#i have not been playing genshin. but i was shown all the designs the other day

[wellnoe]

under-reported evil of genshin character designs is that so many non-pirate non-vampire characters dress like pirates and vampires that you are tricked into believing there are no pirates or vampires and that is precisely when you are hit with a secret pirate or vampire.

[gacha-incels]

you’re never going to have a real conversation about racism, colorism, misogyny, pedo-pandering etc in regards to gacha if you’re looking at one single game, especially a relatively new one. like anything, this will be a superficial look at these problems with no understanding of root causes. this has been most apparent when users will say “don’t play X gacha, play Y gacha instead.” these are industry-wide problems. you’re not doing anyone any favors pretending otherwise. I’m not saying this because I love or hate any of these games, I don’t really care, I’m not coming into conversations about this with the mindset of a “fan”. You need to objectively look at the function of these games in the society from which they come and the relation they have with their target market. Your frame of mind needs to be out of “fandom” mode to do this. You need to understand the target market these games try to reach and their reputation in their country of origin. The games are technically “free” - the consumer is not paying for the story, music, worldbuilding, etc. they are paying large amounts of money (for actual big spenders, thousands per month) to gamble for singular characters, so in turn these characters’ designs must reflect what the consumer most desires to an extreme extent- and this is of course informed by a lifetime’s worth of societal conditioning (media/advertising/gov/etc) and the prejudices that entails. essentially, because everything is banking on selling these characters, the designs are a direct reflection of the consumerbase who in turn are reflections of the society they’ve been conditioned by. they get shown what they want to see and expect to see what they get shown in what eventually becomes a feedback loop that enforces itself, this isn’t unique to gacha (though it’s extremely visible), you can see this happening in other forms of media as well. for something more benign, an example is in US media the eagle’s cry was replaced by the more dramatic sounding red tailed hawk because that’s what viewers expected it to sound like, and after seeing so much media where the eagle is associated with the hawk sound clip this falsity became reality to them through this “movie magic”. It doesn’t matter what reality is, it matters what the viewer’s perception of reality is. Power produces reality. media like this is used not so benignly. this is why good representation in media is fought for, there’s the ability to have a huge effect on a populace, also why “all art is political” it’s who greenlites it, who funds it, who hosts it, where is it shown, who sees it, etc this is all politics. all of this is related.

I would say the average gacha design/character doesn’t want to challenge anything but use the signifiers of contemporary stereotypes already rigidly in place to flatter the consumer’s already held beliefs- and typically it boils down to this is the “demure” (most often East Asian) girl who will fuck you, this is the “exotic” (most often generic fantasy SWANA-like stereotyped) girl who will fuck you, this is the “motherly” girl who will fuck you, this is the “little girl” who will fuck you, this is the “angry” girl that says she hates you but you still own, this is your “cool bro” who is designed to not make men feel uncomfortable. by doing this they are also entering the feedback loop of, for example, racial stereotyping, so this absolutely isn’t to say these designs are harmless.. one year thigh straps are in, one year bare feet are in, one year tech accessories are in, every year racism is in, every year misogyny is in. If you’re coming into this thinking a game like Genshin is leading the pack in any of these areas besides being an open world game and its UI you’re kidding yourself. There are thousands of these games, they’ve been coming out since like 2012 with Puzzle & Dragons, LL:SIF was huge on this website when Nozomi was the designated “thick” anime girl (plus ça change), FGO started in back 2015 and continues to reach new heights of pedophilic design and racism each day. The reason why you will sometimes see riskier design choices in music, NPCs, side stories, background design is that no one is paying to gamble for those things.

[todayimgonnaplay]

Today I'm Gonna Play: Nu: Carnival

I've always seen mobile gacha games that depict lots of female characters. I don't see much of the same for male characters, despite some games showing huge success of having them (i.e. HoyoVerse games and Fate Grand Order). I stumbled across a mention of this on a post about gachas with a male majority cast. I checked to see if it's worth it.

**TW: This is an 18+ BL game containing sexual content to the point that it's not even on the App Stores, although a censored version will be released soon for the stores. I will not be detailing the naughty bits much regardless.**

I have to say, when the content warning popped up mentioning that a scene contains adult content and that I have the option to skip it, I thought it'd be something akin to softcore for some reason. Instead, there was an entire scene with everything shown in all its glory and descriptions. I did get a laugh out of being surprised.

But admiteddly, this game does not cut corners in presentation, at all. The art style is very appealing with a diverse amount of character designs that fit various tropes, and the animation is actually spendid, both in regular and explicit scenes. Although regular animations do tend to move around with a lot of exaggeration, so this can be a turn off for some players. Maybe it's because I don't play BL or adult games much so I'm not in the know for what's the latest or what's buzzing, but I'm getting the impression that this game is a lot more underrated than expected.

The story is not too bad. At least for once I'm paying a little attention to it in a gacha game. It basically acts as an isekai where you gain the role of being a successor to a sorcerer and sex somewhat acts as an energy source. Character dynamics are nice where present, but the best part for me personally is that I like that the relationships are depicted in a healthy manner, where it's more consensual. There are also side stories in the form of events which are fun to read through.

Gameplay is surprisingly fun! It's turn-based with a front view perspective. The UI is very animated which feels like it's giving me little dopamine hits lol. Your party consists of the characters in different tiers known as rarity, and they also have roles such as debuffers, healers, strikers, etc. so there is a fair share of strategy involved. Your party also needs to be leveled up via potions, as well as increase their ranks (kind of like ascensions in Genshin Impact), and also increase certain base stats known as Potential. However at some point it does get grindy as the requirements for getting to the next levels gets higher and higher in terms of your team's power level. This is a system I loathed in another gacha game (Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis), but it's more bearable here because the game offers you other things to do instead, such as events.

As for the gacha aspects, there is a way to get the rolls you want by using a guest account and then binding when you're satisfied, so it is generous in that sense. I'm also F2P so far and I've had decent rolls in the beginning, though lately it's been awful lol. I did think about spending a bit of money, but the prices for what they ask are ridiculously high, which is one aspect I dislike about the game. You can instead gain rewards through quests such as dailies, weeklies,etc., join a guild to do quests in order to collectively earn rewards, do explorations and craft things, or buy with other currencies that don't require payment.

In the end, I'm actually playing this game religiously , but I'm also quite relaxed with it. It's a nice game to drop by and do some stuff and then hop off while you go about with your day. I do hope that the censored version can bring in more users (the intended audience, that is).

[dandelion-wings]

I agree with how the hilichurls are one of the worst dissonances in the game. I'm pretty sure that part of it early installment weirdness as when you look at the prequel comics for the game they're around when Vennessa was still enslaved which whas 500 years before the cataclysm, with traits not shown in-game, like the wings, let alone the chapters that take place closer to the start of the game. Though the rest of it is just poor handling. (Not even getting into the everything of how badly said comics handled that and other parts of the story)

I don't remember when exactly but it was either around right before or slightly after Inazuma release that my headcanon was going to be that the hilichurls were remnants of the Khaenri'ah people's lingering grief and resentment given form after what happened 500 years pre-game. That being known to happen with the fallen gods sealed in liyue and Hanachirusato. Hence why they were so person like, with what happened to the actual people present then left unknown for multiple region releases, but whatever it was, was bad. And that maybe the justifications for why there was hilichurls before was from other people/civilizations that Celestia had doomed. Wouldn't adress everything, but not as bad as what they ended up going with.

