#look. there's very few of Ultima fans around here.

[zaziecurie]

Am I the only one who find that final scene with Ultima where, after he's absorbed by Clive, we get a small jumpscare(?) with his disembodied head glaring at us for 5 seconds weird?

I mean...

Look at him side-eyeing us in this split second, like we own him money for pay rent, gas, and that fancy dinner we had last year.

Like, what was the purpose of that moment?

Is it a breaking the fourth wall moment and Ultima is giving us, the player, the stink eye for helping Clive defeat him? Or for being members of his wayward creation?

Or both?

[garrothromeave]

the hell is mystreet season 6??

(warning, long post ahead)

ok so before i start this

1) ive never posted shiiiit on tumblr before so watch me suffer, im just here to talk about stuff that my friends who dont know anything about aphmau have to listen to me rant about for hours on end

2) i havent seen mystreet in like years (except season 3, i watch that frequently since im laurance and shadow knight deprived) so please bear with me because i might be completely wrong on this lol. it’s just like, pointing out things i remember

3) im sure someones already talked about this but who cares

4) im gonna do this stupid thing where i just explain myself a bit at first, if you dont want to read that just skip to the part where you see “the actual thingy:” in bold and italics 

5) mild disclaimer; i am completely aware that jessica is not a professional writer. i know that she did her best to appeal to her fans, and honestly, respect for that. while this post will come off as aggressive and probably look like hate, that’s not my intention in the slightest. it’s just... intense criticism. im sure y’all probably already know that, but yeah, just stating that anyways. i do believe that jess is doing her best, and in no way do i want to dismiss any hard work she’s done. that being said; prepare for a very strongly opinionated post.

haha watch there be 10000+ typos in this making me look like a complete dumbass

ok here we go 

one of the main reasons i stopped watching aphmau back in 2017 was the mess that was season 4. like, in the first few episodes of the emerald secret, i thought “woah!! this is kinda cool, im a sucker for mystery!” because of course i was, it was something new and something exciting. the only problem i had with it at the time was kim, but that’s just because i always found her annoying and out of place. i just didn’t understand why garroth dragged her along and honestly i still don’t to this day BUT, moving on.

anyways, as the season progressed, 13 year old me was of course just ��:0!!” the entire time--that is, up until the reveal of the main villain. i remember watching the episode, seeing the reveal of ein, and then stopping. like, just for a quick break, but i was still just overwhelmingly disappointed. like, and this was the time when pdh was airing and ein just got made alpha (i think?) and i had really really liked eins character in pdh. either way, that really sucked and actually opened my eyes to a lot of things.

one of the main things bein’ the fact that this was supposed to be a slice of life kinda series that decided to take a turn to a more edgy kinda approach. which, i guess i regularly wouldnt mind? but seeing as mcd was kinda bein neglected at the time it just didnt sit right with me. BUT WHATEVER, point is i stopped watching mystreet all together at the end of season 4.

like, a whole year later my brother tells me that shit’s getting intense in season 5 + 6 of mystreet, and my brilliant self decided to give it a shot--but i refused to watch all of season 5, so i only stepped in when ein made an appearance. so whenever that was, that’s where i picked up because i didnt care enough to see 

and y’know--i honestly didn’t hate it at first. in fact, i found it oddly cool. it wasn’t enough to get me into aphmau again, but it was enough to where i was intrigued. i dont know why, but i never watched the finale, so i didnt see the ending until just a few weeks ago--but back then, i thought it was neat. looking back on it however... im just so confused. 

side note: only got back into aphmau this time around because of mcd. mainly because like, i adore the first season and the first half of the second season. and being nearly 18 now, im a lot more appreciative of plot and well-written characters n junk. 

the actual thingy:

ok back on track. imma stop spilling out my story of how i got back into aphmau, and lets just skip to what rewatching mcd made me realize of season 6′s plot and shit:

-emmalyn. how the fuck does ghost even remotely exist? if she’s emmalyn as claimed, then why have we already seen emmalyn in the mystreet universe alive? look i get that creators can do whatever they want with their stories but at the same time please provide some sort of explanation good god. and maybe they did and i just havent seen it, so if there is one--let me know. but until that day imma just sit here confused as fuck

-ok so imma just be real, the whole ‘ultima’ thing is just... not great. in my opinion, anyways. like... i saw someone mention this in another post, but if this ultima stuff was like, a really big deal, why isnt it mentioned in mcd? though i suppose since its a curse of sorts, it could be later on past the time period in which mcd takes place--but even then, how did it manage to make its way into aaron’s family bloodline? 

-WHY IS EVERYONE AT STARLIGHT ITS JUST SO CONVINIENT like what happened to this place being the most expensive shit on the planet or whatever, and how the gang happens to run into like, the werewolf trio and blaze and kai and guy and nate all of these people like god damn life doesnt WORK LIKE THAT 

-im sorry but turning people into relics? thats... thats the best you could come up with? plus, like, how does that even work? in mcd it’s established that relics are separate entitles that choose their wielder, based on a ‘personal’ connection (being a descendent of a previous wielder) or if they’re a good match personality and (i think?) moral wise. so the whole turning-people-into-relics doesnt make much sense to be honest. 

-irene really over here using her god powers to only keep her friends alive like god damn not a great god if you ask me 

-can i talk about how incredibly predictable aphmaus death was? like i just kinda sat there waiting for it to happen and when it did i literally went “haha! wonder when she’ll be revived” because god forbid we actually kill off characters 

-when aphmau + demon warlock fought in the irene dimension there was no passage of time whatsoever in the real world whiiiiiiiiich really bothers me because they fought in there for at least a few minutes

-speaking of aphmau and the demon warlocks fight does it bother anyone else that it had to be aaron who took over the fight?? like we get it hes the big protector blah blah blah but god damn it wouldve been cooler if aphmau had fought this battle as her. aaron fighting this battle was so underwhelming

-...love. like, thats the only thing thats needed to break out of a forever potion? love? LIKE YEAH, GOOD GUYS GOTTA WIN SOMEHOW, but its just so cliche and overdoneeee

-oh yeah and also when travis went bonkers and became the demon warlock or whatever, why’d he only take over katelyn and garroth?? like, zane had been influenced by the potions in the past as well? DONT GET ME WRONG--i do love some good brother edge, but uh, the demon warlock was just bein kinda a dumbass by not possessing zane too just sayin’

-can aaron please go to fucking jail for mass murder now like holy shit, he just got sent home on a fuckin boat. also why did blaze forgive him for killing him thats not even remotely realistic. then again, nothing in mystreet has ever been realistic when it comes to characters and motives and personalities, (cough katelyn being actually abusive and travis being an actual pervert) but yknow whatever

-katelyn and kawaii chan literally added nothing to the plot whatsoever. like lets be real, katelyn lost her personality the moment season 5 started and kawaii chan just kinda sits there :I

-ok im sorry this was bound to come up but cmon guys imagine laurances potential if he was in season 6 like god damn this is beyond maddening. AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY REALLY COOL PARRALLEL?? IF IT WAS LAURANCE WHO SNAPPED GARROTH OUT OF HIS MIND CONTROL THING, because it would mimic laurance’s speech to get garroth to snap out of his rage in season 1, episode 100 of minecraft diaries. like how fuckin rad would that have been? missed opportunity 

-also?? why does kim/ghost know magicks?? like, if i remember correctly, emmalyn is a scholar--not someone who knew magicks. i mean, i guess research? study?? but its been established that knowing how magicks works =/= being able to use magicks. i dunno, just doesnt seem right i guess. maybe its explained, i wouldnt know (yes i know that makes me look like a dick leave me alone)

-melissa should have stayed dead. LIKE, NO, ITS NOT AS SIMPLE AS “haha it takes more than a few bullets to kill me”??? look ive got nothing wrong with melissa (cough lie cough) but yknow it would have just been cool a character... stay dead? for once? its just too fuckin cliche that shes alive god damn

-can i also just say the only good thing that came out of season 6 was travis’ dads sacrifice like damn that made me actually sad

-howww was lucinda turned into a relic. or yknow, anyone else? like im sure they explain it better in the actual show i just dont remember, but its just that easy? turning anyone into a relic? granted, a normal person wouldnt be able to produce a good relic, but idk man. IM JUST SAYING; that the only really powerful relics that aphmau should have been able to wield is the one that aaron + zane produced because shad relic and esmund relic moment. lucinda isnt even like, connected to a divine warrior. ALSO, another point, if its seriously that powerful of a relic getting one from just a magic user like lucinda, why go through the trouble? i mean i guess ofc youd want the “all powerful” one that the ultima produces but i mean damn whats the point

-ok this is just going to bother me but in one of the episodes (i think might have been in season 5 actually) where that like, guardian dude was chasing aphmau and zane and at one point they split up and the dude just chuckles at zane diverting paths and goes under his breath “youre not the important one here”, suggesting that aphmau somehow is? first of all, id argue that any ro’meave is significantly more important than aphmau was, especially not knowing much about her other than that shes with aaron. i might be missing some bits an pieces, but if i was that dude id forget about aphmau and go after zane 

-killing off derek for shock factor sucked, and i know the moment was supposed to be really sad because like “oh :( aarons dad is sacrificing himself for his son” but lets be real dereks still was a shitty father and i dont think his reasons for doing what he did was very good at all

-less about plot or more like: why the absolute fuck did the gang bring kim along instead of, oh i dont know, a life-long friend? like, laurance or dante maybe?? im sure its explained, i never saw aphmaus year or most of season 5, but god DAMN id hate to be apart of this friend group AND GOD LIKE, imagine reconnecting with an old friend who ends up getting closer to your best friends and taking priority in their lives over you (cough laurance) like god damn lol

-im just going to preface this one with: i dont remember everything that’s happened, so if im wrong i apologize in advance--but (you actually can correct me if im wrong and please do) didnt like, irene reincarnate her friends in order to give them better lives? I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE, ITS JUST WHAT I REMEMBER--however, if im correct, then:

a. why the hell would she bring back someone like zane, or gene, or ivy, etc.

b. why the hell do they all have the same exact names? first and last? again, im aware that the whole mystreet+mcd tie wasn’t originally supposed to be there, but i dont think that means such a coincidence can be excused? its just a bit much if you ask me.

c. why the hell is the fact that (as much as i literally hate this) aaron is a decedent of shad being ignored? like, you’d think that something like this would be something thats actually important, or something the demon warlock couldve taken advantage of. or are we completely erasing every other connections to divine warriors besides aphmau + irene? because even if irene did reincarnate them or do whatever it is she did, does she even have the power to sever the connections between them and their ancestors? my guess is, no.

d. speaking of irene why on earth was aphmau able to talk to/see irene, they’re literally the same person are they not? did she like, fuckin reincarnate herself without actually doing it?? BUT--i will give it to them, the demon warlock did refer to aphmau as something along the lines of being “one of the 3 parts of her broken soul” or something like that. however, my point still remains. also what are the other two did i miss that or is it never explained

now; if irene in fact did not ‘reincarnate’ her friends then please ignore that little bit right there :)

but yes, those are a few of the problems i have with season 6 off the top of my head. i would go into like, season 4 and 5 more as well, but i honestly didnt feel like it. at some point i might go into other things, like how important laurance could have been to the plot of these later seasons, or HELL, even dante. i might also go into what could have made season 4, 5, and 6 actually good--maybe... a rewrite? perhaps? but im getting too far ahead of myself, so i just leave you with this for now.

and i know that as soon as i post this 15 more things are just going to pop into my head BUT im going to try and not edit this post because why stress myself with that even more

anyways thank you for coming to my tedtalk 

[dfdreh]

k con esa foto no eres el mas indicado para decirme si se o no de baloncesto

He's adept at zara pantalon chinorunning the offense in the pick and roll or running off screens for catch and shoot looks, capable of defending multiple positions, and comfortable either acting as a No. 1 option without shrinking from the moment or working off the ball in the presence of another dominant playmaker. He was the best and most important offensive player on a 51 win Jazz team, and now he slots in on the wing between dynamic All Star point man Isaiah

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[iamrealbuilder]

Bill Buchalter interview

Bill Buchalter was a level designer for Sunstorm Interactive. He’s worked on 3 official add-on of Build Engine games: Cryptic Passage for Blood, Suckin’ Grits On Route 66 for Redneck Rampage, Caribbean Life for Duke Nukem 3D. Interview, November 2020: Corentin: Can you introduce yourself?

Bill Buchalter: My name is Bill Buchalter. I’m an avid gamer of all kinds – video games, board games, and especially tabletop RPGs. I’m currently a freelance writer for AAW Games (Adventure A Week Games) writing mini adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I live outside Indianapolis, IN with my wife Jane, our three kids, and our dog Roxi. When I’m not gaming, I also enjoy music, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.

C: With Sunstorm Interactive, you're credited for level design on Cryptic Passage, Caribbean Life and Route 66. How did you start working with Sunstorm and what do you remember from that time?

BB: In the mid 90’s, maybe around 1995 or 96, I was very into playing Duke Nukem 3D. Like most PC gamers at the time, I had played Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, and Duke Nukem just blew me away. Back in those days, when we played online, we would use a 3rd party program called KALI. You dialed up on your modem, logged onto the internet, and then used KALI as a portal to chat with other gamers and find someone to play with. The KALI software would then allow you to network together over the internet and play PVP matches. It was crude, and the lag could be horrible, but we didn’t know any better at the time and we loved it!

I remember I was in a B. Dalton bookstore in the mall one day (another relic of the 90’s that is long gone!) when I found a book called the “Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook”. I was intrigued, and as I flipped through the pages it talked about a program on the Duke Nukem CD called Build, which allowed you to create your own levels. I had no idea Build existed, let alone how to use it. I bought the book and spent the next couple weeks diving into learning how to use Build. I was hooked!

Making my own maps quickly became an obsession. I would share them with my friends on KALI and I quickly earned a reputation for making user maps. I remember there was a map building competition, but I don’t recall who sponsored it. A guy named Robert Travis won the competition. When I saw his maps, I was blown away! His designs were so much more advanced than mine. He was using tricks I had never thought of to get lighting effects and set moods. I had to reach out to him to pick his brain.

Robert responded and we began talking and quickly figured out that we both lived in Indianapolis. He was working for Sunstorm at the time and invited me to come to their office to discuss level design. I met him there one evening, and he showed me some of the stuff he was working on. We ended up playing Duke all night on Sunstorm’s network with some of the other guys in the office. I was in heaven!

Robert introduced me to Anthony Campiti, the lead producer on Sunstorm’s next project – Cryptic Passage, an add-on for a Build engine game called Blood. They invited me to design some levels for the game and I jumped at the chance. Robert assigned me to design an opera house level and immediately I got pictures in my head of the theater scenes from Interview with a Vampire. I went home and worked furiously on designing the level. I was still rough, but with Robert’s help I tweaked things here and there and slowly learned his techniques. In the end I was really pleased with the level I’d designed. Robert and Anthony were happy too and asked me to design a second map specifically for deathmatch.

The next project Sunstorm was working on was Suckin’ Grits on Route 66, an add-on for another Build engine game called Redneck Rampage. Robert again asked if I’d like to be a part of that team and assigned me to build a truck stop level. Using a lot of the things I’d learned on Cryptic Passage, and the campy feel of the Redneck Rampage game, I had a lot of fun designing that level.

The last project I worked on for Sunstorm was Duke Nukem Caribbean Vacation. By this time Duke’s popularity was beginning to wane, and Quake was taking over. Robert was already starting to experiment and learn how to use the Quake engine. I was a new dad at the time (my first daughter had just been born) so unfortunately, I didn’t have the spare time to devote to learning a new engine. I barely had the time to design my level for Duke Caribbean, but I did manage to finish the casino level for that project. I do recall that Robert ended up going through in the end and changing a lot of the aspects of my level to fit the theme they had in mind. I remember being a bit disappointed and not really feeling like the level was “mine” because of so many of the changes. It was the last project I worked on for Sunstorm.

I kept in touch with Robert and Anthony for a while after that. They were branching out, working on other projects, and even trying to develop their own FPS game that I don’t think ever really got off the ground. Sunstorm was having the most success with their Deer Hunter line of games that at the time were selling well in Wal-Mart. Sadly, I eventually just lost touch with those guys.

I’m sure this is WAY more information than you were wanting (I’m a writer… I can’t help but go off the deep end!) but you dusted off some fond, old memories for me, so I apologize for walking so far down memory lane!

C: I see that you're still making maps, different kind of maps! This makes me wonder if maybe you were involved with W!Zone (a pack of maps for Warcraft 2 released by Sunstorm). Can you tell us a bit about that if possible?

BB: I didn’t have any hand in the W!Zone project for Sunstorm, but I loved the Warcraft series. As was common for many video gamers like me, who had roots in fantasy games like D&D, I played a lot of Warcraft and eventually got sucked into the world of MMOs with Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft! If only I had back the time I sunk into those games!

