#literally every pc/original character I develop

[knock-twice-or-fuck-off]

internal politics 

[bltngames]

I Have Complicated Thoughts About Mother 3

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Confined to a tiny room, I pulled out my off-brand retro portable and loaded up the fan translation of Mother 3. It had been on my list of "important games to play" for literal years at this point, if not more than a decade, and playing Mother 3 was bottle necking a lot of other stuff -- for example, I also wanted to play Undertale, but swore I'd need to finish Mother 3 first, despite being very graciously gifted Undertale only a few months after it came out on PC. 

Being something I wanted to play, that obviously meant avoiding spoilers. When the ability was added to places like Twitter or Tumblr to block specific keywords, often the first one I'd block was "Mother 3" alongside the names of a handful of characters I knew like Lucas, Claus, and Kumatora. 

I'd played a couple hours of Mother 3 once before, right when the translation patch first came out, so I knew what happened in the opening scenes of the game. I knew what a gut punch it was. It definitely worried me, because as I started the game back up, now in 2021, I silently thought about what it would be like playing a game that starts with your player character's mother dying, as I looked up at my own bed ridden mother. 

It was May of 2021 that she developed debilitating back pain. There was an easy enough explanation for that; we had just gone through a hellish (and potentially legally dubious) renovation forced upon us by the corporation that owned our gigantic apartment complex. Due to a scheduling error, we had less than a week to pack up our whole apartment so they could move us out, renovate the unit, and then move us back in. We attributed her back pain to that moving process -- lifting cardboard boxes and such.

But the back pain kept getting worse. They prescribed her stronger and stronger medication for what they claimed was sciatica, but it never seemed to help. After multiple trips to the emergency room, she was finally admitted to the hospital proper, where her femur randomly shattered during a routine procedure. The femur is the longest, strongest bone in your body, and typically only breaks during extremely violent impacts, like car crashes and stuff. For my mother, it broke as nurses were shifting her around to clean her bedding. Tests for bone cancer seemed to come back negative, so the doctors shrugged at us and considered it a freak accident and just the toll of old age.

There was no way she was making it back up the stairs to our apartment any time soon (if ever), so it was decided she'd have to heal from that broken leg at my brother's place, and since my brother and his wife both work day jobs, I volunteered to take care of my Mom while she got better. Hence why I was stuck in this tiny room, booting up Mother 3 in July or August of 2021.

My Mom never got better. It would be eight months before they told us they had somehow missed detecting her cancer, and by then, it had spread so viciously they weren't even sure where it originally started from. By the time they told us this, she had only days left.

Every step of the way in those 8 months, as she insisted over and over she was healing and told me about all the things she wanted to get back to doing, I believed her. But my Mom also taught me to always expect and brace for the worst. So as I watched Mother 3's Claus and Lucas bury their own deceased mom, there was an undeniable heaviness swelling in my heart. A feeling I could not shake. Though I didn't know yet, I knew something wasn't right, even if the doctors continued to shrug as more symptoms mounted. I could see myself in the same shoes as Claus and Lucas, and I didn't like it.

Once upon a time, I loved RPGs. I cut my teeth on Final Fantasy 2 for the SNES. Though to be honest, I don't remember my time with it very fondly. I didn't really understand the genre; I thought "hit points" referred to points on the body you could be struck at. Like, your elbow is a hit point. Your ear is a hit point. So on and so forth. When the game told me a monster like Scarmiliogne had "3,000 Hit Points", I figured that meant he was a giant, and thus had more surface area to strike at. I was not a very bright kid, but in my defense, nobody ever bothered to correct me, either. 

The first RPG to really stick out in my head was Earthbound (known in Japan as Mother 2). On the surface, Earthbound felt like a kitschy look at hometown Americana, as filtered through the lens of a Japanese writer. Though Earthbound sort of focused on contemporary America when it came out, to me, it's always carried this vibe of Norman Rockwell by way of The Peanuts gang. Though you chat it up with mohawk wearing punks, visit video arcades, and order pizza over the phone, something about its story feels deliberately retro and nostalgic, even in the mid-90's when it first came out. 

Earthbound is about leaving home for the first time, feeling sad about it, and calling your Mom at a payphone to cheer up. It's about taking on huge responsibilities while you're still just a kid swinging a baseball bat. It's about going from your house on a dirt road and traveling all the way up to the big city and beyond. It's about making best friends and bullies, and some of those story elements hit close to home for me. It's about finding an inner strength you didn't know was there, and to keep going, no matter what. It's about music and the secret song that plays in your soul. 

Earthbound is a warm, deeply heart-felt game that also happens to feature zombies, bubblegum chewing monkeys, time travel, secret civilizations full of unknown creatures, and a sequence where you beat up an entire police force one cop at a time. 

That is not the kind of game Mother 3 is. 

I suppose I wasn't really sure what I expected Mother 3 was going to be. All I'd really known was Earthbound, plus the 5 or so hours I'd played of the original NES game, retroactively renamed from "Mother" to "Earthbound Beginnings" in 2015. The retro Americana vibes I felt in Earthbound are even stronger in Beginnings. Though the story of Earthbound Beginnings claims it takes place in the 1980's, the visual identity rings much closer to the 50's or 60's. One of round vintage Cadillacs, greasers with big pompadours, and roaming hippies preaching peace and love. 

Mother 3 deliberately obscures when and where it's set, for reasons that will eventually become clear. You better get used to it too, because holding information back is kind of a running theme. 

Because if I'm being totally honest, I didn't like Mother 3. And at first, I was struggling to figure out why. Earlier when I said "I loved RPGs", that's because my life changed to a point where I felt like I didn't have room for them anymore. Games with lots of dialog meant they demanded my full, undivided attention. When I was sitting at a TV or a computer, I was often multitasking between multiple forms of output -- I'd be doing work while watching a Youtube video or listening to a podcast, and that slowly began to push out story-driven games like RPGs in favor of lighter, more replayable experiences I could engage with while I also did something else.

The one place that was not true was in the portable space. I didn't have a smartphone for the longest time, so I'd often find myself in a commute or on a lunch break at work with nothing to do but pull out something like my Nintendo DS and crank away at an RPG. I devoured games like Final Fantasy IV, Phantasy Star Zero and Bowser's Inside Story. Even games I did not particularly like, such as Kingdom Hearts re:Coded and Pokemon Pearl ended up getting a lot of play. 

At some point that changed, and it changed so gradually I didn't even realize it for the longest time. Over the last ten years I have tried and failed to enjoy portable versions of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, and found neither game to my taste. FF5 felt far too boilerplate in terms of structure and I simply got bored of it halfway in. With FF6, hype had led me to believe it was some kind of life-changing RPG super-classic, and I came away extremely unimpressed with both its story and its pacing. 

Both FF5 and FF6 came at a time after I'd finally gotten a few Android devices of my own -- in fact, most of Final Fantasy V was played on a Samsung tablet while I was at work. By now, I was starting to question whether or not having breezy mobile games like Pac-Man 256 was hurting my ability to commit to longer RPGs, even in the last space where it felt like I could sit down and focus on them. 

This is sort of what spurred me to start Mother 3 at all: since I was at my brother's place, my desktop computer and most of my video games were on the other side of town. All I had with me was a 12 year old laptop that was only good as a word processor, and a handheld emulation device called an "Anbernic". As the weeks stretched into months, I needed something to do or I was going to go insane. It seemed like no better time to knock something off my bucket list, but now it was starting to feel like strike three with portable RPGs. 

My malaise only added fuel to the fire: am I now simply too distractible everywhere? Would I rather be playing simple, quick-hit arcade style games, forever? 

It seemed like the perfect scapegoat, too. Maybe the problem wasn't that Final Fantasy VI hasn't aged very well, and more just the fact that my tastes had changed. After all, Final Fantasy VI is deeply beloved and considered one of the best games in the series. Perhaps I was the problem. 

But that's not entirely true. The problem with FF6 is that its story simultaneously felt too complex and dead simple at the same time. By now, I was engaging with RPGs where I'd only play them for 20-30 minutes once a week, and I could never remember what was going on because the plot felt like it was over my head. But when a major event would happen, it was always conveyed in this rushed, shallow way. The reason I could never remember what was going on is because nothing ever felt important enough to leave a lasting impact on me. 

That was never true with Mother 3. Even though it took me close to three full years to finish it, it wasn't that hard to recall where I'd left off, even if "where I'd left off" was over four months ago. 

No, the further I got into Mother 3, the clearer it became that I was not vibing with the story. 

Whereas the first two Earthbound games seemed to be deeply mired in warm feelings of childhood nostalgia, Mother 3 is a bitter, angry game about how much growing up sucks. All three games are of children coming of age and taking their first shaky steps into adulthood, but whereas Earthbound wields rose-tinted sweetness, Mother 3 grabs you by the neck and lays out a cold, harsh reality. 

You play as Lucas, who has a twin brother named Claus, and a father, a cowboy named Flint. The death of their mother shatters their entire family; both Flint and Claus have emotional breakdowns, the latter of which ends in Claus running away from home and Flint leaving to go find him. Both of them vanish. That leaves you, as Lucas, in the care of your grandfather, Alec.

Unfortunately for Lucas, the accident that killed his mother was only the start of a dangerous chain of events, and he soon finds himself swept up in adventure in the way RPG protagonists generally do. Earthbound set itself apart from typical RPG tropes by getting away from fantastical elements and basing itself in real life (albeit a strange, exaggerated version of it). Places with bicycles, fast food, and ATMs.

Mother 3 generally avoids this. You're introduced to Tazmily Village, an isolated farming community of log cabins and dirt roads, buried deep within the heart of the Sunshine Forest.

It's not really known when or where Mother 3 is set. Compared to Earthbound's attachment to contemporary America, Sunshine Forest and the areas surrounding it feature strange creatures like dragons, and even old, dilapidated castles. And yet Mother 3 also seems to have more in common with the wild-west-era American frontier than it does anything else, but even that isn't quite right. 

Tazmily is presented as the ultimate in idyllic life. It's a place where everybody helps everybody, intrinsically, out of the goodness of their own hearts. Poke around at the start of the game and you'll find that though they do have a jail, it's never been used, because nobody has ever committed a crime. 

Until one day, a mysterious man named Fassad appears. He's quick to charm the residents of Tazmily, and introduces the village to the concept of money. He also introduces the concept of deception, as in the night, Fassad steals some of that same money, sowing the first seeds of greed and distrust in these simple people. This rapidly transforms Tazmily from a sleepy, easy-going community to a bustling town of paved roads, automobiles, and even, thanks to further gifts from Fassad, technological entertainment delivered by his "Happy Boxes" -- cubes with embedded, glowing screens that emit a hypnotic signal intended to make people feel good (and more willing to spend their newly acquired finances). 

As Lucas, you oppose all of this. Fassad is clearly an evil, scheming man, both establishing and sabotaging a structure of financial power for his own gain, and its changing Tazmily for the worse. Since Fassad has arrived, Tazmily has seen an increase in monster attacks, and eventually even freak lightning storms that destroy whole entire buildings -- which coincidentally always belong to people that oppose Fassad. 

Funny how that works.

After Lucas and his grandpa Alec accuse Fassad, he uses his foothold with the people of Tazmily to brand you as a traitor. The very people that once treated you like family now curse your name for daring to threaten their modernized way of life. Soon, the first mayor of Tazmily officially disowns you, your grandfather is locked up in the newly built elderly care center, and your house somehow ends up being the next thing obliterated by the mysterious lightning storm. 

It's a hell of a first impression. The dominating message Mother 3 sends in its opening chapters is that things used to be better. Back when it was just people helping people, before the days of television, and cars, and roads, and even money. When the only thing that mattered was the sweat on your brow, the food in your stomach, and where the sun was in the sky. 

It felt cynical to me. Jaded. Things were different in 2006 when Mother 3 first came out, but it's hard not to read that today as some extension of the tired complaints around having too many devices and too much convenience. Like that meme that simply blames all of society's problems on having a phone. And it's a well Mother 3 goes back to over and over and over again: that Fassad brings the corruption of money, the corruption of technology, and the corruption of modern civilization, turning the residents of Tazmily into rude, vapid, ignorant zombies who have grown complacent with the increasingly bad things happening around them. 

And that's not the only thing in the game that can be read as cynical, either. More than once Mother 3 presents us with scenarios where Lucas faces down adult responsibilities and uses this as a way to express something depressing or frustrating as just being the way the world works. Such as early on when Lucas has to enter a factory as a new employee, and we're told about the joys of child labor -- including the hard hours you're expected to work for minimal pay.

Or how about when you receive a fast travel vehicle halfway through the game. Not only will it become permanently unusable if you accidentally allow it to run out of fuel (pretty easy, considering there's no visible fuel gauge), but refueling it incorrectly will cause it to explode, also rendering the vehicle useless. After all, you're just a dumb kid, and complex machines like these are meant to be cared for properly. 

