#it's not even a cutscene from in-game and it's still probably in my top three pieces of genshin content

[tempests-bards-and-birds]

not a day goes by where i do not think about the endless suffering pv

[shuttershocky]

What did you think about the visual aesthetics of Concord's characters? For example, do you agree or disagree with those people who say their color palettes - not their complexions, but their clothing - are just plain ugly?

I believe Concord had three points of failure: It was a paid hero shooter when all of them are free to play (I respect the move but this is exactly what killed Gigantic. Twice.), it wasn't marketed well (I play PVP games as my main games and even I had never heard of Concord until it launched and fell flat on its face) and finally it very badly wanted to have an exaggerated aesthetic for its characters but instead went for a more Apex Legends look which made the game just look more unappealing that it could have been.

I mean look at these guys.

Tell me they wouldn't look much better in an exaggerated cartoon aesthetic. Red Handsome Squidward up there on the cover would actually work if he was drawn differently. In fact, let's get more screenshots of him (it will be important later)

This is how he looks in a cutscene.

And this is what he looks like in-game.

Concord has all these vibrant colors and characters and somehow ends up looking just like the next shooter mcshooty game, but with pink. I look at Concord and I have zero interest in whatever this is. I watch footage of how it played and while it looks well-made and reviews that gave it a chance said it was actually fun, nothing I have seen makes me go "Oh wow I want to play this". And I'm the target audience for Concord!

Compare this art to another game that came out recently that's far uglier (it's an alpha so all of its art assets are using placeholders) and yet is a runaway success without even being a game you can access without getting an invite: Deadlock.

As you can see, this is not a good-looking game that's gonna make you upgrade your PC, but its weird blend of Mike Mignola meets Team Fortress 2 for an art style just works in helping it stand out from the pack.

Recall Red Handsome Squidward from the cover of Concord and how funny his face looks. Deadlock has its own square-jawed big man in Blue Hellboy, who's drawn like this

And in-game looks like this

There's probably more polygons on Red Handsome Squidward's head than Blue Hellboy's everything, but the latter is in a game with an average of 100,000 concurrent players (for an alpha you can't even access normally, and whose servers are only open at certain hours Jesus Christ) and the former reached a peak of 2388 concurrent players on Steam.

I doubt i'm the only one who feels the same way about Concord's art style. The people blaming the game being "woke" for its failure are the same people that bend over backwards trying to explain that Baldur's Gate 3 isn't everything they say they hate, and the people who say audiences are tired of hero shooters are being proven wrong by Deadlock trying everything to keep the playerbase low and exploding into the top of Steam's most played in spite of it (Valve's still got the magic touch apparently)

I hope the devs that worked on Concord can bounce back, maybe on a new project or maybe on a massive rework and rerelease for Concord (I doubt it but you never know). This was clearly something they worked hard on and its gotta hurt watching your first project not only flop, but become one of the biggest flops in modern history with an estimated budget of 100 million dollars over 8 years of development. Ouch.

[dgiacomo]

munday on a not monday, what are your thoughts on the dlc so far? :0 that is if you’ve… GOTTEN far lmao

[I have plenty of thoughts on the DLC, hahaha XD And I've finally seen the one cutscene. But people really hate when I talk about my thoughts on canon and what it means and I don't really want that negativity in my life right now, so whilst I could say plenty about the Team Star part and the main section, I'm going to choose not to =T

I will say three things though, that hopefully won't be too controversial...

Firstly, something that made me sad... the generic NPC bodies they gave everybody but Eri (who looks like she had the most time spent on her, probably because their hands were forced), has given Giacomo a bobblehead look which is especially bad in Scarlet... I get it, they didn't want to model their unique body types 10 times since the outfits between Scarlet and Violet are more than just palette swaps, for a cutscene we'll see once and never again, for characters who aren't really fan favourites by a long shot. It's just a shame. He looked so sturdy and broad shouldered standing with his base game model, now he looks like his head is too big. <=(

Disclaimer; If you like how big his head looks and the way they did the bodies, that's cool.

EDIT; I've got both models and I've laid them on top of each other, interestingly it looks like the depth mostly matches (EDIT EDIT; I was wrong, it looked like it matched up, but it doesn't, not at the front or back), but his width doesn't(???), on the Violet outfit at least. They've also thinned out his legs(??) width ways but not depth ways(??) The Scarlet outfit is cut down even more(??). Conclusion; strange.

FURTHER EDIT; His neck is also considerably narrower from the front than on the base game model, so I feel like the assets haven't been thickened enough for him? As in the limbs etc don't match... But that's why his head looks too big, I imagine, his neck is thinner. His head itself is the same size and in the same place.

Secondly, something that made me happy... I like how his eyes look brown now, at least in this shot (to me, personally). I think it's obvious why that makes me smile!

Disclaimer; Yes, it's likely a lighting bug, a texture error, my "eyes are bad", if you want his eyes to still be black, that's cool.

Finally, congrats to Eri for her eyebrows!

(I really hope that last one isn't controversial...)]

[eaglefairy]

A new world is born.

Began with a little world tour to kill some unique monsters and get more experience (and affinity coins)

After the Bana fight Roommate: Huh, I wonder where Bana went after this. Me, gleeful: Oh? You want to see Bana now? ... Roommate: He's on the wheel now! Me: He's on the wheel now!

I'd recommend looking back at the previous post on my blog for a conversation much too long and winding to include in this post. It's worth it. Trust me

We're finally back at Prison Island and we literally walked past the fight that made her ragequit last week. The deinos don't attack us on sight anymore and the rest of the enemies won't spawn if they aren't fought so we just. walked past.

...and we just got the second bolt element so we are once again not fighting Dickson. This is like the third time we've walked away from the main story in the endgame, it's honestly kind of funny at this point

Upon seeing Demon King Dragonia for the first time: "OH. MY. GOD." "Ok but can you imagine like canonically...like people talk about the giants sometimes but no one talks about the dragons. And then finding out they're real??"

So I thought we were mostly keeping up with the collectopaedia, but we're looking at it again and we're missing items in Colony 6, the Ether Mine, Makna Forest, Valak Mountain, two from Galahad Fortress, and the Fallen Arm. What...what happened?!

My roommate is very disappointed that we don't really get any lore about the dragons and honestly, I agree with her. They're so cool and there's only three of them and we don't know anything about them except that they were likely important to the Giants because of their presence in the decor of Prison Island

Oh shit we're going for it. Past the point of no return!

Oh oops, I didn't make it clear that "point of no return" meant that she couldn't save past that point. Well, at least we have the autosave at Gondorl

Dickson...his death really tore her up. This is the only time she's cried throughout the whole game

:Saturn: Roommate: "Saturn, ok." still sniffling Me: "Saturn." Roommate: "...wait, Saturn?!"

"Jupiter?! So I'm actively in the solar system?!"

We're at the Moon now. "So the whole thing...the whole thing happened on Earth?! What the hell happened to Earth?!"

"Oh good, we don't have to fight Alvis. He'd probably beat me" (we are about to fight Zanza, she doesn't know yet)

I forgot how horribly ugly Zanza's second form is, wow. The roommate is not impressed either

Alvis: "I am Monado." Roommate: "I KNEW IT! I said that last week! Tell them I said that last week, Eagle."

Oh interesting, the experiment cutscene in 1 doesn't actually show Galea touching the button. I always thought it had. I'll have to rewatch the version from 2 then to see if my anger at the retcon is as justified as I thought

Time to beating Zanza: 99 hours

Final roommate stats: Game rating: 10/10, 5/5 stars, absolutely perfect game. Worldbuilding, design, characters, perfect Favorite character: Dickson, obviously Top 4: Dickson and Riki are both number one (whole head and whole heart respectively), Sharla and Reyn are number two, everyone else is below those Favorite area: Valak Mountain (and really any area that glows) Least favorite area: Bionis Interior by FAR Favorite town: Frontier Village Favorite party member to play: Fiora Favorite and least favorite story beat: Mechonis Core (because it's complicated) Favorite uncomplicated story beat: When Xord speaks for the first time and when Fiora is discovered to be alive Most heartbreaking moment: Dickson's death

Thank you all so much for joining us on this journey. I never thought I'd be liveblogging the entire game like this when I started, but it's been so fun to chronicle the entire game for the good people of tumblr. I've made new friends through this! Reaching the end of this game is bittersweet (heavy on the sweet), but it's certainly not the end of the liveblog! It's not even the end of this liveblog, honestly. Join us again tomorrow for more sidequests!

