#more cinematic cutscenes PLEASE

[venbetta]

Okay, I wanted to talk about this animation by @/Johantly on Twitter

It's 1:31 animation of Freddy in the Endo Daycare having his existential crisis, it slaps so hard... and I just need to ramble about it. (I was trying to add pictures, but it's not loading properly, so... wahh)

The first few seconds have me interested. It's something about the way Freddy moves, feels natural/humanoid. The cut of the camera to a lower mid shot angle gives it a similar feel to a TV show/movie.

Something about the different shots adds a nice a flow that tickles my brain

I also love the use of the voiceline and how it was edited, as its one of those lines that Freddy asks at some point during the game; as if he's having an epiphany about what Gregory saw earlier.

He brings it up with such casual skepticism (his tone makes me giggle), despite saying, "I believe you if you say you have." Hearing that line in game makes me wanna flick him- don't question me, Freddy, I know what I saw >:(

Anyways the natural cut off of dialogue just works, his little quirks of speech and movement in this animation makes him so human like.

The model for the endo daycare is so well crafted that the setting is dark but has a nostalgic vibe. The original game model is cold, dark, and creepy, but for some reason, when I look at this one, it feels different. Nostalgic, as I mentioned, and kinda warm in a weird way. I don't know. Conceptually it's fucking creepy with the endos hanging around, but honestly this gives me the vibes of a college kid going back to his childhood room and reminiscing on the memories. It would be interesting if we find out if the glams remember their training.

Side bit, his mention of never being allowed in the endo daycare is interesting, despite saying he might have been born there. Knowing what we know from HW2, seeing the programming process of juvenile endos is a delicate yet fast-paced one. I've had personal headcanons about what it was like, and Hw2 sort of confirmed it.

It's kinda odd that Freddy isn't allowed to be in the daycare, though, but maybe the existential dread is probably the reason why the techs don't let the main mascots go back there.

Freddy's soliloquy has always made me feel for him, I like listening to it. He sounds so introspective and frantic about it, so seeing it animated with his movements was.. cathartic? (Help I've watched this thing 9 times now)

The glams themselves aren't that expressive in the game. They experience emotions, yeah, but I mean physically emoting is rare or pretty stiff. The most facial expressions we get are in the beginning cutscene, maybe the dissamble ending, and the front entrance cutscene- Freddy being at the forefront. It's kinda hard to emote as a robot, but this animation does a great job with the limited range of expression.

Using Freddy's ears, hands, eyebrows, and his shoulder pads to emote is impressive. I've seen a lot of good security breach animations and they all have their own ways of making the glams emote, and I always love watching them (I'll probably link my favorite fan animations at the end). Also, this one of the few animations I've seen where they actually rigged Freddy's eyebrows to move. Hell yeahhhh!!!

But how Freddy acts in this just gives me joy. "Monty in a different" as he looks over himself, reaching to touch an endo as he says, "They are all the same." He's just so sweet acting.

And the music swelling adds so much more to his monologue. The crescendo as he says, "If I am mass produced, am I still art?" HITS SO FUCKING HARD

I made a joke tweet comparing the shot of him reaching up to the light with Ariel in Part of Your World, but it honestly has that same vibe. He's dramatic, he's whimsical, he's dumb, and also a little annoying, but it's okay. We still love him.

The light shutting off as he breaks out from his dread is kinda funny, though, and Gregory awkwardly standing there adds to it.

Sorry, this is such a cornplate thing to say, but he also uses a contraction when he says, "Greg, I'm not nearly that annoying, am I?"

GOD HES SO SILLY

Then Gregory nodding in response, causing him to get a little droopy is comedy. It's not gut busting humor, but it's the little things that make me giggle okay. Freddy needs to be self-aware, and damnit, if a 12 year old doesn't humble him, then what's the point?

Get called cringe like the rest of us, Freddy.

Okay, the fazerblast commercial doesn't have any reason to go that hard, but it does. The opening sequence for it with Freddy standing there is so... GGHHFHG :33

I'm normal.

He's so cool. I know I called him cringe just a second ago but I'm fan regardless of his flaws okay. This makes me want to play fazerblast with him.

The running, jumping, and shooting he does is *chef's kiss*, even if it's at Monty's expense. Bro should've had a fazerblaster...

Also their faces... it's like Freddy doesn't even remember doing that commercial.

I love how embarrassed he gets, it's so cute-

And it's hard to tell if Gregory is impressed by Freddy's agility or by how cheesy the ad is. The cut was like a cutaway gag in The Office or Family Guy.

Either way, this is peak. I loved this animation, it's only been out less than a week and I've watched it officially 9 times... (and maybe more)

It gives me a sense of comfort. The amount of time and effort put into something that was a small side project is an incredible feat, and it has so much jam packed in a one and half minute animation. It feels like it could be a scene from SB or even a movie. It's so fucking good. This is just a self indulgent, cornplate post and I don't care what anyone says about it. I just like rambling about fnaf sb stuff especially if Freddy is involved.

Here's the playlist full of my favorite security breach animations (some are music videos)

Anyway, thanks for reading..

[pumpkingeorge]

Man Anduin hit it ROUGH

[gay-dorito-dust]

HEY HEY CAN I REQUEST INTIMACY PROMPT ONE WITH BILLY BATSON SJJSBDJS PLEASE AND THANK YOU

Intimacy prompt #1: hugging them from behind, laying their heads on the other shoulder.

It wasn’t hard to find Billy when he was cursing up a storm from his place in the living room alongside Eugene, who was blazing through the level without much hassle, where as Billy was struggling to get through his whilst trying to not get shot or blown up like his past two attempts.

However the game they were playing wasn’t known to be merciful for first time players as Billy’s character was subsequently killed as his side of the television became a shade of blood red as the bold lettering of ‘you died’ flashed on screen with the ‘restart level’ and ‘go back to main menu’ were sprawled beneath it in smaller, missable lettering. Billy sighed defeatedly as he put down the controller onto the coffee table, taking the headphone from his head before placing them next to the controller, as he hauled himself out of his armchair muttering about getting a drink from the fridge.

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself Billy,’ you told him as you joined him in the kitchen, ignoring the fact that you heard him scoff, ‘you’ll get the hang of it in due time and soon you’ll be a pro like Eugene.’ You gestured back to the living room, where Eugene had already made it past the last level of the game, was now watching the final cinematic cutscene play out whilst nursing his cramped hands. ‘Don’t fake sympathy for me y/n, I know I’m shit and I doubt I’ll be able to get on Eugene’s level of expertise in gaming.’ Billy replied, taking a sip from his drink as his gaze was firmly lock on the window just over the kitchen sink, that looked out into back garden; Still a tad upset over his amateur loss.

You sighed, already having expected this typical response from him, and moved across the room to cage your arms over his chest, pausing briefly when his muscles stiffened be so your touch before relaxing again as you then tested your head comfortably on his shoulder, where you nuzzled his cheek. ‘What will make you feel better then hmm?’ You asked him softly, your thumbs subconsciously rubbing his sides in reassurance. Wanting nothing more then to provide him a safe place to open up and be comfortable in doing so.

Billy sighed, putting his bottle of fizzy drink down on the counter to put his hands over your own, rubbing the back of them out of habit. ‘I’d like it if you kept holding me like this a little while longer.’ He said, feeling a tad embarrassed of being so open about how he felt after repressing his emotions for so long, he was still a little rusty but with your help Billy had been able to become a lot more accepting of letting others lending him their aid, without feeling as though it was all just transactional. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to move to somewhere more comfortable?’ Billy’s hands tightening on yours when he felt them began to pull away, bringing them back to where they once were.

‘No, standing here with you is fine enough for me.’ He replied in a soft tone. A smile spread across your lips as you made yourself more comfortable by pressing yourself further into his back, arms holding onto him tight. ‘Okay, don’t blame me when your feet start to ache from standing here for too long, or when Freddy starts belting his rendition of ‘my heart will go on’ by Celine Dion.’ You warned Billy playfully as he could only chuckle, moving his head so he could press a kiss to your forehead, whispering against it, ‘I’ll take my chances.’

[cosmic-navel-gazin]

Finished Felvidek and had a grand time!

Thought I'd do a lil list of things/moments/details I loved off the top of my head:

gave cursed coffee bean to a chicken and it mutated. Did it for science

game's got some twin peaks vibes, some monty python, a tad of hylics, along it a bunch of other ingredients, but it feels very much its own thing with its own identity

pear man and his daughters deserve the world, wish we hung out more

there's a fight with an invisible enemy, all your attacks miss because your guys can't see shit and I was laughing just imagining Pavol and Matej swinging their swords at nothing hoping to slay the forest fiend. Very Don Quixote, I love it.

the PS1 style cutscenes are sooooo beautiful I love them to pieces, they drip with style and charm. I knew I needed to give this game a go the moment I watched the trailer and was greeted by the cinematics. God I love them so much. And not just the syle but the directing itself, the way shots are framed, god...

I love the character portraits for everyone. There's so much detail and everyone feels unique/like an actual person with distinct features. From the Priest's very punchable face, to Pavol's grin to Josef's sexy ass... From main characters to NPCs to enemy sprites, I love everyone's design and colour coding (don't know if it was intentional but the purple for the cultists was neat, seemed to subtly imply early on that they were being funded by rich folk, since pruple is associated with nobility, power and wealth)

speaking of character design, shout-out to this lil guy, look at him please

Numnut the drunkard my beloved, I recruited him and less than a minute later he fell on flat ground into a nearby river (and drowns???). I reloaded a previous save to see if I could have him in my party a lil longer. I took a different path, got into a fight. "yay I get to see him in action!"- I thought. I used his one special move, called: 'good idea', and Numnut proceeds to punch his own face, dealing 90 damage (not even in the endgame did I deal such high numbers!). THE Character of all time, he drowned again after that and I'll never forget him.