As time passed, that got proven wrong, and now I'm kinda worried about the implications of Kaeya's appearance vs other other Khaenri'ahns. With how most other characters from that region shown having pale skin and light colored hair and it's going to be that why he has dark hair and his brown skin is going to be the effects of the curse being almost non-existant in him and not just how he looks. I know there are other characters with similar appearances like Dehya or Xinyan without being related to Khaenri'ah, but I've seen that trope play out before and it really sucks. (Again, not even getting into the lack of variety of skin tone in playable characters or NPC)

Along with the other frankly horrifying implications of the worldbuilding that Mihoyo doesn't seem to consider or care about like the emphasis with the differences in how the curse affected regular Khaenri'ahns and the "pure-blooded" ones, with Khaenri'ah having obvious Norse influences, or with Enkonomiya, and how some vishaps, called Reptilians, are said to be able to shapeshift and blend in with humans, except for some obvious traits.

This has been a really long-winded rant, but your post really helped me put to words just some of what I found so disappointing about the directions the plot in Genshin has taken over time. I've enjoyed the game so much since release and while I still care about it now, I look at what it's become and can only wish that it'll improve going forward.

Yeah, you have good points! The thing is that Hoyo is putting a lot of work into their story, but I don't think they're really paying attention to a lot of the implications of the tropes they use or worldbuilding they toss off. Which plagues all storytelling to some extent, and the more so when you have big sprawling worlds with lots of writers and designers involved. Some of this comes straight from Fantasy Tradition, Video Game Tradition, and the intersection of the two. It's typical in ways that still suck.

Which isn't meant as an excuse, just as to say that while these things are disappointing, I'm not surprised by them, and don't expect better from Hoyo in the future. Especially while marketability is also in the mix. Natlan gives me some hope, but I still do not expect to get many more diverse 5-stars, and very possibly not any event-banner ones, because of the nature of gacha and the target market they're going for--the people who can afford to whale, and are already invested in their style. Their model encourages them to stay in that lane, and while I'd like to be pleasantly surprised, I don't anticipate it.

[voidpumpkin]

YOU FIGHT ON THE COLONISERS SIDE IN SUMERU?!?!

I’m honestly losing track of all the bullshit going on with Sumeru, mihoyo, what the fuck, how are you this bad? For my own sake I'm putting all this nonsense in one place.

Sumeru is a nation in Genshin Impact, like all other nations it’s based off a real world culture. Mondstadt: Germany, Liyue: China, Inazuma: Japan, Snezhaya: Russia, Fontaine: France, Natlan: South America and Africa, Sumeru: SWANA countries (note the non-white/east Asian cultures are just lumped together rather than being separate, distinct cultures.)

First inklings of the problems to come with Sumeru were apparent with the travelling npcs, who are all incredibly pale. They look exactly like the white npcs. Pale SWANA people exist, but they are the minority, the Sumeru npcs we see should not all be so pale. Mihoyo has a long history of colourism, out of the 48 playable characters only 2 are darker than milk, there are no darker skinned npcs, the majority of the non-white playable are paler than most white people. In their other game, Honkai Impact there is only one character with a darker skin tone than milk, that is Carole Pepper, who has slight tan. Despite how pale she already is a major characteristic of her is that she hates how dark her skin is. I repeat one of the main characteristics of Honkai’s only non-white coloured character is that she hates her skin tone. Mihoyo has shown themselves to be consistently colourist before, including how they characterised there only slightly darker skinned characters, Kaeya and Xinyan, both being described as more aggressive than their paler counterparts.

Then designs for Sumeru were released. Not only were they white as fuck, but there designs were quite frankly messy. In the case of Tighnari there was no discernible connection to SWANA culture, and in the case of Doir, she is straight up an orientalist caricature of Indian culture rather than SWANA culture, so they couldn’t even get their caricatures to stick to one region. The conflation of SWANA cultures with each other and non SWANA cultures is a form of racism/orientalism and is unacceptable. The orientalism that is Dori falls in line with the larger misogynistic trend in Genshin Impact, virtually all girls who aren't aren't little children are sexualised/fetishized in some way, with high heels, objectifying outfits, and egregious amount skin shown (something not shared with the vast majority of their male counterparts). This objectification is especially dangerous with the SWANA characters as it is this fetishization and objectification that has been used to justify and condone sexual violence against SWANA women. More details about Dori were released, which showed her riding a genie like it was an animal which people criticised as being disrespectful due to genies being based off the Djinn of Islamic belief.

Then the archon was leaked. And she was a white elf child with a generic Isekai design and absolutely no connection to any SWANA. I repeat, the leader of a supposedly SWANA coded nation has nothing SWANA about her. Her whiteness is even more egregious as a 2D cutscene showed her as a brown skinned adult. Not long after this the trailer for Sumeru dropped. With generic and not very good ‘oriental’ music playing it showed a tropical jungle landscape. Tropical jungles don’t really exist in SWANA countries, don’t get me wrong they do have vast beautiful forests but this didn't resemble them in the slightest. Instead of a) showing how cultures can flourish in desert landscapes as SWANA cultures have done for millennia and the plants that can and do grow there. Or b) showing an accurate depiction of the actual forests that exist in SWANA countries, dispelling some widespread myths about the area. But instead they just went with a jungle. During this trailer we also got to see some of the architecture with only slithers of it referencing actual SWANA architecture.

It was right around this time that Mihoyo themselves put out the terrible defence of ‘it’s just a fantasy world, it’s all cool bro, stop being so mad’ an abysmal defence that doesn’t hold up in their own considering how extensively Mondstadt, Liyue and Inazuma were based on Germany, China and Japan respectively. The level of research and care that went into making these areas and the characters from these areas is what makes Sumeru such a slap in the face. Not helped by the names being accurate. The names of the Sumeru characters are accurate, which shows that Mihoyo is in fact capable of doing research into SWANA cultures and putting it into their game, proving that the orientalist caricature was a choice.

More designs were released, more orientalism. Then the harbingers dropped, a pretty blatant distraction tactic from the racist mess that is Sumeru, with people noting noting that this sliver of Russian culture has more care an accuracy than most of Sumeru.

A couple more Sumeru designs were released/leaked, hinted at being dark skin before release but in fact had the world's slightest tan. These were Dehya and Cyno, who are Eremites, the indigenous people of Sumeru and now live in the desert (keep that in mind.) There was also the release of the desert bandits, enemy npcs who hilariously are noted as being more accurate than the playable characters. The enemies you fight are more accurate than the playable characters (though they still are incredibly inaccurate, especially the women), this will become darker with the recent release of Sumeru’s backstory.

Now the backstory of Sumeru has apparently been released, with a rough summary of it being: the eremites (the indigenous people of Sumeru who are for some reason named after a type of Christian hermit) lived in harmony in Sumeru before the Scarlet king fought the original Dendro archon, creating the desert. The dendro archon subsequently forced the indingenous people to the desert and built a wall. They built a wall to keep out the indigenous people they kicked out, and the enemies you fight are from the desert, i.e. you’re fighting the indigenous people of sumeru, on the side of the coloniser. Genshin already has a history of anti-indigenous racism with the hilichurls, humanoid beasts, countless of which you slaughter, with native americans used as reference for their behaviour. People have also pointed out the uncomfortable parallels to the Israeli genocide of Palestine, white people forcing out the darker skinned indigenous people whilst also claiming to be the ones who are causing it to bloom. 