[mrfroag]

any chance you'd be willing to share why you made some of the design choices for the scret soulmate fusion?- it always facinates me to see why artists do certain things and your design is especially cool👀👀👀

!!!!!!!!!!

Oh watch out you've unlocked the froag unskippable cutscene you're not safe from my abnormality about rocks now >:))))

For real though, there were a couple reasons I picked Apatite for the secret soulmates fusion, but. I'm going to put this under a cut because this WILL be long:

I'm honestly not sure how people usually find rocks to look for for gemcyt fusions, but for me the thing I found most simple was to just. Scour geological and gemology websites for any information I could find about blue gemstones. I had a couple criteria in mind- since Grian and BigB's current designs are opposite ends of the blue spectrum (Bigb leans more ultramarine/warm blue, while Grian leans more turquoise/colder blue) I wanted to look for a stone that ideally had a good mixture of the two, and preferably with spotting or interesting color patterns to sort of match the speckled nature of blue quartzes [also I wanted to potentially give them freckles. I'm a weak guy]. So I spent a few hours looking around on various websites, comparing gemstones for their hardness, chemical properties, what their cuts were, etc? I probably went a lot deeper than I should for. A rock to make a funny little fusion guy out of, but it was basically me squinting information about a rock and thinking "hmm. can I see secret soulmates in this rock" until I found some that clicked. By the time I was done with that I had Apatite, Sodalite, and Larimar as my top three potential choices, and eventually picked Apatite:

Number one, it looked like a really fun gemstone to pick colors from!!! It has a lot of interesting color patterns, and I especially liked the little bits of gold you could pick out in it, which would be fun to mess with. And secondly, Apatite is actually pretty fragile as far as gemstones go- it only has a rating of 5 on the Mohs hardness scale, and isn't often used for jewelry because of how brittle and easy to break apart it is. And that was a little interesting to me. Grian and BigB choose each other as soulmates, they trust each other, they go against the fate of the game to swap gifts and resources and be together. But there's also the way in which at the end of it, Grian still kills Ren and doesn't even realize he's killed BigB until it's already over. Something about the way that even if they choose each other that isn't enough to change the way the game goes, or fully break the other alliances they have. So, it was kind of inchresting to connect that fusion to a rock that's a bit softer.

In terms of the actual DESIGN for Apatite though, it was mostly just me messing around sketching until I hit something interesting? I knew before I picked the gemstone that the weapon was probably going to be some kind of bubble contraption- I was originally going to go for some kind of detachable bubble sword where you had the physical hilt, and then a bubble/water blade that could shift shapes, but that was before I dug into BigB's design and found out he actually uses a chakram [which is a sick as hell weapon btw]. So it ended up being the perfect shape for a bubble wand fusion!!

The chef theme was a silly little homage to how Secret Soulmates started because Grian and BigB exchanged little cookie gifts and promised to exchange food, and also just because. Look at these two goobers. I feel like they'd be moderately competent chefs together and it made me giggle to think about, so I went with it! Plus, having a little chef theme and tilting the bubble wand so that you could move it a bit like a frying pan, giving it exploding bubbles that could look like food- it sounded like something a little goofy and silly, which is the main theme I was going for lol.

The three sets of arms was honestly more of a whim kind of thing- I'm still sketching out and designing this dude in my brain so i might add on or take stuff away later when i give it a second pass. But I knew I wanted at least one of the sets of arms that Grian contributed to be water hands? Firstly because it'd be kind of fun for a silhouette, it'd match up with the chef theme (give this guy so many sets of hands he can be his own sous chef), and also because it'd kind of match up with the trickster, multiple sets of repeated limbs motif that other Grian fusions like marblegroves' Charoite design have, which I thought would be cool. Gonna be real most of it is because I thought it would be cool or funny.

I think that mostly covers it so uh. Hope you enjoyed unskippable cutscene if anybody has made it this far criminy. Hands you a gold star or something I guess if you're down here ^-^"

[nervousron]

Where do you stand on shipping Michael and Trevor? Pre-prologue did they have an established relationship, an unlabelled "thing," or just ridiculous romantic tension? How about post-canon?

i flip-flop on where I stand a lot. Especially with the pre-game stuff. I don't think it was ever an established relationship, but there are a lot of little comments in the game that make me think they had something going on between them.

(Post Deathwish conversation)

"we're back baby! Mike and Trevor - top of the world."

"T, come on."

"Trevor Philips and Michael... De... *fart sound* together again!"

"Yeah. We're together at this moment, but... ahh... you know it's not..."

"I know, alright? Shit, you're such a downer. I don't even feel drunk anymore."

"Well, you are still drunk. So cheer up."

"Nah, you ruined it."

(Drunk conversation)

(T) Fuck you, actually (M) Dont you wish

(Cutscene in By the Book)

(M) hey, fuck you (T) You know? I'm beginning to think that's exactly what you wanna do (M) Yeah, Jesus. I just said the same fucking thing to my wife

Trevor's attraction towards Michael seems to have been there from the get-go. Lamar jokingly refers to it as "love at first sight" and i dont think he was very far off. When Trevor blew their first robbery together, he was sent to prison for it. By all accounts Michael should've skipped town and continued on his way. But he didnt. He waited for Trevor, a man at this point he hardly knew, and that decision changed Trevor's life irreversibly. I think thats where his infatuation begins.

As for Michael I think the attraction to Trevor comes on slowly. He doesnt realize its happening, and when he does, he makes up excuses for himself so he doesnt have to worry about being a queer. Buddies jerk off together all the time. If your best friend is willing to go a little farther than that and doesn't make it weird in the morning, why not go with it? And if Michael loves him a little, so what? Who doesn't love their best friend. They're Bodhi and Johnny Utah. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. That's all.

I think they had a good thing going for a while, up until Mandy got pregnant. Then they had an on-and-off thing for years that got more and more volatile as their friendship fell apart.( I wrote like 6 paragraphs about that but it was getting really lengthy so that's a post for another day lol.)

Or maybe they just never acted on it and the farthest they got was weird flirting, drunken three-ways with call girls, or jerking off to the same skin-flick. I can see em' all happening and its a horrible back and forth on my end of which makes the most sense canonically.

No matter what I think they had something really deep and guttural together before the Ludendorff heist

As for post-game i have my realistic idea of what would happen, and my idealistic ideas of what would happen.

Realistically:

Trevor is done pining after Michael. He still loves him, that will never change. But he's done with the heartache. They made up, and they'll hang out from time to time, but Trevor is never going to let his heart be broken by Michael again.

Michael is trying with his family. He wants to make his marriage work. He continues to fuck up, probably still sleeps around from time to time, but he's genuinely trying to stay with Amanda. He doesnt think about his past with Trevor very often, because if Trevor doesnt want to bring it up, neither will he.

They have a strained fucked up friendship, but a friendship nonetheless.

Ideally:

Abso-fucking-lutely. They figure it out. They're a goddamn mess together, but they're happy. They fight like they always do, but at the end of the day they're both trying

(im working on a post about my ending C Trikey thoughts that was supposed to be a reply to iagami a while back. i have so many ideas for a post-C ending for them and most of it is just dumb "lol thatd be funny" type stuff, but a lot of it has genuine thought put into it too. This post is already too long lol. thanks for reading through it!)

[darkclouud9]

one of the things you have to realise in life is that Minato was and would've been a shit parent

he FAILED his three students.

one of them had sacrificed himself for the other two, the other sacrificed herself for the whole fucking village, and them Minato said fuck it to his final student and let him go on for 10+ years after his death, depressed and suicidal.

and then in the Road to Ninja movie where Minato is alive and Naruto gets to meet him, he slaps his child for disrespecting his mother.

