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smolbeandrabbles · 6 years

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Out of Nowhere Girl - Talos/Keller/OC (Captain Marvel)

Set In Canon MCU Captain Marvel / Guardian’s of the Galaxy Universe with a few out-of-canon ‘twists’...

Author’s Note: Posting this a week after I see Captain Marvel (AS FOLLOWS CANON!) but still tagging with spoilers.

Oh my god. I was having an existential crisis after the movie and the fic that I posted that is not canon (Science & Faith. If you want to read you can click the thing) That I wrote this between acts at the C2C country music festival on 9th March... That makes this the quickest write and edit I have EVER done. It’s probably quite telling... (It’s 10/3/19 @ 8:26 PM GMT.) She is with Keller, Talos just simed him. I’m making that clear right now! It’ll make sense when you read! This is an alternate version to ‘Science & Faith’ - so that characters there are the same. This one just follows actual movie canon.

Don’t worry it’s not the same story. It has a few similar elements... It will likely go back and forth between the two time periods. Please someone get what I did with his full name... 😂😭

NOT reader insert. Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OC... I am slightly bending canon on Supernova; but I liked the concept. Maybe I've set it so there's more than one? Like a special forces part of the Nova Corp? (Tbh still figuring this out) So you can have it coming from another Saal... sorry not sorry Expositional conversation-narrative heavy... Sorry!

Simmed? Simed? Sim-ed? Which is it!?

Premise: When Keller gets sim-ed by Talos as a result of the Kree-Skrull war the aftermath is of no great consequence to his partner... However, when exploring on behalf of the Nova Corps Keller’s distress signature coming from a planet half way across the galaxy leads her to investigate...

Word Count: 4384

Warnings: Spoilers! Murder (I guess) Actually this might assume you know about her from Science & Faith...

My little out, out of nowhere girl Where you been all my life? Where you been trying to hide? It's like you’ve come Come from another world Fell right out of the sky And landed right here tonight...

Keller had had a day. He’s had days before, as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent and sometime-Scientist he expected for days to be a part of his life. But this had been something else entirely. When he opened the door to his apartment, he was at least glad to be greeted by an essence of normality. Well, as normal as it could get he supposed…

Maliyah was pouring over drawing after drawing and ship schematics. She still couldn’t get something on that ship of hers to work right. Or, maybe she knew she was just stalling for time… She looked up with a smile; “I can already tell you have a lot to tell me…” “Yeah…” He sighed, throwing his keys on the counter and allowing a pause. “It’s where to start…” He looked across to her, at the way her skin sparkled just at his presence… She’d crash landed to Earth nearly two years previously. Through studying her they had built a friendship – and now it was a lot more than that. The blue lights across her skin; because, all of his were blue or white, or purple… used to only light up when he touched her. Or, when he was feeling something at the extreme end of the spectrum. They turned red every time he got hurt, and that hurt her too… So he’d tried to make his life easier. Tried. Now the lights appeared just because he was in proximity… She said that showed they had a strong bond. Keller was only human, so he felt proud of that. He hadn’t ever expected to see anything else otherworldly – until today happened. “Maliyah… You know a lot about the other species out there… right?” She put her pen down and turned her full attention on him; “Yes. Enough. Why?” “Because you were the only other race I thought I’d ever see. But clearly, I was wrong. Because-” He faltered, squinted in remembering and then tried again “…Tell me about shapeshifters?” “Narrow that down. It isn’t an exclusive trait…” She tilted her head “…But now I’m worried.” “Okay, uh… Green… pointed ears… Like… linear markings or patterns…or…” “Skrulls!?” She was takenaback “Skrulls on Earth!?” Then she slammed her hands on the table, more in interest that anger; “WAIT! Did you get SIMED by a Skrull!?!??!” Clearly he had no idea what that meant by the look on his face, but she couldn’t hide her laugh; “…Wait. Skrulls are on Earth? Okay, I’ll roll with it… Did a Skrull shapeshift into YOU.” “…Yes.” She laughed again “Oh God!” Then she attempted to stop herself “Oh! Baby, that’s terrible!” “Doesn’t sound like you mean it.” She cleared her throat, “Whilst it’s funny it’s not exactly good news…” She rested her hands on her thighs and chewed her lip “…What did you think about..?” “Huh?” “Your last thoughts. Before they simed you.” “Probably something like: Oh GOD I hope I don’t die?!” “You didn’t think about me, at all?” He hesitated, it probably wasn’t the best idea to confess to his other half he hadn’t thought about her whilst waiting on the fate of his own life… “…Uh…No…?” “Good.” “Good?!” She was clearly as full of surprises. As any ‘alien’ should be, he guessed. “Yes. I’m an Auron, my race and my planet are dying… Sightings of us are rare even in our part of the galaxy… As an adult female I am worth a hell of a lot to my home planet – And a lot of my abilities will be worth something to a race like to Skrulls.” “…So you’re telling me that not talking about you – like you asked - and therefore obviously not consciously thinking of you is good?” She nodded; “I wonder if the Kree war has come all the way out here?” She almost laughed again “That’s no good for me either… Considering my affinity with Xandar… You’ve done very well if they don’t know a THING.” “…Have you seen me today!?” Her sentence sparked panic in him. “Right now and when you left. I haven’t been out of here even once. I’ve been working this algorithm…” she shook her head “You haven’t come back, I haven’t called you… Zip. I promise.” “…Okay…” “Don’t worry about me… I’m more worried about you… Getting Simed is not the experience you want to have… are you okay?” “Seeing someone change into me… That’s bad, getting tied up and left in a Blockbuster though… Ehhhhh….!” She shook her head “…You really went through it then, huh?” She beckoned him over, and he was all too glad to walk into her arms… She brushed some stray hairs out of his face, her touch gentle and welcoming… A different set of colours formed on her skin – these lights pale and milky… pastels… enveloping him in her arms the effect was instantly calming… “I’m sorry…” “…You don’t need to be sorry…” “I told you, nothing about another race coming to Earth is good…” He almost laughed; “That makes you an anomaly then… You must be the one good thing.” ** Nick Fury almost jumped at the next knock at his door. This time it was Keller that opened it. "Oh! SIR!!!" He looked more than a little weary and Keller knew why. "Nick, I swear it's actually me! And I can prove it, but to do so you have to come with me." "Yeah that sounds... Safe." "Unfortunately I'm not the one who needs to information in your head. Or I could just stand here." He winced as he realised it maybe wasn't the best choice of words "Urm. Look just... Come to my office..." He backed out with an attempt at a convincing smile and wandered down the corridor to his own work space.

As usual it was hard to get Maliyah to look inconspicuous. This time she put up a fair argument of she'd only be going car, to security door, and then to his office. Still, she was sitting in a top that cut across her shoulders AND exposed her stomach and a short, layered skirt that showed off her legs. The marks across her skin, and all his fault, were more than just visible. And the jacket she'd brought because he insisted she wore one, was of course emblazoned with her Nova Corp rank insignia. Geez... He almost thought about loosening his tie just looking at her. She was curled up in one of his chairs reading a file of his. He rolled his eyes, of course the first thing Maliyah would do was break into his cabinet. She had a stack in front of her too. Her shoes kicked off and left by the chair. "I've asked him. The rest is up to you." "Does he trust you?" She didn’t look up "Would you?!" "...Not entirely. Depends what Sim Keller did!!!" "Well it probably wasn't GOOD!!" He sat behind his desk and nodded to her files; "Careful with those." She turned a page towards him "Why do you have a Nova symbol?" "It’s a very complicated astrological algorithm..." Why she thought everything centred around the 8-point star of Xandar was beyond him. "... Did you do this..." she nodded to the algorithm itself "Yes" "You're a scientist!?" "Part time... I don't... Not all the time... I dabble..." "That's why you wanted my blood. Right?" "Your bloodwork is... Incredible." "You should have tried some Skrull blood if you think MINE is interesting." He was at least amused; "... Bit late for that advice!!" then tilted his head; "Does it… Change? Now we are... Now we have a...?" connection? Did her race give that a name? "Yes?" "We should do yours again." "Worry about your own." She noticed the way he furrowed his eyebrows in concern; "... What we did... It'll affect yours too." He stared at his hands with wide eyes "And I'm not entirely sure what being simed will do to you…" "Geez! I clearly just need to take you everywhere with me don't I!?" "I don’t wanna get Simed...!!!!" That was the wrong thing to say as his door opened.

Jonathan knew it, and Malyiah knew it by the way he put his head in his hands. She thought it was cute. She thought a lot of things humans did to display their emotions were cute. She hadn't known a race feel so acutely as this. She'd chosen well, she couldn't have ever expected to. He was the best surprise. Nick looked across to the female voice that had spoken and almost had a heart attack; He wasn’t faced with a straight-laced, suited, female S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Instead her purple fading to pink hair, eyes so deep blue they were purple, the mish-mash of clothes she was wearing - that still strangely matched - and the foreign markings visible every so often on her skin, like someone had tattooed her with white ink, made him think she wasn’t human at all. "Who the hell are--!?!" Jonathan Keller jumped quickly to her rescue; "Nick there's a lot of classified stuff that's happened in the last two years..." "Two years!? WHAT!?" "Remember that crash we were called to in Utah?" "... Yeah. Highest level. You were there ages... No-one ever spoke about it." "Yeah... Uh..." he brought his hands together and pointed across to the girl in the chair. "...Hi!" she smiled "You must be Nick Fury." He turned to Keller "Sir!!! Don't start telling me there's more of them!!! What is she S.H.I.E.L.D intelligence!?!" "... The fact there IS more of them is exactly why we NEED to tell her everything. But I was tied up in a Blockbuster ok, so I'm no help! You are." She was looking down at herself; did she look like S.H.I.E.L.D intelligence? Nick wasn’t sure he was following; "He employed you... Right? That's why you're here and you know everything...?" "No I'm not employed. HEY! Jonathan there's a thought!" "I'm not paying you. That's got implications I'd rather not have...!" If Maliyah didn’t catch on, Keller's agent did; "Wait---!! Are you two!?" Nick quickly grasped the situation as he pointed between the two of them. Keller nodded in silent admittance "It wasn't meant to be like that. I had to study her... But they were... It was inhumane Nick. I moved her out here... She's trying to get her ship back in order." Malyiah shrugged as if that wasn’t the explanation she would give; "I won't know what I'm gonna do until it's fixed. At the moment it's in a high security area back in Utah..." "Yeah, I've seen it. I didn't know there was anyone involved... So you know about the Kree? And Skrulls." Her jaw tightened at the mention of the Kree; "So they DID bring their war here." "I'm not sure it was intentional." she hummed, fingering the pages of the file she was reading for a second "And what happened? Where are they now?" "Gone. Why..." "Gone where!? Like gone, gone!?" Keller looked glad of that, juxtaposing Maliyah’s sudden panic. "She didn't say where she was taking them..." he narrowed his eyes "Whose side are you on!?" Fury wouldn’t risk Carol’s life. Never. "... I'm not really on anyone's side... BUT... I guess I align better with the Skrulls..." She gave a shrug. "... The war isn't my problem. Them siming Keller is my problem. The Kree out here with me here that's ALSO my problem. " " Maliyah..." It was Keller’s warning " I'm not trying to start anything!" she held her hands up and turned back to Nick; "You can't help me, but you know they’re all gone? " " We have a Flerken though... " "I can tell by your eye... " she tilted her head, reading Fury’s own emotions; "What are you afraid of?? Is it him or me?? I'm stronger than you Terrans are but I'm not dangerous... And he's him. But I can understand the wary feeling there... " Nick tried to make it look like he wouldn't be afraid of Keller and he didn't know what she was talking about... And it worked. For around half a second. He took a breath and pointed to his boss; "Prove he isn't one." "He's not. He reacts to me." "Prove you aren't one." "I doubt they can get my empathic abilities spot on... They can probably try, but I doubt that they can get their skin to react exactly the same... It’s a unique pattern... And it's triggered through a DNA reaction. A Skrull would need both, but it can only sim to one set of DNA... " "Hang on... What?! And - WHAT!?" Nick realised he hadn’t listened to her first explanation clearly. She took a breath; "Like this..." She watched him carefully as she guided years of evolution through her race to latch onto Keller... The feel of him around her was intense enough to let the bright lights flicker over her skin in all his shades. Nick was at least staring at her in wonder. "That's how you know I'm not one.” "... How does... That work?" She tilted her head "At first instance. For these unique patterns... Intimacy. Real physical intimacy. For anything more than that... For a real connection... Blood. His mixed with mine, mine with his." "That sounds... Painful…” His eyes flicked to Keller again, who was keeping his gaze locked on Maliyah; "Have you..." "No. I wouldn't ask that of him." She didn't like that Nick would insinuate that she would "It is by far a conversation for another time..." Nick at least noticed that Keller look uneasy, which settled him a little. He changed the flow of the conversation again; "Why are you so intent on knowing where they went?" She shook her head "I'm just trying to make sure they don't know about me. And the only way to do that is to check in on their simed memories." "I don't think they are much of a threat to you... Right?" "Huh." Maliyah folded her arms "I'd rather they didn't tie him up and sim him. Guess we'll let that one go too, huh?" He had to crack a smile, she wasn’t human. Obviously, but she was so human. He wondered if that was her upbringing or Keller’s influence; "Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D Agent.” She stood to shake his hand; "Maliyah Saal. Nova Corps. Ravager Captain... Auron by way of Xandar... Pleasure to meet you." She gave him a warm smile, and it was like he instantly got why Keller had been taken in. She seemed strong, she had a sass about her that clearly EVERY extra terrestrial had... But she had an instant warmth... She turned to Keller which made Nick do the same; " I think we could be in the clear... Guess we'll need to keep a check on everything. " "You'd make a good agent. Are you sure we can't hire her!? " "Absolutely not." Keller let him know he thought he must be joking. She laughed, with a wink; "It's okay, Nick. My duty is to the Nova Corps. I leave S.H.I.E.L.D in the capable hands of its Human workers... "

" I think I've figured it out. " "What? " "The problem with your ship...? " "... At 3am!?" "You’re clearly not sleeping either..." She rolled over to stare at him. He was looking at the ceiling. His glasses were pushed up into his hairline and he was squinting "... No, I really think I've cracked it." "At least I was awake for something that wasn't stupidly thinking about fixing my damn ship." "No... But... I looked at your notes. You've been working on them for two years... I wanted to help... And formulate some for myself. I think I've got it Maliyah. I think I can get you home..." He turned to face her, but the look she gave was one of fear. "Don't you dare say that like I want to leave!" "Maliyah... You know it is dangerous for you to stay here... " He was extraordinarily calm. Like he was already letting her go. It only caused her to shake her head. "NO!" She buried herself in him; digging her nails into the skin of his arms and her head on his chest her colours burst into life and illuminated his darkened room. "Maliyah..." He ran a hand through her hair "... Let me let you go... Earth is not where you belong." She shook her head again; "Look at this..." He took her hand in his free one and lifted her arm, the way the colours danced for him. "Jonathan. I don't belong out there either... I belong with you." "I cannot protect you from your planet..." "Do not ask me to leave. I will not leave you." He was pretty sure she was crying... He gathered her close in his arms. "I'm human.... Maliyah... My race is breakable. It's vulnerable... It’s clear to me we have NO idea what’s really out there... You don't want this..." "Stop telling me what I want. I HAVE what I want." "Anywhere else in the world and I would believe that." "... What about anywhere else in the universe?" "Huh?" She looked at him, sadness in those purple-blue eyes... But something else too. An idea sparking to life: "If you can really help me fix my ship... Come with me. Come back to Xandar with me..." "Mali... I can't just leave..." "WHY!? Everything in your head we could use on Xandar." "Maybe... Maybe one day..." He said it softly "But your planet... If it’s at war.... It needs YOU and until you win; and you will win it my supernova... Until Earth gets a good grip on things out there... You cannot stay. And I cannot go."

