#mostly media where it was originally just supposed to be the one book/series (warriors) or where the author didn't plan (naruto)

[woodfrogs]

long (mostly unplanned) series almost always have a first arc with completely different vibes than the rest of the story as the author(s) figure out what exactly they're doing and the problem is. i always fall in love with the first arc's worldbuilding and wish everything after stayed more similar

thinking about it further the problem might just be that the authors i'm thinking of are not good at writing and so when they're left to develop a story further it inevitably fumbles

[felassan]

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

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

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

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

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

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

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

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

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

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

Dragon Age II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

World of Thedas

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

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

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

DAI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A general note on concept art:

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

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

[faireekira]

highlights from Flames of the Dark Crystal (the fourth and final book of the series):

there’s always a quote from the original film or some other dark crystal piece of media in the beginning, and the quote for this book was “we may meet in another life, but not again in this one” :(

immediately not a good sign like im not even on chapter 1 yet

the Vapra are known for being good fliers (with their wings not like as pilots)

the Swamp of Sog is green and turquoise as well as purple and gold

Amri crouches so much that normally he looks shorter than Naia, but he’s actually taller than her

a skeksis says “The Skeksis will ruin the Gelfling so utterly, your descendants won’t know the names of the seven clans!” which ends up being true ouch

Naia chokes the hell out of a skeksis

Gurjin also has healing powers

Grottans have sharp teeth

skekSa’s ship is named Vassa

urSan the Swimmer (skekSa’s counterpart) has indigo hair with silver streaks

urSu the Master Mystic (and later on Jen’s caretaker) explains the history of the skeksis and mystics

his bowl full of green water, as seen in the film, also makes an appearance.

urSu states that it has been nearly 2,000 trine since the appearance of the urSkeks, so Jen will likely be born soon

apparently the urSkeks were kicked off of their home planet because they wanted more out of life

it’s specifically stated that the crystal itself rejected all of the urSkeks when they tried to return home the first time, which is kinda different from the reason stated in Creation Myths

skekSo seems to be the only skeksis that remembers being an urSkek

Naia is really just ready to kill at a moments notice

honestly it’s possible that she’s even more fierce than Maudra Fara which is saying something

normally the third and smallest sun moves quickly and barely appears in the sky, but when another conjunction is about to happen, the sun is slower and stays in the sky much longer

Naia’s relationship with urVa the Archer is similar to Jen’s relationship with his master

urVa says that the resistance is not about war, it’s about acknowledging that thra is sick and needs to be healed, then finding a way to heal it

the Mystic Valley is very close to Sami Thicket and Stone-in-the-Wood, so if Jen is confirmed to be Spriton or Stonewood (or both), then urSan was not far from him and was not just randomly wandering around until he found baby Jen

Naia sees both Tavra and Onica as older sisters

Tavra tells Naia that she’s extremely proud of her

a background Spriton has blue locs and green wings

the trees in Sami Thicket are green and brown

Kylan believes that Maudra Mera and the rest of his clan didn’t care about him when he lived there

Maudra Mera is short and wiry, and is also sixty-four

she’s older than Laesid

Mera’s extreme loyalty to the skeksis was to ensure that nothing happened to her clan; she fully believed that they were draining gelfling but believed that loyalty was the only way to survive

after Seladon’s crowning, Maudra Fara took all of her Stonewood warriors directly to the castle to fight.  They ended up retreating back to their village, but the skeksis persued and killed or captured all of them

the skeksis also intended to kill every last Stonewood - there’s no implication that Jen was in the village

landstriders are used in battle at the castle and are sometimes given armor, including leg armor

Naia sees that Gurjin has changed a lot since he became a castle guard (not negative change, just more cautious)

the Drenchen and Spriton are longtime rivals, which is weird cuz they mostly have nothing to do with each other but anyways

basically every clan has a problem with at least one other clan, except maybe the Sifa

Maudra Mera sleeps with braids in, idk how common that is

Amri is very stealthy

Gurjin’s eyes are gray-blue

Gurjin and Naia have a “dreamfast link” where they can talk to each other without touching, but only at a certain distance

gelfling warriors with wings have lighter armor/weapons for aerial attacks, but since Drenchen wings are better for swimming, all Drenchen wear the same armor

