#my god the dlc voice acting is soooo good

[pan0ramy]

re8 thought dump because YE

i feel like this was almost inevitable but idk where else to talk about resident evil village so i’m just going to rant about it here!!! i have,,,, a lot of thoughts on this game after being so excited for it for so long

obviously, massive spoilers if you haven’t finished the game. i feel like i have thoughts on pretty much everything so please please please stay clear of this post if you’re trying to stay blind

otherwise, let me just rant about this game for a bit - mainly the story and characters - because i have Thoughts™

(also i feel like it goes without saying but this will be probably be quite long, so. strap in, ig)

okay SO. the whole intro was pretty interesting - even though we’d seen bits of it in trailers, it was still pretty unnerving and felt like it came out of nowhere. but the first thing that really stood out was the first village section with the hordes of lycans; i didn’t expect this game to start freaking me out so quickly but JESUS my blood pressure went up fast. 

there’s so many of them coming at you at once, and not only have you just lost half your damn hand, you’re not really used to the gunplay at that point AND you don’t have that many weapons at your disposal. so it’s basically just “hey we’re throwing you into this ring of death, good luck surviving!” which... now that i think about it, that really sums up the whole game lol

but for the most part, the early parts of the game are what we saw in the demos, so there’s nothing too new - it was nice getting to see the scene with all four lords and mother miranda, though. i wasn’t sure how the whole chase scene with the lycans would work - i thought heisenberg’s area was going to be some sort of mine, and that the chase would take place there - but it didn’t, and it was interesting regardless of it being so short. 

but the castle. THE CASTLE. 

i would be lying through my teeth if i said i wasn’t excited for dimitrescu like everybody else; i’m firmly in the camp of people who both meme about how attractive she is, and then also the people who legitimately find her attractive, soooo i kinda had high expectations going in? 

and sure, the castle section is only part of the game, but if there’s anything that makes me nervous most, it’s stalker enemies. resi 2 remake was actually pretty tough for me to get through because of how anxiety-inducing mr x was, and even though i don’t feel like she was as present as mr x was, lady d was still great! there were a good few times where you could hear her walking around and you just knew she was searching for you, which was really damn cool.

also, i know capcom had a lot of hype to live up to with lady dimitrescu, but goddamn they did such a great job with her. she’s so imposing but badass and just... really damn cool? like i honestly found myself being excited for her to show up rather than being scared. i just think she’s neat! I MEAN LOOK AT HER.

(also yes i know the whole internet has talked about how attractive she is, but can we just. appreciate that for a second???? she’s gorgeous and yall can’t tell me otherwise. like. bro ik the pronunciation is wrong but the way she says dimitrescu made me GASP i love this powerful vampire woman)

if anything, though, i... actually felt really bad that her story ended up the way it did. i mean, think about it: you break into her house, kill the three people she’s grown to consider her daughters, rob her shit, and then kill her? she technically goes through the same kind of parental grief that ethan does, in a way, which is a really interesting parallel. grief seems to be a theme that capcom really pushed for this game, and it works. 

also, her boss fight design is badass. she’s literally a dragon, how is that not incredible

so the castle was great, where could the game go from here? oh, i don’t know, how about gOOD OLD FASIONED FUCKING TRAUMA.

jesus christ the dollhouse GOT TO ME.

i’m pretty used to horror in general; i love horror games, movies, books, you name it. i’ve gone to horror movies where people have ran out because of fear all while i’ve sat there giggling the whole time. but the dollhouse? that dollhouse is FUCKED. i can’t remember the last time i watched someone play through a horror game and was so... on edge the whole time. the fact that they keep you waiting for so long with nothing happening just... makes the atmosphere incredibly uncomfortable, and then when shit does start going down, it goes down fast. in other words, jesus fucking christ that baby will haunt my nightmares until the end of time

basically capcom managed to make the n*zi baby joke from south park: the stick of truth legitimately terrifying, and i was glad to see donna die. moving on.

moreau’s section is the one i... actually don’t have as many thoughts on. it’s cool, sure, and the whole idea of him turning into a fish when he hits water is neat - it’s definitely a good callback to re4 - but idk, it didn’t really scare me that much. i can see it scaring those with a fear of water or the ocean, for sure, but eh. i thought the designs were cool, but i kinda tuned out a little here.

