#no i am not satisfied with because gameplay

[thydungeongal]

Hey there! I just say your post about dungeon crawlers. I was curious about your second bullet point, "Dungeon-crawling challenge games actually kind of own if you're willing to engage with them on their own terms! There's a lot of potential for cool gameplay if you let go of silly reductive notions like "roleplaying" being just being when you play-act your character or social interaction!" I was curious if you'd mind telling me more about how you feel roleplay should be handled in these types of games. I am genuinely interested to hear your thoughts. :)

Okay, first of all, I have a very broad and admittedly circular definition of role-playing (in the context of role-playing game): role-playing is when you're playing a role-playing game.

As said, it's circular, but ultimately, throughout my years of playing role-playing games I've found that all other definitions are unsatisfying. To conclude that role-playing is the parts where the mechanics aren't used (the roll-playing and role-playing dichotomy) implies that mechanics are somehow inherently contrary to a good role-playing game experience, which is simply untrue, because good mechanics can actually enhance the narrative! Saying that only the social parts of play are role-playing undermines the fact that players will be still making decisions for their characters in various other situations where the personal and emotional stakes can be even greater than in social situations!

Ultimately, role-playing games as a medium are defined by the possibility space, and specifically that possibility space being near infinite. There's an old line I keep bringing up from some painfully twee eighties RPG ad which goes like "Role-playing games are like board games but you can move outside the board!" and ultimately that is the thing that defines a role-playing game. It's a game where the players collaborate in a shared fictional space to produce cool little narratives although sometimes the cool little narratives aren't the point but it's literally like a lil challenge that the players try to overcome by interfacing with the fiction and engaging with the mechanics.

To tie this into dungeon crawlers: even a traditional dungeon crawler is ultimately a role-playing game because it has the players engaging, via their characters, with the shared fiction, sometimes mediated by the rules. A lot of people assume that a dungeon crawler must mean that the gameplay is nothing but a meat grinder, but this is actually ahistorical and not actually reflective of how old-school dungeon crawling RPGs play out!

Even the most basic dungeon is still a location in the setting it's part of, so there is plenty of narrative content to be found there. The characters might just be motivated by greed, but there is plenty of narratively satisfying content that can happen in the pursuit of that goal once one accepts that there need not be a linear narrative where the characters must hit certain story beats, but the story itself can just be "the characters went into a place, explored, interacted with the locals, found out some secrets about the dungeon, fought some monsters." That is still role-playing.

None of this is to say that the play-acting part of play (which I sometimes call characterization) is in any way bad: in fact, it can very much enhance the gameplay. But that is in and of itself not the end-all-be-all of role-playing!

Anyway role-playing is so much more than describing your cool elf kissing other cool elves, it can also be your cool elf finding a cool sword in a dungeon and giving it a name. Dungeon crawlers kick ass because the GM can craft a whole narrative about how the dungeon used to be and then reveal it slowly to the players through their characters finding fantasy audiologs and that is already narratively satisfying in and of itself!

[hungriesttable]

one of my favorite things about Dante Limbus Company is that they achieve a level of what I will call “sogginess” rarely seen in the wild (source material), more commonly seen in captivity (fanfiction)…

The insecurity. The inability to understand that they have a positive impact on others without being told outright. The sad, resigned self-deprecation. “I know it’s the same tired old face for you…but here I am” when you re-select them as an announcer (a line which you are literally incapable of seeing during gameplay). The “you guys only love me for my clock 😞” mentality.

Dante wouldn’t ask, “would you still love me if I were a worm?”, because they’d be afraid of a resounding NO.

Not to say Dante doesn’t have their satisfying moments of asserting themselves as manager, but man. What a creature

[official-megumin]

I love atlyss so much.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. I am not a furry. So normally games like atlyss stay kinda off my radar.

But like, booba. I also heard the gameplay was great, so I figured I'd give it a go.

ANd just, the gameplay, the visuals, the sounds. It's all so wonderful.

The gameplay is snappy as satisfying, the artstyle is delightful to look at even if you don't care about big boobs and fat asses.

The game plays it's low poly style to its strengths. Everything is as detailed as it needs to be and the OST of the game plays into the sort of dream-like atmosphere the rough textures and low poly end up producing.

And it just fits the lore of the world. The world is surreal and supposed to be somewhat beyond reality.

I can't believe I came just to be able to play as a wide hipped animal girl, and I stayed because hopw incredibly loveable the world kissef is making has turned out.

here is the soundtrack on youtube btw

[ohcorny]

deeply curious about your opinion on mouthwashing

it's an unnecessary part of oral hygiene. brushing your teeth and especially flossing are more important.

anyway. spoilers in this post for the game.

i'm going to co-opt lee's post about it to save myself rewriting the opinions we share but he hits the nail on the head about the gameplay. i didn't play it myself, just watched a streamer go through the whole thing, but all the game-ass-game elements felt completely tacked on. especially given there isn't one until like.... an hour in? up until the maze (or at least that's when the thought occurred to me, idr if there was anything before it) the game was just go to place, talk to character, get object, receive story progression.

and i thought that was fine up to that moment. tell me a claustrophobic story! but as soon as it added Horror Gameplay it was like the developers went 'fuck shit we need to add a challenge or it's not a real horror game'. and i never changed my opinion on that as there were more of those sections added.

because the game just keeps going. i remember when we get to the big reveal about what Really happened i looked at the timestamp on the VOD i was watching and there was somehow an hour left. and i was just ??? why??? the game just becomes a showcase of 'look at our cool scary visuals! look at our metaphors!' without anything left to actually say about them. we know what happened. there's nothing to reveal or unpack that we couldn't have done earlier in the story, when people were alive, when it mattered. we just forgot to put a game in our game until the last minute.

but the thing that really annoys me, and this i'll put under a read more because it's Actual actual spoilers

how fucking dare they make the whole crux of the issue be that jimmy sexually assaulted anya and got her pregnant, and then do nothing with that in the post-reveal nightmare sequences. we spend so much time on swansea and curly and all anya gets is a womb with a cartoon horse ultrasound. are you fucking kidding me

like the most charitable explanation i can conceive for that is jimmy only cares about what the men around him think, so we only spend time with them in his nightmare world, but like. i am simply not satisfied with that reading. i do in fact need it underlined if that is the intent. somebody, anybody, saying 'why are you apologizing to me'. anybody caring about anya at all.

if you're going to keep flashing the message of 'take responsibility' i would like at least some gesture toward what he really, actually needs to take responsibility for

[vajrapoet]

Turning The Wheel

For SUNDANG RPG, I wanted to write a different kind of turn-based system. I stand on the shoulders of giants: PbtA’s Conversation-As-Procedure and “No Combat Minigame.” My goal was to make a battle system that had the free flowing, no-minigame feel of a PbtA/FitD game, but had a bit more structure to satisfy the action-heads.

One of the bigger inspirations for revolutionizing the turn-system is my obsession with The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, two seminal Silat films that have some of the best action sequences and choreographies in all of cinema. To me, it stands among Police Story 2 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the current peak of cinematic action.

A few things to lay down to help center the thought-processes I had:

I am of a theater-academic background. My fascination and hyperfixation on RPGs stems wholly from the Role-Playing aspect. My friend group loves to extract stories and narratives from gameplay loops, but we want to Role-Play In A World first and foremost.

Therefore, I value the Role-Playing Experience above everything else. This is no doubt colored and informed by what RPGs I began with: Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: the Ascension. RPGs are world-portals to me, ways to experience, interact, and interrogate realities.

I don’t consider Mechanics to be separate from the “Fiction”. I might even deem a game’s rules to be the “Infrafiction,” the Fiction underneath everything else that arises from a game. The Fiction that demands to be told. The specter that suffuses every rules interaction.

Tangent: This idea was first spurred on because of idle daydreams while playing and finishing my current run of Final Fantasy XII. For those that don’t know, Final Fantasy XII has the ADB or Active Dimension Battle System (which is funny because ADB is also the acronym for Asia Development Bank, one of the major enemies of National Industrialization in the Philippines). ADB is the evolution of the popular ATB battle system or the Active Time Battle System. It’s called ADB because you aren’t squared off into a different screen when you enter combat. Instead, you go into combat as you’re exploring the world. Combat and Dungeon segregation barriers are effectively destroyed. This is actually one of the reasons why I love FFXII so much, and so much of what FFXII worked is what I also love from its CRPG contemporaries such as Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins. (It’s also very similar to the Combat System found in Xenoblade!)