Maudra Laesid can ride on her pet muski (giant eel) and its name is Chapyora

Laesid is tall and has locs as well as deep green skin

the Drenchen (and maybe other clans) have a special maudra cloak that’s shaped like Drenchen wings

gelfling can still communicate through special fires

Laesid says that Kylan and Amri are handsome ohmygod

Grottans tend to wear darker clothes and capes

Amri is kinda beefed???????

the Great Smerth in Sog has a great hall with carvings of the various creatures that live there

Naia’s youngest sister’s wings are a kind of transparent green

basically what i’ve gotten from these books is that gelfling wings can come in a variety of styles, and their colors tend to compliment their owner’s appearance

Naia’s middle sister also has healing powers

Naia’s father has beard locs

the urSkeks likely had a large influence on thra

the crystal only started to feed off of essence when it was fully corrupted and “empty”

Amri smells like candlewax and stone

skekSa the Mariner fears the Emperor which is bad because she’s scary as hell

some crazy stuff happens with skekSa, i’ll say that. it’s really kinda unbelievable

when you dreamfast with one skeksis/mystic, you dreamfast with their other half too

Gurjin believes that Naia should be All-Maudra

when Drenchen are grieving for a loved one who’s passed away, they remove any decorations from their locs like beads or ribbons

Naia’s new nickname is “Blue Flame Naia”, and it was given to her by Gurjin

Drenchen armor is made out of fish scales and crab shells

the landstriders are depicted as being way larger than they were in the film, able to hold 2 gelfing comfortably

the maudras do this thing where they put their palms on another maudra’s forehead if she needs comforting.  this is the only time i’ve ever read of any gelfling doing that

it’s said that Aughra became distant from the gelfling because they stopped asking her for help; i said this in a previous post but Aughra has been awake this whole time

Maudra Fara is described as being like a stone pillar

Deet shows up towards the end and she’s just hanging out with Rian

she and Amri interact, but there’s no scene of them seeing each other for the first time in awhile, they just start talking 

Rian still communicates through the blue fires

the dual glade has a golden hilt and it starts singing when he says his speech

the Emperor’s voice is like black smoke

before they even knew of the prophecy, the skeksis were fully prepared to kill all gelfling

Deet still makes her smoke bombs

she was really shoehorned at the end to tie in with aor (im guessing)

the Emperor is capable of using all four of his hands

the Battle of Stone-in-the-Wood goes differently; they tricked all the skeksis into believing that only Rian was there, and then jumped them once they were caught off guard

Maudras Mera and Fara lead the aerial attacks

Rian fights the Emperor himself, and then fights skekMal

his sword ends up being broken

Maudra Fara still dies, but she spends her last moments attacking the Emperor and defending Naia which is so metal

the final battle with Naia is sooooooooooooooooooooo good yall its amazing

NAIA is amazing like what

urVa the Archer still sacrifices himself but it’s way sadder

the crystal shard is still lodged in Rian’s sword

it’s 100% implied that the ruins Jen and Kira see later are in what was once Stone-in-the-Wood, specifically Maudra Fara’s meeting chamber; the prophecy etchings were carved by Thra itself

that might have been obvious but nothing happens in aor season 1 to prove it

Seladon makes a small appearance, and admits that she sided with the skeksis in fear of what they would do to the Vapra, not solely out of loyalty

she also acknowledges that the All-Maudra crown was created to divide the gelfling

Amri braids a landstrider’s hair with ribbons.  idk if that’s significant but i want to remember that

Gurjin calls Rian a fizzgig

after the battle at Stone-in-the-Wood, the gelfling all agree that they should stay away from the area surrounding the castle and either go way north (to Ha’rar) or way south (to Smerth).

Kylan, Onica, and Tavra stay behind to decipher the prophecy etchings

Rian and Gurjin plan on going to the castle to heal the crystal

Amri goes with Naia to Smerth

the book has no clear ending, it’s supposed to be the last one though

[dlamp-dictator]

I’ll keep an eye on this anime. If anything, it definitely looks pretty, the fight scenes have been [done] well so far, and seeing Melida be cute in full color is great. If I just get a decent action series out of this anime, I’ll be happy.