These days I’m exclusively writing and designing for Dungeons and Dragons. I started about ten years ago writing for D&D Organized Play in a campaign called Living Forgotten Realms. I co-authored two adventures for that with my good friend, Michael Pearman, and authored a third adventure on my own. As you know from tracking me down via AAW Games, I’ve now authored six adventures for them, five of which are already published and one that is still in the works but should be released soon.

When I do manage to find time for video games, Diablo III is my game of choice these days. I’m looking forward to Season 22 starting here shortly, and like many others, I’m really hoping for something great with Diablo IV. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, and even wrote an entire campaign for D&D 5E that translated the story of Diablo III into Dungeons and Dragons for the players in my home game! Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of this history. It was fun putting it all down and reliving those days!

C: There are two signatures in the Truck Stop level for Route 66. Do you remember anything about that ? There also several levels with no known credit : Fun Park, House of ill Repute, Mystery Dino Cave, Bigfoot Convention.

The signature on the truck stop is Route 66 was a joke! I was the only designer on that one. I just signed it "Billy Joe Jim Bob Buchalter" as a joke for bad redneck name. I wasn't the kind of guy that had to sign my maps the EXACT same way every time. :)

Other than the truck stop, I don't recall designing any other maps for Route 66. I pretty sure none of those you listed below were mine, but I don't recall whose they were.

Finally, here are some final comments Bill made after reading through some forum posts:

Wow, I am really quite humbled that you guys looked so deeply into my work! The fact that you could recognize my build style is pretty cool - I didn't even know I had a style! LOL. The truth be told, the reason you probably had so much trouble telling my levels from Robert's is because he was a big influence on me. I learned a lot from him and incorporated a lot of that into the stuff I built.

Its funny how reading through that thread you linked brought back memories... I remember now that my biggest disappointment from Duke Caribbean was that my only level in the game ended up being a secret level - that some people wouldn't even find it or ever play it. I was actually pretty excited about that level. I was the one that suggested a casino because my folks had retired to Vegas, so I'd been in a lot of the casinos there and had some great ideas for the map. I'd forgotten all about the restaurant I worked into it, and the big fish tanks.

There seems to be some debate about Robert. From what I remember, he was a really good guy. Maybe a bit tough to work for, but only because he really strived for our designs to be the best they could be, and he demanded that of both himself and the other designers. As I said before, I learned early on to accept criticism and critique and not take it personally. It was just Robert doing his job. I'll be the first to admit that I designed better levels thanks to the stuff I learned from Robert.

Someone on the message board made a very astute comment, basically to the effect that "Bill had to have other work out there. Sunstorm wouldn't hire an unproven guy off the street." But truth be told, that's exactly what they did! I hadn't done a single thing before working there. But I think a few things played in my favor. First, I lived in Indy, just 15 minutes from their office, so it was easy for me to go in and work directly with Robert. Second, while I didn't have anything officially published, I did have a disk full of the maps I'd designed on my own, and Robert thought I showed promise. I would design at home a lot, then go into the office a couple times a week and sit with Robert while he critiqued my work and offered advice on how to improve it.

I'll be honest - I'm blown away at the number of people STILL playing these old maps we made so many years ago. I watched a couple YouTube videos of a guy playing and reviewing Duke Caribbean and Blood Cryptic Passage. His high praise of both Full House and the Opera House really made my day. It's nice to know that people enjoyed my work.

_____________________________

Thanks a lot to Bill Buchalter for taking the time to answer these questions! Thanks also for sharing... “Big City” !

A Duke Nukem 3D map he created back in the day before joining with Sunstorm Interactive which was never released before! Screenshot:

Map download:

https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip

______

External link: Duke4 forum blog megathread: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11471-blog-interviews-of-build-engine-video-games-developers/page__pid__353013#entry353013 The forum posts Bill read, mentionned above, can be found here: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9418-duke-caribbean-multiplayer-levels/

[touhou-gensoudairantou]

Terra Casts a Spell On You! (Magitek Elite Madame)

Overview: Beautiful, mysterious, kind… all great words to describe Terra Branford. A young half-Esper lady taken from her home by the Gestahlian Empire and raised as a living weapon before a mission in Narshe gone wrong has her wind up in the company of the Returners. Her magical capabilities are incredible, even without factoring in her power-doubling Trance, her incredible Apocalypse sword, and the abilities she gained from Magicite. But be warned, she lacks useful recovery a good amount of the time, and she can be quite frail.

Gimmick: Terra's Trance morphs her body into her Esper form upon maxing out her Gauge, which fills over time. In this state, she's all around much stronger. With doubled speed, power, and defense… that is, until she uses a Special Move, Bomb, or Final Smash… or y'know… gets launched off-screen or loses a her Stamina. Also, when at 100% damage or higher, all Smash attacks gain a 1/16 chance at becoming the powerful Desperation Attack Riot Blade, which has great range and four strikes. Riot Blade will also get rid of your Trance, so please keep that in mind.

Standard Attack: A slash, a stab, and a Fire spell. Quite basic really, but the stab has Terra advance forward.

Her tilts are various slashes.

Her Dash Attack is a jumping slash.

Smash Attacks: Do you know the name Cyan Garamonde? He’s a party member in Final Fantasy VI who is sadly quite outclassed. A real shame too, he has a great design, and his samurai motif is very appealing. Well Cyan, today is the day of your vindication! Terra, who spent quite a long time studying your Bushido skills, is ready to use them to great effect in Smash! They're way cooler than what I initially planned. Keep in mind, the names used here are combinations of their Japanese names and their original English localizations. (To put it better, JP first, Woolsey second!)

-Side Smash: Kiba Dispatch. A quick, ultra-strong stabbing lunge.

-Up Smash: Mai Quadra Slam. Four upward sword strikes that do good damage.

-Down Smash: Sora Retort/Tsuki Stunner. Essentially a counter attack that has a 3 second window of effect. If struck during this window, Terra will retaliate with a slash that has a decent range. If she's not struck, she will rain down blades made of ki, which are very prone to stunning enemies.

Neutral Air: Blizzard. A spin of ice that can freeze enemies.

Forward Air: Fira:

Up Air: Blizzara: An icy somersault that can freeze enemies. Deals much more damage than Blizzard.

Back Air: Thunder. Kicks back a bolt of lightning.

Down Air: Thundara. Does a lightning-charged stomp.

Neutral Special: Active Time Battle Menu. A variant on Hero's Command; this one has all options available at a times. Can move around a lot more, but you don't really have very few options for buffs and such. If you're having trouble with the movement while the menu is up, the Taunts have been disabled in this state so you can use the buttons to help make your selection. Better make it quick, this menu lasts only 2/3 of the time of Hero's!

-Bio: Sends forth a poisonous cloud a few feet in front of Terra. If it hits, it does about 9% and leaves the enemy with fast-acting poison for 5 seconds.

-Flare: Does damage in a very high column that can counter enemies.

-Protect: Halves all damage for 10 seconds.

-Thundaga: Fires off a massive beam of electricity that does great damage. It's very easy to jump over, however.

-Cura: Restores 30%. (50% in Trance)

-Graviga: Slams down every enemy within range of the platform Terra is on. Hurts an awful lot more if they were in the air.

-Quake: Trips and damages all opponents on the ground you're on. Deals 10% to you.

-Banish: A spell that can instantly defeat an opponent. Increases in effectiveness at higher percentages.

-Flood: Sends rushing water that can damage and carry away enemies.

-Meltdown: Deals the most initial damage out of ATB Menu's spells (at a whopping 50-80%) and has the longest burning effect, range, and spread, but at the cost of dealing a flat 30% to Terra herself, which triples in Trance.

-Tornado: Rips up everyone's percentages to 300%. And I do mean everyone. Only use if you're extremely desperate. Considering Terra's pretty light, you'd better be ungodly careful.

Side Special: Holy. Think Robin’s Arcfire, but with no burning damage. To compensate, it'd be a bit stronger.

Up Special: Firaga. Propels Terra upward with a concentrated burst of flame. Deals 20-28% on direct contact and leaves a burning effect.

Down Special: Summon. Using the power of your Magicite, you can summon an Esper's power to devastate opponents with powerful magical attacks! But beware, during this you stand completely still, and are unable to move until the Esper disappears. You're resistant to knockback and damage, but if your opponent can get in enough damage that can break your concentration/launch you, you're a sitting duck. In addition, the Esper Terra summons is entirely random, so you'd better make sure your teammates are covering you or pray for your own safety. And if you get it off, you can't activate this special again for 30 seconds. She has 4 potential summons.

-Maduin: Chaos Wave. Unleashes a tide of raw anger upon all opponents within Terra's range. Functions similarly to Mario Finale or Marisa's Master Spark.

-Valigarmanda: Tri-Disaster. Fires off a series of screen crossing beams with wide-ish range in many directions. Can burn or freeze opponents.

-Midgarsormr: Abyssal Maw. A far more powerful version of Quake that can even hit enemies in the air in a wide radius around Terra.

-Bismarck: Breach Blast. A far more powerful version of Flood that significantly increases spread and damage.

Bomb: Meteor. Summons down a series of meteors that strike enemies. It's basically a slightly less good PK Starstorm.

Final Smash: Trance Ultima. Terra goes into Trance and rushes across the stage. Like Joker, if she misses her target, she can turn the opposite direction and attempt to strike again. Once her targets have been struck, a cinematic plays where she charges up, then casts Ultima. Once it finishes, they are launched quite far.

And I know I don’t usually talk about Shields and such but eh… this time I'll make an exception.

Shield: There's a second long window where Terra will Reflect all projectiles. It’s quite easy to miss, but if you can hit you'll be rewarded.

Stage Entrance:

-Rides in on a Chocobo, and jumps off as it rides away.

Taunts:

-Imitates that piece of her Yoshitaka Amano artwork at the bottom.

-Turns to the screen and looks down.

-Briefly takes on an aura colored after her Esper form.

Victory Screen: Like Cloud, she uses the Victory Fanfare from her game.

-Celebrates in earnest with FF6's victory animation, often giggling.

-Hopes back onto the Chocobo, and rides toward the screen, saying “Apologies…” or “You won't be forgotten.”

-Downs an Elixir, and smiles at the camera.

Alts:

-She also has palettes based on her fellow Returners’ sprites from the same game. Specifically, Locke, Edgar, Shadow, Gau, and Strago. No Celes? How come? Well… that's currently a trade secret. It will be revealed in due time, dear readers.

-One of her alts is based on her sprites from Final Fantasy VI, as done by Kasuko Shibuya. Essentially, her Second Form from Dissidia.

-Her last palette is based on the battle sprite of one Kefka Palazzo. He's a very iconic villain among western fans, thanks to, in no small part, his dark but humor-filled dialogue and his Joker-like mannerisms. He just might be worthy of his own character slot.

Special thanks to @spooner-the-trinity for the suggestion. ...and apologies for taking so long oof.

[nemossubmarine]

Warhammer 40k: Wrath & Glory RP #52: Epilogue

The epilogue takes place during five years after the encounter in the Necron temple. It involved several conversations between our heroes and NPCs and a meet up on Cayenne’s ship, as well as some check-ups on NPCs’ fates that will not be reported here (as there’s a separate document for that and I’m not rewriting it). But onto the epilogue stuff.

Near the end of the five year period finds us in a non-descript planet somewhere within the Ultima Segmentum. There is a coffee house there, patronized by workers’ on their lunch breaks as well as some old people, and now a visitor. Bettie the old owner of the place greets the new comer, who asks after Lu Yan, who works here. Bettie calls for Lu Yan, who comes to the front and immediately recognizes her friend Gimlet. The two retreat to Lu Yan’s little apartment to catch up. Gimlet has come to pick Lu Yan up after all these years, now that he is finally in a more secure position. Lu Yan is quite happy to go, even if she likes the people around. Gimlet also finally is able to tell Lu Yan what became of Inpax. He has no idea if Inpax is even alive at this point, but he hands Lu Yan a drawing of what Inpax looks these days (presumably). Lu Yan asks if they could go see if they can find her, and Gimlet says maybe, though they still need to be careful. Lu Yan gets to packing and off they go.

Rat breaks her silent treatment for Saef after a year, when Theo stops suddenly answering her messages. With Saef’s help Rat manages to locate Theo, and Saef asks to meet up with her afterwards, which they do. She is quite different already, still a teen, still sporting the old dusty aviator’s cap, but her clothes are different and there’s turquoise hair peeking beneath the cap. She lets him know that Theo is struggling, but for now he is safe and Rat is going to help him the best she can going forward. Saef asks how Rat has liked the Ynnari, and Rat admits that they are strange in many senses, but they have some dealings with humans (references to the group’s leader’s “big blue boyfriend” are made), so they are not opposed to Rat keeping in touch with Theo, though of course they are careful. All in all, it is different, but for the first time in her life Rat feels like she is loved because she is an eldar, not despite it. Saef says he is glad to hear that, and they hug when they part (though Rat complains loudly as teens are wont to do).

When Gorm reaches Fenris, he reports his mission to Sveleighr, and then asks him to arrange a meeting with Ragnar Blackmane, his company’s leader to discuss Trazyn the Collector. Sveleighr does just that. Gorm tells Ragnar what he saw and says he believes it was fate that he would see a Primarch believed dead through the portal. It is unsure whether the Primarch is a clone or if the corpse had been stolen, but it is clear that it is in the interests of the Imperium to get to the bottom of it. So Gorm requests Ragnar a transfer to the Deathwatch. Ragnar asks if this is what Gorm wants and Gorm tells him how Fenris started to feel different ever since Gorm had returned. Ragnar can sympathize, as he has been in the bad graces of Wolves himself before, but he hopes one day Gorm can again call Fenris home. Gorm’s request is granted and Ragnar bonks his head against Gorm’s and tells him to make Ragnar proud.

We also take a look at Gimlet’s final meeting with Inpax. He finds her at the transport room, examining her new face in a mirror. Inpax admits some strangeness to her new look, but supposes it’s a matter of getting used to it. She tells Gimlet to do better than his predecessors in the Inquisition, and Gimlet says he’ll try to do her proud. He also slips some extra money to her pocket while she isn’t looking. They also hug, though Inpax isn’t a fan, and with that Inpax is sent off to her new life.

We next pick up with Gorm some years in Deathwatch with his new kill team. One morning no one can find Carl, who has also become Gorm’s squad mate. Gorm eventually finds him in the infirmary, having a little bit of a cry. Gorm sits down next to him and asks who died, and Carl informs that both Stuart and Aaron have lost their lives in the Plague Wars. It has hit Carl kind of hard, two of his boys gone at the same time, and he can’t stop thinking that when he was saying goodbyes to them he hadn’t expected to never see them again. Carl can’t help but think if he had been there, as the squad’s apothecary, could they have been saved, especially since they haven’t heard anything from Trazyn for half a year. Gorm tells him that no one is blaming them for not being there, and that Stuart and Aaron died doing their duty. Besides if Carl had been somewhere else, the kill team would have lost their sergeant. Carl says Gorm is right, and Gorm offers him a drink from his flask. Carl mentions that Stuart had told him that the party in Saef’s room was the best party he had ever been to. Outside, they can hear sergeant Argyros calling for morning brief, so Carl grabs also a mint from Gorm as apparently their sergeant doesn’t take kindly to drinking.

Before meeting with his friends on Santa Maria, Gimlet goes to meet up with Tabasco. They have kept up a long distance relationship over the years so Tabasco is very glad to see Gimlet after a long time away. Apparently the leader of the Pepper clan has recently been assassinated and that has caused some political turmoil among the Rogue Traders, which Tabasco is very much sick off. Gimlet asks him to join him his crew, but Tabasco says he can’t leave his sister in a pickle, but once that is settled, he’s more than happy to re-unite. Then they go canoodle in the ship’s library.

Gorm’s hunt brings him to Fenris for the first time in years. Gorm is happy to show his teammates the sights, but most exicted he is about getting to see Uffe again. It’s been near five years, and Uffe hasn’t changed much. They greet each other with warm hugs and head bonks, and settle down to eat together. Uffe has been working as a Lone Wolf all these years, mostly as a scout and / or sniper, and he seems to be content in his lot, though Gorm says he can always get him into Deathwatch if need be. When Gorm asks after Vivek, Uffe pauses for a moment, and says that’s a topic best talked in private. Gorm suggests they go on a hunt, as they never did figure out who was their pack’s leader all this time, so they do. Away from others’ ears, Uffe lets Gorm know Vivek is no longer on Fenris. Several close friends (and his brother) having died made it impossible for Vivek to not do something. Uffe asks Gorm to not ask more of his task or where he is at, just for everyone’s safety, but Uffe knows where he is, and he can only hope Vivek finds some peace so he can come back home. Gorm agrees and adds that they, Vivek and Uffe both, deserve to be happy. The hunt ends with Gorm winning, but he hands the leadership of the pack to Uffe while he is gone, telling him to take good care of the pack. They return back to a night of drinking and partying. An attempt is made to get Sergeant Argyros to drink, but he resists.