So for SUNDANG, I had the following goals for combat and turn “order”:

Non-Minigame Combat, or Nondivided Combat Mechanics from the rest of the world/Conversation, taking inspiration from ADB.

No “Turns” just continuous “Action.”

Never-Not-Your-Turn vibe.

Skill-Based Combat.

Brutal, dangerous combat. Skull-cracking, bone-twisting, blood-drawing. Thrilling in the sense that a Horror movie is. A horror movie with wuxia protagonists.

The Action

Action Economy is when, on your turn, you have a number of “Actions” that you can do, and you cannot do anything beyond the number of actions (of course you can do anything which you can justify as an action). This will define not just how your character moves in combat, but how they think of themselves throughout their progression. The most common form of Action Economy is “Move + Action” as seen in most d20 games, especially D&D 5e.

One of the very first things that I’ve had to unattach myself from is the Action Economy. One thing I noticed while developing SUNDANG was that every aspect of the game mechanics felt like it had to justify itself within the Action Economy. This was problematic to me for 2 aspects:

It centered combat completely. Since Action Economy only really mattered in combat, every little trinket that I had to write suddenly had to have some sort of interaction that could be done when you pressed the “Interact” action during combat.

It required “mechanization.” One of the major ideas I had for SUNDANG was to provide a mechanical base that centered on the gamization of the “fluff” without the designer having had a hand in it. If something said “This is a mallet, useful for evening out dinks and repairing machineries” it should be able to be used for that without having to interact with a subsystem. Through this, we annihilate barriers between “fluff” and mechanics, creating a more “immersive” world-space that is more conducive to Role-Playing.

While nothing is wrong with something requiring mechanization, I want it to be as invisible as possible, hence why the mechanical base of SUNDANG is built for such an experience: at creating an immersive interactive world.

One of my problems with Action Economy is that combat becomes about Action Economy. This is a problem that you can see so deeply within some of my favorite games: Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Final Fantasy XII all have Speed Stats that are affected by Weight, etc. Since having more “turns” is infinitely valuable in a game about getting more chances to reduce an opponent’s HP to 0, Speed-generating strats dominated those games’ upper mechanical ceiling.

While I think that’s cool, it’s not what I wanted to do with SUNDANG. It makes strange mechanical repercussions, dominations of certain strategies and therefore a larger gap between what is used and what is not used. I don’t want to make a game where you have to “solve” it through buildcrafting. I wanted to make a game where you can express yourself in.

So, away with the Action Economy. What do you do on the turn now?

The Turn

“On your turn, you can do X and Y.” This is the basic assumption in most RPGs. In OSR and NSR games this is the common assumption as well. Move + Action is elegant, simple, and gets things moving along. It gets the system out of the way so people can keep focusing on the fiction.

More importantly, the Turn splits combat into every acting character within the current situation, context, or scene. Gives everyone a chance to act. Pins everything down into spacetime.

For SUNDANG, this was not the vibe I wanted to give off. It felt too spartan, in a way. I wanted people to be constantly moving, constantly turning. More importantly, as the RPG is a player-facing medium, I want there to be the vibe of “never-not-your-turn.” This is a problem I face with much of my past RPGs and with other combat-heavy RPGs.

You take your turn and then you sit back and wait for your next one. If you’re invested in the game, you watch as the situation and gamestate changes. If not, you wait until someone calls you out and then you ask what has happened and what has changed. In all honesty, my position is that this is not a bad game design quirk. In fact, if you design around it, it could be a good quirk. Being able to do something while it’s not your turn helps a lot with Attention Deficiencies, for example.

But this isn’t something I wanted to do with SUNDANG. I wanted it to be Never-Not-Your-Turn.

So I stole a bit from Fire Emblem. There, in Fire Emblem, a “Turn” isn’t a single character’s turn to move, but rather, an advancement of the combat time-space. You often have objectives where you have to “Rout Enemy In 40 Turns” or something along those lines.

So I revolutionized how I thought about Turns. What if Turns weren’t each individual being’s turn, but an entire group of people’s turns? Now this is phase-based or side-based initiative, common (and good! I actually love side-based initiative) in OSR games. It’s very wargame-y and, honestly, conducive to strategy. But that’s not what I wanted to do here.

So I turned the Wheel again. What if Turns were chunks of time in a combat? What if turns were just Rounds? Often, the existence of a combat minigame is so that people can “zoom-in” into the action, because this is a matter of life or death! You can get killed here! Hence why we zoom in, stop time, focus on the details because the details means the difference between kill or be killed.

So I focused on that aspect.

Turn The Wheel

In PbtA, one of the major schools of RPG Design that I profess to have arisen from, combat doesn’t have a “Turn System” or a “Combat System.” Instead, it flows naturally from the conversation. It is contiguous to the rest of the system, not requiring special attention. What you can do in normal roleplaying, you can do in combat! That’s what that meant. When you sequester combat away into a new set of rules, you implicitly change the game unless you explicitly design for it to be a microcosm of the game’s already existing rules. Due to this change, I believe the mindset then becomes that you have to play the game according to this new set of rules unless you’re particularly good at improv-ing or are some form of designer/GM yourself.

I wanted that. So SUNDANG’s “turn system” has no Action Economy, no Initiative, no Reaction (no Reactionaries!) When you want to do something, do it. But it will most likely require a roll, and it will change the state of the situation.Everything has an equal amount of appropriate consequences. This is already how PbtA “combat” goes, since it’s not separate from the Conversation, the combat is also a conversation. You do something, the world does something, you react to that, then the world reacts to that, and so on.

I therefore fused the “Turns as divisions of action space-time” and “Combat-as-Conversation.”

A lot of this clicked after listening to a Robert Kurvitz interview about how he wanted to do Skill-Based Combat Scenes. Which aligned with what I wanted to do. Check it out!

For arguments of space, such as movement rates, the normal movement rate is 5 tails (roughly, 25 feet) per second. One can then infer how much a character can move in a single Turn through that as well as the modifying, environmental factors (harsh terrain, labyrinths, and so on). This allows it to be played on a Grid with the Grid as a space-representer, with shifting distance-scales for each grid square. The more interesting consequence is that, when you move, what about the world that's actively trying against you? That will then necessitate a Check, making even movement volatile and situation-changing. 

Turn-Based Combat: Never-Not-Your-Turn

First off the bat, this conception of Turn-Based Combat arises also from Clocks and Skill Challenges. The difference is largely the Presentation, mentality, and structure.

Additionally, SUNDANG’s Skill System is integral to this conception of combat. SUNDANG is a 24-Skill System inspired by the likes of Artesia: Adventures in the Known World and Runequest, where the majority of the Skills are not even combat-focused Skills, which color a player’s expectations for how combat could go (why be chained to the 3-4 Combat Skills when you can potentially agitate your Creativity to try and use the rest of them?)

So in SUNDANG, Turn-Based Combat is as follows:

If you enter into a situation wherein life-or-death is in the details, set up a 4-, 6-, or 8-segmented circle, known as The Wheel. Segment it according to the time you have left.

Find something within the world to be the temporal anchor, the World-Time. It could be the moving train, the skyskiff (that you might or might not be on at that moment!) plummeting into city streets, the wheels of a horse-carriage heading into a crash, the juggernaut battering ram barreling through enemy trenches. You can use this to lengthen the timescale of a battle. A day-long duel between two masters might have the Sun as their World-Time.

Turn 1 begins when you point at one segment and say it does. During a Turn, all the relevant PCs must do something.When they do something, the world then does something back. As always, this is just the conversation. When a PC goes and swordstrikes a pirate captain, the pirate captain will probably swordstrike back (dealing damage if that’s the PC’s consequence or threatening damage if not). Keep the conversation going.

When all the PCs have done something, mark out that segment of the Wheel. Turn to the next one adjacent to it, and say “Turn 2.” This is called Turning The Wheel. When you Turn The Wheel, before the PCs do anything, describe how the temporal anchor moves forward in time, and ascertain the consequences of that happening:

The skyskiff breaks through the high-rises. (Now there are potential people watching, now there are potential casualties, and so on.)

The horse carriage bumps against a tree and barrels closer to the cliff. (The carriage might have chunks broken off, some combatants might be knocked off, and so on.)

The Sun begins to sink into the horizon. (Dark becomes to impair vision, a nocturnal sea predator might breach soon, and so on.)

The juggernaut battering ram flies over enemy heads and moves closer to the city walls (there might be some warriors firing projectiles at you now, and so on.)