BALLOON IN THE MIDDLE AGES! (possible Andrei Rublev reference? I can dream...)

just, the way things are worded:

cutting people's ears after killing them as spoils (and giving the ears to a maiden, as you do)

there's a quest where you have to cut a man's tattooed buttock to give to another guy, and it's all for nothing, you ruined a man's ass for nothing. I love it. The dialogue during this whole section had me dying.

I love that there's just this guy who lives in the castle's well. And our boy Pavol thinks it's a great idea to throw a bomb in there to make him come out.

this:

there's these lil inisghtful and mournfoul comments on the dead bodies you leave behind. Like, expressing regret at all the senseless violence and death or how cheap life is here. And I'm not sure if it's Pavol or Matej making them. It makes more sense for it to be Matej but I kinda like the idea of it being Pavol's comments, these small moments of introspection and realization in the midst of a drunken adventure. You've been engaging in all the violence while pissed drunk but then after you kill your opponents and look at their corpses... and it's like this sobering moment, before you're back at it with all the merry-making (I also like that a lot of these bodies don't disappear and just remain on screen, and you can see the carnage your guys leave behind in their quest)

the whole adventure felt to me like, this series of odd little events in a knight's life before it's passed down, told by and retold by different people, and after many generations it's been touched up and made more coherent and noble than the clusterfuck it actually was. Before it became a narrative I guess is what I mean

it can get a bit wordy and hard to follow but I really like the old timey way the dialogue is written and its dry sense of humour

there's these little subversions of gaming tropes that I found really fun too! Like as soon as Pavol's wife and your falling out with her is introduced you may expect a reconciliation between the two, or a moment where you have to save her and prove your worth and love to her to win her heart. As you would expect from a story with a knight and a damsel. But no she hates his guts lmao tries to murder him too! (tho I do think Pavol took her in that balloon ride at the end). There's also the fact that I am not allowed to play minigames! Josef wants to play tabletop games but your character always replies no. No minigames for you son! And like, this feels especially catered to me as someone who, more often than not, will dread whenever a game will introduce some sort of card game or the like. I was so happy that wasn't forced on me for once! Couldn't believe it. Kinda felt bad for Josef tho, I'm sorry Pavol doesn't wanna play Pexeso wth you.

the battle animations! I'm particularly fond of the eating porridge one, or the chugging down a bucket of sour cream, and the petard

the little *slaps face* animation

Pavol and Matej as a duo and the whole tavern scene with the two exchanging clothes

the lil moments of humanity where Pavol talks about his broken life and sense of self

the rare moments when Pavol stops grinning

it goes without saying but the art is absolutely gorgeous. Its nostalgic monochrome melancholy speaks to me on a deep spiritual level. Inject it directly into my bone marrow please. Shout-out also to the ost, it fucks and has tons of bangers. The Hrad track, the one that plays on Josef's castle... god... love at first listen, and have been listening nonstop for the last few days now while going on walks.

[gold-rhine]

Inazuma Rewrite Act Two

Please read part one before reading this. It will make no sense otherwise.

In part one I did setup for the vision hunt conflict, changed Raiden’s motivations, added Rebellion \ Resistance interaction and Teppei setup, added setups to the arcs to Ayaka and Yoimiya. And more!

In this installment:

Let’s Make Player Give A Fuck About Rebellion and Teppei

Kokomi Is Not An Idiot

Delusions Are Not The Aging Beach

Ayaka’s Arc Pay-off

and more!

All disclaimers from part one also apply, I’m not gonna copy paste them.

Raiden Shogun First Duel 

I think we can keep the duel itself mostly unchanged. The cutscenes are pretty good and very cinematic, I don’t see reason to fix things which are not broke when there are already so many broken things

so, Traveler comes to Thoma’s rescue, gets taken to raiden’s plane of euthemia

also mb let’s cut i hate all minorities dialogue and instead like. open disobedience of the traveler to raiden shogun is i think enough to be used as a cause for the duel

The dialogue with raiden changes, we add banter with Traveler where traveler is like but you were pro-change before! and like cites some Transience things we talked about in the part 1.

Raiden gets mad in response, yells “Don’t you dare to mention her against me!” and that’s when she throws Traveler out of  euthemia and prepares the boob nuke

yeah, it’s foreshadowing of Makoto reveal

then the cutscene is the same, Thoma chucks a spear in her face and escapes with the traveler

thoma goes into hiding, traveler goes to join rebellion. bc they’re already in contact with gorou, we skip meandering around and go straight to the goal

First battle

and we arrive directly to the battlefield

there are several problems with rebellion pacing and kokomi characterization, which i elaborated on before. Like, Kokomi in canon only has one battle, which she wins because she hired mercenaries with fatui money. which like! invalidates this whole thing and makes her naive enough to be duped by the bad guys. So we need a battle win which is decidedly due to Kokomi’s genius.

so like in canon, Kujou Sara demands rebellion give her the traveler. Teppei, whos also there, is like no, fuck off! he’s embarrassed to speak out of the order but determined.

Gorou of course gives a speech about not giving up comrades, the fight starts, we have cool battle animation blah blah, and then suddenly!! Kujou Sara has reinforcements coming from behind some cliffs, oh no!! Teppei yells there’s too much of them! We will be overrun! Close up of Gorou’s snarling face, eyes darting, ready to call retreat, close up of victoriously looking Sara, Tenryou reinforcements are running to the battle... 

The water bubbles start rising up and Kokomi appears. She smiles at Gorou reassuringly and does some cool water animation. The hidden spring\waterfall bursts up with water and crushes into the reinforcements, washing them away. Rebellion rejoices, Kujou Sara curses and calls retreat.

i’ve seen people demand kokomi to have like a cool battle transforming into a dragon or smth bc of her origins and draconae constellation, but like this is missing the narrative pacing. the vishap origins only make sense after enkanomya where we learn about watatsumi history AND on the subversion of “oh its pink pastel kokomi who is smart and sweet :3”. Like we need to know her like that first, and THEN the dragon reveal will be cool and interesting.

Rebellion and Teppei overall setup

so, the Rebellion act wanted to accomplish too many things and didn’t structure them efficiently:

make you feel comradery with rebellion

make you like teppei

make you feel like a leader of your own squad, but like you EARNEd it, bc at first soldiers are distrustful and make you prove yourself

establish delusions and that delusions are bad bc teppei died, which is sad bc p.2

 in canon it’s like - have one scene with teppei, do some useless fetch errands for rebels, have another scene with teppei, be assigned swordfish captain and have two quick scenes with two dudes you will not remember

so obviously no one gives a fuck with this kind of pacing

instead, we will combine all of this and more importantly, give it narrative throughline so it doesn’t feel so disconnected and erratic

traveler is already known to Gorou through resistance meet up, he vouches for them, and Kokomi immediately names Traveler as captain of swordfish 2

Teppei is here and he excitedly volunteers to join that squad too

Gorou is like hey its a high risk squad that’s deployed on front lines, and you don’t have combat experience like, at all

Paimon and Traveler step up to be like yeah its fine, we’ll look after him, teppei is like omg thanks you guys :3

turns out he has problems fitting in with the rebels. they are all great ppl, sure, but they are warriors bonded in fights for years and most of them are from watatsumi. 

and he’s like a merchant or a clerk from narukami island. he feels like an outsider and a burden

but now the Traveler is here! they are already buddies from that resistance meet up and Traveler is an outsider too. They can stick together!

Swordfish II

So you go to meet up with your swordfish squad. You are greeted by a buff butch woman who is v no-nonsense and skeptical about your ability to be leader and another woman who is more friendly, but still kinda keeps distance and is snarky

their code names are Xena and Gabrielle for no reason other that we need buff female models like blacksmihs, hoyo. The point is that we need some memorable NPCs to represent swordfish, bc these two dudes that give you shit in canon for 3 second? I couldn’t remember them if my life depended on it

anyway, you learn that the previous captain just died and everyone loved and was very loyal to them, and now they are hostile to anyone who tries to take command.

So we do couple of battle to prove we’re strong blah blah, teppei is useless during a fight and Xena makes fun of him for this, and he’s super embarrassed

after that we walk around with teppei. Swordfishes camp is kinda shabby, they just took a bad hit. So we help the wounded, repair some tents, etc, but most important, Teppei uses expertise he’s got from his civilian job to solve problems

like he knows how to make a great painkiller potion bc he used to sell them. Or he gets an idea to use empty bags from used supplies to cover holes in tents, etc. 

Point is, he contributes.