heisenberg, though, was anything but. the entire time leading up to village’s release, this guy has fascinated me for some reason. i don’t know if it’s because he’s the most normal-looking of the four lords, or the fact that he has telekinesis, or his amazing voice acting (seriously i know some people have shit on his VA but oh my god i adore it) or what, but this guy stood out to me from day one. i even went into the game expecting him not to die tbh. but no, he does, and his fight is pretty damn cool all things considered. only in a resident evil game could you have a mech fight and have it not feel out of place lol

also this line ^^^ legitimately made me laugh so hard i almost choked on my water. THE FACT HE TURNS AROUND AND APOLOGISES SO MEEKLY its fucking hilarious to me

but anyway.

similar to alcina, though, i was left with one big question about heisenberg - what did mother miranda do to him to get him to join her impromptu familly? he said himself to ethan that he didn’t want to join, so what did miranda do that didn’t give him a choice? did he have a family at some point? is he grieving too? what did miranda take from him? i can only hope this gets answered in the dlc, because it’s by far one of my biggest questions surrounding all of this. i may very well have missed it somewhere, and at least we know he has his telekinesis abilities thanks to miranda, but it’s a question that’ll definitely be on my mind going forward.

at this point, though, the story REALLY gets insane. it’s really nice how village decided to just continue on straight from what 7 did, and i’m very glad that everyone’s theories about chris being a werewolf were wrong - it’s a really nice spanner to throw in the works. if anything, the whole revelation of mother miranda disguising herself as mia the whole time since rose’s birth was really cool, and ethan being Mold™ the entire time was pretty neat too - it made a lot of things both in 7 and village make more sense.

what i’m still digesting, though, is the ending.

...man, capcom, you put poor ethan through all of that and then you have the balls to actually kill him? i mean shit, you made us think he was dead for a whole 20 minutes but then nope! he’s alive! but then nope! he’s dead again! i did see someone point out that at least ethan got to go out on his own terms, but dammit i would’ve at least liked for him to get to see mia one last time. i think it would’ve softened the blow a little more. but i guess that ties into the whole grief theming this game has going for it, and like i said, i probably just need some more time to digest it. 

i don’t dislike the ending, it’s just a very big culture shock - it’s definitely a ballsy move, and i really respect capcom for going all out the way they did. they really held back on nothing in terms of this game’s story and i absolutely love it. it was so, so worth the wait in that regard. 

and tbh that’s kinda how i feel about the whole game in general; it was super super good, very much worth the wait, and i absolutely cannot wait to see where resident evil goes from here. i have a gut feeling this’ll end up being one of my absolute favourites in the series, which i know is very high praise, but i really do love it that much. i wasn’t disappointed with much in this game, if anything at all. it’s just a super fucking good video game man idk what else to say at this point

[fvtvrelegends]

( charlie rowe, trans male, he/him, fire emblem: awakening ) * &. i know it must be scary for you, owain, after surviving the takeover. to turn into someone like owen faulk, a twenty-three year-old clerk at the hq, right here in castle town. just remember that you are as imaginative as you are impulsive, and to be wary, be safe, be true to who you are : heroic through and through. ( (H)O(Y)-(LIA) THERE )

               HOY THERE. Sup guys so I’m here with . . . the closest Fire Emblem has ever written to an actual LARPer who is ALSO my baby boy , fucking love of my life , favorite weirdo 10/10. Click for more under the cut , but beware of spoilers for Fire Emblem: Awakening !!

BEFORE CASTLE TOWN. / O W A I N. ( tw: parental death )

SOOOO OKAY. let me get some stuff out of the way ,

- - - UNDERNEATH THIS BOY CONSISTS OF SPOILERS FOR FIRE EMBLEM: AWAKENING ( and kind of Fates ) . A MARKER WILL BE SET TO INDICATE SPOILERS ARE OVER. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Soooo’kay Owain !! Now Owain. Owain has the exact same circumstance as Lucina , who I recently dropped if you remember her. 

Not too familiar still ?? That’s fine !! He’s basically the future child of one of the heroes of the story , and like the rest of them , traveled through time as his future was a ruined land where chaos took over and zombies and evil dragons and . . . yeah. In his time , his parents are long dead. It’s not pretty.

Now who are his parents ?? Well his dad is determined by the player - I won’t clarify who his father is for plot reasons ( but my favorite candidates are Gaius & Lon’qu ) , but his mother is LISSA. Lissa , yes , your first cleric in the game , one of your starter heroes , and Chrom’s little sister. So this makes Owain Ylissean royalty of sorts ( his mother’s a princess ) , and also Chrom’s nephew , and Lucina’s cousin. 