Finally, when all the segments are filled, a Revolution happens. Something Big. Throw away that Wheel. The situation changes. It has to. That’s the only real thing in this world.

The skyskiff crashes into the city plaza.

The horse carriage flies off the cliff.

The Sun sinks completely into the sea, ushering darkness.

The battering ram slams into the city walls and breaks it open.

Often, this change in situation ends Violence. You have to deal with the consequences now. In SUNDANG, you get XP for surviving Violence, not winning it. But SUNDANG is also a wuxia-western-silat game of wandering justicemakers and hotshot swordsmen. If this happens, set up another Wheel and choose another world-time.

You somehow survive the crash, and now must fight in the city plaza amongst hundreds of watchers.

The horse carriage plummets into a jade jungle, and you must fight upon its descending carcass.

The Moon rises now, as the fight continues on.

The King’s Man-At-Arms now charge toward the juggernaut to swarm and destroy it, with you still inside it.

The Violence continues. Deal with the consequences of your actions. Look forward to another Revolution.

If this piqued your interest, SUNDANG is currently out on my Patreon and I'm running pseudo-playtests of it on the Patreon Discord!

[dreamsy990]

SPONTANEOUS MINI REVIEW BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT I HAVENT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so. i actually really liked this one!

so uh. if you witnessed that incredibly long thread i made yelling about kh3 you will know that i. am not a fan of the look of modern kh. i think its kind of uninteresting compared to the delightfully cartoony style and just generally i dont like more realistic looks to games that already had a unique visual identity.

so im here to say that i think it works for 0.2! im a good way through kh3 and i dont think it works well there and ill get to that when i eventually review that game but. in 0.2 i think the new style fits the more dark tone very nicely, and the enviornments are absolutely gorgeous. like i came out of ddd thinking absolutely nothing could top symphony of sorcery in terms of world design and was proven wrong. the realm of darkness is my new favorite kh "world". for my mutuals who havent played kh, look at this!!! its absolutely gorgeous

and the environments are actually my favorite thing about this game. besides being beautiful, theyre also delightfully trippy and unsettling. theres a section where you have to climb up a seemingly never ending staircase, and every time you reach what you think is the top you hear aquas worst thoughts. a lot of the areas are twisted, destroyed versions of worlds seen in bbs. its very dark (fitting, for the realm of darkness) and honestly its a treat to just walk around admiring the view. the visual storytelling is as good as kh ever gets.

i briefly mentioned aquas thoughts a minute ago so ill bring them up again, her commentary adds a lot to the desolate atmosphere, and this game really feels like a character study. it shows her desperation, her worst thoughts, her hope despite everything, and its just genuinely good. i havent been able to say that about khs character writing since like. days. its GOOD.

i am. not a fan of bbs' writing. i think its got a good underlying concept with absolutely terrible execution, and it makes me wonder at times if the things i like about it were intentional or not. but this game takes the best written character of bbs and gives her more depth than they ever could before. i can say with confidence that aqua is one of the best characters in the series, and a lot of it is because of this game.

the tone here is very gloomy, but thats not really a complaint because the game is so short. the depressing atmosphere isnt too much to bear because youre barely in it for more than 2 hours. and i think that run time is EXACTLY long enough. it goes for exactly as long as it needs to tell the story and still give a moment to breathe.

as for gameplay. im not the biggest fan of the updated system. i like to think im open to change with kh's combat. i think the command deck has potential and the card system in com was fun and i actually liked days' panel system. but something about the way this new version of the system feels to play is just. unsatisfying. hits dont feel like they have any weight to me, and spells feel inconsequential despite being more grandiose than ever. its just not as good as it was before, and like its a sort of half assed replacement of reaction commands. the way they incorporated style changes into it was okay, but again its not as satisfying as it was in bbs. but maybe it was just satisfying in bbs because the rest of the combat there sucked

tldr, the things i care about in a game (writing and visuals) were fucking spectacular, but the gameplay definitely had room to improve. also if i ever have to fight a darkside again ill throw up and cry! 8/10, though im tempted to raise it to a 9 for the environments alone

[sloshr]

After watching through Side Order... I have a Few Thoughts.

[Spoilers ahead]

My Review of the Side Order DLC - Its little more than Gameplay.

Initial Opinion

- - - - - - - - - -

Overall; I like the gameplay mechanics initially, but the story absolutely feels lacking to me, imo. It feels like they were really banking on Side Order being Hard but... multiple of my friends finished it on their 2nd or 3rd run through the Spire.

That in itself isnt a problem! But... everyone felt sort of unsatisfied? There were no developments in the story, as we, Agent 8, were just assigned the task to Get to The Top of the Spire -> The Player Does That -> You beat a Boss -> Credits Roll (?)

On my watchthrough I literally said Please Say Sike 😭 because, dont take this poorly, but they were advertising Side Order as;

• Difficult (stated Multiple Times in basically every Trailer)

• Story Driven (You Uncover things as You Climb)

• Character and Lore Intensive (as shown by the trailers with all the concept art as well as promo art)

I dont feel like it was wrong to expect more based on how it was advertised.

But... if you complete the DLC in 1-2 runs, which is Very Much Possible, no buildup happens at all. The story was banking on the player struggling, and putting all the content behind repeat runs, which falls through and Doesnt really work/feel satisfying if the main goal is achieved in such a short time. I Feel like anyone who regularly plays Salmon Run will likely have a similar experience. And I feel kind of cheated? Because what we got was something that was Tell Not Show rather than the Show, Not Tell formula. And in my opinion, it really doesn't work as well at all. It puts all the major lore that the game has set up behind repetetive climbs (which never change btw, despite each climb being generated differently, its the same after a while) and you get about 1 Sentence of Exposition, with a Modlog from Marina if you are Lucky.

Side Order was (to me), after watching it all;

• Not Difficult, But Repetetive Gameplay (This easily runs people down, which would be fine if the tower had more than 1 setup or phase)

• Inital Story Setup with no complexities or stages. You climb the first Tower, Save Marina, Climb the Second Tower, Beat Order, and the credits Roll. In its most complex, you could fit what Side Order's Story is in 2-3 Sentences. Rather than Lore being revealed During the story, it feels Pushed to the Side as all of it is either in Text the player may never see (different climbs) or care to read (Marina's Mod Log)

• Use of Character Drops with no explaination / mention (The Agent 4 Boss, Anyone?) (This felt very Bait-y, with No Payoff)

Rating

- - - - -

If I had to give Side Order a Rating

4/10. At Best.

I am a bit disappointed with this as I feel like I was promised more, Storywise, and honestly a bit gameplay wise. I think it fails where other DLC has succeeded Due to being Built in such a way where anything engaging is stuck behind barely changing gameplay. It is not built in a way where the experience cant fail to show you whats important to the characters and the worldbuilding. It relies too much on telling you whats happening rather than the world showing you. Its too Simple, and It Doesnt Work, personally, in a series that contains Octo Expansion.

Which is Sad to me!! It had so much wasted potential and I really hope this isn't the last we're going to see of the concept, we get to see ideas actually built into the story, and... maybe find Agent 4.

Conclusion

- - - - - - - -

Tldr; Side Order had a good concept, but failed in execution for being simple and gameplay dependent, which was ultimately disappointing due to it being advertised as something more for all involved.

It was an alright attempt. The experience will just be known to me as... well. Baby's First Rouge-like. Nothing worldbreaking.

(PS, this isnt meant to be mean spirited or overly critical, I just love the Splatoon Series so I give it Tough Love. This is just my personal view on the DLC)

Thank you for Reading! Feel free to share or add any thoughts!

[hellslayersomething]

I feel like I should write out some proper thoughts about my opinions on Veilguard, or at least an outline for the much longer essay that is currently calcifying in my heart. It's a mixed bag of a reaction, and I'm not going to compliment sandwiching any of it--this is all just stream of consciousness, so I'm probably going to snag on the negative and spiral down that pretty quickly. Spoilers, obviously:

I liked the battle system. For the first time in a DA game, it actually felt satisfying to play and had its own identity. I do wish the Pokemon element aspect was a little better balanced among the companions, but overall it was great.

That said, considering the length of the game, they needed way more enemy diversity, especially with the bosses. Eventually I was just fighting dragons, and every dragon had essentially the same moveset, one of those moves being "the dragon trips over her own dick and face-plants on top of Rook", which sure doesn't make the fights feel epic. Even very unique characters, like the Gloom Howler, were just reskinned basic demons when it came time to fight them.

