#like they don't care about the intricacies of all that. game developers didn't give a fuck about bisexuals in 2007

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

I HOPE YOURE HAVING A GOOD DAY genuinely . i also feel it would be funny to mention that getting into tf2 actually did make me discover a piss kink. thank you sniper team fortress 2 i will actually never be the same.

but to ask, do you have any weird headcanons about the mercs you havent told anyone just yet? i have a few about medic specifically, but some could get me hate esp from people who enjoy erasing any sort of bisexual coding in characters (i say this as a bi person myself)

THRILLED FOR YOU tf2 offhand made me discover a whole bunch of shit about myself I won't divulge here but like if you know stuff about me you can probably guess

Uhh kind of I guess! I have a ton of posts that kinda just hit the cutting room floor, I don't post everything I think of bc I like to think I run a tight operation over here lmao. A lot of hcs I come up with in conversations w friends or w my siblings and I consider that already "telling someone" so I'll forget to post it even if it's good lol. A lot of my ideas will go thru my mental Quality Control process where I don't wanna post anything too generic or boring, which is why for smth like the McDonald's post I cut out all the characters I couldn't think of anything funny for and only left in the jokes I like. Also ofc some of my hcs are really really really horny and I don't necessarily feel like I need or even want to share those. If you want some headcanons I've never posted but have workshopped for a while, here are some:

Scout will actively kill people but won't litter in front of a cop

Sniper says he doesn't litter out of environmental concerns but it's actually because he eats everything out of his hands or off the floor

Soldier doesn't litter because when he finishes something he eats it. This includes styrofoam

Engie doesn't litter out of genuine concern for the environment

Medic litters on purpose

[techmomma]

Tears of the Kingdom rings hollow.

I wanted to like it, I really did. Breath of the Wild is often criticized as feeling "empty" but tbh? I think TOTK, despite having a "fuller" map, is the one that feels empty.

botw felt like it had care and thought put into every detail. Every inch of the map is brimming with worldbuilding and attention to detail from the devs if you actually take the time to stop and explore and smell the roses. none of the things added in totk really adds to that sense of care and thought put into botw--which is especially sad and frustrating given that totk was not only re-using the map and engine but was in development longer than botw.

an example of that thoughtfulness in worldbuilding in botw is the map itself. one of my favorite things about the map in botw is that there's actually several invisible roads that you can not only see, but your horse will actually follow the road despite there being no marker on the map--kind of a visual confirmation that yes, you are seeing the ancient remnants of a road. you can see this on sahasrala slope, where there clearly used used to be a road connecting Kakariko with the main roads of Hyrule back when the sheikkah were in favor. there's another road on death mountain that ends at its foothills but your horse will follow an unseen road up the mountain (that in fact leads you to one of the memories) and along the way, you can see remnants of the mass fleeing of hyruleans, with decrepit wagons partway up the mountain--people who were so desperate to flee the Calamity that they were willing to risk death mountain itself, and it's fairly clear they didn't make it.

all of this told purely in environmental storytelling.

there are shrines and yes, while some of the shrines did get repetitive, there's so many of them where the individuality of the monk who created the shrine shines through. the monk enshrined at Kakariko was said to be an incredible swordsman now looking after Kakariko, and what do you do in his shrine? you learn how to fight. the shrines at the Dueling Peaks hint that the monks within may be brothers who created their shrines in tandem, connected both in life and in (un)death now. the devs themselves, in the botw artbook, say they tried to instill every shrine with a sense of individuality, they just didn't have the time or resources to do so--but they tried their best, and it shows.

in the ruins of Akkala Citidel, right at the front gate, there's a moss-covered inactive guardian with a rusted sword still sticking out of its neck segment. there's broken guardians at the base of the bridge among the rubble and you can infer that the bridge is destroyed not because of the ravages of time but because they blasted the bridge with the citadel cannons in a last-ditch attempt to keep the guardians from overwhelming them (semi-confirmed in Age of Calamity, depending on how much you think the general events are a decent guideline for what happened on that day, give or take some changes from a certain eggbot).

botw does not hold your hand and lets you infer and use your mind to explore the storytelling presented to you. botw asks you to think about what's there and what it means.

and sadly, totk to me, had the feeling of the exact opposite: "don't think about it too much."

why are some of the sky islands shaped the way they are? devs needed to give players a game. why is there like nothing in the sky islands, why do they all feel the exact same? idk.

the sky islands, which are supposed to be bits and pieces of ancient hyrule, feel like they were never populated in the first place. none of them actually feel like people were there, inhabiting them; they just feel like very Aesthetic puzzle pieces.

