#just something about Cloud being from an end game area with incredibly real threats and being baffled by these city kids

[dark-elf-writes]

Some Midgar Cadet: Yeah I’ve seen some things before joining Shinra! You wouldn’t believe the damage an angry hedgehog pie could do!

Cloud Strife, fresh from Nibelheim where it’s common for kids to take down a fully grown nibel wolf before they’re ten to protect the family chickens: You’re right. I wouldn’t believe.

[the-piece-of-spadille]

Eustass Kid | Sorrow

Pairing: Eustass Kid x female reader

Notes: Mentions of death, and injuries.

Word Count: 2k

Killer was the first to hear the dreadful news, he was making his way down the street to the local bar where he was to meet back up with Kid. He heard a hushed conversation between two gentlemen and at first, he thought it was just another made up rumor. There’s simply no way that the Raven Pirates were dead. Their captain, (Y/n), is apart of the Worst Generation and has proven many times over, that she’s worthy of that title not only to the government but especially to Eustass and his crew.

It wasn’t until one of the men spoke about a fight that involved two Admirals that made the Killer’s blood run cold. He remained hidden and waited for any possible truth in the conversation. The names Aokiji and Kizaru came up a few times and that was enough for Killer to grab both men and drag them to his Captain. He knew, in the pit of his stomach he knew that something happened. If any part of the rumor turns out to be true, his captain is going to want blood and so will the rest of the crew. One simply doesn’t harm Kid’s beloved. 

The Kid Pirates soon found themselves sailing off to a winter island in the New World. Kid and Killer were able to get more information from the two men at the market before Kid destroyed the town in a furious rage. There was suspicion about an informant that tipped off the location of the Raven’s to the Government. A fight had already broken out between Pirates and Marines before the Admirals made it to the island. It was an easy win for the pirates until the Admirals showed. They don’t have the details, but the fight took a gruesome turn and many pirates lost their lives. No report has been made yet by the Government, at least not publicly. Which in turn means no record of who’s alive or dead.

Kid always said that he would be the one to kill them someday. (Y/n), the captain, got under his skin like no other. They both live bold and fearless lives and often they came into contact on the seas as enemies. That was before the incident with the Red Hair Pirates. 

It was (Y/n) who managed to keep Kid alive after losing his arm. She allowed him and his crew to recover on a winter island that the Raven’s use as a second home. It was then the relationship between the two captains began to shift. She would often check on the man, get him anything he needed, and most importantly, told him not to stop chasing after what he wants most.

It became evident that previous and new threats held no real weight to them. They still fought like cats and dogs, but it was different. The crewmates on either side saw what was forming between them and knew it was going to be a long road ahead before either side could truly rest. It turned into a long and agonizing game of who would fall victim to their feelings first. 

Ultimately (Y/n) was the first to fall, she grew tired of all the pent-up emotions and grabbed Kid by his signature coat and pulled him down to her height and kissed him. It stroked Kid’s ever-growing ego that he did not give in first and he paraded around the island as if he found the One Piece for weeks. With the warm memory in thought, he breaths a heavy sigh as he watches the passing sea. “You’re fine… you have to be.”

Starring out at the vast number of graves of the fallen crewmember, (Y/n) stood in the middle of a snowstorm. It’s been a total of three days since the lost of her crew. All but two members perished by the hands of the Admirals. It took two days to make it to their island and another to bury and lay them to rest, but she promised them she’d bring them back home.  “Please Captain (Y/n.) You need to warm up and rest. It won’t do you any good if you freeze to death out there” the voice yelled across the field of snow. Instantly whipping her head around, glaring at the last remaining crewmate.  

The words “freeze to death” played over and over in the captain’s head. That’s exactly what Aokiji did. He froze them to death while Kizaru pinned (Y/n) to the ground and made her watch as the other shattered her crewmates into pieces. Tears roll down her redden checks as she looks over at the graves for the last time tonight and whispers a “goodnight.” 

(Y/n) makes the slow tread back towards the warmth of the building. The injuries and cold catching up to her. “Sorry about the choice of words Captain, you need to rest. You’re heavily injured and you shouldn’t be out in that storm in your condition.” Avisa, the youngest and newest member of the crew being only eighteen, covers her captain with her own coat and holds the door open. Avisa was incredibly lucky to be mostly unharmed after what they went through. “We should probably change your bandages and disinfect them again… has your eyesight changed?”

(Y/n) groans from shifting the coat open and revealing the endless bandages wrapped around her body. “It’s… it’s as good as it’s going to get, I’m afraid. I lost about half the sight in my left eye.” The young girl shifts around, grabbing more bandages and disinfectant before settling in front of the captain and unpeeling the dirty bandages from the wounds earning a whimper of pain.

“Wait, before you start with the disinfecting, I could use a drink.” 

“Sure thing Captain, I’ll go fetch you some water.” Just as the girl began to move a loud boisterous laughter bounces around the walls of the otherwise quiet room. The two women jump from their seated positions at the voice of a man. “She means booze girlie” the voice snickers. (Y/n) pushes the girl behind her and does her best to seem threating but it’s proving to be hard in her state. This nearly makes the man laugh again but he gets a glance at the wounds scattered across her body. 

The outside lighting does little to show who’s at the door and it wasn’t until the man spoke again that (Y/n) recognized who was there. “Take it easy doll” Kid spoke, hand in the air stepping inside. “Kid” her voice wavers. Taking a few steps towards him but stops and clutches her side in pain. His smile falters as he crosses the room to grab her and keep her upright. 