After all this, Xena and Gabrielle are walking around, and Gabrielle is like wow captain, did you do all these improvements, and Traveler is like yeah, but it was all Teppei’s solutions, and Xena doesn’t say anything, but you can see she’s surprised and appreciative that you’re not only strong in combat, but care for the squad

she nods over the campfire at teppei like “i guess you’re not so useless after all, narukami nerd”

he protests, everyone laughs, its Bonding Time

Kokomi is not an idiot\ Fatui

We’re summoned to go see Kokomi. She’s in deep thought. Rebellion is in dire situation, supplies are running out, she’s sure they will not be able to win another open confrontation, even with her strategic tricks

But there is a new development - she’s being offered a huge anonymous donation. With that money, she could hire mercs to help. But to accept money without knowing the source is too risky, it could be a trap or setup

so she asks us to investigate these mysterious benefactors. bc also there are some vague rumors about some way to get boost to power going around and thats very sus too

bc like no, I cannot get over supposed genius Kokomi just taking fatui’s help blindly and letting them spread delusions around

so we go to the quest to investigate clues, with the swordfishes, its our first srs mission as the captain.

its couple of fights, blah blah. we find some clues and then its the Leader Decision time.

like there are two camps and we need to strike both at the same time, or the other one will destroy evidence and run, but we don’t have enough manpower. traveler is like  can take one camp by myself, and Xena at first is skeptical, but we’ve proven ourselves yesterday so she’s like okay I trust you, boss

everything goes well, both camps are taken and we find evidence that these donations are in fact, from fatui! and they are trying to spread delusions, which are bad and can kill you!

Delusions

I’m not a fan of Delusions working like the aging beach from that movie Old. Like first of all, if that’s how it worked, Childe should at this point look like this

and Diluc. And Signora. Like I get that these are like low quality delusions, so effect is worse, but you can’t be like wow Teppei turned 90 in 2 days and Diluc stayed babyfaced after 4 years.

second, how is that no one noticed Teppei aging 20 years after each fight. Like it had to happen in front of other soldiers.

And like, why change the mechanics at all?? You use delusion, you get burst of power and take huge hit to the health, that’s it. Low quality delusions take more out of your health, so people using them die faster. They don’t need to age faster at the same time.So that’s mechanics I’m using here.

Anyway, while swordfishes discuss delusions finding (and Xena loudly condemns them), camera shows Teppei being quiet, kinda sus and looking away

Kokomi Mini-Arc\ Swordfish Bonding

we go back and report to kokomi. She’s distraught. The battle is so soon and she doesn’t know what to do!

from pure strategic, emotionless perspective to win the battle she needs to take fatui’s money and close her eyes at some soldiers using delusions. She can trade their lives for the voctory

But as a Watatsumi leader who cares about her people she cannot do that!

Traveler comforts her, but leaves without any obvious decision made and with a heavy heart. 

the night before battle, we gather at campfire with the swordfishes

everyone is kinda doom and gloom bc it’s obvious Rebellion doesn’t stand a chance

Traveler stands up and makes a motivational speech about fighting together, about how they’ve faced seemingly impossible odds before and prevailed, bc everyone worked together, like with Ossail fight

Xena suddenly stands up to support us, she’s like yeah, I didn’t believe in you before, but now I see you’re worth it, Captain!

everyone cheers, Xena punches Teppei into shoulder and he almost falls over like “Even this narukami nerd is not as bad as I thought haha!”

Final Rebellion Battle

So, cinematic cutscene. Sara on one side with obviously more soldiers. Kokomi and Gorou with rebellion on the other side. Traveler is with the Swordfishes and Teppei. Kokomi and Sara shjare some snappy banter. 

mb there’s a duel, but only if combat designers can figure out way to make it cool. Traveler whacking NPC in a row who can do nothing back with a sword 5 times in a row like in canon is fucking boring. Mb incorporate like challenge with Inazuma mechanics like the thunder zoomies or smth.

the battle begins. Rebellions fights fiercely, close ups of our swordfishes.

Teppei is fighting Surprisingly Good For Him. Xena comments on this and he beams up

but the difference in numbers is too much. Rebellions starts being overwhelmed, and then!

Suddenly Beidou and the mercs join the battle! Kazuha is here too. Traveler looks worriedly at Kokomi, does this mean that she’s accepted Fatui’s bloody money??

But Kokomi smiles back. No, she’s had another trump up her sleeve

trail of snowflakes runs through the ground and suddenly, Ayaka appears on the battlefield. 

animation cutscene plays, Ayaka is shown in the past, after Traveler leaves, feeling restless and trapped in the estate. She’s still reeling from Yoimiya’s words and the fact that she couldn’t even help Thoma herself. She feels powerless, a pretty helpless figurehead princess that she didn’t want to be

letter from Kokomi arrives, telling about Rebellion’s dire situation and asking if Ayaka can help

Ayaka is in turmoil, she wants to help so bad, but she can’t steal money from Yashiro commission, that’d be stealing from people of Inazuma! 

She glances at her dancing fan and suddenly, a solution comes to her.

Looking determined, she goes to the Kamisato estate treasury and opens the chest of her parents’ inheritance

She sells some of her family heritage jewels and silks to get the money, deciding to use the same privilege that kept her trapped to finally help people 

she also officially announces that she’ll be in religious solitude meditation ritual or smth and instead sneaks off and travels to Watatsumi

she’s wearing that carnival mask that hoyo puts on models when they want to do “disguise”. Listen, if Diluc doesn’t get recognized in this gay little mask, then it can work for Ayaka too

anyway, animation ends with Ayaka springing from the ground on the battlefield and starting her burst, which transitions to her in-game burst animation

Her burst shreds through Tenryou forces.

Ayaka freeze with Kokomi and Kazuha is one of the best meta teams. Sara realizes it’s fucking JOVER for this battle and calls retreat.

Teppei death \ Delusion factory

Rebellion overjoices, Traveler and the swordfishes hug or whatever our animation department can handle in celebration, when suddenly!

Teppei falls down! Everyone gathers around and see delusion roll over from his hand!

oh no! He says he secretly picked up delusion from the fatui camp we cleared during investigation. This is why he’s fought so well today.

We tell him that he shouldn’t have done it, the fool!

He says he wanted to be useful. He just wanted to finally be one of the rebels!

Xena sits down next to him and says “You were already one of us.”

He dies holding her hand, with all comrades all around, instead of alone behind a shed like a sick housecat

Gorou and Kokomi walk up.Kokomi says that this is exactly why she refused Fatui’s help, but this happening even to one of the soldiers is a tragedy

Traveler and Swordfishes of course demand revenge. But we don’t know where the delusions are coming from! we already cleared fatui camps we knew of, we just don’t have any new leads!

Kujou Sara who watched this scene from afar suddenly speaks up

She has intel about possible location of Fatui factory, that she didn’t have time to explore. It’s on Tenryuo territory, but she’s willing to let Traveler pass. Fatui betraying and harming Inazuma people like this is unacceptable to her, even if they are enemies for now.

We’re like but can we trust her?? What if she just captures us?

Kokomi has long eye contact with Sara. It’s very Yuri. 

She finally says “No, we can trust Kujou Sara’s honor”

Sara only lets Traveler pass, so we have a scene of swordfishes wishing us luck and then we leave

Delusion factory quest goes the same. It’s okay, again, not fixing what’s not broke.

We confront Scara, he rants about mortals being bubbles, blah blah

The only dialogue change is when he bullshits about like oh, these mortals are weak and useless, of course they have to pay for power, Traveler argues that Teppei was already useful, he helped with the camp in a way others couldn’t, and he didn’t have to die to prove anything or “pay” for power

Otherwise it goes the same, Traveler passes out, Yae shows up to trade the gnosis

we’re moving to the Act 3!

PART 3

[felassan]

David Gaider on Twitter: "Going through my old DAI files and came across the original plan for a playable post-credits Epilogue... which, due to time constraints, eventually got down-scaled to the post-credits cutscene you saw on release. A lot of the meat here was, I believe, resurrected for Trespasser." [source] "At the time, I was pushing hard for an actual denouement - as opposed to always ending the story so abruptly after the climax. Considering how few players ever get that far, I suppose I can see the argument that it's not exactly a great place to focus resources. I did like where the cutscene ended up, mind you. A nice, Marvel-esque stinger that hinted at story to come. Took the sting out of having yet another story plan go awry... which is simply par for the course for game dev. Writing can always imagine more than we can produce. ;) And in case anyone wonders: no actual work was done on that playable section prior to the cut. You can imagine it being this fully-fleshed out, glorious thing, if you like... but it could just as easily have been half-baked and terrible. The team was fully stretched as it was." [source, two, three]

Some further info from follow-up tweets -

User: "It's a bummer, though I understand the logic. A proper end to cap off the experience can make or break your enjoyment of the full game though, imo" DG: "That was indeed my argument. There's a point where we have to draw the line and finish the story, however, and I'm afraid the original plan was... mmm a mite too big. This was far from the only cut."

User: "WAIT. Am I reading this right… Solas drains Flemeth and then COMMANDS the Well of Sorrows drinker to kill Flemeth?" DG: "I think it was Flemeth who commanded it. I'd have to look through the whole document. It's complicated. Part of why it was eventually cut, probably."

User: "Hold on. We were to kill Flemeth on Flemeth’s command to, possibly, prevent Solas from taking everything? Was passing whatever energy she did to the Eluvian her way of preparing for survival ?" DG: "I don't think it was going to be explained any more than it was in the cutscene you got, tbh."

User: "My WoS Lavellan is SCREAMING rn god please help her in the next game" DG: "Keep in mind that none of this *actually* happened. ;)"

User: "Interesting to see this was envisioned as having adversarial encounters between Solas & Flemeth with the well-drinker being ping-pawned between them. I noticed the Inquisitor lurking off-camera in that cutscene and wondered if they were originally meant to be part of it." DG: "Heh. I'm pretty sure the Inquisitor being placed there in the actual cutscene's level was because a player had to be present *somewhere*. Might be wrong, though." John Epler: "the way the cinematics worked, if you had them firing too far from the player character the engine would try to optimize and cutscenes would start jittering" DG: "Yeah, I thought it was something like that! Thanks, John."