                                                                            -Allen X, October 22 2019

 Well folks, Assassins Pride wrapped up last week and I can safely say I got what I wanted. In the end, I think this was a pretty fun and passable anime to watch weekly. Decent action, decent plot, and a decently written story. Nothing was too offensive or annoying save for one or two moments in the middle, and as much as I felt the show stumbled compared to the manga and possibly the light novel I have hope that this might just get an official translate and... well, you know, do the pacing thing better.

But since I had a habit of covering this thing after every arc I figured I’d give the show some closing thoughts and an overall opinion of the thing at the end. I hope I don’t spend a 1000+ words on this, but... well... I can get pretty wordy when I get a groove, so we’ll see. 

But anyway, let’s start with...

The Good

The Visuals

Let’s not mince words folks, this anime is pretty. It might be because I’m a sucker for night aesthetic, but the one disadvantage of the black-and-white manga is that were really never got to see just how dark the world of Flandor really was. To quote myself again:

(This is a) world trapped in perpetual night with warriors of light being the only thing keeping away further darkness, along with the last bastion of humanity being a literal chandelier city in case you missed the symbolism

And nothing makes you really feel that more than that first scene of Kufa walking through the quiet streets on his way to the Angel estate, seeing not only how dark the world is from the night sky above, but also how artificial the light within it really is. The dark aesthetic really helps a lot of the other characters pop out a lot more in terms of the actual color. Mana is literally a glowing, flaming aura that lights the darkness like a candle. The two main girls in this series are a bright blonde and white-haired girl that stand out against the black night sky like the sun and stars. 

Again, symbolism.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

The Action

Not to say this is Trigger or Madhouse or Perriot, but it is pretty nice that we get a decent action scene every arc. Something I definitely appreciate is that they show contrast between Melida’s kind nature and friendly attitude with her brutal and dirty fighting style. 

See, Melida is a kind and gentle girl that would rather not use violence save for fighting demons, but if she has to fight she’ll use every dirty trick in the book. She’ll throw sand, she feint attacks, she go into brawling when close enough, she fake being injured to make her opponent let their guard down. It’s a nice little story detail that shows you this noblewoman was, in fact, trained by a ruthless assassin that taught her to actual fight for survival instead of like a nobleman. Her taking down stronger students by doing all but outright cheat is almost hilarious to watch sometimes.

The Overall Narrative

For as fast as the pacing was I feel like I got a good idea of Melida’s story and the trials she has to endure as the “Incompetent Talented Girl”. This story focused on Melida more than Kufa, which is something I’m very thankful for. It’s always tempting to switch over the OP male MC to overpower his way through things, but to my pleasant surprise this only happened in one arc, and it was an arc that had some justification for it, though I really didn’t care it myself. Save for the third arc everything was to show Melida’s growth from a shy and bullied girl to a competent swordswoman that can even hold her own against the other heirs of the three noble houses. 

But that’s enough of the good, so now we have to talk about... 

The Bad

The Pacing

There’s no getting around this. Even if I didn’t already read bits of the manga online ahead of time the pacing for this show is still insanely fast. Even taking out the fact that this is an adapted story we’re never given enough time to absorb certain scenes. And the worse is that a lot of the arcs have a focus on intrigue and mystery. Luna Lumiere Selection Tournament Arc had two major mysteries: who was the one that changed the plaque and who is Black Madia masquerading as? They especially took care to make Mule seem like a very suspicious party only to reveal it was a third party in the very same episode. The mystery of Black Madia was done better, though by necessity as she couldn’t reveal herself until the very last moment of the arc. This was fine in the anime, but it could had used an extra episode or two of build-up between scenes. The arc at Rosetti’s hometown was a huge mystery that had Kufa under believable suspicious, and was actually done pretty well by not revealing the true culprit until the last episode of it, it also helps that Kufa was under suspicion from the first episode of it. The Library Exam Arc was... done alright, but it could had used an extra episode or two to cook and add some more tension between the Angels and the other nobles, but it was done well. 

And that’s the main issue. Every arc could had used one or two extra episodes to really set the scene. Nothing was done poorly in terms of structure and narrative, but everything could had been better had things slowed down. Despite the action this show isn’t a shounen or action genre, it’s a political drama with a combat school setting. 