Whilst we don’t know how this plot will end, considering the track record of genshin and other companies the plot is unfortunately likely going to resolve with, ‘the indigenous people and colonisers should just get along.’

Pretty much every single thing about Sumeru is racist and orientalist in someway and it just gets worse with every new update. 

An especially annoying part is the fans so insistent on denying and defending a fucking gacha game of all things, showing how racist they are in both their support and defense of this mess.

Fuck genshin, fuck mihoyo, and fuck the fans defending it.

I am quite frankly terrified for how they will handle natlan, a South American and African coded nation.

[the-fandom-crossroads]

Nilou = Goddess Hathor

Nilou's character design is heavily based on the Ancient Egyptian Goddess of Love Hathor. Like my previous post about Cyno I'm going to break down the larger references to the Egyptian gods these Genshin characters are based on.

First up Appearance! Nilou's headpiece has Hathor's iconic curved horns. Hathor's horns have been interpreted many ways over the years. Generally shown as a flat piece facing forward on a hat of sorts.

Now Hathor's horns make sense when drawn in hieroglyphics like this. But they make less sense when placed on a 3d subject like the statue above.

Leading to modern artists interpreting hathor's horns in other ways. Mostly one horn on either side of the head instead of a U on top of the head. Hathor is not as well known as Anubis or Ra. Meaning there are only two modern media depictions to pull from. Aaaaand the only one to show her with her horns is the really bad, white washed to hell, movie "Gods of Egypt".

As you can see the headpiece matches Nilou's. Nilou's even has the curved arch connecting the two horns in an attempt to mimic the arch of the sun disk in Hathor's horns. Nilou also has the bikini top thing going on, but that's more in reference to the Persian belly dancer stereotype. The reason Hathor has a bikini top in gods of egypt is because most ancient art of her shows her topless or at least with one tit out. Gods of Egypt decided to be boring and stay pg-13.

Of course like with Cyno and Anubis the connections don't stop at design.

Hathor is the goddess with a thousand names (joking). But the list is long she's goddess of the sky, the moon, the sun, love, motherhood, agriculture, the east, the west, providing for the dead, rare minerals/gold copper lapis lazuli, guardian of miners, incense, guardian of travelers/foreigners, cows, sycamore trees, wine, drunkenness, war, and cosmetics.

Like I said it’s a lot. Here’s the ones that fit Nilou and the dead flower goddess Nilou represents. Hathor goddess of rebirth/lotus flowers.

Nilou’s name means “blue lotus”. In Egyptian mythos the lotus represents death and rebirth and it’s common to find art of Hathor with a blue lotus flower. This is because Hathor was depicted both as a motherly goddess that welcomed you into the world and as a goddess of death that offered you food and drink in the afterlife. The OG definition of I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.

(Pretend one of them is hathor all the hathor one's have her tits out like I said before. Since I'm cross posting this on Hoyolab no tits for you.)

Hathor is also the Goddess of Music and Dance which is Nilou's whole thing. She was also the Goddess of Joy and Gratitude. If you play Nilou's Story Quest you find she spreads happiness to all the people of the bazaar. So much so they often give her gifts in thanks.

Hathor was also credited with the creation of the Nile in some stories. Scholars list this as her being the goddess of moisture? For some reason. But really all that matters is it's some sort of water connection. Hathor is more well known as a sky goddess. The Milky way gets it's name because of the sky was considered cow Hathor and the milky way her milk. Seeing as space isn't an element in Genshin they went with water. But they still reference this connection in Nilou's character trailer.

(She's literally looking at the Milky way my guys.)

Hathor is the goddess of rare minerals and was worshiped in mines far into the Sinai Peninsula (Outside of Egypt's Borders) as a protection goddess for miners. But the rare gemstone most commonly associated with her is Lapis Lazuli. Nilou's gemstone stone decorations are most likely this stone. Lapis Lazuli has been mined in the middle east since ancient times most specifically in Isreal. But it is cheaper than Blue Sapphire the other option for Nilou's ornaments.

Lastly Hathor is known as The Eye of Ra. Enacting Ra's will/punishment on humanity. Other's have been the Eye of Ra but Hathor's story is the most infamous. It's said that once she took the form of Sekhmet she refused to stop killing humans. None of the other gods were strong enough to beat her in a fight. So they spilled Beer/Wine along the Nile, Sekhmet came and drank thinking it was the blood of her enemies. She got so drunk she past out and Ra was able to remove the blessing transforming her back into cow Hathor the gentle. There are no other stories of Hathor channeling the Eye of Ra after this occasion.

As a playable Genshin character Nilou is required to be good at combat. But it doesn't hurt to have her source material be a gentle soul with a secret blood thirsty warrior within.

So to summarize Hathor is a goddess of lotus flowers, music, dance love, joy, gratitude, moisture, the sky/milky way, lapis lazuli, protection, and war. All characteristics that can be found in Nilou. Along with a nice horn head piece.

So what do you think? Is Nilou secretly a goddess of Love? Are there any connections I missed?

Check out my Cyno breakdown Here! and Follow to find out when I post Candace's breakdown! Also Thanks for reading this monster of a post.

[crapmagak]

Engage Drip Marketing: Timerra and Solm

Whelp, it’s-a-time for the last major box art character to appear (not counting Sombron), Timerra, as well as an intro to Solm itself. Seems we’re rounding out the countries first before further intros, which I’m down for.

So, Solm… 

Solm is a country in southeast Elyos, ruled by the freedom-loving queen Sfoglia as a neutral nation.

Solm by far has been one of the nations I’ve been the most interested in. Mostly just because of how little we saw of it until a couple weeks ago. Here, though, it seems to play double duty as our token neutral mid act shake up country, and our token desert country. And considering all the vibes every royal but Lumera has been putting down, and how neutral countries usually operate in Fire Emblem… If queen Sfoglia isn’t gonna be an antagonist at some point, some noble probably will be. Speaking of which, from Fogato’s website bios, it’s also revealed the royal line of Solm is matrilineal, which is neat. 

Sadly, though, I am kind of worried about something when it comes to Solm. Earlier this year, the country of Sumeru came in Genshin Impact, and swiftly grew infamous for its colorism issues. With the italian food name gimmick of this country, we currently know six Solmnian characters; Timerra, Fogato, Bonet, Pandoro, Seadall, and Merrin. And, well… four of them are the ambiguous maybe white, maybe east asian skin tone of anime. Like, I’m a white American dude, I’m not the best person to articulate the problems here. Still, they are kind of eyebrow raising. Hopefully this isn’t the case, but I’m ready to be disappointed again.

And without further adieu… Timerra herself. Fire in artwork…

Timerra is the first princess of the Kingdom of Solm, and Fogato's sister. Perhaps because she was raised in the freedom-loving Solm, she has an innocent and positive personality.

Then portrait…

While Timerra has been educated to become the next queen, she has been allowed to roam freely, so she can get along with just about anyone.

