#just in a very literal narrative sense. and thats fine. its fun. maybe it goes harder in the last half I dont recall

[tillman]

The writing in part 1 of jojos specifically really gets to me because dio is such a fascinating villain for a story with such heavy themes of nature vs nurture and humanity and what not but also they do the “you disagree with this mans morals. He puts dogs into furnaces” bit and constantly go “he was born evil hes the devil its in his Blood” its so fucking funny. I dont know im genuinely obsessed with how poorly it fumbles its very few themes. And I know thats not the point. But its just a hysterical reading to me.

[sibyl-of-space]

Finished a binge re-play of Ocarina of Time (3D) for the first time in a very, very long time. Long-winded thoughts below.

Disclaimer: I played the original n64 version (red blood Ganondorf and all) ad NAUSEUM as a kid. It was by far in my top 3 most-played video games, and if you all know me you know that I don’t play a lot of video games, I play the same few over and over and over and become obsessed with them. As such, OoT is not new to me. I also played the 3D version once before, but it was over the course of several years when I was in college and that was a no-lens-of-truth run for the heck of it. I have not touched either since though, so this is the freshest eyes I’ve had on the game since I was probably about 6-7 years old seeing it for the first time. Do keep in mind though that I already knew virtually all the easter eggs and secrets and story and progression and had a vague recollection of the vast majority of dungeon concepts/puzzles before going in, because this game was my entire world for many formative years.

This game has really excellent dungeons. I ranked them below because I was inspired by my friend ML’s ranking (in fact a desire to rank them myself is what caused me to binge replay this in the first place), but honestly I found all of them engaging. My least favorite was ice cavern but even ice cavern has a really cool atmosphere and an interesting concept, it’s just a bit tedious and bottle management gameplay is not particularly fun to me.

1. Spirit Temple - unlike Shadow which uses invisible walls as a mechanic to trick you, Spirit subverts every single mechanic and puzzle you've encountered so far to really throw you. It's extremely clever. The ambience and overall design is also just excellent.

2. Forest Temple - gameplay wise it is fine but as the first adult temple it REALLY sets the scale and tone for the latter portion of your adventure; the vibe in this temple is just so fucking cool. The sacred forest meadow honestly does come off as sacred, ancient, and haunted but in an ethereal way as opposed to a spooky way. Ooh, I love it.

3. Ganon's Tower - the concept is excellent and the execution is solid, the medallion portion is interesting but the gauntlet up to Ganondorf with increasingly loud organ music and hallways filled with bats and just cool fights and great atmosphere makes this one of the sickest final dungeons I can think of. I was starting to be like "eh maybe the medallion rooms are a bit underwhelming" and then I got hit with the fakeout room in Light that just won me over with how cheeky it was. All the medallion rooms felt a bit like Spirit temple with how they played with expectations, which (ironically?) made the spirit portion actually the least good.

4. Gerudo Fortress - I'm counting mini dungeons and the whole espionage thing is just SO much fun. Break into a thieves’ hideout, jump across rooftops and shoot people with your bow to sneak past them?? WHAT IS NOT TO LOVE?????

5. Water Temple - okay I gotta say this replay really sold me on water temple. It's a cool concept and a fantastic atmosphere, and 3DS quality of life changes (boot swap ease of access + very clearly visually marked water level change rooms) made me actually thoroughly enjoy playing it. Also Dark Link is rightfully hailed as one of the coolest, if not the coolest, miniboss(es) in the game, so extra points there.

6. Bottom of the Well - Shadow's invisible wall mechanic is much more interesting when you can't see through them and everything is a potential trap. Falling down to the basement does get frustrating but that room where you light torches to open coffins and a FLOATING GIBDO EMERGES makes up for it, holy crap. Shadow Temple is underwhelming because Bottom of the Well already did what it tries to do but better.

7. Dodongo's Cavern - hey man I like blowing up dinosaurs this dungeon is just solid 0 complaints

8. Fire Temple - Fire Temple is also solid I just a) am so used to the original music that this version feels empty and lacking atmosphere by comparison, and b) find the above temples cooler. Shout out to dragon whack-a-mole boss fight though.

9. Shadow Temple - this suffers from being the only temple I really had completely memorized (I think my weenie friends* must have made me beat it for them as kids) so playing it this time was really just going through the motions; it didn’t get the chance to win me over because I remembered all of it and nothing particularly stuck out to me as being super clever. The boat ride, however, is sick as hell.