The decision to tie companion approval to companion levels was a mistake. A massive and extremely obvious mistake. No wonder there are no disagreements or tension among the group--the game can't let you lose affinity with your team members, because then it would have to account for you leveling them down. The gameplay design here strangled the narrative design in its crib.

Speaking of narrative design: while I appreciate that the modular approach to companion arcs was experimental, it was extremely weird of them to take that approach in the only DA game where all companions are required. The story doesn't have to be written to account for the fact that you might not recruit some of them or they might die early--so why didn't they write one story about Rook and their seven friends instead of one story about Rook and also there are seven smaller, unrelated stories of extremely varying quality shoved in next to it?

The hyperfixation on the companion quests paired with their complete compartmentalization from each other means that each companion basically has nothing going on outside of their own quest and very few opportunities to engage with other characters' quests.

I was so starved for conflict in this game that I went from Solas-neutral to Solas-positive because he was the only character who the game allowed to be a bitch to me, and I respect him for that.

I do like all the horrid little sons the game gives me. I think I would appreciate them more if there was anything bad or tense happening in the story on a personal level that required some comic relief, but I am a sucker for a funky little guy none the less, and Manfred, Assan, and Spite are the perfect trifecta of funky little guys, as far as I'm concerned.

"We're only going to do character cameos if it's important to the plot." *does what they did with Isabela* Okay, devs.

"We aren't importing player choices but we won't override your decisions either." *several codex entries overriding player decisions later* Okay, devs.

I like the companions, generally. I see their potential. Fanfic will do right by them. Harding, in my mind, is the weakest of the bunch, just truly having no personality to speak of and talking like she was written by a Boomer who thinks that Millennials are still teenagers. (Everyone responsible for her uttering the phrase "Awkward..." like she's a character in 2011 quirky girl sitcom should be tried at the fucking Hague, istg.) And while I like Bellara, it was extremely frustrating to have a character that's just "Merrill, again, but with the edges sanded off". Taash and Emmerich are also glaringly the last additions in the writing process, each belonging to one of the two most underbaked factions and neither of them being tied to any of the game's few "big choices". There's promise in this cast, but I don't think any of them came close to realizing their potential.

Davrin and Emmerich's companion quests felt appropriately scoped to the size of the questlines, had good emotionality, good antagonists, and expanded on the lore of Thedas in ways we hadn't seen yet.

Lucanis's companion quest had potential, but it was too unfocused with three antagonists, too much attention to the boring Venatori shit, and not enough examination on Illario's motives or Lucanis's relationships with either Spite or Illario.

Harding's companion quest was fine, I guess (the people are starving for dwarf lore), but Harding could have been swapped out with literally any other dwarven character who wasn't Sandal and nothing would have been different. (Also weird that the whole quest was basically about Sandal while simultaneously fully removing Sandal from the narrative.)

Bellara and Neve's companion quests were just nothing. Just a whole lot of nothing. And Neve's also suffered from what I like to call "machete editing", where it is glaring obviously where things were cut, changed, moved around, and added at the last minute.

I say, from the bottom of my non-binary heart: Taash's companion quest is total ass. Real nice of Mae to come out of hiding and risk being found and executed by the Venatori to give Taash a Queer Theory 101 class, though, I fucking guess.

Is Lucanis's romance bugged? Apparently I'm not the only one who had that thought while I was playing it, so now I'm wondering. Like, there's no way they made it Like That on purpose, right?

Why and how are the Venatori still a force in Thedas, never mind a force with numbers so great (in spite of lacking a central leader) that they were able to simultaneously occupy the two largest cities in Thedas?

They literally didn't even try with the Antaam. The Venatori are at least theoretically still working to try to restore Tevinter to its former imperial might. The Antaam are just invading countries for literally no reason except ill-defined power grabs. Given the racial coding of Qunari, this writing choice sure is...something. (And that something is racist.)

That said, the revelation that the Butcher did a military tour in Europe and fell in love with the culture and just wants to drink wine and visit art museums now is fucking hilarious.

What the absolute FUCK did they do the Crows. I like the Crow characters from Tevinter Nights/the comics, and Zevran is my favorite character in the whole damn franchise, but they completely whitewashed both TN's mafia take on them and their original portrayal in DA:O. But it also doesn't really retcon anything, making it instead seem like the human trafficking and torture and sexual abuse that Zevran suffered at the Crows' hands A) only happened to him individually, and B) are fine, actually??? Even the very few times that characters express reservations about working with Lucanis because he's an assassin, if you play as a Crow, those concerns get immediately backpedaled, so the Crows end up being so ironed out that the game doesn't even let characters say of the Crows, "Murder is bad," lest it hurt a Crow Rook's feelings. That is how conflict-averse the writing is.

So I guess everyone in southern Thedas is...dead now? Several characters survived long enough to get a mention from the Inquisitor, but by the end, it sounds like Orlais, Ferelden, and most of the Free Marches are pretty much donezo. When Epler said the events in southern Thedas didn't matter, I didn't expect that to mean they were going to nuke the damn place. Even having generally enjoyed VG (in spite of all my criticisms here) that, uh...doesn't leave me enthused about the future of the franchise, ngl.

The layoffs of several writers (and other Bioware employees) before the game's release was obviously heinous. But after that secret ending, I'm now of the mind that of the writers that remain, at least a few of them need to be demoted. Like literally what the fuck was that. That was the dumbest plot point to ever appear in a Dragon Age game, and that is a high bar to clear. If you're not going to acknowledge our past choices, then keep Loghain's name out of your fucking mouths.

[spiribia]

rewrote this post 3 times. a common critique of fallout 4 is that it assumes your character is morally good-aligned by default, moreso than its predecessors. on reflection i suppose it's actually not uncommon for even a game with gleefully violent gameplay or evil options to have a narrative baseline where the player character will still condemn scripted instances of violence, and i don't always consider it hypocritical. i guess the conflict for me in fo4 is more how they pose this morality - they have this great 'noble' ideal of sweeping through the wasteland cleaning out the brutishly violent groups that currently cover it to make room for settlers. this ideal is foisted onto your player character through fo4's big new headliner feature of settlement building. i think it's funny for the game to pose you as some figure that wants to reduce violence to an extent which not only justifies you in slaughtering every raider you see on sight because of their presumed association to a violent lifestyle but makes you a Good person for This extreme gorey bloodshed which the developers on purpose put in to be satisfying for the player and meanwhile you can bribe and blackmail people but the game always considers you above those people that you are justified in purging in masses from the wasteland. it wants you to live out a fantasy of being a scrappy survivor in the inhospitable dog-eat-dog post apocalypse cobbling together improvised weapons out of nails and duct tape and making selfish choices for your benefit but it doesn't actually want to let you join a gang. that is, until the paid DLC which hilariously responds to player feedback on character morality in the base game by forcing you to be a raider. does any of this make sense. i am sorry

[mail-me-a-snail]

I got pacific drive and I have no idea what I am doing. Any tips?

hi there !! welcome to the zones :^) i have. way too many hours on this game so here's my advice!

stock up on repair items before you make a drive! if you're just starting out, i recommend 2 repair putties, an extra scrapper, and a prybar. you will be encountering many, many locked doors so the prybar will come in handy

you'll also need a battery jumper kit, depending on how far you are into the game currently

if you throw flares at the tourists, there's a chance they'll drop resources, some more valuable than others. just be sure to step away because they Do explode

the same goes for the bunnies; use your scrapper on them and they could give you anything from plain scrap to cosmetic items

invest in your garage; there are a Lot of handy upgrades that you can get that'll make your early game less of a headache. you can get crafting recipes for stronger parts for your car, such as ones that will withstand radiation better, for example

and trust me. you're gonna need those

when out on a drive, don't collect just One of the stable energy cores on a map; if you can, collect all of them. you can fill up your stable energy core (the machine on your passenger seat) up to 4 units, which is the currency that the garage upgrade station uses. most upgrades use 1-2 units of that energy, depending on the usefulness and complexity of the upgrade!

this will destabilize the area faster and you will have to leave earlier, however, so you can do this last after you harvest all the resources you can find

every map/drive point has the same exact road layout every time, with just the structures randomly generated each time you visit. it's good to familiarize yourself with the layout so that you won't be lost when the time comes to skidaddle and head back to the garage

always go to the gas stations if you see a marker on a map for one. there is a high chance you will find a vending machine that'll give you a random cosmetic item for your car. plus, they're an endless supply of fuel

scan EVERYTHING. scanning certain things—ESPECIALLY anomalies—lets you unlock recipes

this is less gameplay and more lore specific, but keep flipping thru the radio stations until you reach broadcasts with the name ???. listen to em. that's all :-)

and my most important tip: EXPLORE. if you see something interesting outside your window, park and go check! there is no harm to exploring!

i love this game honestly. it has one of the most satisfying gameplay loops in any game ive ever played; each stop feels so fresh that resource harvesting is barely a slog. anyhoo if you have any questions or want me to elaborate on anything i said here id be more than happy to talk about it :-)

[boringbones]

What type of player are you?