Then cutscene…

Timerra loves having everyone sit around bonfires. She loves singing, and it seems sometimes she comes up with songs on the spot...

Timerra: "Hmm, there we go! Time to happily wait for this meat to grill! Ahem... Now then, First Princess of Solm, Timerra, is going to sing!"

So, quite a bit going on with her. The design is cute, and the colors work really well together, even if the balls are rather silly. Still, her outfit itself is kind of an orientalist stereotype. Not as fetishistically horny as it could be, but not great either. Like, with the specific portions of skin shown off, the clothes around her waist and legs, and the ornaments on her wrists and ankles, they all bring to mind a stereotypical belly dancer, and that’s not even her class as it turns out. Sadly, these depictions are par for the course in fantasy media depicting any country inspired by MENA regions. I don’t even think she should be in something from a historically accurate documentary, or show no skin at all. Timerra is clearly a free spirit girl who employs an acrobatic fighting style, so her design should communicate that. Just… maybe not something evocative of a fictitious outfit made up by Europeans to fetishize women from a region of the world they were colonizing. This is a problem that's so much bigger than one game though, so I’ll try not to harp on it too much, and just leave it at disappointed but not surprised.

As for the character herself, Timerra seems alright. Your typical cute genki girl, here to round out the cast of generically nice avatar Alear, generically nice prince Alfred, cool and stoic prince Diamante, and cool and sexy princess Ivy. It’d be cool if Timerra’s freedom and roaming around gave her a more ground perspective compared to the other royals. Sadly I won’t hold my breath. This is Fire Emblem, after all, the little people don’t really matter in this franchise.

Also, I’m curious if she actually is gonna break out into song near the end of that cutscene. Vocal themes have become a huge part of nintendo games all over, and every mainline FE game since Fates has had one. Perhaps Timerra may end up singing the opening and or ending theme for the game.

And now for the crit clip…

Timerra's starting class is Sentinel. Elegantly wielding a lance, they use quick movements to make enemies' heads spin.

Curiously, her class name is Vigilante in japanese, but was changed to sentinel as seen in english trailers. Not sure why. Maybe it’s like a translation thing, like how the devs for Metroid thought bounty hunter just meant “cool guy who goes on adventures”? Don’t really know enough about the language to know for sure, though.

There are some rather interesting details to look over. The map itself seems to be the castle of Solm itself, overrun with Elusian soldiers. And that's not even the strangest part. We can see on the mini map that Timerra is alone in the middle of the map, while the rest of the army is away at the bottom. I’d ask if this is the chapter Timerra is recruited, but she’s currently level 19, a mere level away from promoting. Perhaps for story reasons she’s been separating.

I’m also curious because we haven’t seen Timerra with any characters that could be her retainers, same as Ivy. It’d be odd if these characters didn’t have them while the other royals clearly do. Perhaps we’ll see them later.

[evercelle]

What are your feelings towards 2.1 genshin? You mentioned having a lot of lukewarm ones in some tags :O

hm... short version: i feel mhy had a list of cool moments/story beats they wanted to hit in 2.1 archon quest, and rushed through cramming all of those into a single update at the cost of literally any good writing/character development/pacing.

long version: i'll cut this to avoid too many spoilers for folks/contain my complaining under a cut:

EVER'S LIST OF GRIEVANCES, 2.1 EDITION:

1) the pacing is super whacked out. i get that mhy wants to make each region wrap in 3 chapters (consistent with mondstadt and liyue), but the pacing for Inazuma as a whole was incredibly rushed at the end. the first 2 chapters did a great job of setting up the context for the vision hunt decree, introducing the toll it takes on Inazuma's citizens/visitors to the nation, and the introducing the resistance as well. the world quests available with 2.0 also went to great lengths to develop the theme of how the war & civil unrest created problems caused both by the shogunate and the resistance. then, in the climactic ending... it went almost entirely unaddressed? after the decree is repealed, vision holders are given their visions back and state they completely recovered their memories, but neither the main storyline nor raiden's quest address the rest of the human cost (lost time, lost lives, displaced populations). it feels like everything wrapped up too neatly.

2) there's a serious gap between raiden's ideals and the way her actions are written. raiden suffered great loss (her twin, her friends, even her subjects) throughout her reign, which is a reasonable (if whacked out) logic to base her pursuit of eternity upon. what i wanted to see (and mhy did not deliver) was the depth of her conviction that caused her to enforce something as drastic as the vision hunt decree. the fact that she flatly stated she was fully aware of its human cost even in the plane of euthymia substantiates how deeply she believed in her ideals... only for it to be effectively overturned by (1) conversation with yae/traveler? all the emotion in raiden's character trailer never makes a single appearance in the main line game (other than the animated sequence in which you’re very quickly told, not otherwise shown by raiden’s dialogue or choices, what she suffered), which is absolutely boggling.

3) no accountability for raiden's action = shallow character development: to that end, the lack of depth in her individual character quest is also disappointing... i get that she's the eternal god-ruler of inazuma which would present a very different public reaction than, say, a president doing the same thing, but the fact that the human cost of the decree isn't addressed at ALL is ridiculous. her character quest being... a shopping trip... lacks the development that other archons (venti, zhongli) had in their respective quests. i think raiden truly wants to protect her living subjects through her pursuit of eternity, yet the inner conflict between "a god's devotion to their subjects vs. an immortal struggling to grasp mortal experiences" was only vaguely implied instead of actively explored.

4) key NPCs were severely underutilized: acts 1+2 of the inazuma arc set up the resistance as key figures, only for them to do... absolutely nothing in act 3. kokomi is billed as a genius strategist. the notion that she'll accept unknown donations of supplies from an unidentifiable benefactor, no questions asked, is INSANE. frankly, i would've found the plot much more interesting if the resistance was actively colluding with the fatui to destabilize the shogunate, but no... the resistance's presence in act 3 is solely to introduce the delusions/tie the fatui back into the plot/create the emotional attachment to teppei to galvanize the traveler into confronting raiden again. the part with teppei was fine and in fact one of the highlights in the patch to me (legitimately!! heartbroken!! AT HIS LAST LINE ABOUT THE UNIFORMS!!!), but kokomi and gorou were such a non-presence... sigh. i acknowledge my pipe dream about kokomi doing sus shit with the fatui was wishful thinking, but mhy's decision to essentially lay the blame for everything on the established villains the fatui in order effectively absolve raiden of any emotional culpability/make her redeemable so players will like & roll for her is WEAK.

5) the pacing, again... (head in hands) i feel like all of the problems i complained about could have been addressed if mhy just let their story content breath a little more. i know game developers have schedules they need to stick to, but considering the complexity they introduced into inazuma and different factions present, trying to tie up all the loose strings in a single patch was a fool's errand... though it's possible that some of these things may be addressed in 2.2.

on one hand, genshin is a game designed to be played in short bursts, so it's not surprising to me that the narrative choices they make tends towards "tell, don't show" and lots of background reading (a LOT of character stories/depth/lore is only available in item descriptions), but it's still rather disappointing when you compare it to what it could be...

at the end of it, the cutscenes were beautifully animated and there were a few parts i did enjoy (sara had a nice spotlight, i stan for teppei, SCARAMOUCHE, and kazuha's moment was incredibly moving), but on the whole 2.1 felt very rushed, and the writing for raiden shogun is so all over the place it's really put a damper on my personal enjoyment for inazuma ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[oh-cool-a-burning-sword]

if you wanna get some insight on the hate from someone who kinda agrees with this one, basically it felt like all the girls at first were plucked straight from Genshin Impact; Generically Anime Girl with armor/designs that didn't really fit the war. Biggest example is Etie, who "devotes all her time to body-building" but doesn't look amy buffer than the other noble girls. I think it's gotten better as more of the designs got shown but i may be just be numb idk. No hate if you don't agree!

