#it was lagging so bad that i had to retcon an entire bit that i wanted to do

[strangely-epic]

wake up mikeoids, new chat out of context video just dropped

[bill-beauxquais]

Blogging my Bravely Default II Playthrough - Chapter 2

Here we are for a new chapter!

As usual, spoilers for up to chapter 3′s title card below the cut (so all of chapter 2, none of chapter 3), you have been warned.

Overall opinion: The game is still fun to play and while I sometimes laments being so slow, I like that I can play a lot without feeling like I’m goind too fast. On a story standpoint, I’m a bit bummed that this chapter didn’t really make any real progress in its main thematics, but on a gameplay level, it was fun.

Gameplay: I talked about there being more strategy in battle already, but I realise I didn’t mention why. Compared to previous games, it seems like enemies use brave and default a lot more, and they actually go into negative. It happened in previous game, but if my memory serve, it was only certain enemies who had this quirk baked into them. Also, nearly all of them have counters and immunity, preventing you from just braving 4 times and calling it a day (albeit it still works reasonably often).

However, I did notice a flaw as well in the balancing. Some sidequests (most notably, the mushrooms sidequest) only opened to me after I finished the chapter’s story, but they took place in a dungeon where every enemy was WAY underpowered. I’m still getting underdog bonuses in the story, so I’m not overleveled. I don’t know what exactly unlocked the sidequest, but I checked everytime I set food in Wisward. On the other hand, the sidequest boss actually took me some planning, while I basically Yolo’d all the asterisks of the chapter. Weird. In the end, the whole dungeon was simply a long corridor (every enemy fleeing from me), with one tough boss at the end. Jarring.

Speaking of dungeon, this chapter really made them a lot longer than anything the serie had until now. On one hand, they can get a little boring and frustrating after a while, but on the other, I do like that they allow you to really train your new asterisks by putting more time between each of them, so overall I’d say it’s a positive.

Speaking of which, I finally looked into what you get from the boat, and I need to mention the inclusion of JP orbs, to give you JP experience on the go. It makes it easier to level up jobs without having to grind with ill matched teams, which is a good idea, since ill matched teams are sometimes really unforgiving because of the immunities and counters mentioned earlier. You still end up having to train jobs the old fashioned way, but any shortcut is good.

Speaking of grinding, I was surprised that I didn’t need to grind even once, for now. I wouldn’t qualify the asterisk battles of underwhelming, they took me half an hour on average and demanded strategy and quick thinking or risk taking, but I went into most of them with in-training teams full of ill matched underleveled and redundant jobs and still won. For me, that’s just the right difficulty to be interesting without getting frustrating.

My favorite asterisk of this chapter probably was the Shieldbearer for more Gloria Tankness (I also noticed it pairs well with White mage for a tanky healer)  , but Ranger is good as well (but I’m biaised from the previous games. Always liked hunter). I appreciate that they changed red mage to be less of a watered down mix of Black and White, but I’m not sure I’m using it very efficiently. It just doesn’t seems to deal a lot of damage, and I prefered the old one’s design. This one looks a lot more boring. As for Artist, I’m not really using it very well for now either. I feel like there’s already tons of debuffing skills in other classes.

I didn’t really get the point of Wayward Wood, since you know where the correct exit is, there’s not much point in making a looping/”lost wood” kinda dungeon, because it’s not like you will get lost (unless you’re doing it willingly the first time just to see what happens). Maybe it’ll open other paths later, who knows.

Writing: Still good, albeit I think i prefered Savalon. I suppose I expected to see more of Elvis’s backstory and family, why did he come study magic, how did Lady Emma pass away... But nothing of the sort. I don’t think like it really helped see Elvis any more in depth, sure he is a good friend, but that’s something we already could infer. I would’ve liked to see his character broken down more.

I’m always happy to see dead kids stories (don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but I also roll my eyes quite a lot when writers chicken out on having anything bad happen to a kid in their stories) but I don’t know if this was strong enough to be the focus of the entire chapter. I don’t think it had any connection to Musa’s downfall or the crystals. But I could see Wiswald coming back later in the story to tie back into these themes, and maybe that was just the Wiswald introduction chapter.