I’m almost never one hundred percent satisfied with my game. When I am satisfied, I start looking for a flaw to "fix." For this reason, and others, I end up not fully enjoying the gameplay. It’s my Achilles' heel. The two images above are an achievement I reached.

Let me explain: In the first image, my game is running at over 100 FPS without any filters (maybe just an SSAO to better harmonize the scene elements and add a bit more depth), while in the second image, my game is running at around 55 FPS but with a ton of filters. Both are in small maps.

I’m always weighing what’s better or worse, constantly balancing things out. On the one hand, I’m proud that I managed to make the game look incredibly beautiful with a single lighting mod that makes it seem like it's full of filters but without the heavy processing load of those filters.

On the other hand, the filters in the second image are applied to my previous lighting mod, which was a bit more "balanced," so to speak. In other words, the elements between the filters and the lighting work more "harmoniously" together.

But when we’re trying to create this ecosystem, we need to think broadly. In other words, if I apply my new lighting mod to the second image, the result will be completely different (which doesn’t necessarily mean better), because I’m designing the neighborhood based on what I see with the filters. If I remove them, it turns into a strange mix.

Meanwhile, the first image was created with this restriction in mind, and it was necessary to harmonize all the elements (meaning recoloring plants and buildings based on what the game was showing me). If a player uses this neighborhood with any lighting mod other than mine... the result will be disappointing.

What I’m trying to say is this: Often, as creators, we strive to present the best and most complete version of our work to the world, and that work depends on a combination of factors to represent the vision we have. These factors involve the colorimetry of the environments (i.e., the colors and textures we apply to buildings), the colorimetry of the plants, terrain, and streets. This means we apply modifications to all these elements based on our vision, and if the player is using any other mod or set of filters, they may never see the same thing. In some cases, this can be good, but in most cases, the result just feels “off.” For example, in the gif below, the filters I’m using are the same, but the lighting mods are different. Both are my mods.

While the first leans toward a softer tone, the second ends up highlighting a green tint (almost like the Matrix). I like both, but I have a preference for the less greenish tone since all the elements in the scene seem to blend better with the environment that was built.

However, see what happens when I show the same neighborhood without the filters. In other words, it wasn't designed to be viewed without them. The colors and textures (even with two different lighting mods) no longer convey the same visual quality with which it was originally envisioned.

Pleasantville carries the quality of having been designed with only the lighting mod in mind, without any filters.

And the result looks charming! I know I’m emphasizing a rather curious point, but what I mean is that building neighborhoods is complicated when we consider all the necessary elements to create harmony within the scenes. When we creators recommend that you use a specific set of mods or filters, it’s not out of vanity, but so that you can see the world we’ve created through the correct lens. Otherwise, what was meant to be a greenish world might look too rocky, and what was supposed to have a nostalgic tone might end up looking like a strange mix of elements.

In the end, the question I ask is: What type of player are you? A player who cares about these little details, or a player who thinks these concerns are irrelevant and do not interfere with their gameplay?

To sum it all up: To achieve the ideal visual, each mod or adjustment needs to be considered as part of a broader ecosystem. It’s not just about adding or removing filters, but about how all the elements (lighting, colors, and mods) interact and harmonize within the scene. By customizing the game to reach this level of quality, we may end up making the experience unsatisfying for those not using the same adjustments. This quest for perfection can be a solitary journey, though it is a fun and laborious one.

[cram-cram]

Bonjour everyone

So, I am here today to yap about ZZZ because Y E S

I made two tier lists and I shall comment on them because why not

This post will be for the first tier list, which is regarding playstyle, while the other post will be for companion quests. So let's get to it!

So, you could say I like fast playstyles but then BOOM, Anton (he doesn't have a fast playstyle per say, but it is very fun still). So, let's tacke each tier

Fun playstyle, feels great and satisfying to play

For this tier, we have:

→ Billy - fast playstyle leaning playstyle with certain gimmicks that I find super fun. His signature W-Engine, in my opinion, enhances his playstyle by incentivating the player to do his beyblade dash attack more often (the Engine's passive buffs attack for 10 seconds after doing a dash or basic attack). His skill does a HUGE ammount of damage and, when put in a team he has resonance with, using his skill before the burst will buff the burst's damage (and if you burst AFTER a chain attack, the burst ALSO gets buffed!). So, in general, really fun to play! Love dodging with him by just... Pressing a movement key while he's in his crouched state (yes you can do that), it makes me feel like a pro (it fails 90% of the time). Fun fact! Billy is one of the fastest running units in the game after Lycaon and Ellen I believe! So ye, love my lil' android man, he's amazing

→ Ellen - Another one with a fast leaning playstyle!(Did you notice I have a preferred gameplay type?) But her playstyle is SUPER fun, albeit I'm still fetching her gimmick. The fact that you should dodge, continue sprinting, and THEN attack instead of doing a normal dodge counter is a bit tricky, but as you play her more, you manage to get used to it. Ellen's playstyle is very forward imo, which isn't a bad thing at all. Enter stalk mode, hold attack to charge the scissors, let go, get basic attack stacks, basic attack, repeat. While I don't have her signature (didn't have enough time to fetch it, augh) the Engine I use, starlight knight, is very good, since it buffs dash attacks and basic attacks as well (made for her and Billy eh?). I also love her burst animation and I usually play her with Lucy and Soukaku for big pp damage. Highly recommend getting her on her rerun if you missed her on her banner!

→ Anton - BABYGIRL I LOVE YOUU! Anyways, his playstyle was VERY confusing at first, but you get the hang of it rather easily. His main souce of damage comes from his burst mode (not actual burst, but skill activation). Once in that mode, he will do constant electric damage, but you need to pay attention to his energy meter because, once it reaches zero, you're back to dealing physical damage. While off field, with his resonance passive activated, Anton will regain energy. Other ways to regain energy WHILE in burst mode is to assist with him. As soon as you hear the attack noise + see the glow, press space and his assist counter will refill part of his energy meter! His actual burst is also SUPER satisfying to use, doing big damage in an aoe. I was using the summer event weapon on him before getting his signature and GYATT he was doing some VERY good damage (he's not even properly built as of rn). Tldr, Anton, while having a playstyle that requires a bit of time to do damage, is very rewarding when the big pp damage mode is on.

→ Qingyi - Soldier 11 I hate you for making me lose my 50/50 to you... QINGYI IS SO FUN TO PLAY! Genuinely speaking, her playstyle is SO fun, love me some stun units (I don't have any stun units that I use, sorry Anby). Qignyi also has a fast and to the point playstyle. Just keep pressing basic attack until she enters tazer mode and then hold the button once the little gold bar beneath her energy is gold. Big pp dmg and the stun is great. I love her dodge counters too (I have only played her on quests and trials, but gosh I love playing with her). In general, there's nothing much I have to say about her playstyle, it's direct and rather simple. Just zap ppl, fill up gold bar, hold attack button, do damage. Great playstyle, I will get her on her rerun.

→ Caesar - FUN SHIELDER LET'S GOOOO. Fast playstyle on the basic attacks but that is not her purpose (you could absolutely play her as a dps tho). Her shield build off of her impact, which I found very interesting and fun! To play her, you just counter an incoming attack with her skill (shield) and press it again. Bam, shield is on, time to swap out! However, I recommend you keep her on field a bit longer and do a held attack before leaving. Why? Well, her held attack, the spinning shields, gather small-medium enemies into a horde, making it easier to attack them in one go! She's great in teams that have characters that can do aoe dmg, so I highly recommend her for literally ANY team that has a physical or sons of callydon character (such as Piper, Lucy, Corin, Jane or even Billy). One negative point tho, there are no A rank or B rank Defence W-Engines with an Impact substat, the only one is her signature. So, if you want the W-Engine buff, I highly recommend getting her signature, unless ZZZ plans on launching another A rank defence engine with impact substat (which I find unlikely).