Of course , you find out that all of the children got separated as they traveled through time - some like Laurent , who were displaced five years earlier than when you find him. Owain didn’t have a scenario like that , but this poor baby actually curled up into a ball and cried upon realizing he was alone. My POOR FUCKING SON -

An interesting fact is that he bears the brand of the Exalt - a thing of the Ylissean royal family that surfaces on the skin of each member - while his mother’s actually never surfaced. He has it on his arm ( isn’t clarified exactly where , but I like to think it’s on the back of his hand. ) 

SOOOO lemme just get this one out of the way because I feel like I need to address it - because the way Awakening works , Owain is one of the many characters who - thanks to the fact that every child unit save for Lucina inherits their dependent parent’s ( in this case , his father’s ) hair color , his hair color and be... literally anything. Now in Fates his hair’s blonde ( because Lissa’s is ) BUT ... I prefer Owain with dark hair so I simply said fuck it and went with that. Technically either Frederick , Kellam , Lon’qu , or even Stahl ( closely in a way ) could give him that sorta hair color but just because I made him have dark hair doesn’t mean his dad’s any of these dudes. Again , I won’t clarify. 

ALSO . . . I’m not. SURE on what I want to do for Fates because Owain actually does appear in Fates ( as a dark mage named Odin working under Prince Leo of Nohr ) but I’m not. Big on some parts of Fates but ALSO I . . . I REALLY LIKE HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH LEO & NILES so I guess I’ll be including that but not Ophelia since. As much as I love her it’s so hard to picture Owain as a dad with this kind of plot. He’s still Baby in my eyes.

AKA bring me a fucking Leo.

- - END OF MAJOR FIRE EMBLEM: AWAKENING ( and kind of Fates? ) SPOILERS. 

SO YEAH THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT OWAIN is . . . well , remembering when I said he’s basically a LARPer ?? I wasn’t kidding.

A good chunk of his character is that most of the time he actually acts like a character from an old hero’s legend or something. He speaks in this overly theatrical Ye Olde kind of . . . dialect ?? I’m not sure if that’s the right way to put it but he basically puts on a show 90% of the time - but he also breaks character quite a few times in game.

( SPOILER WARNING )  Like when you recruit him with Chrom : “By the gods old and new! Another future traveler?! And yet, impossible, for I saw none like him in the light... Who are you, villain?! Speak now!” “Um, I'm Chrom. ...Of Ylisse? I have no quarrel with you, but if we must fight, then-” “UNCLE CHROM?!”

That is singlehandedly one of the best conversations in-game and it’s not even a support.

BUT YEAH he loves stories like these and always wanted to be that legendary hero so he goes around acting like it because he likes it and it’s so fucking pure.

One thing he has is his “sword hand” - it’s purely a theatrical thing , but he has this uncontrollable “sword hand” that thirsts for duel and battle and it’s why I almost made his url “svvordhvnd” but that was too obvious for Owain.

It’s changes to “aching blood” in Fates but that’s not as good as my opinion since in Awakening’s one of his voice lines is literally “My sword hand twitches.”

Lucina describes him as “colorful.” She’s not wrong. 

He also has a habit of naming his weapons and attacks and . . . shouting when he performs them ?? He also names these weapons & attacks after actual Fire Emblem characters & titles from previous games - it’s fucking funny.

And of COURSE all of these theatrics and imagination isn’t for naught since he’s actually a bit of a writer !! In his Hot Spring Scramble conversation with Laurent he actually has a manuscript all written down and apparently it’s well-written and damn good. 

But yeah in a nutshell - Owain is just a nerdy sweetheart who honestly never really grew out of playing pretend and it helps him cope with all the shit he’s faced so ?? Are we gonna blame him ?? Fuck no that’s my baby & he’s a creative baby who drinks respect women juice. That’s important. 

AFTER CASTLE TOWN. / O W E N. 

SO. Owain survived the takeover meaning he has all of his memories from Awakening ( and Fates w/ the exception of Ophelia I guess since I’m a sucker for Leo’s terrible trio ).

His one token is a staff from his mother ( in-game , he actually keeps a piece of one of his mother’s staves that he named after her but this time it’s The Actual Staff. )

He works at the HQ because honestly in this world too he was a fucking nerd and he embraces that shit constantly !!

Unfortunately he CAN’T be all theatrical because he realized Castle Town is a way different world than his and because people already thought he was strange back there , that’d only increased tenfold.