User: "Does this have any link to the fact that there are dialogue audios of Morrigan reacting to solas “absorbing” Mythal in the game files?" DG: "Possibly? I finished writing the epilogue, so it's possible some of it got recorded prior to the cut."

User: "So Morrigan would've finally gotten to kill Flemeth herself, and nobody had to turn into a dragon this time? Also, this clears up what even happened to Flemeth at the end. She's definitely dead. Presumably, the spirit or essence of Mythal and possibly Urthemiel are inside Solas?" User 2: "does it? it can be theorized that flemeth commands the inquisitor/morrigan to kill her so solas wouldn't be able to take all her essence. regardless, in the ending we did get it's not entirely clear what happened. but i doubt she's truly gone. she cheated death before." DG: "And remember that what this stuff points at never actually happened. Whatever becomes of Flemeth in the future is up to the current writing team, and is based only on the cutscene you saw."

Summerfall Studios: "Our creative director davidgaider shares some insight into how Dragon Age: Inquisition's epilogue evolved over production" DG: "You want "evolved over production"? *cracks knuckles* Lemme tell you how we cut Corypheus attacking Skyhold. Now *that's* evolution."

[meatball-headache]

I dont have a non-spoilery screenshot for The Sacrifice, so, please enjoy this survey!

Chiclet's not allowed to read this yet, so shhhh

Howling... full moon... heh. He's a Wereframe.

So, once again I'm captivated by Warframe's approach to storytelling. It's unique, in my experience—and I'll be glad to admit my experience is pretty limited. MMOs tend to dominate all your time, y'know?

I've heard how with The Second Dream they started to take the story in a different direction, that is, they introduced a lot more cinematic scenes—and, man, they pack a punch. Honestly, I think introducing this style later in the game, years down the road for some players and still many months for myself—it's very effective. I keep using analogies like playing Tetris to level 100 and then suddenly you get a scene that introduces the pieces' names. If Warframe had been this from the beginning, it still would have been good, but the impact of the surprise wouldn't have been there, and that moment still shines so brightly for me. The game would just be a fun grind to kill some time without it, but with that "This is what you are" scene, the whole game just took on a profound, sacred aspect that can't be topped.

...and yet...

No, no, The Sacrifice isn't better than The Second Dream, but, I am surprised. See, I've long known two things: one, you can look at the Codex and see all the quests in the game. Angels of the Zariman is there right from the beginning, except it says "Prerequisite: The New War." Whispers in the Walls is there right from the beginning, except it says "Prerequisite: The New War." Jade Shadows is there from the beginning, except it says "Prerequisite: The New War."

The New War does not appear in my Codex.

The second thing I've long known? The New War is going to be a big deal.

There's something else that's been stuck in my craw for a long time. What's the Ropalolyst? There's a mission on Jupiter that can't be done because it requires the quest The Chimera: Prologue. That quest... also doesn't appear in my Codex? So, there are some quests that aren't in the Codex...

Compared to FFXIV, there's no comparison. A classic MMORPG is quest-dense with wall-to-wall dialogue and almost nonstop cutscenes. On the other end of the coin, the other type of game I'm most familiar with is Soulsbornes, where there's almost no story in-game; it's more similar to the NES classics where you turn on the game, press Start, and fight stuff until you see credits. Warframe, of course, doesn't need to be FFXIV, but what's exciting is the hint that there's something behind it all, and there's still some secrets I don't know about.

I did Apostasy: Prologue and was really surprised to find out that it's a one-mission quest that sets up the next story quest. I wonder if it released at the same time as The Sacrifice? I was thinking I'd do Apostasy tonight, The Sacrifice tomorrow... well, since Apostasy was basically just one cutscene, I had to do The Sacrifice. I'll get into the details later, but...

What the...

Well. We found the Chimera Prologue. Hell, we found the Chimera, didn't we?

This is what I mean. Once again, I'm astounded by the game's turns. So, Prelude to War has... chapters?! That's never been a thing before. That explains why Chimera Prologue wasn't in my Codex. Maybe The New War is one of these chapters? No, no, for what a big deal The New War is, it must be its whole own system. It must be something as big as Duviri. It's got to be something.

None of the quests in this game have been big enough to warrant chapters. I'm guessing it's not that each "chapter" is just its own mission, no. Each chapter must be the size of a normal quest, right? Around 3-5 missions, cutscenes between a couple...

Just want to throw this in, I really like how Warframe just doesn't give a shit about throwing something weird at you without explanation. You get an objective "Search the lab." Search for what? Is it glowing? Am I supposed to use my scanner on it? Turn into the kid and blast it with my void beam? Walk up to it and press the button? Am I looking for a console to use, an item to pick up, damage to get curious about? I appreciate that Warframe seems to trust the player to figure it out. They trust the player to figure out that there's something to figure out. ...which might be a little optimistic on their part, because I did have to look up what to do on those Kuva siphon missions...

FFXIV's narrative is massive and non-stop. I have to wait four months for the next patch, but every patch always ends with a big fight, and then Y'shtola puzzling over some magical mystery, saying, "I'll let you know when I've figured something out." When the patch comes out, you talk to her in the same place, "Perfect timing! I just wanted to let you know I've figured something out." A new player would get uninterrupted flow and never know when one patch ends and another begins, unless they clue in on the little narrative trick. But, like I said, me, I've always played patches day one, and then I have months between patches.

If I played Warframe the same way... well, the way I'm playing Warframe now, is that I'm going at an absolute snail's pace, tiptoeing my way through the quests and spending a lot of time leveling things and grinding all the time.

I'm not explaining myself properly. Let me try again.

Warframe's quests released months or more apart, as did FFXIV's. But FFXIV's are meant to be continuous. Warframe's feel like they need to have space between them, because it's not a continuous narrative from one to the next. I'm not saying the story is disjointed or makes no sense; but imagine if it were FFXIV, and you do the quest where you fight Ifrit and all that, and then the next quest is to do the banquet and fight Titan, and then the next quest is to fight Garuda. Played back to back, it'd feel like there's vast gaps between them, both narratively and level-wise.

Maybe I just have a shit memory for lore? Warframe's quests always feel like they're talking about characters I should be extremely familiar with. Or, maybe I'm just used to less-well-written games that explicitly hand you reminders of these characters that haven't been mentioned in several minutes.

So, The Sacrifice is all about Ballas. I don't really know who Ballas is, but this quest has the feeling of "Finally, we're going to take on Ballas." But, I have heard about him. In The Second Dream, we see that Margulis was talking to Ballas. He might've been mentioned in Chains of Harrow? Or, no... I think it was The Silver Grove, where we had dialogue from I don't remember who, someone who was building Warframes for Ballas, I think, and regretted it because they were doing horrible things, so her last Warframe was Titania, to protect the forest. But where I know Ballas from the most is the song, "For Narmer." I don't know the context in-game, but you can't listen to "We All Lift Together" on Youtube without getting recommended the rest. There's a lyric that says "Praise the wise and mighty Ballas" in it. I thought they were saying "balance" at first, but then I thought, are they saying someone's name?

Ballas is a little like Ludwig from Bloodborne. If you've been paying attention, you have hints and snippets of this guy's role in the story. If you're like me, you take one little hint, dwell on it, obsess over it, and when the grand reveal finally comes, oh how grand it is! Ludwig, Ballas, Ketenramm... okay, maybe not Ketenramm.

Warframe has this unshakable feeling that there was some plot between quest beats that I missed. Same thing with just... the game. Ghoul Purge! Thermia Fractures! ...do I know what that's about? Was there some quest to introduce those, and now they're just in the game? It's like fighting Yojimbo or Typhon at the Gold Saucer when you've been playing FFXIV for three weeks and you're level 37. Am I supposed to know who this is? Oh well, gotta do my dailies! Or the... Rathuum? Where you fight... I had to look up her name... Kela De Thaym, on Sedna. The thing has this feeling like we're old rivals, her dialogue suggests she's finally going to get us for all the times we've foiled her before! But, lady, we just met you. Actually, we haven't even met you! We just showed up at this new node and you're going, "Finally we settle things!"

Don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining, it's just a very unique feeling about the game's whole quest style.

There's something else, too. There always is, you know me.

You ever get into a new series, books, movies, games, whatever? There's already three seasons but you're just finding out about it now, so you eat it all up and you're excited to learn there's going to be a new season next year. It comes and you watch it and... it just feels different? They got new writers, or the pacing is weird, something's just not clicking. And then next year another new season and, yeah it's just not as good. Or, music, people do this with music all the time, right?

When I first got into Warframe, Angels of the Zariman was the new patch. I didn't play it, obviously, don't know anything about it, but, I wonder if, when I get to that point, then everything from then on is going to feel like "new" Warframe, and just not have the same impact as the "original" stuff? I know me; I'm certain I'm going to be overly aware of the dividing line, and look for changes.

Also? In The Sacrifice, we learn that Margulis was sentenced to the Jade light. There's a new Warframe named Jade, and in fact a whole new quest called Jade Shadows. Clearly, this "Jade" thing has been long foreshadowed (lol) and must tie into the story deeply. I just thought it was a cool new Warframe they made because they didn't have one starting with J already. My playing these old quests with hints of knowledge of the future is an interseting perspective; anyone playing these things back when they were new wouldn't have this "Ah, so this is where Jade comes from!" moment... but at the same time, they get what I won't, they get a "Holy shit they're finally making a Jade Warframe?!" (Now that I think about it, that does kind of explain why this warranted a whole new Eximus type...)