It’s been five years and our heroes have not seen each other, and in fact keeping in contact has proved quite difficult as well. Gorm is the first one in the meeting place in his black Deathwatch armor, several xenos-collected memorabilia attached to his armor, including two heads of Trazyn the Collector. Gimlet joins him soon, and he is in Inquisition uniform. Saef is not far behind, also in uniform. There’s hugs all around as the three settle down around a table. 

Gimlet tells everyone that he has been promoted to Inquisitor, and though he is not completely free of High Inquisitor Marbray, he has been offered much more freedom. He is now gathering up a crew including Lu Yan and Alex, his father as a Navigator and Tabasco eventually. Gorm reveals he had planned on going to kill Marbray if she proved troublesome, but things turned out alright it seems. Gimlet apologizes to Saef, Saef had contacted him asking after an AdMech that got caught by the Inquisition and Gimlet couldn’t tell him what was going on, because he was in quite a bit of hot water at the time. Saef says he understands. He asks Gimlet how did it turn out on Triplex Phall, since after Saef learned that Z47r had been executed, he had contacted Gimlet and Gorm, unsure if Z47r had finished his work with the virus-people. Gimlet says he let High Inquisitor know and it has been dealt with.

Saef has joined the Fermund Scorpions, making new friends. Apparently army life has been mostly boring, though he has managed to get some more interesting missions, for example next he is going to a Blackstone fortress. Upon being asked about his relationship with Demir, Saef says that they have managed to meet a few times, but since Demir has rejoined Triplex Phall AdMech forces, they mostly communicate via texting. Gimlet makes an offer for Saef to join his crew, it would be certainly more freedom than the army (although obviously Demir can’t come, since Marbray is still after the AdMechs). Saef says he’ll have to think about it after he’s done with his current mission.

The hunt for Trazyn still continues, Gorm tells. Other than that he has enjoyed Deathwatch, continuing his priestly education with the Deathwatch Chaplain. He mentions Stuart’s and Aaron’s passing, and also that Stuart enjoyed their party. He also mentions meeting with Uffe, and suggests that Gimlet could hire Uffe if he needs Space Wolf to help with Inquisition business, as Gorm is quite busy with the Deathwatch (but in emergency he is also available). Gimlet says he’ll think about. 

Greetings and news now shared our heroes get to drinking and reminiscing that takes the night. And that’s the end of this story, for now at least.

[zerochanges]

Chunsoft and Sound Novels

I remember when visual novels weren't quite known as well as they are today. By no means are visual novels a mainstream genre of video games--in fact you won’t be hard pressed to find some “expert” try to argue with you over how they are not games at all--but their notoriety is far more than that of even just ten years prior. For the longest time visual novels were seen as just an anime fandom “thing” that mainstream gamers paid no mind to. Very few titles were discussed outside those that had animes be it a TV series or an erotic OVA, and even some of the earliest visual novels localized into English were done so by anime and manga translation companies and not actual video game publishers.

If I had to pinpoint a time in my own memory where the genre started to get noticed more it would be when the Nintendo DS took off. With the DS there was an increase amount of western releases for visual novels thanks in large part to its touch screen interface working well with adventure style games. This wasn't just noticed by Japanese developers either as a fair share of American and European made adventure style games were developed for the console as well. It seems everybody was anxious to utilize the system’s unique features when the DS started soaring in popularity. The point ‘n click and visual novel genres really had a home on the DS, and because of that a lot of people outside of just the anime community got a taste of these kinds of games with beginner friendly titles such as Ace Attorney, Trauma Center, and Hotel Dusk.

However, despite the Nintendo DS (and later to a lesser extent the PSP and PS Vita) giving gamers a finely curated and easily digestible dose of the genre I’d say the sad thing is the push was pretty small and died out quickly. Instead what seems to be the biggest reason why most video game outlets nowadays talk about visual novels are because of the parody dating sims that started to grow in popularity. Hey, do you want to date some monster? Is your girlfriend a llama? Maybe all you need in your life is to date a pigeon. Don’t try to hide it, we all know you secretly wish you could go out with a YouTuber. Not into dorky millennials, well no problem, we got a game for you--that is if dating other people’s dads is a you thing. Yes, this is the era of the wacky, silly dating sims taking over in the English market. It wasn't always like this however, and yes Japan has had a long history of doujin dating sim parodies themselves, but lately it feels like all people know are the parodies that make good YouTube videos to react to instead of what a large amount of the games in the genre can offer.

Don’t get me wrong however, I’m by no means saying parodies do not have a place nor should they stay out of the limelight, and I definitely love that this fad has ushered in a wave of indie made English titles--but simply put this wave lacks so much variety and has been stretched so thin by this point. For every one creative title that pushes boundaries and gets new people interested in visual novels there are ten bland titles spilled all over Steam that feel like they were made by people with barley a grasp on what a visual novel can be outside of either parody dating or “boobies are pretty awesome”. Some of these bland games are even really well made and have a lot of care and attention added to their interfaces and artwork, but when push comes to shove, they are still just a basic joke stretched to its thinnest level. Visual novels don’t have to be that however, and while most mainstream gaming outlets may still be joking about how great it is to date your kitchen appliances, you don’t have to (unless you want to, in which case I recommend dating the toaster for he is the bravest of all kitchen dwellers).

A lot of this misunderstanding can be tied into the nebulous relationship between visual novel and dating sim, two “genres” that many people debate are separate things entirely yet due to the overlapping nature of the two they are often confused for each other. There’s a great article by Brian Crimmins online that actually goes into heavy detail about how visual novels came to be as a genre and how over time both visual novels and dating sims affected and evolved each other. It’s a wonderful read that I really recommend it for anyone curious about games such as these, but either way, whether or not you think visual novels and dating sims are the same thing or should be counted as separate but similar genres of games; it certainly doesn't seem to stop most western gaming outlets reporting solely on gag dating sims as visual novels and taking away a majority of people’s attention from so much more that these games can offer.

I take back all my complaints

I somewhat lost focus and started rambling today, so let’s move on now and finally discuss what I wanted to talk about--that being, despite there being well known visual novel developers to the tight knit community that follows games such as these--examples including but not limited to: Mages, Type Moon, or Nitroplus--my favorite developer often seems forgotten in the conversation. What company is that you ask? Well, it’s Chunsoft. So today I want to talk about why Chunsoft really should be talked about more in the western fandom and all their contributions to the genre.

Chunsoft is one of the many long standing Japanese developers that have been around for every major home console since the Famicom. Nowadays they are known as Spike Chunsoft after their merger with Spike Co. in April of 2012. For the sake of this blog post however I am mostly going to refer to them as Chunsoft still given everything I really want to talk about predates the merger. Chunsoft’s involvement with Japanese style adventure games and visual novels more or less are tied to the very beginning of the genre. There isn't quite a de facto known “first” visual novel per se, but most fans put the starting line at around 1982 or ‘83 depending on which game they may be talking about and which source they want to use for the release date (remember release dates were not entirely clear back in these early days).

One of the earliest contenders for this honor is Yuji Horii’s adventure game The Portopia Serial Murder Case (Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken), a game that was based around Horii’s interest in western style adventure titles, much like Horii’s later known legendary game Dragon Quest was based around his fascination with Wizzardy and Ultima and how to replicate those games in an easier to understand interface for his home nation. It’s here we can see “visual novel” wasn't even a blip on the radar yet, and there was no definitive understanding of what genres for games really were at the time. Portopia proved to be a major hit during its release however and lives on even to this day as a fondly remembered game (and also a Japanese internet meme). Chunsoft handled the porting of the title to the Famicom and this was the beginning of a long business relationship between Chunsoft president Koichi Nakamura and Enix’s own Yuji Horii as in the years to follow Chunsoft would develop the first five entries in the hit Dragon Quest franchise for Enix.

With the birth of the Super Famicom things began to change between both Enix and Chunsoft. Having developed games primarily for the publisher Enix Chunsoft felt they should move into their own publishing, and soon got certification from Nintendo to do so. After slaving away on four Dragon Quest titles on the Famicom, and also working on the fifth title for the Super Famicom, most of the employees at Chunsoft were burned out so they decided their first self published title should be a simple game. Koichi Nakamura wanted to help make gaming more accessible at the time and took both the team’s exhaustion and his desire for a more casual audience into consideration when they moved forward. 

The title Nakamura needed to make had to be simple; a game that anyone could be able to figure out to navigate--even those intimidated by a controller, but despite that also needed to take advantage of the more powerful hardware of the Super Famicom by using Kanji scripts which again would make the experience easier on casual players who had trouble getting into video games because game consoles prior could only display text entirely in Hiragana or Katakana making the reading experience poor and hard to enjoy for Japanese players (see Japanese writing systems for more details). To all these ends the team at Chunsoft decided to create a game entirely around reading to tackle this Hiragana issue and show off the hardware (or at least the hardware’s Kanji capabilities) while also being something anyone of any gaming skill level could enjoy. The game would mostly be text for the player to navigate through and present choices at key moments in the story to advance, cutting out any complicated aspects from western adventure style games that might intimidate the unfamiliar such as solving puzzles or finding hidden items. This is how Otogirisō was born.

Otogirisō (Japanese for St John Wort) was Chunsoft’s very first sound novel, a nomenclature which has since confused the hell out of everyone. But what exactly is a sound novel you may ask? Well, people get kind of convoluted about it. Looking at the definition currently found on Giant Bomb a sound novel can be defined by its heavy reliance on sound effects and music to create a game's atmosphere. Usually sound novels will use minimalist visuals and choose to emphasize the text over the artwork presented on screen--most commonly covering the entire screen in said text instead of keeping text only contained in a dialogue box. Something among these lines is the definition usually seen online when you look into it. It’s not entirely wrong either, but it’s also missing something to it. The term sound novel is a creation of Chunsoft themselves, and something they own a copyright on, this is also often brought up when you search sound novel, but at the time of its creation sound novel was meant to be something really easily understood and not this tangled mess of “a certain kind of visual novel”. 

When Chunsoft first created Otogirisō the brand sound novel was added to its box in order to help potential customers understand what kind of game it was. At the time it was just a way to let people unfamiliar with adventure style games (more commonly found in the west) to understand that this title will largely feature reading. In fact when Otogirisō was originally shown to the press in a 1991 Nintendo Space World show the game looked radically different from its finished project. Otogirisō was presented mostly as a book that the player would read, pretty much just like modern e-readers are now, with the exception that it included some sound effects and music. The press at the time was underwhelmed by this so Chunsoft took the game back to the drawing board and created unique visual backgrounds to give the game more flair and in doing so set a certain precedence for future visual novels to follow in. 

An important factor to remember here is there was no clear cut way to define games such as these yet. The term visual novel had not yet been coined, and even gamers themselves were not very well aware of genres. As Nakamura admits in a Famitsu interview when asked about the creation of sound novels, “if you look back at the very beginning of video games, for me, the conception of “genre” didn’t exist. Take action games, for example: within that label you had shooting games [note: Shoot ‘em Ups], you had stuff like Pac Man and Dig Dug, and you had more puzzle-y games too. It was very diverse. On the same note, with adventure games, there were Ascii Magazine’s games like Ometesandou Adventure and Minamiseizan Adventure, which were pure text adventures… but you also had things like Mystery House, which had a few pictures, or war simulation games like Fleet Commander. I played all those, and while I recognized there were many different types of games, I never thought about it in terms of genres.” So basically, at the time sound novel was conceived it was just meant to be the most straightforward way to define this Japanese style of adventure gaming that Chunsoft was trying out on the Super Famicom.

But does it end there? Well no. That’s only the part of the answer. Otogirisō ended up being a modest sleeper hit upon its release and this lead to Chunsoft to making more sound novels, with their next title being a legendary game that has since eclipsed Otogirisō as the de facto sound novel; Kamaitachi no Yoru (Night of the Sickle Weasels). This game was a hit, there’s no easy way for me to describe just how big it really was back during its release--out of the pantheon of legendary Japanese games that people in the US and Europe know jack about Kamaitachi no Yoru is one of the highest. Kamaitachi no Yoru is a fantastic game and I talked about it ad nauseum a few years ago when I payed the localized version called Banshee’s Last Cry, check that out if you’d like to know more, and if you’re still somehow able to play it then you’re definitely in for a darn good time.

With the a string of successes in the visual novel marketplace after both Otogirisō and Kamaitachi no Yoru, Chunsoft kept churning out games over the years, many of which are highly respected by the fandom still such as Machi and 428: Shibuya Scramble. All these releases of theirs had a certain tone and atmosphere, not to mention a distinct presentation that didn’t change much over the years and because of that did not look like what visual novels typically look like now. There’s a certain charm and narrative style between all of Chunsoft’s sound novels that is a really strong defining link in their catalogue despite a lot of these games being stand alone--and because of that people come to expect certain things upon seeing the term sound novel. Many titles would eventually come out not made by Chunsoft that shared similarities to their brand--these games followed in the footsteps of Chunsoft’s tone, structure, style, and presentation--and people began to notice, the most famous of which being 07th Expansion’s Higurashi doujin series. This is where we begin to see that murky kind of convoluted aspect of sound novels, as they start to transcend a basic label put on a box almost three decades ago and turn into their own little sub genre or maybe better described as their own style of visual novel. 

So what the heck is a sound novel then? The simplest answer is a sound novel is a dated term that Chunsoft used regularly and has since fallen out of use for visual novel; the more complicated answer is that sound novels are both a term used by Chunsoft for their brand of visual novels back before the term visual novel existed and also a certain style of visual novel that is mostly inspired by the early Chunsoft games’ presentation and ambiance.

Top Left to Right: Otogirisō - Chunsoft '92, Kamaitachi no Yoru - Chunsoft '94, and Machi - Chunsoft '98 Bottom Left to Right: Higurashi When They Cry - 07Expansion 2002, Tsukihime - Type Moon 2000, and GeGeGe no Kitaro Maboroshi Fuyu Kaikitan - Bandai '96 

Over the years Chunsoft has expanded, changed, and moved beyond their sound novel brand. Despite this however, they have never really stopped putting out solid titles in the visual novel market, and it seems like each new generation of gaming is blessed with at least one visual novel of theirs. My personal favorite title out of all their work from this era would definitely have to be 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors on the Nintendo DS. It was because of this game in particular that my love of visual novels in general really started, and Kotaro Uchikoshi’s sharp writing--especially the incredible dialogue and thorough thought narration in protagonist's Junpei’s head still stands at the peak in my mind. Throw in beautiful sprite work based around art from legendary Capcom (and now freelance) artist Kinu Nishimura, and a fantastic soundtrack from the man himself, Shinji Hosoe and you got yourself a meeting of some fantastic minds. I've written about 999 in the past, and you can read about it here, but I still want to write more about it in the future, especially tackling the latest release it got in 2017’s Zero Escape: The Nonary Games. 

Recent years have seen Spike Chunsoft make it big with their Dangan ronpa franchise, admittedly however the first Dangan ronpa title should be more attributed to Spike, as the game was released in 2010 two years before their merger. However the two companies together as one have since released three more Dangan ronpa games, and two (or is it three?) Dangan ronpa anime titles, and many, many rereleases and compilations. My own interest in the franchise isn't nearly as strong as everyone else’s seem to be but I did however absolutely adore the last game, Dangan ronpa V3, with how many times it managed to jump the shark, upping the game, and constant plot twist after more ludicrous plot twist. If there was ever a way to end something like Dangan ronpa it was what that game did, and oh boy did I get a kick out of that. 

Finally moving past Dangan ronpa, 2019 will see Spike Chunsoft develop and publish Kotaro Uchikoshi’s newest game, AI: The Somnium Files, for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Steam which just got its newest trailer and release date announced earlier this week. I am very excited for it personally and love the intricate and complex alternate reality game type marketing the team has been using to build up to its release! This is some next level stuff, and has been tons of fun all on its own.

Then there’s of course one more game I simply cannot pass up mentioning, 428: Shibuya Scramble. Now I briefly spoke this title earlier mentioning later sound novels that have been highly acclaimed, and trust me 428 is definitely beloved; its perfect score in Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu really meant something back in 2008 on the Wii. But why mention this with recent Spike Chunsoft games? Well the answer is easy, 2018 saw the much beloved, super Japanese game finally get an American and European release! And much celebration was had! If anything in this whole blog post remotely sounded interesting to you I really implore you all to go check it out either on the PS4 or Steam, and see what a Chunsoft sound novel is all about. And for the impatient, I will be writing about it next on blog! 

Despite Chunsoft changing over time and no longer using their sound novel brand, they have still put out many classic and fantastic games in the visual novel genre. Their later work may take a radically different presentation from their prior titles, but despite their moving away from that set style there are still other developers out there that keep up that mantle. Overall I think the effect Chunsoft has had on the genre is undeniable and anyone missing out on their catalogue of fantastic titles are really missing on some of the best titles visual novels have to offer. That’s why I really wanted to write this blog post about them and put into words my thoughts about this developer’s library that just seems so often overlooked by many others in the fandom, at least in my experience. I hope through all my grumbling, and “kids today” rant I was able to at least get somebody interested in trying out one of their games.