Tbh, I never really got the whole 'Engage looks like Genshin' thing people have been saying. like yeah the setting's more colourful but that's as far as the similarities go. And I'm saying this as someone who plays Genshin. I don't see that many similarities between between these games design-wise.

As for the female character's armour/body type... that's an issue a lot of FE characters have, not just engage's. Like just look at Byleth and Shez, both of them spent most of their lives as mercenaries, yet both their female counterparts do little to show that. Then we have Charlotte who's barely even wearing clothes. Yeah we have some more muscular female characters but their unfortunately few and far between.

Yeah I also thought Alear's hair was odd at first but seeing as it looks like that'll be a plot point in game I'm willing to let that slide. As for everyone else I either have no real opinion over their designs or I love how they look. Like say what you want about Alfred and Celine, but I love the flower themes.

It could just be me but I really don't understand all the hate people have for Engage's designs. Yeah their different to what we're used to, but different doesn't automatically mean bad. Look at Rise of the TMNT for example. Their designs and personalities vary from their previous counterparts which caused a lot of previous fans to not want to watch, but two seasons and a movie later people love this addition to the series.

Wether or not the same will happen with Engage is still up for Debate. Based on what the reviewers who got their hands on the demo said, the gameplay should be pretty good. But we don't know too much about the main story just yet, how much of it will be the classic 'Good dragon vs evil dragon' and how much will be unique twists and turns to set the game apart. Hopefully we can get one more story trailer before the game's released.

[ravenwolfie97]

2021 Art Summary

The time old tradition continues. I’ll be honest; this year was rough. Like, I scraped the bottom of the barrel for most of these months. Very little art was accomplished (or, at least, completed), and I had felt pretty bad about that the last couple months. But, as it turns out, I wasn’t alone in that. Every other artist I’ve seen has said they’ve been in the exact same boat. So I’m glad now that I could do what I could this year. And now, as always, I’ll share my journey through this year with you!

normally i don’t hide these under a readmore but this one kinda got away from me and i wanted to spare your and my dashboards this time

HEY SO remember when i said i would work on my TOME Fan Animations every day all year? hahaha Yeah That Didn’t Happen I spent like ten days out of the month tops, and in that time I really only worked a little bit on storyboards and got almost all of my character’s talksprites redone. And I do like them! But yeah. I honestly don’t even know what will become of that project, if anything, at this point.

In addition to that, I participated yet again in Gotta Draw ‘Em All on deviantArt with Grookey as my muse. What a lil cutie. Sadly, this was the final event for that group, but I’m glad I was there to contribute to it.

I also continued my TOME server’s art challenge tradition of making a TOMERPG character from scratch, and Zeitgeist was born. I just think it’s got a cool design :>

Also! New thing I’m doing for this summary: some WIPs! because I did a lot of them and I’m upset that I didn’t ever get to finish them! So to kick it off here’s one that began in January and was last updated in June: a “six fanarts” part three exclusively for cute girls

okay let’s continue

i’ll tell you right now that this year is comprised of a lot of sketches because digital art was too hard or too time- or energy-consuming, so i tried to make them look really nice this time

This was the height of my Genshin fever, and the only prescription was playing it more and finally attempting to draw and write some stuff with it. Razor was the first actual character I drew, mainly cuz I love him lots, but also cuz I thought his design would lend well to my style. I also made myself a Genshin sona, as well as ones for Michael and Val (not shown cuz i couldn’t get a design figured out for Val at all): Raven (me) is a Hydro sword user, Michael is an Anemo bow user, and Val is a Pyro claymore user. Wanted to try my hand at making my own Genshin-esque designs after having lots of opinions on the actual characters and doing a bunch of edits on some of them.

My Pokemon 25th anniversary pic was late, so it goes in here. I had such a fun time emulating Sugimori’s modern art style... even if it took forever to do.

Also Astra (my nb genshin traveler) got a redesign and I still haven’t made a proper ref for it. But they do look a lot cooler. I drew them at work :>

I wanted to draw more genshin, so I asked for genshin to draw, and I attempted only one. but Venti was a good one. Got into Montero (Call Me By Your Name) too much and got Val vibes, and also watched Queer ✨ too much and loved the bisexual lighting in the third act too much, so. yeah. mix em together and that’s what i got And in a twist of fate, Tales of Lostclan re-entered my brain space because The Creator Found My Post and contacted me about it and we started chatting and it was great so I drew a Pepperpaw gijinka and named him Aiden.

Another WIP I wanted to share was my sketch for another TOME server art challenge, with Zetto in the Zero Escape universe. I really liked the prompt but again, digitization was my enemy this year.

moving on!

These are literally the only two things that happened this month. And they were both pretty late in. Drawing Diluc is easy to explain; I love him and wanted to try and draw him. The other one is much more interesting.

My friend @mew-cake​ started reading To Your Eternity (which later on in the year became an anime), and I enjoyed the bits and pieces she liveblogged. She posted something along the lines of “i wish i could write a story like this” and i was like Hell Yes let’s do it together. So we got to work, making a story I tentatively call Spirit of the Earth about an angel wanting to learn what life on Earth is like so it lives first as a tree, then a bird, then a cat, and then a variety of different humans. My recent fascination with philosophy and the themes Cake found within To Your Eternity inspired us to think on lots of aspects of life and love and hurt, and it was kinda beautiful. We should revisit it sometime.

i lied kind of, i really wanted to get this picture of Xiao done too. but i did not. here is the sketch tho

and even though we were working on one original story, at the very end of the month, there was another idea coming together...

SURPRISE, IT’S A DIFFERENT ORIGINAL STORY. It’s okay, we didn’t expect this either, but it happened anyway.

Cake had been saying that it would be cool for the two of us to be cast as anime rivals, and I was like yeah that would be cool. And then I had the most massive shower thought on that and it spiraled into this story premise. As much as I would love to completely gush about this new story, I wanna still keep most of it under wraps, so I’ll give a basic rundown. The two main characters, the “anime rivals” as they were initially, are Roxy (red/sketch) and Lalun (blue/full color), who have the powers of the Sun and the Moon respectively. In a world full of alchemical magic where many people control elements based on the solar system, Roxy and Lalun are two special cases and they’re being forced to fulfill a cosmic destiny for reasons largely unknown to them. Other characters here include: Alex (purple/sketch) who has the powers of Venus, which in this world corresponds with electricity; and Oliver (green/full color) who has the powers of Saturn, which are oriented with gravity control and telekinesis. These kids all go to school together and get into horrible situations against their will (and even at their will, sometimes). So all in all, it’s a time :3

One day we’ll show off all of our art for this, but for now, I’ll just give ya all the good stuff I did.