Now, the actual quest.

What the FUCK just happened?

After dealing with Rell's psyche and releasing or destroying Harrow in the Void, or whatever we did, there's something odd in our personal quarters. When we go in, we suddenly find ourselves on Lua, where we find... the pod containing the actual Lotus? And then Ballas just... shows up, and takes her away? But, Ballas is one of the Orokin, the people that were annihilated by the Warframes in the Old War (I think) ... how long ago? A couple years? A couple thousand years? I think there were some lore snippets along the lines of, after the Orokin fell, the Grineer and Corpus took over the system. The Grineer used to be strong and competent, but cloning errors began to creep in generation after generation, so some time must have transpore since the Old War. We have extremely overgrown Orokin ruins on Deimos. And, Ballas's dialogue suggests he's been around for a bazillion years.

What happened? Why did Ballas wait for us to arrive to take the Lotus away? Did we have to lead him to her? We found magic voices from the Lotus asking to be freed... is this what she's always wanted? Or was that a memory from when she was like, imprisoned before her execution? The other lines do seem to be the latter, so. Who was it that Ballas turned into Umbra? Does it matter? Is it supposed to be someone we know? Why does Ballas have a long Bloodborne arm? Why is Ballas a blue Orokin and Isaah is just like a dude?

All rhetorical questions, as always, but this is what I'm asking for real. Am I forgetting something? Or am I meant to wonder what's going on, try to figure out the missing pieces? These cutscenes are as cinematic as anything in Final Fantasy, but the story is as Swiss-cheesed as any Soulsborne. Pieces are missing and I don't know what's going on, but it's being presented as if I already have the setup, as if I already know the context.

And, again. I love this style. It's completely fascinating and captivating. I'm not being critical, I know it sounds like I'm just complaining about being confused, but, that's not the case. I like being confused, because it's just the right level. There's plenty of story and characters, and enough lore and just... this vibe to suggest there's more. Ordis chirps every now and then, "Do you remember the Old War? Ordis seems to have... misplaced those memories." That's enough to make you go, whoa whoa whoa, what? ...and now whenever you play, you're looking for any tangential reference to this mysterious "Old War." Nora on the radio talks about Alad V's experiments, and now you know this mad scientist is out there something, up to something strange... It's not always a throughline narrative like FF, but you get these pieces to sort of color a vibe, so to speak. The world gradually fills in, and every now and then the dam breaks and it all spills forth, and you get all the water you could ever want, but... gosh, it's pretty messy sometimes.

Somehow, I've lucked into the ideal way to play this game, I think. At least, I'm having a lot of fun. I look up builds on websites, and they'll have powerful mods like Umbral Intensify. Umbral! I know about Primed, but Umbral!? Where do I get that! ...and then, suddenly, I have it, and it's like the stars have aligned and I've achieved enlightenment. At long last, this mythical relic has entered my hand! And, not gonna lie, it's kind of a profound moment. Now I know. Now I know where this important and mysterious item comes from!

There's so much to this game. Eidolon hunts, Kuva liches, sorties—these I've just recently unlocked, in terms of progression, and I could spend ages grinding them for the latest paths to strength. And there's more out there that I know very little or nothing about. I have "Arbitration" on my menu, but I can't select it until I clear the star chart, which includes a few things I can't do, like the Ropalolyst, and things I'm not up to yet, like Zariman, and things I can't even fathom a guess at, like the half-dozen remaining nodes on Deimos. I've vaguely heard about Icarnons? Something about a special mode for weapons? And recently I was watching a video explaining damage types, and he mentioned Archon shards? I have no idea what that is! But this man is shooting a bow that explodes ten times for 1,000,000 damage each hit... I can sometimes do a million damage with Baruuk's exalted weapon's charged heavy attack... And, there's probably more cool mods out there that are just super rare from an extremely specific source... I've heard of Adaptation and Growing Power, a couple other types of "Power," I think, so those must be from... who knows? C rotation in a rescue mission on Sedna? I know Vor shows up after round 1 survival on Mot in the Void, and he drops some unique mods, so maybe other places have some weird gimmick like that? I just don't know, and I probably won't without looking it up.

There is SO. MUCH. To this game. It's absurd. I've never played anything that comes close, even FFXIV, with as huge a game as it is, its content is much more samey—consistent tomestone systems, raid loot designs, dungeon length, whatnot. Nothing compares to Warframe, it's absolutely ridiculous.

And?

All this is free. Completely free. The only things you can only get with real cash money are cosmetic skins and syandanas and color palettes, I think. You can play the entire story and campaign for free, you can get every Warframe for free—getting enough storage to keep them all is a different story, though... Nora has some slots you can grind for sometimes but mostly you gotta pay—you can get all the Prime Warframes and weapons for free, there's no paid version of the season pass, no subscribers-only zones or Warframes or quests...

If I had found Warframe before FFXIV... I probably wouldn't have liked it. Original Warframe seemed... really different. I mean, current Warframe didn't even grab me until the third or fourth time around. But, I mean, what'm I playing now? I played Dawntrail, I logged in as soon as the servers went live and I sank deep into the story for a couple months. I took my time, exploring, grinding all my jobs first, and then as soon as the story was done—I went and did the post-game dungeons and raids :p But as soon as that was done, I just kinda... stopped playing. I haven't capped tomes once in Dawntrail; I used to do it religiously. I haven't even been getting all my Arcadion NM loot. I love FFXIV, it's my absolute baby, thinking about it, reminiscing about it, listening to it—my god, Soken's a genius—pondering the story, looking at fanart... but when it comes to pure gameplay? It's... dry. Combat is great—for an MMO. I find action RPGs like Warframe, Bloodborne, these kind of things a lot more fun, in terms of pure gameplay. And, look, every dungeon is formulaic, so many of the jobs play so similarly to others... Then you go to Warframe where, yes, missions are extremely formulaic, but you also have randomized maps, Stalker attacks, Eximus waves; and every Warframe plays so different from every other. Every weapon is different! Most games seem to just be a sliding scale of "This shoots fast but does less damage," "This shoots slow and does lots of damage," "This does lots of damage but is not accurate." Warframe has "This is an assault rifle," "This is an assault rifle. If you empty the magazine then it drains life from enemies nearby." "This is an assault rifle. It shoots missiles that explode," "This shoots grenades. You have to press this button to detonate them manually."

All right, folks. I'm tired of writing. To summarize: I love Warframe, this quest was great. Thanks for reading. Good night.

[just-a-carrot]

Our Wonderland (Queer Indie Horror VN) Arc 5 Part 1 1/2 Out Now!

YEAHHHHHHHHHHH HERE IT IS??????

The, uh... MIDDLE THIRD(?) of the final arc blasting its way onto your Personal Computers! I WENT A LITTLE OVERBOARD ON THIS ONE MAYBE.

FEATURING:

🍅Intense action sequences! STUFF FLYING ACROSS YOUR SCREEN

📽️Super sweet semi-animated cinematic cutscenes! TO BETTER EXPERIENCE THE PAIN

🧑‍🤝‍🧑Soft gay feels??? (also a cute ace moment LDKAJSLKDF) (I AM WEAK)

💦1.21 gigawatts of tears! I WEPT MULTIPLE TIMES MAKING IT

😈Scenes with "heart"! THIS IS A PUN. LAUGH.

🐰Jerry! EVERYONE'S FAVORITE SEVEN-FOOT-TALL HUMANOID RABBIT??????

MORE DETAILS OR SOMETHING:

2-3 hours more content (a little over 33k words, bringing the total word count of the game up to 256k words lksadjlfad)

A RIDICULOUS 74 NEW CGS???????????

3 new cinematic semi-animated cutscenes (one of which is quite long)! Because I don't know the meaning of "Carrot, no"

Lots of sweet new tracks because this is apparently where I go all in on the Epic Music Train

A COUPLE OF COOL NEW FEATURES????

Feature-wise, I have also added some bodacious new QoL stuff, for instance, a new REPLAY GALLERY(?) and the ability to SKIP CUTSCENES AND CREDITS YOU'VE ALREADY SEEN(???) that I hope in my heart of hearts will Please People.

Read the full devlog and find links to download this bad boy here (IT'S FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE) (and by that I mean free aside from that LASTING TRAUMA it will inflict upon your heart maybe):

PLEASE TO BE ENJOYING.

YOU WON'T REGRET IT.

[currantlee]

(I didn't find this cutscene by itself on YouTube in English, so y'all are gonna have to deal with a link to a specific timestamp in the video - anyway, here's the Japanese version sans subtitles)

Okay, but can we talk about the Revelation ending cinematic for a second, please?

Like, I know this game is several years old at this point, but this cinematic is still so perfect, like, come on!! Apart from the strellar video quality that all of the 3DS games have, there is so much love and detail in just this one scene.

You have eight characters in the scene, and none of them are standing around and doing nothing. This is obviously not counting Corrin, who is really more of a stand-in for the player in this scene - also, funfact!

Theoretically, you should see Corrin in this shot since in the end of the cutscene, when the little sisters drag Corrin to the rest of the siblings, they're running in the direction of the trees in the background, indicating that this is where Corrin should stand. But they're not in this shot.

Regardless, having eight characters in one scene and each of them not just say something, but do something (rather than just standing by idly until it's time to say their lines) is impressive! Even more impressive is that the things they do are not just standard / repetitive motions, but rather small details that are easy to miss, yet so in-character. I put some of my personal highlights under the cut - what are yours?