(*disclaimer: I was also a weenie. Shadow Temple scared the absolute pants off of me. But I clearly played it enough times that the entire thing was etched into my memory regardless, so.)

10. Deku Tree - does its job as tutorial dungeon, nice atmosphere, thats about all there is to say.

11. Jabu-Jabu's Belly - redeeming feature is using Ruto as a projectile. Throwing her at the ceiling switches will never not be hilarious. Honestly not a bad dungeon, merely gross and I like the other ones better.

12. Ice Cavern - I used to dread Ice Cavern; this time around I just found it tedious. The atmosphere is successful - it really feels cold and chilling - but not appealing enough to make up for it being dull and kind of annoying. Has the potential to be really cool if the blue fire were used in a more interesting way than “fill your bottles and dump them elsewhere.”

BUT, I feel it would be a complete disservice to my younger self and my younger self’s reasons for playing this game so much, if I focus completely on dungeons and disproportionately on gameplay in a review. Because while gameplay is a huge reason I kept going back to it (hard to want to go back to a game if it isn't fun to play), that’s not what made me love it so much, and a replay has given me fresher eyes to enjoy everything else it has to offer.

Ocarina of Time creates a world and a story that I deeply cared about, and revisiting as an adult, I find if anything I have more take-aways than I did previously. I have always really enjoyed coming-of-age narratives when done well, and this is a coming-of-age narrative done REMARKABLY well. You see dumb bratty kids doing dumb bratty kid things and then see the mature people they’ve grown into 7 years later; the game does not make the mistake of projecting a personality onto a voiceless protagonist, but it does imply a narrative arc for him (and you) regardless just through how strong and cool and awesome you get by the end and all the rad shit you’ve accomplished over the course of the game. It manages to very, very successfully make its story about other characters who DO have personalities, but also make you as the blank slate mc cool guy hero very much have a part in that story that feels very earned and satisfying.

Link doesn’t have a personality. You can project whatever the hell you want onto him or nothing at all. Ocarina of Time makes that *work*, because it doesn’t try to frame him as either ~adult in a child’s body~ or ~child in adult’s body~, it just lets you experience the literal growth from a kid who has to jump to reach ledges and has to thwack things twice with a slingshot and tiny sword, to an adult who can LAUNCH MASSIVE PILLARS INTO THE AIR and one-shot previously difficult enemies, and interpret that however you will. I think the most powerful example of this is going back in time again after doing several adult temples, and entering the bottom of the well, where you see enemies you’ve previously only encountered as an adult, and feel confident that you can tackle them as a child, too.

I really love these kinds of narratives. Where the growth of the main character is purely in the sense of you as the player becoming more adept and stronger, and the context of the story makes that mean something, but the game doesn’t try and pretend the avatar itself has a 3-dimensional personality.

I also think the balance between narrative and gameplay is excellent once it hits its groove. The beginning is very hand-holdy (Navi taught me how to open a door after I had already opened a door elsewhere because she’s scripted to do it at a specific door even though you can technically get to a later one first. lol), and I very firmly believe that with Saria’s Song as a device that lets you seek advice when you want to, it is completely unnecessary to have Navi yell at you what she thinks you should be doing. That said, the game doesn’t stop you from doing whatever the hell you want, and the number and depth of dungeons makes exploring and killing stuff by FAR the meat of the game, over the story. There is a suggested dungeon order, but you have some freedom if you’d rather do them a bit out of order, and there is a LOT of fun side stuff you can do and get rewarded for.

Most of that side stuff is an excellent way to highlight the humor in this game. If you beat Malon’s horse race record she mails a literal fucking cow to your house. Your house in Kokiri Forest. You just show up and there is a fucking cow in your house. That is the funniest thing that has ever happened in a game in the history of forever, sorry. You can race the running man, and all of the other sidequests in the game make you think there is a beatable goal you’ll be rewarded for, and the fucker just goes “lol good try but I beat you by one second. :)” You can blow up the Gossip Stones and they turn into rocketships and launch into space. After you beat the game, and have a really poignant moment with Princess Zelda where she sends you back in time, there is a completely out of nowhere dance party featuring the entire cast in celebration. The game does not try to explain this. It just gives you a dance party, and after such a bittersweet finale and such a fun and engaging game, a no-context dance party is exactly what it needs. A line o Gerudo doing the can-can? Thank you, yes please.