With the dead kids, crazy people, greenery, hunter & red mage asterisks, and those darn Mushrooms and flower enemies, it’s also hard to shake the feeling of this being Florem.02, and Florem will always be extra special to me.

Writing - Theories: Definitely called it for Edna’s veiled ass, although introducing that silver haired lady just before almost threw me for a loop. I’m assuming she’s the traveler handing out asterisks like candies, and Adelle probably knows (or at least she knows her sister is related to asterisks in some way)

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I had a theory back when playing Default for the first time, that asterisk made people crazy or at least, more extreme, and that’s why they all made the perfect little mascot for theirs each time. And also why Ringabel *and* Artemia in the anthology lost their memories when they lost their asterisk: it plays into their brain and personalities. So, nice to see theory confirmed by the sequel.

As expected of its unredeemable bosses, Folie kicked the bucket, which begs the question: I fully expect them to have another gauntlet like the previous games. So is a timeloop/universe hopping all but confirmed at this point, or will this be something else? Will the characters’ deaths be retconed or explained away? I feel like some of these characters could be redeemed in a timeloop, and stopped an saved before they do much damage. The asterisk are pretty much the ones to blame in nearly every case for the sudden change of heart of their holders.

I’ve got that flimsy theory that Shirley is Emma’s kid, based on a similar hairstyle, the fact the gambler asterisk pairs well with black mage, and that Shirley mentioned her mother leaving her father. Who knows. I liked Shirley.

Adelle is definitely crushing hard on Elvis, but I think he’s pretty much ace. Interesting to see how this develops.

Graphics: Gonna hand it to them, i was impressed that they actually made a unique model for Mona, all to use it for one cutscene. Long gone are the days in which they just reused Yew and Magnolia’s models for Altair and Vega, two majors characters. This is the kind of attention to detail we like to see here. No cutting corners. They even made a model for the paintings, too.

The fog effect was pretty rad as well, and definitely got me running a few laps like a giddy kid. You like to see it.

Elvis’ head looked pretty big compared to his friends, noticeably so. But I suppose Bravely Default 1 and second weren’t that much better, and even worse. The main 4 were DEFINITELY chibised compared to other characters (which made Alternis look like a baby in the Eternian team)

Performance: I noticed a bit less lag, but I also made the battle speed slower, this is probably related. Else, it’s the same things.

Music: Elvis’ theme is pretty good. I remember listening to the first drafts that were datamined from the first demo back in the day, and it was already my favorite.

However, I wasn’t a fan of Wiswald’s overworld theme, and the city’s was forgettable.

[luna--dragon]

Have you ever seen a movie where the first 12 minutes are the only minutes worth watching?

I sure have!

And it was called Scoob!

Like I said, the only portion of this movie worth watching is the first 12 minutes. In fact, I really would have liked the entire movie to be like the first 12 minutes, with them being little kids and all! That would have been cute, fun, and endearing, even if they didn’t use the APNSD designs, and Scooby looks like a fucking funko pop!

Instead we got... whatever that was? I’m just gonna bullet point all my gripes (In no particular order) because I do not want to dwell on this dumpster fire any longer than I have to.

Why the fuck is Simon Cowell here? Seriously, why? No one asked for him, and they literally have a series all about guest stars. Couldn’t they have pulled someone in from that? Like Bill Nye, or Elvira? They’ve had Elvira in a whole bunch of the latest movies )for some reason), and one of those two would have been so much more entertaining to have, even if it was only for a minute or two.

What the fuck is up with the voices? Daphne’s is a generic white girl, Velma’s and Fred’s can’t express to save their lives, and Shaggy sounds very depressed. Also, Fred’s it’s just pretty jarring because Frank Welker’s been playing him for so long. That, and they got rid of 90% of Scooby’s lisp which is automatically a SIN.