Right before the little sisters run towards them, Camilla smiles and gives Corrin / the player a little wave, and it's the sort of smile that we rarely see from this character - a very sincere smile that reaches her eyes.

Very easy to miss, but I love how just before the little sisters run to Corrin, Takumi (and, less obviously, Leo too!) look lovingly at their little sisters (whom both of them are shown to have a close relationship to in the supports, it's such a nice touch IMO!), while Camilla and Hinoka are looking at Corrin, and Xander and Ryoma are looking at the scene unfolding in front of them.

There is also this cute interaction Takumi initiates with Leo, which I find especially cool because after Ryoma and Xander make their vow to keep peace and Elise cheers that Sakura and her can be friends now, Takumi remarks how he wishes it were that easy to forgive, and Leo responds by saying that healing can only begin with trust - which is not only very true in my experience, it's one of my favorite lines from the entire game. If you take anything away from Fates as a story, it should be this.

So anyway, Takumi seems to think about Leo's words a bit before he nods and agrees. So regardless of whether you ship Leokumi or not (I do, and this interaction is definitely a bonus to me), you can kind of see this interaction as an extension to Takumi's agreement from earlier, where he specifically decides to trust and befriend Leo.

The next part of this interaction is a bit harder to see because the camera pans to the sisters. Camilla and Hinoka have a little interaction with Sakura and Elise. Hinoka even bends down so they're on the same level (cool aunt character indeed), and it looks like they're moving their lips to actually say something, even though that's not part of the dialogue. Xander and Ryoma also watch this unfold (while Leo gets shoved in a friendly way by Takumi).

Leo, judging by his expression, did not expect this and is not exactly happy about in the first second of surprise. You can actually see him breathe heavily directly after stumbling forward, indicating that he was indeed startled by this. However, he then goes on to laugh it off, like "haha, you got me". Meanwhile, Takumi does not instantly turn around to Corrin again, but actually takes a step towards Leo and even turns to him for a bit, as if to make sure he's okay. The other siblings (safe for Elise) also turn to them briefly.

By the way, at the end of the scene, Takumi's hand is still on Leo's back. Also, Camilla is actually the last one to turn around to face the camera / Corrin. Instead, she takes a long look at the united families until her gaze lands at Corrin when the screen already fades to white.

[stormethecat]

Sabotage Studio Announces Free Sea of Stars Update: Dawn of Equinox Bringing Top Fan-Requested Additions to PC and Consoles, Gains November Release Date

A Masterful Modernization of Classic RPGs will Receive Local Co-op, Refinements and More

Sea of Stars developer and publisher Sabotage Studio today announced Dawn of Equinox, a free content update for the award-winning turn-based RPG inspired by the golden era of ‘90s role-playing classics, will arrive on Nov. 12 for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

Following a year of incredible support from the Sea of Stars community, Dawn of Equinox is Sabotage Studio’s gift to thank more than 5 million players for their unwavering love and support for Sea of Stars. Dawn of Equinox includes some of the most requested features and improvements informed by feedback from players. The update represents Sabotage Studio’s fully realized vision for Sea of Stars’ spectacular adventure.

Dawn of Equinox features below the cut:

All-New Local Co-op: Sea of Stars’ story will be playable in its entirety by up to three players, with allies traversing the world together and mastering a new Co-op Timed Hits combat mechanic.

Combat 2.0: The addition of Mystery Locks brings a new gameplay loop around revealing the ways to break the spells of enemies each time a new type is encountered in battle. Along with “Reveal” functions added to some of the playable cast’s special skills, Combo Points now remain after battle, offering new ways to open certain encounters, or test different damage types on enemies to reveal their locks. A comprehensive balancing pass has also been done to reflect both these new changes and player feedback since launch.

A Revamped Prologue: Implementing combat for the young versions of our heroes, the updated flow does away with the flashback structure to begin in their childhood, directly including action in the prologue.

Bonus Cinematic Scene: An entirely new cutscene has been added to accentuate a pivotal moment in the original adventure, referred to as “Paths on Water”.

A Speedrunner Mode Relic: This new item activates a range of features helpful for those looking to set a new personal best or world record.

Difficulty Presets: Three difficulty options are now available when starting a new game, which are presets using the game’s Relics. New Relics have also been added, both for quality of life and difficulty adjustments.

Improved Parrot Relic: Sea of Stars’ secret-tracking parrot has learned a few new tricks to better assist players tracking down overlooked challenges and collectibles.

Quebecois Localization: A comprehensive French Canadian translation for Quebec’s finest Solstice Warriors.

Quality of Life Improvements: A constellation of general updates and improvements spanning Sea of Stars’ full campaign.

Dawn of Equinox arrives ahead of Throes of the Watchmaker, free DLC launching in Spring 2025 which will debut a completely new storyline, a new playable character and more as an encore to Sea of Stars’ original adventure. Throes of the Watchmaker will find Sea of Stars’ leading heroes Valere and Zale venturing into a magical miniature clockwork world threatened by a cursed carnival, which forces the Solstice Warriors to adapt to unfamiliar rules to fully master their Sun and Moon powers. The entirety of Throes of the Watchmaker will also be playable in the Local Co-op feature arriving in Dawn of Equinox.

Launched last summer to critical praise from media and fans before being recognized with accolades including Best Independent Game at The Game Awards, Sea of Stars has garnered more than 5 million players and is available across PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One for $34.99. It’s also free to subscribers to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.

For complete game information, please visit www.seaofstarsgame.co.

[chamomiletealeaf]

Started playing MW Zombies and a few thoughts

- honestly kinda fun. I couldn’t stop playing

- I HATE HOW YOU HAVE TO FUCKING WAIT FOR YOUR WEAPONS TO “cool down” LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN IM GOING TO FIGHT ZOMBIES WITH A PISTOL AND MY FIST???

- I miss the supply boxes that just spit out all the shit at you lmfao

- Who the fuck are these other ppl talking to me I want more Soap

- WHY ARE THE MISSIONS SO FUCKING LONG JUST TO GET TO THE SECOND CINEMATIC CUTSCENE GOD PLEASE

- Love that we still get new Soap content

- Overall I’d say like a 7.5 out of 10. It’s pretty fun but can get a bit confusing

[mabaris]

OK SO GAMEPLAY REVEAL THOUGHTS. SPOILERS

immediately very happy with the blend of cinematic cutscenes and gameplay

LOVE the change in combat. i remember them saying they were leaning a little more hack and slashy and im very pleased with it so far. i’ve said before that i wish it was a little more involved and let you target and that’s exactly what we go!!!!

damb brian bloom sounds old and varric’s skin looks too smooth

sumalee montano ABSOLUTELY voiced one of the venatori lmao

can you not control your party?? i didn’t see a place for them on the UI (it said they get empty spots on the wheel later but nothing else) but that might have also been cleaned up for the trailer

i don’t know if this is the console version or pc but the little hotkey cluster makes me think the former. a big fan of the ability wheel (another thing that was previously console-only) and i hope that’s on all platforms

i love neve’s little scepter

varric rly said “i’m ride or die for any of my friends” and yknow what i appreciate his idealism even after all this time. my man.

solas looks almost the same?? even in the new style?? incredible lmao

THAT DAGGER HE HAS. ROUND HANDLE. THATS GOTTA BE THE LYRIUM IDOL RIGHT

in conclusion i’m gonna kill this mf

[macgyvertape]

Thoughts on TFS Campaign

please note spoilers for everything

Gameplay:

It only lasted for less than a day but the launch errors were so bad. Not just Battleye disconnects during fights, but Prismatic unlock being bugged, and completely missing cutscenes after missions. It was enough to ruin the experience so waiting to play it was absolutely worth it. I guess it's a sign of there being a lot more moving pieces on the backend than is apparent when things go smoothly.

I’m amazed at the shifting environment inside the Traveler and the dev work it took to do that. Not just creating new paths, but the environment terraforming as you run. The map design is amazing: it's a hill and it's a statue of a cat, its a tree but its also person shaped. Thrilled by how many creepy faces there are in the map, and how the horror and faces just ramp up as the zone continues. The highway where the underside was just hands was one of the more fucked up ones for me

I like that the game warns you if you leave the campaign to the Tower. Plus the “End Draws Near” buff was appropriately ominous

Also if there is “social” Tower what about “Legend” Tower, or “Grandmaster” Tower lol

Mission 3 where you’re locked in with a room of sword arm guys took some adjusting to. Really like how the shooty eye blast Orge fight was set up in mission 3. Good intro of mechanics, how it will absolutely fuck you up, then it comes together in the final fight where the different types of ads help the combat loop. I’m getting a lot of use from “gain armor charge from breaking shields”

The Dissent mission was the point where I couldn’t solo Legend campaign anymore. The Ogres were fine, but I don’t do great in small rooms with little cover and enemies that rush at you. It's noticeable where earlier missions have a much shorter repeat run back section when you die than this mission. 

Final mission was rough due to a lot of mechanics and a long final fight with little room for error. I’m glad the random cool person I found for the previous mission was such a good sport since it took about an hour.

This is the most mechanics heavy expansion so far, they introduced each mechanic through earlier missions: blights, VotD style symbols tracking, VoG relic shield, RoN shoot the darkness seeds, kill 3 giant hive knights on a time limit like Shattered Throne. That’s just a lot of mechanics to juggle while dealing with prismatic shields and aggressive Dread enemies

Overall I enjoyed Legendary Campaign on my Warlock, haven’t finished it on the other classes. Outbreak Perfected fucking shredded especially combined with Chromatic Fire

The new Suspectrum Heavy LFR is way too visually similar to Taipan. Wish the icon was at least a different color. I do like the art on the new craftable campaign weapons. 