** …10 Years Later… Maliyah piloted the Milano very cautiously. She knew the sector of space; just not as well as she would have liked. Kree these days were still running havok. Maybe not too much around Xandar... But things were shaky at best, which is why she was piloting her tiny Milano though this, rather than her Nova Corps star ship. The planet that Keller’s "distress signal" was coming from looked small and harmless. But it was the other side of the galaxy. Keller, even on Earth’s best space day, was not reaching here any time soon.

It made her hesitate. She shouldn't trust it, but what choice did she have? It didn't mean that someone hadn't taken Jonathan here, although that was unlikely it was not impossible. And it wasn't like it was a signal to her ship... Or any communications device. Keller’s very DNA and feelings were sending a direct signal to her. And for nothing in this known universe would she ignore something like that. Entering the planet’s atmosphere she knew exactly why the feeling was of distress. It looked dead. Or at least incinerated. The earth was scorched and there wasn't a trace of greenery or life anywhere. Yet, the feeling persisted. Which meant whatever was giving off Keller’s signal was here. And was very much alive.

She landed on about the clearest strip of land she could find that the Milano would fit into and took a deep breath. Whatever she was about to face would not be good. She was already suited up for Supernova... Hopefully she wouldn't have to use it. Exiting the Milano she kept her blaster holstered. She wouldn't fire unless fired upon and whoever did that would be making a big mistake.

Pillars of smoke rising from the debris made the perfect cover... She breathed in and out, closing her eyes she focused on what ‘Keller’ was feeling. It wasn't nice for her to feel it, either. She pinpointed a location in a matter of seconds and headed towards it. Only for her to start noticing the purple, everywhere. And it was blood. She continued through the mess of debris, every so often a body or two would present itself. They're Skrulls. She realised. The bodies were Skrulls. She knitted her eyebrows together. Carol Danvers, who she had met a few times whilst traversing the galaxy, had told her nearly everything to help her piece together what had happened when they were on Earth. She had given them a home, and finished the war. Clearly someone was trying to start it up again... And if this was the planet that Carol had made their haven. The Skrulls were from Earth. Which meant one thing... From what Keller had confessed to her that could mean only one thing... And it was something she didn't even think possible.

She sprinted to the signal on that notion alone; across the ground that kicked up with every step she took. What had the Kree done here!? Why was he still alive when so many others were not!?! She stopped. Suddenly tense. He was walking toward her. His stance was fighting and she could read those emotions a lot clearer now. Her race and its engineering had failed her. It was confusing Keller’s real DNA with simed DNA from years gone by. Hopefully that wasn't about to cost her her life. Upon recognising him, she took two steps back. She'd made a point of studying Skrulls as soon as Keller had mentioned them. Talos. And he was big news. Huge news. He was a General that ran a whole sector, he was a good leader. He'd simed her life partner. Maliyah held her hands up in an attempt to show she wasn't trouble, as far away from her weapon as possible... "I've come from Xandar. So... I'm not here to destroy you like everything else... Unless you don't care; in which case... You're much more of a threat to me..." He took a step forward, which made her concede another, he was studying her uniform carefully. The eight-point shining yellow star running from her chest down her abdomen, framed by a metallic light blue. The three-point ‘V’ of the Nova Corps shimmering just behind it, glowing faintly every so often. The rest of the uniform navy. Except the gold stripes up her boots. She thought she should have worn her Nova Corps over-jacket; multicoloured rank ribbons and clearer Corp red star emblazoned sleeves. Too late now, though.

He straightened, seeming satisfied but tilted his head. “Who are you?” She tilted hers in turn; “You should know. The fact that you don’t means he did real good to keep me out of his thoughts…” Or any part of his life. Keller’s desk, his car, his pager, his wallet. If nothing held the slightest trace of her then she owed Jonathan her very life. God, she knew that already. He looked confused, as he rightly should. “My name is Maliyah. Quite a few years ago when you were on Earth you simed a Terran known as Jonathan Richard Keller. Unbeknownst to YOU at the time of doing so I had already formed a connection with his DNA. Now, apparently, because siming creates an exact DNA copy of his - I have got some kind of connection with you.” “…You’re Auron.” She was more than a little surprised that he knew that, it made her smile; “Correct.” “Keller… Fury’s boss? How is he and his beautiful blue eyes.” She raised an eyebrow to a phrase she didn’t expect; “…That’s the man. And he’s well… No thanks to you and his constant reoccurring nightmare…” Every so often Jonathan would still wake up in cold sweats with the word simed coming off his lips – Usually it was drink induced, but telling him to stop drinking was pointless. She smiled, but it faded as she looked around her “…So… About this distress that I felt from half way across the Galaxy and came to investigate because Jonathan should be nowhere NEAR this sector… Human’s still haven’t figured out their space travel, God bless ‘em…” “…Well. It’s pretty obvious isn’t it.” “Yeah… Your distress signal tells me one thing I am grateful for. You need help. It looks like a lot of it. And I am here to offer my services... First off, you need to tell me what happened.” “Why should I trust you.” “You have no reason to, and I have no reason to trust you either – In fact I have LESS reason to trust you considering Keller – But Fury trusts you, and so does Carol. So. Yeah, I trust you. Just put a little faith in me…” His eyes flicked back to the Star emblazoned on her uniform and he nodded to it; "If you are really from Xandar then you know what happened." She swept the landscape with her eyes again "Kree... WHY!? It's over, your wars are over..." "There are those in the outside that think they should just end it." "... Is this planet all that’s left!?" "No... Thank god. There are still some of us back home..." She turned again, not wanting to voice it but feeling like she should know everything; "Are you...?? Did they..." "Not everyone. A few, as a statement. An example. My family... They are..." He looked to the stars for a minute "I don't know where they will have taken them but for now they are alive..." She followed the trace of his eyes "I can track that... I'm sure I can track that." She turned back to him; "Obviously first things first. I can't leave you here." "Oh really." She tilted her head at the sarcasm he was displaying. It wasn’t unlike that of her older brother. She couldn’t help but smile, Perhaps she would have more affinity with him than just Keller… "One, you're alone. Two, whatever this connection to Keller you have is... It won't let me leave "Keller" here. So. You simed the right guy. I guess... " Maliyah half turned back to her ship; but kept her eyes on him. He knew the reason she was putting faith in him was the same reason she was still standing over there looking at him like any moment he might change. Or change form. It looked more like a stand off than a potential team-up. Because Jonathan Keller for him was just a Terran male that worked for S.H.I.E.L.D had all the access codes and clearances he needed and eventually got him to his family. For Maliyah, Talos had inadvertently intervened with something sacred. The very fabric of her race’s evolution. Her relationship with Keller now blurred into him. And without this travesty none of them would be any the wiser. "Does he know?" "Jonathan? No. Why would he? I'm the only one that feels anything... He knows all the intricacies of what I am. Whether he understands them...” She afforded explanation with a shrug "He’s human. After all. About the only race out there not involved in the rest of the universe. And integrating even one of them isn't easy... But you should know that." She gave a small, mysterious smile, “So, congratulations. Siming Keller had consequences that you and I are both stuck with.” Talos folded his arms; for all her talk of helping, he hadn’t seen anything that would actually help them out yet. He decided to test that one; “How do we even get out of here… They’ve destroyed all the technology we had. You are some kind of… Supernova. So…” “Supernova is just the name, Jonathan used it all the time it kinda stuck, And I didn’t get here via the Nova Force...” Yet again Talos surprised her with just how much he knew… She wondered if he’d ever been to Xandar… If he’d ever Simed someone from there. Now was not the time to ask the question. “Then how DID you get here?!” She looked back at her Milano, now at least partially visible through the dust clouds as the sun hit the shiny paintwork, then turned to him with a significant look; “…Are we going to save your family, or not?”

#Talos #Keller #Captain Marvel #Captain Marvel spoilers #OC #KellerXOC #Ben Mendelsohn #Oh my god I wrote this TOO quick #But I don't care #I need more Keller in my life #Linzi Writes #Linzi Queues Things #Maliyah #7 #Out Of Nowhere Girl #OONG

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maximelebled · 6 years

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Growing Pains - Zelda, Tony Hawk, The Sims, games and related memories from my formative years

This blog post is about my personal history with video games, how they influenced me growing up, how they sometimes helped me, and more or less an excuse to write about associated memories with them.

This is a very straightforward intro, because I’ve had this post sitting as a draft for ages, trying to glue all of it cohesively, but I’m not a very good writer, so I never really succeeded. Some of these paragraphs date back at least one year.

And I figured I should write about a lot of this as long as I still remember clearly, or not too inaccurately. Because I know that I don’t remember my earliest ever memory. I only remember how I remember it. So I might as well help my future self here, and give myself a good memento.

Anyway, the post is a kilometer long, so it’ll be under this cut.

My family got a Windows 95 computer when I was 3 years old. While I don’t remember this personally, I’m told that one of the first things I ever did with it was mess up with the BIOS settings so badly that dad’s computer-expert friend had to be invited to repair it. (He stayed for dinner as a thank you.)

It was that off-white plastic tower, it had a turbo button, and even a 4X CD reader! Wow! And the CRT monitor must have been... I don’t remember what it was, actually. But I do once remember launching a game at a stupidly high resolution: 1280x1024! And despite being a top-down 2D strategy, it ran VERY slowly. Its video card was an ATI Rage. I had no idea what that really meant that at the time, but I do recall that detail nonetheless.

Along with legitimately purchased games, the list of which I can remember:

Tubular Worlds

Descent II

Alone in the Dark I & III

Lost Eden

Formula One (not sure which game exactly)

Heart of Darkness

(and of course the famous Adibou/Adi series of educational games)

... we also had what I realize today were cracked/pirated games, from the work-friend that had set up the family computer. I remember the following:

Age of Empires I (not sure about that one, I think it might have been from a legitimate “Microsoft Plus!” disc)

Nightmare Creatures (yep, there was a PC port of that game)

Earthworm Jim (but without any music)

The Fifth Element

Moto Racer II

There are a few other memorable games, which were memorable in most aspects, except their name. I just cannot remember their name. And believe me, I have looked. Too bad! Anyway, in this list, I can point out a couple games that made a big mark on me.

First, the Alone in the Dark trilogy. It took me a long time to beat them. I still remember the morning I beat the third game. I think it was in 2001 or 2002.

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There was a specific death in it which gave me nightmares for a week. You shrink yourself to fit through a crack in a wall, but it’s possible to let a timer run out—or fall down a hole—and this terrifying thing happens (16:03). I remember sometimes struggling to run the game for no reason; something about DOS Extended Memory being too small.

I really like the low-poly flat-shaded 3D + hand-drawn 2D style of the game, and it’d be really cool to see something like that pop up again. After the 8-bit/16-bit trend, there’s now more and more games paying tribute to rough PS1-style 3D, so maybe this will happen? Maybe I’ll have to do it myself? Who knows!

Second, Lost Eden gave me a taste for adventure and good music, and outlandish fantasy universes. Here’s the intro to the game:

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A lot of the game is very evocative, especially its gorgeous soundtrack, and you spend a lot of time trekking through somewhat empty renders of landscapes. Despite being very rough early pre-rendered 3D, those places were an incredible journey in my young eyes. If you have some time, I suggest either playing the game (it’s available on Steam) or watching / skimmering through this “longplay” video. Here are some of my personal highlights: 25:35, 38:05, 52:15 (love that landscape), 1:17:20, 1:20:20 (another landscape burned in my neurons), 2:12:10, 2:55:30, 3:01:18. (spoiler warning)

But let’s go a couple years back. Ever since my youngest years, I was very intrigued by creation. I filled entire pocket-sized notebooks with writing—sometimes attempts at fiction, sometimes daily logs like the weather reports from the newspaper, sometimes really bad attempts at drawing. I also filled entire audio tapes over and over and OVER with “fake shows” that my sister and I would act out. The only thing that survived is this picture of 3-year-old me with the tape player/recorder.

It also turns out that the tape recorder AND the shelf have both survived.

(I don’t know if it still works.)

On Wednesday afternoons (school was off) and on the week-ends, I often got to play on the family computer, most of the time with my older brother, who’s the one who introduced me to... well... all of it, really. (Looking back on the games he bought, I can say he had very good tastes.)

Moto Racer II came with a track editor. It was simple but pretty cool to play around with. You just had to make the track path and elevation; all the scenery was generated by the game. You could draw impossible tracks that overlapped themselves, but the editor wouldn’t let you save them. However, I found out there was a way to play/save them no matter what you did, and I got to experiment with crazy glitches. 85 degree inclines that launched the bike so high you couldn’t see the ground anymore? No problem. Tracks that overlapped themselves several times, causing very strange behaviour at the meeting points? You bet. That stuff made me really curious about how video games worked. I think a lot of my initial interest in games can be traced back to that one moment I figured out how to exploit the track editor...

There was also another game—I think it was Tubular Worlds—that came on floppy disks. I don’t remember what exactly lead me to do it, but I managed to edit the text that was displayed by the installer... I think it was the license agreement bit of it. That got me even more curious as to how computers worked.

Up until some time around my 13th or 14th birthday, during summer break (the last days of June to the first days of September for French pupils), my sister and I would always go on vacation at my grandparents’ home.

The very first console game I ever played was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on my cousin’s Super Nintendo, who also usually stayed with us. Unlike us, he had quite a few consoles available to him, and brought a couple along. My first time watching and playing this game was absolutely mind-blowing to me. An adventure with a huge game world to explore, so many mysterious things at every corner. “Why are you a pink rabbit now?” “I’m looking for the pearl that will help me not be that.”

Growing up and working in the games industry has taken the magic out of many things in video games... and my curiosity for the medium (and its inner workings) definitely hasn’t helped. I know more obscure technical trivia about older games than I care to admit. But I think this is what is shaping my tastes in video games nowadays... part of it is that I crave story-rich experiences that can bring me back to a, for lack of a better term, “child-like” wonderment. And I know how weird this is going to sound, but I don’t really enjoy “pure gameplay” games as much for that reason. Some of the high-concept ones are great, of course (e.g. Tetris), but I usually can’t enjoy others without a good interwoven narrative. I can’t imagine I would have completed The Talos Principle had it consisted purely of the puzzles without any narrative beats, story bits, and all that. What I’m getting at is, thinking about it, I guess I tend to value the “narrative” side of games pretty highly, because, to me, it’s one of the aspects of the medium that, even if distillable to some formulas, is inherently way more “vague” and “ungraspable”. You can do disassembly on game mechanics and figure out even the most obsure bits of weird technical trivia. You can’t do that to a plot, a universe, characters, etc. or at least nowhere near to the same extent.

You can take a good story and weave it into a number of games, but the opposite is not true. It’s easy to figure out the inner working of gameplay mechanics, and take the magic out of them, but it’s a lot harder to do that for a story, unless it’s fundamentally flawed in some way.

Video games back then seemed a lot bigger than they actually were.

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I got Heart of Darkness as a gift in 1998 or 1999. We used to celebrate Christmas at my grandparents’, so I had to wait a few days to be back home, and to able to put the CD in the computer. But boy was it worth it! Those animated cutscenes! The amazing pixel art animations! The amazing and somewhat disturbing variety of ways in which you can die, most of which gruesome and mildly graphic! And of course, yet again... a strange and outlandish universe that just scratches my itch for it. Well, one of which that forged my taste for them.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened or what it was, but I do remember that at some point we visited some sort of... exposition? Exhibit? Something along those lines. And it had a board games & computer games section. The two that stick out in my mind were Abalone (of which I still have the box somewhere) and what I think was some sort of 2D isometric (MMO?) RPG. I wanna say it was Ultima Online but I recall it looking more primitive than that (it had small maps whose “void” outside them was a single blueish color).