This might also be just the issue of this being a 12-episode anime adapting a novel. A  novel has the advantage of progressing its plots slowly with the knowledge the reader has the entire book to finish either that arc or at least most of it. If that reader skips around because they’re bored that says more about them than the author. With an anime or television show you don’t have that luxury, you only have a few episodes at best to keep a viewers attention, especially for something like the seasonal anime lineup where you have to keep audience retention every week and your competition is the other 50+ anime out there that might possibly be more interesting. I pity whatever decent anime has to contend with the newest My Hero Academia season along with everything else. 

I understand the need to want to just show off the cool bits to keep audience attention, but it came at the cost of the narrative. Even if this thing still holds together well it could hold together much better if they only focused on the first two arcs of this series instead of trying to shove in four, but alas... 

In any case...

Other Smaller Issues that Bugged Allen

Really, the pacing was the biggest issue in this anime, but I do have my fair share of gripes and nitpicks too. I’ll keep this in list form for the sake of simplicity.

Kufa having access to potions/medicines that can not only kick-start a mana-less person into having it, but one that can also turn half-Lyncrophyes back to humans opens up quite a few plotholes and issues. I’m sure the light novel and manga explain their existence better, probably something to the effect of them being extremely experimental and a deadly risk, but the anime doesn’t explain that and it can take you out of the story if you care about the world-building.

I feel like side characters like Nerva, Mule, and Salacha were suppose to get more screentime, or at least more development, but just didn’t due to the pacing and runtime. You get the basic idea of everyone, but it feels like the show wanted to do more with them, or at least that the source material probably did more with them.

The occasional moments fanservice don’t work too well in this series. It’s nothing to the level of Senran Kagura or Ikkitousen, but when your cast consist of mostly middle school aged girls the most fanservice that should be seen is a beach episode or a sleepover episode. And while this anime did have a sleepover episode it still also took time to put some of this girls in... compromising positions. My general rule of fanservice is that high school age characters doesn’t really count due to the wonky-ness of hormones act and how most media east and west tends to treat high school characters anyway, but middle school kids... yeah no. That’s just my morals, but it’s still a detractor from the anime.

The third arc kind of felt pointless since it tried to focus on Kufa’s relationship with Rosetti. I didn’t really need to know about Kufa’s past, and connecting it to Rosetti just... doesn’t feel right given how he dismissive treated her in the first arc. Making Rose a half-vampire was also pretty pointless to me. It feels like they were trying to give Kufa a harem when this show is mostly focused on Melida, and the most interesting part about his past is a mix of his life in the dark zone of the world and his past as an assassin, not his relationships with his apparent adoptive sister. It just felt... really focused and a waste of time. They could had cut out this arc, gave each other arc an extra episode to build up some things and be none the weaker for it.

The Dub

The nice thing about VRV is that I can see the HiDive dubcast along with the show. I only watched a handful of episodes, but here are my general throughts for those curious. Overall, the dub is fine, but like most HiDive Dubcasts it feels... off. Not bad, but it feels like they needed to be 4 or 6 weeks off the original release instead of 2 or 3 to get the director in the right place. I feel like most of the issues with this dub come from the direction and scripting rather than the actual voice-acting. But just to keep this short.

Kufa sounds too flat. This was a pretty common dubbing issue back in the early 2000s when trying to translate/localize a stoic, serious character. The director is probably trying to make the actor emulate the original Japanese voice acting and Kufa just sounds too flat and bored at times because of it. Most character like this tend to be given a more deadpan and sarcastic edge to them in English to make the have a little more emotion. In Japanese that flat tone is meant imply stoicism, resolve, and masculinity. In English... that’s just sounding flat and bored. Again, most characters like this are usually given a different kind of tone to keep them from sounding bored. For Kufa I’d say a more strict and stern tone of voice would help given he’s an instructor, almost like a even-toned drill sergeant issuing orders. He does sound like that from time to time when actually instructing, but I wish he kept that persona. Though that’s just my take.

Nerva and Rosetti... just don’t hit it for me. I don’t mind the difference in tone, but the script doesn’t lend itself to it. Rosetti’s actor makes her sounds much more like an adult in English, but her actual lines are still childish, which makes her come off as a little... cringe. Same with Nerva, but I’m willing to overlook it since she’s more of a side character anyway. Mule actually sounds pretty good in this regard. Her tone sounds less like a middle schooler and more like a young college woman, but since a lot of her actual lines has an air of condescending smugness it works out, though her actor sounds like she’s reading the script and not acting from it.

