#i hope they once again succeeded in making both a good bubble video game AND reasonable sequel

[aces-to-apples]

I'm gonna be real, so little of previous games have actually mattered in any way beyond flavor text that I literally could not give less of a shit about this whole debacle. Like it's such a non-issue to me. Idk what games y'all have been playing for 15 years but truly this is the norm. Barely anything carried over from Origins to Hawke and all pretty minor shit, and I genuinely cannot think of anything beyond flavor text carrying over to Inquisition. Oh you could customize Hawke and they can answer a few vague questions with vague bullshit? Cool, presumably that's what the Inquisitor will give us. Like idk guys but I think maybe building up your expectations for a decade has had a detrimental effect on what should be reasonable expectations for a video game that's truly been in development hell for like eight years and wants to be functionably playable to brand new players without alienating them.

[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 14: Ready? Fight!

For our first actual team fight against something, I had to say, it felt like it was going pretty well right up until the glass shards. With a screech out of its eldritch-looking mouth, the windows shattered into many dangerous looking pieces, which of course he controlled telepathically to send flying towards us. Tabitha covered herself, Aki and her father, and Seth with a bubble of energy propelled from her hands at the last second, while Amy and I just had to run, each effort at bringing up the floor for a makeshift barrier barely making it a few inches off the ground. She was getting tired, despite how effortlessly she had acted before, most of her energy having been lost blocking the King inside in the first place. A shadowy tendril shot out in our path, and Amy dropped to a slide, which looked incredibly painful on the knees. With barely any time to react, I couldn’t do anything but bring up my sword and slash through it, using my momentum to carry me through the attack, severing the limb from the rest of the body and coating me in a generous helping of icky stuff. The creature screamed again, and the glass shards dissolved, my ears ringing with the attack. Multiple eyes had sprouted along its body now, which served as little more than targets for Seth to shoot out. I watched him as he fired at them, grouping shots three at a time to each eye, then reloading when he had to. A tendril swung from above, and he dodged out of the way, reminding me of where exactly I was right now, and I narrowly missed being hit by a tendril aimed at me.

“If anyone has one of those attacks that the heroes do in movies at the end of a fight, where you wonder why they don’t do it sooner, now would be a good time to do it!” I called out, while glancing at everyone else. Each expression was blank, as if expecting one of the others to be the one to have that attack. I saw Seth attempt to speak, before being cut off by another screech from the monster, as small flying creatures came out of its mouth. One flew at me, quickly stopped by a slash from the Cobatana, but once again showering me in ick.

“What do we know about this guy?” Seth repeated, and I had to think back to the game version. While there were most definitely differences, I didn’t know for certain what they were, and it was better to operate as if we were in the same circumstances.

“It’s mostly endurance, he eventually gives us an opening to attack with!” I said, after some deliberation. “We need to get above him somehow, usually the attack is done from the top of the castle because he’s fought outside!” Once again, the difference between the game and real life got in the way. I jumped over one of the tendrils, hoping that Amy would be able to handle herself, before ducking under another. I was noticing more about the creature’s changes now, with the long appendages now having faces at the end of them, sharp-teethed and very bitey. One snapped at me, and I drove my sword through its face, narrowly missing being bitten by it. It began to recoil, pulling me and the sword with it, but Tabitha’s fire cut through it, engulfing the entire creature in a shield of fire. Amy took this moment to run across to the rest of us, the brief reprieve in fighting giving us a second to regroup.

“How long do we have to do this for?” Aki asked, and I couldn’t do anything but shrug. It felt like we’d been fighting for hours at this point, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. The fight in the game went on for a while, but I’d never timed it then, since who would count the seconds while playing a game normally?

“The core of the creature is in there, and over time, it gets exposed. When it does, we launch everything we have at it. We’ll need someone to run a distraction to stop it from closing early, holding it apart in two pieces by dividing its attention.” I said, and Seth stepped forward.

“We’ll split into two teams. Me, Aki’s father, and Tabitha will stick to one side, while the rest stay on the other. Aki and her father will run the distractions when the core opens, and we’ll use a full-frontal assault. Any questions?” He finished, and Aki raised her hand.

“Do you always take over the tactical stuff?” She asked, and Seth grinned.

“Oh yes!” Seth fired off a shot at the creature, which Tabitha took as the signal for her to drop the shield holding it in. The teams split up, taking each side of the room and attacking any point of the creature we could. Amy’s new method of attack was to create whatever kind of throwable weapon she could, which didn’t seem to do too much, but I was okay with her saving her power. It wasn’t like I could do much better with a limited-range weapon like a sword. Though, I had to admit, this thing sliced through the King like butter, though I wouldn’t want to spread him on my toast in the morning. Or afternoon, or evening. Basically, any time of the day that I would have toast. After all, why should warm bread be confined to only one time of the day?

“Aki, what’s your distraction plan?” I called out, trying to distract myself from what I was fighting, and also from my trailing thoughts. Glancing over at her, I saw exactly what her plan was, as she ran along one of the creature’s limbs deftly and gracefully, not even showing a hint of losing her balance. The limb turned, but she didn’t, propelling herself off of it and extending an arm to catch it with her claws. Aki swung around the limb with her claws dragging through it, flipping back up to where she started like a gymnast, though I imagine in a gymnastic environment, they wouldn’t normally end up severing a limb with the force of their landing. Though then again, I’d not seen much of gymnastics. Maybe it was way higher stakes than I thought. Despite every removed tendril, nothing felt like it was changing, the King acting like a hydra and just sprouting more limbs every time it lost one, which totally felt like cheating, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t take kindly to being called out on it. What I could only assume was now the head of the creature opened up for another scream, and, very briefly, I saw the flash of light that was tell-tale to a video game weak point. A shrill whistle, and the others caught on to what I was talking about. Aki’s father took off running one way, and Aki herself went another, with the creature’s following eyes causing it to begin to pull apart. The light became more visible, and I knew this was the time to attack.