In my last two years of elementary school, there was one big field trip per year. They lasted two weeks, away from family. The first one was to the Alps. The second one was... not too far from where I live now, somewhere on the coast of Brittany! I have tried really hard to find out exactly where it was, as I remember the building and facilities really well, but I was never able to find it again. On a couple occasions, we went on a boat with some kind of... algae harvesters? The smell was extremely strong (burning itself into my memory) and made me sick. The reason I bring them up is because quite a few of my classmates had Game Boy consoles, most of them with, you know, all those accessories, especially the little lights. I remember being amazed at the transparent ones. Play was usually during the off-times, and I watched what my friends were up to, with, of course, a bit of jealousy mixed in. The class traveled by bus, and it took off in the middle of the night; something like 3 or 4 in the morning? It seemed like such a huge deal at the time! Now here I am, writing THESE WORDS at 03:00. Anyway, most of my classmates didn’t fall back asleep and those that had a Game Boy just started playing on them. One of my classmates, however, handed me his whole kit and I got to do pretty much what I wanted with it, with the express condition that I would not overwrite any of his save files. I remember getting reasonably far in Pokémon before I had to give it back to him and my progress was wiped.

During the trip to the Alps, I remember seeing older kids paying for computer time; there was a row of five computers in a small room... and they played Counter-Strike. I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I would forget about it until the moment I’m writing these words, but I was watching with much curiosity.

The first time I had my own access to console games was in 2001. The first Harry Potter film had just come out, and at Christmas, I was gifted a Game Boy Advance with the first official game. I just looked it up again and good god, it’s rougher than I remember. The three most memorable GBA games which I then got to play were both Golden Sun(s) and Sword of Mana... especially the latter, with its gorgeous art direction. My dad had a cellphone back then, and I remember sneakily going on there to look up a walkthrough for a tricky part of Golden Sun’s desert bit. Cellphones had access to something called “WAP” internet... very basic stuff, but of course still incredible to me back then.

I eventually got to play another Zelda game on my GBA: Link’s Awakening DX. I have very fond memories of that one because I was bed-ridden with a terrible flu. My fever ran so high that I started having some really funky dreams, delirious half-awake hallucinations/feelings, and one night, I got so hot that I stumbled out of bed and just laid down against the cold tile of the hallway. At 3 in the morning! A crazy time! (Crazy for 11-year-old me.)

(The fever hallucinations were crazy. My bedroom felt like it was three times at big, and I was convinced that a pack of elephants were charging at me from the opposite corner. The “night grain” of my vision felt sharper, amplified. Every touch, my sore body rubbing against the bed covers felt like it was happening twice as much. You know that “Heavy Rain with 300% facial animation” video? Imagine that, but as a feverish feeling. The dreams were on another level entirely. I could spend pages on them, but suffice to say that’s when I had my first dream where I dreamed of dying. There were at least two, actually. The first one was by walking down a strange, blueish metal corridor, then getting in an elevator, and then feeling that intimate convinction that it was leading me to passing over. The second one was in some Myst-like world, straight out of a Roger Dean cover, with some sort of mini-habitat pods floating on a completely undisturbed lake. We were just trapped in them. It just felt like some kind of weird afterlife.)

I also eventually got to play the GBA port of A Link To The Past. My uncle was pretty amused by seeing me play it, as he’d also played the original on SNES before I’d even been born. I asked him for help with a boss (the first Dark World one), but unfortunately, he admitted he didn’t remember much of the game.

We had a skiing holiday around this time. I don’t remember the resort’s or the town’s name, but its sights are burned in my memory. Maybe it’s because, shortly after we arrived, and we went to the ski rental place, I almost fainted and puked on myself, supposedly from the low oxygen. It also turned out that the bedroom my parents had rented unexpectedly came with a SNES in the drawer under the tiny TV. The game: Super Mario World. I got sick at one point and got to stay in and play it. This was also the holiday where I developed a fondness for iced tea, although back then the most common brand left an awful aftertaste in your mouth that just made you even more thirsty.

We got a new PC in December of 2004. Ditching the old Windows 98 SE (yep, the OS had been upgraded in... 2002, I think?). Look at how old-school this looks. The computer office room was in the basement. Even with the blur job that I applied to the monitor for privacy reasons, you can still tell that this is the XP file explorer:

A look at what the old DSLR managed to capture on the shelf reveals some more of the games that were available to me back then: a bunch of educational software, The Sims 2, and SpellForce Gold.

I might be misremembering but I think they were our Christmas gifts for that year; we both got to pick one game. I had no idea what I wanted, really, but out of all the boxes at (what I think was) the local Fnac store, it was SpellForce that stood out to me the most. Having watched Lord of the Rings the year prior might have been a factor. I somewhat understood Age of Empires years before that, but SpellForce? Man, I loved the hell out of SpellForce. Imagine a top-down RPG that can also be played from a third-person perspective. And with the concept of... hero units... wait a second... now that reminds me of Dota.

Imagine playing a Dota hero with lots of micro-management and being able to build a whole base on new maps. And sometimes visiting very RPG-ish sections (my favorites!) with very little top-down strategy bits, towns, etc. like Siltbreaker. I guess this game was somewhat like an alternate, single-player Dota if you look at it from the right angle. (Not the third-person one.)

I do remember being very excited when I found out that it, too, came with a level editor. I never figured it out, though. I only ever got as far as making a nice landscape for my island, and that was it!

A couple weeks after, it was Christmas; my sister and I got our first modern PC game: The Sims 2. It didn’t run super well—most games didn’t, because the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 wasn’t very good. But that didn’t stop me or my sister from going absolutely nuts with the game. This video has the timestamp of 09 January 2005, and it is the first video I’ve ever made with a computer. Less than two weeks after we got the game, I was already neck-deep in creating stuff.

Not that it was particularly good, of course. This is a video that meets all of the “early YouTube Windows Movie Maker clichés”.

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Speaking of YouTube, I did register an account there pretty early on, in August of 2006. I’ve been through all of it. I remember every single layout change. I also started using Sony Vegas around that time. It felt so complex and advanced back then! And I’m still using it today. Besides Windows, Vegas Pro is very likely to be the piece of software that I’ve been using for the longest time.

I don’t have a video on YouTube from before 2009, because I decided to delete all of them out of embarassment. They were mostly Super Mario 64 machinima. It’s as bad as it sounds. The reason I bring that up right now, though, is that it makes the “first” video of my account the last one I made with the Sims 2.

But before I get too far ahead with my early YouTube days, let me go backwards a bit. We got hooked up to the Internet some time in late 2005. It was RTC (dialup), 56 kbps. my first steps into the Internet led me to the Cube engine. Mostly because back then my dad would purchase computer magazines (which were genuinely helpful back then), and came with CDs of common downloadable software for those without Internet connections. One of them linked to Cube. I think it was using either this very same screenshot, or a very similar one, on the same map.

The amazing thing about Cube is not only that it was open-source and moddable, but had map editing built-in the game. The mode was toggled on with a single key press. You could even edit maps cooperatively with other people. Multiplayer mapping! How cool is that?! And the idea of a game that enabled so much creation was amazing to me, so I downloaded it right away. (Over the course of several hours, 30 MiB being large for dialup.)

I made lots of bad maps that never fulfilled the definition of “good level” or “good gameplay”, not having any idea how “game design” meant, or what it even was. But I made places. Places that I could call my own. “Virtual homes”. I still distinctively remember the first map I ever made, even though no trace of it survives to this day. In the second smallest map size possible, I’d made a tower surrounded by a moat and a few smaller cozy towers, with lots of nice colored lighting. This, along with the distinctive skyboxes and intriguing music, made me feel like I’d made my home in a strange new world.

At some point later down the line, I made a kinda-decent singleplayer level. It was very linear, but one of the two lead developers of the game played it and told me he liked it a lot! Of course, half of that statement was probably “to be nice”, but it was really validating and encouraging. And I’m glad they were like that. Because I remember being annoying to some other mappers in the Sauerbraten community (the follow-up to Cube, more advanced technically), who couldn’t wrap their heads around my absolutely god awful texturing work and complete lack of level “design”. Honestly, sometimes, I actually kinda feel like trying to track a couple of them down and being like, “yeah, remember that annoying kid? That was me. Sorry you had to deal with 14-year-old me.”

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At some point, I stumbled upon a mod called Cube Legends. It was a heavily Zelda-inspired “total conversion”; a term reserved for mods that are the moddiest mods and try to take away as much of the original foundation as possible. It featured lots of evocative MIDI music by the Norwegian composer Bjørn Lynne. Fun fact: the .mid files are still available officially from his website!

This was at the crossroad of many of my interests. It was yet another piece of the puzzle. As a quick side note, this is why Zelda is the first series that I name in the title of this post, even though I... never really thought of myself as a Zelda fan. It’s not that it’s one of the game series that I like the most, it’s just that, before I started writing this, I’d never realized how far-reaching its influence had been in my life, both in overt and subtle ways, especially during my formative years.

And despite how clearly unfinished, how much of a “draft” Cube Legends was, I could see what it was trying to do. I could see the author’s intent. And I’m still listening to Bjørn Lynne’s music today.

The Cube Engine and its forums were a big part of why I started speaking English so well. Compared to most French people, I mean. We’re notoriously bad with the English language, and so was I up until then. But having this much hands-on practice proved to be immensely valuable. And so, I can say that the game and its community have therefore had long-lasting impacts in my life.

I also tried out a bunch of N64 games via emulation, bringing me right back in that bedroom at my grandparents’ house, with my cousin. Though he did not have either N64 Zelda game back then.

The first online forum I ever joined was a Zelda fan site’s. There are two noteworthy things to say here:

It was managed by a woman who, during my stay in the community, graduated from her animation degree. At this stage I had absolutely no idea that this was going to be the line of work I would eventually pursue!

I recently ran into the former head moderator of the forums. (I don’t know when the community died.) One of the Dota players on my friends list invited him because I was like “hmm, I wanna go as 3, not as 2 players today”. His nickname very vaguely reminded me of something, a weird hunch I couldn’t place. Half an hour into the game, he said “hey Max... this might be a long shot, but did you ever visit [forum]?” and then I immediately yelled “OH MY GOD—IT IS YOU.” The world is a small place.

Access to the computer was sometimes tricky. I didn’t always have good grades, and of course, “punishment” (not sure the word is appropriate, hence the quotes, but you get the idea) often involved locking me out of the computer room. Of course, most times, I ended up trying to find the key instead. I needed my escape from the real world. (You better believe it’s Tangent Time.)

I was always told I was the “smart kid”, because I “understood things faster” than my classmates. So they made me skip two grades ahead. This made me enter high school at nine years old. The consequences were awful (I was even more of the typical nerdy kid that wouldn’t fit in), and I wish it had never happened. Over the years, I finally understood: I wasn’t more intelligent. I merely had the chance to have been able to grow up with an older brother who’d instilled a sense of curiosity, critical thinking, and taste in books that were ahead of my age and reading level. This situation—and its opposite—is what I believe accounts for the difference in how well kids get to learn. It’s not innate talent, it’s not genetics (as some racists would like you to believe). It’s parenting and privilege.

And that’s why I’ll always be an outspoken proponent for any piece of media that tries to instill critical thinking and curiosity in its viewer, reader, or player.

But I digress.

Well, I’ve been digressing a lot, really, but games aren’t everything and after all, this post is about the context in which I played those games. Otherwise I reckon I would’ve just made a simple list.

I eventually got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Mario Kart DS. My sister had gotten her own just around the time when it released... she had the Nintendogs bundle. We had also upgraded to proper ADSL, what I think was about a ~5 megabits download speed. The Nintendo DS supported wi-fi, which was still relatively rare compared to today. In fact, Nintendo sold a USB wireless adapter to help with that issue—our ISP-supplied modem-router did not have any wireless capabilities. I couldn’t get it the adapter work and I remember I got help from a really kind stranger who knew a lot about networking—to a point that it seemed like wizardry to me.

I remember I got a “discman” as a gift some time around that point. In fact, I still have it. Check out the stickers I put on it! I think those came from the Sims 2 DVD box and/or one of its add-ons.

I burned a lot of discs. In fact, in the stack of burned CDs/DVDs that I found (with the really bad Sims movies somewhere in there), I found at least three discs that had the Zelda album Hyrule Symphony burned in, each with different additional tracks. Some were straight-up MIDI files from vgmusic.com...! And speaking (again) of Zelda, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess utterly blew my mind. I never got the game or the console, but damn did I yearn badly for it. I listened to the main theme of the game a lot, which didn’t help. I eventually got to play the first few hours at a friend’s place.

At some point, we’d upgraded the family computer to something with a bit more horsepower. It had a GeForce 8500 GT inside, which was eventually upgraded to a 9600 GT after the card failed for some reason. It could also dual-boot between XP and Vista. I stuck with that computer until 2011.

We moved to where I currently live in 2007. I’ve been here over a decade! And before we’d even fully finished unpacking, I was on the floor of the room that is now my office, with the computer on the ground and the monitor on a cardboard box, playing a pirated copy of... Half-Life! It was given to me by my cousin. It took me that long to find out about the series. It’s the first Valve game I played. I also later heard about the Orange Box, but mostly about Portal. Which I also pirated and played. I distinctly remember being very puzzled by the options menu: I thought it was glitched or broken, as changing settings froze the game. Turns out the Source engine had to chug for a little while, like a city car in countryside mud, as it reloaded a bunch of stuff. Patience is a virtue...

But then, something serious happened.

In the afternoon of 25 December 2007, I started having a bit of a dull stomach pain. I didn’t think much of it. Figured maybe I’d eaten too many Christmas chocolates and it’d go away. It didn’t. It progressively deteriorated into a high fever where I had trouble walking and my tummy really hurt; especially if you pressed on it. My parents tried to gently get me to eat something nice on New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t stay in very long. I could only feed myself with lemonade and painkiller. Eventually, the doctor decided I should get blood tests done as soon as possible. And I remember that day very clearly.

I was already up at 6:30 in the morning. Back then, The Daily Show aired on the French TV channel Canal+, so I was watching that, lying in the couch while waiting for my mom to get up and drive me to my appointment, at 7:00. It was just two streets away, but there was no way I could walk there. At around noon, the doctor called and told my mom: “get your son to the emergency room now.”

Long story short, part of my intestines nuked themselves into oblivion, causing acute peritonitis. To give you an idea, that’s something with a double-digit fatality rate. Had we waited maybe a day or two more, I would not be here writing this. They kind of blew up. I had an enormous abcess attached to a bunch of my organs. I had to be operated on with only weak local anaesthetics as they tried to start draining the abscess. It is, to date, by far the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. It was bad enough that the hospital doctor that was on my case told me that I was pretty much a case worthy to be in textbooks. I even had medical students come into my hospital room about it! They were very nice.

This whole affair lasted over a month. I became intimately familiar with TV schedules. And thankfully, I had my DS to keep me company. At the time, I was pretty big into the Tony Hawk DS games. They were genuinely good. They had extensive customization, really great replayability, etc. you get the idea. I think I even got pretty high on the online leaderboards at some point. I didn’t have much to do on some days besides lying down in pain while perfecting my scoring and combo strategies. I think Downhill Jam might’ve been my favorite.