Fred’s design looks like shit. White on white is like denim on denim - It takes a VERY special person to rock it, and he is not it. Also that face? Really?? You couldn’t come up with something better??? I don’t even give a shit about the lack of ascot, I’m just upset they couldn’t even make him look decent. 

Scooby and Shaggy have an identity crisis on where they fit into the team? Kinda sounds like the plot of SD2: Monsters Unleased, not gonna lie...

Same with opening the gates to hell- that’s literally what they did for Mystery Incorporated’s big finale.

Also they literally just retconned Zombie Island and 13 Ghosts so they have little to no real supernatural elements, yet they introduce HELL?? What the FUCK!?

I physically recoiled at the Browser History, Netflix and, Taxes jokes, they were so bad, oh my god. If they become the 2020s stand-in for gross out humour, I will give up on humanity.

Shaggy and Scooby are kind of assholes. Actually, no they’re not. They’re huge assholes. I can at least excuse scooby a bit cause he’s a fucking dog, but I did not like their characterisation at all.

Actually, fuck it! Every character’s an asshole! I did not give a shit about the main five! I liked, cared about, and was overall more entertained by Dick Dastardly than the main characters! That is literally the worst critique a Scooby-Doo movie can get!

This one doesn’t really bother me too much, but the lip sync is a little off in some places. Either that or my version just had some audio lag. Either way, a little jarring, but not a huge deal.

Where’s the mystery? Where’s the monster? Where’s literally every element of a Scooby-Doo movie except for the cast? Not there?? No wonder it’s shit then! I went in expecting a Scooby-Doo movie, and I didn’t get it. Not even the Hex girls could’ve saved this, and that is saying something.

The aesthetic is all over the place. I could not vibe to a single minute of it.

[clonerightsagenda]

TLC DVD commentary: Vriska’s arc, pt 2

I'm back at it responding to a request to discuss Vriska's arc in TLC. Since this is commentary on her story overall I won't dive too deep into any single scene, although I'll skim through them. Part of the reason we tag updates is for people to see them, but mostly I use the character indexing so I can reference specific scenes as needed. It has saved so much time.

As some general notes, as I said before, I'm skeptical of "redemptions" where someone says "yeah I regret what I did". Post-retcon Vriska pays lip service to that, but she doubles down on her abusive behavior, so I'm not convinced. I wanted to make sure TLC Vriska actually demonstrated growth and change. However, she has a tendency to take over the story. Luckily, the dreambubbles are a pretty good quarantine. You'll notice that although she gets the most updates out of Team Dreaming Dead, she doesn't really impact the story in any direct way. Sure, she delays/distracts Lord English, but we could've left that out and just had him show up as needed, and people would've accepted that as part of the narrative. So Vriska doesn't get to be the super relevant hero of the story the way she wants to be, but what she does get to do is grow up a little, even if she physically can't.

After Meenah and Aranea die, Vriska ends up enlisting with the ghost 'army', for lack of a better word. While before she was in charge of a bunch of dreamers that she used as 88, now *she* is 88 protecting them. Her situation has flipped upside down, including in that while at one point she was bossing Tavros around, he is now in a position of command. I had been planning for Tavros to show up leading the ghosts, and when it happened in canon, I was like oh hey, look at that. Then, after showing up the person who's treated him so horribly, Tavros is promptly subordinated by her again. I was rather miffed by this. In TLC, Tavros is calling the shots. That makes sense to me. The dream bubbles sap people's wills, and Breath players seem to be the best antidote. Vriska livens up after being merged with Tavros, and the treasure hunt loses steam after John bails. Tavros is the perfect person to keep the ghosts energized and focused. As I've acknowledged before, part of Vriska's abusive behavior comes from her conditioning by Alternia and her situation with her lusus, although that is not an excuse. Tavros was abused by her in turn... and when he is in a position of power, he doesn't misuse it. The cycle of passing pain along ends here.

Ok, looking at some scenes in depth... When Vriska is upset, she uses 8s for way more vowels, and right after Meenah and Aranea's death, they're all over the place. Meanwhile, Aradia is making heavy use of the Socratic method here, not passing judgment but asking leading questions to try to get Vriska to realize some things about herself. Aradia has been doing this for a while. She’s gotten good at gently guiding spirits in the right direction. 