I appreciate that with Ghost as the vendor I can easily swap ghost shells to see what the damage looks like on different ones. Like Sagira’s Shell (for the angst) or Last City Shell (Damaged).

There were so many post campaign story missions, I appreciate how they filled out narrative threads that didn’t fit in the base campaign but also all quests now can be right clicked to be launched

The post raid 12 person activity was great. I've been wanting a 12 player activity to be introduced ever since the time of 12 person raid bug, and it felt an appropriately “epic” scale with no raid context needed

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

This expansion really felt cinematic, a grand finale. I love how many cutscenes both artistic and pre-rendered there were, capped off with the final post raid cutscene. My favorites were of course the ending cutscene but also the opening hawk covered in goo cutscene to set the tone

Story Thoughts under cut

Love the hawk being back and notes of Journey from the D2 base campaign

The guardian taking critical damage when Ghost gets possessed in Temptation really added to the feel. Glad to get one more story beat of Crow angst

Crow and Cayde going back and forth with banter makes it a lot more tolerable than just Cayde the funnyman. Also a fun bit of “3 sharpest hunters” when I played Hunter

Ikora’s reaction/processing of Cayde being “alive” had a lot more emotional impact for me than the Guardian reuniting with him. Of course Cayde did it in the most dramatic way possible

TARGE!!!! Excited to hear him in game. Love the visuals of the Witness smoke coming from the family house

I’m glad that Zavala’s character got so developed over the seasonal storylines, it makes the pathos of his encounter here so much stronger. He’s one of the big emotional anchors of the story and while Keith David does a great job filling in as Zavala it feels awkward considering out of game context to hear Zavala talk about dying and not making it back

The cynical part of me thought; ok narratively there’s been a moment to be sad about Cayde 6, sad about Zavala’s dead family, sad about Amanda. Are we going to get narratively sad about Rasputin? (edit: nope)

That Cayde came back from Crow’s wish was something I thought had been heavily hinted at?? Like it wasn’t a surprise to me. 

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

Holy shit mean Zavala, but I like how the Guardian then gets called out for listening on the radio unlike any other time they snoop in this or last expansions on deeply personal conversations

I’d like to wish a very happy Luzaku to all Hive/Guardian shippers

“I’m yours, and you’re mine” I love Ghost this expansion and how it really touches on the long partnership. Ghost is really only a character in the expansions and this expansion was great for that emotional arc

Liminality Strike crossed the line from Zavala reacting poorly in a moment of stress/grief to “Out of Character is serious business”. It was heavily foreshadowed before that Zavala isn’t doing well and something will happen to Zavala, by the end of the season I hope he gets some ending that has him at peace

“They’ll speak up if they have something to say, that’s what I do” Targe has been lore only so long, he’s even better than I thought with voice acting how he speaks with a kinda decisiveness.

Damn RIP Targe the game got me to fall in love with him in such a short time. Deeply hilarious IMO that then we got a lore page from Immaru

The statues that look like a sheet-ghost were always kinda creepy, but the ceremony where they were falling down dead and it looked much more like funeral shrouds for living beings made them soooooo much creepier

Keeping with the theme of OOC is Serious Business, it was noticeable when The Witness lost its cool and anger/aggravation was clear in its tone

The Iron Lord sigil and the axe in Temptation was the first reference to Crow being the last Iron Lord in a long time, very cool to then see him summon a flaming axe at the end. 

Ikora was a supporting character this expansion, but the writing really showed how she is a necessary part of the Vanguard fireteam

Postgame:

Excited to see Micah-10 another favorite previously lore only character

Queens Part 1: Very in character of Savathun show up uninvited, to have her hostile forces with their own agenda at the precipice and almost end of all things. “My Guardian. My Friend” Transactional relationship for now until she decides she no longer owes us, the style of Hive violence as love. Fits right in with the Star Jasmine lore. I love her.

Queens Part 2: I was really smiling listening to Savathun and Mara go back and forth sniping at each other and being catty. I love when Mara isn’t nice! 

Can’t believe the Mithrax missions introduced “escort NPCs and keep them alive” style missions. In aggravating tradition, player healing mechanisms do nothing. Just like the meme of “aren’t you tired of being nice” exciting seeing him lose his shit, yell ANSWER ME, then avenge his mother by dropping a Brig on the enemy guy

Caiatl quests: love when she fights alongside us, really enjoyed the furthering of her and Zavala’s relationship as leaders. Incredibly gallows humor that Zavala’s dead family farm is just a permanent part of the Pale Heart.

I really liked the Crow/Cayde camping quest, it felt very much like the Guardian was living through investigating and being with these characters vs drop in, fight, and leave. Sort of like how FF14 Shadowbringers had your character narratively go to the inn to rest.

SCUR-V and Halsiks my friends in the final mission!!! Loved seeing all of our allies fight alongside us, then seeing so many cameos from characters in the cutscenes

Guess the vanguard does make people shave their head lol, I will miss his old look as I loved the bird chaperon style hood with cape

Great way to end the expansion and this storyline of Destiny; Ghost and Guardian sitting together peacefully staring at the Traveler with riffs from Deep Stone Lullaby playing

[sevi007]

FF 16 spoilers

Spoilers right up til the ending lads and ladies

Are you kidding me. Are you. Kidding. Me

Ahem. Excuse me. I needed to get that out of my system.

Like. I‘m still reeling. I „only“ had the final fight to finish, thought yea, easy - and now this rollercoaster ride of feels right here. Ugh. Uff

I will get more into depth on the whole game in a seperate post later, but right now I need to jot down my first impression

From the start just - ugh. UGH. Gav openly crying into Clive‘s shoulder. Mid almost doing the same as they talk about Cid. Byron seeing his brother‘s sons off into a suicide mission

(Where was Otto though? Needed Otto, Goetz, Charon and Blackthorne here too! And Terence while we‘re at it. Aggressively promoting the NPCs here)

And Jill. Jill. I‘m almost glad she stayed behind and wasn‘t in danger but ouch. Now is so not a good moment for a love confession children (I know, I know, it might be the last chance, but that makes it so much more difficult). Why must you hurt me so, you two.

I will get back to that though

Then the journey and the final fight. Can I say I‘m almost disappointed there was no big aerial battle as Bahamuth against the many thralls? That would have been cool. But alas

I WOULD have liked for the battle of the three Eikons against Ultima to be. A real battle? Like the the Cinematic clashes are rather slow compared to other QTEs, I didnt feel a lot of excitement in this part of the battle compared to the rest of it

Changed with the next cutscene though. I mean, I had already suspected there is more of Ultima‘s people - one for every Eikon - but I had thought the Mothercrystals are there to power them up, and destroying them would stop that. I was just as shocked as Clive to here we basically helped them with it.

And then. Then. Here‘s the yelling part, the are you kidding me -

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE LOSE JOSHUA?!

We JUST got him back! After 18 years! We had all these sidequests to gather him medicine! He is literally the Phoenix - Undying! Nope. Nu-uh. Square I am not accepting that. Did not happen in my book

But also thos is quite possible one of the visually most beautiful scenes, what with the Phoenix wings and reflecting in Joshua‘s eyes. And the voice actors, especially Clive‘s, really knocked it out of the park. The gasps and sniffles and the pain? Holy shit. I cried mostly because of the voices

The unholy rage I felt man - I felt very much in Clive‘s position there. Very immersive. Just absolutely get WRECKED Ultima, you made the wrong brother angry

The battle was so, so awesome. I‘m sorry but this might just about be cooler than the one in Rebirth, hands down.

The music - that was a remix of Find the Flame, yes? It sounded different but alike.

Then that it was one on one, and Ultima almost humanlike - fit really well in showing how he is no different from us, from Clive. And the way Ultima got more and more desperate and lost all cool, INCREDIBLY satisfying

the part where Ultima and Clive kept meeting Eikon with the same Eikon - combined with the Voice overs from Clive‘s friends - so good, I cheered.

The Eikon fight part was also very cool. Hate to say it, but blue-fire Ifrit also looks damn cool. Can we get blue and red fire please XD

Just. The entire fight was wellrounded and fun, really had my blood pumping, I loved it.

And then. Then, the end. The flashback to baby Clive and baby Joshua. Come on. Dont turn the knife in the wound you sadists!

Well. Obviously. They are all okay. It‘s clear as day. Clive healed Joshua, so he‘s gonna be okay. Dion only fell into the sea, and OBVIOUSLY the Enterprise had followed them and picked him up. And Clive already got to the beach all alone, now we just need to go get him. Yup. Mhm

(But Sevi the game made it clear - shhhh. Shush. No. Not in this house. In this house, we live in dellusion)

[felassan]

A few more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago -

Chat asked "Why are there no Desire Demons in DA:I?". Mark said "I think they need a visual redesign and there wasn't time for them, and they're not, they require a combat rethink in terms of how they're used in combat, and a visual redesign, so it was basically just de-prioritized."