Minato, imo, was just a shit person in general idk why i still love him so much. like my top 2 characters are Kakashi and him, but like. Minato didn't do anything good for Kakashi? literally nothing from Minato was worthwhile or useful to Kakashi.

the ONLY thing of use to Kakashi from Minato was the hiraishin kunai, and even then, all it did was save Kakashi and Rin's life. (which is still important, I'm just saying we never see Kakashi with it again, plus Kakashi *might* have been able to keep himself and Rin alive there, plus Minato technically should have heem there with them in the first place)

we never see Minato act lovingly towards any of his students, always acting cold. I think there's a cutscene in one of the games where Minato and Kushina talk about Obito in a good way, but still. we never see Minato's (full) reaction to Obito's sacrifice OR Rin's death.

Minato hardly has any accomplishments as hokage either. the only thing we can say he did is fuck Kakashi up worse (and take the word of another anbu who fucking lied to him), and die saving the village.

also I have little to no complaints about most of Naruto in general, but if there's one thing I'd ever want changed, it's one scene in the war. it's a small scene, but it's around the time Obito 'loses' and Kakashi pops out of kamui to kill him, to which Minato stops him.

something something, the scene where Minato says 'that should have been your job' about Naruto talk-no-jutsu-ing Obito to become good again or whatever.

BECAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE. I just think it would've been cool if Kakashi was the reason why Obito 'lost'. not Naruto.

and I get it. Obito probably wouldn't have listened to Kakashi. I mean. after Rin's death, Obito probably wouldn't have wanted to listen to a WORD Kakashi said to him, but still. I just think Kakashi could have gotten to Obito. I just wish.

(and I get it. it's about Naruto. the show's named after him. but still. other characters can be important too...)

[jadagul]

I beat FFXII today. (I want to go back and do some more completionism, but I beat the final boss and watched the credits.) And honestly, while I didn't hate it, I was disappointed.

I have about 90 hours in the game. That's about twice as long as the next-longest Final Fantasy I know my playtime for (for a single playthrough, I mean). And that seems like a good thing—there's lots of Content—but to me it underscores how empty the game is that I have twice as much time in it and it feels like much less has happened.

The story just generally felt underwritten; I've said it before and I stand by that. It's not that anything was bad; it just felt like characters had isolated scenes with isolated character beats that weren't prepared or resolved. They probably should have taken some of those extensive space airship battles that definitely aren't from Star Wars and replaced them with cutscenes involving the actual characters in the actual story.

It didn't help that there were often hours of play between one plot scene and the next—another place the long playtime rears its head. Of course, a lot of that was me going off on sidequests. This game has a ton of sidequests, and at least most of them it telegraphs pretty clearly. That's nice, in that it shows you the content; but it winds up keeping the focus off the actual story when there are hours of "go kill random bosses" in between each story quest.

And it also always hurts me as a somewhat-roleplayer to go do sidequests when in theory my characters should be under time pressure. ("Oh, there's a giant sky fortress leading a fleet towards my hometown. Now is a perfect time to run errands!) One of the things I most liked about Breath of the Wild is that it basically justifies your desire to run around sidequesting rather than fight the final boss. That's a diegetic, in-character decision that gets discussed.

And the climax feels equally half-assed. I was genuinely surprised that the game ended where it did; it really felt like it needed at least one more act. (I hadn't planned to finish tonight!) The final final boss is way more arbitrary than most FF final bosses, and might even beat out FFIXs. And honestly the credits didn't wrap up nearly as much as I expected, either.

And the gameplay wasn't awful but wasn't super fun. The gambit system was neat, although I kept wanting it to be more fine-grained. (I wish I could and two gambit instructions!) The fights were sometimes a little too chaotic to tell what was going on clearly, and I really don't like the reliance on fuck-you "this boss is immune to everything for the next thirty seconds" fields.

Some of the bonus bosses were interesting and tense and fun. But if you're doing them, the story bosses then become pretty trivial. At the same time, even with doing a bunch of the optional content it's easy to be missing what I think of as core abilities, which made the optional content not really feel optional to me. (And I still don't have any of the, like, top two or three tiers of abilities or equipment. God only knows how boring the final boss would be if I'd actually done all the sidequests first.)

So yeah. I got 90 hours of playtime, and I'm probably going to get more, and I don't regret playing it. But I was disappointed, and I'd have a hard time recommending it.

[soartfullydone]

I finished my first bg3 playthrough and just need to ramble about act 3 things specifically (spoiler-heavy, don't read this)

There's so much about this game that's great. But so much of act 3 made me go from :D to :/ like people were not kidding about how unpolished it feels. There's some positive thoughts here, but there's also a LOT of critique sooo don't read this probably fr fr.

The amount of bugs are egregious in act 3. I normally have a high threshold for bugs in games. They happen. So long as I don't lose gameplay hours over them, I'm pretty fine. But omg, I finally found my threshold. Just so much that distracted and detracted from cutscenes, from character moments, from the immersion of it all. It's hard to praise Larian for showing up the AAA studios when they turn around and actually do much the same as them: rush an unfinished product to launch. BG3 should've been worked on another year at least so the poor devs wouldn't have to go through the crunch time they are as I type this.

Acts 1 and 2 feel very tight and cohesive, act 1 especially (and I swear, act 2 was the shortest, easy, and yes, I did everything), but in act 3, you start to see so many holes, so many quest lines abandoned, rewritten, and unfinished. Quick question: why was Cazador's palace attached to a random guard wall in the Lower City when he's as upper echelon as they come? Oh, because we cut all of the Upper City from the game but still needed to resolve Astarion's storyline? Got it. What was the point of me tracking down the bomb factory in the fireworks shop if there are no repercussions for either destroying it or leaving it alone? Oh, just a reason to connect Rivington to Baldur's Gate, same as the Dribbles quest? Cool.

Speaking of Dribbles, I almost couldn't even finish the damn quest because I stole the clown's hand from the kobald and the game didn't acknowledge it because a cutscene didn't trigger. I had to do the most roundabout series of tests and finally figured out I had to put the hand in a pouch marked as wares, sell the wares to the kobald, steal the pouch back, drop the hand in front of him, and ensure he caught me stealing it.

That being said, there is nothing about the Circus segment itself I would change. Pure confetti all the way down. Enjoyed being turned into a stinky wheel of cheese.

I love love love the Auntie Ethel quest line. The only thing I could've asked for in relation to it is even more fae shit.

On that note, loved Valeria. Loved how Normal a miniature flying elephant detective was.

The Emperor's sex scene? Delightful. So glad I got to experience that through a friend. Can't wait to be a freak like that someday.

The House of Hope was Hot AF. I died at the Haarlep part; it was everything I wanted: a Raphael """romance""", a terrible deal, exhibitionism, companion-wide disapproval, body and mind violation. Honestly, Larian DOES get full points for that. (Now, make it a true possibility with Raphael, cowards. Let me ride that pillow princess.) Can't WAIT to fully go through with this deal someday with a different character because Riven wasn't the one.

The Raphael fight was honestly incredibly fun (the soundtrack lol A+++) and I didn't find it that challenging in Balanced mode. Like, I thought it was going to wreck my shit, but it was easily one of my most favorite parts of the game. Getting to the room to go through with it, however, was a trial and a half.

Act 3 also had two, if not three, of my least favorite quests of the whole game, tbh. And when I say least favorite, I mean they were just plain not fun to play. At all. Top of mind is the Free the Artist quest with the haunted house, which should've been fun but was just an incredible pain in the ass the whole time, and the Iron Throne quest, which I had to do no less than 8 times to get the exact results I wanted because bugs would thwart me at every turn. NPCs not dashing because their pathways were somehow blocked. Characters getting stuck up the ladder, not allowing anyone else to climb it. Having a character physically move to pull a switch to lock a door behind them only to get them permanently stuck on the wrong side of the door. Did I mention this quest was also a timed trial? lol lol

Kept expecting for my betrayal of the Zhentarim in act 1 to have Repercussions when I reached the city, their stomping ground, in act 3. lol lol

With the flood of companion interactions and cutscenes I got in act 1, it's a shame how much those dried up in act 2 and were practically non-existent in act 3. Their personal quest lines are all you have, and once they're over, you'll maybe get one final cutscene and maybe a romantic one and that's it.