My case was bad enough that they were unable to do something due to the sad state of my insides during the last surgery of my stay. I was told that I could come back in a few months for a checkup, and potentially a “cleanup” operation that would fix me up for good. I came back in late June of 2008, got the operation, and... woke up in my hospital room surrounded by, like, nine doctors, and hooked up to a morphine machine that I could trigger on command. Apparently something had gone wrong during the operation, but they never told me what. I wasn’t legally an adult, so they didn’t have to tell me. I suspect it’s somewhere in some medical files, but I never bothered to dig up through my parents’ archives, or ask the hospital. And I think I would rather not know. But anyway, that was almost three more weeks in the hospital. And it sucked even more that time because, you see, hospital beds do not “breathe” like regular beds do. The air can’t go through. Let’s say I’m intimately familiar with the smell of back sweat forever.

When I got out, my mom stopped by a supermarket on the way home. And that is when I bought The Orange Box, completely on a whim, and made my Steam account. Why? Because it was orange and stood out on the shelf.

(As a side note, that was the whole bit I started writing first, and that made me initially title this post “growing pains”. First, because I’m bad at titles. Second, because not that I didn’t have them otherwise (ow oof ouch my knees), but that was literally the most painful episode of my entire life thus far and it ended in a comically-unrelated, high-impact, life-changing decision. Just me picking up The Orange Box after two awful hospital stays... led me to where I am today.)

While I was recovering, I also started playing EarthBound! Another bit of a life-changer, that one. To a lesser extent, but still. I was immediately enamored by its unique tone. Giygas really really really creeped me out for a while afterwards though. I still get unsettled if I hear its noises sometimes.

I later bought Garry’s Mod (after convincing my mom that it was a “great creative toolbox that only cost ten bucks!”), and, well, the rest is history. By which I mean, a lot of my work and gaming activity since 2009 is still up and browsable. But there are still a few things to talk about.

In 2009, I bought my first computer with YouTube ad money: the Asus eee PC 1005HA-H. By modern standards, it’s... not very powerful. The processor in my current desktop machine is nearly 50 times as fast as its Atom N280. It had only one gigabyte of RAM, Windows 7 Basic Edition, and an integrated GPU barely worthy of the name; Intel didn’t care much for 3D in their chips back then. The GMA 945 didn’t even have hardware support for Transform & Lighting.

But I made it work, damn it. I made that machine run so much stuff. I played countless Half-Life and Half-Life 2 mods on it—though, due to the CPU overhead on geometry, some of those were trickier. I think one of the most memorable ones I played was Mistake of Pythagoras; very surreal, very rough, but I still remember it so clearly. I later played The Longest Journey on it, in the middle of winter. It was a very cozy and memorable experience. (And another one that’s an adventure wonderful outlandish alien universe. LOVE THOSE.)

I did more than playing games on it, though...

This is me sitting, sunburned on the nose, in an apartment room, on 06 August 2010. This was in the Pyrénées, at the border between France and Spain. We had a vacation with daily hiking. Some of the landscapes we visited reminded me very strongly of those from Lost Eden, way up the page...

So, you see, I had 3ds Max running on that machine. The Source SDK as well. Sony Vegas. All of it was slow; you bet I had to use some workarounds to squeeze performance out of software, and that I had to keep a close, watchful eye on RAM usage. But I worked on this thing. I really did! I animated this video’s facial animation bits (warning: this is old & bad) on the eee PC, during the evenings of the trip, when we were back at our accomodation. The Faceposer tool in the Source SDK really worked well on that machine.

I also animated an entire video solely on the machine (warning: also old and bad). It had to be rendered on the desktop computer... but every single bit of the animation was crafted on the eee PC.

I made it work.

Speaking of software that did not run well: around that time, I also played the original Crysis. The “but can it run Crysis?” joke was very much justified back then. I had to edit configuration files by hand so that I could run the game in 640x480... because I wanted to keep most of the high-end settings enabled. The motion blur was delicious, and it blew my mind that the effect made the game feel this smooth, despite wobbling around in the 20 to 30 fps range.

Alright. It’s time to finish writing this damn post and publish it at last, so I’m going to close it out by listing some more memories and games that I couldn’t work in up there.

Advance Wars. Strategy game on GBA with a top-down level editor. You better believe I was all over the editor right away.

BioShock. When we got the 2007 desktop computer, it was one of the first games I tried. Well, its demo, to be precise. Its tech and graphics blew my mind, enough that I saved up to buy the full game. This was before I had a Steam account; I got a boxed copy! I think it might have been the last boxed game I ever bought? It had a really nice metal case. The themes and political messages of the game flew way over my head, though.

Mirror’s Edge. The art direction was completely fascinating to me, and it introduced me to Solar Fields’ music; my most listened artist this decade, by a long shot.

L.A. Noire. I lost myself in its stories and investigations, and then, I did it all again, with my sister at the helm. I very rarely play games twice (directly or indirectly), which I figure is worth mentioning.

Zeno Clash. It was weird and full of soul, had cool music, and cool cutscenes. It inspired me a lot in my early animation days.

Skyward Sword. Yep, going back to Zelda on that one. The whole game was pretty good, and I’m still thinking about how amazing its art direction was. Look up screenshots of it running in HD on an emulator... it’s outstanding. But there’s a portion of the game that stands tall above the rest: the Lanayru Sand Sea. It managed to create a really striking atmosphere in many aspects, through and through. I still think about it from time to time, especially when its music comes on in shuffle mode.

Wandersong. A very recent pick, but it was absolutely a life-changing one. That game is an anti-depressant, a vaccine against cynicism, a lone bright and optimist voice.

I realize now this is basically a “flawed but interesting and impactful games” list. With “can establish its atmosphere very well” as a big criteria. (A segment of video games that is absolutely worth exploring.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever make my own video game. I have a few ideas floating around and I tried prototyping some stuff, though my limited programming abilities stood in my way. But either way, if it happens one day, I hope I’ll manage to channel all those years of games into the CULMINATION OF WHAT I LIKE. Something along those lines, I reckon.

#video games

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aslaton8-blog · 4 years

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I've been playing Skyrim here for the last two days straight. What else do you do as a stay at home mom?

Skyrim is like a home away from home. It's a place I can unapologetically be anything I want to be. I find it funny though I typically choose good characters and have a hard time being mean to the people. Well not anymore. I've learned it's a great escape when I'm feeling nothing but hatred. I can blow up an entire city and just reset the game and everything will be back to normal unlike life. You can't take back things you say or do in real life without consequence. I think I just really enjoy that freedom.

Now, I'm using it to make characters for my story. Skyrim isn't the best set and setting for my story but it's better than the Sims 😂 Lately I've been focused on a character that I named Zudachum (he doesn't have a first and last name, that's just his name). So I created the character in Skyrim. I made him a Breton with long black hair and that beard that looks like a wizard. So far he is an Imperial because Zudachum is a dictator in my story. The Imperials won't let the people worship Talos so that sounds aligned with Zudachum. He's not a rebel. He owns the entire planet of Avera, the people, the production, everything. He's a scientist so I made him an alchemist in Skyrim.

So far he's a level 5 (just started him yesterday) and a member of the thrives guild. He's kind of mean so I might make him an assassin too. I kind of want to turn him into a vampire. I always did the dawnguard quests but never chose the vampire. So I've never played a vampire in the game so I kinda want to see how that will play out for this character. I always choose companions because I LOVE werewolf mythology.

But I've been playing this for two days straight. Part of me feels like I need to get up and do stuff but part of me also knows I AM doing stuff by diving into my characters for my story. It's just hard to get up and do stuff with this child. She sits next to me and plays and learns while I play. She screams and cries if I leave to room to go clean so I basically have to wait until my husband is off work so I can do my regular duties.

Today will be day FOUR of him working 12-14 hour shifts. He usually gets three 12's but he had four twelves in a row this weekend. So Sky and I are spending it wisely. Being without my husband for this long creates a lot of anxiety. That's why i said I could never date military. I'm too clingy. I grew up alone so I can't stand it.

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mittensmcedgelord · 7 years

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The Truth Will Set You Free

The truth will set you free, but lieu of truth a different kind of lie can suffice.

Exhausted of vague plans and repetitious assurance, Mim seeks out Mikhaila in the hopes of getting answers no one else will give him. What he finds are more questions, ones with far sharper edges than he bargained for.

(This is so long. I am so sorry. This update has been sitting in my documents, waiting for @wandering-chronicler-blog to edit it for the 25th time before I posted. And somehow it kept getting longer. )

You’re a good human.

You’re a good person.

You’re as good as Morgan.

You’re better than Morgan.

It’s not that I’m not flattered, but I’m starting to think everyone is reading off of the same script. Igwe. Sho. Alex. Especially Alex. I’ve had that conversation with my brother so many times it’s starting to feel like part of the old sim. I used to think it was guilt over Morgan, but it isn’t just him. Almost everyone has the same thing to say to me. I haven’t spoken to Elazar yet, not privately, but the group emails and security memos were enough. It’s strange, to say the least. I haven’t been out of containment long enough to make that much of an impression, unless they’re all going by my responses in the sim. The Morgan I was in there probably deserved all the compliments I get. There are too many holes in that theory, though.

My sense of self-preservation is screaming at me. It picks threads out of the weave and tries to tie them together into something more solid. There was something in Alex’s office that hid his thoughts and brought me crashing down into myself. I can’t blame him. I’m a Typhon. I’m wearing Morgan’s skin, but I know what I am. He has every right to be afraid after what happened on Talos. It’s a reasonable, human response to a potential threat and I could ignore it if it didn’t feel like déjà vu. I’ve had that disassociated, claustrophobic feeling before. I didn’t tell Alex. If he’s going to keep things from me, I might as well return the favor. From now on, any new memories or feelings that surface are mine alone.

I’m halfway down the shaft to the cafeteria when it finally hits me what that feeling was: The psychoscope. I put it on once. Only once. It was like having my thoughts wrung out of me until there was nothing left. I remember shaking, fumbling at the clasps to get it off. I blacked out at some point. That isn’t in any of my notes, though. All of the emails I found about psychoscopes are just Alex telling the people in the lab that I don’t need to wear one when I come down. I watch the lights, consider just hitting the button to take me back up to my room, and let it keep going.

I’m walking out of the grav shaft mechanically. I’ve fallen into a routine again, even without the sim. At least it’s a routine of my own design. Every midnight I come down for udon and a can of coffee. I sit by myself near the vending machines. I listen to the other voices and absorb them. I know a lot of movies now. I know how to use chopsticks. I breathe in the collective consciousness of Talos 2 as if it could sustain me. Typhon feed on thought. In a way, I still do. I’m learning how to blend in. It’s a type of social mimesis, when you get down to it. I pick an employee at random, a young woman in a researcher’s uniform, and copy her affect. Before long I’m at ease, moving my fingers to a song I’ve never heard and humming. I look up from my noodles every few minutes, a second after she does, and stare expectantly at the nearly empty cafeteria. I’m not sure if I’m actually expecting someone, but I see Mikhaila out of the corner of my eye and something clicks.

I need to talk to Mikhaila. She might not tell me everything, but she’ll tell me a different lie than the others. Maybe between them I can find the truth. I wish I could read her. I want to know why she tries so hard to look through me. Is it Morgan? Alex? Was she there when they put me together and did she see something they didn’t?

“Doctor Yu,” she greets me as I sit down. One of the employees next to her, another researcher, looks away before leaving the table. His eyes never meet mine. I hear whispers. The people at the table are gone. Mikhaila continues to watch me. I’m shaking when I set the notebook down. My suit ripples along my hands like water and she’s polite enough not to say anything, though I see her clench her jaw. The weave is filled with her coworkers’ thoughts, hazy memories of a newscast about Talos 1 and the evacuation of earth to the martian colonies.

“Still putting off your doctors’ appointments?” Her tone is accusatory. It’s a welcome change, though I wish it was from anyone but her. I don’t have to answer. I guess the look of shame is enough. Her lips tighten together and the corners of her mouth drop. Her eyes are soft. “You can’t keep doing that. You know there is a very good reason they schedule those.”

She catches herself and bites her lip. Anger and embarrassment blossom across her face before fading. I wonder who she’s wearing. Whose skin got pulled on over Mikhaila Ilyushin’s? Her eyes move to my hand and I scramble to make the fingers divide into individual digits again.

“And this is why you go to your appointments.” She drums her fingers on the table, spinning strands of gold thread where her emotions leave her. I touch one and pull it towards me, only for it to break. Mikhaila is staring at me, mouth open and a million silent words spilling out. I pick up my can of tea to make sure my reflection is still human. It is. When I look back up her jaw is set. “How many psi hypo do you use per day? On top of the water filters you have. Do you know?”

“One or two. It depends on what I’m doing. More interaction with the crew means more hypo.”

“You need them to be human.” It sounds like it’s a question, but her expression says she doesn’t want me to answer. She knows. I do. I run out, I stop being Morgan. I stop being Morgan, I become something else. Something that is going to have to actually feed instead of just drink a pitcher of tap water infused with psychotropic particles every few hours. I try to maintain eye contact, but her gaze is piercing. “You know what those hypo are, don’t you?”

“I know. And I appreciate the irony of consuming typhon material in order to stay human.” I attempt a smile. It’s too wide. Too many teeth. I can feel how wrong my mouth is. Her fear moves beneath the surface of her face and I stop smiling. I come apart near her. I think Morgan did too, but in a different way. My hands move through the table. I don’t feel the bench under me anymore. Something whispers inside my head. I used to know the language it speaks, but now it’s nothing but a scratching noise and empty light. I nearly jump out of my seat when something slams against the table next to my hand. The can of green tea is crumpled in Mikhaila’s fist. The fear is gone. Anger. This one is anger.

“You have no idea what you’re doing here, do you?”

“Talking to you.” I run my tongue across my teeth, feel them smooth out and arrange themselves in order. My body is heavy, more solid than it’s been in days. I don’t like it. It has to stay this way until I leave, though.

“On Talos,” she amends. “You have no idea what you’re doing on Talos.”

“Alex said I was some kind of bridge between species. We’re working the details out.” I smile properly this time. It doesn't help.

“When did you learn to write?” The question comes out of nowhere. She must have seen me taking notes on what she said. When I don’t answer the first time, she repeats herself. This time her words are bright, sharp. They burrow under my skin and give off sparks. I stare down at the notebook in front of me, the endless list of things that I think I know alternately underlined or crossed out. “You can’t use chopsticks, but you have Morgan’s handwriting. Do you know why?”

“The cell lines?” Unsure. I sound unsure. She has a point and I don’t like it. I have to fight to keep myself as me. I imagine Morgan. I replay his voice in my head, telling Alex about growing a pair and committing. I replay his sense of self-assuredness and resignation. I take a deep breath as I straighten my posture. “Phantom memories aren’t the best studied side effect of Typhon modification, but they’re known to happen. It’s likely I only got a fraction of what Morgan knew from the experiment, the things that were important to him.”

“You can’t fake his arrogance,” she snorts. “Morgan was arrogant because he was smart, because he worked hard to use that intelligence. And because he wouldn’t understand humility even if you installed it in him with a mod.”

My thoughts are screaming. They warp everything in my vision, pulling away at the threads I try to carefully gather around me. My glove stops existing. She notices it, but her expression remains the same.

“Ask Alex why you know how to write. And while you’re at it, ask him why he goes along with your insane desire to live in a simulation still.”

“I don’t.” I hear the hum of the coral and, somewhere deep inside it, I hear my own voice echoed back to me. It sounds different than Morgan’s. Arrogance, but without the barbs. “I turned it off. Broke the clock. Reset my transcribe to sync with the station’s calendar. I spent too much of my life in a simulation already.”