Some of this is definitely meant to be more funny than serious or soul crushing, but the whole game has this rough edge to it that wasn't there in the original Earthbound, where Lucas brushes up against some fact of adulthood and it serves as an uncomfortable lesson. I couldn't help but read it as the game imparting something about how much growing up sucks, and how much that's just a part of life. Your parents will die, your neighbors are ignorant, work sucks and you'll probably mess it up anyway. Get over it. 

I even got this impression coming from the game's own upgrade systems. Both Lucas and another party member Kumatora can learn PSI abilities, which are basically the game's magic spells. When Lucas or Kumatora gets strong enough to learn a new PSI ability, they break out in an uncontrollable fever, a status effect that limits your ability to do certain things like sprinting. Until that fever breaks, you have to slowly walk everywhere. 

It doesn't really add anything to the experience. It doesn't make the game more fun, or more exciting. It's just one of those annoying things you have to put up with, because again, that's life, kid. Sometimes you get sick and you just can't move very fast.

The overall vibe of cynicism gets even worse as you start encountering Mother 3's handful of references to Earthbound. Mother 3 may go out of its way to forge a narrative separate from Earthbound, but there are definitely more than a few scenes referencing special moments from that game, and at least to me, all of them felt extremely pandering. It was as if Mother 3 was beating me over the head, jumping up and down shouting, "It's that thing you remember! Do you remember? Remember Earthbound? Look, we can do that thing too!" 

The further you progress in the game, the more these references change from feeling pandering to almost being mocking. It's eventually revealed that the game's true antagonist, and the man giving orders to Fassad, is Porky, the mean little rich kid from Earthbound. Porky has now become a man who seemingly lives in the past, having constructed multiple shrines of mementos from his adventures battling Ness and friends in the previous game. The ultimate version of this is his monument to nostalgia, New Pork City, the final area of Mother 3. 

It's effectively one gigantic theme park patterned after the major locales of Earthbound, all focused around celebrating how great Porky was back then, and how great he apparently still is.

And again, it felt unnecessarily angry. Just like how Fassad conquered and spoiled the idyllic village of Tazmily, Porky had taken ownership over Earthbound nostalgia and made it feel dirty. It felt like Mother 3, a game that went out of its way to be so different from Earthbound, sometimes almost shockingly so, was now spitting directly in my face. Porky, the ultimate obnoxious loser who just won't go away, refuses to let go of Earthbound. And you don't want to be like Porky, do you? 

It started to feel insulting. Several times over the course of playing Mother 3, I was considering quitting the game and never looking back because it seemed to be going out of its way to twist the knife. Was Mother 3 somehow bitter about Earthbound's legacy? 

Again, I had done my absolute best to avoid spoilers. Blocking Mother-related tags on social media was just the first step. In general, when Mother 3 came up in casual conversations I was privy to, I would quietly excuse myself and find somewhere else to be until I was sure they had changed subjects.

There has been a degree of "spoiler culture" discourse in recent years. Some claim it's a marketing tactic. Marvel movies only make you care so much about spoilers because that's how they get butts in seats on opening weekend. I don't know about that -- I've cared about spoilers my entire life, and I know I'm not alone. The pilot episode of the seminal sitcom Seinfeld ends with Jerry trying to avoid spoilers for a Mets baseball game that he recorded. And that was 1989. It's been a valid concern for much longer than any notion of a summer blockbuster movie.

Simply put, surprises are better when they are surprising. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to like surprises, but I think you'd have to be a pretty sad sack to go out of your way to ruin a surprise for someone else. For people who aren't curmudgeons about it, there are few things better in life than a nice surprise. Something unexpected like that could make a person's whole day, if not their whole week.

If modern movie culture has done anything, it's made people unable to keep spoilers to themselves. Blocking social media terms will only get you so far. When an artist posts a piece of fan art or friends share memes and they don't include any text, then there's nothing for the blocking algorithm to detect. And when a conversation starts with spoilers, there's simply no time to avoid the landmine -- which, to be fair, was the final punchline Jerry suffered in the Seinfeld pilot, as his neighbor Kramer blurted out the results of the game before Jerry had a chance to protest.  

Many of Mother 3's biggest mysteries were spoiled well in advance of me ever actually playing the game. The biggest one being the reveal of the mastermind behind the game's Pigmask Army, the aforementioned Porky Minch. Mother 3 goes to great lengths to tease this mystery out across its entire 30 hour run time, dropping major hints as you pass the halfway point. 

And then Porky, in his Mother 3 form, cameos as an early boss battle in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, one of the ten best selling games on the Nintendo Wii. Thanks to director Masahiro Sakurai, more people know who the final boss of Mother 3 is than have actually played Mother 3 (or, let's be honest, will ever play Mother 3). 

This is why I freely mentioned Porky earlier, because if anyone knows anything about Mother 3 at this point, it's that Porky is the primary villain. The same goes for New Pork City, which was a prominent arena in Smash Bros.

In a roundabout way, Smash Bros. was also responsible for the other major Mother 3 spoiler I bore witness to; Mother 3 pixel artwork ended up being used in other Smash Bros. games over the years, including artwork of other characters with secret identities. That hasn't stopped a number of Smash Bros. fans from casually name-dropping the true, unmasked identity of this character online. I may have avoided conversations about Mother 3, but the tendrils of these spoilers extended far beyond its humble borders. Sometimes, you just can't escape it.

This is not me drumming up any sort of "woe is me" sympathy, mind you. But ultimately, it did have an effect on me. In most of Mother 3's cutscenes, I was waiting for the big reveals I knew were coming. Expectation is everything, and when you're watching every cutscene through a microscope, it changes how you see things. There's the old adage about being so focused on one tree that you miss seeing the rest of the forest, but imagine you're so zoomed in you can't even see the one tree, and you're just kind of... stuck there.

I often wondered if my general frustration with Mother 3's aggressive tone was related to the fact I knew some of its biggest late game emotional beats 30 hours in advance. 

Would its numerous Earthbound references still feel so patronizing if I didn't know what was coming? Or would all of its cute little surprises and shocking revelations make for a more enjoyable game over the long term?

Maybe the whole thing started off on the wrong foot in general. It's definitely a choice to play a game about characters processing the death of their mother while you yourself are processing the death of your mother. Characters in the game itself get bitter about this, so doesn't it make sense that I would be, too? Again, expectation is everything, and sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It could have just been a bad time in my life to experience this story.

And to some degree that's true, because the thing about Mother 3 is that I just didn't get it for the longest time.

Despite a big rant about spoiler culture just now, I can't talk about this without spoiling Mother 3's last big secret, because it turns out to be central to the game's entire theme. However, in my defense, I am giving you a big warning: If you've somehow read this far and still care about preserving the game's final mystery (and parts of the ending to Earthbound, too), this is your signal to turn back now. 

Okay. Ready?

So while the people of Tazmily are comfortable and protective of their newly developed suburban lifestyle, past the game's halfway point they all start talking about a far off land: the big city. It's a place where dreams are made, or so they're told. And as Mother 3 starts down its home stretch, Lucas and friends return to find Tazmily deserted. Everyone who's anyone has left for New Pork City. 

The reality of New Pork City is a lot more depressing than the dream, but then it always would be. The residents of Tazmily find it more trashy than cool. A lot of the theme park rides are broken, and those that still function are kind of dangerous. There's even open sewer vents leaking noxious gasses. And at the center of it all stands the massive Empire Porky Building.

Lucas and his friends are only allowed into the building when the time is right. Until then, you have to wander around New Pork City and explore. 

Those open vents turn out to be an invitation to enter the sewer when Lucas's dog, Boney, becomes lost. Reuniting with Boney leads you to discover a secret entrance to the less glamorous parts of New Pork City, and you find yourself in an old, run down apartment complex. Though the hall is strewn with trash and grime, at the very end you find an apartment belonging to a strange man named Leder. 

You initially meet Leder very early in the game. He's an older resident of Tazmily known for being unnaturally tall -- well over four times taller than most characters in the game. And to most people living in Tazmily, Leder is known to never speak. His only job is acting as a human watch tower, armed with a bell to be rung when there is danger. 

Leder's apartment in New Pork City is reasonably sized for a single person, with two floors, but for a man of his stature, Leder makes the space look tiny. However, by climbing up to the second floor, Lucas can now finally talk to Leder face to face for the first time. As it turns out, Leder can talk, but by being so tall, most people couldn't hear him. Not that it mattered much, given Leder had taken a vow of silence in order to protect the true origin of Tazmily Village. Given the circumstances, and considering Lucas is old enough now, Leder believes it is finally time to learn the truth.

The truth being that despite Mother 3's outward appearance of taking place in a fantasy land full of dragons and chimera, it is in fact a distant future earth. Or, well... what's left of it. 

According to Leder's retelling, after bracing itself for the apocalypse, humanity finally found itself at the end of the world as we know it. Facing mutually assured extinction, a select group of individuals boarded something known as "The White Ship" and traveled to the furthest, most secretive location on earth in order to escape destruction. Once they arrived at this mysterious island, those people used a device to erase the memories of their past lives. 

The idea was to start over from scratch, free from the bonds that lead to the destruction of the old world. And so, the simple farming village of Tazmily was born. It is very likely that Lucas is one of the first generation of people born and raised in Tazmily.

For years, Leder not only kept watch over Tazmily Village, but over its people, as well. Entrusted as one of the only people who knew the truth.

Tazmily Village was a success. Its people lived in peace and prosperity, free from greed and power. However, one day, a man named Porky appeared. Porky was not from this world -- not from the old world, and not a part of this new one, either. Using the Phase Distortion machine from the end of Earthbound, Porky had been carving a swath of chaos through all of time and space. Having been defeated and ejected from pretty much every other reality, Porky eventually found himself here: the last, most defenseless place on the timeline. 

With nobody around to tell him no, Porky set about treating the island like his own personal playground. He used the Phase Distortion Machine to pull in creatures from alternate dimensions, he used forbidden science to establish an army and build factories. And, once Porky became aware of Tazmily and the truth of "The White Ship", he made it one of his goals to restore their memories and further exploit their desires.

Leder's story recontextualizes all of Mother 3. It's not a game about people being corrupted by modern society; instead, it's a game about people being unable to escape it. That, despite their best efforts to run away from it, forget about it, and start over, who they are still catches up to them. When the residents of Tazmily brand Lucas as a traitor, they aren't doing it drunk on their shiny new toys, it's more that their old habits are re-asserting themselves. Not a people being corrupted, but a people who simply had their existing nature freed. Human beings acting like human beings.

This recontextualizes Porky's role in the story, too. More than being the harbinger of nostalgia, Porky takes advantage of Tazmily's amnesia to rewrite history to his benefit. His shrines to Earthbound memorabilia are less about making us remember what happened in the previous game and more about establishing his version of events, where he can refer to Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo as his "precious friends" instead of what they actually were: the band of kids that stopped him from bringing about the eradication of the known universe. 

Instead of shunning the past, Mother 3 is telling us that not only is running away from our history impossible, but in trying to do so, we open ourselves up to an even worse and easily exploitable weakness where guys like Porky get to catalyze their twisted version of history. Only by moving forward, unafraid, with courage and the full knowledge of where we came from, can we create a truly better world. We cannot bury who we used to be; we must accept and grow beyond it. 

There is no stronger denouement to this ideal than the game's very, very end. 

All throughout the game, Lucas has dealt with two of Porky's highest ranking officers. The first one being Fassad, who brings commerce and greed to the people of Tazmily. The other one, someone I haven't really mentioned until now, is only known as "The Masked Man." Mother 3 pits The Masked Man against Lucas as sort of a rival -- he's one of the small handful of humans you meet able to use PSI abilities, and most of them are identical to what Lucas can do.

In the lead up to actually meeting Porky in the flesh for the first time, Lucas finally catches up with his dad, Flint. Lucas hasn't seen his father in years, not since the incident after their mother's funeral that broke up their family. And yet Mother 3 treats his reappearance as strangely casual. There's no big, emotional reunion. Flint and Lucas barely even acknowledge it. Flint is just here now, another NPC milling about with the residents of Tazmily.

On the way to the final showdown, Flint will suddenly ask you to stay behind. He plans to face Porky alone. 

And this is probably supposed to raise all kinds of strange questions. Could Flint be the Masked Man? After all, if Lucas has PSI abilities, maybe that's a trait that runs in the family. Maybe he inherited it from Flint, and that's why The Masked Man has all the same abilities. 

But just one or two rooms later, you find Flint completely laid out. He faced Porky and The Masked Man and came away defeated. It now falls on Lucas and his friends to stop them. Before Lucas leaves, Flint offers one more piece of information for us: The Masked Man, the rival Lucas has faced almost the entire game, is actually his twin brother, Claus. 