Karlach barely feels like she had a real arc. You do a few things to keep her infernal engine from exploding, but then there's nothing more you can do and she resigns herself to death, refusing to go to Avernus. She and Dammon stop interacting, and the game gives you no other avenues to explore besides a confrontation with Gortash that went about as well as I expected. Just dissatisfaction after dissatisfaction with her. Which is a shame because her VA killed it the entire time! The best I could do for her was take her to the House of Hope for a few hours of relief, but not even an archdevil's home has anything more to offer her.

And it's wild because her death scene was super emotional and touching. I was ready to burst into tears until Wyll ran up and begged her to come to Avernus with him, to live. Then, I wanted to cry for another reason! (My Wyll lost his warlock powers but saved his father and became the Blade of Avernus.) This made so much sense to me as an option for Karlach a long time ago, that I was both relieved and frustrated that this was The Solution the whole time.

I gave Karlach the option to choose what she wanted, and she chose to go with him. What has all this been for, then? So much of Karlach's narrative and the tragedy of it hangs on her absolute refusal to return to the place that tortured her so badly just to live—but that turns out to be only solution this whole time? Why couldn't we just go to Avernus and find something that actually helps her then?

Karlach and Wyll got short-changed in many respects to their arcs, which is wild considering all the touchpoints they have with each other. I'm still frustrated that I, not Wyll, had to choose between severing the pact and saving his father. Even though I achieved both, Wyll should've been given the option to make that decision based on how you interacted with him throughout the game, same as every other character gets to make. At least he gets to choose between becoming a city official and the Blade of Avernus. But it's wild that we have two characters here who were used and enslaved by devils, and that's either not really addressed or resolved (Karlach) or it's only passively handled (Wyll).

And god, I loved the final scene with Wyll and Karlach in Avernus! How Karlach accepted that she would live, how she appreciated both the horror and the opportunity that Avernus presented, and how she wasn't alone anymore. I loved how confident she gets, assuming the role of the experienced expert/hunter in this place. And then Wyll. Who has also hunted and explored Avernus before. Doesn't even get to speak. Just smiles encouragingly the whole time, silent. This scene is so clearly written for Karlach with a Tav, and it's. Frustrating. Wyll and Karlach should be straight-up talking shop together right now. If this is the resolution of both of their arcs together, then it should be written for both of them together.

I'm a Wyll fan who loves the character he is, but I also resonate with folks who are frustrated losing the EA Wyll I never got to meet. I love what I've seen of his romance arc; it's his character arc that has me scratching my head at times, just because I see where they could've done a lot more with more time. The Ansur quest was... interesting but feels very tacked on at the last minute, and the twist that occurs from it isn't even about Wyll. And it matters for all of two seconds and then is never brought up again except to remind you to never speak of it lol what?? At least the lesson Wyll learns is one I knew all along, which is he's the hero Baldur's Gate needs and deserves.

And Gale! I'm honestly not even counting his arc as resolved. That was a joke. The crown falls into the lake?? And based on how you talked to him, he decides whether he's going to fish it out or not??? And I don't even get to see it??? For me, Gale decided to leave it alone, not giving it to Mystra or using it to become a god, which is. Wild. Considering my Tav, Riven, was very much Team "Fuck Mystra" and didn't discourage him from the god path. I was expecting a whole moment like what Astarion got between completing the ritual or not, but nope! You've gotta be joking.

I think the only arcs I'm satisfied with are Lae'zel's and Shadowheart's, even though I still don't know how and why the latter dyed her hair white lol. (I mean, symbolically, I get it, but I'm half-convinced her hair's not even supposed to be white because her portrait never changed hair color and the other characters only commented on her bangs like is this a universal bug that everyone accepted and Larian doesn't want to own up to?)

I also wish that if Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc are going to be companions that they would've given them proper arcs, too. Halsin especially since he comes along earlier. Jaheira gets more of a pass since she's older and a legacy character and I love her, but I could take or leave Minsc tbh. Haven't gotten Minthara yet, so opinion's still out on her.

I loved Jaheira's little adopted family. A shame I never saw them again or got anymore resolution! (More on resolution in general later)

I guess I'll talk about Astarion's arc. I loved so much of it, but I'll be honest; I was having the most fun with him in acts 1 and 2. The sex repulsion thing, while key to his arc, also seemed to dry up all the romantic chemistry he has between himself and your character. Part of that might be because his arc turns so hard into obsessing over the ritual. But part of it is a Huge Missed Opportunity between exploring the difference between Sex as a Means to an End and exploring with him what actual intimacy looks like. Sure, you get the hand-holding and the hug, once, which can easily turn into a Just Friends thing. But where was learning what easy sensuality and intimacy looks like with a partner who won't pressure you into making it about sex? The graveyard scene was great! Sure wish there was more where that came from!

Astarion's romantic arc became a lot more about what Astarion wanted versus what you both want, argue with the wall. Sure, he wants it to become something real and wants to take things slow, but at what point is a Tav who was used for protection through sex allowed to be sexually frustrated and not shamed for it? The only time that's even acknowledged is if Tav considers a poly relationship with Astarion and Halsin, and we're supposed to feel bad on Astarion's account and not Tav's. Well, I'm sorry, but for Riven, Astarion would've been her first sexual partner and relationship, and he knowingly turned that switch on to make her obsessed and pliant towards him. It's unrealistic to just. Expect her to not be sexually frustrated, to grin and bear it, just because he's finally acknowledging his own automony. Part of that autonomy means taking ownership for what he did as an exploitive sexual partner; I'm not saying he needs to get her off or anything, but this is where displaying actual intimacy could've helped while they were taking a break from sex. Instead, the game really does have Astarion cut her off cold turkey with no further romantic scenes outside of the odd line here and there while discussing the ritual, and p e r s o n a l l y, I take Great Issue with that as a woman with some fucking self-respect.

Considering how hard this romance goes on the front-end with sex, flirting, and banter, Astarion's romance arc feels very foreplay-heavy with a very dissatisfying finish, which I'm not impressed with, okay? (And yes, my last romantic scene with him was bugged all to hell, so I didn't get to experience it as a cutscene, just fragmented lines in a box of a room. In fact, a lot of his romance lines throughout act 3 would either get cut-off or there'd be other buggy things happening that detracted from the scene.) At least he stays an asshole and not this uwu baby that so much of the fandom wants to pretend he is lol

That said, and even though I haven't done it yet, I am so sure that it'll be Ascended Astarion >>>>>>>> Good End Astarion for me lol. Give me the dark, fucked-up ends forever, thanks.

I didn't even get one of the biggest payoffs from convincing Astarion not to Ascend. I had Shadowheart cast Daylight as an orb and not on an object, so when the other spawn got free, they took damage from the spell and ran away, disappearing forever. Cazador's staff was nowhere to be seen because it was tied to a cutscene with those spawn, so now??? The ~7,000 spawn trapped in those arcane cells are just going to be driven mad as they starve to death, which we know from Astarion being held in solitary for a year is going to take a very long time. Meaning the more humane thing to do would've been to just. Let Astarion go through with the ritual, damning himself to save them from a fate worse than death. Great storytelling, Larian, we didn't test that Daylight spell at all, did we? Good thing I made a save with Astarion post-Ascension, tbh.

(Which, the fact that you still have to convince Astarion not to go through with the ritual, despite your high approval, romance, and all the things he's seen getting there, fascinates me. So many other characters will do the right thing if you've planted the seeds and give them the chance to make the choice themselves, but Astarion is determined to see the ritual through by default unless you roll real good. It's Big Sexy of him.)

On the one hand, this game has SO many more companion cutscenes and reactions than past rpg games like this. But on the other, it doesn't balance them well throughout the game. It doesn't help that I played the version with approval thresholds being lower than they should've been. But it goes back to how much of act 1 was written, built out, and tested in EA, and how much the rest of the game was... not.

Also what was the point of Yenna besides being nice to an orphan kid? Why did she disappear from camp for days and days that was never acknowledged? How many more bugs with kids did I experience in this playthrough, the Mol quest also being fucked sideways?

Gortash was so hot and SO underused and for what??? Jason Isaacs, b r u h!!! Oh well, more reason to play Dark Urge at some point.