[dent-de-leon]

Now that Romelle is here, what do you think they’ll do with her plot-line? Do you think there might be forced romance with her?

ookkkkaayy,,, I think I’ve gotten….I dunno, but Very Many asks about Romelle, in particular people being afraid of Romelle, everyone already worrying she will destroy x ship or y ship, people upset that she “wrecked” Lotor’s character development, ect, so…let’s just talk about Romelle for a moment, because I really do like her. Also prefacing everything with this: fans can enjoy whatever ships they want, regardless of the eventual outcome. And I don’t think anyone should be afraid of Romelle or hate her because of potential ships. Now, that said:

First things first, Romelle’s not the reason Lotor’s character is the way he is. There’s literally no rationalizing that–they didn’t write Lotor to suit Romelle’s character arc, they wrote Romelle’s backstory to suit his. Since episode one, there’s been buildup for Lotor’s character heading down this route. He was always going to fail his redemption arc. In one interview, the show runners even saw people comparing Lotor’s supposed redemption to Zuko’s, and they admitted their intention was always for him to end up going “full Azula” isntead. Before season 6, there was also plenty of talk about how, no matter your intentions, there’s just certain actions that go beyond redemption. Lotor was responsible for horrible things happening to Romelle in the original series too, so I think it’s fitting for things to end up this way–and for his treatment of Romelle and her brother to ultimaely be his undoing. 

I really like the way Romelle was written in VLD, actually. She’s not a chosen hero like the others. She’s this very sweet supporting character. She can’t even fight, but she still has the courage to go chasing after Bandor and manages to escape from Lotor. She doesn’t have a weapon or even a shield, she’s just…herself. She doesn’t have that gift of Altean magic either, she’s not a great alchemist or healer like Allura is. And that’s just kind of refreshing in a series like this I think, that she basically had nothing but still had this drive to take down Lotor, as impossible as it seemed. 

Her lack of magic seems to have even saved her–she’s denied access to the “new colony” because she doesn’t pass the test. If Lotor’s harvesting the “purest” quintessence, then I think his intention was to draw from Sacred Alteans–those that are more “magical,” like Allura and Lotor. So when you look at her character through that lens, I think it’s especially tragic. Her parents had the gift. Her brother had it. But Romelle alone isn’t a chosen one, doesn’t have the potential to be a Life Giver, and she ends up being saved because of it. The rest of her family might have been able to enter the paradise of Oriande, but instead they’re  tortured to a slow agonizing death. Romelle might not have had that magical potential in her blood, but instead, she manages to do something no one else on the colony can–she sees the truth about Lotor. 

Honestly, I also don’t think it makes any sense to bring in a love interest for a major character this late in the game. People have expressed fear about her ending up with Keith or Shiro especially, but both of those characters are also notoriously closed off from others, and I can’t imagine them so readily bonding with someone new. Not for anything, but if she were going to end up with either Shiro or Keith, then I think we would have at least gotten some buildup or indication of that. It seems to me that Romelle is really a side character–possibly she’ll end up being a little more important of a side character, like Matt, but for now she’s only spoken in a single episode. 

She also wasn’t involved with Shiro’s resurrection at all, nor did she have a romantic coded sort of scene during the revival–which I would expect if they were going to push for a sudden love interest. I think fans also forget very quickly, but with Hunk and Shay, we saw that potential for them as a couple literally the first time they meet. Even Keith and Shiro’s first scene, as well we Lance and Allura’s first meeting–both of those scenes seem romantically coded. I mean, when Matt first sees Allura, he’s got the little heart eyes. 

But Shiro doesn’t even seem to really notice Romelle, nor she him. Keith doesn’t completely hit it off with her either. I just think that this isn’t the way VLD would introduce the love interest for a major character. She didn’t seem particularly attached to Keith either, and just sort of follows Krolia around the castle instead. Then, rather than leaving the castle on Keith/Shiro’s Lion, she chooses to go with the Alteans–a nice touch, I think. I’m not sure why people are also incredibly afraid of some forced Shiro/Romelle thing because I mean…?? It’s not like VLD has ever tried to exactly replicate relationships in DOTU?? 

Keith/Allura was made a thing in the 80′s dub, but it’s clear Lance/Allura have all the romantic buildup in VLD. Zarkon/Haggar wasn’t a thing in DOTU either, and Keith’s mother wasn’t galra. Even if you think they’re going to copy Romelle’s romance from DOTU exactly, then–1, she never even met Takashi in the original, the person she knew was Ryou. And 2, in the dub, she ends up with ‘Sven’–who is literally already his own seperate character in VLD. So, yeah…I’m not sure why…everyone’s terrified?? Besides that, the show runners have already said they’re not going to force in relationships, that any romantic developments will be organic. Forced romance doesn’t really have a place in an action series like this anyway, at least, not with the way its few romantic subplots were handled in the past. 

But it says a lot that everyone immediately fears how Romelle will affect ships when there are plenty of other possbilities for her character, such as the gift of Allura finally having another Altean to relate with. An Altean girl that’s more or less her own age too, that’s amazing!! I’d love to see Allura explaining to her what Altea and Orianda were like, or even just Romelle playing with the space mice. Learning how to build new Altean tech with Coran. There’s tons of potential there. Hell, it seemed that Bandor built that communicator, right? Maybe Romelle likes helping Pidge tinker with things because it reminds her of her brother. Maybe she asks Krolia to teach her how to fight so she can be part of the coalition. I just think there’s lots of options for growth if the writers want to take it–though again, I believe she’ll be a side character. 

This isn’t even addressing what the show runners have said about Romelle, which is that she is essentially an entirely different character, because the original Romelle wasn’t what they needed for their story:

Lauren: “I always loved the character Romelle, and I was really excited to bring her back. And you know, we’ve really abandoned her being an Allura doppleganger. That wasn’t what we need in our show, so we were really able to differenciate those characters a lot more so we didn’t have two characters looking exactly the same. And that was fun. Bandor was also fun–they just kind of came from some crazy Grecian planet in Voltron.” (source). 

So yeah, I think it’s fair to say that Romelle’s going to continue to be a character independent from both her DOTU and Golion incarnations. And I really don’t think fans should be so terrified of a romantic subplot added by DOTU, to be honest. Also, she’s very cute, and I adore her,, 

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III, a title that many fans have been waiting to get their hands on for 13 years. Granted, it’s been 7 years since an installment into the series, but it’s been this one that fans have really been waiting for.  Now that it’s here, many fans are combing through every inch of the game to find how the Dark Seeker saga will come to a close. Now, when it came to reviewing the other games in the Kingdom Hearts series, I tried to avoid spoilers best I could, sometimes it was unavoidable and other times it was. For the purposes of Kingdom Hearts III, I’m going to go into full spoilers. I’m going to spoil the previous games, I’m going to spoil this one and yes, I will also be talking about the ending as well.

“But Biscuit, how can I avoid the spoilers from your review?” I hear you asking. Well it’s easy. Normally I would have a “Keep Reading” link shortly after the intro of review, but this go around I’m going to put it right before I get to the spoilers so you can go through your feed or the tag if you just want my thoughts on game itself as well have a brief description of the plot. I’ll throw in another reminder for when spoilers are coming.

Score wise is going to be different as well as I’m going to be displaying my score for the game before I get into the spoilers. I do want to mention that said spoilers do have an impact on the score so if you’re wondering why the game is scored as is, you’ll find more details in the spoiler section of the review.

The game begins right where Dream Drop Distance left off, with Sora going to Olympus Coliseum to not only continue his training to obtain the “Power of Waking” to save Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, as well as stop Xehanort from starting plunging the universe into darkness. This opens up with not Kingdom Hearts III, but rather “Kingdom Hearts 2.9” because I guess Square had to get one last joke in on how long fans had to wait until Kingdom Hearts III proper.

Many of the Disney worlds you’ll travel too actually revolve around the CGI Disney movies and Pixar movies. You’ll travel to worlds featuring: Toy Story, Tangled, Frozen, Monsters Inc., and Big Hero 6. Returning worlds include the previously mentioned Olympus Coliseum, Twilight Town, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

As far as the art style goes, I’ve been vocal on not being the biggest fan with it. I’m still not. Although it complimented the majority of Disney worlds, it still clashes with the Caribbean, but it’s not as jarring as it was in Kingdom Hearts II, it’s still obvious and bad though with a clearly anime looking Sora interacting with realistic people. But, what is perhaps the most jarring of them all is the Olympus Coliseum. Hercules was not meant to be a CGI-esque model and it shows. With the art style of the previous game and the movie proper. The look of Hercules was able to compliment everything to keep a cartoonish look. Now, everything just looks like oddly shaped, realistic blobs.

Like all previous entries in the series, each of these Disney worlds has its own story and problems that Sora will help solve. Some are an abridged version of their respective Disney films, or a new original story within that world. I found that I had preference of the worlds that had their own story, this included: Toy Story, which took place between the events of Toy Story 2 and 3; Monsters Inc., which took place after the first film; Big Hero 6 which takes place after the movie and actually has Sora help Hiro deal with something that occured at the end of the film, something that I hope does become canon if the Big Hero 6 sequel does go into production; Olympus Coliseum to some extent retold the ending of Hercules, but there was enough events altered to where it could have been its own story; finally, Pirates of the Caribbean, although the events of the world take place during “At World’s End” Sora is not actually present for the majority of those events, in fact he’s mostly fighting a member of Organization XIII as the events of the movie play out away from Sora.

Other worlds, such as Tangled and Frozen, told abridged versions of their films. I found that both these worlds did good retellings as both incorporated elements of the main Kingdom Hearts story to keep it interesting. My only complaint is the Tangled world, Sora actually doesn’t contribute to the films events. He’s just simply in the background watching the events be played out. Nothing he does changes anything, unlike the Frozen world where Sora’s presence does cause an alteration in the films events.

The world design was a bit of a mixed bag. You had some worlds that truly felt like a a big world, Toy Story, Big Hero 6, and Pirates of the Caribbean are prime examples of this. Then, you had the rest of the worlds which were nothing but a giant hallway with Disney decorations. It was a bit disappointing that Square took that direction when they could have done so much more.

So what about the combat, the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts III. Like the other numbered entries, it’s great. We got a taste of it in Kingdom Hearts 0.2 and I really loved the little bits that was shown in that game, regular attacks, special attacks, grand magic, it’s all in Kingdom Hearts III and it still feels really great to just fly around in the air or glide around the battlefield hitting things with your Keyblade.

Some Heartless enemies now have elemental weaknesses that can hinder them in battle giving a little layer of strategy in your fights, but not very much, that’s the only thing you’re going to really be keeping in mind when you fight.

There’s also a new summoning ability known as “Attraction Flow Summon” where you can summon a Disney World inspired ride to do some serious damage. Some are better than others, but overall I actually liked them. Regular summons are also available in the game and their fine for the most part, but you won’t really find much of a use for them like in Kingdom Hearts II, it’s just an ability that’s there. One of my favorite new additions is how drive forms are handled. It’s not Sora that changes, but rather his Keyblade as it takes a form of a different weapon that has additional properties that can unleash devastating finishing moves after filling up the hit meter.

The Gummi ship also makes a return and this is perhaps my favorite approach to the Gummi ship. It made the worlds feel like their own planet and the Universe more expansive driving you to explore space as you fly through it shooting Heartless and collecting prizes. Approaching a world feels amazing as you approach a giant place that feels like you’re about to step on another unique planet.

Now, there’s something that Kingdom Hearts has always been known for, the secret bosses. These bosses always challenged your knowledge of spells, game mechanics, and reaction speed. In the case of Kingdom Hearts III, there’s only one secret boss, Dark Inferno, and it’s not hard. In fact, you don’t even have to be max level with the Ultima Weapon to even stand somewhat of a chance to face this boss. I was level 55 when I faced this boss and although I did die a few times it wasn’t because of lack of level, but rather reacting to an attack at the wrong moment. There’s no unique difficult Heartless, no Sephiroth battle, no extra Final Fantasy character battles, no Data battles, no extra Disney villain fights, no extra boss to tease the future of the series, nothing and it feels really lacking compared to previous entries. Granted the original vanilla versions of Kingdom Hearts I and II, didn’t have that many extra boss fights, they still had a few challenge bosses for those that wanted to prove themselves.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of side content, there is, it’s just the extra combat side content is severely lacking in terms of challenge and variety and that was one of my favorite side activities in Kingdom Hearts was attempting them. Again, if you haven’t finished the game and don’t want story spoilers. My score is this:

Kingdom Hearts III receives a 2 out of 5

Keep in mind that the story did have an impact on my final score so click on the “Keep Reading” link for the story discussion to see what else contributed to the score.

I hated the story.

There were some great touching moments, but overall I did not like how many of the events played out. The first issue I had was Vexen. He did something that many people will see as a break in character. He’s always been a seeker of knowledge and has been willing to gain it no matter the cost. However, we see that suddenly, we wants to atone for his actions when the story approaches it’s climax. Granted it does get explained why the sudden shift happens in a Secret Report, which you won’t be able to get until you beat the game, it’s still a jarring shift. One that could have easily been dispelled if we saw a scene of Vexen going through that change.

Then we have the Black Box that Maleficent and Pete are looking for for the entire game. Sora and the gang know that Maleficent is trying to do this, and knowing that she’s looking for an item that could potentially grant her power. So what does Sora do? He just ignores them the entire game. What’s in the box? Who knows, the game didn’t bother telling us, it only used the Black Box to tease the future of the series.

Next is the fight with Aqua, or Anti-Aqua if you will. This was perhaps an emotionally charged fight for me. The scene preceding the fight and the fight itself was perhaps the most emotionally charged moment in the entire game. You have Sora, who wants nothing but to save Aqua from her despair and depression. As you’re fighting Aqua, you hear her whisper during the fight. “I wandered the shadows endlessly, no one ever came.” “I waited for so long.” “You shouldn’t have abandoned me.”

Although this may have just been a cool fight with emotions on high, there is a deeper meaning to this fight, rather it be intentional or not and that is how this can be an allegory of battling depression and abandonment. When depressed, we might often stew in our self created darkness, possible blaming circumstances or people for putting us on this state. Sora, Riku and Mickey in this case, represent the light to help you out of that depression as they have ventured in that darkness to help get you out of it. As for the abandonment, again Sora, Riku, and Mickey, showing that she was not abandoned, as they were looking for a way to help her the entire time.  Again, I’m not sure if this was intentional on Nomura’s part, but it does give the fight a more impactful meaning outside of the core story.

Another enjoyable moment was a scene that I’m sure many people, including myself have been waiting on for years and that Sora and Kairi having their moment. Before the final battle, they exchange some heartfelt words and do something that has been teased since Kingdom Hearts I, share a paopu fruit. This small scene has been building up for years and to finally have this moment delivered did make the wait worth it.

Next, is the concept of death. Kingdom Hearts has always been a series that has been a bit of an enigma when it came to death. That’s not say death has happened in the series, for it has, see Master Eraqus in Birth by Sleep and Strelitzia in Kingdom Hearts Union X. The series established that just because someone loses their heart, doesn’t mean that they themselves die, rather a piece of themselves is lost until it’s found again. Kingdom Hearts takes the concept of death and basically just burns the book, throw it out the window and take away any impact it could have had to the overall story.

That’s right, I’m talking about Kairi’s “death”.

Before we get into that, I want to talk about the Final World. This world, is essentially the afterlife. Keyblade wielders find themselves here if their heart and body have been destroyed in a state that they cannot return. However, Sora was able to break out of the afterlife because of Kairi’s power, which in turn allowed him to use the Power of Waking to revive his friends who also died for them to continue their fight with Xehanort.

When Xehanort struck Kairi down to where she was completely obliterated, this not only shocked me that Nomura was willing to do this to one of the core three, but also how it impacted Sora. He wanted nothing more but to defeat Xehanort and to avenge Kairi. This could have been a powerful moment that stayed rooted in the final entry of the Dark Seeker saga. However, after defeating Xehanort, Sora begins a new journey, to save Kairi.

Because of the connection Sora and Kairi share, Sora believes he can use the Power of Waking to bring Kairi back, however it comes at the cost of Sora himself. Everyone even warns Sora that he’s abusing the power and will disappear if he brings Kairi back. This would make sense as Kairi’s Heart and Body have been obliterated to a state that she cannot return. But hey, Sora discovered he can use the power of waking to go into the afterlife to revive people and you know what, that’s what he does. He goes to the afterlife, revives Kairi and then disappears for abusing the power. Doing this to me ruined the impact this moment could have potentially left for the finale of the Dark Seeker saga.

There is however one more point I would like to discuss with the story before finally closing this review. How the story felt.

I felt it was half baked. I think Nomura wanted to move on to a different idea he had for the series, but he couldn’t as he had to conclude the Dark Seeker Saga first. It’s partly why I feel Kingdom Hearts III is rather empty, because I don’t think Nomura’s heart was in the conclusion. I feel he only did this to finish the story and to give the fans the title they wanted, Kingdom Hearts III. A good portion of Kingdom Hearts III, even sets pieces up for the future of the series, rather than act as a wrap up. Which is fine, if you want a loose thread to have the idea and possibility for a sequel open, but I felt Nomura didn’t give Kingdom Hearts III his all and felt restricted with what he could do, because he couldn’t tell the story he really wanted. Again, I don’t know Nomura, I’m not in the guys head, but to me that’s what it felt like.