He’s familiar with the layout and takes her to a bed in the closest bedroom. “Sit before you bleed all over the floor.” He walks out the room to motions for the rest of his crew to come inside. Killer follows his captain back into the bedroom to inspect (Y/n’s) wounds. Avisa, with a bottle of opened booze sitting on the table, had already unwrapped her wounds and had proceeded to disinfect her wounds.

There’s deep bruising along her ribs on the right, followed by three holes no doubt left by Kizaru, scatter over her torso. The worse being on her left shoulder. Kid grabs the bottle on the table and takes a generous swing before offering her more. “I did my best to stitch the wounds with what we had, I’m pretty sure her ribs are broken. She was…” the young girl had to stop keep herself from crying. Killer, as gentle as he could muster, touched the swollen and bruised area earning a sharp intake of air followed by a cry of pain. 

“I’d say three are broken and the rest are just bruised. What did you use for stitches? I see a few places that need to be touched up.” The masked man turns away from (Y/n) to talk to Avisa. “Horsehair. There’s a small ranch not too far from here.” He nods in thought, “we’re going to need more.” The pair leave the room to go retrieve more supplies and to fill in the rest of Kid’s crew on her condition.

Kid looks around for something to cover her body and he spots (Y/n’s) coat, or rather what’s left of it. It was a beautiful thick, long coat, jet black in color, and made of raven feathers, now it’s barely recognizable. It’s a lot smaller in length now from being ripped. More feathers decorate the floor than the actual fabric. It also mirrors the holes littered in (Y/n). It was a gift to her from him. “Say something please.” 

Kid looks over with an unreadable expression and shrugs off his coat and walks over. His hand traces over the new scars and wounds that littered across her. He pays extra care to the open wounds before his amber eyes meet hers. He brushes the hair out of her face to get a better look. Half of her left eye is clouded over with a faint scar to go with it. He knows now isn’t the time to get angry, but all he wants to do is tear the bastards heads off for hurting her. He can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like to lose her crew on top of everything. 

He takes a deep breath, something she has told him numerous times to do, and thinks back to what she said to him when he was in a similar situation. “It uh… adds character.” (Y/n) laughs until she feels the pain in her ribs. Kid scowls at her before dropping himself on the bed and his coat on her to cover her up. “Thank you for trying to cheer me up.” He makes a “tsk” sound before telling her to shut up. She grabs his hand and plays with his fingers to calm her nerves. “It was planned.” 

“What?” 

“It was Scratchmen Apoo who told the Admirals where we were headed. Had to be. He was trailing us for a couple days and when the Marines spotted us, they let him go.” A stray tear falls down her cheek before she can wipe it away. “We we’re cornered into an island, so we abandoned ship for the time being and fought. We were fine until those bastards showed. They started to take us down one by one. Kizaru trapped me underneath him and held me in place. Made me watch.” Kid wiped away her flowing tears and placed a long kiss to her hair. He’s never wanted to hurt someone so bad in his entire life. Forcing her to watch. “It was Avisa who saved me. And to think I almost didn’t let her join… she shot them with sea stone bullets.”

The anger rolling from Eustass can probably be felt in the next room. He recently formed an alliance with Apoo and was already having his own issues with the man. This is the final piece straw that broke the camels back. Kid knows he can’t be trusted, and he need to be brought to an end. “I’ll make them all pay!” 

Kid jumps up ready to storm out and take his frustrations out on whatever he can get ahold of but (Y/n) speaks up just as he’s at the door frame. “I want to be apart of taking them down. I need to. For the sake of my crew.” Kid turns around and stomps into your direction and places a heated kiss on your lips. 

“Hurry up and get better, because your sailing with me.”  

[sage-nebula]

Scrawlers! Is there anything your hoping to see with the new Evil Team in gen 8? (Besides a big bad lady team lead who is allowed to be awful come'on gamefreak PLEASE) I'm really hoping we see them used like plasma in gen 5 (I.E. Their plot and goal actually coincide with with the player character's journey) since we haven't gotten that in the last 2 gens now.

Hmm, I would say that all of the evil organizations have coincided with the player character’s journey, since you usually have to beat them in order to progress the story. I think what set Team Plasma apart in Gen V is that this was a crisis that involved the entire region. We had people on the streets talking and worrying about Team Plasma, and when Team Plasma raised their castle where the League used to be, the Gym Leaders themselves took to the front lines in order to defend Unova. (Which in turn makes Gen VI look so much worse, because that was the generation wherein the evil team wanted to commit mass genocide, and announced this in a region-wide broadcast, and no one—not the Champion, not the Elite Four, not the Gym Leaders—felt like getting involved. Amazing.) There was a real sense of urgency and stakes with what Team Plasma was doing. It didn’t feel like something we were doing on the side, something that was secondary to the goal of collecting badges and becoming the Champion; instead, it was something that put the entire region at stake, and near the end, you felt like you were collecting badges and facing the Elite Four not to become Champion yourself, but to stop N from accomplishing his goal. (Which made the realization that he beat you to it an even harder kick in the teeth. You raced there, out of breath, got through everything as fast as you could, and Team Plasma won anyway. Damn.) Like you, I would love to have that sense of urgency, those stakes, again. It’s part of what made Gen V’s story so memorable.