ALSO. WIP TIME BECAUSE I AM SO UPSET I NEVER REMEMBERED TO FINISH THIS. I liveblogged about SK8 The Infinity around this time too, and I loved it, and I drew parallels between the two main characters of that show with my two main OCs from The Dark Side: War on Destiny. So I drew Reki and Kyle together being cool bros

okay anyway

My Genshin brainrot has started to fade around now and it’d been replaced with Cosmic Legacy brainrot instead. I just... we loved these kids so much, man. So much cool stuff. Lots of funny filler. A whole bunch of suffering. Y’know. The usual.

I’ll just say it now too that most of August just had a few more Cosmic sketches. Not very much was happening with me creatively, and things were starting to grind me down. And, well... eventually things took a turn, and...

UH WHOOPS I GOT A GIRLFRIEND AND HER NAME IS STACEY AKA @wolf-of-hearts-den​?????

Yeah, that also happened very suddenly. And we both had a lot of feelings to work out. It was a lot, and we couldn’t handle it very well - Stacey especially... considering the fact she had Two Partners now n all... but it all worked out. And all in all, it was an awesome moment, and a great turning point for me.

WIP time helps break up this part of the summary and i’m also pissed i couldn’t get this done in time because it was actually a timely piece. i started to do a 10  year anniversary redraw i’d been planning for Years and chickened out when it came to doing the background. so have this comparison with my Animal Jam OC Ferret for now

okay back to girlfriend um

this was honestly really tough to make hkjbbjlk Since our relationship started pretty late into the last month, our feelings spilled out more into the month after. And Boy Howdy, were there feelings. If I can be a little transparent, being able to freely express sexual feelings and thoughts with someone you trust is literally one of the most wonderful things. It’s just one more thing I don’t have to completely hide, and it feels awesome to be able to tell someone. And to have someone think of you and want you in that way? Absolutely insane. It still boggles my mind that someone can love me the way Stacey does. Honestly incredible.

also it’s not like i didn’t make any non-horny art during that time. they were just the only things i put effort into jklhjkl MOTIVATION HITS WHEN IT HITS, Y’ALL

this isn’t a WIP but it is more cosmic art i can share

ok back to the program. god the art summary is off the rails this year

Among some more girlfriend-related material, Stacey and Cake and I also had an aggie.io session where I drew some of my OCs poorly. Featured here are Sierra from Legends: Children of the Dragons, Mamoru from Cat Devil, and Val... from my brain. He’s just cool.

there was actually very little else than this, and that continued into...

Yeah, barely anything happened this month. The RW ref is only half-finished, and I had meant to get that done in August. But I gave it to someone to actually use as reference here, so it counts, okay?

Here we have an actually decent picture of another Cosmic Legacy character named Mercutio, who’s the not-so-good guy. But he does good things for people. He’s a good father... right?

and then Stacey came up with a game in a dream called Everbound and I had to make at least a mock-up title screen for it. Thank you for getting me to make an art to fill the screen up, babe

Thank God I got the inspiration to finally do that TWEWY self-insert pic only a few days ago, or else this would have been very empty. Additionally we have A Cool Character That Shall Not Be Explained on the right, whom I have added mainly because they are very cool and a piece of art that I completed in this month that I am proud of, as well as another Cool Character that I would be happy to explain about. So Stacey had recently been coming up with their own original story universe thing that’s essentially a radioactive wasteland full of animal mutants and hybrids. It’s mostly an excuse to make rad furry character designs, and I was all in on all of it, so I wanted to try and join in, so I made Calista! She’s a housecat/jellyfish hybrid with the ability to poison and shock people cuz that’s what jellyfish do. Haven’t done much with her, but she was a fun little character design challenge to do if nothing else :>

ANYWAY yeah this year sucked art-wise, but it was a good time regardless. I got a steady full-time job, I got car-driving abilities, and most importantly I have a lovely partner and wonderful friends to keep me sane and feel loved. No matter what happens in this year to come, all I know is I’ll make the most of it, and still find some things to make me happy.

...and maybe i’ll finally get some of those WIPs done OK BYE

[scaramoon]

OKAY SO LORE I’M TYPING THIS IN MY NOTES APP AS I’M WATCHING THE STREAM TO GIVE YOU THE FULL EXPERIENCE AND TO MAKE SURE I DONT MISS TO TELL YOU ANYTHING

there’s someone playing piano?? like straight up video of someone at a piano,,,,i think it’s yu-peng chen!! the song he’s playing is so pretty :( THEY HAVE A WHOLE INAZUMA THEMED SET HE’S PLAYING IN?? THERES AN ACTUAL INAZUMA ARCHON STATUE IN THE BACKGROUND AND EVERYTHING??

the stream is in chinese!! with subtitles!!

it will be 2.0 AND inazuma is now officially confirmed!!

now there’s a trailer! ITS ALL SO PRETTY AND OMG THE VOICE ACTORS?? GOROU AND THOMA WERE SHOWN!! oh my god the pyro cube?? looks so?? scary?? AAAAH THOMA THOMA THOMA??? STOOD NEXT TO AETHER?? IM SCREAMING rn they’re shaking ayaka!! and now yoimiya!! her voice actor is so cute i’m- SAYUUUU!!!! AGHH SHES SO CUTE BYE GOROU GORIU GORIU GOROU AAAAHHH HE EAS THERE HE WAS THERE AAAAAH

FIRST CODE: AS6BQKLY9GLD

now they’re back to the set!! they’re introducing some of the developers, right now there’s aquaria who’s the combat designer in genshin and rn they’re talking about the stages and joys of development and how the process works,,,i actually like this part!! it’s nice to see the people working on a game i’m so fond of talk so passionately about their thoughts while they’re working on it :> he said everyone at mihoyo loves the game as much as we do and that it’s all of us together in teyvat and i went 🥺 ngl

now he’s talking about inazuma and how different it was than mondstadt or liyue and how different the challenges there were! they put a lot of thought into the electro aspect of inazuma as well as the “eternity” part of it. there will be more dev talk later and now they’re just announcing the fan art contest that starts today

now they had a set change and there’s a different dev, and now they’re talking about the cultural and design aspects of inazuma! they say they love to see fan theories and that they often leave little clues in the game and that it brings them joy and motivation when people find and decipher them. they’re talking about the tea house now and the shiba inu that owns it; they hope players can discover all the little details the writers and designers put all over inazuma,,THEY JUST DRANK IN SYNC BC THEY STARTED TALKING ABOUT UNIFORMITY IN INAZUMA IM SOBBING,,,,ok wait it’s actually rlly interesting bc they’re talking about how they made sure every single detail in inazuma contributes/reflects the story and the “electro archon strives for eternity” story i’m- they’re currently talking about the real life inspiration they had, for example how the sacred sakura tree came to be and what it means

now they’re showing character combat (?) trailers!! ayaka is first, now yoimiya!! they’re actually showing the pyro cube in yoimiya’s!! THEYRE SHOWING SAYUUU MY BBY SHES SO CUTE they’re joking about how genshin players have been waiting for ayaka since the beginning of the game lmaooo bye 😭 they’re talking about the new characters now, what kind of people they are, what to expect from them and what their character traits are!! ayaka is elegant but also sweet and cute, yoimiya is creative and somewhat childish, enthusiastic and gets along with everyone, sayu sleeps a lot to grow taller and is a very well trained tiny ninja

we’re getting two new story chapters, act I and act II as well as ayaka’s and yoimiya’s story quests!!