→ Piper - *signs the entirety of the beyblade opening*. But yeah, that's her gameplay, LMAO. Albeit being ok the slower playstyle side, she is still very fun to play. You can spam her basic attack and use the section in which she jumps to avoid enemy attacks or ya can just, y'know, dodge them. Since she's an anomaly character, her dmg lies in anomaly buildups and procs. Do three of her basic attacks and press her skill (when glowing) and she will enter her fast spinning mode faster, acquiring stacks. Those stacks, when her resonance passive is on, buff her and her teammates' anomaly dmg when doing the physical anomaly reactions. She's great for solos (I solo'd the Dead End Butcher on Hollow Zero with her but hey, it's Hollow Zero lol) and just fun to play in general. Love spinning with her and hearing the SHING sound when she procs and Assault reaction.

→ Grace - ELECTRIC GRENADEEEE. Also fast style gameplay, just normal attack with her, wait for her bombs to charge up beneath her energy meter, wait for glowing skill, BAM. Swap her out for your electric dps. That's her playstyle frfr, just NA, skill, leave. Albeit being having a rather... Short time on screen, she does HUGE damage with her skill due to being an anomaly character (the ammount of times she got the MVP because of her shock procks are not listed). She's a great Electric character support and is just fun to play in general. Just be aware that she has a rather smoll ammount of hp, she's very frail.

→ Jane - normal attack, charge passion, held to spinn. Essentially piper but normal attack instead of skill. Her Assault procks are great and her dmg is just, MWACK, phenomenal. Fast playstyle with very smooth moves that make even FIGHTING against her difficult. The enemies are legit just... Tanking a thousand blades. Again, albeit being straight to the point, the fact of how fast you hit enemies and the shing sound of the anomaly procks are just prefection, love it, very satisfying to just put the enemies in the Jane blender (she fr blends them up with how fast she attacking, we gonna have enemy smoothie at this point).

Good playstyle, also fun to play

→ Burnice - she also has a very fast paced playstyle but I don't feel the vibes to put her on the tier above. Love that she pirouettes with her flamethrowers and that, to charge her basic attacks (there's a meter beneath her energy meter) you have to press the skill to just burn the enemies with her flamethrowers. Very straightforwards, very fun to play, just doesn't scratch the funky itch for me, but her playstyle is great! Pair her with Caesar and you'll have a great time burning everything to the ground.

→ Nekomata - SHING SHING SHINNG. Fast kitty has the zoomies and she is going to turn you into sashimi. Again, only played her on her quest and on the trials, but her playstyle, while being fast, doesn't hit as much as the others. Love how fast she goes, love how she just slides on the floor while slashing the enemy's kneecaps, but it just doesn't scratch the itch as much as the others... Very good and fun still tho!

→ Rina - press her skill and leave the field. That's it, that's her gameplay. She's mainly here because of how fluid her moves are and how good it feels to use her on the few moments she's on field. Her purpose is solely to buff pierce, but she still manages to have a fun and fluid playstyle while fitting that role perfectly. Wife, please come home, your W-Engine is waiting...

→ Lycaon - while he has fast attacks, that's not how you're supposed to play him. It's a bit tricky and I was considering lowering him a bit, but he's fun still so he stays here. The deal with his playstyle is that you have to hold the attack button so that Lycaon can do ice damage, otherwise is just physical, so keeping the ice combo is a bit complicated (skill issue on my end mb). Still, while being a bit slower due to that little gimmick, he still mantains his fun factor.

→ Lucy - HIT EM WITH THE BAT, GURL. But yeah, her gameplay is also very to the point, wait for her skill to start glowing, hold it, swap out and enjoy the attack buff. You can also build her with crit, since once her resonance passive is active, her little boars will inherit her crit ratio, doing damage alongside your on field dps. So I'd say is worth it to try and build her with a bit of crit, just for her boars' sake. I find it rlly funny that she just... Hits her children boars with the bat, and the hit is SO STRONG that they come back down like a fiery comet. Lucy, hun, pls take better care of your babies-

→ Koleda - NYOOOOOOOOMMMM. GIRLY IS FAST! But like, where the fire dmg at-. Love the weapons, love her hits, love her speed but... She's just a physical character with some fire stuff. I came to that realization while playing with her on a trial on the new event thingy we have at the HIA headquarters. She attacks rlly fast, but 90% of those attacks deal phys dmg instead of fire, with her only fire dmg hits being the end of her basic combo, skill and burst. She's still fun, but the lack of fire saddens me a bit.

→ Corin - smoll delicate gurl with beeg chainsaw, love her. Her playstyle is a bit on the slower side and she thrives in dealing repeated damage due to her chainsaw. Majority of her damage comes from her skill, where she keeps the steadiest grip I've ever seen on her weapon as she walks, hitting whatever the fuck is in her way. While it's fun, yes, it's also a bit... Boring at times, I think? Idk, I loved playing her at the beginning, with her hitting bitches around with her chainsaw, but nowadays, since I don't play her much, whenever I use a trial her I'm like "I mean... It's fun, but she only has like, one attack variation and her dodge attack is kinda... Meh" idk why, but she's still fun

→ Soldier 11 - I hate you, I hate you so much, you have no flavor but... Your playstyle is actually a bit fun. Her fire damage is WAAAY more present and, even tho I don't play her (I refuse to) the few times I had to I had a surprising amount of fun. Like, yes, she's almost a carbon copy of Anby, but she's a faster fire version of Anby, which makes her a bit more satisfying to play in my books (I'm so sorry Anby)

A slightly clunky but still solid playstyle

→ Soukaku - yes, I know she's a support, but her skill is a bit clunky to use imo. You have to use it three times in order to get the max buff she can provide, yet her skill activation time is so slow and leaves her vulnerable to enemy attacks. While yes, she has INSANE interruption res while using her skill, the vulnerability while releasing her ice circles (when she waves her weapon like a tennis racket) is very annoying to me. Like, should I give her more hp? Probably. Will I? No, she gets the attack, deal with it.

→ Nicole - same thing as Soukaku. Her skill is great, love the suck and the aoe, but why is it SO SLOW TO CHARGEEEE. GIRLY POP, YOU'RE VULNERABLE TO THE ENEMY DAMAGE, CHARGE THAT GUN BAG FASTER! As you can see, I don't like slower playstyle characters, it takes a LOT for me to like them. But besides her skill, her playstyle is ok. Don't use her so often besides trials and when the game forces me, but yeah, I'm not rlly... A fan of her playstyle (love her character tho)

Playstyle is clunky

→ Ben - he is, quite literally, the SLOWEST character in the game. His attack animations are great but... I just don't like his playstyle. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Ben as a character, but his playstyle just... Rlly doesn't hit home for me. Yeah, his skill is fun, but I keep forgetting to press it twice instead of only once.

→ Anby - girl... Girl I'm so not counting how many attacks you did to do your electric charged. Like, "once she's done four attacks, hold the attack button to-" BITCH YOU THINK I COUNT? Like, I understand if you love Anby, me too! I love her character! But... Why, why do I have to count to properly use her... My brain needs stimuly, not mathematics 😭 I'm so sorry Anby

→ Zhu Yuan - why are you so clunky. I rlly just don't like her playstyle, it feels so... Clunky and choppy and NOT FUN to me. I completely understand if you like her playstyle, that's great, but I just rlly can't bring myself to enjoy it. When I tested her I already felt soooo icky, she felt so choppy and rigid to play like, why... I know she's a cop and her moves are precise, but Qignyi, who's also a cop, plays smoother than her imo

Playstyle feels stiff and non enjoyable

→ Seth - Seth... Seth my love... I am so sorry... I rly don't like his playstyle. His dash attack? Confusing. His skill? Takes SO LONG to charge and also leaves him vulnerable to damage. And his normal attacks are like... Ok-ish? But he feels so stiff and clunky and I just can't enjoy myself while playing him... I'm so sorry Seth, but your playstyle, in my humble opinion, is shit. Not for me, 0/10, please never force me to use you again.

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

[simlicious]

Personal update!

Hey everyone! I started to write this at 9:40 am, then I got distracted and did not post it right away but I guess activity on tumblr at that time is low anyway.