So to that end, if I had my way:

A female Big Bad who, yes, is allowed to be awful and is in this for her own ends. Lusamine was incredibly disappointing in so many ways, but the primary ways she was disappointing is the way she was “redeemed” by having her abused children look after and forgive her (taken to extremes in USUM when she was shown to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist, like what), and the fact that her role in the story essentially relied on male characters. We learn through NPC chatter that the Aether Foundation was actually founded by either her father or her grandfather (can’t remember which), and that the experiments and research were originally started by her husband, and that she became obsessed with Ultra Beasts as way to get him back. Lusamine had no accomplishments or motivations that didn’t rely on male characters in some way or another. While all the other Big Bads before her created their own organizations and had their own primary drives and goals, Lusamine didn’t. It was wholly disappointing, and since she’s the only female Big Bad the series has right now (if you can even call her that after what USUM and the anime did), it smacks of sexism.But this can be rectified by giving us a female Big Bad who’s allowed to be every bit of a villain as the male Big Bads before her were. Give us a woman who is arrogant, who is intelligent, who is dangerous. Give us a woman who is not sorry for the things she does, no matter how terrible. Give us a woman who built her organization from the ground up, who is respected by those beneath her, who presents a real threat and who isn’t interested in being a wife or mother, because she’d much rather be a queen. She can be a Well-Intentioned Extremist to a degree (such as, maybe she wants to rule the world because in her mind that’s the only way to curb crime and other dangers, and if she has to crack a few skulls to get to the top to make life better for everyone after that, so be it), but I want her to be on the same level as the male villains before her, rather than someone who is reduced to being a damsel in in distress at the hands of those same villains. If we had a female villain like that, it would make what was done with Lusamine feel less sexist, and more like just a story choice that was made with her character.

I want the whole region involved again. Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I want stakes and danger. I want to see the Gym Leaders, Elite Four, and Champion doing their jobs. (Or maybe the Champion turns out to be the Big Bad, and we’re overthrowing a corrupt government … oooooh, that’d be pretty cool.) I want people on the streets to be concerned and nervous, and actually affected by what is going on. One of the easiest ways to raise stakes in a story is to show people (and pokémon, in this case) actually being affected. We saw that in Gen V with Team Plasma stealing people’s pokémon, the castle being raised, and the Gym Leaders getting involved to fight the threat. I’d love to see something on that scale again.

That said, I’d also like some moral ambiguity, too. The one area in which Gen V’s story fails is the fact that the very obvious grey area wasn’t addressed. N wants to separate people and pokémon because he believes that humans abuse pokémon. At the end of the story, he’s made to realize that he was wrong, and thus abandons his ideals wholesale. But the thing is, he’s not completely wrong. There are people who abuse pokémon. That doesn’t mean that people and pokémon should be wholly separated, but it also doesn’t mean that N’s cause is an unjustified one. What needed to happen (and what I was going to show in my novelization that I never finished) was N and the protagonist reaching a middle ground of understanding. Maybe there is no ideal solution, but neither side is wholly wrong (which also means that neither side is wholly right). There are people who abuse pokémon, just as there are people who love and cherish their pokémon. There is both good and bad in the world, and the important thing is to recognize that and work toward reducing the bad and increasing the good as much as you can, doing as little harm as possible.That said, I know why Game Freak stayed away from the middle ground in this case. Admitting that there were trainers—perfectly ordinary trainers—who do abuse their pokémon would put a dark cloud over the series and could potentially hurt sales if parents didn’t want their kids interacting with media like that. (Then again, the anime had no problem showing a trainer abusing his pokémon in the previous region (Paul), so who knows.) But even so, I’d like to see something like that in the upcoming story. Obviously the villainous organization is, well, villainous, and I do want the Big Bad to be allowed to be awful (particularly if she’s female), but at the same time I’d like to see, say, NPCs debating whether or not the villainous organization has a point. If there is a friendly rival (and I hope to god we still get a jerkass one if there is a friendly one again), maybe the friendly rival is tempted by the villainous organization’s ways and temporarily joins them. (While the jerkass rival stays adamantly opposed. Wouldn’t that be a twist.) Things like that would add depth to the story and, again, make things more interesting.

Branching story paths. I know we won’t get this, but it’d be so cool if we could have branching story paths and multiple endings. (And maybe multiple save files to go with those multiple endings, please, Game Freak, it’s 2019.) Maybe you’re given the option to join the villainous organization, and you can actually take that option and agree to join them, and so you get an ending suited for that. You also get an ending for refusing to join them, one for joining and then betraying them later, and so on. This is more of a wide-scale game idea than anything else, but along with the moral ambiguity (however much there can be), I’d like it if we were actually given multiple endings, and that those endings did tie into the villains somehow. They’ve been asking us if we want to join Team Rocket since 1996 and they’ve never let us do it. Come on, Game Freak. Even if it’s not Team Rocket specifically, it’s still time.

So yeah, those are my wishes. I don’t expect to get any of them, but it would be nice, haha. I just wish the story could match the calibre of Gen V again. Gen V wasn’t perfect (the lack of moral ambiguity and Bianca’s treatment being the most glaring flaws), but it was damn well near. I’d love to meet that calibre again … here’s hoping that Gen VIII delivers. :)

[danbevanwriting]

The Ranking of Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy III is the second game that the West didn't see an official localised version until many years later. Initially released a few years after Final Fantasy II in Japan, it was remade with a new localisation and 3D update 26 years later in 2006 on Nintendo DS. This game is important in the lineage of the series as it's the one that set the motifs of the series; Chocobos, Cid as a recurring character, Job specific actions, even some of the designs of iconic jobs that are still used today. But was the game worth the long wait for Western audiences?

