#okay but I am fond of me2 honestly

[kainissoable]

Similarities between MediEvil 2 and Blood Omen 2

• Steampunk/Victorian setting • Scantily clad side characters who deserved better dammit! • Made with a different direction to the original and It Shows • Weird should-have-been-sidequests as part of the main game • Probably aliens? • P a d d i n g • Why are there blue vampires? • Protagonist has several costume changes • You blow shit up at the end • I have personally spent far too much time and effort trying to make both of them make sense

[mass-effect-anonymous]

Full Confession Under the Cut due to Length

Can I just say that I am honestly sick and tired of people complaining about a character for little to no reason? Or even the constant 'I love Kaidan/Garrus/Thane so much' posts? As this post is twofold.

Take for example Liara. Now, while I am not really a fan of her in ME3 with just how cold and focused she was (which I get given everything) at the same time I get her focus, yet she could have had some moments with Shepard and just blew off some steam with something fun, be it romantically or just as friends. And while I am on the topic of her, to say that she "was written as a romance first" and "I feel guilty because BW 'meant' me romance her and I feel shamed'... Just stop with that nonsense. They simply wrote more and had more interactions with her to make up for her lack of ones in ME2. And you can just simply be her best friend and she is entirely okay with that. She doesn't guilt-trip you or show disappointment if you weren't into her in ME1 or ME3. She is totally fine with being your friend and praises that she is glad to have had you be a good friend to her. So stop with that overdramatic nonsensical complaint and get over yourself. It's a you problem more than anything.

None of the companions are truly perfect. Each of them has a flaw and that's fine. But to bitch and moan and put one character over another simply for outside factors or what one did is absurd and is just laughable.

Secondly, I truly am tired of the "Forced" nature of accepting Kaidan/Garrus/Thane as romances that are better than others. And to be entirely clear: I see Kaidan as just average, not really that interesting, do enjoy and love Garrus in spots, and I do entirely feel that Thane deserved much better than what we endured. But at the same time, I see constant posts else where, particularly Twitter, and it's just praising those three more so than any other character. Where is the love for Jack or Miranda or even Tali huh? Hell, even Kelly or Samantha or EDI? I love Jack to bits as she is totally my main waifu. From a girl with a lot of issues (abandonment, trust, anger, intimacy) to becoming someone who is hella protective of her students and would die to protect them and worries deeply about missing Shepard (if romanced). Miranda grew from ice queen to someone who cared and regrets what she wanted to do to Shepard and showed that she cares about her sister and is fond of Shepard as well. And Tali? From young Quarian to Admiral, seeing how wrong she was with wanting war with the Geth, and being a total tease while on the Dreadnaught (sorry/not sorry Garrus) and becoming a strong female with a big heart. All these companions and characters grew and were shaped by us.

And while it is entirely understandable that everyone has their personal favorites (Space Wifey aka Jack) for me, and I am sure for others, it would be nice to see more praise and posts about other characters than just the "main three". For me, I do love and enjoy pretty much everyone (with the exception of Jacob, so boring and not that interesting) and I can't for the life of me put down any of them. While I may have an issue over something that they had done or done, I still love and care about them regardless (even if they are boring and uninteresting like Jacob/Kaidan/Ashley).

[zahra-hydris]

thoughts upon just reaching the tempest (I know, I know, i’m still so early; I spent way too much in the cc)

[andr*meda spoilers]

let me preface all of this with an important qualification: I am going into this game expecting shit. after me3, after the tonedeaf politics of da:i, after the very fucking premise of this game (colonialism’s okay when it’s in space, right???), i’m not expecting a great story. I’m going in to make a new kid, collect some new companions, see some pretty worlds, and criticise everything else.

I’ve seen a lot of hostility on my dash lately about this. from each side. like anything about the game and you’re naive. criticise anything and being unnecessarily critical and you’re ruining fans’ experiences. i’m going to do both, tag both, and if you don’t like it, I would much rather you unfollow than whine at me for critically engaging a series that I’ve loved for years.

pros:

the combat is fun. it’s very much an expansion of me2/3 but with a faster pace and the ability to jet around.

the environment is gorgeous. “habitat 7″ was legitimately spooky but with a strange beauty to it.

it’s mainly well-acted? admittedly, liam’s delivery has been kind of off at times, but his voice is lovely. addison on the nexus was awful, okay. but cora’s been wonderful, I want to marry vetra’s voice, and, perhaps most importantly, fryda wolff has been doing a pretty great job. also shout out to kumail nanjiani as jarun tann, who is FANTASTIC.

the tempest looks really pretty. haven’t left the nexus yet, but it’s pretty inside.

ehhhhs:

so I’m kind of in two minds here. on the one hand, I can definitely see things in the companions that I love. i’ve met cora, liam, and vetra so far and I’m fond of them. but I don’t really know them? vetra, I’m willing to make concessions for since I literally just met her, but I haven’t had one proper conversation with either cora or liam? I feel really disconnected from them, other than maggie and liam getting a little chat during the first mission (that I really had no part in?). but then liam was saddled with the loaded position of ‘justifying killing the aliens’ or outright killing them for you if you refuse. he gets the cliche ‘overkilling’ scene because god! these aliens are so bad! so worthy of death!!!!. yet, when you actually get to chat a little to the guy (a little!), I like him. but i’m about 5 hours in and I still feel disconnected so....