She smiles, but it isn’t kind. I’m getting the idea that Igwe’s Emotional Intelligence flashcards are full of lies. Every time I’ve seen someone smile, it hasn’t been happy. I don’t copy her. I feel my jaw tighten and my eyes lose focus. There’s empty space around her where the weave should be, those intangible threads that haven’t been made into solid coral yet. I can feel myself pulsing through them, my thoughts an invisible heartbeat for something much bigger than I am. And I can feel the threads tangle together. I exhale. She’s still smiling. I’ve decided I don’t like that expression. Humans have it all wrong. Animals bare their teeth to display a threat, but here they are thinking that it means friendship. The cards are lies.

“What did I do to you?” There’s an echo in my voice, a crackle of static electricity. I shut my mouth and hope it was too quiet for the rest of the cafeteria to hear. It sounded like a phantom’s speech.

“You? Nothing. Not this time. Not this you.” She regards me with the same rigid smile, the same bared teeth. Just once, the weave pulses around her and I hear the darkness move. “But maybe you should ask about the other ‘Mim’.”

I want her to be lying. I want to tell her that she’s lying, that I know she’s saying this to hurt me because of some unfinished business with Morgan, but I remember the dreams.

“You are so much like him, you know that? Maybe you can’t fake his mannerisms, but he’s still part of you.” She scoffs and glances at the table where Sho is. I should be over there with her, splitting a plate of eel rolls and talking about the latest batch of Fatal Fortress recordings I found. My feet won’t move, no matter how much I tell them to. Mikhaila turns back to me. “So quick to believe you’re a savior, that ends justify means. I’m sure they’ve told you otherwise. They always do. But how quickly did you believe them when they said you were the only one, the last great hope of humanity?”

“Did anything I did in that simulation mean anything, anything at all to you?”

There’s a pause. The world hums, gets desaturated. All I can hear is the first time I saw her outside of the sim and the way her voice sounded when she called me ‘Dr. Yu’. A thread breaks somewhere. My vision refocuses and, even though I know I haven’t shifted, I see the way I used to. There’s too many angles riding too close to each other. Starbursts of thought radiate around her, none of them hers. When she finally speaks, it’s deafening.

“It meant that we tailored the testing variables right and adjusted your composition accordingly. You were a very receptive test subject.”

“If you don’t like having a…” I stumble, my thoughts flicker away into the coral. I breathe in deep through my mouth and focus on Morgan. “If you’re so set against a Typhon based replica, why not just use an operator like April?”

She doesn’t reply. Her eyes widen slightly and any emotion on her face disappears. As soon as I open my mouth again, she gets up and leaves. Her half finished dinner is left behind, along with her TranScribe. I shouldn’t have mentioned April. What did I think she’d do, sit back down and tell me a tragic story about a rogue operator? No. That wouldn’t be reasonable. I know she won’t tell me and that’s why I don’t follow her. I know enough to know that.

I pick one of the blini from her tray as I wait for my body to forget Mikhaila’s presence. The threads are still moving, straining under the weight of my own scattered thoughts. I knew there were others. She told me nothing I didn’t know. So why does it bother me?

I pick up the box of blini and stare at it for a while. I never learned Russian. I couldn’t have, not in the few weeks I’ve been awake. The Cyrillic letters come to me naturally. The names of the ingredients, the information, the slogan, and the Russian regalia are all familiar. I have never eaten blini. I never learned Russian.

I don’t remember learning how to write either.

#prey au #fanfic #Mim #Mikhaila Iluyshin #Prey #This is so long #I already said that #I blame LST for all of this #Mostly for grammatical errors if there are any #I'm kidding LST #You know I am eternally indebted to you for translating my scattered thoughts into coherent plot

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sammgreer · 7 years

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PREY - Review

How fitting for a game about issues of identity to have borrowed the name belonging to a completely unrelated game. There's barely even a passing wink to 3D Realm's daft shooter. Ah well.

What Prey is instead is a modern successor to System Shock but with heaps of novel ideas layered atop a familiar centre. It's also not too dissimilar from Arkane's Dishonored, albeit without the stealth focus. Whilst I think I prefer Dishonored overall (I'm a big stealth fan) I think Prey has a chance at being considered the best immersive sim around. What Prey has over them all is coherence. The game is a network of related systems, all interactive, fleshing out a single location.

Talos IV in this case, a corporate owned space station orbiting the moon in an alternate reality where the Kennedy space program took off due to first contact with a strange alien species. The station is the real star of the show. It is a completely intricate location where every staff member is accounted for and every area has a logical contribution to the station's purpose. What a treat it is to not only be set loose on an intricate, dense location but one that fits together so completely. Whilst it never manages to be outright striking like the iconic Rapture, it still looks distinct; the decor offering a stylish retro themed alternative to the usual dull, gun metal grey corridors. And the score is a refreshingly stylish affair with the twang of an electric guitar cutting through the air instead of the bassy drone that seems the default for so much science fiction.

You play as Morgan Yu (who can be male or female depending on player choice), youngest child of the family owned Transtar corporation who run the station. Along with your eldest brother you're left stranded on the station, to deal with an alien menace. Worse, you've no memory of the last few months. Neuromods, the station's latest invention, allows anyone to acquire any recorded skill in seconds but it comes with a hefty price. Removing them resets the user's memory to just before they were installed. As a result you're left to pick up the pieces. Various characters will claim to be acting in your best interests but its up to you to pay attention if you want to decipher what's really going on and who to trust. There's a pleasant Philip. K. Dick vibe to it all, this oppressive paranoia dripping over everything. Even though it dulls over the game's many hours, it makes for an intriguing start. Beyond this beginning, what occurs is largely up to you and the game will react accordingly to every action you take. No matter what you do, you can reach a conclusion. Save the other survivors, leave them or even kill them if you somehow decide that's a good idea. Chase down secrets, discover what was really going on aboard the station and in your own past. Talos IV is so open to exploration, with dozens of connecting routes through every area. It's the density of details that impressed me the most. Looking for a specific crew member? Check the ship's roster which gives a location (in real time) for every single employee. Found a locked room? Hit a touch screen with foam darts through a vent in the roof to unlock the door.

Those examples are just scratching the surface and the further into the game you go, the more systems are made available, allowing you to exert more control within the established rules of the game world. I won't spoil the later secrets because discovery is so much of what makes Prey a joy to play. Even if I tried however there's almost no way I could spoil someone's experience with the game. There are so many approaches and options you will almost certainly have a distinctly different experience from me. Importantly, the game gives you plenty of reasons to try out these options. Part of that is narrative, with a moral element likely to factor into how you choose to approach a situation, chasing a particular outcome in the story. Other times its through design, with the game's admittedly steep difficulty pushing you towards finding alternative solutions or seeking new tools.

Enemies themselves are perhaps the least interesting area of the game. The much talked about mimics are, whilst somewhat tedious to actually fight, a neat idea. Able to imitate any object within the game world, you have to pay attention at all times to avoid ambushes. The novelty does wear off of course but by the time it does, the game offers you a device to identify them more easily, one of many instances where the game stays a step ahead of itself. The game's other foes feel relatively bog standard though. Phantoms are the main type and whilst they can have various properties that require unique counters, they're largely predictable. A few late game enemy types have their own twists, forcing you well outside your comfort zone but there's a long stretch of the game before they show up. All the enemies work well and they have that rare quality of feeling distinctly alien but few of them have much personality or leave a lasting impression.

What they all do pretty well is make you use the full extent of your arsenal. The devices you amass over its many hours are composed largely of "tools" with unique functions rather than dozens of guns. The GLOO gun for instance shoots a hardening foam which can be used to encase enemies, slowing them down, block doors or can even be used to create platforms to climb on. Then there's the abilities you unlock throughout, opening up an even greater array of approaches. Which does include, yes, the ability to turn into a coffee cup. Which has more uses than you might imagine.

The point is, the more you play the more creative you can be. A challenge you found daunting in the early hours or an obstacle that seemed impassable can be returned to, conquered with what you've acquired. It's the satisfaction of being given problems you can figure out your own solutions to that makes Prey feel so special. It puts its immersive sim competition like the new Deus Ex games to shame, with a depth and level of freedom that honestly felt a little dizzying at the start. I'm so used to endless waypoints, checkpoints and hand holding that absolute freedom can be overwhelming. It's also perfectly possible to overlook important information, fail to discover a helpful item or weapon. Nothing that will stop you being able to progress but can certainly make exploration all the more difficult.

It is exciting though and remains so as you see the effects of your choices throughout the game. Being one, interwoven location rather than broken up into distinct levels like Dishonored means your actions ripple through Talos IV much more organically. Events, both story-driven and player driven, develop nicely and lead to those “oh yeah...” moments as you bump into a result some hours down the line.

The story itself isn't the game's best feature. Your conflict with your brother is handled smartly, with their relationship fleshed out in the details rather than exposition but it does fail to deliver emotional punch, a real missed opportunity. A shame cause the game's characters are all pretty well written, with distinct, believable personalities from dozens of NPCs (with an admirable number of LGBT characters, including Female-Morgan). They even come with some great little sub-quests, offering some of the game's most emotionally satisfying moments. Prey uses e-mails and audio logs like a dozen games before it but sprinkles them carefully. Not to mention most only offer hints of important details, instead of a character having a monologue about their ideologies. You have to pay attention, read between the lines and that means I engaged with the information offered instead of passively absorbing exposition. With a deft hand and constant trickle of details the story and world managed to hold my attention.

All of which sadly leads to a predictable though fairly enjoyable climax (of the two major variations of conclusion, one is much more satisfying to play through than the other) but one followed by an utterly limp, rushed ending. Nothing that spoils the rest of the game but certainly a disappointment after all the world building and care given to make your choices up to that point feel meaningful. There is an after credits sequence that offers an audacious twist to events but it doesn't do much to salvage the ending.

Nonetheless, for almost its entire run time I found Prey an absolute delight. There's much that's derivative in it, System Shock remains the most obvious influence but Prey has more style and a far better interface than that game ever did. Mainly though, these are ideas we seldom see or see done this well, so what's borrowed never really felt like a negative. What's more is for every familiar trope, there's a unique idea at work. Each could serve as the premise of a game all unto themselves. Instead they're here together, in this incredibly detailed sandbox. A flawed one admittedly but Prey still manages to be one of the most coherent and inventive games in years.

#prey #Arkane Studios #system shock #looking glass #videogames #review #pc games #science fiction #Deus Ex #Morgan Yu #LGBT

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takenews-blog1 · 7 years

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The Finest PC Video games of 2017

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/the-finest-pc-video-games-of-2017/

The Finest PC Video games of 2017

Sony has the PS4 Professional and Microsoft has the Xbox One X. The common-or-garden PC doesn’t have to brag about 4K decision or HDR when customisation and adaptability lie on the core of its enchantment, although it is equally doable to energy up your PC to a degree the place it outperforms the highest finish consoles. It’s this flexibility and selection that extends to its video games too. From alien-infested house stations to nostalgia-fuelled pixellated cities, listed below are our favorite PC video games of 2017.

Thimbleweed Park Helmed by ex-LucasArts recreation veterans, Thimbleweed Park is some extent and click on a dventure within the vein of classics corresponding to Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. There’s a wealth of engrossing puzzles, a ton of meta commentary, and darkish humour. If that wasn’t sufficient, there’s oddball bunch of characters from foul-mouthed clowns to deadpan authorities brokers, giving it a way of selection few can match. It’s not as cinematic as most trendy titles and it doesn’t sport an open-world both, however that doesn’t make it any much less enduring.

Value: Rs. 565

Thimbleweed Park Assessment

Murderer’s Creed Origins The open-world historic assassination simulator is again with a vengeance. Set in Historical Egypt, you’re Bayek — a warrior on a quest for revenge. Alongside the way in which you’ll battle the gods, taken within the websites of Egypt in all their glory, and partake in a plot that’s simply as intriguing and mysterious as crusing down the Nile below the moonlit sky.

Ubisoft’s choice to present Murderer’s Creed a yearlong break has paid off and it exhibits in Murderer’s Creed Origins. The fight specifically is a large step up borrowing from the likes of Darkish Souls making every encounter deliberate the place planning is of utmost significance. It helps that the sport world is likely one of the most expansive and dynamic we have seen this era, making Murderer’s Creed a must-buy.

Value: Rs. three,499

Murderer’s Creed Origins PC Efficiency Assessment

Pyre Not like Supergiant Video games’ previous efforts, Bastion and Transistor, Pyre is a gradual burn and a hodgepodge of genres — borrowing from role-playing video games, MOBAs like Dota 2, and sports activities like basketball in equal measure, with fight being a mixture of the latter two. Set in a excessive fantasy world, you have been exiled to purgatory and the one method out is to defeat different exiles in a recreation that is greatest described as Quidditch by the use of Dota 2. There’s a deep, partaking narrative round redemption that strings it altogether making for one of many extra distinctive titles of 2017.

Value: Rs. 529

Pyre Assessment

South Park: The Fractured However Complete South Park: The Fractured However Complete is what occurs when grownup animated TV sequence South Park decides to parody superhero films in a online game. The stellar fight, partaking narrative, and quirky humour make this 30 hour romp by means of the quiet mountain city of South Park, Colorado, price trying out. That is notably true if the TV present’s model of humour gels with you. It’s a marked enchancment over 2014’s South Park: The Stick of Fact in virtually each method.

Value: Rs. three,499

South Park: The Fractured However Complete Assessment

Prey Prey is an FPS (or immersive sim in case you’re a pedant) that takes place aboard the Talos I – a sprawling house station orbiting the moon – as you tackle the position of a scientist named Morgan Yu. You rapidly realise you’ve been reliving the identical day again and again, as the results of an experiment gone flawed. Worse nonetheless, aliens generally known as Typhon have overrun the station, and it’s as much as you to cease them, in addition to uncover your previous. The recent tackle a well-worn premise coupled with an assortment weapons and powers such because the exceptionally cool GLOO gun make Prey close to good, even when Bethesda was lazy sufficient to decide on such a boring title.

Value: Rs. 2,670

Prey PC Efficiency Assessment

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice just isn’t what you’d anticipate from Ninja Idea, the builders behind Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and DmC: Satan Might Cry. This motion recreation encompasses a darker tone than these titles, and restricted upgrades. You tackle the position of Senua, a Celtic warrior decided to deliver her betrothed again from the land of the useless. And alongside the way in which you will indulge in legendary landscapes, satisfying fight, and a gripping story that make it price taking part in by means of. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is bigger than the sum of its elements, making it nicely price its asking value. It won’t be the sequel to DmC: Satan Might Cry, nevertheless it’s a tense, dramatic expertise that’s well worth the value of entry.

Value: Rs. 2,670

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice Assessment

What are your favorite PC video games of 2017? Tell us by way of the feedback.

Need to know that are Devices 360’s prime 10 video games throughout platforms? We mentioned that on Transition, our weekly gaming and popular culture podcast. You’ll be able to hearken to it by way of Apple Podcasts or RSS or simply hearken to this episode by hitting the play button under.

#Assassins Creed Origins #Best GOG games 2017 #Best of 2017 #Best PC games 2017 #best pc games 2017 best of 2017 #Best PC games 2017 India #Best Steam games 2017 #Hellblade #Hellblade Senuas Sacrifice #Prey #Prey 2017 #Pyre #South Park Fractured But Whole #Thimbleweed Park

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include behind-the-scenes on Hidden Folks, an interview about the Coin-Operated Americans book, interviews from E3, and much more.

Well, am back from Los Angeles, attending E3, which was - well - not that different that anyone might expect. Lots of hype and excitement for large AAA games, most of which do have guns all over them (looking forward to more Tim Rogers dispatches like this from Kotaku!), a somewhat overcrowded E3 itself thanks to the consumer influx, and enough games for everyone to be excited about at least one.