The version of the game I played (and will continue to play from here on out) is the version available of Steam, which is itself a version of the mobile port. The only real differences between these versions and the DS remake is the User Interface, which I personally didn't kind too off putting despite looking a bit clunky. The content and graphics are otherwise the same as the DS version. Upfront I'll say that I like the style of the 3D remake. It retains the chibi-esque style for the characters that the series is known for during the NES/ SNES era. The world is colourful and benefits from the 3D modelling by giving the world more character through the use of added details to the floor tiles. The game was no slouch on the NES either though, it definitely improved graphics compared to previous games, with unique sprites for each job that the characters could take and battles looking more impressive than ever. It's honestly quite impressive what Square managed to do with the NES, even if there was a few assets clearly still being used from the original game (mostly world map town and castles looking very similar, and the warrior sprite being literally the same from Final Fantasy I).

Basic gameplay is untouched during the exploration of the world from previous games. You're still walking through dungeons picking up items, fighting random battles, talking to townsfolk to gather clues for how to advance forward. The wrinkle this game provided to the formula is that each character can change their 'job' whenever they want from a growing selection. This means that you're not stuck with the same class set up from the get-go like in the original game and characters more instantly specialise unlike in FF2. Bored of your current set up? Just change that White Mage to a Red Mage, or try an all offensive group of melee brawlers! In the remake the only downside to switching is that there's a 'cooling off' period after switching in which you have to fight a certain amount of battles with lowered stats before becoming normal. Stats don't carry over between jobs either, with the only permanent change being HP, which does lead to an issue where characters who didn't play much as melee characters can end the game with a disadvantageous amount of health (this is definitely something that happened to me). Overall though this is a rather fun system to experiment with, keeping me engaged throughout most of the game's playtime.

Situations that the game throws at you sometimes lead to influencing your party composition. This comes with some mixed results though. The more interesting of these is where you have to go through a dungeon while being mini, meaning that physical attacks are useless. This means that the best way through these dungeons is to bring a party of casters, which definitely mixes things up and is interesting to think and plan around. A situation which isn't as good however is during a part of the game where you're stranded in a town area and the only way to get out is to beat the boss of the area: Garuda. The problem with this part of the game is that if you don't take a party of Dragoons (which the game heavily implies you should do) then you are already dead. Only Dragoon gear is attainable and the boss' weakness is spears but this doesn't make this interesting as there's only one solution to the encounter. A similar issue occurs during a late game dungeon where the only way to get through without pulling your hair out is to bring a party of Dark Knights to stop all the normal enemies you encounter from duplicating themselves. The problem with this is that Dark Knights are basically worthless outside of this dungeon as they don't bring much of interest in terms of their abilities. The 'getting mini or turning to a toad to get in to the dungeon' gimmick also starts to wear thin by the end of the game, mostly because it wastes 2 charges of magic to get the party small or warty and then back again. It's nothing game breaking but it becomes a tired gimmick by the end of the game.

The dungeon design in general is much improved over the last game, however. Gone are the trap rooms that yielded nothing but crushed dreams and a thousand random battles. The dungeons now are a bit more linear with off shoots from the main path that more often than not have some goodies to pick up. None of them are overly complex to the point that you'd get lost and none of them ever really last too long either. Dungeons even have a bit of characteristics with them as they often have unique designs apart from a couple of the optional dungeons which are just generic cave dungeons. Otherwise they're fine, nothing to really complain about or overly praise either to be honest.

Final Fantasy III does not try to tell a story as ambitious as Final Fantasy II's, although it is still more fleshed out than the original game's. In the remake the developers tried to give each of the 4 heroes their own personality and backstory but it's rather thin and doesn't amount to much by the end. It's still more than the nothing you're given in the NES original (although your characters spoke between each other, there was never names attached to lines and they never really said anything profound). Characters in general are rather thin to be honest, there's no character dynamics I found to be memorable and even a lot of the major characters are more plot device than characters. Cid's got a wife in this one though, so that's... nice! What is interesting about the game is the world building that the game does. This isn't any more evident than when you realise that the world map you started on is only a tiny part and is actually just a small floating island in the corner of the map. You get out, and the world is covered in a thick fog that you need to disperse. It's interesting, and the build up to the Crystal Tower at the end is a fun experience as you uncover parts of the world and how the darkness has affected parts of it. The conclusion is rather limp though, with the guy you've been chasing throughout the game not actually being the last boss but actually being manipulated by an even greater threat known as the Cloud of Darkness! Gasp! This is another theme that ends up being carried forward in to the series too. Unfortunately, the Cloud of Darkness and the Crystal Tower, as cool as they are, is where I found issue with the game in general.

Up until the Crystal Tower, the game is not too hard (even with bosses in the remake attacking twice per turn) and seems overall to be well balanced. I beat most bosses on my first or second try and the fights seemed just hard enough that they were lengthy and fun. None of this is an issue until the very end of the game. You climb the Crystal Tower and nothing really poses too much of a threat: usually a good sign that you're in the right level curve to face what's coming. I reached the top, beat Xande rather easily and then Cloud of Darkness shows up and your group follows her to her realm: The World of Darkness. This is a point of no return by the way. Here, there are boss level enemies you fight in random encounters, have to fight 4 bosses with HP pools double that of Xande's, and then fight Cloud of Darkness who has 4 times his health. She has a group-wide attack originating from one of her tentacles that does massive magic damage as well as being able to attack twice herself. It's such a huge difficulty spike and it's completely unfair with it coming after a point of no return, meaning that if you fail you have to go through the whole of the Crystal Tower again, wasting a couple of hours' progress. This is such a sour note to end the game on after it being so enjoyable up until this final dungeon, it's such a shame that the game stumbles so hard on the final hurdle. It doesn't help that the way the story ends involves a contrived event that brings characters from the game with 'pure hearts of light' to help the heroes out of a jam, and for some reason, one of those characters is one of the old men who thought they were the warriors of light. A character that seemed to have been used as a joke in one of the towns. I audibly said to myself 'are you actually serious?'  when it happened, it was such a bizarre plot point.