As for me, I think this is where my journey will end for the series. I don’t see myself following this series anymore and I’ll probably let the new generation of fans inherit the series. It was fun while it lasted and I’ll most likely continue to play the previous entries of the series, but the future entries, I think I’ll pass.

Thank you all for sharing this journey with me. The core gameplay is enjoyable and although there are some wonky bits, it’s a still a good game for long time fans of the series, just not the grand finale that I’m sure many people were hoping for and expecting. The score was something I was wrestling with for awhile, but at the end of the day, I feel that this is what I would give it.

[streetsbound]

Let’s see how to build a campaign! Part 1- Introduction

Hey all! I've been into DnD for a while now, and I'm the kind of dude that always DMs, but that's okay, because I love to run games! Getting to guide stories and to tinker with rules and settings is something that keeps me happy! A little on my history with roleplaying is appropriate then: I've run a lot of stuff throughout my time. I got my start as a child with Second Edition learning a hodgepodge of rules that seemed commonplace at the time. I've been running games every edition of DnD since, and often for other systems. It happens that I’ve time to start thinking on things I want to do for myself, so I thought I might catalogue the process that goes into making a campaign, for myself at least.

I'm going to walk through making this campaign with all of you- Now it is important to remember that this is just what goes into a campaign for me- and your own approach is going to differ, probably wildly.

The first step I found was to find what I'd wanted to run- and for me it was easy to work out. The part that always grabs me for roleplaying games is exploring the world around me, getting to see how things unfold and fit together. It's also always useful to scratch out inspiration from the media around me. I'm a fan of Morrowind and loved how the world handled exploration- each cell had interesting features and with a few smaller hub-spaces, distinct environments and a few types of dungeons it was easy to just dive in and see what happened. I want to capture that feel of striking out of town and making the choice to plunder a tomb. Morrowind then, is going to be a driving inspiration for me less for the setting and world, and more for how it handled dungeons. Those are always the meat of any DnD style game, they provide puzzles for the abilities of classes to express themselves. Morrowind accomplished a lot by chunking its game world into cells, so I probably want to do something similar and divide up things into chunks I can handle. I also grew up with a bunch of isometric RPGs like the ever-popular Baldur's gate series. I'm also the kind of dork who digs roguelike stuff: Especially TOME of late. Finally, I've been diving into the Ultima series.

This is important to note because it's all been coloring my ideas for this game and campaign, I'm being given a guide for design and gamebuilding by deconstructing the things I enjoy. Not only will these games give me something to emulate as I plod along, but they'll keep me motivated to keep adding things to this campaign.

Okay, so I know what I'm going to shamelessly pilfer from, now what's the game system I want to use? I really want to run a fantasy exploration game with a lot of dungeon crawling and I know it has to be done theatre of the mind. That's because running things with miniatures creates a second-game I'm trying to avoid, and what's more I can't run that without things bogging down. For what I'm looking for Dungeons and Dragons fits like a glove. It will be super easy to grasp thanks to its presence in the cultural lexicon (Honestly, it's also a solid game line and I will fight any of your nerds on this.) There's a lot of DnD out there though, so here's where stuff gets groggy. I need to find an edition since I love 5e, but I don't want to DM it. I'm currently running another game and I'd be too bored running both. 4e is superb, and still holds up as a solid game but I can't easily run it theater of the mind. I'm going to go with an old edition. Very old. Basic/Expert DnD. I said things would get groggy, yeah? I actually printed off my own copies after purchasing the pdfs. I like it for a few reasons: it's simple, it's fast and clean, and there's an obscene amount of material floating around out there for it- and that incredible amount of material is going to serve me well by giving me so many ready-made dungeons, monsters, mechanics, more. Unfortunately, the game has not aged well, so I'm going to bolt a lot of rules onto it- something I can do thanks to how simple the system is! That’s also another part of the appeal! Since this is just going a side-project for me, I can take a crack at game design and working on mechanics!

There's also a few different types of campaigns; I could run a mega-module going from one adventure and set-piece to the next- following the course of my players as they challenge a minor bandit group that has ties to the demon-goddess of fungus, before pushing into the underdark and battling the Demogorgon. But nah, that's not quite what I want. I love crafting stories and getting to involve the players in that. I love the collaborative fiction that emerges- but it's just not what I want this time around. I want to focus more on the experience of the game itself, in having mechanics be something that players blatantly interact with, rather than being something hidden behind fiction. I've also stressed how much I want exploration to play a part here- there's a type of campaign that works particularly well with B/X dnd and that is the wilderness exploration game. The Gazetteer series worked on fleshing out a world for players to explore- that same world is in the back of the expert book as a series of Hexes that players can move around. If I'm working in a game-board aspect to the game, it'll be with a map. That'll keep things sandboxy enough, but still give a built-in restraint for me to use. Heck yes. With luck, I can build a game of exploration by chunking things into hexes and really getting mileage out of the wilderness aspect of the expert rules.

Well, now that I have the ideas formed, it's time to do something with that. Time to turn my idea into a framework- every project needs blueprints and a campaign is no exception. It'll give me a timeframe and keep me on track with designing things so that I don't go overboard with my enthusiasm. The last thing I want is to burn out or to stagnate.

[aurimeanswind]

Get Acquainted—Sunday Chats—3/4/18

So I will be talking about this a lot over the next few days, but I have a brand new podcast that I want you all to check out.

Get Acquainted, with Alex O’Neill

My new show is called Get Acquainted, and it’s a one on one interview show. And I know. I get it. Everyone has one nowadays, but I’ve been working on this for a while, and I’m really excited about the conversations I’m going to have on it.

First and foremost, you can go subscribe to this show right now. It’s on iTunes and everyone, with just a little preview episode available to get you subscribed and ready for my first episode, next week.

You also get to hear the amazing music made just for this show by my friend Micah E. Wood, who you can go listen to more of his music on iTunes and Spotify as well! 

iTunes Link

If you can rate or review this while it’s just launching, that would be immensely helpful. My first guest is Andrea Rene and her episode will be releasing next week. This is going to be a monthly show with different guests on each podcast, and the format will evolve and change over time. 

I’m really excited to finally launch this show, and I hope you all like it!

Honestly that’s the big news I wanted to get out, so let’s go right to questions.

You can send your questions @ me when you see my tweet on Sunday afternoons with the hashtag #SundayChats in it!

I mean the big one is Grand Theft Auto. I’ve played 2, 4, and 5, and I think all of them are like, fine. This infatuation with GTA V is so beyond me. I hate to sound so stuck up, but it’s a series I’ve just never had much patience for. There is supreme quality and technical design there, but none of the entries have stuck with me. That being said, all of the more seminal ones (Vice City, San Andreas, and GTA 3) I haven’t played, so I could be missing a lot of the core of that series. 

I’ve also, and this is me just really thinking about it for a moment, but I’ve never really loved the Battlefield series? By which I mostly mean the “modern” Battlefield games. I loved the original, 1942 was the first FPS I ever played, and it is super special to me. I enjoyed 1943, but most of all I adored Bad Company 2. I like the original, but BC2 is where it’s at. But Battlefield 3/4 and most recently 1, all haven’t really done much for me .I’ve bounced off of all of them, but the idea of another WW2 Battlefield game, which is rumored to be this year’s, actually has me excited. If they can get 1942 vibes again.

I mean Max Scoville once gave me pogs out of his pockets. But I dunno, they’re just bits of cardboard really, right?

So porgs. I liked the porgs. As someone who didn’t love everything about The Last Jedi, I liked porgs a whole lot.

Absolutely. There are multiple pieces that I’ve gone back to and completely rewritten. In fact most of them still aren’t published because I’d probably rewrite most of them again if given the chance. Hell I’ve written something on Persona 4 Golden about six times.

Which I think is similar to the situation you’re in, right? As Night in the Woods is your favorite game Steven, I feel you when I channel that to write about mine, Persona 4. 

But a project that’s special to you should take time. Sometimes the ideas come and go and you feel good about them, but you don’t want to rush something you feel you only have one crack at. Get Acquainted is a show I have had rummaging around for two full years, and I’m finally in a place where I feel I can do it. So take your time.

This is tricky. It’s different for different things. I mean if it was numbers and clicks and views, i’d have quit this gig a long time ago haha. I think projects where I can see my own personal growth in them, like the run of five episodes for the latest Alex Talks. I can see the change from the first to the last as far as editing ability and my hosting capability. So I take that as a success. 

Plus a lot of people had very kind things to say about that series, and that makes me feel really good. 

I think it’s a combination of all of the above. Ultimately if you’re really proud of a thing and think it’s genuinely cool, even if no one sees or hears it, it’s a quality thing you made. Then, when you’re applying for jobs and trying to show the work you’ve made, you can send them a link to whatever that thing is, and you know exactly the right people have seen and appreciated it. If it’s worth sharing it’ll get its use in its own ways, in my experience.

I mean, I think in a perfect world that is what Patreon was for. But then it blew up, and why wouldn’t it, since it’s such a strong idea and works so well for creators. But I feel like also those huge creators make it harder for those smaller ones to thrive on that service. Like the notion that has been going around a lot: is Patreon just a small pool of contributors or is it still brining new people to its service? I don’t know, but it seems like there isn’t enough love to go around.

I want smaller creators to be able to thrive on Patreon, and hopefully they find their audiences grow on that service.

Pretty stoked. New show launching, PAX East is going to be huge for us, and I’m reviewing Yakuza 6.

Get ready.

I’ve been seeing them! Folks can check them out here:

I’d probably take Anna Kendrick, because she seems like she’d be down, and I’m in love with her.

Oh god yes. Feed me your Kingdom Hearts questions.

My favorite world is tricky, but it may be something like The Land of Dragons from KH2. But honestly so many playthroughs later of KH2 I don’t love any of it’s worlds really, save for The World That Never Was. KH1 had really good, big worlds with tons of exploration, but the platforming was so all over the place in that game that getting around them was a bit nightmarish.

Haha I guess I am just jaded on KH worlds after playing through them so much. Space Paranoids.

I don’t love many of the Disney key blades, but I love the Ultima Weapon in KH2, it looks excellent, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Oathkeeper. I love it’s look and what i represents. Of course if you were to ask any of my KH brethren, it’d be Oblivion, hands down, and I like that one quite a bit.

Honestly, Chain of Memories has one of the absolute best stories in that entire franchise. I wish you didn’t have to get through a really poor card game to get to it.

But I love the story of KH2 the most. Especially the ending. Birth by Sleep is a close third of those two though. 

World Specific I love the Peter Pan one from KH1, and I really like Hunchback of Notre Dame in KH3D.

I like order of release over chronological order. Honestly I don’t know why it’s such a big argument. I think feeling those games evolve is just such a treat, all the way from the first to 0.2, it’s such a great feeling of how those games changed.

Plus, some things are supposed to be told out of order? Stories have prequels come out in the middle to freshen things for a later context. I always think of Metal Gear Solid 3. Enriches that story so much, but you should play that game first. 

Anyway. Yes I need yours. See tweets for details.

I’m really excited about this new show, and I know this may seem like a bit of an unceremonious announcement, but I’ve been stressing about this for so long I just need to get it out there.

Go subscribe to Get Acquainted, and tune in next week for the first official episode!

Cheers! Keep it real!

[vargasni]

Back to oils!

A few days ago the second volume of Mistborn "The well of ascension" edition Leather-bound went on sale.Hard with gold letters, with exclusive fan art galleries for this edition.

Hace unos días salió a la venta el segundo tomo de Mistborn “The well of ascension” edición Leather-bound. Un tapa dura forrado en cuero y dorado, con galerías de fan art exclusivo del libro.

I don't know for how long you follow me, but here's a bit of history.Last year, when I came across the books of Brandon Sanderson, I had a few months that every free minute I had was dedicated to drawing pictures of their stories.It is nowadays, one of my favorite writers, and almost everything he writes, I try to devour almost immediately. His writing style and the ideas he shapes are the kind of stories that I enjoy the most, and that one day I would love to transmit with mine.  Last inktober I made around 30 drawings based only on his work. And when he was here in Barcelona, I was able to give him one of those drawings. In May I was contacted by the art director of Dragonsteel production (Brandon's company) and illustrator of much of the graphic material that appears in the books, to discuss the possibility of licensing some of these drawings for use in the art gallery of the editions for collectors.

No sé por cuanto tiempo me seguís la mayoría, pero aquí va un poco de historia. El año pasado, cuando me encontré con los libros de Brandon Sanderson, tuve unos meses que cada minuto libre que tenía lo dedicaba a hacer dibujos de sus historias. Es hoy en día, uno de mis escritores preferidos, y casi todo lo que escribe, lo intento devorar casi inmediatamente. Su estilo de escritura y las ideas que plasma es el tipo de historias que mas disfruto, y que algún día me encantaría lograr trasmitir con las mías. El inktober pasado hice alrededor de 30 dibujos solamente basados en su obra. Y cuando estuvo por aquí por Barcelona, pude regalarle uno de esos dibujos. En el mes de mayo me contactó el art director de Dragonsteel production (Brandon’s company) e ilustrador de gran parte del material gráfico que aparecen en los libros, para hablar de la posibilidad de licenciar algunos de esos dibujos para usarlos en la galería de arte de las ediciones de coleccionistas que producen de sus libros. 

Ya la simple idea de que mi trabajo apareciera en un de sus libros me dejaba sin palabras, así que imaginen mi reacción cuando la plática evolucionó de licenciar a comisionar una pieza nueva para el tomo 2 de Mistborn… Llevaba tiempo intentando dedicarle un espacio para pintar algo relacionado a estos magníficos libros que tantos buenos momentos me han dejado. Pero el trabajo en esos meses era bastante constante en no dejarme ningún segundo libre. Así que una comisión para hacerlo era un sueño hecho realidad. Me puse de inmediato a la tarea. Y empecé a trabajar en los bocetos. En el segundo libro de Mistborn, hay muchas escenas brutales que quería ilustrar, pero solo tenía espacio para una ilustración, y teniendo en cuenta que muchos otros artistas también se ven atraídos por estas historias, es muy probable que las primeras ideas ya estuvieran flotando por Internet. No por ser lo mas original del mundo, sino por la forma en que me cautivó, me quise enfocar sobre todo en los lazos que se crean entre Vin y el Kandra “OreSeur”, que toma la forma de un perro negro enorme. La relación de estos dos no empieza muy bien en el libro, pero poco a poco va tomando un rumbo de profunda amistad y respeto por ambas partes.

Por cierto, perdón por la baja calidad de las fotos del proceso, fueron hechas con el móvil sin prestar mucha atención. Algunas tienen una distorsión muy marcada o colores muy alejados de la realidad. El que mas se acerca es la ultima foto del post.

Already, the simple idea that my work would apear in one of his books left me speechless, so imagine my reaction when the talk evolved from licensing to commissioning a new piece for Volume 2 of Mistborn ... I had been trying for quite some time to make some fan art related to these magnificent books that so many good moments have left me. But the work at the time was really constant and left me no room for it. So a commision to do so was a dream come true! I immediately started the task, starting to work on the sketches. In Mistborn's second book, there are many brutal scenes I wanted to illustrate, but I only had space for an illustration, and taking into account that many other artists are also attracted by these stories, it is very likely that the first ideas are already floating around the Internet.Not for being the most original of the world, but for the way I was captivated, I wanted to focus especially on the bonds that are created between Vin and the Kandra "OreSeur", which takes the form of a huge black dog. The relationship of these two does not start very well in the book, but little by little it takes a course of deep friendship and respect on both sides.

By the way, sorry for the low quality of the photos of the process, were made with the phone without paying much attention. Some have a very marked distortion or colors very far from reality. The one that comes closest is the last photo of the post.

My second goal with this job was to continue working with oil paintings. I already had some piece for Magic by the date in that technique (still to come out) and I wanted to continue experimenting with the medium. With this piece I tried the indirect painting method. Certainly more laborious than the others, but the result (and seeing it with eyes now) was completely worth it. I started doing a pencil drawing, to define the design, general values and details well. I do not usually make them as detailed normally, but with this piece I wanted to have control over the details, and not try to design with the painting as in digital, obviously because of the nature of the medium that would come later.

Mi segunda meta con este trabajo, seguir trabajando con óleos. Ya llevaba alguna pieza de Magic por la fecha en esa técnica (aún por salir) y quería seguir experimentando con el medio. Con esta pieza intenté el método de pintura indirecta. Ciertamente mas trabajoso que los demás, pero el resultado (y viéndolo con ojos de ahora) valió completamente la pena. Empecé haciendo un dibujo a lapiz, para definir bien el diseño, valores generales y detalles. No suelo hacerlos  tan detallados normalmente, pero con esta pieza quería tener control sobre los detalles, y no intentar diseñar con la pintura como en digital, obviamente por la naturaleza del medio que vendría luego.