There is SO much that this game does not feel any need to justify in-game, that it simply puts in there because it is fun or cool or both, and I appreciate that so much. There are easter eggs out the butt (still haven’t bothered catching the Hylian Loach and I have still NEVER found the sinking lure despite following every guide in existence). Most of the temples imply some sort of greater history that is not even the slightest bit touched on. It has a very cohesive “core” game that has a start-to-finish suggested progression and a matching narrative, and it has absolute mountains of random shit outside of that it in no way pretends to justify. It explains just enough to give it ground to stand on, but no more, leaving you with more questions than answers. That ambiguity drove me nuts as a kid, but now, I think it’s also why I kept coming back. I wanted answers the game wouldn’t give me so I felt compelled to try and find them myself.

Ocarina of Time’s ending is incredible in ways I am just now able to appreciate. First of all, Zelda is like “I’m gonna send you back in time now” and pulls up the Ocarina and instead of playing the Song of Time which everything in the game implies she should, she plays Zelda’s Lullaby and hesitates just enough on the last note as you are sent back in the past - oof, that’s a good moment. The entire game you’re told about how the Kokiri can’t survive outside of the forest and suddenly they’re at Lon Lon Ranch having a dance party. You walk away from the Master Sword and seal it back in the temple, but nonsensically are then able to meet Zelda in her garden as if nothing had happened, meaning she sent you back so far it erased not just the adult timeline but also everything you accomplished as a child too? So many questions, but the fact that it does not even bother to answer them and just leaves you with such an open-ended image of you and Zelda as kids, calling back to that very early moment after the first dungeon in the game, and you can interpret for yourself what exactly that means.

I’m getting rambly (HAHA as if I’m ever not) so I should wrap this up shortly. Ocarina of Time’s ending is why I am so vehemently opposed to the concept of a ~Zelda Timeline~. The ending is nonsensical if you try to apply concrete logic to it. This game proposes ideas and makes me feel a certain way about them and the ending succeeds in providing just enough closure to make me satisfied and just enough open-ness that makes me want to keep coming back to it to experience it again. It’s not an open-and-shut piece of history of a fake world, it’s a really remarkable journey thats ambiguity is what allows it to feel so very magical.

Ooh boy I can’t wait to replay MM again, but that is a game I’ve never stopped playing, so it’ll be anything but fresh. It hits different right after completing OoT, though. The only way to follow up on a story like Ocarina of Time is to be even MORE batshit, ambiguous, and loose with your definition of how time works.

[shakespesre]

things i did not like about beauty and the beast (2017)

oh man am i in the minority in this situation (also this list is comically long) spoilers, obviously

honestly

most of it

during the opening sequence with the enchantress as she was narrating the prince’s actions didn’t match with what she was saying (like he didn’t dismiss her again or beg forgiveness even though the enchantress is saying he did) details like that irk me

also the whole “guys who wear makeup are somehow morally destitute” trope needs to die

the staging of belle made the town feel like its a half an acre big which made for some awful blocking

it just looked really repetitive in terms of staging like there was nowhere to go because the set wasn’t big enough

belle talking to the minister about the books was short and dispassionate

emma watson can’t sing to save her life

the little robot following her around fixing her voice the entire movie should be paid good money

ok i get that making belle the inventor is supposed to be “empowering” but it goes nowhere??

the hill she runs up during the belle reprise is cgi af and it doesn’t feel right??

honestly you couldn’t have found an actual hill

also the fact that maurice being captured was happening concurrently w the number and the sky being all dark made the wonder and longing of it all weaker

i know it’s in the original fairy tale but honestly why did they bring back the rose stealing as the inciting incident for the beast to punish maurice

it makes very little sense

especially given that maurice took A Rose from what he assumed was an abandoned castle

how did maurice get back to the village? like we see at the end that belle has the horse

BIG ONE RIGHT HERE

why did lumiere and cogsworth show belle to her room instead of the beast???

why would you cut the first interactions between your main characters that actually establishes a connection between them?!!?