the Depths, while an interesting concept, turn out to be a video game equivalent of greebling; adding a bunch of superfluous and random bits and bobbles to give the illusion of depth and intricacy when there is none. you don't even have to visit the depths at all. for the entire game. there is an area the size of an entire second hyrule that you literally do not have to visit once to beat the game. by the end of a normal run, the only thing the depths offer is resource-gathering, which gets tiresome and tedious when again, an area the size of hyrule looks the exact same everywhere you go.

none of this is even touching on the weirdly imperialistic story with even less depth than botw's. and no, the original japanese translations do not save the story! it's just as black and white, Good vs Evil in the original japanese! which like, no I haven't played a lot of zelda games but honestly that feels sort of weird from what I do know? even the simpler games tend to have even a little nuance to them. just look at Link's Awakening, do you (spoiler?) wake up the windfish to go home, and in the process, destroy this entire dream world that you've gotten to know and love? which may or may not be full of sentient people? not even touching on civil wars, or the Sheikah's history, or Arbiter's Grounds, the gods themselves flooding the fucking world, etc.. botw was at least a little bit critical of the idea of royal families and one of the main questions that a lot of players came away with was "did Hyrule really need the royal family anymore?" by the end of the game. totk was FULLY "royal family good!! :) foreigner bad :( "

botw is one of those games that feels like you can dig and dig and dig into the worldbuilding and you can go so far before you ever hit "the devs did this because it's a game." the feeling of totk is only scratching the surface and already hitting that point of "the devs did this because it's a game."

I could go on, this is like. tip of the goddamn iceberg in terms of "reasons steph was real disappointed in totk" but all I'll say right now is

"secret stones" is such a stupid fucking name it should have been Sacred Stones or like literally anything besides SECRET STONE

[fragments-of-despair]

Finished chapter 4. I'll keep my thoughts brief. Don't worry. They're mostly positives this time.

Of course, trying to keep it vague enough, but spoilers ahead.

First, the positives.

This was by far the most interesting mystery out of the entire game. The intricacies, the careful planning, the mastermind reveal. All of it worked perfectly. Even when I figured out where it was going, I was still surprised and impressed with the overall solution.

Also, Vivia Twilight?

BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY BEST BOY

I adored his development this chapter and loved how his Forte and personal convictions and worldview influenced the investigation. I can't really describe anything about it without spoiling too much, but like, damn, he's worth the $60 price tag. I can see why the one side NPC fell in love. Vivia is just AMAZING.

Also, this was probably Shinigami's best outing. She was still her usual self, but she also met her match in Vivia, and the overall story really started getting to her in a way the other cases didn't. So when the culprit reveal happened and she reaped the soul, it made sense why it went the way it did. And I found myself getting a bit emotional over this culprit along with all the detectives.

That being said, I'm still rather disappointed in the lack of true comradery between Yuma and the other detectives, as well as the lack of character conflict between the Nocturnal Detective Agency and the Peacekeepers. Most of the characters still feel like they're just kind of there, especially the villains. And that leaves everything feeling rather bare bones without even scraps to nibble on.

It might sound weird, but I think what hinders this game is the fact that you don't really interact with anyone outside of the main mystery and the Gab mechanic, and that mechanic is easy to pass over if you don't find all the statues and don't actively go out of your way to find them all. If they had made Kanai World more of an open box to explore like, say, a Legend of Zelda or Assassin's Creed game, where you unlock certain cases and interact with certain characters based on certain conditions and are encouraged to explore the world, I think I would have found the emotional core of this chapter more hard hitting.

Give me side quests where you go undercover with Desuhiko more and master a relationship meter or something similar.

Give me side quests where you and Halara take on cold cases and you work on paying off your debt to them you incur in chapter 2.

Go on more adventures with Fubuki to unlock certain districts in Kanai Ward and learn more about the outside world.

Give me lore based adventures with Yakou and Vivia, who are supposed to have this strong bond based on the emotional core of this chapter.

And make it so that your choices can affect how you go through the Mystery Labyrinth in the main story chapter. Have the Master Detectives come with you and actually have them help more with the investigations in there because as it stands, the only ones who really justified being there were Vivia and Halara, but that had to do more with the story rather than the gameplay.

I really, really want to love this game, but overall it feels empty. It easily could have been an 80-120 hour game if given the time and resources, and I feel like it would be all the better for it.

Hopefully chapter 5 sticks the landing because from my understanding, it's the final chapter, and I'm really hoping that it keeps improving where chapter 4 left us.

Overall, if I had to rank all of the chapters so far from best to worst, it'd look something like this:

Chapter 4: The Imperfect Insider

Chapter 2: A Silent Curtain Call

Chapter 0 and Prologue: Massacre on the Amaterasu Express/the WDO vs Amaterasu Corperation

Chapter 1: The Nail Man Killings

Chapter 3: No Longer a Detective (Chapter 3 curse lives on)

To be honest, I think I would have gladly waited another two or three years for Rain Code if it were filled with more than what we got.

