#i wish we had a photomode

[blues-screenshots]

This is what taking screenshots from an ultrawide monitor looks like

[robo-dino-puppy]

horizon zero dawn | talanah 5/?

[lemonlilactea]

[aves-rook-laidir]

Here are my live notes that i typed out on the Sticker App while playing the game for the first time. - MAJOR SPOILERS -

They are slightly out of order because I was just jumping in typing wherever:

Holy shit it’s on TWO DISCS?!!?

Not me staring at the press any button screen for ages

I like that Neve is like Cassandra, your no 1

Davrin Rook bonded so fast because they were immediately thrown into a dragon battle together and it got really tough real quick

Did Gilhanain just say YOUR BLOOD KNOWS YOU’LL DIE HERE?

Absolutely loved bringing harding as the extra companion, she’s just so exasperated by it all

I do feel like the va tone didn’t always fit with certain more serious situations.

Staring at Solas in photomode, so mixed emotions, mostly exasperation.

So what was he doing at the strart? Putting evanuris in a stronger prison, then tearing down the veil, or? Because if he was just putting them in a new prison, and exlained himself to Varric non of this would be happening.

God damn, someone ask Morrigan about the fith blight, actually, is it even public record who journeyed with the Warden? Was it kept hush hush?

Can wardens still hear the calling if all the high dragons are awakend? Whos calling them in the deep roads?

I wonder if Davrin has a hard time talking about the elven god reveal because he has a special relationship with Halla and Ghilanain was the god of Halla? 

Oh, why would we have Varric's shaving mirror?

Lucanis so fucking weird haha

Davrin - “Couldn’t have asked for a better day” Rook immediately, ungracefully slides down a cliff

Emmrich is making a mistake, why would he want to be immortal, like look at these three imortal clowns running around.

Ok so The Ancient Elves were spirits who took physical forms using the lyrium, which is the blood of the ancient titans, They became the first mages? This caused a war between the elves and the titans

I wish they had shown more of Emmrich getting her out of the fade, because that is his very specific skill, like all the attention Lucanis got about using the dagger, to cement Emrrich's role in all this, I wanna see him being a badass in a direct story point.

The Butcher was scarier than Elghanan, should not have been,

Elghanan should have been wayyyy scarier, less talking.

“The gods they give strength but all they ask in return is everything” dope

Literally fuck off no scene getting her out of the fade, her reacting to getting out, the grief? The Relief? Helo?

“Though Harding also told me” LMAO Emmrich

I feel like it makes more sense for Harding to sneak up on Ghillie, This is her moment, tragic because we’ve seen her whole journey. Harding saying ‘should I take the shot’ at the start of the game then taking guaranteeing Ghilanains death with her simple bow and arrow. and to have this little dreamless thing, created out of the desicrated titans be the last thing she sees, fuck yes.

The first thing they did was retrieve all the bodies. They found Harding and Leliana and the Inquisitor brought her back to her village

Solas: How did you even get out of the fade? Rook: gestures vaguely to Emmrich standing behind her ‘He knows more about the fade than you.'

I wish there was a bit more dialogue with Dorian at the end, saying ‘Do it for Varric and or Harding, won’t you? They were just so…oh, you…know...’

Taash everyone I loves dies NONONO I love you!

‘Everything dies, its what they do’ Including imortal gods

Is solas fucking losing??? fucks sake cant even do one thing

Solas assisting the Shadow Dragons at the end paint a funny picture, like, imaging Dorain trying to evacuate the city and Solas is just also there, after like 10 years. How did that reunion go?

It had to be bellara that got blighted, those gods were hers, that history is hers, and she's just so innocent, it was a great character arc

me the whole time 'its fine just go grey warden'

Shaved her head after coming out the fade to feel something

What if it’s not enough? What if it is?

I really though time travel was going to be a thing, after the dorian stuff?

Leo represent my Inky because in my AU she is too weak to travel as the mark is still sucking the life out of her, arm or no arm, but she dragged her ass up for that final scene with Solas. Leli and Josie spread a misinformation campaign around thedas, so unless you meet them directly its really hard to know if Inky is a female Elf, Male Human, and whoever else.

I hope Morrigan is ok

[kemendin]

Kem's non-spoilery/non-plot-related impressions on Veilguard:

Now that I finished a first run, I want to just put some thoughts out there - basically likes/dislikes sort of thing. So here we go! In no particular order:

Likes:

This is very subjective of course, but to me it just FEELS like Dragon Age. It's nostalgic in the vibes and mechanics while also being fresh.