The scripting in general seemed to really want to follow the subbed version and it falls flat because of it. When I read the subtitles that take the world, systems, and general wackiness of this subpar anime so seriously it’s fine. But to actually hear it in  a language I understand... it kinda’ shows how lacking the series is. I’m not saying they should had added jokes or anything, but it feels like they could had made the dialogue a bit more casual than it was in the subs so that the lines flowed a little better. HiDive dubs, their dubcasts especially, tend to feel like a product of the early 2000s rather than something current.

Thoughts and Recommendations

Overall I do recommend this series as a decent action show with some nice colors to it and a killer OP and ED, but there's a lot better I could recommend too that does everything this anime does but better. 

So... here are a recommendations I have if Assassins Pride didn’t really click with you as much as you hoped.

A bit of an odd recommendation, but I’ll stick up Goblin Slayer first. This anime is actually a lot like Assassins Pride, being a character-focused story with decent side characters and does a lot of its world-building in the background. However,  it does its arcs far better than Assassins Pride since they aren’t intrigue-based and the cast is solving much simpler problems in the grand scheme of things. It’s also an anime based off a light novel just to add to the similarities, and said anime also has four arcs to it. I will say this is a series that’s not for the faint of heart, and I almost recommend skipping episode 1 if you’re of a weaker constitution if you plan on watching this one.

Next up would be Chivalry of a Failed Knight. It does the combat school aspect of Assassins Pride much better, taking some strides to show that each of its students are, in fact, warriors capable of harming and killing others and going to a school to hone those skills. And if you that Melida was a ruthless fighter Ikki probably takes it a step further. And this is also another light novel adaptation, though the manga did technically finish its updates online if you’re curious. A side recommendation to this one would be Armed Girl's Machiavellism.

My last recommendation will be Katana Maidens. This is another combat school anime that I feel is honestly average, but it’s an anime-original series that has 24 episodes behind it, and quite a few decent action scenes. I recommend this one more to action junkies as I feel the story really starts to drag in the second half, but an overall decent series that does do itself world-building a little better than Assassins Pride, or at least I’m not asking as many questions at the end of it.

And those are my thoughts on Assassins Pride. Now I have a Rambling on video games to work on, so I’ll see you all later.

[morshtalon]

Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei

Possibly part 1 of a series of posts on the whole series, maybe?

So, the first game in the popular MegaTen franchise is, wouldn't you know it, kind of weird. It was actually a video game sequel to a series of two novels starring a sort of villainous protagonist and the (government-mandated to exist ubiquitously through japanese media) high school exchange student as they become indirectly related to the summoning of ancient bad dudes Loki and Set through the magic of 80's computer programming, go into historic japanese landmarks to resurrect shinto goddesses, witness horrific, gruesome, sometimes sexual actions from the demons, go to space, fight using gods that turn into swords, and generally have a good time.

Naturally, considering the, um... Notorious source material, it's only logical that the videogame adaptation would, then, turn the sort of dark, villainous, intelligent programmer guy into a blank slate warrior with no personality, the girl into a standard RPG magic user, and drop them into a big dungeon crawl with almost no plot, nonsensical NPCs and a connection with the novels so tenuous they might as well have just taken some inspiration from it and opted to create a more original IP instead (I dunno, maybe put a "shin" in front of the title or something). Thus is born the antiquated experience that is Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei.

While Japanese gamers did at the time have the original version of Dragon Quest - with the sprites that always faced down and the lack of a save system - ushering in a new style of role-playing gameplay into the mainstream, I suppose the mindset of RPG development was still rooted in the design philosophies of the western games from throughout the decade that were distilled into DQ. Games that, like Megami Tensei, typically featured a simplistic first-person view and a party of six characters, following the rough guidelines of the most recent version of D&D, and had generally no plot development, consisting instead of a hardcore, punishing trek through a few 20x20 grid mazes full of traps and gimmicks.

Furthermore, this type of experience, from what I heard, was huge in Japan, so it's no wonder Atlus chose to capitalize on that market instead of streamlining it and risk losing fans of the genre that were looking for an experience similar to what they had witnessed from RPGs so far. Less cynically, it's also entirely possible the developers themselves were huge fans of the first person dungeon crawler and wanted to replicate their positive experiences in a passionate love letter to the genre. Also, for what it's worth, they did add uniqueness in party management and customization, as you surely already know, but we'll get to that later.