VRISKA: They were 8mp8rt8nt t8 VRISKA: T8 the missi8n.

I've posted about this before, but a tricky thing w/ writing Homestuck is that the characters' voices are established through online communication, and we talk very differently in person than online. Online, we have a lot more opportunities to choose our words and convey an artificial persona. However, especially if you're doing a fic w/ someone else's characters, you don't want to deviate too much, because then it sounds wrong. It's a tough balance to strike. One addition I made to spoken word logs was people cutting themselves off, talking over themselves, or leaving sentences dangling. You can add some extra meanings there, or just indicate distress and uncertainty.

VRISKA: Anything is better than n8thing. VRISKA: That's why I had t8 d8 something. VRISKA: It's this pl8ce. VRISKA: If you st8nd still for too long, you get stuck in the s8me stupid cycles of v8pid teen 8ullshit forever. VRISKA: T8lking and t8lking 8b8ut n8thing while the w8rld 8r8und y8u 8r8ks 8p8rt. VRISKA: I had to 8r8k out of that! VRISKA: I had to keep g8ing 8r VRISKA: Or I'd 8e really dead.

It's easy to forget with the existence of an afterlife and a life/death revolving door, but Vriska is a kid who died at thirteen, and recent events have driven that home for her. It's hard to think that your story is over, and life goes on without you, especially when you're young and tend to be more solipsistic. That's one of the drivers of her behavior. If she lets go and stops struggling, she has to admit she's dead, which is hard to bear.

Gill calls page 519 the 'put me in coach, I'm ready!' panel.

Anyway, Vriska joins up, primarily for vengeance. Most of that is offscreen, although we've got a bit in the Vriskagram flash. That flash exists entirely because we wanted at least some practice on getting something audiovisual up on mspfa, youtube, and tumblr before we did an actually important flash. It's near the top of my list for the Director's Cut to add in a lot more character dev for Team Dreaming Dead members (plus Sollux and Aradia who are team liminal or something.) Perhaps Gill will even put fewer OCs in the remake. (This shows me it's rather silly to act like her drawing everyone in Metal Gear outfits is some huge burden. She has always pulled this shit.) However, there is indication that Vriska has started taking her job a little more personally and is becoming invested in the safety of the dreamers. Progress.

Of course, Vriska is all about appearances and bravado, so she's not going to admit it. In her conversation with Eridan she claims to be one of the good guys but is rather dismissive about their ideals, and it's intentionally ambiguous how much she's sincere about. (As a writing sidenote, Vriska often refers to her fellow trolls by their last name, probably as a gesture of ironic distance. Later, I no longer have her do that. That could indicate character dev but is also a matter of practicality. If you're dealing with thousands of versions of one person, it's hard enough knowing who you mean when you use their first name, let alone their surname.)

We get more sincerity from her when she talks to John. That's usually who she's most likely to open up to, because John tends to be less judgmental, and Vriska gets defensive very quickly. With John, who sort of served as a morality guide earlier, she seeks absolution, eagerly saying she's changed her ways and it should all be fine now. Unfortunately, Vriska's attempts to push bad stuff under the rug crashes directly into John's attempts to push bad stuff under the rug and he has a mental breakdown. Afterward, although Vriska is taking some steps to improve herself, he suggests she clear the air with her former victims. Although she's reluctant, John has suggestion powers, probably linked to his aspect. Often, when he tells someone to do something, they end up doing it, especially if it's in line with their own inclinations or suppressed urges. (I think puppets aren't that cool. Why don't you fly away and never come back? Why can't space and time work the way I want it to?) At least he Breath-hexes Vriska in a constructive way.

VRISKA: I guess there's ONE person I'd like to clear the air with. VRISKA: I'll skip the 8r8kdown part though.

Me, lurking overhead with my .txt files open. No, Vriska, you are both going to scream and cry about it.