I don't wish to end this review on a sour note, however, as I can more than confidently say that the music in this game is incredible. After the disappointing showing from Final Fantasy II this is a breath of fresh air. The overworld theme has a light airy sound to it that evokes a quiet mystery, the battle themes are exciting and energetic, the boss theme is incredibly iconic. The only tracks that annoyed me were the 'liberated' theme which plays in certain towns and locations after a saving it from a major threat, and a couple of the town themes were pretty obnoxious to the point where I just wanted to get out of them as soon as I could. As it's a NES game the themes are pretty short loops, which does lessen the impact of the good songs and amplify the irritation of the lesser ones. Overall though, a big thumbs up in the music department!

To conclude then I enjoyed FF3 quite a lot overall, to the point where I stayed up late a lot to play it. I would say I enjoyed it more that the previous 2 games even though this game has flaws all of its own. The job system is great and fun but is ultimately a bit shallow, especially when comparing to games to follow (hint, hint). I would still say this is the best of the NES era games though due to it having ambition and mostly hitting the right notes, unlike Final Fantasy II. The series' biggest flaw at this point of it's life is that the plot and characters are still rather underdeveloped but they've given the games their own distinct style and gameplay that is well refined. The old games would probably be best kept to only being played by die-hard fans, even the remakes.

Current Rankings:

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy I

Final Fantasy II

[thehonorwithinau]

Story 3

STEM was, as it turned out, a living nightmare. Or was it a...sleeping nightmare? Technically, wasn’t this some kind of mental landscape the Core’s AI created? What the hell did that make it? Corvo wasn’t sure, but in the end, he supposed it didn’t matter.

What did matter was the monsters that populated the place, things that he was almost positive shouldn’t exist except in the depths of an old horror film relegated to the annals of B-movie history. The...zombies? Were they zombies? Whatever they were, they looked like half-drowned creatures that wandered out of one of the many flooded areas of the city, and would attack as soon as he saw them. And on top of them were the starfish that clung to walls only to leap at him with undersides covered in barbs and fangs, the clouds of mosquito-winged lampreys, and the giant, rotting crabs.

It reminded him of his college years, weirdly, in Aramis Stilton’s dorm room playing that old tabletop game on weekends. Only there were no tiny painted figurines or dice with way too many sides...just monsters. 

He’d found a gun on a thankfully unmoving dead body and stole that and the clips on the man’s belt, and there was a knife sticking out of a ruined wall covered in odd, esoteric graffiti that he borrowed as well. Can never be too armed, especially in a horror movie he’d had no idea he was walking into.

Even if there were some things he just couldn’t fight. There was something in the water, he’d realized -- two somethings. One of them looked like some sort of monstrous mermaid, and though it didn’t attack him, just sang what sounded like whale noises, the other thing....it was some kind of gigantic octopus, rotting like the rest of the beasts in this place and covered in bleeding wounds as well as broken glass and steel pipes. It smelled like cheap alcohol, he’d noticed, and as strange as that was it at least let him know when the thing was nearby. And that was a good thing, given that it would chase him like a wolf that sighted a rabbit if it caught sight of him.

Like now, for example.

Corvo turned a corner at a sprint, nearly tripping over an upended trashcan and vaulting over a crashed car as the thing followed him in the water-filled crack in the world beside the road he was on, tentacles lashing out and the metal debris in them digging gouges in the tarmac and concrete.

“Fuck!” Corvo swore, barely dodging one of the flailing limbs and wincing as the edge of the debris caught his skin and drew a red line across his forearm. 

“Over here!” Someone shouted, and that alone nearly made him fall over his feet -- someone else? In here? Someone still sane? Regardless, he turned quickly in that direction, all but throwing himself  through the doorway of the small, still mostly intact building on the street corner. The other man slammed the door shut and sank down against it to join Corvo on the floor with a sigh. “That son of a bitch is sure stubborn,” he said, amused. “I think it likes you.”

“It can go fuck itself,” Corvo grunted, sitting up and brushing himself off, before looking at his would-be savior. The man looked to be about his age, perhaps a year or three older, with short dark hair and a five-o’clock shadow. He’d apparently once been wearing a suit, though the jacket was long since gone and his shirtsleeves were rolled up and the tie loosened -- and Corvo noted with some surprise a black priest’s collar beneath the dress shirt.

“Didn’t expect to see anyone else alive in here,” he said dryly. “Especially not a priest.”

The man laughed. “Not a practicing one right now, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to go elsewhere for confession.” He held out his hand. “Teague Martin. And before you say anything, I know who you are -- Corvo Attano. I used to work at Empire Trading.”

“Did you?” Corvo asked, absently shaking Martin’s hand. “Left three years ago, then, I imagine.”