the west wing loses some of its gravitas bc of this too

and like????? the beast never even considered that belle would be the one to break the spell?????? WHY NOT????? DUDE???????? YOU MORON even the original beast considered that!!! he’s actually lampshading you all the way back from 1991

but the “this way to the east wing. or as i like to call it the Only Wing!” line was funny i laughed at that

audra mcdonald deserved more to do and to sing

mrs potts looked creepy As Fuck

idk the “come down to dinner” scene was played kind of seriously this time and i get why but i think cutting to inside the room changes the dynamic a bit like in the original you never even see belle and she holds all the power but this is a nitpick

why did they cut to black after be our guest??? did the editor lose a bet or something??

gaston was a fun number but the cuts were absolutely nonsensical

like

you could barely get a feel for the space it took up

they don’t cut to any kind of demonstration of gaston using “antlers in all of his DECoratING” which kind of tells you all you need to know about how bad this movie was at visual storytelling

so many composers and lyricists write music to visuals and there aren’t sufficient visuals to bolster the gaston number

and it felt kind of overcrowded? maybe that one’s just me

the plot just seriously drags

the fact that we spent so much time with kevin kline and gaston out “searching” for belle kind of slowed the movie down a lot

as did the whole “attempted murder” thing

so gaston blows up and tells maurice he’s only helping look for belle bc he wants to marry her

and maurice is like “my daughter is never gonna marry someone like you you’re an asshole!!”

and then gaston punches him in the face and leaves him to die in the woods tied to a tree

and then this miserly old beggar lady comes and saves him and has him accuse gaston of attempted murder

the entire thing is completely unnecessary

back to the enchanted castle

was it just me or did belle not even get that close to the rose? like the animated belle took the case off and was literally about to touch the actual plant and in this one she like brushed the table with her hand

the wolf scene was fine

they lifted the dialogue from the patch up scene directly from the 1991 film except without any of the energy or emotion

also the prince’s backstory is like?? really thin???

the fact that it was literally just inserted into the plot so he and belle could have a “dead moms” connection is so flimsy

they take this random subplot and roll with it instead of actually taking more time to develop belle and the beast as romantic interests

ANOTHER PROBLEM

ok so like the beast was somehow really hurt by the wolf attack right?

so he kind of drifts in and out of sleep for a while and one time he wakes up and belle is reading to him

AND THEN OHHHH AND THEN

HE MANSPLAINS ROMEO AND JULIET TO HER

AND HE GIVES HER THE LIBRARY BECAUSE HE THINKS THAT ANYTHING IN THERE IS BETTER THAN WHAT SHE LIKES

COME ON

WHAT THE FUCK

THATS SO CONDESCENDING

WAY TO UNDERMINE A SWEET MOMENT THAT SHOWS EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN YOUR TWO ROMANTIC LEADS

the new song days in the sun is pretty but combining the servants desires with belle’s make for some conflicting messages

they actually sing something there?

like move their mouths sing

this is another nitpick but like i always thought something there was their internal monologue and it feels weird to see them actually sing them idk

THE BOOK

OOOOOHHHHH THE BOOK

belle and the beast are talking and he’s like “LETS RUN AWAY TOGETHER!!!”

what

ok movie i’ll bite where are we running away to

so the enchantress for some damn reason decides to give the beast a magic book that can take him anywhere he wishes to go

why??? who knows????? certainly not the movie!!!

and he’s like to belle “think of where ever you want to go and we’ll go there just 4 u!!!!!” despite the fact that he literally just said that the world wouldn’t accept him as a beast

so they go to this little house in a Goddamn windmill on the outskirts of bohemian paris

it’s cramped and dark and drenched in a blue filter so you can’t actually see anything

and it’s this useless detour about how belle’s mom died

and it connects to nothing it’s not a plot twist or some big reveal it’s just that she died of the plague

there wasn’t even any emotional backing to it because belle didn’t know anything about her mother because maurice never told her

like if belle had thought maurice just walked out on her mother and resented him for it this twist would have some emotional significance

but that’s not the case

the ballroom scene looks really awkward

like the beast looks especially computer generated here and that doesn’t help the fact that emma watson expresses almost nothing during the entire dance

the whole “you must go to him” scene goes way too fucking fast and there’s no time for the emotions of that scene to actually breathe and release

she rides off in the (ugly) yellow dress which is another nitpick but looks weird