Once Porky is successfully dealt with, the final battle of Mother 3 comes down to brother versus brother. Claus, the boy who ran from his tragedy, and Lucas, the hero, the boy who became a stronger person by overcoming that tragedy.

That's it. That's everything Mother 3 is trying to say. It doesn't get much clearer than that.

Watching the credits roll, I couldn't help but think back to earlier in the game. There I was, having just arrived in New Pork City, and I was talking to my friends about how it had taken me close to three years to finish Mother 3. I'd only play the game in fits and starts because I didn't really like it, but I was forcing myself through it anyway. 

One friend told me, "If you haven't enjoyed the first 25 hours, then it's not like the last five or ten is going to change your mind." 

It really cannot be understated how talking to Leder completely rewrote my entire perspective on this game. But then you also have to wonder: how many more people were in the same boat I was and didn't keep going? People who got fed up with feeling like the game was bitter and patronizing and just gave up? 

I knew there must have been something special in this game. You have to figure that, given the circumstances (sequel to a 10+ year old RPG, only released in Japan), total lifetime sales figures for Mother 3 are probably under five million copies. Probably under two million, if I'm being honest. That's still in the realm of success, especially for 2006, but Nintendo is also a company that deals in games with 20 million, 40 million, even 60 and 80 million plus sales. Mother 3 is some very small potatoes for them. 

Despite such a comparatively modest success, Mother 3's influence feels hard to ignore. From fueling skits on Robot Chicken to Adventure Time and Undertale's whole... everything, Mother 3 (and the wider franchise as a whole) is extremely beloved by many, even if it doesn't do record breaking sales numbers. 

And that's before you figure in the whole fan translation angle, too. Everything about Mother 3 screams something that should be niche, and yet it's downright prolific.

It demanded more respect than giving up before seeing the credits roll. If I had quit upon reaching New Pork City, I would have missed this game's whole redemption arc. 

I suppose, then, that just makes this the chronicle of a long, difficult, emotional journey. One I originally felt like I needed to do more than I actually wanted to. That in itself is just another one of those many things adults just have to deal with, right? That's in keeping with the themes of the game.

And, ultimately, there is light at the end of this tunnel. I guess it's not really about charging forward with courage, it's more that as long as you hold on to yourself, everything will be okay. Everyone has their tragedies. But closing yourself off from tragedy or running away from it isn't going to fix you. Your love is what will save you. 

The love you share with family. The love you share with friends. The love you share with the world. 

Love meant Flint never gave up trying to save Claus, even as that same boy tried to kill him. 

Love led Kumatora, Duster and Boney to stay with Lucas no matter how strange or frightening things became. Together, they faced deadly mutants, the darkest hallucinations, and even had to contend with the possibility that all human life on their planet might cease to exist.

Love was Lucas never abandoning the people of Tazmily, even as they shunned him. 

Love will provide you with a strength beyond anything else in this universe. No matter how much adult life beats you down, love will always be the single greatest and most simple thing we all have. Rich or poor, old or young, love is the power that binds us all. It deserves to be cultivated, protected, and celebrated. Love heals all. Without it, we cease to be human. And believing in love is what takes the most courage.

But only through love can we find the way forward.

[gubbles-owo]

When whipping up Railgun in two weeks' time for a game jam, I aimed to make the entire experience look and feel as N64-esque as I could muster in that short span. But the whole game was constructed in Godot, a modern engine, and targeted for PC. I just tried to look the part. Here is the same bedroom scene running on an actual Nintendo 64:

I cannot overstate just how fucking amazing this is.

Obviously this is not using Godot anymore, but an open source SDK for the N64 called Libdragon. The 3D support is still very much in active development, and it implements-- get this-- OpenGL 1.1 under the hood. What the heck is this sorcery...

UH OH, YOU'VE BEEN TRAPPED IN THE GEEK ZONE! NO ESCAPE NO ESCAPE NO ESCAPE EHUEHUHEUHEUHEUHUEH While there is a gltf importer for models, I didn't want to put my faith in a kinda buggy importer with an already (in my experience) kinda buggy model format. I wanted more control over how my mesh data is stored in memory, and how it gets drawn. So instead I opted for a more direct solution: converting every vertex of every triangle of every object in the scene by fucking hand.

THERE ARE NEARLY NINE HUNDRED LINES OF THIS SHIT. THIS TOOK ME MONTHS. And these are just the vertices. I had to figure out triangle drawing PER VERTEX. You have to construct each triangle counterclockwise in order for the front of the face to be, well, the front. In addition, starting the next tri with the last vertex of the previous tri is the most efficient, so I plotted out so many diagrams to determine how to most efficiently draw each mesh. And god the TEXTURES. When I painted the textures for this scene originally, I went no larger than 64 x 64 pixels for each. The N64 has an infamously minuscule texture cache of 4kb, and while there were some different formats to try and make the most of it, I previously understood this resolution to be the maximum. Guess what? I was wrong! You can go higher. Tall textures, such as the closet and hallway doors, were stored as 32 x 64 in Godot. On the actual N64, however, I chose the CI4 texture format, aka 4-bit color index. I can choose a palette of 16 colors, and in doing so bump it up to 48 x 84.

On the left, the original texture in Godot at 32 x 64px. On the right, an updated texture on the N64 at 48 x 84px. Latter screenshot taken in the Ares emulator.

The window, previously the same smaller size, is now a full 64 x 64 CI4 texture mirrored once vertically. Why I didn't think of this previously in Godot I do not know lol

Similarly, the sides of the monitors in the room? A single 32 x 8 CI4 texture. The N64 does a neat thing where you can specify the number of times a texture repeats or mirrors on each axis, and clip it afterwards. So I draw a single vent in the texture, mirror it twice horizontally and 4 times vertically, adjusting the texture coordinates so the vents sit toward the back of the monitor.

The bookshelf actually had to be split up into two textures for the top and bottom halves. Due to the colorful array of books on display, a 16 color palette wasn't enough to show it all cleanly. So instead these are two CI8 textures, an 8-bit color index so 256 colors per half!! At a slightly bumped up resolution of 42 x 42. You can now kind of sort of tell what the mysterious object on the 2nd shelf is. It's. It is a sea urchin y'all it is in the room of a character that literally goes by Urchin do ddo you get it n-

also hey do u notice anything coo,l about the color of the books on each shelf perhaps they also hjint at things about Urchin as a character teehee :3c I redid the ceiling texture anyways cause the old one was kind of garbage, (simple noise that somehow made the edges obvious when tiled). Not only is it still 64px, but it's now an I4 texture, aka 4-bit intensity. There's no color information here, it's simply a grayscale image that gets blended over the vertex color. So it's half the size in memory now! Similarly the ceiling fan shadow now has a texture on it (it was previously just a black polygon). The format is IA4, or 4-bit intensity alpha. 3 bits of intensity (b/w), 1 bit of alpha (transparency). It's super subtle but it now has some pleasing vertex colors that compliment the lighting in the room!

Left, Godot. Right, N64. All of the texture resolutions either stayed the same, or got BIGGER thanks to the different texture formats the N64 provides. Simply put:

THE SCENE LOOKS BETTER ON THE ACTUAL N64.

ALSO IT RUNS AT 60FPS. MOSTLY*. *It depends on the camera angle, as tried to order draw calls of everything in the scene to render as efficiently as I could for most common viewing angles. Even then there are STILL improvements I know I can make, particularly with disabling the Z-buffer for some parts of the room. And I still want to add more to the scene: ambient sounds, and if I can manage it, the particles of dust that swirl around the room. Optimization is wild, y'all. But more strikingly... fulfilling a childhood dream of making something that actually renders and works on the first video game console I ever played? Holy shit. Seeing this thing I made on this nearly thirty-year-old console, on this fuzzy CRT, is such a fucking trip. I will never tire of it.

[dippydippycritiques]

Under Night In Birth 2: Sys Celes is a DEAD GAME (My Last Post On The State Of UNI2)

I don't even know where to start with this. I feel like this is the third time I had to address my issues with the sequel. A few months back, I had made multiple different attempts to learn and play the damn game. I even went to discord, which in the end without going into detail, did not get me to enjoy the game either.

I gave it my best shot. I listened to the fans who said there is, in fact, a way to play with other people online (I play on the PS5, not PC cause I don't enjoy it)...but it's been six months since UNI2's release and I'm done being nice. The gloves are officially coming off.

I don't usually come off this harsh towards a video game unless I REALLY have something to say. So if you don't want to listen to me critique and/or bash UNI2 and how it was handled, scroll away, but to me. UNI2 is not only one of the worst sequels ever made. It is also, to me, the worst fighting game I have ever played, period. The gameplay is the ONLY saving grace. It's just too bad that network mode literally has a total of 0 people online to learn it! And before anyone asks. Some people have messaged me and said 'well, why don't you get friends to play with you?" Some people are unfortunately not lucky enough to have friends, or friends with the same interests as other people. When I go online every other night to play BBTAG, that is my escape from reality. It is a game I can feel good playing so that I can forget about my troubles for a couple of hours. Even though there are people who will say "Well, back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, you HAD to find someone to play fighting games with in real life."

Those days are OVER.

Having an online system with a big pool of people in your fighting game should be THE STANDARD. It's one thing if your franchise isn't the type of genre or type of game (like a single player game) that would incorporate an online mode. Fighting games are different. They should ALWAYS have an online mode for people who still want to play and can't find friends to play with. That will be my piece on this subject. Now I want to go into why Under Night In Birth 2: Sys Celes fails on every level.

It is Monday after all (or it was Monday, I had to stop writing half way through) and THIS was the face I made when I realized this game was DEAD AF.

The Character Art

OK, I want to start off with probably the most controversial thing that I cannot prove, but is just speculation, and that's the artwork. I found this out quite recently, but the artist who worked on the first UNI game, Seiichi Yoshihara, is the SAME artist for UNI2. I don't know if the guy posts artwork on a different site in Japan just so I can see if anythings changed, but to me. There is no way someone who had that much style and talent when creating the original designs would forget basic anatomy or facial structure for UNI's sequel. I need to see different artwork from him outside of UNI to really confirm my fears, but the speculation part of this is, unfortunately, I think the guy was rushed and it shows in the art he put out.

I'm not the one that usually says "toxic work environment" when it comes to extremely daunting tasks for a single person with a strict deadline...but man does this feel like it. I just don't think this artist would pump out something mediocre and be ok with it. I would like to believe he clearly trained and practiced his art style already for many years before UNI. Again, I cannot prove this so please take what I say with a gain of salt, but all the signs are there and if it turns out to be true? It was in no way Seiichi Yoshihara's fault and the blame should be shifted towards whoever heads French Bread or ArcSystems. Since we don't know the full story of how UNI2 got developed, it's hard to really point fingers at the right person at the moment until someone speaks up, but if I had to guess. I wouldn't be surprised if ArcSystems was the main contributing factor. I don't believe that the people at French Bread would what to put out a bad game either...but it happened. Until we learn more about UNI2's development, this is really all I can say on the matter when it comes to the artwork.

I'm not going to pick apart the character designs again as doing so would take an hour to really digest it all, but if you know, you know. It's not good, like at all.

Ok, thank you for making it this far. Here's a picture of a dog licking an ice cream cone.

Marketing and Lead Up To UNI2's Launch

What marketing? Welp, that pretty much sums it up. No, but in all seriousness. One of French Breads biggest mistake before the trailer was even shown was that UNI2 was rumored to be a "sequel," when it really isn't. The only reason why it was given the title "UNI2" was due to the arcade mode which was very sloppily put together with no rewarding pay off...that's it. Take that away and UNI2 is literally a copy/paste of the original except everything got downgraded and I mean EVERYTHING. I will talk more about that in a moment, but calling UNI2 a sequel immediately set high expectations for the game that were NEVER going to be there. I fell for this trap myself.

French Bread had several years to work on it. Why couldn't they make new sprites? Or give the same sprites they already had a new coat of paint? Something, anything at all! To imply that your game is a "sequel," to me, by definition would mean French Bread would take the time to create something new from the ground up and upgrade everything. If Devil May Cry 2 copy and pasted all the same mechanics, boss fights, castle areas, and items from the first game EXACTLY how they were with very little changes at all. That game would more than likely be considered a port with very minor tweaks to it, not a sequel. This use of the word "sequel" for UNI2 set up French Bread to fail right from the gate.