Indirect painting is worked by layers, the first dedicated to the values and then little by little building the colors on top. The luminosity achieved by this technique is unrivaled with other more direct methods. A pity that the photos can't transmit this feeling through , but if you have been in front of some oil painting of the last century you will know the effect that I speak. That light that radiates from the surface, especially the skins. These are some of the captures I was taking of the process. First, by moving the most prominent lines of the drawing to the MDF panel and then the first layer of paint.

La pintura indirecta se trabaja por capas, las primeras dedicadas a los valores y luego poco a poco construyendo los colores encima. La luminosidad que logra esta técnica no tiene rival con otros métodos mas directos. Una pena que no se pueda trasmitir esta sensación a través de fotos, pero si han estado delante de alguna pintura al oleo del siglo pasado sabrán del efecto que hablo. Esa luz que irradia de la superficie, especialmente de las pieles. Estas son algunas de las capturas que fui tomando del proceso. Primero traspansando las lineas mas prominentes del dibujo al panel MDF y a continuación la primera capa de pintura.

Aunque la peor parte de este proceso es la espera, en este caso no me fue tan mal. No soy fan de los secativos y no quería usar en esta pintura, no había mucha prisa y por trabajo, recuerdo que tenía dos pinturas mas para Magic. Luego viene la segunda capa de valores y al secar empezar a introducir algunos colores.

Although the worst part of this process is waiting, in this case it wasn't so bad. I am not a fan of the secatives and I didn't want to use in this painting, there wasn't much of a hurry and as far as work, I remember that I had two more paintings for Magic. Luego viene la segunda capa de valores y al secar, empezar a introducir algunos colores.

As you can see, the dog was the one that suffered the most changes during the whole journey. But the result is quite close to that of pencil drawing. From here I did not have many problems, I just followed the plan I had from the beginning. I had the Ipad right next to me to go looking at the references while I was doing and compare the color in real time

Como pueden ver, el perro fue el que mas cambios sufrio durante todo el trayecto. Pero el resultado se acerca bastante al del dibujo a lapiz. A partir de aquí no tuve muchos problemas, solo seguir el plan que tenia desde un principio. Tenía el Ipad justo al lado mío para ir mirando las referencias mientras iba haciendo y comparar el color a tiempo real.

Here is the final painting.I had the chance to frame the painting with this awesome design, can't be more happy about it! Also the pencil drawing. Both for sale in my store in case there is someone interested.

Así quedó la pintura. Tuve la ocasión de enmarcarla y no puedo estar mas contento con la elección del marco, al igual que el dibujo a lápiz. Ambos en venta en mi tienda por si hay alguien interesado.

As always thank you for reading all my ramblings and see you in the next one!

¡Gracias por echarle un ojo a la entrada y hasta la proxima!

[aion-rsa]

25 Best RPGs Ever Made

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It’s almost cruel to talk about the best RPGs ever made. Not only is it the kind of topic that inspires especially heated debates, but even a shortlist of the greatest RPGs ever may leave you desperately trying to find the time to somehow play them all.

Then again, the thing that separates the best RPGs from the rest is that they never really make you feel like you’re in a rush to “beat” them or move on to the next thing. They grab you by the hand and take you on a journey defined by character building, storytelling, world design, and, most importantly, the very convincing idea that you are no longer simply yourself but rather have the chance to truly become the kind of legendary figure you used to only be able to daydream about.

Whether they’re JRPGs, CRPGs, Tactical RPGs, or ARPGs, the best RPGs ever made are united by their ability to ease the escape from your burdens, your worries, and your world by taking you on an adventure the likes of which you simply won’t find in any other game.

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25. Disco Elysium

It may be the newest game on this list, but in less than two years, Disco Elysium has changed the way some of the industry’s best creators approach the art of video game writing and RPG design. 

Though it lacks a proper combat system, this hard-boiled detective adventure is never lacking in intensity. With its fascinating moral dilemmas and incredible writing, Disco Elysium raised the bar in terms of challenging us to define who we are in its intoxicating world. If that isn’t role-playing, what is?

24. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Tactical RPGs don’t always get the love some of their genre cohorts enjoy, but it’s nearly impossible to not respect everything that Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance does so well.

Fire Emblem’s “rock, paper, scissors” style combat shines brighter than ever in this 2005 GameCube classic, but it’s the way this RPG’s incredible plot highlights the thrills of Fire Emblem’s high-risk permadeath system that puts it over the top. This is a simply brilliant blend of tactics and raw emotion that few games in this genre have come close to besting.

23. Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar

There’s a healthy debate to be had about the best Ultima game ever, but Ultima 4 gets the nod here by virtue of this sequel’s sheer audacity.

Free of nearly every overused role-playing trope, Ultima 4 tasks you with finding yourself in an age of enlightenment rather than battling some great evil during a dark time. Ultima 4 deserves more credit than it typically receives for its plot that focuses on internal struggles in a time of peace, but it’s this game’s Virtues system, unusual character-building mechanics, and truly open nature that make it special to this day.

22. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Look, Vampire: The Masquerade was a tragically broken game upon its release and is only really playable today thanks to fan updates. However, so many of Masquerade’s problems can be attributed to its incredible ambition.

Some of the best tabletop-style RPG mechanics ever perfectly complement a truly unique RPG world where vampire clans battle for control of an extensive underground society. At its best, Vampire: The Masquerade is even better than that premise makes it sound.

21. Dragon Quest VIII: Journey Of The Cursed King

Ranking the Dragon Quest games is a tall enough task in and of itself, but there’s something to be said for how Dragon Quest 8 so perfectly captures most of the things that make this series great while adding a few necessary improvements.

Here’s a Dragon Quest game that offers a 100 hour+ journey packed with the incredible settings and memorable characters this series is known for that still manages to make the whole thing just accessible enough to encourage even the timid to participate in a truly epic adventure.

20. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

What is there left to say about KOTOR? After all, you probably know about its all-time great Star Wars story, its memorable morality system, and certainly its incredible twist.

Instead, let’s focus on how BioWare managed to break down the wall that divided PC and console RPGs by releasing one of the most well-crafted, best-written, and surprisingly deep PC-style RPGs ever exclusively for a console. It’s as if millions of gamers cried out in joy at the collective realization that it suddenly felt like anything was possible no matter what platform you owned.

19. Secret of Mana

It’s really a testament to the quality of the SNES’ JRPG library that Secret of Mana isn’t even the first SquareSoft RPG that people usually think of when they think of that console.

Still, Secret of Mana is something close to a video game design miracle. Few other games have come this close to packing this much depth and heart into such a substantial RPG experience that never feels like a slog and even allows you to play with a friend. This is one of the most entertaining RPGs ever made.

18. Earthbound

For years, Earthbound fans had to beg and plead for gamers to go out of their way to give this initially overlooked RPG the chance it deserved. I even spent quite a few years preaching that same gospel.

Now, though, many gamers know that Earthbound is one of the weirdest, most creative, and most surprisingly emotional JRPGs ever made. From its bizarre story to its soundtrack that refuses to stick to a genre for more than a song, Earthbound is a truly unique creative vision the likes of which many weren’t prepared for at that time and likely won’t see again.

17. Vagrant Story

Vagrant Story is another one of those games that were initially overlooked by many of the people who may have enjoyed it most. Even positive reviews said that Vagrant Story was too complicated, too dry, and maybe too much of an investment.

Years later, some of those criticisms remain, but they’re often quickly drowned out by praise for Vagrant Story’s unique take on the dungeon crawler genre and the ways that it juggled a pleasantly deep combat system with a dark, subtle, and mature narrative. There’s a world in which Vagrant Story achieved Dark Souls levels of fame, but it’s still rightfully remembered as one of the best dungeon crawlers ever. 

16. Persona 5

There are very few misses in the Persona franchise, but Persona 5’s story and style arguably elevate it over the other Persona titles that could have easily appeared on this list.

Alright, if I’m being very honest, Persona 5 gets the nod here for its style alone. This title’s design team took no piece of on-screen real estate for granted and managed to turn even the most mundane piece of UI into art. The worst part about this game is spending almost 100 hours with your jaw on the floor. 

15. Final Fantasy 9

You’ll soon discover that Final Fantasy 9 essentially “beat” Final Fantasy 7 for a spot on this list. They’re obviously both great games, but there are just so many little things that separate Final Fantasy 9 from the series’ revolutionary 7th (numbered) installment.

Final Fantasy 9’s characters, story, world, and music are simply among the best in franchise history. While it certainly doesn’t hurt that Final Fantasy 9 returned to a wonderful medieval setting, this incredible swan song for the original PlayStation ultimately gets the nod for the ways that it so perfectly utilizes and improves on so many of the things the FF franchise does so well. 

14. Deus Ex

Deus Ex may owe a lot to the System Shock series, but when it comes to executing the ambitious concept of a narrative-driven first-person RPG series that emphasizes environmental storytelling and character building, the original Deus Ex arguably stands alone. 

While Deus Ex’ bionic implant system and the way it offered multiple solutions to almost every situation are just brilliant bits of roleplay excellence, the game is arguably best remembered for its conspiracy theory narrative and how it sent you across the globe in search of something close to the truth.

13. Suikoden 2

While many RPGs (including an especially famous one we’ll be talking about in a bit) are built around assembling a party, few do it better than Suikoden 2 and its cast of 108 “collectible” characters with unique personalities, abilities, and stories. 

That large cast of character is understandably the game’s highlight feature, but what’s easy to forget about Suikoden 2 is how its incredible political storyline, castle building minigame, and surprisingly enjoyable combat system so easily ensnare you even if you aren’t especially interested in finding every available party member.

12. Planescape: Torment

For years, I’ve heard Planescape Torment fans argue that it features the best story in RPG history. Well, you know what? They…might actually be right.

Planescape: Torment’s story of the “Nameless One” quickly evolved into a philosophical meditation on the nature of existence that never feels as pretentious as that description may make it sound. This masterpiece expertly forces you to confront the implications and impact of every decision you make in a way that feels pleasantly organic. This is a nearly unrivaled example of choice-driven storytelling.

11. Baldur’s Gate 2

There’s a strong case to be made that Baldur’s Gate 2 is the best “pure” D&D style RPG ever, but what’s really so impressive about this title is how it translated D&D’s most complicated concepts to a digital medium so easily that you’ll likely find yourself wondering why other games haven’t been able to pull that feat off with such apparent ease.

Of course, there’s nothing easy about Baldur’s Gate 2‘s design. Its choice and consequence-based storytelling and stunningly deep character-building systems have often been replicated, but it’s hard to top one of the best RPG developers ever working at the top of their game.

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10. Dark Souls

It’s always a little controversial to label Dark Souls as an RPG, but the two things that this game does better than most in terms of classic RPG genre conventions are class distinction and character building. 

To survive in the world of Dark Souls, you have to understand your character and your own abilities in a way that goes beyond knowing which button to hit. The bond you form with your character by the time that you finish Dark Souls is something that the best RPGs strive for but rarely achieve. You truly feel like you have become your in-game persona and belong in this game’s wonderful yet horrifying world.

9. Pokémon Red and Blue

In case you’re wondering, this spot nearly went to Pokémon Gold and Silver based on quality alone. Ultimately, though, the cultural impact of Red and Blue was too great to ignore.

There’s a very good chance Pokémon was the first RPG that many people lost themselves in, which is all the more impressive when you consider that it’s a shockingly deep RPG in its own right rather than a simple “introduction” to the genre. Adventures are supposed to feel magical rather than cumbersome, and few RPG adventures are as consistently magical as this one. 

8. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind

Look, I know Skyrim is the blockbuster best-seller, and I’ve even argued that Oblivion is the best Elder Scrolls game ever, but much like Pokemon Red and Blue, it’s hard to argue against the impact of Morrowind and how it forever changed our expectations for the scope of an RPG. 

Morrowind‘s status as one of the first modern open-world RPGs (at least based on how we use usually that term today) is impressive enough, but what’s so shocking about this game is that few RPGs that followed in its footsteps have come close to topping Morrowind‘s visual creativity and lore. It’s so easy to forgive so many of the ways that Morrowind hasn’t aged especially well once you’ve fallen down the shockingly deep rabbit hole of its character-building possibilities and world-building.

7. Fallout: New Vegas

The debate over the best Fallout game will go on, but for the moment, let’s put down our swords and talk about all of the things that make Fallout: New Vegas so unbelievably brilliant.

Rarely have we ever seen an “open-world” RPG that puts this much attention into its side quests, out-of-the-way locales, and minor characters. Most open-world games try to sell you on the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything, but Fallout: New Vegas is one of the few that will encourage even the most focused gamers to see it all. More importantly, it manages to offer a variety of potential paths forward that only reveal themselves based on how you navigate its complex web of choices. It’s the kind of game that makes you want to stand up and take a bow.

6. Mass Effect 2

There are some who will say that Mass Effect’s core promise of a galaxy that’s fate will be impacted by most of your choices was always too ambitious. There are others who will argue, “It wasn’t. Just look at Mass Effect 2.”

Mass Effect 2 is arguably the closest BioWare came to realizing their most ambitious design ideas. Despite working with (often against) a scope that would make most studios weep in the corner, BioWare packed this sequel with a legion of memorable characters with their own complicated arcs that slowly reveal themselves as you brazenly explore a galaxy that feels ready to open up or crumble at your feet at any time. Mass Effect 2 does all of that and still manages to be a blast to play throughout.

5. The Witcher 3

The first two Witcher games are incredible, but if you find that most people don’t seem to be able to put The Witcher 3’s impact into words, that’s probably because even the first two games couldn’t quite prepare them for this masterpiece.

The Witcher 3 has side stories that would be worthy of campaigns in lesser games. I honestly still can’t quite explain how this game remains so fresh and exciting even after dozens of hours of play. Many of us grew up dreaming of being thrown in an elaborate medieval fantasy world where we truly felt like the hero that could shape the fortunes of all, and The Witcher 3 might just be the ultimate piece of sword and sorcery fantasy wish fulfillment.

4. Final Fantasy 6

Look, I could sit here all day and talk about the virtues of Final Fantasy 6 or even how its best moments are still capable of reducing gamers to tears. I could tell you about the heroes, the villains, the plot beats, and all the other things that make this game the classic that few will debate that it is.

Instead, I want to talk about how Final Fantasy 6 changed how so many of us look at gaming. This title’s prestigious nature was so prominent that it almost feels like developer Squaresoft traveled into the future and brought something back with them. This was the kind of game you begged people to play and it was the kind of game that made you pledge your allegiance to the very concept of gaming. 

3. Diablo 2

In an earlier article, I talked about how Diablo turned RPGs into an addiction. Somehow, that brilliant game managed to retain all the deep qualities of the greatest D&D adventures and wrap them around a simplified combat system that had many of us playing until the wee hours of the morning completely unaware of what was happening in our own world.

Well, Diablo 2 did all of that and made the whole thing so much better that you rarely even hear people talk about the original Diablo anymore. If the highlight of an RPG is that moment when you so completely lose yourself in its world that the troubles of your own existence leave your mind, Diablo 2 arguably reaches that point faster than almost any other RPG ever made.

2. World of Warcraft

I often wonder how I would explain to a child of the ‘80s or early ‘90s that a game like WoW exists. I suppose I’d just say “See, there’s this persistent world filled with wonders that you and your friends can spend thousands of hours exploring as you work together to defeat overwhelming threats and write your own adventures.” They’d probably understand the appeal of that idea but may not be able to comprehend how such a thing could be possible.

WoW may require one hell of a commitment to get the most out of it, and the game has had some ups and downs over the years, but the fact of the matter is that there is really no other RPG that can offer what the best moments in WoW history have to offer. It’s a truly magical experience that you’ll willingly sacrifice your free time to for the simple fact that it offers experiences you could only previously dream of. 

1. Chrono Trigger

Maybe this is an oddly appropriate statement for a game about time travel, but I’m fairly certain that Chrono Trigger will forever remain a timeless masterpiece. 

Chrono Trigger is an almost flawless game that not only combines so many of the things that we love about RPGs but arguably perfects them. Assembled by a dream team of some of the best JRPG creators ever, Chrono Trigger makes even the most seemingly mundane elements of its adventure feel absolutely joyful. When this game wants to go big, though, it does it in a way that few other games could ever dream of topping. Here’s a game with over 10 endings and a multi-layered time travel plot that moves with the effortless pace of a game of Tetris. 

Chrono Trigger is simply one of the best examples of curated RPG design that has ever or will ever be crafted. 

The post 25 Best RPGs Ever Made appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3vFZDhJ

[entergamingxp]

Final Fantasy 14’s big 5.3 patch opens up the path to new players • Eurogamer.net

It’s been almost seven years since the release of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, a game whose story has been recounted countless times, after putting Naoki Yoshida in the director’s chair, who since pulled the game from the brink of disaster with the release of A Realm Reborn. Fast forward seven years, with a few critically-acclaimed expansions under their belts, the Final Fantasy 14 team looks back at older content, and introducing the game to new players with patch 5.3.