For me, that Super Mario Odyssey trailer was enough for me to pre-order the game to play with my son - and finally work out how to get a Switch, which is coming in a couple of weeks. [Sidebar: it's actually a bit crazy how much Nintendo was being counted out by many - including perhaps me. Then, whomp, two games later (new Zelda, new Mario) they're the belle of the ball again.]

But that's why E3 works as high drama, soap opera, and metacommentary hub of the year for video games - we've all got a hot take, and hot takes are king. (Also why there's not a GREAT deal of E3 coverage in this week's VGDC, heh. Not that we're 'hot take allergic', but you can get that on YouTube & Twitch right now in real-time if you'd like.) Anyway, 'til next time...

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

Developer Q&A: Balancing storytelling and player choice in Prey (Alex Wiltshire / Gamasutra) "Talos-1 runs on eels. This large space station, setting to Arkane Studios’ recently released emergent sim Prey, deals with its residents’ effluent by sending it to large vats where it’s consumed by the things."

Nintendo of America Boss Fils-Aimé On Comebacks, the Future of the DS and Surviving the Wii U (John Davison / Simon Cox / Glixel) "It's almost exactly a year since we last spoke with Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé at E3 2016. On that occasion he was standing fifteen feet above that Disney-like Nintendo E3 booth, which was dedicated solely to the forthcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."

Why 'Super Mario Maker' Didn’t Kill the Mario Hacking Community (Jess Joho / Motherboard) "Yet, playing hyper-polished feats of design like Super Mario Maker leave some longtime fans of the franchise nostalgic for the days of janky programming, kill screens, and brutal challenge. That's why the heroes of the Super Mario World (SMW) ROM hacking community remain stubbornly alive, even long after the release of an official Nintendo Mario level creator."

Coin-Operated Boys: An Interview with Carly Kocurek (Dan Royles / Nursing Clio) "Carly Kocurek’s Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) examines the origins of modern video game culture in the “classic” arcade era, spanning the release of Pong in 1972 and the industry’s first major collapse in 1983. She traces the formation of the “technomasculine” during that period, as the arcade became increasingly defined as the province of young men."

How we make a game called Hidden Folks (Adriaan de Jongh / Imgur) "Hey there! I'm Adriaan, one of the two developers behind Hidden Folks, a game for smartphones and computers in which you search for hidden folks in hand-drawn, interactive, miniature landscapes by unfurling tent flaps, cutting through bushes, slamming doors, and poking crocodiles!"

Offworld Trading Company: An RTS Without Guns (Soren Johnson / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 Game Developers Conference talk, Mohawk Games' Soren Johnson dives into strategy game history to explain how he and his team developed Offworld Trading Company, a strategy game with little combat."

These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books (Sarah Laskow / Atlas Obscura) "Reading a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book can feel like being lost in a maze and running through twists and turns only to find dead ends, switchbacks, and disappointment. In the books—for those not familiar with them—you read until you come to a decision point, which prompts you to flip to another page, backward or forward."

A Falconer Enters the World of Video Games (Simon Parkin / New Yorker) "The story of how Nricco Iseppi, a master falconer, came to Riot Games has, among the company’s staff, acquired the malleability of myth. According to one scriptwriter, it began when Riot had an orange grove planted on its multimillion-dollar campus, in Los Angeles, a place already bristling with perks and mod cons."

Interview: “Rez” creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s unusual life evolves humanity (Staff / Denfaminicogamer) "One midnight, during an internal office chat at the Denfaminicogamer editorial department were the words “They’re crazy.” This was right at the end of 2016 after PS VR was released. As it were, the editorial departments odd excitement resulted in an impulsive interview about VR Contents “Rez Infinite” at the end of last year. This article is a written version of that insane seven hours interview. [SIMON'S NOTE: the translation isn't perfect, but this interview is AMAZING - you rarely see Japanese creators asked historical questions in this kind of depth.]"

The Garden Ages | Myst series (Sam Zucchi / Heterotopias) "How do the linking books in Myst read? These books are, in-universe, written out in the alphabet and language of a dead civilization. The text details the world that the writer wishes to visit: an island is described, its qualities delineated in some detail, and a linking pane appears on the first page, ready to literally transport the reader to the object described."

The RPG Scrollbars: In search of urban fantasy (Richard Cobbett / RockPaperShotgun) "There’s a real urban fantasy gap in the gaming industry, and it’s never made much sense. We see a thousand Tolkienesque fantasy games a minute (rough napkin calculation) and the future’s typically so bright, even the lens flares need shades. Yet when it comes to that line where the mundane meets the magical, mostly what we’ve had for the last few years is false hope."

E3 Was Different This Year, And It Wasn’t Just The Crowds (Nathan Grayson / Kotaku) "It’s the first day of E3. I’m walking the show floor—or more accurately, oozing across it, slug-like, followed by a trail of my own sweat. I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with swathes of people. Across the way, crowds of people whoop and holler, each of them hoping to win swag they can stuff in their floor-length swag bags. 15,000 new people are in attendance this year. [SIMON'S NOTE: one of the most considered of the 'what's up with E3 this year?' articles.]"

7 examples of accessibility design that developers should study (Richard Moss / Gamasutra) "Games are for everyone. And in recognizing this, ever-increasing numbers of developers are making a point to incorporate more accessibility features and options like remappable controls, configurable subtitles, resizable HUDs, and more."

The big interview: Xbox boss Phil Spencer (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "It was with all this in mind that I sat down with Xbox boss Phil Spencer at the Galen Center in Los Angeles to talk Xbox One X. At £449, I'm not sure who the console is for ("there is a customer out there who's looking for the premium experience"). I fear for Microsoft's first-party studio setup ("I do think we have an opportunity to get better in first-party")."

The State Of Virtual Reality (Brian Crecente / Polygon) "One could argue that the age of virtual reality kicked-off during last year's Game Developers Conference, an event that nearly coincided with the launch of two of the technology's most important head-mounted displays in recent history: the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive."

EA Boss Andrew Wilson's Vision of Gaming's Future Will Blow Your Mind (John Davison / Glixel) "The intervening years were tumultuous and challenging. Changing the company to deliver on that vision was a bumpy ride, but now 10 years later, Wilson is eager to convey what the new Electronic Arts stands for, and its vision for the future of games. [SIMON'S NOTE: Much snark online for some of the 'vision' in this interview, particularly the Emily Dickinson bit.]"

Ex-Puyo Puyo producer reveals some of the classic puzzler’s earliest prototypes (Kishi / Retronauts) "Last week, Compile founder Moo Niitani announced two previously unreleased works from the defunct developer’s glory days on MSX2 computers. Later this month, Dominon and Dominon X are both coming to Project EGG, D4 Enterprise’s prolific download service for old Japanese computer games."

Don't Change a Thing! The Challenges of Evolving Solitaire (Russell Carroll / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, MobilityWare's Russell Carroll shares the experience of updating Solitaire for a modern mobile audience, and what features they were able to update while grappling with intense resistance to any changes made to the core game. [SIMON'S NOTE: I've known Russell - who used to run indie site GameTunnel - for a LONG time, and this talk is as much about management philosophy as it is solitaire - it's super well-considered.]"

Young Men Are Playing Video Games Instead of Getting Jobs. That's OK. (For Now.) (Peter Suderman / Reason) "Video games, like work, are basically a series of quests comprised of mundane and repetitive tasks: Receive an assignment, travel to a location, overcome some obstacles, perform some sort of search, pick up an item, and then deliver it in exchange for a reward—and, usually, another quest, which starts the cycle all over again. You are not playing the game so much as following its orders. The game is your boss; to succeed, you have to do what it says."

7 roguelikes that every developer should study (Stefanie Fogel / Gamasutra) "With that in mind, we asked developers to name some of their favorite roguelikes - or games in other genres influenced by roguelike mechanics - and the lessons they can teach people today. And, many of these games are free and/or open source, which makes them easy to download, play, and study!"

-------------------

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

#IFTTT #Blogger

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comiconverse · 7 years

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Game Review: Prey

Prey is a sci-fi “immersive sim” by Arkane Studios – and a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (PlayStation 4 version reviewed). Alan Stock bashes everything in sight with his wrench in case it’s a Mimic, whilst bringing you this review for ComiConverse.

Game Review: Prey

Prey is a game built on the back of giants. First, a gaming history lesson for anyone interested in the origins of this title (skip down a few paragraphs if you want to get to the actual review). To understand Prey’s influences and the long legacy which it builds on, we need to look at the “immersive sim”. These are games which focus on immersion, usually from a first person perspective. In this genre, open-ended gameplay allows you to tackle problems in various creative ways, with multiple ways to build your character. You can often make choices during the game which change the outcome of the story.

Welcome to Talos 1. Credit: Arkane Studios

It all began with Looking Glass Studios in the 1990’s – who pioneered the genre with the influential and critically acclaimed sci-fi horror System Shock and the dark fantasy Thief series. When Looking Glass reached the end of its life in 2000, many of its staff had moved on to other studios like Irrational Games and Ion Storm but continued to produce brilliant immersive sims inspired by those classics. Irrational Games made System Shock 2 – considered to be one of the best sci-fi games of all time, and years later they produced the Bioshock series, the spiritual sequels to System Shock 2 (under their new name of 2K Games).

Meanwhile came the defining cyberpunk title Deux Ex from Ion Storm, many of its developers having come from Looking Glass as well. Years later, Deus Ex got a successful series reboot by Eidos. Those early Looking Glass games were so influential that their presence is still found in many other games to this day too – and they are what Arkane Studios took their inspiration from with their Dishonored games and now, Prey. Arkane even has staff from those old companies. To me, it’s fascinating that one development studio almost 30 years ago created a genre – but even after its death, its staff continued the Looking Glass legacy in multiple new companies by using that gaming DNA.

The views of space are awesome from the station. A great touch is that as Talos 1 orbits the Earth, the sunlight dynamically moves through the rooms – changing the mood of each location with windows over time. Credit: Arkane Studios

For Prey, a sci-fi adventure game set on a failing space station overrun by hostile aliens, Arkane has openly said this is another spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Although Bioshock was the first game to take that crown, Prey is definitely the most System Shock game that we’ve had to date – and it’s not shy in acknowledging it. The 3D video technology used in Prey’s universe is even called “Looking Glass”. So, Prey takes its ideas and concept from the whole immersive sim backlog, as well as a host of other sci-fi horror games and movies. It has all the generic tropes you would expect from titles like Alien or Dead Space. But strangely, although Prey takes its brand name from an average 2006 sci-fi game, there’s almost nothing in common between the two – aside from shooting and a lone protagonist trying to survive an alien threat.

On paper, Prey reads like a checklist of sci-fi horror game cliches. Ill-advised secret research on corporate space station Talos 1 has ended in disaster. The aliens – known as the Typhon – have escaped confinement and killed most of the crew. You play as co-station boss Morgan Yu – but of course, an experiment has caused you to lose your recent memories. You fight or avoid the Typhon invaders using guns or abilities, both human and alien. You can customise your character and weapons as you wish using skill trees and upgrades.

Credit: Arkane Studios

You scour the environment as you go, rummaging in cupboards and boxes for crucial supplies and ammo, which you then have to manage in your grid-based inventory. Dead crew are everywhere, you uncover their backstories and learn more about the station by reading their emails and picking up audio logs helpfully strewn around the environment. Predictably, many of these messages contain passwords and keycodes to locked doors and safes. You are free to wander Talos 1 as you see fit, and approach encounters and obstacles using the approach that you want. That might be using stealth, all-out combat, hacking, secret shortcuts, using the environment to your advantage or maybe a special ability to problem-solve in a creative way. The few survivors on board give you orders and requests by radio and you don’t really know which of them to trust. Pretty original, right?

Loot everything. Thankfully, some smart refinements of looting mechanics in Prey make it quick and easy to clear out areas, removing a lot of the looting tedium found in older sims like Bioshock. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Fortunately Prey does have some of its own ideas. The most memorable of these is probably the Mimic, a spider-like Typhon which can take the form of a normal inanimate object. It will hide itself as something innocent looking, like a box or a cup – and when you least expect it’ll suddenly reveal itself and jump at your face. It’s an idea that’s been used before, RPG treasure chest monsters and popular Garry’s Mod creation “Prop Hunt” spring to mind – but Mimics aren’t just passive traps. If you shoot a Mimic but don’t kill it, it will scurry away and try to hide and transform again. If you’re quick, you can even see them morphing into objects. It’s a great idea that keeps you on edge when exploring and makes for some great and unscripted jump scares. When your character is weak in the early stages of the game Mimics induce real paranoia. Was that box there when you were last in this room? You’ll start bashing everything with your wrench and shooting suspicious chairs – just to be sure….

Ensnaring a Mimic with the Gloo Gun. Credit: Arkane Studios

Prey’s roster of weapons and abilities have their share of originality too. The Gloo Gun, which you find early on, allows you to slow and trap enemies with blobs of Gloo, allowing you to smash them at your leisure. Gloo can also be used to put out fires and even make makeshift pathways on walls, allowing you to climb to higher levels. As you progress through Talos 1, you gain access to Typhon abilities for yourself, with uses for both combat and puzzle solving. These include the Mimic’s ability to morph into an object, clumsily rolling past enemies disguised as a cleaning sign, for example – or you could use it to fit through small gaps. Then there’s the Lift Field, an ethereal column which pushes yourself or enemies into the air – which can be used with traps or maybe as a way to get to higher floors. Or the rather evil Phantom Genesis ability which summons an alien ally – by sacrificing a nearby human corpse.

Your brother Alex – is he a friend or a foe? Credit: Arkane Studios.

The ability skill tree is explained in the game’s lore, through technology called Neuromods. Just shove a massive needle into your eye (ouch) and they will imbue you with new skills. Neuromods are nicely tied into the storyline in a similar way to Bioshock’s ADAM. Acquire too many Typhon abilities and the station’s turrets will consider you alien – shooting at you on sight. It’s possible to do a “purity” run relying on human abilities alone, but the alien powers are too fun to pass up on. You quickly realise that Neuromods are a Very Good Thing and you want to find, or create as many as possible.

Just part of the large skill tree – you have to be selective about the path you want to take as Neuromods are in short supply. Credit: Arkane Studios

Which leads us to fabrication, another of Prey’s good ideas. Recycling machines around Talos 1 allow you to turn any junk or item that you pick up into their base components. This wonderful machine takes your unwanted nik naks and satisfyingly plops out cubes and spheres of matter in return, with compelling clinky-clunky sounds as they fall into the Recycler’s metal dispenser. You can then use this base matter to construct items at similar Fabricator machines. Once you find a Fabricator blueprint for an item, you can make that item as many times as you want at a Fabricator (if you have enough matter).

In gameplay terms, it’s a great solution to the genre’s problem of inventory junk and clutter. It allows you to reforge items you don’t need into something more useful, and as resources are usually low, difficult choices must be made. What’s more important to you right now – a medkit or shotgun ammo, or maybe risk it and just make a new Neuromod instead? Recycling also encourages you to scour the environment for items – for once you’re happy to pick up useless junk and banana peels, because you know you can turn it into sweet, sweet matter. There’s even an awesome weapon- the Recycler grenade – which blasts enemies, objects and you, if you’re not careful, into those wonderful little cubes and spheres.

At the start of the game you can choose the sex of your hero – Morgan Yu. It only affects the voice acting but it’s a nice touch to have. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Prey’s combat is a mixed bag. Although the weaponry feels meaty enough, many of the enemies aren’t particularly satisfying to fight. Most Typhon are made up of the wispy black alien smoke you see on the game’s cover and have the ability to teleport around, moving and attacking very quickly once alerted. This makes most combat frantic and enemies cause a lot of damage too. There’s little time for tactics and plans go out the window once shots are fired due to the combat’s pace and your low survivability – although fortunately the item/weapon wheel does pause time – allowing you to switch to an appropriate tool for the job.