Hair physics!! Me gleefully watching my boy's ponytail flipping around like 'yessss gooood'. Every game needs this imo xD

Companions: While I'm personally not going feral over any of them, I do LIKE them all, which is unusual for me. I love the shouted encouragement in combat, and how they move around the Lighthouse and have little snippets of conversations with each other (wish we got MORE of this).

I adore the environments and maps. I love exploring new places in Thedas, they're all so gorgeously detailed, and I love the LAYERS of them. The exploration feels very Assassin's Creed, which is fun for me. Docktown is my favourite I think, but Arlathan and the Crossroads are also stunning.

I'm a sucker for the elven relic puzzles, they make me happy!

Combat: It took a while for me to adjust, particularly coming from BG3 where I had time to deliberate my decisions. But once I got into the rhythm of it, I now find Veilguard combat quite fun. (I played as a sword and shield warrior this first run, I'm excited to see what a mage feels like next time around)

PHOTOMODE!!! At least a third of my playtime has definitely been spent taking screenshots. It has almost everything I want - camera angles, depth of field, field of view. SO MANY SCREENSHOTS! (1800 at last count)

Dislikes:

Save system. Generous auto-saves are great, but I hate how you get bumped to the nearest beacon when you load in, rather than where you actually left off. Also I'm a save scummer so 100 manual saves is not enough lol.

Main menu being the only functional 'pause' button is irritating, especially when trying to get into photomode.

Armour/outfit stuff. I'm sorry but most of the designs are terrible. TERRIBLE. Also there's no dye/tint system, at least Inquisition had SOMETHING to that effect.

Pacing. I feel like the stories in the game had so many good notes, but it felt.... disjointed, like it was just hitting the main beats rather than creating a cohesive narrative flow. Across the board, it felt rushed and shallow in that respect. Also (and maybe this is just a me thing) it felt really difficult to get a handle on the passage of time throughout the game.

Ambivalent: The character creator. Lots of great sliders and options, but also I kinda hate the 'mash three heads together' thing, and I don't know why we need 50 styles of eyelashes instead of, I dunno, more hair options? (also - body hair. Needs body hair)

I may add to this as more thoughts occur, but for now that's what I've got. Overall impression - positive! I had a great time and I'll be replaying for sure.

[h0riz0nstuff]

Pros and cons of The Remaster

(in my humble opinion)

I've started a NG+ with the remaster, just because I want to explore a bit more and look for differences in the world, which aren't numerous but are there. Technically, this is still exactly the same game (except they just added transmog, which is honestly great). Still, I have a few gripes: - They didn't correct the pre-rendered cutscenes where Aloy reverts to her default outfit. I suppose this would have entailed actually making them dynamic instead of pre-rendered. Still, why do a Remaster and not even do that ? This is honestly the main thing that makes me feel it is a bit half-assed. - Now there's a palpable difference between the Frozen Wilds dialogues and the main game dialogue, but it goes the other way xD It is STILL a way less perceptible difference tho, I'm nitpicking. - Some of the skintones in those new dialogue scenes are all over the place. - A few weird visual glitches here and there and the NPCs tend to replicate a lot more and move less naturally in some instance. - Personal gripe: I don't like that the healing plants have butterflies flying around like in FW. I guess it makes them more easy to find ? I dunno. I don't like it somehow. Stuff I'm neutral about : - I don't really give a damn about the horse teeth. They're fine. The Good Stuff: - MOSS EVERYWHERE. Like, seriously. MOSSSSSSSSSsssssss. It's really great. Love it. MORE (well ok, not more… but maybe more ?) - The water does look a lot better. - I dunno if it's the case for everyone, but way more random encounters in the world (machine convoys, NPC patrols, bandits attacks). Also, did those NPCs become a little bit more sturdy ? Not sure. But there are way more of them than there used to be and that makes just venturing around without a specific goal way more enjoyable. - This also holds true for NPCs populating the upper reaches of Meridian Village. It's instantaneous while before it took a few minutes to happen (and that weird glitch that had one of them on a roof is gone). - Added animations in settlements, some of them incredibly cute. A lot of the cooking animations seem to come straight out of Forbidden West. I think they actually replaced one cooking animation in Mother's Craddle and added more too. And most previous animations happen more often too. - Oh ! And they added small FIELDS in Mother's Craddle too ! They don't look like fields but there are Nora harvesting and seeding in them. That wasn't there before and it's funny that it actually fills in a little hole about the Nora having so many harvest (not gathered) staples visible in their settlements. I also found dummies wearing HFW Carja gear in a corner of Mother's Craddle. - The merchant stalls have stuff added on the floor etc to make them more realistic. love it. - The one Strike gameboard in the Hunter's Lodge !… nobody seems to be playing it tho. :( Could have added an animation there, even if we couldn't actually play it. - More plants in settlements, more realistic ivy and stuff like that. It makes them looking so much better. - Photomode tweaks like being able to turn off machine lens glare ! Yes ! I wanted this so much in HZD. (Still no way to move the camera in settlements which is a bummer. And I don't like the Hero Halo around Aloy. I wish there was a way to turn it off too) You'd think they could have added the poses and expressions from HFW in there too, but no. *sigh* Still, the lens glare thing was my major ask so i'm happy about that. I know they must have some sort of reason for the fixed cam in settlements but that one still hurts.