As of right now, the only reasons I would say to get this game as is would be because of Yuma, Halara, Vivia, and the music. Otherwise, it might be better to wait until it's on sale.

Here's hoping chapter 5 stays on the upward trajectory and sticks the landing.

[rapifessor]

Pokéchronology, Volume I: Yellow

Day 9

Unfortunately, this was another one of those days where I planned to play more, but didn't get around to it because my brain had other plans. I also had a lot of homework to do.

Getting to the end of the day I've decided to call off any additional playtime. I'll have to continue a couple days from now, unless I manage to get some time in at work tomorrow. Sorry to say, I don't have much to write about for this post.

Does anyone even care about Pokémon Yellow spoilers? Ah, whatever. It's easier to just keep up the habit.

Route 15

So this day was all about implementing new training strategies that I've been thinking about, and I was able to do some of that on Route 15. Before that though, I go to the upper floor of the building separating the route from Fuchsia City (I'm sure there's a name for it but it escapes me at the moment) where I encounter that mystery man Professor Oak's Aide. He says he'll give me the EXP. All, better known as the EXP Share in later games, if I've caught 50 Pokémon. Naturally... I'm one Pokémon short.

Guess I'll pop into Route 15 and try to catch something new then. I've seen all the Pokémon here before, but I hadn't caught Bellsprout or Weepinbell yet. I managed to catch the latter after Mycoboss accidentally OHK'd a Bellsprout beforehand (they've got a pretty beefy Attack stat, so even a weak move like Cut does hella damage), named them OOOOOH. Yeah, I really can't be bothered coming up with names anymore. That'll be fun as I move on to other Pokémon games. Later on I catch a Bellsprout that gets named AYOOOOO.

I get the EXP Share, but I decide I don't want to use it. For one, every time you KO a Pokémon you have to mash through a ton of text just because every single member of your team gets EXP when you do, which is SUPER annoying, and for another it actually makes it more difficult to train specific Pokémon on your team. So into the PC it goes. But this is where I ran into another problem.

Turns out it's not just your inventory space that's limited, but even your storage in Generation I. It maxes out at 50 item slots. Since this was going to continue being a problem if I didn't address it right away, I sold a whole bunch of TMs that I didn't plan on using and a few junk items to free up space.

I must say, I'm a little torn about how Generation I games handle items, and thinking about them in comparison to what I know the modern games are like really makes you aware of how these things were a product of their time. Item storage being limited is to be expected to some extent, as the Gameboy is a very simple console with limited capabilities compared to our modern standards. But I didn't expect it to be quite as limiting as it is.

The inability to acquire certain items multiple times is also an issue. Most TMs aren't sold in the Celadon Department Store, which means you get one shot at using them, after which they're gone forever. Even goner foreverer if you later choose to overwrite the move. While on some level I do like the idea that items are limited and you have to use them wisely, and the game does a good job of discouraging you from being a hoarder, it kinda sucks when you're on a blind playthrough and you realize you've locked yourself out of an option because you didn't know what you were doing.

But this is understandable, isn't it? Pokémon Yellow was released during a time when video games weren't yet designed for mass appeal. Less thought was put into making the game accessible for players of all skill and knowledge levels, because it wasn't needed. Heck, if I didn't have any of the Pokémon resources that have been developed over the years, my experience with this game would likely have been very different.

I probably would have found the game frustrating, looking at it through the lens of a child playing it 20 years ago. As an adult with literally two decades of gaming experience under my belt I'm able to grasp mechanics and intricacies very quickly, and I think this means that I'm able to enjoy a game like Pokémon Yellow more now than I would have at the time it was released.

This is all to say that, despite the numerous and noticeable flaws and limitations, Generation I Pokémon is worth experiencing. In my opinion, at least. Maybe if I had come into the game after experiencing later entries in the series, with their added quality of life features and better balancing, I'd be less enthused. But I'd say my experience so far has been a good sign, as from what I've been told, things only get better from here.

Wow, that was one hell of a tangent, wasn't it? Sorry about that. To tell you the truth, there's really not much to cover as far as the rest of my play time goes today, so I padded the post by waxing lyrical about the Pokémon Yellow experience. I mostly just switched up how I fought enemy Pokémon, favoring Mycoboss for Grass/Poison types instead of Miles or Prinzessin. I brought in BIG RAT whenever I could as well, though those opportunities are few and far between and he is STILL getting destroyed by Fury Attacks that just can't help but crit for some reason. Fuckin' Dodrio, man.