THEYRE TALKING ABOUT THOMA, he’s observant apparently and has a very mysterious character!! they’re also talking about sara and kokomi AAHHHH GOROU GOROU!! they didn’t say much about him other than that he’s very dependable and fierce in battle!! they also mentioned yae sakura!!

SECOND CODE; GBNA9J5H9Y4H

another scene change and another dev, now it’s cissie!! she’s the one designing the inazuma map/landscape creator and they’ll be talking about geological design and the scenery of inazuma since it’s a archipelago as well!! she’s talking about the different uses of colour and shapes and how they’re using them to impact the player’s gaming experience; she also said that they tried to pay homage to classic ghibli movies with some of the design choices they made!

rn they’re showing “the shimmering voyage” which is the 1.0 ost w 68 songs which will me available soon!! now they’re talking to yu-peng chen THEY HAD THE LONDON SYMPHONIC THEATRE RECORD THE MONDSTADT SOUNDTRACK, THE SHANGHAI ONE THE ONE FOR LIYUE AND NOW THEY ASKED THE ONE IN TOKYO TO DO THE ONE FOR INAZUMA?? HELLOO?? they pay attention to the smallest details i swear i respect that so much wow

THE THEATRE MECHANICS EVENT IS COMING BACK IN INAZUMA!! we’re getting gardening for our tea pot too!! new enemies called “ruin senitel (?)” which is essentially a worm version of the ruin guard?? it looks weird and scary ngl,,,we get new fatui enemies, “the mirror maiden” as well as normal human enemies in inazuma, dressed like samurais,,

ayaka’s banner is first, then yoimiya & sayu,,,we get 2 new 5 star weapons as well 5 new craftable inazuma weapons. we get 2 new artifacts sets, emblem of severed gate and shimenawas remembrance, we get the ability to choose an artifact by sacrificing 3 5 star artifacts and creating an artifact strongbox; new system for the weapon banner: you pick which of the 5 star weapon you want and if you don’t get it, you get “fate points” and with those you can choose the one you want!

THIRD CODE: LS6T4L9ZZ7TH

and that was it!! yu-peng chen is playing the piano again as a farewell, i guess

AHH TYSM BBY ALL THE KISSES FOR YOU 😞🙏

i really like how much detail they put into it though :( like i’m ngl i am an impatient little shit but fr its so nice to know the devs love it as much as we do, i’ll gladly wait knowing they put so much detail in it :(

ALSO SJDJFJ kazuha and sayu sleeping on warm rocks together send tweet side note: big brother kazuha is v sweet me thinks, they’re related now i said so

i saw some stuff about thoma when i opened twitter a second ago and people are lowkey pressed that their characterizations of him are wrong 😞 that’s what they get for saying he got downgraded 😁

also,,, ruin sential,, y’know the “upgrade, go back, I SAID GO BACK” meme ?? that’s me w ruin guards, hunters, and graders so 😃 i stg if that thing can go underground i’m gonna cry. OH ALSO i heard about the garden thing a while ago and i don’t remember a lot of what was said but it’s really cool >:)

pov you’re me using kazuha to fight the samurais bc i think it’s funny

OOH WAIT THE ARTIFACT THING SOUNDS COOL THOUGH :0 do we just get to pick what type it is, or do sub stats and stuff carry over/give you a higher chance of getting certain sub stats? either way i’m v happy about that i have so much maiden stuff and uh. no one to put it on :”)

the weapon banner thing sounds cool too :> i don’t have a five star weapon bc i’m scared to waste primos but mayhaps if i can choose... >:)

also shout out to yu-peng chen for being amazing, thought one of the mondstadt songs would be easy to play and i was Very Wrong

[krowjet]

Besides, if they leak anymore Sumeru stuff, they’re likely to get sued to hell and back. Hoyo has cracked down on leakers for overdoing things before (Remember the Leaker Hunt Decree of 1.4-1.5?) and they aren’t afraid to do it again.

Two notable people already saw some kind of response- Undiscovery Ch had to move to Undiscovery Genshin on YouTube due to copyright strikes, but they were a pretty reputable channel to go to if you wanted decent leaks, and they said they’d slow down a bit more to avoid any future issues with that, even if they were already carefully selecting viable leaks and weren’t showing models or drop market and stuff if they hadn’t already been released. Lumie had to shut her account down because of how openly she was using a private server, which they made clear in the terms of service wasn’t okay- this included her ult swap videos and leak videos, and completely unrelated to genshin content. There’s so many videos on YouTube as well talking about the leakers took things too far last time and history is going to repeat at this rate.

They had like half the starter cast of Sumeru leaked way ahead of when they wanted to- it was halfway through 2.7 at the latest, and people were leaking gameplay clips and mechanics as well rating fanart for accuracy in comparison to models, and way before that they were talking about model types, weapons, identifiers, visions, and rarity. All the way back in like 2.5-2.6. Though funnily enough, no one was ever able to agree on what Cyno’s vision would be- I saw pyro, hydro, electro, dendro. My friends have said he looks like he could be cryo or geo as well. The only thing I’ve yet to see is Anemo. I still have no idea what to expect because again, I’ve seen it all.

There’s a reason most of the reputable leakers leak as they do- slow, steady, in small bits here and there that build on each other closer to release dates. For people to be doing what they did ruins a lot of excitement for people and also leaks an unfinished product that is very much up to change at the last minute- we saw that with Kokomi, who got her old design shown and then they swapped it for her current, and then we had Heizou who had his height changed the second day of beta and his ult tweaked a bit after beta. It’s because they end up more accurate, help build hype that Hoyo doesn’t have to pay for, and helps the leakers not get sued or face potential shutdowns of accounts. It’s very calculated and the dependable ones know what they’re doing.

And with how unavoidable the leaks are these days, many people don’t have much choice but to live with them even if we don’t want to. I’m not even in the genshin leaks subreddit but it pops up constantly in my feed and with how it’s a leak sub, no one puts spoiler or nsfw tags to blur them. Plus, people will constantly talk about them and videos will pop up in my feed. So not only are they really a bit of thrill killer, they also are completely unavoidable anymore.

Not to mention the work Hoyoverse has to do to make up for it. They’ve been having to create a new kind of excitement to replace the hype they’d been hoping to build since so much got spoiled. The official leaks, the dendro reactions and puzzles, and the harbinger teaser with a Collei cameo. They’re having to do a lot of work to rebuild the hype after the leak dumps.

Leaking him now would only cause problems for Hoyo with probably their biggest ace right now, but also the playerbase could be met with a lot of disappointment, and the leakers themselves could get in a lot of trouble. Its a dangerous game they don’t want to play right now, and I don’t blame them with less then a month away from the drop of Sumeru anyways… and that also means Cyno leaks will probably be more safe and kinda wanted by more people.