. . . BUT HE STILL GETS IT OUT SINCE HE REGULARLY PLAYS D&D and also acts sometimes at the theatre !! ( did u know in the future past dlc he actually becomes a performer w/ inigo and brady in the end it’s Fun )

. . . He. He Also. Performs at children’s parties for some extra cash because they looooove his whole “legendary hero” schtick and it makes him happy so yeah there’s that too. 

He likes a lot of things about Castle Town but again when he woke up and realized he was all alone AGAIN he really didn’t react well and basically . . . it was like the first time he got separated from his allies again. He’s gotten way more used to it now , but in the very beginning it was harsh.

His name’s now Owen bc I’m uncreative : )

He has parents he doesn’t really talk to - mainly because he knows they’re fake , and also they apparently weren’t the best fake parents either so he’s more dead set on finding his real parents again. 

AND.... yeah that it that’s !! Honestly it on my boy. I’d love to plot with u all bc I plan on being awake a bit longer to finish up tasks and things so YEAH come 4 me. 

Also bi as hell bc I do love projecting & also there’s no way Owain is straight thank u

[fandom-geek]

i finished episode prompto earlier and sooo here’s my non-spoilery thoughts on it above the cut

the story was p good, although it didn’t cover everything i thought it would, and some of the choices (both the player ones and the story ones) were definitely interesting

and turns out me getting an ff7 vibe from the trailer wasn’t entirely wrong - verstael reminded me a ton of hojo (from what i know of him from cc and doc). also That One Episode of Brotherhood kinda made an appearance, and while i was expecting it to be mentioned or referenced, i certainly wasn’t expecting what they did with it. but in a good way.

also this just made me want to hug prompto even more, tho he was one helluva badass, and also the after-credits scene was soooo good. can’t say more without spoiling it, but it was a nice little convo i think a lot of ppl will both like and kinda be surprised by.

so. now the spoilers.

if you’ve seen the trailer, you know ardyn makes an appearance, and oh my god. he only appeared two or three times in it (although my playthrough w/o sidequests was 1hr 40) and he does his thing being creepy and also creepy and funny. he sings the goddamn victory song in his final appearance. which, yknow, is both really creepy and completely unexpected. it may have made me laugh.

it also didn’t cover (as i mentioned above the cut) how prompto actually gets captured, which i’m a bit... ‘hmmm’ on. it goes from him defeating the final boss and speeding away on his way to gralea, to panning out to mr fuckface izunia, and then in the credits it cuts to him already tied up in the keep. which... yeah. i did like it showed the chocobros finding him from prompto’s perspective (also, like, this dlc is fucking gold for any noct/prompto shippers, and there’s some good bits for general ot4 shippers like myself) and the aftercredits was noct and prom talking in one of the barracks. altho that was heartbreaking, but only (only) bc of the game’s ending. that killed me more than a little bit.

also the credits reallly heavily imply prompto gets tortured. that’s a thing. ardyn can go rot.

aranea as a companion was good, esp in the cutscenes (she walks in on prompto about to self-harm, which u don’t realise at the time bc you’re choosing whether to or not, which was a big ‘UH NOPE’ for me) altho some of her battle lines were... dodgy. one of them is something like “you’re not worthless after all” or smth, and i just really really cringed whenever i heard it. not bc the voice acting was bad, and i’m sure it’s in character, it was just a really really dodgy thing for her to say given the state prompto’s in at the time.

ALSO!!!! bby prompto from the Brotherhood episode got a character model and multiple appearances, and just. kill me now. they even got him his own VA. he was simultaneously adorable and heartbreaking.

but then again that feeling is like 20% of the dlc, with a good 60% tearjerking and the other 20% prompto being a badass. didn’t help the opening loading screen literally says “Prompto suppresses feelings of sadness [in response to Noct knocking him off the train]”. 

and like [slight detour], given when i originally played the game i was shocked that no one even tried to like hug prompto or anything after they found him (which like, if it had been bc he was implied to be tortured, fair enough, but that scene just feels real closed off to me), but now i just want there to be a giant group hug for those fuckers. esp given the episode ignis teaser. goddamnit. when i watched that last night on youtube i didn’t feel at all ready, and when i saw it again at the end of the dlc i felt even less prepared.

going back to episode prompto - 8/10 (only bc i am really not used to the floaty ps4 gun controls since i’m usually a pc gamer), absolutely ripped my heart out, someone give them all a hug (except ardyn, he still needs to go rot).