[please note this video streamed 4 months ago] "I'm not worried about DA:D not having been at TGA 2022. I mean they're doing it probably because they don't wanna date themselves. Their earliest launch date would basically be end of this year [2023], so it's rational for them not to be at TGA 2022. I assumed they would be mainly because of just the way the marketing campaign has gone, but the fact that they aren't is actually a strong signal that they've decided to regain control of their marketing campaign, which is actually probably smart. Yeah, they're not out of beta yet." Chat commented here "I'm kinda relieved to hear that because I was afraid they would push the game beyond Q4 24." Mark said, "No I don't think so. For them to go to TGA 2022 would have meant having full gameplay and they probably just didn't wanna polish it up. I should've clued in when they released a whole cutscene from the game on DA Day 2022 that they weren't gonna be at TGA 2022. That was a pretty strong signal. For them to do both wouldn't have been. There's no way that Geoff Keighley was gonna let them put that cinematic trailer on the stage at TGA 2022. So what they have is this sort've, too little for TGA 2022 but it's a big drop for DA Day, so that was the thing that I missed."

[following on from the previous point, and when chat was discussing feeling drip-fed] "It's just, I mean, for reasons that make sense for the project but less sense for the marketing. DA:D has been announced for a very long time. You wouldn't voluntarily announce a game so early if you didn't have external reasons. Also, harder to cancel an announced game."

"Cullen's story is done in DA:I."

"We've recast people before, for sure"

Chat said "I feel like DA fans have this tendency to cling extremely tightly to existing characters. Like, there will be a ton of characters introduced in DA:D that we will fall in love with, and not really miss people from previous games." Mark replied, "Yeah, you're right about that. That's exactly what happens, is people want stories with the characters that they know to continue but once they feel that they've seen new characters then they're a lot less concerned."

"I mean the general rule is, you don't bring back followers who are romances or who could be dead. So Cullen kind of doesn't meet any of the criteria for coming back. The quantum on DAII characters is really high. I guess there are a lot that don't die, but."

"My feeling on Absolution, I think everyone else is a bit too under-played and Qwydion is a bit too over-played. If you like brought her done one notch and everyone else up one notch it would be okay. But yeah, she does stick out a little bit for sure."

Chat asked "Was there any thought given to bereskarn in DA:I?" Mark replied, "I think the problem is the artists don't really like the visual design of bereskarn. I think there's a cool model to be had there, but they just don't have it at the moment. I think there's a general desire to move away from just generic wilderness creatures as combatants, like wolves and bears and stuff, so maybe they'll make a reappearance."

Chat asked "Who does everyone think the 'default' Divine is?" Mark said "Interesting question, I don't know."

Chat asked "Do you think that the Architect will make an appearance in DA:D?" Mark replied, "I don't suspect, I think they'll let the Architect just be, the place for the Architect to appear was DA:I, I don't think he will appear in DA:D. I think the reason why he doesn't appear in DA:I is because he could be dead." Chat commented, "Wouldn't he have the same powers as Corypheus though, and just come back?" Mark replied "Well that's true, that's a good point. I don't know that we established that by then or not but I don't know, maybe. He could've linked himself to a, could've been body-hopping."

Chat asked "Do you see DA continuing as a franchise after DA:D?" Mark replied, "Oh yeah, I don't think they're done with DA."

Chat said "We saw Hira in Absolution using a flying magic disc. Do you think they will implement that in DA:D as a new form of magic?" Mark said "Yeah, I don't know. It was interesting because when Hira uses it the first time she uses it to lift someone else, which is sort've how I imagined it working, but then she actually flies with it later. I don't know if that was just poetic license given to the anime creators or if it's an actual plan for going forward. It's definitely presented as quite an awkward way to fly."

[source]

He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -

"I think you can always see the Black City in the Fade, I think that's been said/is correct"

"I like that in DAII the darkspawn have a consistent visual. They don't in DA:O. So I'm pro-that. A lot of the darkspawn in DA:O have like orc plus zombie equals question mark"

"They did lose the grab animation from enemies in DAII. I don't think DAII had any sync animations"

"Stun on the player is not a fun ability. It's not so bad if you have a party fully controlled by the player (you can switch to another party member to try and break it) but only one party member, it's not fun for sure. You definitely need some sort of range attack otherwise you just end up kiting like the Arishok fight in DAII"

"DA does have a tendency to use the Pride demon model as 'generic high tier demon'

"I don't regret putting Cullein in DA:I , the characters are not their voice actors"

"Oghren is kind of a caricature in Awakening"

"Lore in DA is always presented through someone's interpretation"

"In Awakening the Children don't really fit in with the rest of the design up until this point"

"The official response to Leliana's death retcon in DA:I is that the only way Leliana can die in DA:O is at the Urn of Sacred Ashes, so the Urn brought her back. The only way she dies is a weird, specific choice, you're making a choice if you kill her in DA:O for sure. It's not a common choice. Desecrating the Urn doesn't make any sense, I don't think there's a rationale given for why you do that. I can see 'destroy it' but I don't know why in the world you would desecrate it so. Very few people are able to, Renegade in Mass Effect is actually not widely chosen"

"Golems of Amgarrak DLC is there to [just] be there [basically]. Most of the DLC in DA:O doesn't have any particular goals. It was just to make DLC. Like Leliana's Song doesn't really expand Leliana very much. Darkspawn Chronicles is just kind've a fun thing to exist. In DA:O DLC was pretty much still a new concept, at least big pieces of DLC. So kind've trying to figure out what people wanted"

"Awakening is an old-school expansion pack in a time when expansion packs are gone basically. So that's why it feels so big"

Chat asked, "As Executive Producer, did you have any say on the story and direction of the lore?" Mark said "I'm always involved in that kind of stuff, I'm not the one dictating lore but I'm influencing it for sure"

Chat asked "Any chance of the DA tactics game actually being made at this point?" Mark replied "There was not really any chance of a DA tactics game being made. It's pretty antithetical to everything EA believes in"

Chat mentioned that golems in Awakening lack a 'gap closer' move. Mark said "that's why they got chucking rocks in later games"

"Strategy guides used to be a big money maker for games. Not so much anymore"

"The models got new bones in DAII"

Chat asked "Is there a reason why the Legion of the Dead don't automatically just join up with the Wardens?" Mark said "Politics I guess"

[source]

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

[skaianettechsupport]

so i’ve gathered my thoughts a bit and…i’m still in camp pessimism, though more in a call the family just in case but he may pull through kind of way rather than jumping straight to writing a eulogy, i realize that we only saw 15 minutes of gameplay and that’s hardly anything, but based on that here are some of my thoughts (i’m sure there will be more (both critical and praising) after i’ve had time to really ruminate)

(adding a cut bc this was LONG)

the art style doesn’t totally have me sold, i realize it’s probably for performance and longevity’s sake but i really liked the skin textures in dai (they felt more human to me w/ their flaws rather than everyone being smoothed) i also don’t see why we have to redesign the demons & darkspawn every single game but that’s nit-picky (the spells are also a nit-picky thing for me i think there are better ways to illustrate an ice spell than putting big snowflake graphics on it)

i really wasn’t thrilled about the voice acting and thought a lot of the delivery sounded flat, along with that i thought that the writing was kind of lackluster and kept some of that vibe from the cinematic trailer that was making me nervous, all of the “what are we some kind of suicide squad” and “he’s right behind me isn’t he” comments are resonating for sure and i hope there’s a little less of that than the clips we saw implies

there were a lot of cutscene shots that, are forgivable, but did make me kind of roll my eyes because it just felt like the game desperately pointing out look how epic and sick and cool and kick ass these guys are trust me bro these guys are mind blowing fr you don’t have any frame of reference yet but you really don’t need it bc just look at them :) (some of the combat animations felt this way too, it felt gratuitous to me and could’ve been toned down a little, to be fair they probably are cool guys but i don’t know them yet and it felt like the game was trying to push me or convince me to feel a certain way rather than letting me develop those feelings/ideas on my own, it’s a little patronizing though again this is forgivable, it was just one of my minor gripes so it’s going in the post)

another minor gripe is that the game felt a lot more mass effect-y to me than dragon age, i know what minrathous is and i know it’s basically their equivalent of a hyper modern city, but it didn’t feel like it was magic powered to me it felt like sci-fi tech? (specifically the spotlights and loudspeaker announcements) i just wish it didn’t have that sci-fi futurism feel to it it was odd, though maybe it is more of a fantasy setting in game as you explore or maybe i’m just used to ferelden being super backwater, i don’t know, the vibe change is giving me some crazy whiplash

i guess my biggest issue was the va work and writing, i’m worried everyone will sound flat for the duration of the game and the writing will keep that cheesiness (which is what made me so anxious after the cinematic, i thought that might not bode too well) this game may be more tailored for “modern audiences” but i don’t think that means it needs to patronize the players and dumb itself down for us we can handle heavy subject matter and complex story lines (i remember seeing this gripe about inquisition too nothing new here, just a steady progression from 1 to 4 it seems) i’m not ready to throw a funeral for bioware or anything but i am feeling pretty nervous, cautiously observing shall we say, ill be a pessimistic optimist about it how about that

i will say that the lighting and effects are beautiful and the setting is also gorgeous, i’m excited to see everything and spend forever exploring. all this being said i will be creating the most sad little fail guy ever and romancing emmrich, thank you

(i’m just glad to see solas again, smoothed and flat in his delivery as he may be..and apparently there’s an inquisitor creator! so maybe there’s still hope for solavellan closure? maybe? maybe not..(please please please please please please pleaspleadepleasepleasepleasepleasdpease i’ll be happy if there’s satisfying closure i promise i PROMISE BIOWARE ARE YOU LISTENING????? I PROMISE ILL NEVER GRIPE AGAIN!!!!!!!!! OR BITCH OR MOAN OR COMPLAIN EVEN A TINY TINY BIT I SWEAR 😭🙏))