I am happy to report that I am still going strong with my changed day/night cycle. It's not always easy, I don't get into bed early enough on some days and feel pretty groggy the next. But this is always where I get defeated - I think okay, sleeping in for half an hour won't be a problem... but then I go to bed even later and the cycle goes backwards really quickly. This time I am determined to stay strong even if that means I walk around like a zombie and drink 1.5 liters of black tea on some days to keep me awake 😆

I guess it takes time to adjust the evening routines too. On these "useless" days, I often play Anno 1800 which is engaging and relaxing at the same time. I often quit the game to mod this and that in the game, so my brain is pretty engaged still and this is how I like it most days.

Since new habits need at least 6 weeks to be counted as a new stable habit, I will focus only on my sleep rhythm for the time being and allow myself to take a mental break from other projects to eliminate the inner expectation of working on those when I know it is unreasonable at this time. It also does me good to let go of any pressure to create TS3 content. I know it has been a while but it does nobody any good if I guilt myself because of it. I often get negative feelings around my simblr lately and it sucks, like I am really unsure about the few AI patterns I made and the poll made me really question what I should do since it is pretty divided. I do not know whether those are more random people who answered the poll or people who often engage in my blog anyway. So I don't really know if I should release those patterns at all or if people come and harass me over them if I do. But not releasing them would mean that energy to create them would be truly wasted, I think? If the images exist already, shouldn't they be used to make it count? Because thinking of that makes me uneasy, I put my creative energy into Anno 1800 for the time being which is not emotionally loaded. I am way too disorganized to really do beauty building, and most of the time I am just happy when my population get the goods they want 😆but modding another item that helps with that or editing other people's mods to fit my needs is fun and satisfying. It's a bit like editing tuning mods for Sims 3 (just with some more complicated layers added depending on the mod).

Knowing myself, I will get another pattern idea soon enough though, and sweater season is fast approaching which means I get into the mood of creating more cozy patterns, hopefully! I want to give a shoutout to people who have shown my patterns in screenshots lately. I admit I am not very active on tumblr at the moment and do not see everything I should. Memorable ones were @martassimsbook and @gittessimsadventuresog, but anyone else please feel addressed too! It means a lot to me to see my patterns in use, it makes me feel validated and useful and lifts my spirits. It also helps to dispel some of my negative thoughts (maybe patterns do not go obsolete after all if people are still using them). I'm really happy they are so useful to you! A lot of you probably do not post many gameplay screenshots but use my patterns anyway, I cannot forget about you 💜thanks for all the support!

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

[loz-furbies]

Breath of the Wild / Age of Calamity / Tears of the Kingdom Zelda, part 2/2

Role in the story

BotW, AoC and TotK stand out among the LoZ games in that they're specifically Zelda's stories in a way only Spirit Tracks can rival. Or Skyward Sword also did a similar thing where you first try to figure out what the deal with Zelda is, but I'd say that in that game Link's own journey to becoming the hero he needs to be is just as important, while BotW Link's is feelings about his adventure are more implied that explicitly shown in his games. While the actual story of BotW and TotK is pretty similar to most loz titles as far as Zelda is concerned (she is in some kind of trouble through the whole time and only clearing the game can help her, and she has minimal impact to the actual gameplay of the final fight), since we get to see so much of her own story, her contributions still feel a lot more meaningful than just doing something fancy in a cutscene after the player has done all the actual work. And despite being absent for the whole game, Zelda still has a lot of presence, since searching cutscenes about her is the main quest, and so many side characters talk about her.

I prefer Zelda's story in BotW over TotK, because in BotW she has internal conflicts and character development, while in TotK she is more about dealing with the external conflict that the plot throws at her. Or you can say that she is unsure about what to do at first and has grown more confident by the final Dragon Tear cutscene, but I don't think this was motivated by any personal growth about her. Also I'm not a fan of how the Master Sword just shows up on its own in the past, because it makes it feel like she's just acting on someone else's plan and the whole draconification is pushed on her. The scene where she eats the secret stone is really good, but I would rather have had her also intentionally pull the Master Sword to her after she comes up with the dragon plan to give her more agency about the whole thing.

TotK also has the issue that while the scene where Zelda sacrifices her humanity in order to restore the Master Sword is incredible, when it comes to gameplay impact, it comes across as underwhelming. Like this is a reincarnated goddess who gave up her all and has been pouring her strength for a billion years into this sword as a culmination of the dramatic flashback story, and what you get out of it is... a base power 30 weapon. I get why it is like this for obvious balance reasons, but from a pure story perspective, there's so much narrative weight on the Master Sword that at this point it should be able to one-hit-kill anything that isn't Ganondorf.

Showing the cutscenes about Zelda in mostly random order is a somewhat risky way to tell the story. I got a satisfying story in both BotW and TotK, but I figure that your opinion about Zelda might be coloured if the first BotW memory you see about her is the one where she acts rude towards Link. But I do like how any of the memories being optional naturally plays into the ending of the game where Zelda asks if you remember her; how well the player knows Zelda probably factors in how they feel during this scene, so I'd say that each player gets the ending they deserve.

Meanwhile in TotK I feel that after getting the geoglyph where Zelda makes the decision to turn into a dragon, the rest of them become less meaningful when the mystery about where she disappeared has already been solved. And speaking of which, I really wish the game handled the mystery about Zelda in the present time better because all red herrings about her become incredibly awkward when Link already knows where she is. I can still sort of buy that he wouldn't want to discuss this with Penn, but the main story missions really should have had an alternate version if you already did the Dragon Tears quest. And puppet Zelda in Hyrule castle towards the end doesn't work too well either, like what am I expected to feel about this suspiciously behaving Zelda when the game has already made it clear that it can't possibly be her?

Also it should be noted that as has become somewhat of a tradition, Zelda also gives you the Bow of Light in BotW. Which feels a little superfluous there since it's not really related to the rest of her story, but whatever. She also takes part in the TotK final battle as the Light Dragon, though she's not a very active participant when she just automatically carries you higher when you fall down enough, and later she has no memory of her time as a dragon anyway. But it's nice that she was included in some way at least.

AoC tells a similar story about how Zelda goes through failing to awaken her powers to confidently wielding them in a battle, but it feels completely different since the player is present through these events instead of seeing them in a flashback cutscene. And I would argue that Zelda just flat out is the main character of that game, sure you start as Link but Zelda already becomes a playable character in chapter 2, and story-wise Link is feels very much like an afterthought.

AoC makes her a badass fighter like all the other characters, which is totally at odds with the rest of her characterisation, but it's just something you have to accept for this type of game. And of course it would have been super disappointing if she wasn't playable. I like her Sheikah Slate and Bike movesets, but I never liked the bow for too complicated for me to handle (and somehow the bow tutorial is like the hardest level in the game?)

In the golden ending of TotK the sages pledge their loyalty to Zelda, and the scene cuts to a flashback of the ancient sages doing the same for Rauru. Honestly I don't really get what they're trying to say with this; Zelda doesn't have any kind of character arc that would need to culminate in her becoming a leader or accepting help from others, and while the ancient version of this can be taken as everyone joining forces to fight evil together, at the end of TotK the world has already been saved so I don't see what the other races would get out of, I dunno, reinstating the monarchy that fell a hundred years ago? And the sages are already personal friends with Zelda anyway so the whole scene just feels weird.

Relationships

In addition to having a lot of development to herself as an individual, this Zelda also gets to have a lot of relationships with various NPCs that are worth mentioning.

As usual Link is among the most important relationships for Zelda. Zelda and Link obviously have the connection that they both have a predestined role in the Ganon thing, and the fact that they have such different starting points (Zelda struggles at her job while Link is pretty much already ready for his) gives them an interesting contrast. And when they eventually start getting along better they’re probably the only people who can understand each other’s situation properly.

Out of the Zelda and Link duos I've seen, I think this one has the most well defined relationship. For comparison SS Zelink comes second, and while I do like them a lot and I think the game makes it clear they care about each other as people, I don't think there's much else to their relationship than "childhood friends". Or like stuff that makes them unique among the many anime childhood friends. Meanwhile in BotW we get to know some actual specifics about their relationship (at least from Zelda's side), primarily about their shared fate. Zelda being jealous of Link's success at his job is a notable part of the story, and this comes up a lot. In her diary she describes how she is unhappy about the king appointing Link as her knight, how she is unnerved about how he is so silent and unreadable, and how she speculates about how he must despise her for her failures. And her jealousy doesn't just affect her own self esteem, but also impacts her behaviour when she lashes out at him for just doing his job.