So when the first trailer dropped and I saw the artwork. I pretty much knew exactly what kind of game we were going to get. It would be one thing if there was ANY kind of marketing for UNI2 at all...but there wasn't. You can argue that as long as the game is still fun, which it is, you can forgot about all the other things that make it bad...but you have to have a sizable player base to play the damn game! For the time I was on Twitter, I don't even think there was any promotional material at all for UNI2. If I remember right, French Bread doesn't even have a twitter account, and if they do. Everything that was posted about the game completely went under the radar, and due to that. Most casuals who liked playing fighting games didn't know about it's existence. The only people who were following it closely are fans that were already playing BBTAG or UNICLR hoping that, maybe, UNI2 will be "the underdog that changes the fighting game community forever..." There have been many videos of people claiming that on YouTube before the damn thing even dropped. Fans who have already been playing UNICLR for years flocked to their cameras to say that "UNI2 will change everything!." No, it hasn't, and the lack of any growth in the player base for the past several years is my proof.

Point is, when the game dropped in January. There were SOME new players giving it a shot, and the people who wanted to learn it got bullied by the veterans who have already been playing UNI for YEARS! UNI2 needed to market it's game heavily towards new fans so that casuals could learn and fight other casuals instead of being forced into a match with a veteran. This lack of marketing is why UNI2 is now forever stagnant. It will never grow a player base so that beginners can learn how to play along side each other, and even outside of that. People should be able to experiment and mess around with a fighting game without thinking their livelihood is on the line. Fans of fighting games can still have fun with them without taking every match so seriously, and if these new players later on want to expand their knowledge? Let them, don't force them! Forcing players to become better overnight will drive any players who are interested left far, far away. That's the point I am trying to make.

The marketing and the lack of new players to fight is ultimately what doomed this game from the start, and to make matters worse, there isn't really anything "sequel" worthy about UNI2 other then the terrible, terrible endings for many of them (with Gordeau's. Wagner's and Merkavas being some of the exceptions to that rule.) Speaking of which, we should probably move on to those terrible things, huh?

I don't know. I wanted a picture of a gerbil. Here it is! Cute huh?

Alright, now onto--

EVERYTHING ELSE

UNI2 is seriously, SERIOUSLY the definition of a copy/paste sequel with one or two exceptions. The artwork and UI (which is complete and utter trash) and the one or two new moves a character would get. The majority of them either falling into good, meh, bad, or why do I need another spacing tool category. Yes, I'm talking to you Hyde. I think a counter would have benefited him better then another red energy blast of some sort to which Hyde already has several...

Anyways, outside of the "new stuff" and the gameplay, everything is worse. EVERYTHING IS WORSE! How the hell do you do that when UNICLR has already been established???

Let's start with the opening when you boot up UNI2. Who decided that a somber song would hype people up for a fighting game? UNICLRs opening theme was already perfect! Why change it if you know the new one you're putting out is going to be worse by comparison!

That's literally my motto for this game. "Why change it," when what you had in UNICLR was already close to perfect.

All the songs that you love from UNICLR and BBTAG are gone, GONE! UNICLR's opening theme? Not present! Gather under the night? GONE! Overwhelmingly Despair? Hilda's theme? One of the few banger songs in UNICLR that was aloud to how a choir? Rip that shit out and give her a somber, toned down version! Yeah, that will show her! Like...I don't...I don't understand who makes these decisions...

Another glaring issue is the lack of things to buy in this game. After a handful of matches, you will have so much money that literally, like a character from SpongeBob once said, "You won't know what to do with it!" This is mostly because the majority of the alternate colors for every character are already unlocked. Plus, despite that, there is no reason to ever buy these skins because you can customize the sprites colors yourself! Though I do like that I can do this, I particularly hate--

A.) That the the sprites colors are split into sections of the character, meaning you don't have complete control over what the characters look like and--

B.) The lack of colors! There should be a grid somewhere so that you can choose any color you want and this mechanic is not present at all! And even if it was, things like not being able to change ONLY the color of Gordeau's belt because it's color is tied to what his pants color is just fricken frustrates me. I feel like I should be able to customize the colors of the characters accessories alone and I just can't. Same with weapon colors...where's my option for that? If I want Insulator to have a dumb looking green color while Hyde is still set to his default skin, I should be able to!

Since UNI2 decided to make the alts free essentially. All that money (or IP, in think, in this game) will be spent on 5-10+ year old artwork that we have already seen in UNICLR. The only things worth buying in this game are the customization options for your online profile...but even THAT was downgraded! I missed the profile backgrounds where the characters were laying on there sides in UNICLR and I thought we would get more stuff like that here...NOPE! Every profile background and boarder is basic AF. I wish there were more options, like in BBTAG, to put your favorite characters on your profile and it's just not here in any form. Welp, there goes any hope of spending my money.

You know, and I hate to say it. Since UNI2 for a lot of people is very dependent on sex appeal. Why couldn't they just make alts where the characters are in swimsuits? Make that the most expensive thing to buy, at least then the IP would have some purpose! Ik, ik, "they can't for many of them because they would have to change the sprite," but the reason why I suggest this is because if creating new cloths for these characters is too hard and time consuming. Maybe it would have been easier for French Bread to remove sections of the sprites and just add a bathing suit instead. It would at least be SOMETHING, but we weren't aloud to get something. We got nothing most of the time and it shows with how little there is to buy in this game.

Arcade mode...god I don't even know where to start.

I have not viewed all of them, but the ones I saw, especially when it came to the night blade group were very, very bad. There were things important to Hyde's character development (specifically him promising Linne to kill her) that were never followed through with and that contributed to not only Hydes bad ending...but his MULTIPLE bad endings (yes, he has several.) What I mean by this is while Gordeau has a solid conclusion with one canon ending, Hyde has at least four of five different endings (depending on the character you play) and to me. That is just a complete and utter copout. If we need to be technical about it, I would guess that Hyde's arcade mode is the cannon ending...but because Linne is present at the end during the other characters stories. It makes me think that French Bread wanted to leave the conclusion to Hydes story open ended...in the last game in the series...probably...

Side note, I also really hate that most of Hydes friends just sort of ditch him in his arcade mode. This is something that sort of bothered me in UNICLR where he and his friends are either forced to fight or they leave him in the dirt because "it is the only way." I just never felt like Hyde's friendships were genuine (other than maybe Orie, but we don't see enough of them interacting.) It's the same problem I have with Gordeau and Hilda where in UNICLR, Gordeau pretty much swore off to being friends with her at the end of his arcade mode. In UNI2? For SOME REASON there buddy buddies again and THAT really bothers me. Especially with what happened to Rodger and how his death effected Gord throughout the series.

But yeah, most of the endings feel like either huge copouts or let downs. Orie doesn't even speak in her ending! (The last section of her arcade mode I mean) To me, it's the little things that really add up to make UNI2 a bad game.

The last thing I will say that really pisses me off is how network mode is handled. Say what you will about BBTAG, but I think ArcSystems nailed how the lobbies should work. The only things I wished they added eventually was a spectate mode or a way to turn your tag, (and your name if you want), off so that you can fight people who are your rank without the fear of losing your tag color. There are some other nitpicks, but I liked choosing avatars and talking with other people online.

UNI2 needed something like this, and I know, I understand. They might not of had the money or time (the time thing is what I'm most curious about because the rumors say UNI2 has been in development for a couple of years). However, I still stand by that aesthetically and maybe even gameplay wise. Network mode needed to change or have a complete overhaul. This might be a me thing, but it does bother me and is something I felt needed an upgrade...if it was done right which, unfortunately, I fear that it wouldn't have been.

(My reaction to working on this long, dumb ass essay for two days.)

I will end my final statement on UNI2 by saying this. The one thing as a writer that pisses me off more than anything else is seeing the potential for game to grow and become something more....but the passion to do so from it's creators is never fully there. That itch to expand your world, to develop your characters, to try to advocate for the game you put years and years into hoping it will be the next big thing...and in the end, French Bread fumbled over the finish line, hard.

UNI2 was ripe for an anime adaptation, or a manga, or SOMETHING the would get it's name out there more because trust me. I saw it's potential! I wanted it so badly to do well so that maybe, we could get more merchandise, or a spin off game, and anime, hell, even new stickers for my laptop would have bee cool!

When I am THIS critical of a game like UNI2. It's because I want so badly for it to succeed. I WANT it to be the next big thing because I adore every single character on the roster. Other than the lack of a player base, UNICLR had it all. In my opinion, if French Bread didn't have a lot of money to spend. They should have just updated or ported UNICLR to the PS5 and used the money they had to market the game and put, oh I don't know, cross console play into your online mode! Yeah, I am still extremely bothered by that and this is also a contributing factor as to why players can't find people to fight online.

This will be the last time I say anything about UNI2. It's dead, it's done, and I'm ready to move on. At this point, the only hope UNI2 has now is if in a year, or maybe relatively soon, they start promoting the game they created. Other than advertisements, the only thing that I can think of that would really give UNI2 an overhaul is if one of the Under Night characters were put into the next smash brothers game. I don't know why this is the first thing that comes to mind for me, but smash brothers helped gamers for many years become interested in other franchises, big or small. Honestly, if French Bread has no money to advertise their game. To me, putting one of their characters into smash brothers or another fighting game feels like there only play at this point. I doubt that this will ever happen, but if it did, I honest to god believe it would at least keep people interested in UNI2 for several years.

Anyways, that's it, I'm done.

I gonna go get an ice cream now I guess.

[msommers]

1, 3, 4, 14, 18 for riya, meredith and ellana!

thank youuuu xoxo we ignore how long this took between forgetfulness and having no braincells xoxoxo // questions about creating your ocs

1) What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

RIYA — because we knew the campaign at large would span the 15-year long third blight, the first thing i landed on was the base concept of a character who could grow into the type who would willingly brave that ultimate sacrifice to end the blight when it came down to it. obviously with no guarantee of Give Me That Death It's All I Want or even reaching that point, i was just interested in exploring what type of clown i could force into this inevitable character development. 

MEREDITH — god. it's been so long. it was probably her appearance because i went into origins as a baby da fan and didn't know what to expect. which is kinda funny now because her appearance is the biggest change she’s ever had thru all these years. 

ELLANA — on my second playthrough when i knew at least a little bit of what the fuck i was doing in the setting, i believe the first consideration for her was whether i wanted to double down on my interest in the elven culture in thedas that'd i'd developed during my first run of the game or if i wanted to try focused on other aspects (fairly obvious nowadays that i went with the former). 

3) How did you choose their name?

RIYA — i went back into dms with the dm and turns out i chose the name because of the cute nicknames you could get out of it. so pretty much nailed it first try because riya is iconic tbh

MEREDITH — she's one of my oldest characters which means i didn't do Any research before picking her name, meredith was chosen purely because i've been in love with the name since i first read the vampire diaries books when i was a tween. its meaning being “great ruler” was pure destiny, i'll never get over that discovery. 

ELLANA — default name pretty 🥰🥰 and no i still haven't landed on an extended version of her name, don't talk to me about it i have problems making decisions (someone send help).

4) In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?

RIYA — without a doubt the fact that mages in nevarra were given an absurd amount of freedoms compared to countless places, i loved that. i believe soon after that i stumbled upon the vague history tidbit that a duchess had donated her “palatial estate” to become the new college of magi because she had a mage daughter, and that became a solid base for the new pc right quick. riya was shaped so fast between that initial concept and these two discoveries it wasn't even funny. somewhere in there i found the grand tourney business, dunno when. 

MEREDITH — okay so take literally every element of the human noble origin story and its plot through the game and there. you got it. the entire laundry list that had me fucking obsessed with mere since the jump because everything there ticks my boxes. the politics, the family ties and history, the kingdom pride, the sense of duty that's matched in intensity only by the inescapable desire to enact justice (bordering on violent vengeance lmao) for your family and people with your own two goddamn hands because nobody else is going to get it for you. also you have a cute dog right off the bat, that rules. 

ELLANA — her creation is so. muddled to me because she was the first character i ever played a da game with, so most of the influential elements likely just popped up in inquisition at some point or other and nothing stands out there. my best guess would be that the vallaslin and god domains played a good part tho, because there being a goddess of motherhood and justice has been huge for her.

14) If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

RIYA — it physically pains me sometimes, but the first is that i have to remember just how privileged this woman was and try to reflect that in what she says and how she reacts to things (i took psychic damage when she blatantly was judging every bit of that little village). second would be that i have to remind myself how much pain and trauma is gathering up in this mage, unhealed and unacknowledged, because sometimes i can forget while caught up in all that’s going on just how fucking bad it really is. i’ll go quiet here and there during a scene not because i can’t think of what riya would say, but because i realized something would’ve triggered her to spiral into the negative feelings and all she’d be capable of is a “hm” or clear i want to get the fuck out of here one-liner lmao

MEREDITH — number one is that she’s putting noble responsibilities above all else always, sometimes to the detriment of other priorities and even relationships. second is that “canon” doesn’t matter at all and i can have fun with her story however i want, who gives a fuck. follow the fun and all that. i have to keep this in mind for her out of everyone because she has some Strong negative opinions on certain characters which have some,,,aggressive fans and that held me back for a good while lol

ELLANA — first is that she approaches things with gentleness and empathy 99% of the time, even if it’s not advisable and she has people pushing against it. second is naturally Legacy, because that fuck haunts her past, present and future. she's constantly musing on it for both herself and others, and its influence on her can't be noted enough. i have a vivid memory of pausing the hakkon dlc to repeatedly bash a pillow against my face to let out the emotions i was dealing with because the plot was trying to end my fucking life with ameridan and ellana.