While I doubt a situation like Kokomi is going to happen, what with him already being pretty publicly shown for years now- the manga dates back to 2019, I think, and the Tevyat story trailer is from 2020, I still think he might have a few things they might want to polish up a bit more. His design and kit are probably already pretty much finished, but they might tweak it a bit like they did Ayaka’s. Even though she got leaked and her kit was shown, her ult got tweaked and her animations were changed a bit. Similar might happen to him. It wouldn’t shock me. Plus, they also will still need a bit more time to finish up his drip market art, his official trailer, the voiceline card they post along side so people know some of his lines in his profile, but also so his VAs will be able to record and smooth out any issues with his audios before he gets launched- in peace, since everyone kinda floods the VAs when they get announced, even more unknown ones like Kieran Regan got a lot of attention once he was revealed as Heizou’s english VA. Leaks right now open a floodgate that Hoyo would definitely be pissed about.

Just be kind to the leakers. Some have played a dangerous gamble, and now everyone’s on edge waiting for the next play. Why would you willingly roll the dice right now in fear of getting the seven that leads to some kind of punishment, whatever that might end up being? With how things could go this far in, I doubt they’d like to risk potentially one of the more likely to fail moves, especially with the safer option also being easier. God I sound like Yelan with all the gambling and card game references.

Regarding Cyno and any leaks relating to him…

yeah, they can’t leak Cyno’s model. it’s such a risky move and would likely postpone is release. cyno will be appearing in the archon quest in 3.0 most likely, but leaks regarding him will be scarce till the 3.1-3.2 beta.

we got personality leaks, that’s all we’re getting for awhile. his model is there! but it can’t be shown.

i’m only saying this cause people are like… harassing leakers… for cyno leaks… stop😹‼️

the only reason ayaka’s model was leaked was cause of her drip marketing. that’s literally it.

[stepphase]

2021 Best Game list for Gamers: Highlights and much more

The Game Awards traditionally take place in December, and this is also the case this year. There are not only numerous prizes for the developers to win. They also whet gamers' appetite for the games in the coming year.

In keeping with the pandemic year 2020 and the industry, the Game Awards took place virtually on December 10 this year. Only the respective production team and the moderators were on-site (in Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo). Unsurprisingly, “The Last of Us II” was the big winner of the evening and won the categories “Game of the Year”, “Best Game Direction” and “Best Narrative”. What gamers around the world are likely to have been even more interested in than the award ceremony. Our outlooks on the games announced for the coming year 2021. Here come the gaming highlights.

2021 could be a good year for gamers

The biggest titles we can look forward to as early as 2021 are certainly the new "Mass Effect", "Dragon Age 4" and "Call of Duty: Cold War". All series have already made a name for themselves. Now their makers have shown new or even the first trailers.

The teaser for "Dragon Age 4" still doesn't show any gameplay, but it allows you to look much deeper into the story than before. Against the villain Dread Wolf, a new, as yet unknown hero may compete, who ends up in the kingdom of Tevinter, led by magicians. The first trailer for the new “Mass Effect”, however, confirms what fans have been waiting for for a long time: it's back to the Milky Way! There are numerous indications in the teaser that it is a sequel to the original trilogy. In the end, you can also see a familiar face, namely that of Asari Liara, an ally of Commander Shepard, the battle-hardened veteran from the first three parts.

At this point you will find content from Youtube

In order to interact with or display content from social networks, we need your consent. You can find more about this in the description of this data processing purpose and in the data protection information of these third-party providers.

December 16 is confirmed for Season 1 of "Call of Duty: Cold War". At the Game Awards, the trailer showed what the gameplay and map look like. "Returnal" also has a fixed date for the PlayStation 5. The exclusive title starts on March 19, 2021.

Trailers whet the appetite for the new gaming year

The trailer for “Crimson Desert” also stood out. In 2019, the development studio Pearl Abyss announced the game, back then as an MMORPG. The player ends up on the beautiful continent Pywell, known from the MMORPG Black Desert Online. As the leader of a mercenary gang, the area is to be systematically recaptured. In the teaser, the optics and the beautifully designed landscape are particularly impressive. The sketched storyline makes you want more, the release is planned for winter 2021.

In order to interact with or display content from social networks, we need your consent. I consent to external content from social networks being displayed to me. This allows personal data to be transmitted to third-party providers. You can find more about this in the description of this data processing purpose and in the data protection information of these third-party providers.

Another highlight of the Game Awards 2020 was the trailer for "It Takes Two". The co-op game breaks with the genre traditions and tells the story of a falling-out lover. Who are transform into dolls and transport into a magical world? Gamers can also look forward to “Monster Hunter Rise”, which will be released on March 26, 2021, and will probably have a demo version available from January. According to the trailer, the popular “Microsoft Flight Simulator” for the new Xbox Series X / S console will also be released in 2021. The trailer for “The Callisto Protocol” by “Dead Space” creator Glen Schofield also draws attention; there could be a big title in the starting blocks for horror fans!

The winners of the Game Awards 2020

In addition to “The Last of Us II”, there were of course numerous other winners that evening. "Final Fantasy 7 Remake", "Hades" and "Ghost of Tsushima" were also often nominated. Nintendo's long-running “ Animal Crossing: New Horizons ” was also able to convince as “Best Family Game”, but failed as “Game of the Year” on “TLoUII”. The best mobile game was “Among Us”, which was head-to-head with “Genshin Impact” and “Call of Duty Mobile”. Incidentally, “TLoUII” also won in the role-playing category and thus prevailed against other strong nominees such as “Assassin's Creed Valhalla” and “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order”.

The winners of the main categories at a glance:

Game of the Year: The Last of Us II

Game Direction: The Last of Us II

Narration: The Last of Us II

Art Direction: Ghost of Tsushima

Music: Final Fantasy 7 Remake "

Audio design: The Last of Us II

Acting performance: Laura Bailey as Abby in The Last of Us II

It is not only the design of the categories that make you think of the Oscars awarded for films. The entire presentation also underlines the great importance of the Game Awards 2020.

Nintendo Switch

Also read: Update for Nintendo Switch improves picture in TV mode

Games for Impact: Tell Me Why

Running game: No Man's Sky

Indie game: Hades

Mobile game: Among Us

Best community support: Fall Guys

Best VR / AR game: Half-Life: Alyx

Innovation in Accessibility: The Last of Us II

Action game: Hades

Action-Adventure: The Last of Us II

RPG: Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Fighting Game: Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate Edition

Family game: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Simulation or strategy game: Microsoft Flight Simulator

Debut: Phasmophobia

Game waiting for a master: Elden Ring

It is also interesting that it was not “The Last of Us II” that won the audience award, but rather its competitor “Ghost of Tsushima”. As expected, the best esports game will be “League of Legends”.

Audience Award: Ghost of Tsushima

Esports game: League of Legends

We are here to hear from you

After all, you can contact us to let us know if we are missing something on our page. I hope you like it and thank you for your visit.

more related post

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart review, release date, ps4, gameplay

Battlefield 2042 will be available on October 15, 2021, check out the launch trailer

Friday Night Funkin Games – It is located in crazygames

Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay: 9 things to know before playing

#Stepphase #technologies #technology #tech #technews #techworld #techtrends #smartphone #apple #techupdates #futuretechnology #newtech #techgeek #technologynews #technologythesedays #smarttechnology #technologylover #technologytrends #technologyblog #gadgets #smartphone #gadget #marketing #digital #india #technologyisawesome #amazing #repost