“No offense,” Martin said, lifting his hands in placation. “I just wanted to get out of there before the chaos got to my end. Went to work for Mobius, and, well...here we are, both stuck in this crazy computer’s horror show.”

“So there are other people in here,” Corvo said. “Delilah wasn’t too forthcoming.”

“She’s like that,” Martin said, standing, gesturing the other man over to the bar -- because apparently that’s where they were, a bar. “Yes, though, there are other people in here. Maintenance men, people in here to keep an eye on the simulation -- like yours truly -- people testing the place...there were a good few of us in here when the Core went rogue. A lot of us are dead, and more of us are Draugr,” he paused. “Sorry, the zombie things. I started them Draugr because I think I’m funny.”

Corvo snorted. “Not a bad name, though,” he said. “But how is the Core doing that?”

“Our consciousnesses are linked to it by STEM,” Martin explained. “It can corrupt our forms in here, corrupt our minds, and that mental corruption...well, since we are our minds in here, that tends to translate to physical corruption. You succumb to that, you end up a Draugr, or worse.”

“Are all of the monsters in here corrupted minds?” Corvo asked.

“Nope,” Martin said, pouring himself a glass of bourbon and offering the bottle to Corvo. “Some of them are just the Core’s AI being a little fuck. Our minds make things real in STEM, and if it’s not a corrupted mind, it’s a product of that corrupted mind -- and what else is the AI besides a corrupted program?”

Corvo took the bottle of bourbon and stared at it a moment before putting it down, moving around the bar to get a can of soda from the fridge instead. “So this Core...” He said. “It’s just a malfunctioning computer program?”

He couldn’t help but notice Martin hesitate, glass to his lips, before he took a swig of bourbon and sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Mobius set it up to be the Core of STEM, run the city and connect everyone that plugs into it, but...it got out of control. AIs do that -- we should have watched more sci-fi.” He laughed, but there was something insincere about it. “Regardless, the thing’s crazier than a box of shithouse rats. If it sees you as a threat -- and if you’re here to take it out, then you sure as hell are -- it’ll stop at nothing to take you out.”

“Well, hooray for me,” Corvo deadpanned, sipping at his soda. “It can throw whatever it wants at me. I have a job to do.” And Emily was riding on it. He could face down an entire fucking zoo full of these monsters and he wouldn’t back down: his baby girl needed him. And after failing her so many times in the last three years...

Martin shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, sitting back on the barstool. “I’m staying right here until it blows over. Safer that way. I have a zone stabilizer in the back -- it keeps them from getting in here, but the range is incredibly limited: the Core went nuts before we could make ‘em any bigger.”

“Of course it did,” Corvo said. This AI was starting to sound smarter and smarter, wasn’t it? He sighed and took another long drink of the soda, tossing it in the trash and standing. “I’d better get going.”

Martin watched him move back towards the door before pausing. “Wait!” He called, getting up and moving over to one of the tables, where Corvo realized there was a makeshift computer station -- probably cobbled together out of shit from the bar’s office. The former priest grabbed what looked like a really outdated walkie-talkie and tossed it to Corvo, who caught it and clipped it to his belt. “Hang onto that,” he said. “I have the other one. I’m not going anywhere, but if you’re the guy that’s going to get us out, I can at least help. I know a lot about STEM -- and you, obviously, don’t.”

“Right,” Corvo said, rolling his eyes. “And you’re offering to help out of the goodness of your heart.”

Martin just smiled. “Call me if you need me,” he said. Corvo just snorted, giving the other man a wave as he left the bar.

At least he had an ally, even if the man didn’t seem very trustworthy. He’d take what help he could get.

[morriggan]

mrfoox replied to your post “mhmm alright”

Would you mind sharing your thoughts? Would love to hear them

re unpopular breath of the wild opinions; yeah sure! i’ll put them under the cut

so despite anything i criticize, i LOVED this game. it was so much fun to play and it felt like a really special experience. that being said, i think people are glaring over some of its faults that make me sad

*SPOILERS INBOUND BTW*

the biggest problem i have is the plot. what i love is that zelda is an actual character with agency and her own arc and i LOVE her interesting relationship with link, it makes a ton of sense and i love that she kind of resents him at first. its GOLD. i love that. love her. & lesbian protector urbosa

but ganon makes NO sense. at all. so like nintendo is having this big issue of “tell dont show,” and it ruins the plot a lot. hyrule is supposed to be this “post-apocalyptic fantasy dystopia,” except its not at all. hyrule is literally fucking thriving, despite ganons presence at the castle. towns & villages are bustling, there are businesses (including a construction company that is actively searching out new spots to build new towns?? like real expansion??) and people are safe. they really are. towns/villages dont need link except for random fetch errands etc and they dont need any barriers or walls to keep out monsters. all five (5) types of monsters you encounter in the massive open world generally keep to themselves. the only real danger you see is when you help npcs getting attacked by like one bokoblin or MAYBE two bokoblins after theyve wandered off the main roads. 

oh yeah the divine beasts too? what are they really doing? you visit the gorons and the zoras and the rito and like theyre just there complaining about nothing actually happening. MAYBE i can see ruta being a problem with all the rainwater but like not really (cuz wouldnt zoras kind of benefit from that? nah? idk tbh) but like medoh is literally just In The Sky Not Bothering Anyone. i dont see any danger there is none.