I guess we'll never know the true context behind the original MegaTen's creation, but the point is, this is a very old-school game. I don't think it's nearly as brutal as the ones that inspired it, but it is also definitely far from holding your hand. At no point in the game is it entirely obvious exactly where items you're supposed to collect are located, so you mostly have no choice but to comb the entire dungeon yourself until you stumble upon the stuff you need to progress. Furthermore, sometimes the very NPCs that tell you there's even something to look for at all are slightly out of your way, so there's always the mental pressure of maybe having left something behind and having to backtrack and go to all sorts of places trying to find it when you run into the next dead-end.

By itself, this isn't really a bad thing. As an exploration-based dungeon crawl, it's expected that the player will have some agency over what they're doing, and it's refreshing to see a game where you have so much ground to cover, but with hardly any setpiece to spice up the crawling in terms of context, the job of entertaining the player falls squarely upon the gameplay's shoulders.

To that end, the gameplay is definitely more boring than stimulating. This is where I have to admit, I beat the Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei remake version of it. I have played the original, though, and I am aware of the differences between versions. I have also played future games in the franchise with the same issues, so there's no evidence that the original is much different in this regard. Anyway, apart from an intense earlygame where you're at risk of death from a stray Zan spell cast by a gnome if you're unlucky, the rest of the game's fights are uneventful, once you level up enough and have an array of serviceable demons at your side. There's only ever one group of enemy demons per fight. There can be up to eight of them, but all eight are the same type of demon, and the graphics will only show the one until the entire group is dead. It's kind of like every fight is against only one demon but the demon can attack several times and has an erratic, huge HP pool. Furthermore, targeting is completely random for all moves, and you'd think this would add a fake layer of frustration, but the game gives you an auto-battle option. It simply makes the entire party use their regular attack for as many rounds as you want and prevents text from popping up on screen to slow down the monster-slaying, but for the most part, this is more than enough to get you through whatever part of the dungeon you find yourself in, with only the occasional, very rare exceptions of either:

-A demon that has a dangerous ability, therefore making it so that you want to kill them as quickly as possible;

-A boss;

-A battle that you got yourself into without noticing your HP is getting low, so you have to get yourself back to good conditions before proceeding.

It's definitely more of a preparations game than a reactions game. Preparation is fine, but there's never any need for you to deploy clever strategies. The game is ALL about having a good arsenal of choices up your sleeve and, when you do, you're good to go, and then you need to be either very callous or purposefully challenging yourself while playing in order to get into a situation that requires mental resourcefulness and wit. I will admit, I checked some of the mechanical differences between the original and remake versions, and it seems like they reduced the HP of enemies and bosses quite a bit, and generally went to great lengths to streamline the gameplay and make it more in tune with the next few games in the series (as far I could tell from the party itself, Kyuuyaku seems to have taken the inner workings from Megami Tensei II and applied it retroactively to the first game as well to make it more consistent, but I'm not 100% sure). Maybe this means that the original is more nerve-wracking and you need to level up much more, but I doubt it really becomes more strategy-based and oriented towards exploiting the mechanics, like the style future franchise titles would strive to achieve. As far as I can tell, the abilities remain the same, only the stats change, so it's likely more of a formula redesign than any major gameplay departure. If it is though, I apologize, and rectify my statements regarding battle mechanics boredom as far as the original version is concerned.

But hey, regardless of version, the whole demon system is pretty cool. I don't remember the characters doing it much in the books, I believe Nakajima only had Cerberus and that was it, so there's a nice, original expansion of the novels'... mechanics (?) on display here. I don't think the demon conversation, recruitment and fusion systems need any introduction, but I will say that up until Shin Megami Tensei II, the seventh overall game in the franchise, for some odd reason all demons were limited to three abilities/spells (later three spells and a few abilities), so they were not very versatile. Furthermore, magic and abilities generally sucked for the most part in early MegaTen, and in this game, outside of Hanmahan, group healing and the occasional kaja spell, all you really want is a good punching bag to take the heat off of Nakajima and Yumiko.