The horrors of the Neuromod. Thankfully you only have to watch the eye-stabbing animation the first time you use it, with future uses being instantaneous. I hate to picture the reality though, of my Morgan stabbing himself in the eye about 50 times with Neuromods during my playthrough. Small mercies. Credit: Arkane Studios.

There are various types of enemy in Prey that do require different tactics and are fun to fight. But combat against the Phantoms and Mimics which you’ll encounter most the often just devolves into fast and chaotic battles. This goes against the more deliberate approach that the rest of the game tries to achieve – and their rapid movement makes the use of terrain and cover pretty meaningless. Still, getting the drop on unaware enemies is fun, and the game makes good use of combos similar to Dishonored, where one item or weapon followed up by another can bring creative destructive results. It’s just a shame that most of the amorphous black blobs that are the Typhon lack any kind of character. Aside from the Mimics they are mostly unmemorable – there’s nothing like the iconic Big Daddies of Bioshock or the creepy mutants of System Shock here.

Scanning the Typhon lets you unlock lore, tactical information and new abilities – providing a good incentive to stay stealthy or at least survive whilst your scan completes. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Although initially Prey comes across as a sci-fi horror title, the fear factor soon fades once you have discovered each of the different enemy types. There aren’t any that manage to disturb or unsettle once the initial encounters have been had. Although Prey does have a few creepy moments and the Mimics provide good jump scares, this isn’t a scary game overall. But the game doesn’t need scares to succeed – the atmosphere on Talos 1 is still excellent, just in more of a mysterious sci-fi vibe than a horror one. To be honest, I found it refreshing for once to enjoy wandering an abandoned space station populated by monsters without being terrified half the time.

Ah, the joys of Mimicking a coffee cup. Some objects like big boxes are awful to move around as – too many flat sides. Cups though, they can roll, baby! Credit: Arkane Studios.

It’s in Talos 1 that Prey’s biggest strength lies. The huge station is a thing of glory, with wonderful architectural design – a far cry from the generic sci-fi interiors we’ve come to expect from these games. Staff common areas look more like a luxurious hotel than a space station, but more familiar industrial sections like the Reactor and Hardware still have their own distinct look and feel. But cosmetics aside, it’s navigating and exploring Talos 1 that provides the real draw here. The station is massive and the open structure of the game allows you to explore much of it at your own leisure – with the main story and side quests providing direction when you need it. Although many sections are locked off initially, as you progress you will frequently be revisiting areas and unlocking new ones. Once you get the ability to go outside the station into space and explore the exterior in zero-g – the scale is awesome. Brilliantly you can see the various sections of the station you’ve been to from the outside and jump into airlocks you’ve unlocked from the inside, as a form of quickly getting around. Talos 1 feels more real and cohesive than any sci-fi setting in a game yet.

It’s awesome to fly around in Zero-G outside the station and it’s easy to control. Other sections have Zero-G too but it’s a shame there aren’t more gameplay and puzzle implications. Credit: Arkane Studios.

The environment design rewards thorough exploration with countless shortcuts and secrets to discover. Many of these have multiple avenues of access by using your items and abilities cleverly. Unfortunately, new enemies regularly appear when revisiting areas, and long load times between station segments (at least on console) makes getting around a bit of a drag towards the end of the game – when the story and side quests have you constantly running from one end of the station to the other. The area and plot pacing with the large amount of backtracking could have used a little work.

Uncovering the stories of the inhabitants of Talos 1 through the many side objectives and the emails and transcribes scattered through the station is a compelling reason to explore. The crew’s backstories, although short, paint snapshots of their life aboard. There’s lots of little sub-plots to discover – often told as much through the environment and nice details as the messages they leave behind. A nice feature is that you can hunt for staff via security terminals using their tracking bracelets to discover bodies and survivors, allowing you to find eventually find anyone you may have missed.

Another highly secure space station where everyone loves to send each other door codes via open emails. Credit: Arkane Studios.

The main storyline, although familiar to anyone who’s played the System Shock or Bioshock games, is still intriguing enough to enjoy – with plenty of mysteries and mistrust making you eager to uncover the truth. Prey begins with a great introduction – although anyone who’s played the demo will have already seen it. In true immersive sim fashion – there are a number of game endings based on the choices you make throughout, with a great finale not to miss after the credits have rolled. Fortunately, the story choices that you make don’t drastically affect the gameplay experience, so you won’t be missing out on any crucial content whatever you choose to do.

The hacking mini game is actually quite tough sometimes, and is decent as far as these go if you can accept that guiding a blob through a maze is a fair approximation of a hacker’s skills. Credit: Arkane Studios.

Prey won’t be for everyone – immersive sims just aren’t some people’s cup of tea. But for anyone who likes this kind of game, who likes adventure, who likes sci-fi, it’s a real winner. Prey is very polished and although yes, it borrows many concepts and tropes that we’ve seen before, it also refines and improves upon them, whilst adding its own innovations. There’s a significant amount of depth here and the difficulty’s a welcome challenge too – forcing you to think tactically and scavenge for resources (I recommend playing on Hard or higher). The game’s not perfect – the combat is a bit messy, the later stages of the game could have used more depth and less backtracking, and there are some technical issues. But, as an immersive sci-fi experience and a worthy homage to System Shock 2 – it’s fantastic. We’ve mostly seen it all before, but Arkane has just executed it so well. Talos 1 is an amazing setting that you’ll want to explore every inch of, to discover its secrets and the fates of the inhabitants. Long live the immersive sim.

The post Game Review: Prey appeared first on ComiConverse.

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mittensmcedgelord · 7 years

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The Human Condition

A continuation of Cobalt.

In which a Typhon discovers that most of the little things that make a human feel human are actually pretty unpleasant and still doesn't get around to fixing the alarm clock.

Warning: There are so many spoilers here. So many.

Previous: https://mittensmcedgelord.tumblr.com/post/161677991220/cobalt

I never questioned who I was until someone told me who I wasn't.

I think I could have been Morgan. I think I could have worn his skin and used his voice and never realized I was doing either.

Now I doubt. Now I question. Am I him? Am I just a brainwashed Typhon? Maybe I’m something in between.

I'm hugging the broken alarm clock, knees to my chest and thoughts spilling out across the floor. Memories are laid out like tools. Though I don't know what I'm trying to fix. I don't notice Igwe. I don't know he's here until I hear Leitner and Talos one burns around me. I hold the clock tighter. He doesn’t say anything, just sits next to me. His thoughts are unraveling lines of sheet music, loneliness in A Minor. He misses her. He hates his hands, how clumsily they fumble at the Trois Gymnopedies when he thinks of her. He hates that pain makes him a worse musician instead of a better one. My mind fills the silence with broken piano notes and the broken sound of Mikhaila’s voice. I hear the plastic case of the clock fracture in my grip.

“You should talk to Katwe. It might help.” His hand rests on my shoulder in a gesture that’s supposed to be sympathetic. His fingers twitch. No one touches me. It’s an unspoken rule. Contamination. Typhon materials. I forget the official statement, but you don’t touch the test subjects without your suit providing a protective barrier. Most people just stick with don’t touch. His thoughts betray nothing, no reason why he’s ignoring the rules today. All I hear is music. “She’s a good doctor. I think Mr. Yu even gave her all of your files.” "My files.” I laugh. He doesn’t think it’s funny. “Which ‘my’, Dr. Igwe?”

“Which ones do you think?”

I groan. For a second, I wonder what he’d do if I let myself come apart and revert back to ‘Typhon’. The only problem there is that I know my room is bugged and I also don’t know what I am when I’m not Morgan. Phantom? Mimic? Something else? I’m ruling out phantom because despite the human shape, I don’t have the secondary consciousness or memory echoes I’d have as a phantom. Assuming I’m not Phantom Morgan. But that seems like the first thing they’d have tried, not the last. Sho called me ‘Mim’. Mimic Morgan. I’m halfway through my mental archive of Typhon mimetic abilities when I realize he’s waiting for a reply. I set the alarm clock down and pretend I’m not bothered by the fact that it’s in pieces.

“Morgan Yu’s.” He frowns and I amend my answer. “Or the files on Project Cobalt?”

You’d think the fact that Alex never actually told me about it would give me the basic idea that he didn’t want me to know. What was that line about being resistant to good advice? I think it applies to basic common sense too. I realize I made a mistake when Igwe gets two shades too pale.

“The simulation.” Lying comes too easily. Guess I’m getting used to being human after all. “There were emails on the terminals in the simulation. One of the ones that Morgan was sending around was about a human Typhon hybrid.”

“That is true.” He nods and offers me an awkward pat on the shoulder. I’m breathing again. My focus is back. I relax a little more and let the natural mimetics take over. I copy his posture. I feel my face take on his expression. The good doctor seems reassured. “That, however, is not something I would discuss with Dr. Adesina. Mr. Yu wants to see how she evaluates you as yourself, as Morgan.”

“Another test?”

“Concern. You appear to have the full range of human emotions, though without the years of experience understanding them.”

“It was different in the simulation.”

“Very. Your brother and I disagreed on that matter, actually. He thought a disaster was the best way to test your empathy. I thought a more normal day would be better, evaluate interpersonal interaction and response to confrontation.”

“How does interpersonal interaction work when you’re not a person?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“It doesn’t.” I want him to hear the way she called me ‘Doctor Yu’. I want him to see her eyes. My thoughts crash around me, loud as thunder, and he can’t hear them. “What do you do when you know someone used to be there, but they’re gone? Not physically, but some other way. Or you know that everyone else knows you aren’t who they think?”

He laughs. It doesn’t sound happy. Age tears his face down and builds it back up as something softer, all the edges worn down and smoothed away. He changes in front of my eyes with a rapidity that I’m a little envious of.

“That, Morgan, is not the result of not being a person. If anything it’s one of the most human things you can experience. Grief. Self-doubt. I’ve felt both very acutely.”

“I don’t think I like it.”

“Then you have come to heart of the ‘Human Condition’ a lot faster than we thought you would.”

“It was hard for me not to.” My voice cracks. It isn’t inhuman. It’s still mine. But it’s sharp. “You put me in a sim. You had me save people. You made me care about them, made me think I was Morgan, and you didn’t think maybe after you unplugged me it would all still be there?”

Silence. If he has an answer, he doesn’t share. I think I know, from a purely scientific perspective what the answer is. Fiction. Catharsis. The reason humans don’t think they’re the player in a video game. What did Alex say when I first woke up? He was standing there with the operators, evaluating what I’d done.

“It probably thinks it was dreaming,” I say. It’s Alex Yu’s voice that comes out of my mouth instead of Morgan’s. “That nothing mattered.”

Still nothing.

“Its life depends on it thinking like us. Ours too. It all comes down to the choices it made.”

“Morgan, please.” His expression is still sympathetic, but this time there’s something else. Something familiar. Fear. He looks around the room before his eyes settle on the alarm clock. “What happened to your clock?”

Change of subject. Something less personal. Something less likely to cause a volatile reaction. It’s standard practice in diffusing a situation. I pick up one of the broken pieces and turn it over a few times, catching my reflection in the display. It isn’t quite Morgan but it isn’t really anything else. I shut my eyes and squeeze the broken plastic, willing myself to register the change of pressure as pain. When it doesn’t work, I think about Mikhaila.

“I threw it. Psychically. I was mad about the date.”

“The date?”

“March 15th. 2032. It’s stuck.”

“I’m sure Mr. Yu can arrange for a new one. One that will tell the correct date and time.”

“Yeah.” My body’s solid again. Whatever was disintegrating at the core is back to normal, or at least functional. “You were one of the ones who made the final call. That scored my empathy quotient. Right?”

“I’m not sure what that has to do with your clock, but yes.”

“What tipped it in my favor?”

“The files you gave Officer Ilyushin. You did it without hesitation, even though you knew it would change the way she looked at you. The connectomes were another thing. The medicine. How you handled Volunteer 37 and spared Ingram. It was a long list. Even though you used Typhon neuromods somewhat indiscriminately, your actions overall pushed things heavily in your favor. Even the Typhon powers were used in a human way, to break telepathic control on crew members.” He clears his throat and stands up. He’s professional now. I wonder how many times he’s run through the list since the test ended. “In the end, I think it’s part of human nature to want to be a hero, no matter how great the risk. Destroying that reputation for the sake of truth is another matter entirely. It is something most humans are not willing to do.”

#prey #prey2017 #morgan yu #spoilers #all the spoilers #this is pretty much just all dialogue #i don't know what happened #dishonor on my cow #dishonor on my family #dishonor on my mimic #I'm still pretty sure this counts as an AU #why do i try to write tags at 1 am

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mittensmcedgelord · 7 years

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Cobalt

Another day. The same day. It's hard to tell.

A follow up to "Good Morning, Again". Awareness is setting in and questions are coming to the surface. Who am I? How many of me have there been? And how the hell do you even eat udon?

( Alternate Title: The Noodle Incident )

Previous: https://mittensmcedgelord.tumblr.com/post/161414852605/good-morning-again

“Good morning, Morgan. Today is Monday, March 15th.” The alarm clock starts its routine, but doesn’t finish before it hits the kitchen counter with enough force to break the case. I didn’t lay a finger on it. The implications should worry me more than they do.

The illusion crackles as I sit up. The TranScribe tells me it’s closer to midnight than 7 AM. Something somewhere glitches. My room, empty of everything but a few pieces meant to make the simulation feel real, comes into view. I wonder if I’ve seen it like this before. I pick up the broken alarm clock and turn it over in my hands. It’s an easy fix. Ten minutes, maybe. I can figure out why it went off at midnight while I’m putting it back together, too.

Except that isn’t what I do. I put the clock on the counter, get dressed, and head to the cafeteria. I realize halfway down the grav shaft that I haven’t bothered to shave or brush my hair and laugh. I’ve never needed to shave. I never will. I catch my reflection in the glass, red eyes and stubble and hair in all directions. This is either rock bottom or the apex of my efforts. Either way, it’s exactly right for getting instant udon at midnight.

I’ve never actually had instant noodles. I’ve eaten it before in the simulation. It’s one of my—well, Morgan’s—favorite guilty pleasures. So, it seemed like an important thing to try. Lucky me, the cafeteria is nearly empty at this hour. One or two people who look less awake than I do are sitting at a table near the coffee pot, completely absorbed in paperwork. The cook doesn’t even seem surprised that I’m asking for instant udon, which either says a lot about Morgan or about the crew in general. What greets me is a nest of long, tendril-like noodles writhing in unnaturally colored broth, which I now have to eat with a pair of tapered wooden utensils that seem wildly unsuited to the task at hand. Nonetheless, I am not daunted. I am determined to consume this meal. This is, as my memories serve, one of the most quintessential Morgan Yu meals that I can find. I even have a can of Kafe Karsk to go with it, just to ensure authenticity.

A few minutes pass as I stare down the plastic bowl, willing it to divulge its secrets. None are forthcoming. Before I completely give up and take the armload of rations to my room, I see Sho sit down with a tray of unagi rolls. I grab my food and sit down across from her before she realizes I’ve even moved.

“What the fuck?” She drops the chopsticks onto the table and starts to stand. Her hand moves to her hip for a minute before she sits back down. She looks like she wants to punch me. Wouldn’t be the first time if the reports are any indication. “You shouldn’t do that. There’s a shoot on sight order for anything Typhon-like.”

“I didn’t mean to. It just sort of happens.”