the only “danger” or “threat” is that there are 1) guardians around (that are actually like crawling in uninhabited places lmao) 2) hyrule castle but like thats ONE area and 3) zelda who has been trapped fighting ganon for 100 years. thats literally it thats all. 97% of hyrule is THRIVING. the setting does not at all match the plot

and im not saying hyrule cant be beautiful in order to be dangerous. the world of horizon zero dawn is breathtaking and arguably, people are doing alright for the most part? but they actually SHOW the player that the world is incredibly dangerous. and it IS. but all the npcs in botw love to tell link how dangerous it is, but we never actually see it. and it sucks

my other MINOR problems is that to me, it doesnt feel like zelda (i like the departure from the zelda formula, really i do, but like throw me the green tunic what the fuck is this gross ass blue tunic ?? no!!!!) and the combat is fun but super inconsistent (dodging is actually awfully done lmaoooo) and i wish there were huge optional dungeons you could stumble upon, like in twilight princess. that shit is so fun. 

also i hate the shrines. 25% of them are fun and engaging and you feel great when you solve them, but the other 75% are either entirely pointless/mind-numbing/useless/a massive waste of my time. they just are. 

the divine beast dungeons were cool, but felt too short and guided. the bosses were REALLY unoriginal, and hyrule castle was what the game needed throughout. that was the BEST dungeon, i love going in there, it feels like a real adventure going in there

there were a million things i loved about the game but these faults (plus a few more nitpicky ones i wont bother mentioning) were a huge downer for me? i also expected the ending to be something spectacular, like a real reward for killing ganon (calamity ganon looked SO COOL TOO HOLY SHIT so The Thing-esque) but it was like two or three short cutscenes and it didnt tell me anything. it wasnt a great ending at all, it was really boring actually (i got the true ending, so all memories collected + master sword etc. its not that great of a reward for doing all that, BUT collecting the memories were kind of a reward for me in and of itself)

i dont know, maybe im just old man yelling at cloud, but i care about this series and every time a new zelda comes out i love it but i know i’ll never love it like i love twilight princess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sorry these were a lot of thoughts lmao but let me know what you think! i hope other people agree with me and i hope this doesnt seem like im shitting on the game bc i dont want to, i really loved everything else, and i realize its hard to make a game like this and meeting fans’ demands is like impossible, but yeah. i wish they focused on the plot more because theres really nothing happening there unfortunately (except zelda’s arc, THAT is something and its great and i love her unconditionally)

[mikegchambers]

My personal journey to the cloud from my first job on a trading floor to startups

“Hi, my name is James. I’m a self-confessed cloud-oholic and I’ve been off-premise for 7 years now.”

Please do not share this picture with anyone … it’s was my pre-cloud late 90’s look.

There’s no self-help group for someone like me — technology is in my blood. I owned my first computer when I was 5, and from then onward I collected technology like most kids had stuffed toys.

I started writing for a local computer magazine at 12, then a national UK magazine. When I got to college, I had a regular column on a British platform called Oracle Teletext.

“You’ll never need more than 16KB of RAM.” Let me just type that reminder into my 4GB Pixel….

It would have been easier to do cool kid things and hang out at the mall but spending every waking hour thinking about all the problems that can be fixed with machines kept me too busy.

My first job on a trading floor

After earning a CS degree at college, starting work as a software developer was a jarring experience. Having to work in teams of developers is not something they taught at school, nor did they train anyone on how to make sense of ancient convoluted systems. At school, you start from a blank screen and build something beautiful all by yourself, which very rarely happens at work.

If you show this picture to ANYONE… oh wait, it’s the Internet.

My group built electronic trading software for hedge funds, portfolio managers, and the like. Most trading happens at the open and close like a twice-daily Black Friday that stresses the back-end. Our infrastructure was killing us as the platform grew and the amount of data choked any attempt to solve the problem without taking the system offline.

Best of all, our users were traders — and they were assholes on a good day. Their needs changed constantly and were communicated telepathically. They completely lost it when during an outage and had no tolerance for bad data, missing functions or sloppy UI.

Smart, volatile and demanding users — working for them ended up being the very best training for today’s user base, and it taught me several life lessons:

User don’t know what they want. At least, not the final version of what they want. They can read the road for the next hundred feet but anything beyond the headlights is unknown. The paradox is we can only know what to do build in the short term, yet our scaffolding has to work forever.

Developers underestimate how much effort is involved. The one constant across all developers is a total failure to estimate to how long something will take. 80% completion happens quickly and then the last 20% takes forever, if at all. You pad their estimates, your boss pads your estimates and the delivery is still late.

Stability is everything. Your system should not fail. Do not, under any circumstances, allow it to fail. But if you do fail, every single outage must be investigated and remedied so it never happens again.

On Error Resume Next: Product Management

In the mid-2000s, I moved to the Bay Area and worked in startups for several years as a Technical Product Manager. This was during the phase when everybody who previously had an idea for a website now had ideas for mobile.

In the Bay Area, a Product Manager is a coder who is yelled at by customers and also produces road-maps nobody uses.

As we moved into mobile, our users were regular people with cell phones, and our competitors were either well-funded startups or the established technical luminaries. Our development teams were much smaller, budgets were tighter and yet our epic aspirations didn’t seem to notice we were horribly equipped for success.

Mobile made scaling problems insurmountable for start-ups — buying new servers sucked up budgets, configuring load balancers and database replication wasted development time that should have been spent perfecting the UI. And investors and founders, usually bored with the the grind of their real jobs and attracted to the gold rush, were on a mission to become the next billion dollar app with no revenue and an army of users.