Once Link saves Zelda from the Yiga clan, she becomes more friendly towards him, apologises and puts an effort in getting to know him more. I think it's a cute detail that the first thing she learns about him is how gluttonous he is. Eventually Link confides in him about the pressure he feels about his duty and Zelda presumably talks about her own fears (or at least she writes in her diary that she wants to and I assume she eventually did). So I really like that they get to connect at a very personal level and open up about their insecurities, and the game explicitly points out this connection.

I do have some issues with how the turning point of their relationship where Link saves her from the Yiga clan is executed. Like the reasons Zelda starts to see Link in a more positive light is because he did the one job he had as a bodyguard, like that comes as a surprise to her. On an intellectual level sure I can get that it's different for her to know that Link's job is to protect her from theoretical danger and actually experience that moment, but I don't think the story works in the moment. The scene itself is pretty weak, like Zelda writes in her diary how Link put himself in danger for her sake, but it's just two Yiga footsoldiers so as a player it's hard to relate to the idea that Link was at any kind of risk.

Age of Calamity changes Link's character significantly in that he finds the Master Sword during the game after he has already been appointed as Zelda's knight, and this also changes their relationship to a less interesting direction. As someone who is on track with fulfilling their role in the grand plan, Link still works as a foil to Zelda who struggles with hers, but all of this is depicted as Zelda's frustration at herself and all the the envy and animosity towards Link is missing. In general Link is pretty boring in AoC and most of what he could be able to contribute towards Zelda have been moved to Impa. But I do like how consistently he acts as her bodyguard in AoC, there are multiple scenes where he moves in front of her to protect her. Which of course is very appealing to someone who really likes the princess-and-knight trope.

Ultimately I think Link and Zelda make for a good couple not just because they have so much shared history together, but specifically because both are canonically kind of weird. Zelda makes people eat frogs, and Link is someone who eats rocks. I prefer to imagine that even before the Calamity Zelda could fully be herself around Link. And in TotK it's clear she has a high opinion of Link, considering how much she brags about him to Rauru (which was a super cute scene).

Since we've been taking note of any hand holding instances between Link and Zelda it should be noted that there's some of those here as well, though none of them are what I'd classify anywhere near romantic. As the bodyguard Link drags Zelda by the hand when they run away from enemies, and the ultimate hand holding game TotK also gives one hand holding moment to Zelink too (though Link holds hands in pretty much every important character in that game). And we also get a little princess carry moment at the end so that's cool.

While I don't think any of the games confirm that they are canonically a couple, I think there's a lot that points in that direction. Kass relays his teacher's observation that Zelda was in fact in love with Link, and while this is third-hand information and either Kass or the teacher could have misunderstood something, but that just feels like a really strange thing to put in the game especially when it isn't challenged in any way. Then there's the TotK house debate which has been discussed to death, so I'll just state the often listed things that Link can only sleep in the bed of this house, and if Zelda lived alone she wouldn't have as much need for a private study. And also the process of elimination: the game doesn't really give Link any other house where he would have lived during the years between BotW and TotK.

The previous Zelda dads have been pretty boring (either just generically nice or lacking any proper characterisation), so I welcome King Rhoam to this group. He's a pretty hated character for obvious reasons, but I like him because even though he was a terrible father, as a character he is interesting. The story also has more bite to it if everyone isn't just besties with everyone, and Zelda's distress feels more personal when her inability to awaken her powers doesn't affect just faceless masses and instead the constant reminder of her failures has a face. There are many scenes where he impedes or belittles her research or forbids it altogether, and in general the two appear to have a pretty formal and distant relationship.

Many in the audience want Rhoam's head on a stake for his horrid parenting, but I'd say that in canon Zelda is more willing for reconciliation, at least if AoC is anything to go by. According to his diary, Rhoam had been a strict father ever since the queen died (so Zelda was six) and there is little material on them actually having any positive interaction, but I figure there must have been something at least, or at least Zelda appears to value his approval. I do wonder how Zelda feels about her dad after the events of BotW since she probably got to read his diary and Link must have told him about the "old man".

In TotK Zelda gets more competent parental figures in Rauru and Sonia. It's a shame the game itself doesn't bring this up, but at least there is an interview that compares Zelda's parents to them. Through the power of magic and plot convenience they instantly sense that Zelda is trustworthy and become incredibly supportive of her. It really makes a huge difference for Zelda when she gets some actual guidance for unlocking her new magic powers, and unlike her BotW experience where she's constantly reminded of how necessary her contribution is to saving the world, this time she is told that this is not her fight and she is allowed to focus on her own issues. She eventually becomes a part of Rauru's inner circle and anti-Ganondorf team. I really like how Rauru treats Zelda, in that he consistently acts like the adult in the relationship and always remains supportive, but also doesn't baby her either and lets her make her own decisions.

While the other Beast Pilots primarily have a notable relationship with Link, Urbosa is more about Zelda as a mother figure or a "cool aunt" type. Urbosa is consistently supportive towards Zelda; she consoles her when her powers fail to awaken, was present to help when kid Zelda almost passed out from praying in cold water, puts her hand on her shoulder when she's stressed, and tries to do something about her strained relationship with Link. It's clear that the two are very close and go way back and Zelda has opened to her about her feelings. Zelda also acts more relaxed around Urbosa, like in the cute scene in Champion's ballad where they laugh together about having to put up a formal act in front of an audience.

Zelda also writes that she was surprised that Mipha was quick to learn to control her Divine Beast, whatever that means. Other than that Zelda doesn't share much of a specific relationship with Mipha, and Zelda's situation isn't contrasted with Mipha's at all even though both are princesses who are in a conflict with their king father. Even if Zelda does share personal and character-focused cutscenes with all champions, in general there's not much to say about her relationship towards the non-Urbosa Beast Pilots; while each of them has their own unique feelings about Zelda, from Zelda's side it's more just that she considers them her friends.

AoC Impa is in a similar boat. Impa's title in the game is "Royal advisor, loyal friend", and she indeed is included in many of Zelda's scenes where she's troubled over her lack of progress with her powers. Third-wheeling the Zelink from a shipper's perspective, but makes sense from a narrative perspective to have someone for Zelda to play off so she doesn't have to monologue for an entire cutscene since Link (or Terrako) doesn't talk as usual. So Impa gets to deliver some important pep talk to Zelda, so she can continue to trudge forward despite all her failures. Still this is mostly from Impa's side and I don't get a lot out of Zelda outside obviously seeing Impa as a friend.

Mind you even if I don't think Zelda's relationship with Impa or the Beast Pilots is particularly special, I'm not really complaining. Like there is effort to put them in character focused scenes and have them have some sort of connection with each other, and in almost any other LoZ game they would be a high point in Zelda's relationship list. It's just that the bar is way higher with this iteration of Zelda, so stuff like this becomes even worth mentioning.

The TotK sages have disappointingly little to do with Zelda, even though they should have known each other for years. We get nothing from Zelda's side towards any of them, and the sages are primarily concerned about the environmental disaster affecting their homes (which okay is fair) and Zelda is just a footnote in their story. Only Riju brings up Zelda being her close friend, and is the only one to refer to her as Zelda, while the other three use princess Zelda.

AoC gives Zelda her own companion character in Terrako, which I guess is fitting if you see her as the main character of the game. Unfortunately for me Terrako inhabits the character type that I categorically dislike and is my least favourite character of the franchise, but is still relevant enough that it warrants a mention here. And if Zelda has to have a mascot, making it a little robot is a good pick. We even get to see a flashback where kid Zelda builds Terrako, which of course ties well into her characterisation as a scientist. Through the story Terrako is present in Zelda's important moments encouraging her, and Terrako being (temporarily) destroyed just before the grand finale is the final big moment for Zelda where she repeats her resolve to win the war. And of course the true ending of AoC has Zelda set out on her own with just Terrako, which I guess helps to really sell her as the main character of her own life (compared to if she left with her whole friend group or a bodyguard).

Purah is brought up together with Zelda a little; apparently Zelda used to cover for her when her research got too explosive back before the Calamity, and Zelda took part in the ancient Sheikah technology research and writes in her diary how she thinks it's best not to try to argue with Purah. But since being a scholar is such a big part of Zelda's character, I really wish her relationship with Purah was more developed. She doesn't get much out of Mineru either other than a mention that she visited her and rode her construct.

We also get to know about how the public perception of Zelda, in BotW Rhoam tells about how there are rumours spreading about her inadequacy, but in TotK there are NPCs in every corner of Hyrule who have something nice to say about her. I think this is cute development, and I find it believable too given how much of the talk about her is how she actively goes around helping people.