“Phantom shifting just happens. Sure. You are really creepy. You know that, right?” She picks up a roll with the chopsticks and pops it in her mouth. I move closer to inspect only for her to shift a seat over. “Seriously, between that weird stretching thing you did between chairs and this, I’m pretty sure you’re not convincing anyone that you’re actually human.”

“I was trying to see how you used the chopsticks to eat. I would have installed a mod for it if I could have.” I poke at a piece of dehydrated eel floating in the broth. “Trust me, I searched the entire company directory of recorded skills. There’s nothing there.”

“Of course there’s not a neuromod for eating noodles, Mim. I don’t think anyone’s ever needed it. And before you ask I am not going to help you make one. Just do what everyone else does. Swear at the cheap useless chopsticks and slurp it out of the bowl.”

“Mim?”

“Yeah. I mean, we need something to call you. So, Mimic Morgan. Mim for short. It’s even on your official classified files.”

“Why not just ‘Morgan’?”

“Because you’re not Morgan, not to the people who know better. I know Alex programmed you to think you are, but you aren’t.” She snaps the chopsticks together and points them at me. “And before you ask, that’s a good thing. I can guess what you’ve been told, but contrary to what Alex and Igwe say, the station wasn’t exactly falling over itself worshipping Morgan’s brilliance and charm.”

She leans closer and almost knocks over my soup. I sit rigidly in place, trying to pretend I’m not thinking about shifting into a more innocuous object. She’s looking for something, somewhere that I’ve cracked open and the darkness is seeping through. I’m not sure if she sees it or not, but she leans back. “Do you actually think of yourself as him?”

“Yes.” My answer is too immediate, too emphatic. She snorts. “Why wouldn’t I? I know I’m not the same person, but how does that make me any less Morgan than he was after so many neuromod removals?”

“Because I’ve seen the recordings of your simulation. The real Morgan wouldn’t have done half the stuff you did.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he didn’t.” She slams her hands on the table and my noodles spill. I start sopping up the broth with the bundle of napkins the cook gave me. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Because he didn’t do one single thing you did, especially not destroy the station to buy Earth some time. If he did, maybe we wouldn’t be here still studying Typhons on Humanity’s Last Resort.”

“What did happen?” I reach into the bowl with my fingers this time, pull out a piece of dehydrated eel, and eat it. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the texture food is supposed to have. It’s possible that I’m wrong, but the way Sho is laughing says I’m probably not. I’m starting to think that instant noodles, as a whole, might actually be an elaborate joke that I’m not in on yet. “You said Morgan didn’t do the same things I did in the sim. No one’s felt the need to fill me in on what actually happened yet.”

“This isn't a great time for this.” ”Why?” My voice crackles. I see Sho’s face contort at the sound. I take a breath, put my hands on the table in front of me, and try to relax my posture. I try to look as non-threatening as possible. She heard a Typhon; I don’t want her to see one. “Sorry. It’s just that it would mean a lot to me to know. We're the only people in the cafeteria at this hour, so you don’t have to worry about anyone overhearing. And I don’t think you’d accept an invite to my dorm to tell me about it in private.”

“Okay. Fine.” She sits back and crosses her arms. Her mouth is pulled into a tight line. Pain is written across her face. I get an image of Abigail in the freezer. Of the escaped volunteer and his brain decorating the walls of the malfunctioning escape pod. She doesn’t make eye contact. “So, what happened on Talos 1. It was close to the simulation you were in. I nearly died, but you knew that. I got through a hatch before I actually did die. Barely. I ran into a weaver and some cystoids on the way in. My suit was so damaged it read my vitals as deceased. But I had to get back. I had to make sure the bastard that killed her paid. There was never a volunteer named Ingram to be saved. The fabricator in deep storage never got up and running to make any turrets. We had to make do. Only six of us survived. You've met five of them, either in proxy or in person.”

“Alex, Mikhaila, Igwe, Elazar, and you. Who was number six?”

“Morgan.” She waits, watching my expression. The name was acid coming out of her mouth. There was no love lost there, in spite of the familiarity she’d shown me so far. “He survived. For a while. Turns out after all those tests he was almost as much Typhon as human. When he triggered the null wave generator it wiped out all the Typhon on the ship instantly, big one included, but with him it worked slower. It wasn't pretty, let's leave it at that. I didn't like Morgan, but he deserved better. Sure as hell didn’t deserve constant reincarnation as different Typhon.”

“Where do I come in?”

“After the world went to hell.” She pushes the last couple rolls aside. Any hunger I felt is gone too, replaced by something cold and heavy. Sho opens a can of Duck beer as she continues. It seems to do something for the hesitance she had earlier. “We didn't know a shuttle with a mimic on it already landed earthside. We tried to keep ourselves quarantined until we realized it wouldn't do any good. We fought. We ran. We mobilized. And once we were out here playing sentinel by the original breach, Alex started forming a plan. He used Morgan's memories of the outbreak as a base. Said that disaster response was the best way to judge actions. Project Cobalt started. ‘A human Typhon hybrid to bridge our species.’ It was Morgan’s idea, even back before the containment breech, but we’d never been desperate enough to try it before now.”

“How many were there before me?”

“Too many. We were going to scrap it soon. The mirror neurons weren't activating, not without a lot of intervention. And then you came along. You used all the Typhon mods you could find. You helped everyone you met. You tried to save us all. In a way, you were too human to be a real human. Alex said one of the variables was changed, but they changed every test. So, who knows. Maybe we just got lucky.”

“What was changed for my test?”

“Beats me.” She sighs and throws her hands out in front of her. The universal sign of ‘I’m done with this conversation’. The night shift is getting off pretty soon and the morning shift is getting ready to go on. Sho gives her now warm unagi rolls an annoyed look and pushes them to me. “There were a lot of variables. All classified. You’d have better luck asking Dr. Igwe.”

“Thank you.”

“Nothing a quick trip through the station’s history wouldn’t tell you.” She knows that isn’t the truth, but she shrugs it off like nothing anyway. I start to say something and swallow my words. There’s a shield around Sho’s mind like the kind a psychoscope generates, only this one’s not solid. It’s a mile of empty, unforgiving, airless space. She didn’t die outside the station like she did in the sim, but something did. Someone did. The woman talking to me is as much Danielle Sho as I am Morgan Yu. Finally, she breaks eye contact and grabs the half full beer can. “Last word of advice? Try to keep the Typhon powers low key. I’m not sure how many people actually believe the bullshit official story behind Morgan’s miraculous reappearance.”

Somewhere a chime sounds and the graveyard shift starts. She heads off to her station, beer still in hand, and doesn’t look back. That leaves me with her advice, her leftovers, and my now cold udon. Not to mention the host of new questions.

Alex never told me how Morgan died. Or when. I never really thought about how everyone accepted that I was here. The ones who don’t know about Project Cobalt just think I’m the second Yu sibling, a little worse for wear but not dead or inhuman. Sho knew. The survivors of Talos 1 know. I guess the better question is how no one else does.

The TranScribe beeps at me and shakes me out of my daze. The clock rolled back. The scheduled messages for 7 AM have are queued. The date is March 15th, 2032.

I hit the calendar button for the first time since I got it and tell it to synch with the station’s clock. I don’t know what date it finally registers. It’s forgotten in one of the pockets on my uniform by the time the update is done.

The udon is cold. It tastes like how eating instant noodles and a can of coffee alone at 1 AM feels. It isn’t good, but it’s familiar.

#prey #prey 2017 #fanfic #spoilers #dear god the spoilers #mimics and eels and coffee oh my #does this count as an au?#thank long suffering tauren for the alt title

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mittensmcedgelord · 7 years

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Phantoms

LST didn't help me with a title this time.

Yet more of the mimic story wherein Morgan discovers a recording of a Fatal Fortress game, learns something new about his former self, and makes plans to avoid a doctor's visit. ( And where I attempt to lighten the mood after the last update. )

Previous: https://mittensmcedgelord.tumblr.com/post/161916575340/the-human-condition

I feel like I know them. If I shut my eyes, I can hear their thoughts pulse through the coral, the subtle vibrations of memory ghosts. I’ve spent the whole day listening to a backlog of employee recordings from Talos 1 that were ejected when the apex Typhon attacked. Alex held onto them in the hope that maybe, eventually, we’d find their surviving family. I’m sure it wasn’t purely altruistic. There are plenty of logs that are scientific, bits and pieces of Bellamy’s work or employees showing off their new neuromod skills. There are more that aren’t. I told him I wanted to study people, try to understand how they work. It took a lot of convincing and some shameless playing of the ‘little brother’ card, but I got access to the files.

The memories I have don’t go back far enough to remember the boltcaster fights or the Fatal Fortress games. Not that I think either Yu was ever invited to join in. It sounds like it was a different world back then. The crew is still relatively optimistic. There are still dart gun fights. There’s a different color to it now, though. There’s no Yellow Tulip, for one. Which means that there’s a distinct lack of drunken karaoke and that I will never get to hear Sho sing off key love songs outside of TranScribe recordings. And after the invasion I don’t think anyone is in the mood for drunken karaoke anyway. Now that they’ve encountered Typhon, humans are becoming a little more like them in order to continue. The priority is survival, at all costs, and everything else is frills.

So, it’s a pleasant surprise when I come across a second recording of Sho singing, this time completely sober. It’s the song she performed during the big show to promote musical neuromods. There’s a few other voices laughing and applauding. Someone wants to know where she even got a banana to use as a microphone. Someone else is teasing her for taking the ‘role play’ aspect of the game too seriously.

“I didn’t realize you dual classed as a bard,” the DM quips. I recognize the voice as Abigail Foy’s from the simulation. “Alright, you get 10XP for that performance. And…”

I hear shuffling and more laughter. Sho groans. There’s clapping all around the table again before the DM clears her throat and continues triumphantly.

“You also earn ten gold from the audience.”

“Hey,” a male voice interrupts. He’s doing his best to sound offended, but it’s obvious he’s not. Something slides across the table. “When I performed I only got silver coins. And I’m an actual bard.”

“Yes, but she actually sang,” Foy says matter-of-factly and taps something on the tabletop.

“So did I.”

“Poorly. Besides, we all know it’s because Abby thinks our new player is cute.” Someone laughs. High pitched. Female. A hint of an accent I don’t quite recognize.

“I’m cute,” he protests. I have to put a hand over my mouth so I don’t laugh louder than the recording. The other players are enjoying it too. He must have done something because a sharp peal of laughter comes through the speaker.

“Really, Chang? You’re trying to get Foy to say you’re cute?”

“And you’re only filling in for Elias for tonight.” The second male voice scoffs. “What do you really XP and gold for?”

“It’s the principle.”

“Oh my god,” Sho laughs. “Can someone please just tell Chang he’s cute so we can get on with it? Zack? Emma?”

“Don’t look at me,” the second male voice says. “Besides, I thought he were busy swooning over Dr. Yu? Or is it just a coincidence that your password is ‘OMGhotboss’?”

“How did you even know that?”

“It’s on a post-it note on your desk. It’s more of a surprise that anyone on the station doesn’t know it.”

I wonder if Morgan ever noticed it. I remember in the sim I saw it almost immediately. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. Morgan must have walked past his work station every day and caught a glimpse of it. The ‘devastatingly handsome’ line on his psychoscope profile makes a lot more sense now. Jason Chang was dead by the time the simulation started, though. There weren’t a lot of recordings, either. He had unrestricted access to the office during the testing, which seems like a lot of power for a secretary. Given the office I remember was mostly filled with useless junk, a few books, and a stash of moonshine there probably wasn’t too much to worry about. Another player—Emma, I’m assuming—interrupts my train of thought.

“Does this have to do with that time at the Yellow Tulip?”

“You mean the New Year’s party?” Sho sounds smug as she asks. She knows the answer, but clearly wants to hear it from Chang.

And this is when the audio runs out. I might have yelled ‘damn it’ when the playback stopped, but now at least I know which files to search through for the other game logs. I am, however, left with a significant amount of unanswered questions. Particularly about the New Year’s party in question.

“How’s it going, Morgan?” Alex’s voice cuts in over the TranScribe. Responding to higher levels of brain activity, maybe. I’m sure whoever monitors my data feed has been getting some interesting response levels.

“Great.” I’m a little too enthusiastic in responding. I also just found the next log for this session courtesy of Emma Beatty’s ‘IMPORTANT MEETING NOTES’ file.

“That’s great.” He sounds genuinely happy about that. Considering what a mess my first few days interacting with the crew have been like, I can’t blame him. I hear footsteps on the other end of the line briefly before Alex comes back in. “I’m glad the files are useful. Learning anything interesting?”

“A little. Wish there was more data on some of the employees. Emma. Zachary. Jason. The latter particularly.”

“Jason Chang?” He snorts. It’s almost a laugh. “You were drinking buddies. Or something like that. He’s probably why your entire stash of moonshine was missing when you finally made it to your office.”

I make an executive decision not to mention the “hot boss” thing. Or the party. Alex sounds like he’s impatient to get to the topic he actually called about. I load up the next recording and let it buffer while I wait. He gives me a few seconds to type before continuing ahead.

“You think you’ll be ready to go face the world again soon?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“Doctor Igwe told me you were having some trouble with your mimetics the other day.”

“I wasn’t feeling great. Some people cry, I turn into wispy black sentient smoke. Kind of a weird trade off.”

“Morgan, try to be serious.” When he says that, I can actually hear him taking his glasses off and pinching his nose. The first Morgan must have been a real joy to work with if that’s such an innate reaction in him. “If you think that’s going to happen again, I need you to be honest with me. We’ve never monitored extreme emotions in Typhon before. It could be a natural reaction to stressful stimuli.”

“It might. I’m still getting the hang of things.” I’m aware of what a vast understatement this is, but I want Alex to have some faith in me. His optimism about the project is contagious. I’d rather not lose that. I take a breath, hold it for a second, and let it out. My thoughts clear. “If it happens again and I start to change, what do I do? Head back up here?”

“Or the Typhon Research Lab if you can’t get to the grav shaft. Dr. Park knows about your situation. She’ll help.” He pauses. Something clinks against glass. “She actually wanted to schedule an appointment with you for a physical exam, but it didn’t seem like a good idea right now.”

“What kind of physical?”

“DNA stability, mostly. See if the dosage of psi hypos you’re getting is right or if you need any more cell lines to balance things out.” Another pause. I wish I could hear thoughts over TranScribe, but no such luck. Alex makes a small humming noise. “This isn’t about what happened the other day, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s all routine. Well, it’s going to be a routine. We’ve all got a lot of adjusting to do, but I think once we start getting things back to something like normal it’ll start going a lot smoother.”

“Yeah.” Now I’m a little glad you can’t project thoughts through a TranScribe. I’m pretty sure fear of doctor’s visits isn’t something I’m supposed to have. The name Bellamy comes to mind, a swirl of respect and regret, and I remember that I saw his corpse in the sim. I tune out just long enough to get my mind in order and come back to myself to catch the end of Alex’s explanation of the examination procedure.

“I’ll make arrangements with Dr. Park when you’re feeling up for it,” he finishes. I get the feeling that’s going to be never. The way my body works is as alien to me as it is to anyone else on the station and I’m not sure I want to know the result of a physical, let alone take one. I start to tell Alex that, but think better of it. Silence hangs on the other end of the line producing the kind of gravity specific to situations you don’t want to be in. Glass clicks against one of those gaudy, TranStar coasters. Alex sighs. “Morgan, listen. I know it’s been rough, but you’re doing great. I want you to know that.”

#prey #prey 2017 #post game events #probably spoilers if you read the other installments #spoilers #mimics #bananas and bards and booze oh my #which was the working alternate title #this is why LST needs to help me name things #Morgan Yu #Mim #Alex Yu

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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- Simon, curator.]

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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