At the time, there was iOS, Android, Windows and BlackBerry, all using different frameworks and languages, and it looked like these could fragment further. We were trying to put together apps that are essentially a dozen screens which could have been built as a .NET desktop app in a day. And yet we did manage to release apps, solve problems and build some businesses.

I learned:

You don’t know enough. Your team’s knowledge has gaps in networking, security, scaling, electrical engineering, machine code, you name it. When you face problems that veer into these areas, it’s like quicksand for your product. Developers like tough problems and have curious minds, so these types of issues are a siren’s call.

Complexity is death to progress. When your team owns all the pieces, they write complex code that locks systems together. But when developers can only use APIs to talk to other systems and don’t know how they are implemented, they write simple code that makes the system modular.

Dreams aren’t code. If you can’t make your idea function in a spreadsheet or a flowchart, it cannot be built in code, no matter how simple the investor or VC says it is.

Understanding the problem domain is key to building good solutions.

Discovering a better way

Sometime around 2010 it became clear to me that as a development group, we could confidently write solid applications running on machines in the same building. But deployment was difficult — and once apps hit production they weren’t performing as well.

We had been using some cloud apps for a while but hadn’t seriously used AWS until it became absolutely necessary. A client app had started to gain momentum and we didn’t have the money to scale up on-premise, so we became AWS users very quickly. It was a fortuitous but mildly alarming moment to realize we didn’t have any alternatives — but it quickly became the de facto way to build our products.

I had some lightbulb moments during this time:

Infrastructure is hell. It brings out the inner tinkerer in everyone, and it’s a distraction that stops you writing code. You also can’t manage it well no matter how hard you try. So don’t.

Dev-staging-prod doesn’t work. It’s not sophisticated enough, doesn’t stop bugs reaching the customer and ultimately just provides an illusion of quality. Every service needs versioning at every stage with incoming traffic routed accordingly.

Agile is beautiful. We were doing it while also doing waterfall because that was considered professional. When I read the Agile Manifesto I almost wept — I knew this was how we would build software from now on.

What happens in Vegas … becomes a career

In 2012 I attended the very first AWS re:Invent conference in Vegas and that changed everything. Witnessing the entire ecosystem around the platform, it was obvious that many people had been grappling with the same issues and there were a slew of great solutions available.

There was a haunting question about why nobody else was offering this — Amazon was the only game in town and either they were incredibly prescient or we were all being gleefully over-optimistic about this whole cloud thing. This lag continued for years — it gave AWS a 6-year lead over its competition which is why its capabilities still smoke the competition.

In our shop we weren’t the first to the cloud by any measure but we embraced it wholeheartedly. Within 6 months there were a number of unexpected side-effects:

We became truly agile. Our users still didn’t know what they wanted and the devs still underestimated the work, but the dynamic in building products had changed. We could spin on a dime and make radical shifts without blowing the house down — or blowing the budget up.

The things we didn’t understand well were understood for us. Cloud took many of the computer sci-ency problems away and solved them. This allowed us to focus on building only the apps and our productivity (and profitability) sky-rocketed.

Our apps became really good. Many weren’t popular and didn’t survive investment rounds but they were extremely stable, scalable and looked like the products of a much bigger team. I cried for the apps that didn’t make it.

My future as a Technical Product Manager in cloud

In using cloud solutions as the backbone to all the products I’ve worked on, I’ve had to step up my technical game constantly. It’s not enough to be a Product Manager with road-maps and wire-frames — I need to know reliable patterns and trusted practices to create the best technical architecture.

This has meant constant training, taking on programming projects and learning new frameworks as the environment changes. It’s also meant making a commitment to conferences and workshops, which has become an automatic line-item in my budget.

On the business side, cloud has given me the confidence to assess viability and likely cost, predict timeframes more reliably and help business partners understand where the business ideas and the technology meet. In many ways, the concepts between agile, cloud and lean are so intertwined that I often think they are different views around the same thing.

Fail fast, waste little, learn constantly and always deliver customer value — cloud is central to making this work.

There are still a few road bumps

There are still plenty of naysayers. I worked for some more traditional companies after the California days and it was like jumping in the DeLorean and setting the clock to ‘Fail’.

They all grappled with an aging, fragile, expensive IT infrastructure that delivered limited business value and had no hope of helping them innovate or differentiate in the future. Those companies are waiting for a generation of executives to retire and competitive threats to reawaken the appetite that once made them giants.

There are also the fakers in the industry, the ones who for years dismissed cloud, laughed at Amazon and claimed it could never work. Now they scramble to promote their own clouds with the same limited tools and restrictive contracts they had on-premise.

The me-too players like Oracle serve to bring the laggards into the cloud ecosystem but they offer nothing fundamental or game-changing to the technology. 5 years ago they said cloud wasn’t secure and now they say only their clouds are safe, so I suppose fear can drive sales in anything.

But I live by mantra “Go where you are celebrated, not tolerated.” I’m not here to convince yesteryear’s IT professionals that our industry’s change is accelerating geometrically. I’m here because I’m committed to using the cloud and its toolbox to build the next generation of software that solves the next round of problems. I want to get to machine learning and AI, and move from onClick to onPrediction — the cloud is where all of this will happen.

So that’s my story. Most of us geeky kids who grew up with computers didn’t become Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos but it’s been an amazing ride. The opportunities are everywhere and the future has never been brighter. My name is James. I’ve been a self-confessed cloud-oholic for the last 7 years. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

My personal journey to the cloud from my first job on a trading floor to startups was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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