WHY IS SHE IN SUCH A RUSH YOU COULD JUST USE THE BOOK

evermore grinds the momentum of the narrative to a fucking halt

and i swear to god if this wins an oscar for best song while how far i’ll go lost i will dissolve the entire academy of motion picture arts and sciences myself

just love yourself and listen to if i can’t love her it’s honestly a much better song

the part where gaston is hyping up the crowd to go kill the beast progresses in a similar way to the “you must go to him” scene

gaston decides that the beast is a threat to them before he realizes belle has feelings for him which again undercuts the original emotion of the scene

the gaston vs the beast fight feels a whole lot less personal

like

in such a way that gaston is a good 40 feet from belle and the beast when he shoots him

there is no intimacy no emotion in how gaston mortally wounds the beast because he’s literally a Chasm away from them

the beast yelling "I AM NOT A BEAST" to gaston was the hammiest thing in the movie

they just really hate subtext don't they

AND ANOTHER THING

HOOOOOHHH BOY

the enchantress is the old lady who helped maurice when he was left to die in the woods

and yes she’s still dicking around in the forest for???? some reason?????

the beast dies

straight up dies

and the servants have this tragic goodbye sequence where they all turn inanimate it’s the most emotional scene in the film

belle’s love didn’t save them

she doesn’t say “i love you” and the last petal of the rose falls and they all either die/become inanimate

THE ENCHANTRESS JUST COMES IN AND FIXES EVERYTHING?????

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT DOES?

THAT MAKES THE ROSE TIMELINE COMPLETELY SUPERFLUOUS

THE ENCHANTRESS HAS BEEN IN!! THE!! VILLAGE!! THE ENTIRETY OF THE CURSE

SHE COULD CHANGE HIM BACK WHENEVER SHE WANTED

in the original there was this finality to it and this hopelessness of being cursed by magic that isn’t understandable but permanent and that there is only One Way To Break It

the fact that the enchantress is the one to break the spell and not The Power Of Love undercuts the entire intended parable of the original fairy tale, animated movie, and WHAT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE WAS SAYING

also the fact that she’s there makes the entire transformation less intimate???

like there’s this third old woman creeping up in the background watching them when belle and the beast are supposed to be at the height of their emotional connection

also the transformation itself was kind of hard to follow visually like i don’t even think there was a clear shot of his face

the growl wasn’t hot

i didn’t even notice it when i saw it in the theatre

you all need to get laid

why didn’t they just let audra fucking mcdonald sing the final end version of beauty and the beast

also the actual timeline the movie took place over was strange?

someone can clarify this with me if they want i’m genuinely curious

the prince when he’s cursed is played by dan stevens so like it couldn’t have been more than? five years that he was a beast?

and then when the plot with belle starts, the opening number happens, maurice leaving, belle rejecting gaston, the belle reprise, maurice’s wolf chase scene, the prisoner switch, and the gaston number all seem to take place within a 48 hour timespan

^^^ this is all pretty much the same for the animated movie there’s no problem with that

be our guest and all new added numbers (along with the come down to dinner scene and belle’s wolf chase scene) all happen sometime around here too

but my issue is at the end of gaston where maurice asks if someone would help him look for belle

generously, the time spent searching for her is a day

then maurice is left to die in the woods and is rescued by agatha

he couldn’t have been out there more than two days without dying of dehydration

then, at most, five days from the opening belle sequence, maurice accuses gaston of murder and is about to be locked in an insane asylum when belle rides back to save him

if you’re following correctly, this gave belle and the beast a maximum of four and a half days to fall in love with one another

what?????

i know in the original there’s the whole issue of maurice out in the woods searching for belle but that was addressed by the directors and producers as an oversight and they meant to show that belle was in the castle for at least autumn through winter

so the remake’s timeline is completely unrealistic and goddamnit movie

like at VERY MOST the main plot takes place over six days

TL;DR

most of my issues were story problems, they changed fundamentally so little from the original animated movie and what they did change dragged the plot along or straight up undercut what the narrative was actually trying to impart

the rest of the bullets were either self-described nitpick and trying to work out the timeline

to be clear it’s not wrong for you to like the movie go see it again another three times

this list is for humor

and i didn’t comment at all on le fou for one thing because i was neutral on him but also because it’s not my place to say whether this is good rep or not