I also never got the option to Find Familiar my owlbear and he stopped moving in the camp in act 3, and I'm sad, okay? He does somehow become fully grown?? for the final battle and armored up, but you're joking if you think I'm risking my baby boy like that

That said, I did like how the final battle played out, how you could summon your allies to help fight. (Zevlor redeemed himself and survived, baby!) I liked the various stages of it. But omg... the audio problems. A whole area where background music didn't play for over 20 minutes. Where characters had dialogue but no audio track. The immersion was in tatters for me, and given all the character arc resolution problems I discussed above, yeah, no WONDER I'm fucking frustrated. All this build up, to just trip at the finish line?

It was also wild how. Abrupt. The ending is. A series of cutscenes with a few final choices here and there, with random companions interjecting their opinions/perspective, but. There's no goodbye tour. There's no talking to everyone for the last time before the FINAL scenes happen and the credits roll. No "what will you do now?" discussions besides Karlach and Wyll's abrupt leave (made even worse by Astarion's abrupt leave for Reasons). I've been traveling with most of these people since the first hour of the game, and I can't even say to them "goodbye and thank you"??? We've poked fun at Bioware throughout BG3's launch, but they beat you there, Larian. Muchly.

The ending cutscenes were also not edited together cohesively, which might be why the Astarion romance scene bugged out. It's possible it's out of order, but it either goes: Companions talking about celebrating, Astarion getting scalded by the sun and running away, Karlach's engine catching on fire, Wyll convincing her to save herself and the two running off, the narrator showing you the city and proclaiming you a hero, Astarion romance scene in a black box, Wyll and Karlach in Avernus, end credits. OR it goes: Companions talking about celebrating, Astarion being scalded and running off, Karlach's engine catching on fire, Wyll imploring her to live but you convince her to die, the narrator proclaiming you a hero, Astarion romance scene, credits. And that switch to the credits, both times, is a fast and hard switch.

Also okay FINE I'll be honest! How determined this game is to turn you illithid finally pissed me the fuck off! The whole game, I played a character who would Not Eat the Damn Tadpole for anything but who would still abuse her compulsion powers now and again. (Which, a shame that power went away in act 3, that was fun roleplaying.) The whole game, she decides and is given the option to decide that her own strength and those of her companions would be enough, and guess what? It's not lol. Someone still has to become illithid and eat Orpheus's brain. Picture it: I had Astarion, Gale, and Lae'zel with me, the latter two who still need their arcs completed, hence why they're here. And the choice I'm given is either: give the Emperor the stones and have him eat Orpheus' brain; turn myself into an illithid and eat Orpheus' brain, or free Orpheus and convince him to turn himself into an illithid (or have myself or a dying Karlach do it, and guess what? We'd still have to eat his brain). All but one of these choices will either have Lae'zel hate me forever or permanently end my Astarion romance. The only viable option, meanwhile, is depressingly anticlimactic and uninteresting. Yeah, I'll say it: BOOOOOOO!

I have so many characters I want to do different playthroughs with, but act 3 and its ending, man. The taste of it is not horrible but it's not great, either. Kinda torn between taking my time in the first two acts and giving the game a break, see if they fix the most annoying bug issues first. I don't hold out much hope that storytelling issues will be fixed, but god, I wish they would be. Gonna just hold it in and die until I can talk to any friend about it.

[flecks-of-stardust]

okay year in review eh

this shit's long so i'll put it under a cut, and also all tags are going to be removed

I posted 4,547 times in 2022

That's 1,870 more posts than 2021! (lmao. even though i made my blog sept 2021? i guess i slowed down somewhat)

551 posts created (12%)

3,996 posts reblogged (88%) (honestly not too shabby of a ratio for original stuff)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

liquidlikecats (hi moss)

aroarachnid (hi ash)

flecks-of-stardust (LOL MY FUCKING LIVEBLOGGING)

flame-shadow (huh i guess flame just posts a lot)

I tagged 3,149 of my posts in 2022

Only 31% of my posts had no tags (that is surprisingly high tbh)

#hollow knight - 939 posts (haha yes hollow knight blog)

#ghost - 277 posts

#the knight - 237 posts

#hornet - 177 posts

#bug fables - 163 posts

#rain world - 141 posts

#holly - 134 posts

#the hollow knight - 115 posts

#bookmarked - 113 posts

#pale king - 87 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (of course it's just screaming)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

the sale is over stop giving this notes pls /hj

160 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

#4

yknow, the watcher knights really speak to the influence lurien had. monomon’s protection is uumuu, a sentient jellyfish that presumably has some ties to her, while herrah’s protection is her people, in her Den. but lurien? lurien gets an army of knights. we fight five/six, but there’s more husks in the background. who knows how many knights he had at his disposal, all ready to guard his body? what kind of power must you have to have access to that?

192 notes - Posted November 27, 2022

honestly i still don't know how this has so many notes. where were yall even coming from?

#3

[image description: a crochet doll of a very round Radiance. She is roughly spherical, has a three pronged crown, a pair of wings each with three fronds, and round yellow eyes set into a black heart shaped mask. Everything about her is rounded and soft, though her eyes are ovals. end image description]

Orbiance

i saw someone’s radiorb plush in the main tag and was hit with the realization that i, too, can make the roundest radi to ever moth. she’s the biggest thing i’ve ever made thus far, which is... fitting, i think. her crown was surprisingly easy to wrangle into place, but i won’t complain sfjkghjk her face took more effort, honestly.

it’s interesting trying to simplify a design as layered as radi’s down into what is essentially a fancy ball. i thought about adding more fluff to her wings, but honestly, the triplet wing-crown-wing probably makes it cuter. also, from experience with the wooly aphid, adding more fluff just tends to look weird, so eh. simpler is better sometimes.

also, there is a surprise under her...

See the full post

236 notes - Posted May 7, 2022

bro tumblr gave this post a cliffhanger DKJSJKS all hail radiorb

#2

i ship lurien with a bed and a good nap

340 notes - Posted August 12, 2022

fran i blame you for this /j

My #1 post of 2022

the abyss cutscene after you dream nail the egg is a somber one, but i do have to wonder. how does ghost know what the pale king asked of the vessels? like the pale king is clearly going ‘no mind to think, no will to break’ as ghost is climbing up to the top in the cutscene, but surely he couldnt have told each individual vessel as they hatched ‘hey heres what i want you to do’ since theres probably billions of them

the most likely answer is probably magic, somehow, or. gameplay reasons. because this is a video game. but i want to entertain the idea that ghost knows what the pale king expected of the vessels because he stood at the top and screamed it repeatedly down into the abyss

661 notes - Posted January 4, 2022

thanks flame for helping this post blow up /s

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

anyway this is interesting. if i'm still on the hellsite next year we'll compare again lmfao

[bainhardt]

Pokemon SV thoughts: tumblr exclusive dlc version sorry this is so long but too bad lol

I got to the credits tonight and to be honest, I feel like I have way too much to say about SV, but that'd be kind of exhausting, so I'll try to keep it to broad strokes. It reminded me a lot of Legends Arceus: I had my share of fun, but I have numerous complaints as well.

First, if what people are tired and cynical about is Game Freak's supposed lack of "innovation," I feel this game is proof that they are finally coming around to trying new ideas. This and LA are the freshest the franchise has been in decades. But new ideas take a lot of refining.

The most fun aspect was exploration. It's legitimately awesome to simply wander, see Pokemon, and catch Pokemon, and you can go basically anywhere you want from the word “Go.” I remember wanting far more out of the exploration in Legends Arceus, and I was relieved to find when playing SV that it felt much closer to what I had envisioned for the concept. This is a big step forward in terms of freedom (and the region is pretty cool, which helps).

But the battling is the same as always (even with the new gimmick), the gyms are the same, the E4 is the same. If the core gameplay loop has grown old for you, there won't be much to win you over; you can do these battles in any order you like, but they're still just... battles.

Add on top of that this game has... a LOT of cutscenes, and it can really drag just trying to get things done so you can progress and become stronger. Story is always subjective, but if you're not invested in the plotlines, you are NOT going to enjoy the pacing (I didn't).

Despite that, the "endgame zone" so to speak is probably the single coolest thing I've seen in a Pokemon game to date. idk that I'd say it makes up for the first portions, but I did start to enjoy the story in the back half. imo the coolest villain/plan segment in the franchise.