That's all I can think about so far. I've taken tons of pics but they're still in the ps5 ^^;

[oobcoops]

every so often I really wish we had a photomode or pokemon snap style feature to the game

[wanderingaldecaldo]

Definitely operator error. Somehow I deleted the UV framework from her mods. Anyway, she was great but Cyberpunk? Not so much.

Over the last week I've loaded up all but one or two of my OCs to get Pride pics. I wish I'd been paying closer attention earlier, but it certainly feels like the auto-exposure bug for PC players was worse when I was playing with my darker skinned characters. [For console players and others, the bug happens when photomode's auto-exposure changes drastically. This can be anywhere from over- to under-exposed, but either way it is an exponential change in lighting and it can be hard to get the game to return to the "normal" setting.]

In the past (rather, when I'm shooting Val) the bug mainly appeared when I was rotating the camera using Otis (e.g., changing it to portrait from landscape or vice versa). But today it was triggering before I could take a single shot, with the camera locked in place. Several times it happened while moving through poses. Aside from Séverine, whose pictures I did not take for Pride, Vamika is my darkest skinned OC, and this was absolutely the worst PM has ever behaved for me in the span of an hour. I took seven pics, all landscape because any switch to portrait triggered the bug, and I had to reset the exposure a minimum of twenty times, which is three times per shot I took.

I also had a helluva time with Lynx and Hilary earlier this week, but Val's shots were a piece of cake.

While this is definitely correlation and not causation, I don't think it's a stretch to wonder if the rate of occurrence of the bug is related to racial bias in programming. We know there are huge problems with bias in facial recognition technology. Could the way the lighting in-game reflects off of darker skin cause the bug to trigger more often?

I'm down to the last of my solo pride pics and wtffff Vamika, why are you being the problem child???

I guess she's so aroace she doesn't even have a body to experience attraction.

[ilikedetectives]

Gravity Rush 2 - Marketplace, Jirga Para Lhao

[thegothcowboy]

Mary-Beth at Clemens Point.

[scumbagg]

“Don’t forget, I was on the run for murder before fallin in with you boys. For three years.”

Lenny Summers

Shady Belle, Lemoyne.

[chevvy-yates]

So, the year is slowly coming to an end.

everyone does these asweome templates. I'd like to do them as well, but I had a long streak of not playing any game from Jan 2021 til end of June 2022, so I could only fill the half of the templates. I did one but decided not to post.

Nonetheless I'd like to add something as well:

FIRST,

something about Vijay — cutie really made it to an even more sweet cinnamon roll angel since I switched over to pc a.k.a. laptop:

Yes, he was already cute in vanilla (left), I know. I did not mod him much 'cause I wanted him to stay as he already was — just with better skin, giving him freckles all over, he clearly was missing. Added new (almost real) green kiroshi optics and gave him the long male lashes he deserves and lastly ginger colored stubble that doesn't disappear while in photomode. He grew into a fine young adult man in nearly half of a year.

______

SECOND,

something about Ryder — created in September, with no real plan how he will look but let's name him Ryder von Scharfenberg, German dude, please. Thanks:

When I took the first pics of him (left), I wasn't sure if I'd ever warm up with him. But now Ry always surprises me in every session. He developed well in these few months and I'm exited to see where it's going with him. He might also stay as he is now. He's got enough chrome, better don't overdo it.