18) What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

RIYA — the first thing i can think of was a few months back with the callout that correctly identified riya’s lowkey desperation to get warden-commander satine’s approval as her having mommy issues. blatantly obvious fact, yeah, but it had gone without being commented on and it took me tf out for a few minutes after hearing it. as you can imagine she’s thriving after each positive response from sending updates sent the warden-commander’s way.

MEREDITH — ooooh, a few things because of that long ass warden sheet i’ve been slowly chipping away at in the docs. i believe the most recent is that i never gave this poor woman some hobbies outside of a minor interest in map sketches, so i’ve been on-off thinking about that for a little while. who knows what i’ll land on, i’m lazy. embroidery was a contender because it's the Classic for noble ladies and also i think she deserves arts & crafts fun, just look at her life she needs it

ELLANA — nothing really, she's been consistent for a long while 🤷‍♀️ closest thing is that i did very briefly revisit the ancient idea that i think she deserves one or a few kids to fulfill her “mama bear” energy to a more literal degree but that's mostly a goof. 95% a goof. maybe 90%. if she ends up w kids at the end of this week i can’t be held accountable-

[ettadunham]

at last!!!! i played through my first ace attorney game and i'm delighted!

is ace attorney investigations: miles edgeworth (2009) the best first introduction to the series? probably not, but it's what the random generator picked, so it's what we're rolling with.

well, okay, so... i may or may not have played a little bit of the phoenix wright games by the time i'm writing this, but definitely not enough to get most references this game makes, lol. it did give me an insight into the franchise's mechanics though, and confirmed that they all share these same bones more or less.

there's a crime (usually a murder), you might even see in an intro who's the culprit, you collect evidence, make connections, most importantly though, you cross-examine a bunch of people, looking for flaws and contradictions in their statements.

the extra thing about investigations on that front seems to be well... the extra investigations. it mostly comes up in a so-called logic section where you can connect different clues together. this is a mechanic that's already a staple of a lot of detective games, except of course here connecting the wrong clues also punishes you through the game's penalty system. speaking of which...

oh my god, you do gotta be pulling clues out your ass sometimes. after a while, i dif get the hang of the game, and learned where to push (basically: almost everywhere if i wanted to be safe), and at which exact point i needed to present something i already knew was fishy, but maybe that statement actually isn't specific enough and i need to wait for another section of the game where this comes up with a more precise wording, and okay, why isn't this clue the right one??? it literally means what we want it to mean, aaaaaaaaaaa

but yes, i'm fine, and i didn't curse everyone and their moms at the end section of the game where i kept losing that one point i had in the penalty system at a certain point, and then the game loadad to a much earlier section, even when i manually saved after it, and i had to fast forward a bunch of steps every. single. time, and yes, i am fine, and i was fine, what do you mean i don'T sEEm fInE...

moving on. overall, i did have a lot of fun with this game! i enjoyed the mechanics (for the most part), the characters were delightful (franziska, my beloved <3), and their limited move sets and animations are truly something else. i now understand why these games have rewired so many people's brains i think.

the overall story that connects the 5 episodes also comes together quite nicely by the end, however, i did find the way the different episodes jumped back and forth through the timeline needlessly confusing. i love a nonlinear story, but here, i just had the constant sense that the game is probably breaking its own continuity every time. i can't even tell you if that was the case, but it did seem weird that the characters only seemed to have remember certain past events once we played through those episodes. it was a weird choice for sure.

unexpectedly, there's also a bit of what appears to be some character development for miles, and i liked how some of the relationships changed through the different episodes. there's a particular wolf man that really grew on me by the end especially.

in any case, good times all around! can only really recommend this one tbh, no complaints for me.

well...

except...

i really wish this game had a pc release, and i didn't have to play it on my phone.

yup, you heard that right, i played this game through my phone. it was originally released for the nintendo ds, but only got ported to android and ios so far. which does bum me out a bit, especially now, that i had a bit of playtime of some of the ace attorney games that had pc ports, and found it a much superior experience.

don't get me wrong, there's nothing missing with the mobile ports, the controls work perfectly in this medium, etc, but i find that for mobile games, you usually want something that a player can drop at a moment's notice, instead of something that has a more elaborate, longer narrative structure to it. this game probably worked perfectly for a handheld console, but a phone isn't really the same thing. you'll inevitably start thinking about closing the game to look at something else, or your battery gets drained, or there's a cut scene where you have to keep tapping your screen to avoid the screensaver kicking in, etc.

or maybe it's just me, and i'm the weird one for not knowing how to use my phone for gaming.

anyway, my conclusion stands though, this game is a delight, and i can't wait to play through more of the series.

take that!

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (2017) Review [Part One]

The past days I've been slowly going through the world of Crash Bandicoot as I reviewed Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot 3, and Crash Team Racing. All of which was based on their original Playstation releases. I highly recommend reading those reviews first for context. However, only focusing on the Playstation versions of these games isn't really being all that helpful due to a pair of releases that came out comparatively recently. But first, let's take a step back and see how we even got here.

Crash Bandicoot was a game published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and the titular character later became a mascot of sorts for the console it was on: the Playstation. The original Crash games were developed by a studio called Naughty Dog, however they eventually quit making Crash games. Despite that, the series kept going. On all platforms too.. what? Why are Crash Bandicoot games coming out on Nintendo consoles, Xbox consoles, and even PC? What’s happening? Did Sony do this? Well, no. You see, despite Naughty Dog creating the games and the characters and Sony publishing them, Universal Interactive (yes that Universal) owned the series. Ok, so a long time ago Naughty Dog made a weird fighting game called Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. Despite it's obscurity, this game is shockingly important because after finishing it, Naughty Dog displayed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in search of a publisher. After a bidding war, Universal Interactive won the rights to it. Universal liked it so much that they contracted Naughty Dog to make three more games for them. Those three games ended up being, of course, the Crash Bandicoot trilogy. Before that though, Naughty Dog needed to pick a console to develop the next game on. They thought the Playstation looked “sexy” so they started development for that. After a demonstration from Naughty Dog, Sony agreed to publish and partially fund the game. But Naughty Dog made 4 Crash games right? If they already made an extra one, they could just make more, right? Well in theory, but Naughty Dog thought that Universal was too difficult to communicate with. They had a great relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment though. They were so close in fact that only two years after CTR, Sony outright purchased Naughty Dog, firmly establishing their place as part of the Playstation family. 

After Naughty Dog quit, Sony published one more Crash Bandicoot game: Crash Bash. I haven’t really played Crash Bash personally, but from what I’ve heard it’s just a sub-par party game. After that, Universal decided to stop letting Sony publish Crash in favor of publishing the series on all platforms, with the first one being Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. People didn’t like that game, and I didn’t either. I’m not going to talk too much about this game mostly because it's already been mocked to death and also because it’d be kinda redundant. That’s because Wrath of Cortex is literally just a one to one ripoff of Crash Bandicoot 3, even down to the hub world. Except it’s like they saw my review of Crash 3 and said “Hey, what if we took every problem Crash 3 had and made them even worse?”. The platforming is worse because the camera is awful and they messed up the slide somehow. You have to like release the slide button and THEN jump, which is just awkward. Other than that the platforming is playable, but you rarely get to do it. Even more of the game is random bullshit now. Well over half of your playtime will be spent in those vehicle segments. While I didn’t care for the vehicles in Crash 3 because they distracted from the platforming, they were mostly just tolerable filler. In Wrath of Cortex, they all suck soo much ass. They all fucking suck and they're damn near unplayable. I kinda like the ball rolling, but that’s it. They also brought back Crash 2’s awful jetpack. They not only brought back Crash 3’s abysmal underwater stages, but 1. There’s even more of them. and 2. They’re even worse! You get this submarine which is so slow you can’t dodge the obstacles! Anyway, enough ranting. Wrath of Cortex sucks, but that’s no hot take. Everyone knows that, and it’s not just this game. Most Crash games after Naughty Dog left were less than stellar. Even the best one, Twinsanity, was so incredibly rushed that the final result was unpolished and had a lot of cut content. Needless to say, Crash fans weren’t happy, and after a disastrous reboot, they just wanted a simple return to the classics. 

Meanwhile, Universal was eventually merged with Vivendi, who owned a bunch of studios including Blizzard Entertainment. The combined new studio became known as "Vivendi Games". Fast forward to the late 2000s, Activision was foaming at the mouth over the idea of microtransactions and other recurring fees to the gaming consumer, and therefore were dying to get their hands on World of Warcraft, a Blizzard game. Vivendi Games was struggling at that time, so the two companies merged, forming into the public menace we now know as Activision Blizzard. But what about our favorite orange marsupial? Well he had games throughout the 2000s, but after the merger he slowly grew silent. In 2011, Activision Blizzard released a game called Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure. Poor Spyro, but that’s a story for another day isn’t it? Skylanders was made by Toys for Bob alongside other companies, most notably Vicarious Visions. In 2016, the final Skylanders game was released, and it had the long awaited yet melancholic return of Crash Bandicoot. His portion of the game was developed by Vicarious Visions. Announced alongside his inclusion however was a full from the ground up remake of the entire classic Crash trilogy. Months later we got a trailer and a name: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy.

Most people these days play this games in the N. Sane Trilogy, rather than their original Playstation releases so I feel I have to cover it. I'm not going to go super in depth with each game, because I already have done that with my reviews of the originals. Instead, I'm just going to focus on what makes the N. Sane Trilogy different.

Let’s start with the obvious: the graphics. Obviously they’re higher fidelity and they can certainly look quite nice at times, however they're far from perfect. Firstly, I simply don’t think that this realistic artstyle fits Crash Bandicoot. These characters were designed with a low poly, low resolution PS1 game with a far off camera in mind. Crash has big eyes, big eyebrows, and a big mouth so that he can be expressive in a way that still reads when looking at the game from a crappy CRT television. When you put this character in HD with realistic graphics where you can make out every hair on his little bandicock he just looks awful. He looks far better when he's very stylized, ala Crash 4. Even the rest of the graphics just look wrong to me. Something about how some of these levels look just feels off. It doesn't help that the game is also locked to 30fps on every console. For a modern day release, that's not acceptable. Especially considering that neither N. Sane Trilogy nor Nitro Fueled (which trust me I'll get back to) got PS5/Series X upgrades. Considering that even a modest computer like mine can hit 60fps on the PC port of N. Sane, there's absolutely no reason why next gen consoles couldn't also hit that same benchmark. Overall the N. Sane Trilogy only came out like 6 years ago and it already looks really dated to me. I honestly prefer the more timeless look of the originals. Well graphics aside, let’s go through each game one by one:

[Continued in Part Two]

[bouwrites]

But you do realize the game is set in 1890, so all of that backstory you made up for your oc is kinda useless?

Of course I realize that. That's what makes it fun. Same character, completely different circumstances.

And it's not completely useless. Aspects about his situation can be the same, depending on how much freedom the game gives in the PCs backstory. Even though he's not Harry's brother or a Scamander in the game, that doesn't mean he doesn't have a sibling he's separated from(even if the separation is a completely different circumstance), or that he isn't raised in a similar-vibed household.

Figuring out what I can keep and what I can't (and what I want to keep and what I don't) is half the fun of throwing the same characters into new worlds and fics. I have an OC that has a running gag that he exists in literally every world I write in. That's the whole point lmao.

One of my OCs, who will likely be my PC for a Hufflepuff playthrough, is originally from a modern Pokemon story and had some very specific backstory that is deeply tied to that setting. And yet I still use him all the time in other things, like a Miraculous Ladybug fic, because it's fun to adapt backstories to keep the core of the character the same, and allow for those smaller differences to further expand the character.

Probably my literal favorite thing to do with character development lol.

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

[lesbiansforboromir]

Random question; do you play LOTRO? If so, what's your opinion of the game?

Do I 'play' LOTRO? No. I INHABIT Lotro. I THRIVE in Lotro, let me explain.

LOTRO is, as of my writing this post, the gold standard for lord of the rings design and add on worldbuilding. Like is it perfect? No, I have some very niche complaints. But they literally pale in comparison to the overwhelming truth that no one has done it better than LOTRO. Their adherence to book canon is the perfect blend of visual and narrative fidelity whilst allowing themselves creative freedom to expand into the greyer areas. The effort they put into developing every single culture in middle earth is massive. Like the dunlendings are only mentioned offhand in the books? Well in lotro there are three whole areas devoted entirely to engaging with the dunlendings and their complex inter cultural politics and motives and drives. LOTRO manages to say 'is it truly the easterling's fault that their homes were ravaged by Sauron and they were subdued into his army?' whilst maintaining the sense of honour and cosmic goodness that the universe applies too.