Lastly, this game runs like shit. This is THE worst technical showcase of any game I've played on my Switch, bar none. I'm not talking your occasional slowdown or something - this is literally a game that spends more time chugging and breaking than not.

It really brings the entire experience down to know this was a game that was willing to put the work in with its ideas and ambition, only to be held back by hardware limitations and likely development problems (three Pokemon games in a year, all felt crunched and unpolished). I honestly feel like now that the fanbase at large has gotten their hands on gen 9, just about anyone would’ve been willing to give up BDSP and Arceus if it meant this game got the time and resources it really needed. But that problem rings true for any one of them; all three of these games needed more work than they got in the end. Not one of them has felt truly complete when compared to SWSH.

Anyway, all I really had left in terms of complaints are minor ones, but man, I had about a thousand. You can't turn move animations off, you can't L=A mode, there's no Battle Style Shift or Set option, the Pokedex and Bag don't remember where your cursor left off in between uses, the PC box takes forever to load each page, you can’t change to the All Boxes view while holding a Pokemon, the summary screens work differently between the PC and the Party screen, the Bag and Pokedex have no fast scroll buttons, the sandwich recipe menu has a favorite button but then no way to filter by favorites, each time you use an item on a Pokemon it deselects that item and makes you select it again... you get the idea. Many people don’t notice things like this, but for me they’re like pebbles in my shoe, and holy shit - this game was like walking on goddamn gravel.

If this game worked as intended, it would very probably rank the best in the franchise like, unanimously. For a lot of players, it likely still will be. But to me, it's hard to recommend a game that feels this broken, that feels this slapdash when I know they can make them better.

Also, I never tend to include this as part of my actual review’s parameters, but I liked a lot of new Pokemon (most since like gen 5 maybe) and thought a lot of new abilities/moves/battle stuff was really creative. This was the first game I can remember in years where I actually used a team of nothing but new guys, and a full team of six at that. But there's also some truly batshit insane powercreep stuff that's looking to make competitive a nightmare (getting my predictions in early). Continuing the post-3D trend, practically every new Pokemon has a signature move, signature ability, or both, and holy fuck some of the new moves are unbelievable. And the two box legendaries have some Calyrex-ass double down abilities that are sure to make the restricted format full of them. Ugh.

Another thing I felt even before the game came out and after playing still feel is: I really hate the approach to graphical presentation and how that factored into the designs and appearances of the human characters. It’s admirable that they’re trying to add more detail to the Pokemon with texture and lighting, but the people in this game look properly fucking weird to me. The clothes are textured to look more real, the hair is attempting a realistic texture with like visible strands (although it does look pretty shoddy)... but then the skin and faces are still giant plasticy anime-style deals. It reminded me a lot of fashion dolls. Just kind of uncanny, you know?

And personally, I don’t even want the graphics to be more realistic at the end of the day; Pokemon is supposed to be cartoony, and I think this bizarre middle ground only hurts the style in a lot of ways more than it improves it. The trainers and NPCs at large suffer from this lack of cartoonishness, and I feel like the entire world’s color and vitality gets brought down a level from generations past. Yes, the gym leaders still manage some good and a couple great designs; yes, the Star leaders are probably the best designs in the game. But virtually everyone else in the game look like “boring human in clothes.” Battling what few trainers I did, it felt hard to believe this is the same franchise that used to have unique Youngsters, Lasses, Beauties, Fishermen, Hikers, Ace Trainers, Battle Girls and Black Belts, where everyone from business people to scientists to janitors to students and their teachers had memorable and new appearances each generation. Looking at this game, the notion that we could see a repeat of what happened to XY’s Hex Maniac, for example, was laughable. They really put all their eggs into one basket with the main cast, which I think is a significant step backwards.

The actual, real, final thing I can remember to say at this time was that I felt the gym/E4′s use of Terastallization was poor and a huge missed opportunity. Each gym, the leader uses a random ace that they Tera into their gym’s type, which only serves to make the battles as much of a sweep as always if the player is sufficiently prepared. When wiping the Water gym leader with my Electric type, I actually paused for a second when seeing his final Pokemon was Crabominable. I thought “huh, now I don’t have a great move for this, do I switch out to-” before remembering he was, of course, going to change it to a Water type like everything else and I could finish the battle with no more trouble than before.

To me, the better way to handle this and introduce the depth and possibilities of the mechanic is to have each leader’s ace still be a Pokemon of their type, which they Tera into something different and unexpected, reflecting the way it will work in real battles with other players. This also serves to showcase a range of basic strategic choices for each type players could choose to use in their own teams. The only leader that felt close to this was Iono, Terastallizing a Mismagius into Electric so as to have no weaknesses with Levitate. Giving her something like a Volt Absorb Pokemon to Tera into Flying or Water and negate a weakness wouldn’t have been as “strong,” but I feel it would’ve been more thematically appropriate while requiring players to actually vary their approach a little more.

[shuttershocky]

actually this is a good chance to get to know you a bit better. top 3 animals, top 3 colors, top 3 games

Top 3 Animals

1) Crocodiles — There used to be many saltwater crocodiles back in my mom's province. These are the largest reptiles in the world so just seeing them (from a very far, safe distance away) is pretty awe-inspiring. One of these was so gargantuan we put a replica of its skeleton on display in the national museum in Manila, hung over the lobby. We also have Philippine Crocodiles which are endemic to the country, but I've only seen juvenile ones at a zoo since they're endangered and all.

2) Turtles — There are very few experiences like being on the beach and seeing a sea turtle in the wild. One time we were on a fishing boat and someone screamed, I thought for sure it meant someone spotted a shark, but when I leaned over to look, there was a sea turtle poking its head out right above the coral reefs to watch us. There's not many perks to living in the tropics, but this is one of them.

3) Kulasisi — These are very tiny parrots (I think the smallest in the world even?) that aren't common, but can be found virtually anywhere. One of my favorite classes back in college was birdwatching, where one of our sessions found a couple nesting pairs right outside one of the buildings. It was because of that class that I realized it was a Kulasisi that was making the bird calls I would hear when getting up in the morning to go to class

Top 3 Colors

1) Purple — My grandmother's favorite color, and mine eventually. I used to be a blue person until I shifted to darker purple and violet as I got older

2) Blue — I still like it

3) Black — I really liked the Matrix

Top 3 Games

I'm a big gamer (enough that I went into gamedev for a living despite everything) so this is probably the most malleable list. I'm not difficult to please and generally like a lot of stuff, so a top 3 favorite games list could look very different each time, barring one game.

1) Dota 2 — I have over 5000 hours in my favorite game of all time. Picked it up in 2012, and then it was all over for me. I can go stretches of up to 6 months without touching the game, but when I reopen it, the hype comes flooding back.

2) Devil May Cry 5 — I continue to hold the opinion that DMC5 hit the platonic ideal of stylish action game design, V's lack of depth notwithstanding. The game has been out for 5 years and people are still uploading new runs, finding all these tricks and secrets in the game just as they did with DMC3 and 4 before it. If Dante only got wall running and Wild Stomp back from 3, it might be as close to perfect as you can get. Devil Trigger and Bury The Light are also among my favorite video game songs of all time, among the likes of Killer Instinct's or Metal Gear Rising's

3) Metal Gear Solid 4 — MGS3 is the better game, MGS1 and 2 are more iconic, but MGS4 rescued the PS3 from irrelevancy before Uncharted 2 made it big. Holy shit that game looked unbelievably good when it first came out. The way Snake would lie still and camouflage into the floor while bullets sprayed the ground right in front of him while mooing mechs and soldiers were mere feet away blew my mind.

Games like Resident Evil 4 three years earlier really popularized making cinematic cutscenes that were rendered in-game rather than pre-rendered, but I didn't realize the possibilities behind it until MGS4's Raiden vs Vamp. A complex action scene where Raiden and Vamp had a sword duel would always be cool, but what pushed it over the top was that you kept playing the whole time it was happening. MGS4 would split the screen, playing the cutscene in one half, while in the other you had to carry on with your mission, and goddamn that sure was a moment of thinking "Wow this really is next gen"

[falaflames]

fire emblem engage

tumblr is the perfect place to rant about this so here i go

first of all, i suppose i’ll start with the things i DO like. because there are some nice things!! not all hope is lost!! but there are also a lot of. not good design choices. 

first off, colgate-chan is really growing on me actually. at least the m!version. still kind of a terrible design idea, but he does look very pretty in the cutscenes

other designs that i like are: all of brodia(?) tbh. i think they’re the best out of what was shown

i like his little :3 face

this bitch seems insufferable but also he’s hot so he can have a pass for now

OBVIOUSLY EVIL but also. one of the better designs.