“There isn’t any time to relax, or chill out at the moment,” producer and director Naoki Yoshida tells me over Zoom. Final Fantasy 14 has just hit 20 million registered players, but according to Yoshida it’s still not enough for Square-Enix’s President and CEO, Yosuke Matsuda. “We have to continue driving this forward, so there’s really no time to relax, or lower our guard.”

The latest patch for Final Fantasy 14 was delayed by a few months, due to disruption no thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, as announced via a live stream from Yoshida in May. “The situation has affected us heavily these past months. It’s really hard for us to get back on track.” With schedules out of the window, just what is it like to run an active MMO with millions of players during a pandemic?

“Even through this situation, the FF14 team is in a good workflow, there’s a great team with a high sense of responsibility… At the moment, 90 per cent of developers are working from home currently, and they’re starting to get familiar with the change in environment. As for the mentality and psychological perspective. I’m confident that we’re all quite stable, and we can focus on the work. We’re getting back to normality.”

The patch, which releases on August 11th on all platforms, is going under the name Reflections in Crystal.

5.3 is due to be released on the 11th of August, and Square-Enix has since released a mini site for all the new additions to the game. However, just underneath the surface more significant changes are being made to the game in order to accommodate new players, starting with a complete overhaul of the content released in the original game, which was created in just two and a half years, according to Yoshida.

“We needed to create really tight guidelines for creating quests. For example, they have to make each quest 9 minutes long, including all the text and all that. Because we had the concept that we want the players to spend a lot of time on those quests, that’s why we made that kind of guideline for each quest. With that, as a result, it kind of revealed so many quests that may be unnecessary, or lots of excess steps which you don’t really need, so we wanted to revisit and remove all the excess quests and unnecessary bits, because we thought that the focus has to be for players to enjoy the storyline.”

Yoshida’s words ring true. The first hours of A Realm Reborn are rough, and can be a significant turn-off for many newer players of Final Fantasy 14, but this streamlining does not come without its own challenges. “If we just take out some bits from the existing storyline, then we have to take out the NPCs that may be playing the key role, or really important role, and it could also affect the lore of the world and everything. We listed all the quests that are included in ARR, and then we figured out the priority, and the necessity of the quests existing in the game or not. This removal of the unnecessary quests, took up a third of the entire workload.”

But if new players still want to experience all of the content that was in the vanilla release of FF14, Yoshida has words of reassurance. “Those quests that are decommissioned, we didn’t really remove them completely,” he says. “We moved them to side quests. For anyone who has the time and wants to dig more for lore and stuff like that, then they can spend time on it.”

The Heroes’ Gauntlet Dungeon in action.

Exactly how many quests have been removed or altered? “We didn’t really count, because if you do that then it will be so disheartening, discouraging,” says Yoshida with a laugh. “So many quests are there, so we didn’t track how many quests we needed to work on.”

Regardless of just how many quests have been removed from the game, it’ll make the game significantly easier for new players to get into. But as a seasoned Final Fantasy 14 player, I had some bones to pick. In the base game, there is a location that you need to repeatedly return to, with no fast-travel links nearby named The Waking Sands. What’s the deal?

“It’s a hideout, so it feels so cheap, so easy. (to put a fast-travel location there) We don’t have any intentions to implement an Aetheryte (fast travel point) near that location. That said, we totally get that this is a really time-consuming journey, where you have to come up any time Minfilia calls you to come over. That’s why… This is kind of new information that we’ve not really revealed to anyone yet. We actually have a new item, a kind of teleport ticket you can use to teleport to Camp Horizon straight away. You might be wondering, even though there isn’t an Aetheryte ‘How come Teleportation is possible here?’ Anyway, it’s a special item for easing the travel burden. Please don’t be angry at Minfilia.”

But, I wasn’t quite done yet with the list of sorely-needed quality of life changes to the base content of the game. There are two infamous dungeons in A Realm Reborn, Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium. Both are pretty lengthy, with unskippable cutscenes every time they might come up during a daily dungeon roulette where you can get extra bonus XP. It’s not uncommon in these dungeons for some players to be AFK, and just wait for others to complete it for them. What’s going to be done with these now-archaic dungeons?

“We came to the conclusion that it would be easier just to create those two eight-man dungeons from scratch, rather than tweaking the existing content,” says Yoshida. “We totally understand that those two dungeons are very time-consuming, so we have discussed it, but we let go of the idea. We were looking into it, and we thought that it would be best to create new dungeons, but kind of separate out the battle against Ultima Weapon as kind of standalone content outside of those two dungeons. When we do that we will make sure that it will be trust system compatible.”

The Yo-Kai Watch collaboration also returns from August 19th.

The trust system has been introduced in the latest expansion, Shadowbringers. This allows you to go through dungeons with a party of capable NPCs, instead of other players, for those looking for a more single-player experience.”We cannot say when it’s going to be happening, but it’s something in our mind, and we want to do it at some point in future.”

From Yoshida’s responses, it’s clear the team is dedicated to a significant rehaul of content to make the game more friendly to new players. This is assisted by a hugely expanded free trial, which now includes the base game in addition to its first expansion, Heavensward. However, this free trial does exclude some key community features such as being unable to trade using Final Fantasy 14’s market boards in addition to restricting chat and the ability to party up with friends. “We’re not considering changing the current business model of subscriptions, it helps us maintain the quality of the game,” says Yoshida. “There’s a risk of RMT, real money trading, and stuff like that, so once they can use those tools, they’ll just use it and it’ll rise to uncontrollable levels.”

Yoshida also gave a lengthy explanation as to how subscriptions essentially protect Final Fantasy 14 against a higher influx of RMT in the game, which is an incredibly costly endeavour, but it remains to be seen how many players of the new expanded free-trial will be turned off by the lack of community functionality.

However, there is still new content to look forward to in 5.3 for existing players in the form of a new raid, in addition to other side content. But, there’s still one key beloved Final Fantasy 14 character seemingly missing in action. Fan-favourite Hildebrand is a rubbish detective, with an incredibly fun quest line that players experienced five years ago. But, since then he’s been missing in action.

“I don’t currently know the whereabouts of Hildebrand. I don’t know where he is. I can’t go into more details here, but in 5.3 you may or may not find him, not as himself, but more like a tip or a clue as to where he might be. I would like you and all players to join together and search for clues that’ll be dotted around in-game.”

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With a slew of crossover content in Final Fantasy 14, such as the Nier raid series that’s due to be expanded, or the Ivalice raid series, which contains winks and nods to Final Fantasy 12 and Final Fantasy Tactics, or even the FF15 content released several years ago, we wondered about the absence of some high-profile games that the team could have collaborated on.

“We’ve had lots of feedback and lots of hopes that with the FF7 Remake that we’ll do some crossover with them. It’s just part one of the journey, so we need to kind of nail down all the details and flesh it out, so it may take a while, it will take time to actually make something great. That said, we are positively looking into it, and we have hope that we want to do something with this at some point in the future. As for a Kingdom Hearts crossover, for this idea, one of the troubles is that we have to coordinate with Disney, and so I feel that there would be so many hurdles and challenges around working with them, so I try not to think about a crossover with Kingdom Hearts.”

Patch 5.3 of Final Fantasy 14 signifies the end of the current bigger patch cycle for their latest expansion, Shadowbringers. Since it’s been almost ten years since the original release of Final Fantasy 14, just how long does the game have left.

“We haven’t set any goal for how long the game will continue. As long as players enjoy playing the game, then I think we will continue delivering the great content. We don’t really have any sense of time set yet. FF14 is the game that we’ve created, with not only the people on the development team, but with the players around the world. Even though my life may end at some point, I hope that the game will continue after that, that someone will succeed me and continue. That’s my hope.”

Before our time with Yoshida was up, we asked Yoshida if there was any event where he would personally stop working on Final Fantasy 14. With swirling rumours around another project in the works at Square-Enix’s Creative Business Unit 3 and Yoshida himself having to actively deny that he’ll be the director of Final Fantasy 16, could he potentially be taken out of the directors chair anytime soon.

“The possibility would be that either I fell ill, died, or if the CEO fires me. It’s okay, you don’t need to worry about it.”

With Final Fantasy 14’s player base continuing to grow, allowances for new players, and a charismatic director at the helm there seems to be no end in sight for Final Fantasy 14. Patch 5.3 drops on August 11th – and it should contribute to what continues to be one of the strongest MMORPGs in recent memory.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/final-fantasy-14s-big-5-3-patch-opens-up-the-path-to-new-players-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=final-fantasy-14s-big-5-3-patch-opens-up-the-path-to-new-players-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[aurelliocheek]

Albion Online: Against all odds

Are you one of those people who believe that you can’t develop a sophisticated online role-playing game with a PvP focus in Germany? Well, it looks like you were wrong.

It‘s a grey, wet and cold morning as we stand at the gates of the Berlin development studio Sandbox Interactive. At the entrance, we are welcomed by a Christmas tree, and inside it is warm and cozy. „You‘re too early,“ are the first words of Head of Operations Christoph Hombergs. Immediately we are led into the spacious conference room, past impressive artworks and lots of screens on the walls, where you can watch players doing what they are supposed to do – and sometimes not supposed to do – in Albion Online. We‘re here to find out how hard it is for a small Indie developer in Germany to bring a game to market – in a genre that makes most gamers click away.

Welcome to Sandbox Interactive, a young German studio that dared to launch an online role-playing game with a focus on player conflicts in times of Themepark MMO weariness. Funded solely with private capital and the sale of start-up packages, without any publisher support in the background. In recent times, virtually nobody from German-speaking countries has taken up such a challenge. Of course, there are still old-established gems like Tibia, which was published and maintained by the Regensburg developer CipSoft in 1997. But these titles are unknown to most – we have to admit this shamefully, too, when Robin Henkys, CEO of Sandbox, points it out to us a few minutes later. Nobody is currently developing an online role-playing game in Germany that is both visually and mechanically up to date. Because Albion is beautiful, wonderful even, and we would love to talk with the designers about their approach in creating this rich world. But first, we‘re interested in how Albion Online was developed.

Making Games: The story of Sandbox Interactive is rather unusual for a German development studio. Robin: That‘s right. Albion Online or rather Sandbox is based on the idea of a PvP-driven MMO by our main founder who wanted to create the game by means of initial financing and was therefore looking for developers to help him. The Berlin-based Bitfield team had just developed an engine for Nintendo DS and applied for the job. Their approach was that it would be too risky to develop the game immediately on a large scale behind closed doors. Instead, they wanted to develop a simple prototype within a short amount of time, which could be quickly tried and tested. Then they would evaluate the feedback, before taking the next step. Our main founder liked this approach, and the prototype was built in 2012, initially as a small 2D game without any mobs and reduced to the idea that the players would collect resources, build items and battle each other. This was when Sandbox Interactive was born. In order to test the prototype, we invited select guilds at a very early stage – these people had been playing online RPGs like Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and other MMOs for over 20 years together. One of our co-founders, for example, is a huge fan of Dark Age of Camelot and still had a lot of contacts within the community, which helped a lot. It was important for us to get players who would still remember old MMOs such as Everquest, which demanded your utmost attention. These guilds tested the prototype, invited friends, and provided a lot of feedback. As a result of this, the project became bigger and bigger over time.

Making Games: This sounds like a highly unusual game production. Robin: Yes, it was very much unlike a „normal“ game production where a big production schedule is created at the beginning, detailing all steps and dates of the production and the required financial means. In our case, we realised very soon that the initial capital would be used up quickly, but also that, on the other hand, a lot of players were interested in the game. As a result, we set up an early-access program where players could pay to participate in our early alpha. The original plan was to make Albion a „free-to-play“ game, but due to the great reception by the players and the high demand for early access we switched to „buy-to-play.“ This obviously makes a lot of things easier. Cheaters and bots can be controlled better because a ban has completely different consequences than in a F2P game. It‘s simply more painful to lose an account you paid for. The „quality“ of the players is higher with this approach because people invest money from the start and are thus much more involved. But of course, this also means that the expectations for the product rise.

I joined the team at the start of the early-access phase as the core team didn‘t have an experienced designer and was looking for somebody who had made some game design decisions in his life before (laughs). I had just finished Drakensang Online then and was really excited about the idea of Albion Online. At the time, Albion Online was a result of wild brainstorms which somehow already worked but had no structure yet. Over the past few years, we fine-tuned these ideas and put them together in a game which met our players‘ high expectations.

In the early-access phase, we sold over 200,000 starter packs which are between 30 and 100 US dollars each. Our private investor supported us with initial funds of 700,000 euros and gave us some more money in between, for example for the marketing for the early-access phase.

On release day, the floodgates opened and people rushed to claim territories and progress as quickly as possible. The DDoS attacks put a temporary brake on that momentum.

Making Games: How did you start out after your founder gave you the green light? Robin: At the beginning, we were all working from a small, affordable flat in an old building in Berlin-Friedrichshain. At times, we were over 15 people, working desk-on-desk in a 2-bedroom flat, before we moved into our first „real“ office on the top floor of a huge building complex in Berlin (originally built and operated as a brewery) in 2015, just in time for the early-access phase. After a very successful start of the early-access phase, we settled down in today‘s offices in the Prenzlauer Berg area of Berlin in 2016.

By the way, the internet in Germany‘s start-up city Berlin is a topic of its own. In a big city like Berlin, you would expect that you can get a proper, reasonably-priced internet connection without a problem. The best regular internet connection we could have got in our previous location in 2015 was a 16,000 DSL connection with an upstream of 1,500. Now try to upload a new game version or a time-sensitive patch to an American server… First, we thought about fiber-optic connection, but it would have been way too expensive, and it also doesn‘t make sense in a rented office space. After a while, we ended up with microwave internet which also caused some problems though. We had to ask our landlord to allow us to put a small wire from the window of our office all the way up to a tower on top of our office building. Up there we had set up a microwave antenna on a very unstable construction. The wire was wrapped openly around the tower, but at least we had fast internet. In our current location, we finally have a 1-gigabit glass-fibre connection. You can download any game you want from Steam within 12 minutes (laughs). How can a small indie start-up get a proper internet connection that lets you upload a patch within a few minutes? That‘s absolutely an issue you shouldn‘t underestimate when you develop an MMO in Germany. We really had some bad experiences in this respect.

Making Games: Which were the biggest problems you faced when developing Albion Online? Robin: We realised very soon that we had a lot of knowledge about certain things, and hardly knew anything about others. Regarding the things we knew little about, we kept asking other developers and freelancers for advice and help. For example, when we started developing the net code, none of us said: „Here is my idea, I‘ll just give it a try!“ Instead, we talked to various companies and experts about it before we even got started, and it wasn‘t until we had a useful concept which a lot of experts considered to be a solid base that we wrote the first net code lines. However, not everything went smoothly with the net code. After the start of the early-access program, we regularly released new versions of Albion, reset everything after a few months, modified the world again, introduced new features and constantly used our players‘ feedback to check what the game was missing the most. We could have done that for a lot longer, but over time our players gradually lost patience. Luckily, at the time we had a version which we were happy with and wanted to launch without any concerns. We only had to make some minor changes, no problem. That‘s what we thought. But there was this one aspect in the backlog, which we managed to avoid the whole time since it would have taken a lot of time and money to implement and would have delayed the launch. I‘m talking about proper DDOS protection – a system to prevent a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack on our data centre in Washington D.C.

Making Games: But isn‘t this the most important aspect when developing an online RPG? Robin: Yes, it is. Obviously, it was very important for us, too. Prior to development we did a lot of research on this topic and learned that it would take a lot of time and money since, in all honesty, we didn‘t know anything about it. We are game developers, which means we are not specialised in operating and maintaining servers and data centres. Unlike us, most MMO developers have their own data centres and thus full control of their servers, while our computers are hosted by IBM. On the one hand, of course, that‘s very comfortable since IBM is doing the entire hosting. On the other hand, we‘re not authorised to integrate certain technical solutions there. The problem with IBM and other hosts are: 98 percent of the companies need DDOS protection against TCP-based protocols to guarantee smooth operation of their websites. Albion Online, on the other hand, requires UDP protection, and a lot of hosting companies are struggling to react to UDP attacks quickly because they probably lack the necessary know-how and practical experience – or both. And as mentioned already, it wasn‘t an option to simply set up an adequate hardware firewall at IBM. After a lot of thinking, we then decided to launch Albion Online without any such precautions. Well, and then in the first week after launch, we received an email saying: „Send us ten bitcoins; otherwise we will switch off your game. And to prove that we‘re not joking, we‘ll take your game offline at 12 o‘ clock.“

Each update comes with its own distinctly-themed artwork. Since the release in July 2017, there have already been five updates, with a sixth coming soon.