Also, maybe it's just in the remake, but there are quite a few demons that are exclusive to the player through demon fusion. This begins happening from pretty much the start of the game, making them sort of unique all the way through and making it sort of cool for the player to go around with these demons that you can't see anywhere else and who are usually more powerful than the enemy demons in the area. Still, however, the limited abilities and limited usefulness of said abilities make things a bit boring and makes the demons sort of interchangeable for the most part, especially considering you can't even see them in battle. But hey, in 1987 I'm sure the vast array of options alone would have been pretty impressive and, considering the plethora of real-life inspiration that was put into the demons' designs, it's kind of still impressive today, really.

Enemies do have a few tricks of their own up their sleeve, too, though, and they usually fall into the "early RPG unfairness" spectrum quite nicely, such as being able to cast death spells when the game's programming is such that you get a game over if the 2 (out of 6) human party members die, even if all your demons are still alive (naturally the final boss can use a pretty accurate version of this move), or the loathsome "smiles and laughs" attack that permanently drains an experience level from a human party member if it hits, making you have to work your way back up again without even the mercy of having the enemy that sucked your level give a massive hoard of EXP when defeated. Or the mercy of adjusting the experience table (if you're level 41 and get a level sucked from you, now you're level 40 but you still need enough experience for level 42 to get back to level 41). It's basically a reset button.

The original version also had some major frustration in the fact that there was, like DQ and so many others of its time, no save feature. You had to visit a guy near the start of the game to get a password or use a late game spell from the girl. There was also no auto-mapping feature (though the mapper/mappara spell did exist, in the old MegaTen-style 3x5 grid), so you just had to create maps yourself, I guess, which is kind of like wizardry and bard's tale and such, and kind of interesting. Though, for a game that isn't all that stimulating otherwise, it's good that in the remake you don't also have to go get a sheet of graph paper to keep track of where you've been. I'm torn on whether the original's extra doses of hardcore game design are better or worse than the remake's streamlining, but it seems to me like the hardcoreness, probably caused by memory limitations and such, served more like an arbitrary layer of confusion placed over a game that didn't really have a juicy core, while the remake's alleviation of it brought about the black spots a bit more into the limelight... It's hard to make up my mind.

The more standard things to talk about in a review are usually average-to-enjoyable here. The environment graphics are pretty good for their time in the original version, and the remake has some good stuff in the late-game, but has a tendency to make the ground a fake-looking gradient that feels artificial and standoffish. Demon designs are always a treat in MegaTen and I wouldn't say this game is an exception, but I think the original designs look kind of goofy for the most part, while the remake uses the scaled-down style of SMT II and SMT If... instead of the better-looking, more detailed style of SMT I, so that's somewhat disappointing. The music is alright, nothing special, but it starts with really cheery, upbeat tunes that go against the ambiance, especially in the remake where they added a dark-ish prologue with more fitting, atmospheric music. The sheer length of each individual section of the dungeon means the tracks will start to get repetitive at some point, and they have a repetitive nature on their own, but they're not bad. I like the bass in Valhalla Corridor. I also like the last two areas' music. Bien's track sucks, though.

Either way, it surely isn't a great game. Nor does it have to be one, honestly. It's a 1987, sort of experimental game that toyed around with the concept of a dungeon crawler in a very japanese setting coming from a very risqué source. It has its merits in creativity, sorely marred by technical limitations and overly emphasizing on its subpar dungeon crawling gameplay, extending it to the point where it overstays its welcome quite a bit. The devs were wise in keeping the plot connections to its immediate sequel small (and it is fascinating, how different it is from all others in the franchise) because Megami Tensei 1 doesn't stand the test of time.

But again, such a thing shouldn't be expected from a late eighties, obscure weird little game, and for what it's worth, like I said about Dragon Quest, it served as a base, though in my opinion a rockier one, with which to found gameplay mechanics that would be expanded upon and embellished in future titles. I'd give it a 4 out of 10, perhaps an honorary extra half-point if the original version's gameplay is a tad more stimulating, but really it's hard to even give games like this a score. They're a product of the times, and they appeal to sensibilities of the times. Gamer mentalities, even within the genre, have moved past it, but it stays here as a testament to the growth of the series. Going into it, you're likely very aware of its shortcomings already, and whether you'd like it or not is, I think, even more independent of whatever mess of words I'd be able to string together like this than usual.