RED MAN ALSO HAS ROY WHICH IS A WIN.

anyway. now onto the bad. which. unfortunately i think outweighs a lot of the good done.

there’s the ~obviously evil~ kingdom that worships the dark dragon which is pretty run of the mill fire emblem story. i don’t have a problem with that, but i DO have a problem with their designs. the main villain is just an evil old man which, again, is not the issue here bc sometimes you just need Evil Old Man.

THESE THREE. the middle one makes me visibly shake with anger. the two on the side look like they belong in a fire emblem game, but ms cotton candy clown in the middle (who also seems to be the leader) is just. oh my god. what is that. who that was a good idea. she’s a pegknight too which just. why throw that onto a horse. that seems like clipping hell to me, but what do i know right

she also looks like she’s 13 and just. i dont know. she seems so out of place over the top anime and i want to destroy her

these four. while they aren’t the worst their freaky ass models look like they’re walking through pudding and the girls are just really over the top (not that the two dudes aren’t either. also thank you at least for the man titty window too)

not a huge issue with this one but what’s with the cheek marks in this game. uwu we’re original vtubers do not steal

as a friend said: “excited for black people but what are they wearing” because fire emblem, what the FUCK is this. she could be cute but instead you put her in a clown ass outfit and i hate you so much.

her too. honestly 90% of the girls look anime and bad and it just makes me sad. they look like the belong in hololive which, the designer IS a vtuber designer but. it just seems out of place. they don’t feel like fire emblem. they don’t feel cohesive. i get that there’s different countries but this just feels so over the top and forced ~recognizable design~ that i just. can’t like it. also, a lot of the girls look like they’re maybe 16 max. i think it’s just the style but i am really not a fan of the “uwu moe” anime girl style and i don’t like it when it’s brought into fire emblem (looking at you, heroes)

ntm the whole issue of bringing back the old lords. they look so out of place next to some of these characters, little bubblegum clown has lucina next to her. which they are from different games, yes, but it just. really makes them stand out more than they need to. i don’t know. plus, why even have them? what is the point? what is the story? we have a game where you can play with the old lords (heroes). why do we need heroes for the switch.

another small gripe is that the trailer shows a bunch of lords but once again four is given the short end of the stick and not shown at all. i think every other game besides fates/three houses got some sort of representation but again, jugdral as a whole is completely ignored bc nintendo does not like to recognize them unless they are forced to :’)

i’ll still probably get a game bc i am a whore for fire emblem, but i have to say i’m REALLY disappointed by the character designs. they’re not all bad, but the ones that are bad are BAD and they really bring the game down as a whole. 

tl:dr; i love fire emblem but these designs are an incohesive tire fire and it brings down what could be a really pretty game. time will tell how the story is, but i’m honestly going in with low expectations

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette: Revenant Awards 2003

RETURN OF THE DEMON KING – REVENANT AWARDS 2003 EDITION

Well... here we are. The tenth Revenant Awards I’ve made. And the last one related to Doomworld’s Top 100 WADs of All Time.

Even though 2003 has four WADs/MegaWADs that count as partial/total conversion, it was rather various in terms of the map amount. And there will be two awards that weren’t earned by default.

With that out of the way, let’s finish what we started. Starting with...

ONE MAN ARMY – BEST ONE-MAP WAD OF THE YEAR

Choosing the winner for this category was rather hard. In both cases (Helpyourselfish and Space Station Omega), we have a map that might leave a sour taste in your mouth after your blind playthrough but you appreciate it more each time you play it again. it doesn’t mean that these two maps are some kind of masterpieces. And it all comes down to choosing your poison for the rest of the day: Would you choose the map that is basically a typical ZDoom map/WAD of its time and thinks it’s something more than it really needs to be, or rather a map/WAD that knows what it is and what’s to give you fun but also being dickish in some places at the same time.

In my case, I might have a negative bias towards early ZDoom WADs but I would rather shoot nothing for half of a map rather than being smacked by Hoovies in cages as soon as I attack. So I’m giving the One Man Army award to Space Station Omega. It might suffer from the early ZDoom WAD syndrome, but after playing at least a few maps/WADs like this one, I can say that this one is closer to being good rather than bad.           

OFF THE WALL – BEST PARTIAL/TOTAL CONVERSION OF THE YEAR

In this case, we have three competitors (I’m not counting the RTC-3057 demo because, as I said in my review of this map, it’s a demo, and I would rather compare it with other WADs when it’s in its full potential for the lack of better words), all requiring ZDoom to be played properly and, of course, using the source port’s features to enhance themselves, for better or worse.

The second installment of the MassMouth series might have its moments where it looks impressive and/or has insane moments, but this WAD is the one that suffers the most from ZDoom’s unnecessary features. Not to mention some of the jokes falling flat on their faces even by 2003 standards. At least the voice acting doesn’t make it a complete chore to play through (even if I think Nimrod had better voice acting).

Void on the other head feels far less jarring and it’s some of the best ZDoom maps/WADs I’ve played (which is funny considering that this map and MassMouth 2 were made by the same person). Even the cutscenes didn’t feel as jarring and progress stagnating as MassMouth in some moments.

But let me tell you something folks. No matter how good Void is, the Off the Wall award will still go to Doom Raider: Crypt of the Vile. It doesn’t waste time on stuff like dialogue, or cutscenes. It uses ZDoom to enhance itself to go further into the fun zone, and even though one of its locations is now scuffed due to the later version of ZDoom and GZDoom, it is still a really fun map to play. It has my full recommendation.

OTHER AWARDS

And now it’s time for other WADs that earned their respective awards by default:

Pug-of-Pink award (2-7 maps) goes to The Brotherhood of Ruin. A treat for fans of ancient architecture, and even if you don’t care for these, you will probably still have fun while playing this WAD.

Golden Spider award (episode replacement/8-9 maps) goes to Phobos: Anomaly Reborn. Another banger made by Christopher Lutz, that not only looks great but is also fun to play and has at least one unique thing per map. Also, it makes Spider Masterminds shoot plasma. This is one major upgrade from the Classic Doom games.

And the Full Deck of Diamonds award (30-32 maps) goes to Scythe. A small, but creative MegaWAD when it comes to difficulty, splitting itself into three episodes, where you can start with whichever you want, each being harder than the last. Run From It can screw itself though.

CONCLUSION

And that’s all for today. And congratulations to the winners of the 2003 edition of Revenant Awards.

Now you might be thinking that now it’s finally time to take two weeks' worth of a break before starting making a review for Doom 64. But the truth is, Phobos: AR still has four maps known as SubP:AR. It will be funny to take a look at these. It is also a perfect excuse for another day of break to have more time to play Official Classic Doom Addons.

See you next time folks.

Bye!

[mammonsbby]

A Crushing Victory

This is the third part of my “when he knew he loved you” series.  

Lucifer | Mammon | Levi | Satan | Asmo | Beel | Belphie Diavolo | Barbatos | Solomon | Simeon | Luke

✨My Masterlist✨

Warnings: Cursing Pairing: Leviathan x GN!MC Words: 1201

“Damn it!” Levi curses. He’s been stuck at the same part of his new game for over an hour. He’s lost track of how many times he’s tried it. He takes a deep breath before trying again, only to die within a few seconds. He groans and drops his controller on the floor, resisting the urge to stand on the desk and scream at the top of his lungs.

If it weren’t for Lucifer’s threat to confiscate his gaming computer, he probably would. He takes his headphones off and slams them on the desk, a way to release some frustration. Then he realizes that they’d done nothing wrong and that breaking them will not help.

He sighs when he realizes he’s feeling empathy for a pair of headphones. Then a gentle rap at the door startles him.

“Password,” he says, knowing that it’s you. You had told him you’d be by after you finished your study session with Satan.