Every culture has a different design, architecture and fashion, even the elves. The havens near lindon are different to rivendell which is in turn different to Eryn Lasgalen. They create, describe and have characters within subsections of Easterlings and Haradrim, each with their own storylines to follow. Dwarves too! The Breelands have original characters with epic arching storylines for you to engage with, as does every other area.

I started playing it... god like 11 years ago now, and was there for the release of Moria, which really emulates this mix of book fidelity vs making a good story and game. Like did dwarves actually come in behind the fellowship and start trying to reclaim moria? No! But them doing that doesn't impact any other part of the story and gives a wonderful plotline that literally had me in tears sometimes. And by now, the game has gone past the end of the books and is WELL into the months and years after Sauron's defeat. There was actually a recent dwarf-centric expansion released!

And even down to known characters! It's a far more accurate rendition of the books than any piece of media could hope to be. They add in scenes and lines to expand upon character's motives and give a more in depth view of them. Like this bit!

Boromir never says this precisely in the books to Frodo, but it's an expanding of his 'ring rant' that gives absolutely heartbreaking and viscerally understandable context to Boromir's actions! AND GOD, DENETHOR TOO, they literally have Gandalf go on an epic Denethor defense rant in the MIDDLE of Aragorn and Arwen's wedding, like I couldn't make this stuff up. I owe LOTRO my whole life.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North might be the only other piece of lotr media that's similarly devoted to creating good stories within the book's framework but it falls behind just due to the sheer scope that LOTRO has. I should also mention that they at least acknowledge that Gondor has canonically diverse skin tones within it's population and you will find black and brown people as gondorian citizens and can create brown gondorian PC's as well. They also just went ahead and made 'refugees are not only good people who should be accepted into your communities, they enrich a community and you should be happy to have them' the main plotline for the whole of Dale's story in the midst of the refugee crisis in 2019. That's not to say that the game doesn't have some pretty shitty racialised narratives and cultures too, which makes up a large proportion of my criticism of it, but in terms of mainstream lotr media I do not know anything that's done it better.

[loveydoveylex]

💫 RAYMAN GO!!!

RAYMANRAYMANRAYMAN (DOES A LITTLE DANCE)

THANK Y'ALL FOR THE ASKS! hope both of your weekends are going good!!! NOW. RAYMAN. let me take you on a JOURNEY through the years, powered by my autism.

let's start off by asking ourselves a question like we're french philosophers. who is rayman?

rayman is the creation of a man named michel ancel. ancel had always loved videogames, and he had spent much of his life doodling little characters and coming up with ideas for them. around 1992, ancel created his favourite character: rayman!

rayman ended up being left with no arms or legs in order to be easier to animate due to, y'know, several technical limitations at the time. this ended up being a fantastic decision, because not only was it unique and creative, but it opened up for so many more possibilities than normal in regards to his moveset! ah, but i'm getting ahead of myself.

around that same time, development began on a game starring ancel's new character. at first it was planned to be released on the super nintendo, but this was scrapped and it got reworked into an atari jaguar game instead. and such, in 1995, the world was introduced to our platforming limbless wonder ❤

following the release of the first rayman game, it was quickly realized how much potential this series had for its future. tons of edutainment games were created, the game got ported to a whole bunch of different platforms, and eventually, a sequel was developed for the n64 and pc in 1999. i present to you, rayman 2: the great escape!

i would insert a joke here about "Rayman had a rough transition into 3d" but that couldn't be further from the truth. rayman's transition into 3d got nothing but praise! this game has been included in multiple lists for the greatest games of all time. suffice to say, this is a common favourite among rayman fans, and for good reason!

a fun fact about this game is that it has been ported to basically every console imaginable. it's like the doom of platforming. you could probably play rayman 2 on your calculator. rayman 2 microwave speedrun when?

anyways, during this time, a tv show was also in production! it unfortunately only got four episodes in before it was cancelled, but it's still great fun. billy west voices rayman, it's hilarious, i recommend giving it a watch. it sort of follows the scrapped plot that the original rayman 2 had.

before we get to my BELOVED rayman 3, i want to point out one port of rayman 2 in particular that's interesting: rayman revolution, released in 2000!

rayman revolution is the ps2 port of rayman 2, and let me tell you, it's got, like, hours worth of more content than the original game did. it SLAPS. in my opinion, it's my favourite version of rayman 2, but some people feel it's a bit over-bloated with all the new added content. i think it's awesome though. it's got an openworld hub world and everything!

anyways, moving on from rayman 2, we get to my FAVOURITE game in the entire franchise. i love this game so much, i could gush about it for HOURS. RAYMAN 3: HOODLUM HAVOC.

I LOVE RAYMAN 3 SO MUCH, Y'ALL. IT'S INSANE. i literally have practically the entire game memorized in my head.

so for this game, michel ancel actually wasn't directly involved with a lot of it. he did, however, help out with a new redesign of our titular main character! this was 2003, everything had to have that early 2000's edge, and rayman was no exception. so he donned a hoodie, got some sick new kicks, and got a fresh sharp new haircut. and he looks SO GOOD Y'ALL but i'm not going to go into how handsome i think he is because i'm gay enough already. BUT SERIOUSLY, COME ON, JUST LOOK AT HIM, HE'S SO BADASS.

MY LOVE ❤❤❤❤❤

although rayman 3 didn't do as well as rayman 2 did, it wasn't considered a BAD game or anything (i will fight anyone who thinks this is a bad game 😤😤😤), and so the franchise continued... and we got, uh. rayman raving rabbids, in 2006.

i'm using an older ps2 cover here purely because i think it looks cooler but the game was primarily developed with the wii in mind seeing as it ended up being a party game. initially, it was developed as rayman 4, and it was supposed to be a platformer like the others (i could rant about the scrapped prototype for a WHILE) but they tossed that concept aside because they wanted to incorporate the wii playstyle into it.

i am not a huge fan of the rabbids. they're like the minions before the minions existed. i actually didn't even know they were in the same franchise as rayman until i got into the rayman franchise, because they ended up branching off and ubisoft favoured rabbids games over rayman... so he sort of got abandoned for a while. in the period between 2006 to 2011 we got some rabbids games. i'm not going to go over them because 100% honestly i do not care for them a whole lot HAHA.

well, 2011 rolls around, and our boy rayman is back in the spotlight with RAYMAN ORIGINS!

despite its title, it's a direct sequel to rayman 3, not a prequel (though it was originally supposed to be, and it was gonna detail rayman's past and how he grew into the hero that he was, but that idea was put aside last minute).

rayman's returned to his 2d platformer roots and he's here to just go through goofy shenanigans and kick some ass and i can respect that!

in 2013, we got a sequel to rayman origins, rayman legends! another great game. i played this one with two of my friends and i had so much fun.

both really good games!

anyways for the next near-decade we just got a bunch of mobile runner games that recycled origins and legends assets. they're fine, nothing noteworthy.

nowadays, ubisoft hasn't paid much mind to rayman anymore, despite him being the mascot that got them where they are today, and they still seem to favour the rabbids, considering that they got in a game with MARIO before rayman did. but it seems like ubisoft hasn't completely forgotten about their old friend... :D

let me tell you. 2023 cannot come fast enough.

[demifiendrsa]

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin | Announcement Teaser Trailer

Japanese version

It’ll launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2022.

A demo—Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version—-will launch for PlayStation 5 today and be available through June 24, 2021 at 7:59 p.m. PT / 10:59 p.m. ET. A survey will follow from June 13, 2021 through June 30, 2021, accessible from the menu screen of the demo.

Logos

Key visual

Character renders

Overview and Developer comments

About the Game

Final Fantasy VII Remake veterans Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima join forces with Team Ninja from KOei Tecmo Games to deliver a bold new vision for Final Fantasy. Get your first look at Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin . Coming to PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC in 2022.

With the memory of their struggle buried deep in their hearts…

Jack and his allies, Ash and Jed, burn with resolve to defeat Chaos as they throw open the gates to the Chaos Shrine. Yet doubts remain—are they truly the Warriors of Light the prophecy foretold?

Step into a world of dark fantasy and revel in the exhilarating, action-packed battles!

Trial version available on PlayStation 5 until June 24th, 2021.

Developer Comments

Tetsuya Nomura – Creative Producer

The initial concept for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin came up around the time following the release of Dissidia 012[duodecim] Final Fantasy. I was thinking to myself about making my next game into one that featured action elements in which locations are conquered, rather than the kind with battles against characters. Some time passed without anything coming of it, but separately I was also thinking to myself about another plan for a new series of Final Fantasy titles revolving around “the story of an angry man”. Even more time passed, at which point I received a request for a new plan, so I combined these two ideas to come up with this.

While it is Final Fantasy, it feels different—but there’s no doubt that the blood ofFinal Fantasy runs through its veins.

We’ve undertaken the challenge of finding this difficult middle ground for this mature and stylish title.

We need a little time until we’re able to complete it, and while the battle system is a bloody one, it does links to the story, so I hope you’ll use this opportunity to give it a try.

Kazushige Nojima – Story and Scenario

“It’s not a hope or a dream. It’s like a hunger. A thirst.”

When I wrote this line, I felt like the story had been brought to life.

What drives them to want to defeat Chaos as much as they do? What, then, are their hopes and dreams?

It was in this moment that what used to be fragments and pieces of story came together in a powerful way. The story that I wrote—in what seemed like a single breath after penning that line—is Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. I think it turned out to be quite a memorable story that accompanies a game which prominently features brutal imagery.

Please enjoy!

Jin Fujiwara – Producer (Square Enix)

True to its label as “a bold new vision,” this title is full of new undertakings that draw a clear distinction between it and previous Final Fantasy series titles. I can’t divulge too many details at this stage, but we prepared a glimpse of these ambitions within the trial version, including the title’s direction and overall image, so please enjoy.

I believe that the feedback we receive from all of you around the world is very important as we improve upon the title even further. Please send us your thoughts through the trial version survey or through social media.

I’m already looking forward to the day I’ll be able to play this title with you.

Daisuke Inoue – Director (Square Enix)

This is a title that has been developed with the goal of bringing something new to sit alongside the many Final Fantasy titles in the series. I think it could be considered a side story in terms of how it is positioned.

There may be some people who were disappointed that this announcement was not a new, numbered title in the series, but this game contains ambitions within that even a mainline title may not have been able to achieve.

Grounded and challenging action created by Team Ninja. Our protagonist, sprayed with blood as he literally rips apart, throws, and pulverizing his enemies. The way he looks is almost as if—

Well, we have prepared this trial version with hopes of having players experience this new flavor that the title brings with it, even if just a little bit. As we are still in development, I think there may be some areas that are not perfect and may be that way for a while to come, but I hope you’ll enjoy the trial version regardless.

Additionally, please let us know your thoughts on the game, whether it be positives or negative that you noticed—we will make great use of this feedback as we continue development.

Fumihiko Yasuda – Head of Team Ninja, Producer (Koei Tecmo Games)

Playing Final Fantasy IV 30 years ago is what made me aspire towards a career in the gaming industry, so I always hoped that someday I could be involved in the Final Fantasy series. When Team Ninja was working on Dissidia Final Fantasy, I was in charge of a different section, which meant that every night I filled my pillow with tears. I’m truly happy to be involved with a new Final Fantasy, and a title connected to its Origin at that.

Using the feedback that the players provide after playing the trial version, all of us at Team NINJA will work to make this a title that meets the expectations of not only action game fans, but also Final Fantasy series fans around the world!

Hiroya Usuda – Director (Koei Tecmo Games)

I grew up playing Final Fantasy since I was very young, so it is a great honor to have the opportunity to be involved with this title. Furthermore, I’m truly excited that Team NINJA is able to deliver the first full-on action game in the Final Fantasy series to the world.

In this trial version, we’ve made specific demo-oriented adjustments so that players of all styles will be able to enjoy it—we have incorporated elements such as multiple jobs and weapon types, adjustable difficulty levels, and great replayability. Please let us know your thoughts and feedback once you have given it a try!

Nobumichi Kumabe – Director (Koei Tecmo Games)

I’m glad we were able to announce this new Final Fantasy game—an action game in which Jack, a Warrior of Light(?), lays waste to monsters while being bathed in the spray of their blood. I’m a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series myself, so I’m going to work hard towards release so that this blood-stained Jack can become a hero!

This is a title developed with the characteristic Team Ninja level of difficulty in mind, but once you start getting the hang of it, you’ll be able to defeat enemies in an exhilarating and satisfying way. I hope you will replay the trial version many times and try out the various weapons and abilities available.