“Now!” Tabitha said, punctuating her words with a fireball bigger than herself, manifested from a snap of her fingers and a wave of her arm towards the King. Seth’s bullets struck it over and over, and Amy sent a piece of the ground through it, sharp as a spike. Despite everything, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The creature was still attacking. I had to move quickly, before…

“Dad!” Aki’s voice screamed out, and I already knew I was too late. I didn’t even want to look, but I couldn’t do anything but, my body in autopilot. A tendril of shadow, sharp and deadly, had impaled him. One end was coated in blood, and his face was frozen, still in the stage of exertion that comes from running. The limb retracted, and he fell to the ground. I could feel my hand clenching involuntarily, knuckles white as I clutched the sword. The whole idea of being a Cool Guy was an attempt at being calm, funny, and unemotional. But I was pissed.

“Amy, I need platforms, now!” I said, and she caught on quick to what I was trying to do. “Seth, Tabitha, stop the attacking!” The gunfire and fire-fire ceased, and I started running towards the core. The floor became steps as I ran, crude and wobbly, but enough for me to gain enough height to leap off the last one, towards the pulsating mass of blackness. I brought the sword down, slashing wildly as I fell towards the core. The sword stabbed directly into it, stopping my momentum for a moment as the creature’s body began to shift to try and hide it. All it did was give me a foothold to drive the sword further into it, before twisting and pulling it out through the side of it. The creature let out a scream that, at this distance, felt like it was splitting my head. I could see the core was destroyed, which was my last sight as my vision was covered by dark liquid, oozing over my face as the body swallowed me.

 “Bluh.” It was all I could think to say. “Holy shit, that was gross.” Okay, maybe I had a bit more to say. The monster was dead, mostly dissolved away at this point, but the remnants of black goo were still on me, despite my best attempts at shaking it off. I tried standing up, but I was almost thrown off balance by Amy grabbing me tightly, both swearing and crying slightly.

“Don’t do that again, assface.” She muttered, and I kinda felt bad. I knew I wasn’t going to die, because of the way the boss worked, but it definitely looked like I had from the outside. Unfortunately, the mention of my death fake-out only served to remind me of Aki’s father. She was with him, holding his head up on her lap, kneeling next to him. After Amy let go of me, I joined her, and the two of us sat in silence for a while. Her father looked at peace, and I hoped for his sake that he got it. He had helped his people, and had ran forwards instead of away. If it hadn’t been for him, we might not have succeeded.

“Do you know, he asked me to take over as queen?” Aki said, finally. I looked over at her, and she was half-smiling, despite her tears. “What an idiot.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Could you imagine, me ruling over all of them? I’m barely 20 years old!” She added with a chuckle, but the smile was starting to fade. I put my arm around her, letting her fall into a hug as her laughter turned into sobbing.

 “I want to come with you.” Aki said, which caught me off guard. We had been gearing up to leave, having spent a few days here making sure that everyone was recovering, so I had spent a while talking to her. Not once had she brought this up.

“Aki, I don’t know…” I began, but she cut me off.

“Hear me out, okay?” Aki basically pleaded, and I looked over at Tabitha, who just stared me down. Guess this was my call. “I know mutants aren’t common in your world, but I don’t plan on going outside. Hell, I just want to see other worlds altogether, not just change the world I live in.”

“What about your people?” Seth asked, gesturing to the crowds of people behind us.

“I don’t think they need me. What they need right now is time to heal.” Aki said. While she wasn’t wrong, I wasn’t sure how leaving would help with the situation. “If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t know about my purpose here. At least with you guys, I can try and find a reason to keep going.”

“And what if you decide that you want to go home?” Amy asked. Aki raised an eyebrow, or at least, I think she did. Fur all over her made it hard to tell.

“There’s nothing stopping you from bringing me back, is there?” Aki said, though not in a tone that suggested she would care if she couldn’t come back. At this point, we could only turn to Tabitha for answers.

“Not particularly. It’d be a pain in the ass, and a little annoying after having helped you, but I get the feeling this wouldn’t have stopped you either way.” Tabitha was barely paying attention to the conversation, instead typing on her wrist again.

“That settles it, then!” Aki said, moving to the rest of us.

“It does?” I said to myself, but it didn’t matter now. Aki was right in the middle of the group, arms around us, as Tabitha hit the button to send us back to our own world.

[aces-to-apples]

Like I get being disappointed or whatever but some of you are taking this way too personally

I'm gonna be real, so little of previous games have actually mattered in any way beyond flavor text that I literally could not give less of a shit about this whole debacle. Like it's such a non-issue to me. Idk what games y'all have been playing for 15 years but truly this is the norm. Barely anything carried over from Origins to Hawke and all pretty minor shit, and I genuinely cannot think of anything beyond flavor text carrying over to Inquisition. Oh you could customize Hawke and they can answer a few vague questions with vague bullshit? Cool, presumably that's what the Inquisitor will give us. Like idk guys but I think maybe building up your expectations for a decade has had a detrimental effect on what should be reasonable expectations for a video game that's truly been in development hell for like eight years and wants to be functionably playable to brand new players without alienating them.