I'm glad I have two so very different looking oc's. What I can't do with Vj I can do with Ry and the other way around. It's great to have them in my life and I don't wanna miss them anymore. <3

______

THIRD,

joining the CP77 community here (and on discord) made me happy again since I was so frustratd with my real life photography on instagram. Here people actually give feedback (even if it's only in the tags most of the time, that's the way tblr is) and I appreciate every lovely comment <3

It's amazing to see all these amazing oc's floating around on my dash and so many people are so creative and extremely good vps, sometimes I could just cry in happiness. Also managed to make a few chooms and I am thankfull for that.

I mean even my boys have some chooms now and V also grabbed himself a boyfriend <3 (boy that was a big hurdle for me to ask). I wish I could talk to more of you but I'm always in a nutshell that I think I'm annoying (u all know that probably bc we all seem to be introverts), I'm not giving up and working on it, even tho it's hard.

I'm looking forward to 2023 Night City's finest VP!

[robo-dino-puppy]

i captured aloy making this hilarious face - does anyone more clever than me want to add text? it feels like a meme template but i am not that funny

[noirapocalypto]

Cyberask 2077

Tagged by @smilepal, thank you so much!! 💕

1. When did you buy the game?

It was actually a pre-ordered Christmas gift from one of my best friends. I think it was maybe about a month or so before it launched? I had expressed interest in playing the game a few times and my friend kept that in mind lol it was probably one of the best gifts I've ever gotten because it completely sparked my obsession with Cyberpunk 2077 (and the rest of the lore), which lead me to my current hobbies and my new friends.

2. When was the moment you knew you loved the game?

Definitely the montage of our time with Jackie right after we meet him. There's just something extremely endearing about him showing you around, taking you into his mother's house, climbing up the mercenary ranks, etc. There's also the scene were we see Johnny's engram in V's apartment for the first time. His smug ass just standing there, thumping his head against the wall. Ugh, I fell in love immediately.

3. Which character did you romance in your first playthru?

Imagine my disappointment when I found out Jackie was already dating Misty, and Vik was unromancable. Then I go and fall in love with Takemura (and my urge to un-corpo him) only to find out that he is also not a romance option. And of course, neither is Johnny, who I feel my V had developed a VERY strong bond with and can easily see them being in love. 😭

So, finding out all my options were off limits, I eventually fell into bed with resident beefcake River. I liked him as a character and I like his voice actor a lot. But it wasn't really fitting with my V.

4. Whose your favorite NPC?

There's so many I really enjoy and REALLY wish we had more interactions with. I liked Dum Dum a lot and I always try to spare him if I can. I like Mateo and wish he had more lines. Takemura was my favorite right alongside Johnny, both two characters I love deeply. Misty endeared me immediately too, with her soft spoken ways. And of course, I'll do anything for Rogue.

5. Did you have inspiration in mind when designing your V(s)?

Not really, to be honest. Paola wasn't my first V. My first one was unnamed with zero backstory, she was mostly my tester run while I got used to the game and saw what decisions resulted in what end-game. I just slapped together some sliders I thought looekd good (spoiler, they didn't now that I go back and look at her screens lol)

But I accidentally deleted her when I saved over her playthrough lmao! So I created Paola (who was also unnamed at the time). I just experimented with the sliders and was lucky enough to have fallen in love with her look. The mods also really helped lol

6. What's your go-to vehicle?

Admittedly, my driving in-game is not the best and I feel cars are way too janky to maneuver, so I stuck with using bikes for Paola. She uses the Arch Nazare we buy from Wakako (customized via mods) for pretty much everything, both in-game and in character. The times I am using a car though, it's usually the Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech we get from the Sex on Wheels quest.

7. What's your favorite gig/mission/job?

Oh man, it's been so long since I've replayed the game again (mostly spend my time in photomode now lol), but I really loved Kerry's quests involving Us Cracks. He just has huge boomer vibes with them, it's very hilarious to me. I also really like the quests were Johnny gets his date with Rogue because I ship them hella. It was just a sweet touch which showed that he truly did change for the best, imo.

8. Which NC radio station do you switch to the most?

I often switch between Los Principales, the Dirge, Radio Vexelstrom and Morro Rock Radio. I pretty much browse through all of them, really.

Tagging: @jsilverhvnd @alteredsilence @wanderingaldecaldo @cyberneticnipples @nightcityberries @nightingalesoul @cayennenpopsicles @disasteralien and anyone else who would like to give this a go! Sorry if any of you have already been tagged!

[robo-dino-puppy]

horizon forbidden west | sheerside mountains 5/?