The difficulty level can be changed as well, so one recommendation I have is to start playing on an easier difficulty and gradually raise it higher for a challenge!

Demo overview

The Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version was also announced during the showcase, which gives players the opportunity to experience a taste of the full game centering on Jack and his allies—Ash and Jed—as they throw open the gates to the Chaos Shrine. Burning with the resolve to defeat Chaos, and with the memories of their struggle buried deep in their hearts, are they the foretold Warriors of Light?

Players of the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Trial Version can explore this dark fantasy world as they battle an array of iconic monsters from the Final Fantasy series, using powerful spells and abilities from a sample of jobs including warrior, dragoon and black mage.

[onebizarrekai]

v3′s art is comically terrible for a professionally distributed game in a series: a compilation

in this not-essay I will list all of the mistakes and problems I have spotted in v3′s art. don’t worry, it’s entirely for fun and I’m doing this on a whim, so please feel free to not take this seriously but also it’s hilarious and embarrassing how ridiculous this is like what happened did they speedrun the whole production or what

see, there are some things you can take as meta like “they made it bad on purpose to allude to the downfall of tv shows that have been on air for much too long” but I have a very strong feeling this is not the case due to the nature of some of these errors

disclaimer, the more I study this art, the more I fear that the artists were underpaid and underslept, so if this is in fact the case, I am so sorry to all of them but also I’m going to make fun of the art anyway

anyway let’s get started!

if you study this image for longer than 5 seconds, you will see that kaede is the only one fully shaded and keebo is literally just his normal sprite pasted into the image. every other character is just an ordinary ref, hence most of them facing the exact same direction with neutral expressions on their faces. it looks like a bad edit, and is probably one of the worst pieces of art in the game. it kind of gets better from here on, but my roasting will not.

with that out of the way, here’s the problem that officially bothers me the most and clarifies my viewpoint of “this is not meta and an actual lack of company communication”

this freaking cg, which seems normal at a glance, but some wiseass was like “oh, kaede is a girl, so obviously she’s going to be shorter than the Male Protagonist™” ah, that’s funny. because if you look at the character bios, kaede is, in fact, one inch taller than shuichi and not like 6 inches shorter as she is shown here.

also shuichi’s shoulder is disproportionate and horrendous and he looks vaguely like a jojo character, but I wasn’t even thinking about that until right now.

thanks guys, 50% of the fandom who has never bothered to check these bios thinks that kaede is like 5′3 (did the developers really put so little thought into her to the point where drawing her correctly in the game didn’t even matter??)

also I would like to point out that, even though this isn’t related to the art itself, yes, a character kaede’s size being only 117 lbs is unfeasible, but this applies to literally every character in danganronpa ever and it’s not new news that it’s unrealistic

update: someone in the tags informed me that in versions of the game that use centimeters, like the japanese version, kaede is actually shorter than shuichi, which just adds another thing to the list of weird decisions the localization team made for no reason. that said, after confirming this, kaede is 167 cm in the original, while shuichi is 171 cm, which are approximately 5′6 and 5′7 respectively, but one inch is still nowhere near as drastic as it is depicted above. (in spite of this, I would rather depict kaede as slightly taller, so I’m probably going to keep doing that.)

the journey continues!

bro if you want kaede to have shoulder length hair then stick to it to begin with

you can pretend this is at an angle all you want but they definitely committed the shorter kaede sin a second time

wait a goddamn second.

DO YOU SEE THIS

no………… it wasn’t kaede who shrank. it was shuichi who got taller

speaking of which, can we talk about how shady the perspective is in this elevator pic? look at shuichi and kokichi in comparison to kaede. kokichi, who is canonically 7 inches (edit: or 5, if you’re loyal to the original) shorter than kaede, looks taller than kaede. he’s growing too. what steroids are these gays taking

running into the room, electric boogaloo: I don’t think tsumugi is supposed to be the same height as kokichi

gonta… gonta you’re lookin a bit like a jojo character there

I love how kaito’s head looks kind of like it was pasted onto his body. why is he the same size as shuichi? shouldn’t he be high school bully size or something? his torso is teensy

ah yes, white angie.

I love this cg but why is shuichi’s right hand so much bigger than his left hand

I also love how this cg looks like they literally took pictures of trees and pasted them into the background, especially on the left. the shadows are so weird, especially closer to the ceiling, it’s difficult for me to believe they didn’t do exactly that.

return of Enlarged shuichi

puberty update: kokichi is now taller than shuichi in spite of shuichi never missing leg day. what crimes will he commit

I have to mention it, guys. this has to be one of the worst danganronpa cgs. kokichi’s facial proportions look atrocious. look at the way his face sticks out like his jaw is in the wrong place. his scarf is a pasted texture. that’s it. this moment was so iconic but the cg just looks so… so… off. like something is terribly wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.

you know what? let’s get into that ‘pasted texture’ thing.

let’s imagine you’re an artist working on a professional game. you’re assigned to draw cgs of kokichi ouma, who has a checkered scarf from hell. sure, it will be terrible to draw, but you only have to draw it once at a time! plus, perspective is pretty important, right? can you be bothered? nah, actually. let’s just copy paste a checkered pattern into the cg, because I’m sure nobody will notice. it’ll blend right in with the other cgs that someone actually put effort into drawing his scarf in, right?

no. the answer is no and I very much noticed. this genuinely looks terrible and I would understand taking a shortcut like that in fanart or even an indie game but this is a full price pc and console distributed game

(an addition: look at kokichi’s TINY HANDS in that last one)

meanwhile, they straight up forgot to color in kokichi’s scarf in this cg.

dude. I forgot about whatever the hell this cg was. anyway look at keebo please just look at him

lovin kaito’s baby arms

real talk, maybe you could argue that he’s missing muscle because he’s deathly sick, but most of his cgs don’t line up with this, and his arms just look disproportionate to his torso size (granted this is a consistent problem across all danganronpa games and a lot of characters have this weird problem, like hajime, but also kaito is bigger than hajime so I kind of have higher expectations of him) maybe it’s his stupid goatee and the way he reminds me of yasuhiro?? it creates this illusion that he’s older than he is and so I keep expecting him to look more like an adult

oh, also rantaro is missing some of his accessories in that video he made–you know the one–but I don’t wanna go back and screenshot it

also you may have noticed that I’m skipping all of the monokub cgs because I literally do not care about them and I’m not even bothering to check and see if they have artistic mistakes in them

JIMMY NEUTRON???

hey um uh kaito you seem to be missing your neck

hey guys do you like my pregame fanart

so, that done, the sprites are also pretty terrible at times. they’re not as interesting to go through, however, and downloading the full sprite sets for every character and studying every single one of them will drive me insane, so I’ll just sum some of the ones I noticed up. I made things for kaede and shuichi before deciding I wasn’t going to get into it, so here are these.

that said, other mistakes include kokichi missing his purple highlights in all of the sprites encompassing a specific pose, stray pixels all over the place on everyone, and everyone also has heavily inconsistent shading, but literally all I think about is how pregame shuichi is unshaded and two of kaede’s pregame sprites have glaring outfit change mistakes in them

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculous ramble. in all seriousness, there’s this looming presence of some lack of communication in the development team, like with all the art and design inconsistencies, pieces and sprites that look rushed, stray pixels, and missing basic proportional stuff. these are the kinds of things that you supposedly have to pretty much have in the bag in order to get jobs in professional businesses, so it’s really weird to me that this game suffers from so many of these problems. it’s like they tried to make the art so much more crisp than the other games, but it fell on its face as they realized it was going to take longer to draw everything and they started to rush. it’s weird, because the coloring itself looks normal–it’s just sloppily drawn, and the proportions are a mess once put into the context of perspective. many of the cgs look like they were drawn by different people, and I’m still not over the fact that half of kokichi’s cgs have his scarf pasted in as a texture.

the moral of the story is that if you’re selling a game at full price that also happens to be in a series that has had 3 very good games in it already the stakes should probably be higher than this. v3 has been out for more than 3 years and it’s still $40 (did it cost more than that before? I sure hope not), and the overarching quality of the game is just not as high as the other games. I’m not saying that the other games don’t have any problems with their art at all, they’re just not as glaringly obvious and every artistic choice in those games feels intentional.

regardless, I had a blast roasting the art at 2am, so maybe you got a kick out of all this chaos.

[daxieoclock]

Also! If you like to! Top 5 Hunters moments so far?

(Screenshot isn't from the scene but it', i dont think i can put this question in any particular order

honorable mention to the moment where everyone collectively realized Puck was a child because it's a player moment and not a PC moment but it was still fucking hilarious to experience. Literally everyone but me thought he was an adult and I assumed everyone thought knew was a child and it was...really fucking funny to watch

A: Sammy meeting privately with Prim.

(Screenshot isn't from the scene but it's related and also very funny)

I originally planned for Prim to be a character who showed up before each major boss fight to give a bit of cryptic lore and vaguely steer the party in the right direction or keep them from overextending themselves, her introduction in the first dungeon was so impactful (and fun!) that I felt I couldn't resist and included her as an "Arcana-holder" for the party to bond with. And especially seeing her friendship with Sammy develop from that very first encounter has been...fucking amazing, I love it so much.

B: Blake requests that Prim spare their teammates.

On the subject of Prim, her introduction was one of the most fun parts of the campaign to date, just having this mysterious individual psychoanalyze the entire cast, upping the stakes in almost every possible way, it was so fucking fun. But Blake's response stands out to me as a fucking amazing encapsulation of their character, through all their development. The pride, and anger, and absurd intelligence and – beneath mountains and mountains of shame – the unwavering compassion for their friends. It's a fucking amazing bit of writing, and I love how much it just...epitomizes Blake Leto in a single paragraph.

C: Lena breaks Lucien's nose, and Ilse meets with Stephen.

The introduction of Team Trinity was a fucking blast, and while Kaya had some fun moments too (and will hopefully have a few more soon), both Lucien and Stephen's introductions were absolutely fucking iconic. I knew from the start of the campaign that I wanted to have a rival team of Persona-users show up to periodically harass the party, and give an insight to the type of people who Daedalus's structure cultivates and rewards, and Ilse having a named childhood friend in their backstory was too good of an opportunity not to return; and I feel like the reveal of their shared history went really well. Lucien wasn't planned to have too impactful of an introduction, mostly just as the most abrasive of the three to start things off on the worst foot first, but Dave's snap decision to have Lena punch him in the face for a borderline skeezy comment was...fucking amazing, and perfectly in character for Lena.

D: Camellia and Sakio at Frey's grave.

It's a quiet moment, one that I didn't expect at all at the time, but it definitely sticks out in my memory as just...solemn, and beautiful, and potent. (And it definitely makes me so fucking excited for @shinyvibrava to return to the campaign so we can have a ton more moments like it!)

E: Sammy's introduction.

I don't think there's been a more hype reveal in the campaign so far as Sammy's existence, everyone lost their fucking mind and I don't blame them! It was a blast to plan things out with Nyanko in secret, and I adore how excited everyone was to see everyone's favorite goat friend for the first time.

F (because I couldn't limit myself to five + honorable mention I'm sorrryyy): The Hunters unite with the common goal of Fucking Up Jabberwocky's Day.

Sammy getting KO'd and promptly revived, leading to the most fucking triumphant, amazing fight scene in the entire campaign so far as every Hunter took their turn in the round to land a chain of really fucking high-roll attacks (while I had changed the boss battle music to Counterstrike from P5 Strikers on a WHIM) and Sakio pulled out a taste of her own strength – which she'd been limiting in front of the party up until that point? It was just fucking AWESOME and probably the most jazzed I have been during a session so far.

[st-just]

Wherein I shill for a 9 year old RPG

At the request of @lifeattomsdiner Answering this as a proper post, because I have yet to figure out quite how to do formatting in the chat box. Sorry about that.

But, okay, concession first: The game could absolutely have used another 6 months in development. They re-use the same, like, 5 maps for 80% of the game’s quests, the entirety of act 3 is just a mess, thematically, and, well, I don’t consider it a problem, but if you liked Origins the whole aesthetic of the game is much more stylized and 4-color.

That said – so, the central contradiction of Bioware games (or at least the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, Anthem is just a whole other mess) is that they’ve got a studio of really excellent character writers, and are clearly very good at making likeable, engaging characters with personal dramas you get invested in and endearing interactions with each other, but for some reason they insist on every game being based around the most cookie-cutter, boring, ‘save the world/galaxy/kingdom/colony from the unending hordes of [space] orks and their [space] demonic masters! You are our only hoped, poorly justified PC messiah!” generic map fantasy/space opera plot imaginable. Dragon Age 2 is the only time they actually ratchet back the stakes a bit, and tell a story about literally anything else .

(Similarly, Mass Effect 2 is the best Mass Effect game because, while the ‘save humanity’ plot is terrible garbage, it’s also pretty ignorable and the majority of the game’s run time is (mostly, sorry Jacob) really well done character-focused stories.)