“zero to hero story”. uh, ryder is literally given the pathfinder title after the first mission. like I get that the whole thing is ‘they’ve gotta prove themself!!!’ but that’s not what a zero to hero story is. honestly, I feel like the game needs more interaction with alec in a position of subordination. ryder needs to feel like a zero before the gravity of that title can actually be felt. again, I feel disconnected from this whole aspect. which is bad, because it’s the defining attribute of ryder’s hero story.

i’m not gonna list this as a con about the game because it doesn’t matter that much to me but... the animations. this is a game five years in the making, a AAA game under a massive publisher. releasing a game where a companion’s mouth clearly doesn’t match the words they’re speaking is just arrogant. smaller studios would be crucified for it.

cons:

i’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the character creator is fucking awful. it’s legitimately one of the worst i’ve seen from bioware and a massive step back from da:i’s system. it has one big positive in that actually has two asian presets in the female ryder cc, which is fantastic! but the whole preset limitation is just so fucking ridiculous. everyone’s ryders look the same. and there’s little you can do to change it. worse, if you attempt to drastically change something, the facial animations punish you. move the nose down slightly to make it take up more room on ryder’s face, to make them look different? enjoy watching ryder’s mouth fucking devour it every time they move!

the story. i’m sorry, but i’ve literally seen nothing that makes me interested in what’s going to happen. I keep thinking how fucking awful this initiative is. you dragged hundreds of thousands of people to colonialise a portion of the universe that you had never actually been to? you had no awareness of life forms in it? fully aware that it would take 600 years? with zero contingency plans???? you literally expected to just arrive and settle??? the game tries to make everything urgent by telling you that they’ve got all of these people in cryo and they’re running out of power and food and water and... how was this not planned for? why is there no food production capability built into the nexus or any of the arks? I get that we’ve gotta suspend disbelief with science fantasy like this but... the whole premise of the game is just bad.

and then there’s whole colonialism experience itself! they try to make the whole thing sound better by insisting that the pathfinder team has “first contact protocols” but they’re literally just ‘don’t shoot unless they shoot you’. no ‘how do we actually communicate with beings that don’t understand us’. no ‘is it not perhaps threatening that we suddenly appear carrying rifles’. ryder even says that last bit. before adding ‘guess peace is not an option here’. ...... okay. and then there’s the kett. the writers go to such lengths to demonstrate that you’re perfectly valid in gunning them down. ryder can make a fruitless attempt to talk to them, can even refuse to shoot when the game mechanics kick in and they’re clearly hostile (liam will shoot and then he’ll justify it afterwards, where an option for ryder to say ‘sorry I hesitated’ will pop up), can lament the way it turned out afterwards. like it matters. spoilers: it doesn’t.

and, because this is getting long, let me finish with the whole SAM thing. jfc mac walters can you give your autonomy-denying form of transhumanism a fucking rest? look, normally I really love delving into issues of transhumanism and AI in video games. deus ex and the way mass effect 2 looked at the geth, for instance. but there’s been no actual engagement with this. you get alec’s synthesis (the problem with the quarian and geth was just DIFFERENCE, guys!! if we made everyone the same, there’d be no war!!!! definitely not the basis of liberal/capitalist/christian interventionalism across our history!!!) propaganda memory. you get SAM’s insistence that “trust is important”, while ryder’s only real concern apparently is that SAM will fry her brain. and not, you know, the whole ‘we forced you into physical symbiosis with something you never even really knew’. i’m hoping this gets complicated later on, but idk as I mentioned above, I really have zero faith in bioware to actually engage with these issues. 

ALSO i’m gonna call it now: SAM will be (at least partly) the dead wife/mother (can’t have an rpg without a dead wife lately, huh) and that’s why ryder had to become the pathfinder. 

look, this sounds really negative, but my overall feelings have been a mixture of positive (it’s fun), waiting for more (esp regards the companions), and having my pessimism regarding the story confirmed. but, I mean, da:i was the theocratic ruler experience and I will criticise the story forever but I still replayed it like four times and love it in certain ways so... yeah.