[mobianstrip]

sonic forces me to analyze the game

this is by no means a full, in depth review of sonic forces. however, since im working on a Forces au i think its only fitting to talk about my personal gripes with the game. just to be clear, i dont hate sonic forces by any means! there are some really neat concepts about it that i enjoy, which ill include my thoughts on as well! though with that said, theres a lot about it that could have been dealt with better. this post is gonna be a bit long and messy, sorry!

now i cant speak for what the gameplay controls itself are like since i havent actually played it with my own hands, so my primary focus will be the story and general format of the game. everything under the cut!

ill start by saying that in hindsight, i think the general premise of the game is actually really neat (had the war framing of the plot not been so overly glorified and bland. more on that below). eggman taking over most of the world is very reminiscent to the initial circumstance of mobius in the early archie sonic publication. it seems especially reflective of the comic in the fact that sonic forces takes place on a planet setting more akin to that of Mobius than that of Sonic’s World/Earth, the difference being the lack of human beings aside from Eggman. while this does somewhat bother me for the fact that it paints an inconsistency with the setting, im also all for the planet being strictly Mobians + Eggman again tbh. the concept of sonic being on earth populated by humans, complete with a mock version of the united states, never really settled well with me. it always felt like just a means to make sonic more relatable, which is true, but not done because it made anything more interesting. a problem that then arises is that the origins of shadow and silver/blaze would be radically different or at least would need some retcon alterations to make sense...but thats a topic for another day

overall, looking past the inconsistency with the setting and its implications, i enjoy how the premise of the game feels like going back to the basics. but even the premise still has its problems...which is never a good sign, and this point practically sealed forces’s fate of inconsistency: the theme of war and how it frames the story is so, so poorly written

starting with whats presented at the beginning of the game, sonic is captured by eggman as a prisoner. if the writing had just left it at that, fine. however, the exposition goes on to say that sonic has been there for six months being tortured...and that tails has completely lost it. again id be fine with this - the theme of war is a darker one so these two events would make sense in this circumstance. however, that tension is just totally lost in a matter of a few episodes. you rescue sonic who is just as cheery and jokey as ever, somehow able to fight a boss despite being supposedly locked away and tortured for six months

of course i understand that its not like they could give sonic ptsd and make him look tortured and weak and so on - but why even mention the torture thing at all? the same problem is apparent with the first cutscene with tails. tails is hardly given enough time to seem like he has "lost it". i will say though that tails WAS given a bit more of an emotional response to work with than sonic overall. particularly when tails is about to be attacked by chaos, and he ducks his head in fear and calls for sonic to help him even though sonic isnt there - i actually enjoyed this small segment bc it does reflect some of what was said about how he reacted to sonics capture (aside from also being across the planet...for seemingly no reason except bc he "lost it" and to get him away from the main group so that classic sonic can appear)

frankly speaking from these two points alone, the games tone just feels kind of confused. its obvious the writers wanted some parts of the darker theme of war...and its also obvious that going all out wasnt gonna be an option bc of the nature of sonic as a character and franchise being about more lighthearted, easier to relate to stories about sonics heroism. which im fine with that being the case; sonic is a hero and more importantly a mascot that profits off of kids being able to relate and look up to. my issue is simply that the premise of this game makes consistent writing kind of doomed from the start if the writers are trying to appeal to both the kids AND older fans. they cant go to the lengths necessary to adequately build the narrative. cant go too dark, cant go too lighthearted, and not finding a balance between to two gives you a confused and bland story 

on that note,  i personally find the theme of war to be...uncomfortably glorified and unchecked (adding to the tone confusion and blandness). sonic forces is named so because...yknow. armed forces. armies. the whole point of the game is that theres a war going on and youre on the good guy side. i mean its not as if youre fighting against other living creatures, just infinite and eggmans robots, but still. i think what put me off the most is the first comic with the soldier cat. after they save the day, the last lines are "I'll do better. I'll be better. I'll become a real soldier and a real hero." now slap that as the tagline to a united states army corps commercial and suddenly its really...sour tasting

war is just one of those subjects that i think needs to be handled with a bit more care. i mean think about it: the primary gimmick of forces is that you get to make your own character, to be the sonic version of yourself in this world. the plot of the game is that theres a war, and your character joins the resistance to defeat eggman. this game is pretty blatantly glorifying the idea that joining in on a war can make you a REAL soldier, a REAL hero. to some kids, that might sound pretty cool. but theres no nuance to it whatsoever, nothing thought provoking on the subject. no one steps back to be like ‘its good to do good things but wars are tough and not fun, and being a hero isnt everything’. none-a that

now do i think a sonic game could get it into a childs head that they should join the army for real? no, not necessarily. i think its possible, but i think that would also be due to a larger issue of military glorification present in modern culture in general (especially in america). mostly i just find the implications at play with glorifying the theme of war in conjunction to the avatar gimmick to be in poor taste and also entirely avoidable because...