Specifically, it’s about the rags-to-riches-to-who-the-fuck-knows story of Hawke, their relationships with their companions, and the past and future of Kirkwall the city. And, like, calling it an actual tragedy is absolutely overselling it, but it’s not so much of a straightforward power fantasy, either? Hawke is exceptionally good at doing violence to things and saying terrible one liners, but they’re no Savior or Chosen One, so at the end of the day they’re covered in blood and beloved by half the city as everything burns down around them. That, to me, is interesting, far moreso than the standard save-the-world plot, anyway.

Getting a bit more specific – I know that quite a lot of people like a protagonist whose a total blank slate in these sorts of games, but generally speaking I do like a main character who has, well, character, and Hawke delivers that far better than either the full blank-slate protag or Origins or the miserable bland middle ground in Inquisition. Or, well, properly they have three characters – there’s generally three possible responses in any dialogue prompt, diplomatic/righteous, snarky/charming and aggressive/intimidating, which does helpfully signpost what tone your response is going to be read in when you choose it. And the game does actually keep track of which you choose most often, which can determine the lines spoken in cut scenes and, well, I have admittedly only ever played as sarcastic asshole, but if you commit to it you occasionally get fun little monologues like this.

But really, it’s a Bioware game, the real draw are the companions. And it’s, like, 60% just that the framing device is ‘10 years starting out as a refugee in a fucked up cesspit of a city’ and not ‘chosen one on a desperate quest to save the world’, but they really do seem much more their own people who happen to have close relationships to Hawke, and not adjuncts or subordinates or aides on her Epic Quest. They help you get rich or deal with a political crisis, and you help them deal with their ill advised blood magic experimentation, or with the agents of the slaver lord trying to drag them back in chains, or in one case do their job so they can use their evening patrol to flirt with a coworker. Or you don’t – the game does absolutely let you be a massive piece of shit and sell companions into de facto slavery on at least two occasions. But it also avoids the problem where you basically have to go along with your friends terrible ideas or you’re locking yourself out of content – you can be Friends with your companions, but you can bottom out approval and keep going down to be Rivals instead. (This goes for romance as well, and I think DA2 might be the only big-budget game ever made with a whole mechanic for hatesex). There’s also a lot of banter between companions when you’re just walking around the city, so much so that I usually end up cycling through every possibly combination to have with me as I walk around every act to make sure I’m not missing out on any (it’s often really funny, too)

Beyond that, well, minor things – the combat’s divisive, but I really do enjoy it, playing as a mage anyway (though difficulty spikes like 1000% when you switch up to the setting that enables friendly fire). The outfits and aesthetic are exagerated and silly, but I like the look, and at least the rogue with a V-neck going down to their navel is a guy for once. It’s not especially elegant or anything, but I maintain ‘just make all* the romance options bi’ is a better solution than anything Bioware has come up with before or since. The voice acting’s uniformly extremely good. And the loading screens are very, very pretty.

So, in conclusion, I want to replay the game now. Can’t wait for my new laptop to arrive.

[slade-neko]

Saw this video game tag thing pop up on my dash a few days ago. Wanted to do it.

1. First game you played obsessively? Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I believe I was 5yo. Still waiting on that FF7 Remake treatment.

2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc. Well if I play a game and like it, then I'll create sims of it. Does that count?

3. Who did you play with as a kid? My brother from the day I was born.

4. Who do you play with now? My brother FROM THE DAY I WAS BORN.

5. Ever use cheat codes? I wasn't lying when I made this post. {link}

6. Ever buy strategy guides? Yes! Mainly to look at the artwork though. (Don't need no guide!)

7. Any games you have multiple copies of? Lots of games, most being Left 4 Dead with 6 copies (3 Xbox 360, 1 PC case, 2 PC digitally.) What can I say, its a GOOD GAME!

8. Rarest/Most expensive game in your collection? Gold cartridge Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (maybe that's rare?)

9. Most regrettable purchase? I don't regret my purchases, but I have received games I have never played like Cubix (PS2) no clue where that game came from, but I have it somehow. Madagascar (Xbox 360) came with my Xbox 360, never opened it from its case. And Monsters Inc. Scream Arena (Gamecube) or something... it was a gift.

10. Ever go to a midnight game release or stand in line for hours? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games? I'm only friends with people BECAUSE of video games, so yes.

12. Ever get picked on for liking games? No, that'd be ridiculous.

13. A game you’ve never played that everyone else has? Probably a lot, I'd say Call of Duty, but I technically played CoD 1, 2, and 4. The campaign mode was alright, but I don't really care for CoD games at ALL.

14. Favorite game music? Koji Kondo and Grant Kirkhope are two BIG ones.

15. If it was a requirement to get a game related tattoo, what would you pick? Triforce is the most basic option, but I'd rather not get a tattoo.

16. Favorite game to play with your friends IRL? Super Smash Bros. Brawl with hacks, but that was over a decade ago.

17. Ever lose a friend over a game? No, that'd be ridiculous.

18. Would you date someone that hates gaming? No, that'd be RIDICULOUS.

19. Favorite handheld console? PSP. 3DS is great, but PSP Monster Hunter has ALL of my portable gaming memories. Like playing in school after End of Grade tests with my friend.

20. Game that you know like the back of your hand? Sims 4 I like to think I know everything about Left 4 Dead. Quite a bit about Monster Hunter, more so of a series though than a specific game.

21. Game that you didn’t like or understand as a kid but love now? I'd say Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I loved it as a kid, but had a lot of complex pen & paper RPG mechanics that I never understood. I understand a lot more of it now, but its still complex as all heck. I just know you hit things, they die.

22. Do you wear game related clothing/accessories? That's the only thing I wear.

23. The game that you’ve logged the most hours into? Not sure so I'll list a few. Sims 4, Smash Bros. Brawl, Monster Hunter (its a series though), or Left 4 Dead

24. First Pokemon game? Leaf Green

25. Were you ever an arcade game player? No, don't like paying to play.

26. Ever form any gaming rivalries? No.

27. Game that makes you rage? I don't get mad at games, but I had a custom modded Hard Eight mutation in Left 4 Dead that is absolute bullsh*t!

28. Ever play in a tournament? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

29. What is your gaming set up? A giant wall of video game consoles spanning from NES to Switch, 4 TVs, but I sit at a desk with a PC.

30. How many consoles do you own? "I own every console that's ever existed." - I Don't Play Games When I Play Games (My STRENTH) original song by Smooth McGroove BUT no seriously I own 32 consoles including handhelds.

31. Does the 3DS and/or Virtual Boy hurt your eyes or give you headaches? Yes. 3DS gave me headaches though I only really played with the 3D feature in Ocarina of Time 3D. I think my eyes broke because I couldn't get my 3D to work very well after.

32. Did you ever play a game based on your favorite show/cartoon/movie/comic? Sure I play games based on a lot of things. Literally any anime game. If I had to pick Dragon Ball Xenoverse is kinda like a dream Dragon Ball game. Oh, Attack on Titan 2 is pretty neat too!

33. Did you ever have any bootleg games or plug-n-play games? Some SEGA plug-n-play thing once. Played it like once and now its lost to time (or my closet.)

34. Do either of your parents play video games? Yes. Mom and Dad played NES Super Mario Bros. My Dad went HARD at that game until he saved the Princess. Then he quit forever.

35. Ever work in a game store? Or do you have a favorite game shop? "Hi. Welcome to Gamestop!"I never want to hear that again, but it was my main store until I went full digital/ online orders.

36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game? No, I don't tend to get upset or emotional, but Bill dying in Left 4 Dead made me pretty pissed.

37. Have you played E.T. for the Atari 2600? Do you think that’s the worst game ever, or do you have another nomination? Never played it. I don't really play "bad" games, but maybe Sims 4.

38. A game you’re ashamed to admit that you like? The Sims 4

39. A sequel that you would die for them to make? Dragon's Dogma 2 WHICH I think is actually in development, so I'd have to say Fallout New Vegas 2. C'mon Bethesda you cowards, hand the keys back over to Obsidian so they can make another good Fallout game!

40. What to you think of virtual reality headsets or motion controls? Two part question, two answers. VR Headset to immerse in world, yes. Motion Controls, no.

41. A genre that you just can’t get into? MOBAs and MMOs. I don't like paying to keep playing.

42. Maybe it wasn’t your first game, but what was the game that started you on your path to nerdiness? Nintendo 64 opened me up to what video games could be as a kid. Sad to say my parents' NES didn't really do that for me. And years later Fallout 3 was a big game changer for me too.

43. Ever play games when you really should have been concentrating on something else? Every day of my LIFE.

44. Arcade machine that has consumed the most of your quarters? None. I'd rather emulate.

45. How are you at Mario Kart? Pretty dang good. 3-STARS MARIO KART WII, BABY!

46. Do you like relaxing games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon? Yes, both of those. I preferred when Animal Crossing had more character to it. New Horizons looks so pretty, but feels so bland compared to classic AC.

47. Do you like competitive games? No. Not really. Usually amongst friends or if I can get competitive against AI Bots. I love my machine bot friends cause they don't cry like 10 year olds when they lose.

48. How long does it take your to customize your player character? Too long. I've seriously restarted games because I wasn't happy with my character's appearance.

49. In games where you can pick your class, do you always tend to go for the same type of character? Yes, I am always the magic man, my brother is always brute warrior, and my friend is the ranger.

50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create? I don't really know. Honestly, I'd rather mod already good games to make them better than create something completely new.

51. Have you ever played a game for so long that you forgot to eat or sleep? No, that'd be ridiculous. But I've had a friend fall asleep playing games at my house 3 different times and currently dozes off during our Minecraft sessions. So, maybe that's not a completely ridiculous thing after all.

52. A game that you begged your parents for as a kid? Kirby 64 apparently. My brother tells me we had to count out pennies to buy it. I must've been too young with no recollection, but I believe it.

53. What’s your opinion on DLC these days? It's good if its not in the game's files from the beginning and is actually developed AFTER launch... and pre-order bonuses should be standard DLC a month or two later. Some games have content lost to time because of that pre-order bullsh*t.

54. Do you give in to Steam sales? Of course. If you want a game and its on sale then why not? I typically wait just for Steam sales to get games.

55. Did you ever make someone you hated in the Sims and did mean stuff to them? No? I typically make people and characters I like in Sims. I've made villains like Dio, but he's an anime villain and I don't really HATE him despite the horrible things he's done.

56. Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon and kill off your guests? No. Never played that game.

57. Did you ever play a game to 100% or get all of the achievements? I try to for all the games I really like.

58. If you can only play 3 games for the rest of your life, which ones do you pick? The Sims 4, Skyrim, & Fallout: New Vegas. Mods make them live forever. Left 4 Dead and Monster Hunter are good choices too.

59. Do you play any cell phone games? Those aren't games.

60. Do you know the Konami Code? No? But I'll take a guess. Is it make an IP and forget it exists?

61. Do you trade in your games or keep them forever? Keep forever... even the bad ones.

62. Ever buy a console specifically to play one game? PS4 Pro for Monster Hunter World. It was basically for early access since the PC version was being developed and releasing after PS4, but I don't like waiting.

63. Ever go to a gaming convention or tournament? Sort of. Been to anime cons and walked into the gaming tournament rooms only to walk out less than 10 minutes later.

64. Ever make a TV or monitor purchase based on what would be best for gaming? No, but I'm going to be doing that soon, hopefully.

65. Ever have a Game Genie, Game Shark or Action Replay? Did it ever mess up your game’s save file? GameShark for N64, PS2, Gameboy, and Action Replay for Gamecube, DS, 3DS. And no not really, I would cheat responsibly... but there was this one time at school my friend and I borrowed another friend's Gameboy game, loaded it up with my Gameshark, tried playing, it crashed, loaded it back up, save file corrupted... we just stared at each other jaws dropped, "Here's your game back, dude. Make sure you don't play it til you get back home!"

66. Did you ever have have an old Nokia with Snake on it? No, but I remember seeing them on billboards in the game DRIV3R on PS2.

67. Do you have a happy gaming-related childhood memory you want to share? Every game I play is filled with happy memories (mostly.)

68. Ever save up a ton of tickets in an arcade to get something cool? These tiger plushes. My brother got white and I got orange. They were the coolest. Got a butt load of tickets from some jackpot spinning light game thing as I was good at the timing with repeated jackpot hits.

69. In your opinion, best game ever made? I've played quite a few masterpiece games, but to pick one, I'd say Fallout: New Vegas

70. Very first game you ever beat? Super Mario 64. I was a mere child on a Sunday morning and ate celebratory pancakes made by my Dad.

Wow, that was long... I get the feeling this was supposed to be a "send me ask with numbers" thing, but answering all at once is more fun.