You'll notice that Vriska frequently adjusts her outfit and/or hairstyle. Again, this is part of her whole appearances routine. She's not quite sure what her new facade is going to be, so she keeps trying various ones out.

Sidenote for the bonus panel log

TAVROS: aND ARADIA SAID SOMEONE WAS ARRIVING SOON, wHO SHE WANTED TO TALK TO TAVROS: sO SHE’S WAITING FOR THEM VRISKA: Wonder who 8it the dust. VRISKA: Do you think it was someone we knew? TAVROS: iT COULD BE ANYONE,, fROM ANY TIME TAVROS: ,,yOU KNOW THERE’S A LAG, sOMETIMES

Aradia's lurking around to give Dave his peptalk. Gotta roll the carpet out for your fellow Time hero.

And we're up to the last Vriska, Terezi, and Kanaya conversation and her exit. I feel like that deserves its own separate post, which I will work on later.

[gyakutengagotoku]

If you were the an Executive, Producer or some other kind of superior that has the authority at Capcom during the making of the Ace Attorney-series, would there be cases that you would order to be rewritten or designs of characters you would order to be changed?

Yes. Loads of things, really. Because I’m more of a writer than, say, a producer, I think of the cases from the perspective of their scenarios, rather than what churns the most bucks or what would be most time-efficient. I probably wouldn’t make a very good executive in that case, but hey, that’s makes me a writer.

For the record, I don’t find any particular case in the canon “bad”. Some may be disappointing, but “disappointment” comes in so many flavors other than “bad”.

While I could discuss every single case in detail and what I would offer that may improve on them, they would make up an entire book(let) on their own. So, I’ll just drop a few pointers on the general direction of the series and the games. Hey, they can make good writing advice too.

1. Innovate for the sake of innovating, not for the sake of hype.

I feel this is something that is lacking among many amateur and professional writers, alike. Sometimes these authors just want to throw in a huge twist into the drama just for shock value. It’s fair to want to hype up your story, but if you’re able to write suspense well, you don’t need a big twist. A little one that catches the reader’s attention for a bit is enough.

Since AA has a long-running history of building upon previous surprises and twists, I notice entry after entry, the devs keep trying too hard to raise the stakes and ultimately go overboard. Yes, finale cases should be more exciting and investing than the previous cases, but that doesn’t mean they have to be much longer or more complicated than the rest. 2-4 is a good example of keeping things simple throughout, yet still very suspenseful up until the very end. But then 3-5 turned the dial up a notch and made things quite convoluted, and from there, the problem only grew worse. (I can’t vouch for DGS2, since I haven’t finished it, but so far, I’m starting to see a sort of lag by case 3 and I’m not entirely sure why, since it’s supposed to be so plot-relevant.)

2. Manage the pace of the story.

In many other games that tend to separate the main plot from sidequests and substories, it can be a little difficult keeping the player on track, since it’s entirely up to the player’s choice to continue the story whenever they want. However, the central game mechanic to AA is following its single, linear story. There is the option to wander around and poke at Charley or other inanimate objects, but they amount to some extra fluff text and don’t affect the pacing that much.

As a result, I can be more critical of pacing issues in these games. As much as games like AAI2, DD, SoJ, and DGS1-2 are lauded, and I do agree they are all great, but I always have pacing issues with them. I never did with the first three games. Now, why is that? I think it may have to do with how the cases are organized.

The original trilogy keeps pace rather well by cutting the segments rather cleanly into blocks. This is very apparent in the game script files, as you know exactly when and where makes a good breakpoint for a run. The third game has a bit more bulk to it than the first two (not counting the long and dragged-out RftA), not just because it has 5 cases, but because the 5 cases are more expansive.

From there on, the way the games and their respective scripts are organized become much more convoluted. The scripts are designed to flow just as well when playing, but I more often than not pick up on segments of dialogue that seem to reiterate too much on previously given info or are just unnecessary for gags that are jammed in, rather than subtly slipped in. This setup of reiteration is good for those fans who regularly take breaks, but many others want to keep going until the checkpoints, which do make good breakpoints. Unfortunately, those checkpoints are often unevenly placed. See, even with T&T’s supposedly convoluted cases, Takumi managed to keep the pace relatively even across the whole game. Now that’s impressive.