Making Games: So, the game was offline at 12 o‘ clock? Robin: Exactly. Funnily, this happened after a first bigger ban wave against real money traders in the game. Therefore, we assume that this effort to blackmail us had something to do with that ban wave, but of course we couldn‘t prove it. But the timing was spot-on, and at that moment we knew that we had underestimated the problem and had to invest a ton of money and time to get proper DDOS protection. In short: Instead of doing it comfortably during the beta phase we were now facing the problem of having to do it during live operations and under massive time pressure. This took up the entire first month after the start of Albion Online, and we had to fly in an expert who earned heaps of money by setting up a solution for us within a very short time. The lesson we learned was that it cost a lot of time and money and that we should have done it earlier. But if you as an independent developer are used to save money wherever you can, you think twice before spending this amount of money.

Making Games: Did nothing else go wrong? Robin: Yes, but this was the only real big mistake we have made during development so far. Of course, other things went wrong, too, for example for the launch we switched to much more powerful server hardware. We didn‘t want to make the same mistake as almost all other MMOs on the first day, which was to mess up the launch of Albion Online with completely overstrained hardware. Among other things, we moved our database server from a mid-range computer to a state-of-the-art computer. However, that computer had a new raid controller which, in combination with our database, caused a short glitch after 18 hours of live operation. This caused our database to collapse and the game to crash. It took us two weeks to find out that it was all down to the raid controller. Our database runs on Windows, however apparently 95% of all companies run theirs on Linux. Nobody noticed that there were driver issues with Windows since Albion Online was a very unique piece of software.

Christoph: I would also add payment security, which taught us a lesson, too. Especially if you don‘t work with a one-stop service provider like Xsolla but do everything yourself instead – the indie way. The topic may not be quite as exciting as let‘s say a wizard who defeats three creatures at once with a fiery blast, but it‘s a topic that should really not be underestimated and be treated with respect during the development process. We definitely learned a lot in this regard.

Making Games: Was it never an option for you to work with bigger companies for matters like that? Or was it simply too costly? Christoph: At the time when Xsolla, for example, entered the business, we had already come so far, and we‘re already so familiar with our own systems that it wasn‘t an option for us anymore.

Making Games: Let‘s talk about one of the most important aspects of MMOs: quality assurance during live operations. How does your team handle that? Robin: It was always important to us that the quality assurance is done by the team itself. We don‘t have a huge QA department where 30 people can test the game to its core, and the development team passes on all responsibility like maybe Ubisoft does it for a major game. In our case, all developers are responsible for themselves that everything they put in the game works properly and doesn‘t cause critical bugs. Of course, we have a final QA process, but it‘s a lot smaller and rather community-driven. We also rely on our players to give us honest and comprehensive feedback.

Making Games: Does this cause more exploits for your game than for others? Robin: We secure everything thoroughly through our server, which is actually not that common for MMOs. With Asian MMOs, the client often does a lot of those things. In our case, it‘s completely different. Right at the start of the project, we agreed that the client would only receive the same information that the players see on the screen. In that case, you can‘t build things like radar tools or something like that. There are certain things through which you can only properly secure with great technical effort and which are in conflict with what you want to allow. Speedhacks are one example. Our players often tell us to set up speedhack protection. The problem is that you have to trust the client to a certain extent that they have sent certain commands to the server at a certain time. Otherwise players with a high ping of 150 or more would constantly be reset. Including error messages from the server that the player‘s actions were illegal. Hacks aimed at this problem are very hard to prevent if you want to allow people with a high ping to play the game properly. All in all, we have only small exploit issues though, which is definitely owed to the competence of our developers.

Our Tech Director David brought the protection from exploits and security issues to our attention pretty much on day one. It even reaches a point where we have seen some people really try to manipulate each variable we have in the game through false signals. Every element which can somehow be hacked in the game will indeed be hacked by someone. We are very happy that the number of incidents to this day can be counted on one hand and that we were always able to handle the situation in a way that it didn‘t do major damage. There has never been a dupe bug, for example, which would negatively affect the economy in the game. We have always spotted these things early on and contained the damage by immediately banning the respective accounts.

Sandbox Interactive has about 30 permanent employees, plus numerous freelancers. Meanwhile the offices are much more spacious than at the beginning.

Making Games: Do you first try to contact those people, or do you ban them right away? Robin: We first ban, then talk. If we did it differently, people would immediately move all items, and the problem would be out there in the game world. Therefore, we first need to freeze all assets and the account before we talk to them. We did the same thing during the beta already. At the start of the beta, there was a very obscure bug which allowed someone to log in twice by adding a space to the end of the password during the second log-in process. This person then had one and the same character twice in the game world, transferred all items from one character to the other, and then did the same thing all over again and again. When this came to our attention, I logged into the game as a game master, moved right beside him and said: „You know that you just did something wrong. Give me all your stuff. Otherwise you‘ll get kicked out of the beta.“ The funny thing was that this guy immediately started to negotiate with me, like „Can I at least keep 100 million?“, which we refused, of course (laughs). That was somewhat funny and probably the only case where we didn‘t ban the account right away.

Christoph: Fortunately, thanks to our committed community, we are often made aware of exploits in more „discrete“ ways before any bigger problems arise. There is always somebody who spots something somewhere and takes it to us very, very quickly. In almost every MMO these days you have professional exploiters who sell ingame currency for real money. But these people attack user accounts in the first place, meaning they take advantage of weak passwords or hack email addresses to get access to the accounts.

Robin: During early access, we had a phase when presumably Chinese hackers brought a large number of user accounts under their control. In all cases, users had clicked on dubious links or used typical passwords like „123456“ or „password.“ We quickly put an end to that by introducing a two-step authentication process.

Of course, today there are still some cases where accounts get hacked because someone logs in from an internet cafe or shares their account with someone else. We‘ve experienced some dramatic stories, for example that of Team Casualty. In Albion Online, there are large guild battles which are sort of carried out in seasons. In the last season, guild Team Casualty was comfortably in the lead. But an officer of Team Casualty had shared his account with another person who then dropped a bunch of territories in the middle of the season and also took all guild possessions with him. However, the affected person could not file an official complaint with us because he knew that account sharing wasn‘t allowed. What amazed us all was that the guild quickly got up on their feet again and managed to still win the season, even though all guild assets had been stolen and they basically needed to start from scratch.

Making Games: Did you confiscate the assets? Christoph: No, we didn‘t. After all, the account owner never contacted us officially. It was just stupid of him to share the account.

Robin: We refer to this as a meta game: typical infiltration incidents that happen in a lot of MMOs, which take place outside the game world and where competitors are deliberately undermined and eliminated through moles in their own ranks. In a game like Albion Online where players battle each other, it‘s invaluable to you know your enemy‘s plans and their allies. It‘s a very important aspect within the community; we don‘t interfere with that. In the case of hacks, we take immediate and radical measures, but if people are so naïve as to give another person the access data to their account … well, that‘s tough luck.

Christoph: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Making Games: Let‘s talk about technology – why did you decide to go with Unity? Robin: There were several reasons. One was obviously the cross-platform aspect. In 2012, for example, no other engine developer on the market had that much to offer yet as far as cross-platform was concerned. This was really important to us since nobody knew at the time what direction the market was moving in. The headlines were full of things like „In five years‘ time nobody will play on a traditional PC anymore“, and tablets and consoles were the devices of the future. That‘s why we decided that our engine had to be capable of cross-platform. Unity was the most advanced one in this respect, very popular and comparably cheap.

Making Games: Was writing your own engine ever an option? Robin: No, that was never an option. But we don‘t use Unity quite as much as most other companies which make use of many of the additional features. We only use the rendering, so just the graphics part. The level loading code, for example, was completely written by us; the server is completely free from Unity. If we were crazy, we could set up a completely Unity-free client. And yet, Unity is a real benefit for us because since day one we can run Albion on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS without having had to face major problems during updates. We don‘t take this for granted – regarding the number of assets, the level complexity or the data volume, Albion is probably one of the most complex Unity projects ever. We are often the first ones who would write to Unity‘s support about things like „Your hierarchy isn‘t working well if you have 50,000+ objects in the scene“ (laughs) – something most other teams simply don‘t have in their projects.

But there is another reason why we chose Unity. Especially if, like in our case, you quickly want to develop and test a prototype, it doesn‘t make sense to build your own engine. The Unreal engine would have been an alternative, but the terms back then weren‘t nearly as good. Maybe that has changed by now, but we have run Albion on Unity for so long now that it‘s not an option anymore to switch technologies. It would probably take us two years until we‘d be ready again to produce new content for the players. Unlike other companies, we don‘t make a new game every three to five years; we will probably manage Albion for the next 15 years. In that case it just makes more sense if you don‘t have to look after every update for all sorts of platforms as well, which is something you have to do when you have your own engine. With Unity, we get all these updates for free; bug fixes, performance improvements plus new features like enhanced shadow rendering. If we had our own engine, it would take us a lot of effort to build everything ourselves, and at some point we‘d fall far behind with our technology since we wouldn‘t be able to handle it with a team of our size. Especially in the mobile sector where things are constantly changing.

But despite all these benefits, there are also some things which we don‘t like about Unity. For years, there has been a problem with the garbage collection, for example, which causes micro stuttering in our rendering. And yet, we are still better off with Unity than with all other options which are available to indie developers like us.

Making Games: It‘s interesting that Sandbox Interactive chose to work without a publisher. What was the reason? Robin: It was a conscious decision right from the beginning. A lot of indie studios start searching for a major distributor as soon as possible. Not only did we want to develop an MMO in Germany, right from scratch with a team that didn‘t even exist at the time. We also wanted to do the distribution on our own, without anyone in between. That‘s a huge effort, and we‘re very happy that our small team managed to establish Albion Online and leave a mark on the „gaming map.“ We have over 70 payment methods in our webshop through which we run all our operations. We have come to realise though that we have our limits when it comes to publishing operations. That‘s where big game publishers have an advantage. Even if you don‘t need their services like us, in terms of performance marketing we are in direct competition to the well-oiled marketing machines of the major publishers. They have a pool of people who constantly analyse their campaigns, and that‘s where we have to ask ourselves: Do we expand on our own publishing skills, or should we start looking for partners to help us out with the marketing. We‘re currently at a point where we have to make this decision since an online game like Albion lives and dies on online marketing. Like all others, too, we have to compete for the players‘ attention, especially in the sandbox MMO segment. There are quite a few games like Albion, for example, Crowfall, Ashes of Creation, Chronicles of Elyria, or Legends of Aria. Despite the competition, we have done quite well and have practically completed one full MMO life cycle. We founded our company in 2012, had a pre-financed development phase, an early-access phase, then the buy2play launch; we now count almost half a million players and have run our live operations for one and a half years. If somebody had told me that a few years ago – I wouldn‘t have believed it.

Robin Henkys is the Game Director for Albion Online and CEO at Sandbox Interactive

Robin previously lead the game design of Drakensang Online (Bigpoint) and the level design of Drakensang: River of Time (Radon Labs), based on the “Dark Eye” pen&paper license. Robin studied Games Computing at the University of Lincoln (UK).

        Christoph Hombergs is the Head of Operations at Sandbox Interactive

Christoph started working for Sandbox Interactive as a Community and Content Manager in 2015, after previously writing for a gaming blog. As the company grew, so too did his responsibilities. Now, he oversees all communications and operational topics for Albion Online. Before diving into the games industry, he studied English and German literature.

The post Albion Online: Against all odds appeared first on Making Games.

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[terryblount]

Astral Chain – Review

It’s a great time to be a niche Japanese studio. From Arc System Works dominating the fighting game scene to Nier Automata being a serious Game of the Year contender (and winner according to some reputable sites), it seems like more unique experiences are finally getting their time in the sun.

Astral Chain is a game that, is simply oozing with its appeal. With a combat style equal parts stylish and steep in its learning curve, Platinum Games has definitely shown they’re very much in peak form with this stylish character action game.

Design

As a game for the Nintendo Switch, Astral Chain follows the trend of aesthetic over visual fidelity. The game looks great, with an art style full of bold colors that read great on both handheld and TV mode. Admittedly, at first I wasn’t too fond of the bulky armor worn by the game’s protagonists. However, once you get to customize your character and lose it, you see that the character models are actually quite decent.

The world itself is also visually gorgeous, with plenty of neon lights and holographic signs for that techno-future feel. It’s got that great “not too distant future” vibe going for it, and it works it well.

If anything, the game’s at its weakest design-wise in the Astral Plane, a series of stages where everything just kind of looks bog-standard “extradimensional plane”. But even then, it’s not weaker by much, and still looks infinitely more imposing than many other game locales I’ve had to slog through.

In essence, it’s the little things that make Astral Chain’s look so appealing. It’s very anime, in that even side characters have memorable traits instead of looking like background characters. The world looks like the high point of futurist anime art, and it’s an absolute delight to be in.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Astral Chain is very much about two halves. I’ll try to break it down here to the best of my ability.

When it comes to combat, Astral Chain is absolutely phenomenal. The Legion-based combat will take some getting used to, but successful mastery of the game’s timing-based Sync combos make you almost wish you had some kind of style announcer lavishing you in praise.

The important thing to remember about the combat with Astral Chain is that it’s not just you you’re controlling. Over-reliance on either the Legion or the player character will often have your moves feel clunky. However, investing in the sync moves for your Legions will allow them to flow into each other much better.

The Legions themselves are amazing, too. Each of them plays differently, and you’re required to not only know all five of them but actively swap between them as certain ones are required for certain enemies.

I highly recommend picking a favourite to spoil though, as higher-level upgrade materials can be sparse and a high-level Legion is more valuable than several weaker ones.

While the combat sections of the game are by a mile the game’s strongest feature, the game is far from simply being a bunch of cool action scenes. Levels contain investigation portions, side quests and even platforming.

I bring this up because compared to the fighting, many of these segments seem not quite as fleshed out. There are a few segments where you have to ride Beast Legion across some platforms and the Legion controls like Agro from Shadow of the Colossus, if they were going through a divorce and had a lot on their mind and also really wished it were more like the platforming in Ultima 8. Suffice to say, much of the legion based platforming is not fun.

Several of the game’s boss fights can also seem daunting at first, but I’ve chalked that up to the game having a slightly more bizarre set of expectations for the player. In essence, once you’ve understood the importance of both you and your Legion, you’ll see just how many of the game’s problems are built around having one particular legion that can solve it with ease.

Content

I feel like by borrowing side quests from more open-world games, Astral Chain has done a lovely job of respecting the player’s time. I’ve done missions with a straight run for the boss as well as also missions where I’ve stopped and chatted up every NPC to complete the side quests. Combining this with the ability to skip to the parts of the game that you want on replay, it really does allow you to just play the good parts of Astral Chain. It’s a nice touch, because more games should let you play the part of the game that’s actually fun.

Unlike Devil May Cry, playing Astral Chain also lets you access the harder difficulty immediately after clearing it on the Platinum Standard. If you so desired, the missions you beat can instantly be replayed on the harder difficulties.

Similarly, you can also tone down the difficulty. The game gives you an out at the end of every Mission to change your difficulty, which is a nice touch.

On the topic of collectibles, Astral Chain has quite a few. Despite being a serious police story about serious police, the game has you seeking out stray cats and toilets, with one being hidden on every level. There are also alternate Color schemes for you and your Legion, which can be awarded for various feats.

I shouldn’t like this as much as I do, but I kind of love the idea of the cats and toilets. They’re not overtly goofy, but they’re just out there enough to be worth a good chuckle. They’re also incredibly difficult to find, and as of right now no site has any guides posted on how to get all the cosmetics despite it being two weeks post-launch at the time of writing.

While the game may not start after ending like, say, a Monster Hunter game, it is very nice to know that the game has plenty to offer after it’s “finished”. It’s also great to have a playground to test your new Legions in, though the game does also give you a training room for this.

Personal Enjoyment

One of the fastest ways to not enjoy Astral Chain is to go in expecting Nier: Automata. While the two games seem similar at first, Astral Chain is quick to establish itself as an action game first, compared to Nier’s message-focused approach.

That being said, as someone who was on board with Astral Chain on the premise of Stand Cops, the game did not disappoint. The action sequences are great, the sheer video gamey-ness of the plot is well set up and the cues it takes from anime are just present enough to be seen without seeming too forced.

The heights of the highs when playing Astral Chain far outweighed its drab lows, and I can’t think of many complaints I had at the start of the game that didn’t feel resolved in some way or other towards the end.

If I had to make some nitpicks, I’d wish that the secret Stand Police weren’t paid in trash. For whatever reason, rather than give you money, many side quests pay you in items that can be recycled for cash, but it’s not a great look for your protagonist constantly hauling around bags of broken equipment and torn caps.

Conclusion

Astral Chain is essentially a playable anime. However, unlike the games that try to do this with questionable gameplay quality, Astral Chain goes the mile to make sure the anime portions are as good as possible.

Its world is lovingly designed to make sure there’s never a point with nothing to do, be it fighting space demons, picking up litter or helping a guy find the local burger joint.

While I doubt it will ever push the numbers of a mainstream triple-A release, I’m glad to report that the game is very much good, and fans thirsting for a quirky character action game with RPG elements should have a good time with this one.

It’s a game that can really Stand Proud of its achievements, and I hope the development team has some Great Days ahead of them for it. Because this game is Fighting Gold.

Review copy purchased by the reviewer

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