i dont think the war and army framing even had to be a thing. not only is it just so sloppily done in general, with that fact that the supposed soldier forces on the Resistance side are literally never seen on screen except for some dialogue boxes in one episode and the rest of the time only being mentioned through other characters, but i seriously think never saying the words “war” or “army” and not including literal soldiers would have worked just as well and even been the better route. they could have just been like yeah heres eggman taking over the world, heres the resistance fighters that have come together to stop him, they are opposing forces and you play as your avatar to stop eggman - and just leave it at that. it wouldve made the glorification of war less obvious and the handling of the topics at hand appear less confused, appealing to a more lighthearted tone rather than weighing it down with frankly out of place hints to a darker subject of war

finally i wanna talk about the story as it relates to how its told through the game. the plot itself is fairly standard - eggman starts war, captures sonic, takes over planet. you rescue sonic, and together you fight eggman and infinite and ultimately defeat them. thats all good and well even if its cheesy sometimes. the REAL problem is how its executed. a lot of the exposition is given not through cutscenes, but through spoken dialogue with text box subtitles over the episode select screen. and it just feels so...stiff. it doesnt feel like world building, it just feels like being forcefed information with no substance behind it

i get that fully rendered cutscenes throughout can be expensive and time consuming, but shoot id take in-game rendered cut scenes at least. (like in sa, sa2, shadow 2005...) anything that could have provided the world building with a bit more ground to stand on would have been great. sure, there are levels to traverse which look cool...but they dont provide any sense of scale, they dont tell us what the area is like, and more importantly, you never see the other characters who are supposedly on the battlefield "alongside" you in a couple episodes. the storyline from the exposition along sounds like it could be an epic journey - but the way its told with the given game mechanics (i.e.: stage-based gameplay with no open worlds to explore) leaves a lot to be desired

i feel like the stuff explained in the comics should have just been cutscenes or exposition or something to pad out the game a bit. the comics are so short anyways so why just put it in the game? maybe not the first comic about the rando soldier saving the day or w/e...but the comic with silver and knuckles fighting chaos? the comic about infinites origins? all of that could have easily been included. at LEAST the comic with shadow was part of the DLC...but even thats just so gimmicky. they provide important background to the main plot of this game so i really dont understand why it was sidelined to comics and not just included from the beginning

the tension that the exposition already fails to build up is brought down even worse when coupled with the confusing timing of the stage complete screens, where you get your completion rank and see what new character creation items you unlocked. listen, i know immediate gratification for completing the level is important and all...but i swear, having these screens between the end of a boss fight and the cutscene showing what happens to them after being defeated seriously impairs the flow of the game. maybe having it there allows for the cutscene to load up in the background to improve efficiency, but personally id prefer seeing a loading screen as the break between a boss fight and the following cutscene after it and THEN the stage complete screen to finish the sequence off. the boss fight end cutscenes arent that long anyways for the most part, so its just nonsensical to have the stage complete screen interrupt the action when theres only a two minute scene left to it

i cant stand how streamlined forces is to the point of the main plot. what happened to games that actually take the time to explain stuff, show us extra bits to the story and how they connect? and even when forces' does explain SOME stuff, its through audio/text only dialogue. nothing visually interesting, just...dialogue. and then its off to the next level. forces' feels very bare bones honestly. the story is supposed to feel big and epic but it just wasnt given enough to bring that feeling into fruition. this is probably the only thing that saves forces’ from the war glorification issue because the game simply fails so miserably at telling a compelling story due to poor writing and poor formatting that the war stuff gets lost in the mix - and thats just sad

all of this brings me to my conclusion. fuck i wish sonic forces was a better written and executed game, because i do think it could have been so cool. i really like infinite as a villain, in both his design and personality. yeah hes kind of a whiny, edgy bitch - but he had potential. and its really gonna suck if this game killed off all that potential in one fell swoop

(then again, thats why we have fan content and aus :3)