It’s probably this reason that I don’t find RftA as impressive as the cases in T&T. There’s such a huge dissonance in structure between the first four cases of PW:AA and RftA, and the latter really drains me after a while.

3. Encourage more realistic/human-like characteristics in gag characters.

It may confound fans who don’t like Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, Maggey Byrde, etc., but they’re popular for a very simple reason: Despite being comedic relief that are constantly up to no good or otherwise caught up in laughable situations, they become adored for their child-like behavior and/or satire, and occasionally when they do actual good, it’s pretty memorable. These are traits that everyone has to some extent, some more so than others, so they are relatable that way. Thanks to their popularity, they get to stay as recurring characters.

In contrast, take characters like Phineas Filch or Solomon Starbuck (sorry, man, but you do fit this) or Bucky Whet, and I think you all can see the difference. They’re not nearly as commonly lauded because they’re characters that feel less human and more like gags that fill particular roles in their respective cases. While Larry, Wendy, and Lotta have been around longer, the problem is also present for the performers of Berry Big Circus, Wesley Stickler, Spark Brushel, and plenty from AAI… The list goes on.

Obviously, there are plenty of other case-exclusive characters from those same cases that don’t have this problem, or at least don’t have as much of a problem. It just goes to show how effective a character in role can be to tell a story, and sometimes, comedy-relief characters are needed to fill the gaps, but if they’re not given anything else, they’re basically stereotypes taken physical form.

4. Give your villains’ characters at least some level of complexity.

This one’s subjective, so please bear with me. I know motives involving money or fame or power are easy to use because they’re very effective motives in real life, but villains who go through such complex and twisted murders, equating those of nigh-perfect crimes, just for something so basic as filling a debt or coming out on top, are a little disappointing.

It’s why villains like White, L’Belle, Tiala, Engarde, Alba, Phantom, Blaize Debeste, and even Kristoph Gavin come off as weak, at least to me.

Engarde is, plain and simple, an egotistic, two-faced sociopath. We aren’t given anything else but the bad to his character, thus making him quite one-sided. It works in the context of the case, especially when contrasted with the likes of de Killer, but other than that, he really isn’t much of a “character”, so to speak. He’s just there as the catalyst of the incident and someone to blame for all the evil.

Meanwhile, Blaize is much better, but he still comes off as disappointing, especially since we’ve already met with an authority figure who managed to capture our attention and humor us, but still ended up as the villain: Gant. They’re both corrupt old men in high positions, and yet I find Gant so much more fascinating than Blaize. Gant has a side to him that makes him likable, at least up to when he reveals he’s not so pure-hearted, but he did return to that likable side when he accepted defeat. Blaize, on the other hand, simply hollowed out into an empty shell, and we see no form of regret from him afterward - not even an apology to his son or any instance of acting fatherly. Granted, it was done this way to give Sebastian some much-needed development, so I’m not surprised.

Kristoph is a bit different from the rest here because it’s not necessarily the writer’s fault. He’s the only one who gets to have 5 mysterious black psyche-locks over his ultimate motive for killing Zak Gramarye. Some fans theorize that he couldn’t accept that he was simply jealous of Zak; others suggest he blotted out any feeling of inferiority; even others say he honestly didn’t know why. I can lean toward the first two, but I also say it’s just poorly executed ambiguous writing that had to have an imperfect explanation retconned in by DD. Speculation over a character’s motives is good, but when it’s then forgotten into history and never mentioned or referenced ever again, I really have to wonder if the point itself was to incite speculation? If so, that sucks; we’ll never know the truth.

In short, I’m not a fan of villains who are “evil for the sake of evil”. All these characters (and then some) fit that trope one way or another, but at least the last two are well suited in the context they play.

Sorry that this answer got so long-winded, but your question was so open that I wasn’t sure how much I should cover. I hope it isn’t too verbose.