“Let me in, Levi,” you reply. He rolls his eyes. Why does he bother coming up with passwords if you won’t use them? Stupid normie.

Nevertheless, he opens the door before returning to his chair. As you go to join him, you nearly step on his controller.

“Oops, I almost killed this,” you say as you hold it out to him.

“Might as well,” Leviathan grumbles. He takes it and you sit down.

“So… you wanna play DevilKart?” you ask, already grabbing your controller from the desk.

He gestures to the screen, “actually, I’m kinda in the middle of something right now.”

“Oh.” Levi notices the disappointment in your tone and starts to change his mind. “I don’t mind watching till you beat it.”

“Cool.” He says, selecting ‘retry.’

“Is that Azeroth? I’ve heard he’s the worst boss in the game,” you ask, just before the enemy strikes down Levi’s character.

He huffs, “yep.”

“Try again,” you say. He does. In fact, he makes dozens and dozens of attempts. Levi doesn’t notice it getting late. He can only focus on this stupid fucking boss with his stupid fucking rejuvenation powers. How is he supposed to beat someone that gets his full health restored every time he lands an attack on Levi’s character?

It’s not fair!

You try to help, both with encouragement and advice. You even try it yourself a few times. But it’s beyond annoying and you simply don’t have the patience. While Levi is the type to try over and over until it’s done, you’re content with losing three times.

You’ve got the cutscene memorized, it’s annoying as hell. You never want to hear the word ‘vanquished’ ever again. Not that it comes up a lot in real life, but still.

You’re getting pretty tired, but you said you’d watch. So… you sit there, waiting desperately for Azeroth to meet his end. You start to yawn, covering your mouth with your hand. The screen flashes. “VANQUISHED,” announces the game. You grit your teeth, that fucking word. Levi groans.

“Maybe you could put it down for a bit and try again later? Or we could look up a walkthrough?” you suggest, yawning again.

“Mmhmm,” he hums. You can tell he’s in hyperfocus mode. You grab a plushie off the shelf and start to fiddle with its clothing. Straightening out its collar and fluffing up the skirt. Eventually, you hold it in your lap like a teddy bear and sink back into your chair.

Your eyes start to close against your will, but Levi doesn’t notice. Within minutes, you’re sound asleep. The stream of constant curses and the sound effects from the game aren’t loud enough to wake you.

Finally, finally, he pulls it off. His character stands triumphantly over the foe and Levi leaps out of his chair and cheers.

“MC! MC, did you see that? It was amazing! I’m so glad I recorded this, I’m gonna post it on—” he pauses for a second when he realizes you aren’t cheering. Then his brows scrunch as he takes in your sleeping form, “MC?”

He rubs at his tired eyes before glancing at the clock, 3:21. Holy fuck. How long had he been working at this? Over… four hours. You’d been keeping him company since midnight.

When had you fallen asleep? He can’t recall. He starts to poke you awake, so you can sing his praises, as you always do when he does something awesome. But, before his finger touches your arm, his gaze falls on your sleeping face.

A blush creeps across his cheeks. Stupid kawaii human, drooling on one of his limited edition plushies. He grimaces, but decides he doesn’t mind too much. It’s not one of his favorites anyway.

Finished with the game for now, he turns it off. Then stands there for a few moments, unsure whether he should wake you. As he’s trying to decide, you move in your sleep, leaning a bit too far back. His eyes widen as your chair starts to topple over.

Before it can dump you to the floor, he grabs it by the top of the backrest, pulling it forward. Once it’s steady, he realizes you’re now awake. And staring up at him, confused.

“Y- your chair started to fall so I caught it,” he blurts out.

“Oh thanks,” you start, a blush on your face. He quickly backs away.

“I… I beat Azeroth,” Levi says, changing the subject.

“Really? That’s awesome! Good job!”

“Yeah, uh, you wanna see how I did it?” he asks.

“Hell yeah!” you answer excitedly. But when he turns to find the recording, you take the opportunity to yawn. After you see his recorded victory twice, you start to share your thoughts, “it was really smart of you to use those two moves together! And the poison attack while he was restoring his health! I didn’t think of that!”

He beams at your praise. And you start to stand, legs wobbly from sitting so long. You place Ruri-chan back on the shelf carefully and turn towards him.

“I’m gonna head to bed now, before I break my neck falling out of the chair.” You laugh.

He nods, “see you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” you start, then you narrow your eyes, “but we’re playing DevilKart.”

“I promise. I’m… sorry I got so caught up in that,” Levi apologizes.

You smile. “It’s okay. I think it’s sweet how focused you get,” you say, patting his arm. “Goodnight.”

And with that, you exit, leaving him alone in the dark, clutching the arm you’d just touched.The blush on his face is brighter than the light from the monitor behind him.

“Sweet?” he says aloud. You think he’s sweet? This is like that one manga he read, ‘I kept my friend up all night playing video games and they confessed their love for me.’

He flops back in his chair, staring at your empty one. Is that actually how you felt about him? His arm is still tingly. Holy shit, how does he feel about you?

(The next evening, he keeps his promise. And because he can’t focus, you win every single race. Which annoys him, but when you smile, he feels his face heat and subconsciously touches his arm.)

–

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<3 Aerie

[perlukafarinn]

finally watched avengers: endgame and i have thoughts. nothing i’m about to say is new but i just need to get this out so i can stop thinking about this movie

this movie is so ugly to look at. so much of it looks like a video game cutscene; you can feel the weightlessness of the cgi and it makes you feel less invested in the action. 

the action is also poorly staged. i’m no expert by any means but a lot of it was confusing and difficult to watch, not helped by the screen being so damn dark. the lotr trilogy pulled these epic battles off much better 20 years ago, there’s no excuse.

the characters are massacred all around. since the characters are the only thing that ever drew me to the mcu to start with, this is a problem.

even tony, who is treated with a lot of (imo) unearned reverence, still gets screwed by poor character continuity. he’s had to learn the same lesson about how being a hero requires selflessness/sacrifice in like three separate movies now. it doesn’t help that this is rdj’s worst performance in any of these films so far, you can really tell he’s looking towards the exit

i can’t think about steve’s ending without getting pissed off. i think this might be the worst way they could have possibly ended his story? and they sloppily try to justify it by completely rewriting his character trajectory in this movie. just bad decisions all around

nat’s death was stupid and they should feel bad. clint was so very much the obvious choice to sacrifice himself for the soul stone, if we even had to have that stupid plot point. even if they wanted to do the bait and switch ‘oh you think one of them’s gonna die but it’s actually the other one’, you could have had nat arguing more passionately that she’s doing this so clint can reunite with his family and then have clint beat her to the jump with a whole ‘redemption through sacrifice’ moment (because he needed to be redeemed after the first half of that movie and he isn’t really).

the stupidity of nat’s death is even more obvious when you show the characters talking about her after and it’s just a room full of men. really drives home why she was considered the most expendable avenger

thor’s story i feel like could have worked if it didn’t rely so much on fat jokes. but i still think the trajectory they took in infinity war, effectively erasing all the good work ragnarok did, was stupid in the first place. 

the time travel plot felt like an excuse for cheap sentimentality and fan service. when they had like three characters meet dead loved ones in quick succession i wanted to laugh. and they literally just reshow some well known shots from older movies, no new footage needed.

all of the mcu women gathering on the battlefield felt like a cheap ploy for some unearned praise. you know, since they’re so progressive for including so many badass female characters in their movies when most of them haven’t been developed beyond being side characters in men’s stories.

the way ‘five years later’ faded in one word at a time pissed me off so much i groaned out loud. you could feel the decision making process behind it, the gasps they were hoping to elicit from the audience. you know when scorcese said these movies aren’t cinema, they’re theme park attractions? he might have been talking about this exact moment (i don’t agree with that take but endgame was doing its best to convince me otherwise)

you know, the reason it took me three years to watch this movie is that i was so burnt out on the mcu after infinity war that i didn’t feel like watching another marvel movie. so i didn’t, until now. and i probably never would have gotten around to endgame if not for my mission to watch every movie from ‘1001 movies you must see before you die’. now that i have watched it? possibly the second worst time i’ve had watching a movie from that list (nothing is topping saló).