#overworld commentary

[doomstarmagician]

“Do not deign to nullify my star’s own autonomy. He is not a thing, not a creature. He is his own person, same as you and everyone else.”

“Just be nice to him, y’know? Don’t treat him poorly. Haha…”

[lunalikestowriteanddraw]

The more time I have Astarion in my party and getting to see more and more of his personality, the more I realize that Gale and Astarion are more or less the same—both personality and story wise (obv their stories are very different, but the key features driving their stories are eerily similar). The only major difference between their personalities is that Gale is more aligned with good, and Astarion is more evil aligned.

Think I’m kidding? Spend a playthrough talking to Gale and Astarion literally every chance you get (especially at camp), and sooner or later, you’ll see just how similar these power-hungry attention-seeking manwhore malewifes these motherfuckers are

[electrafart]

Heisenberg??????????????

[phantomfallacy]

There’s not nearly enough analyses of Wriothesley and the panopticon that is Meropide.

Like, sure, the connection is there, but are your lines connecting to the right points? Because if you think Wriothesley’s office is the control tower and the Fortress is his all-knowing domain, I think you’re wrong.

Spoilers for his character quest and the Meropide world quest ahead, as well as various tidbits in mini quests:

The Unfinished Comedy reveals that there is a child who had been born in the prison, more or less a decade ago. More than enough time for Wriothesley to “discover” her. But he doesn’t. He is, without a doubt, an advocator of children, and would never allow her to stay in prison if he can help it. No matter what excuse there is, such as being busy with the reformation of the prison, the Fatui invasion, or the Wingalet construction, it doesn’t negate the fact that Wriothesley doesn’t know, or he would’ve acted.

The Beret Society as well, while coming under Wriothesley’s purview, has existed long enough to brainwash and break the spirits of the people who have joined. He had no evidence that Dougier had been breaking rules and infringing on human rights.

So no, Wriothesley, contrary to the Fortress of Meropide description, does not know everything that goes on in the Fortress, and he tells us so.

So then why does the description say otherwise?

The concept of the panopticon is that a single prison warden can maintain order because people will never be able to tell if his eyes are on them. As a result, they will behave, regardless of whether the warden is truly watching or not. Wriothesley tells us that he doesn’t have eyes and ears everywhere because we are not a prisoner. We do not need to be intimidated into behaving. Moreover, the Traveler seems to be an exception to everything like a harem protagonist so let’s discount “our” knowledge of Wriothesley’s claim.

What I think slaps the most though, is that his panopticon isn’t just the Fortress, but the Court of Fontaine as well.

It is mentioned that Wriothesley knows the ongoings of the overworld despite rarely coming up. The citizens of Fontaine see Meropide as this horrible place, even after Wriothesley’s reforms, and it’s not only because of prejudice (though that is most certainly the case), but because of his refusal to be perceived. He refuses Charlotte’s interviews, though being a Duke would most certainly put him in the eye of the public. This is a tentative maintenance of his public persona: that of a cruel and unfathomable man.

“The less people see of me, the happier they will be.”

If people understood that Meropide had welfare meals, stable work hours, and relatively accessible healthcare, why would they be incentivized to follow the law? Especially those of Fleuvre Cendre. But Meropide cannot possibly be that kind of haven. It is a prison, and forever should be—because it is not sustainable.

What humans cannot understand, they fear, and that works to keep the rest of Fontaine in check from committing crimes. No one wants to go to prison, no one wants to suffer, no one wants to see the Duke of Meropide. It’s embedded into the very society, so much that they have pop culture-like phrases for it.

The Duke’s office isn’t the control tower. The whole of Meropide Fortress is, and Fontaine is the “prison.”

There are other interpretations of course, such as the factor of more recent commentary on panopticons and how they bring up the topic of holding those in absolute power accountable. The warden at the center of the panopticon has absolute power, but how is he to be kept accountable?

It could be a hint about how Wriothesley isn’t as in control as he presents himself, and the way he rules is dependent on the people who keep him in check. After all, he says that as Duke, he must set an example of persecuting only after evidence has been found of a wrongdoing, otherwise he could have simply killed Dougier. However, that would certainly bring the Fortress down around him as people questioned his reputation as a fair ruler. (Cough bringing back my sword of Damocles bullshit here//shot).

Alternatively, Wriothesley himself could be a sword of Damocles upon Fontaine, evidenced by Neuvillette’s story quest, but I feel like that would be a Wriolette thread…

Without the source material confirming anything, we’re just playing with Schrödinger’s cat though. Just some food for thought.

Next time on Dragon Ball Z: my TED Talk on why the Fortress of Meropide is not called the Fortress of Atlantis because Wriothesley presents it as communism but it is totalitarian and why that works— (Kidding, I don’t wanna touch this with a ten foot pole pls don’t respond with political philosophies I will perish 🫠🫠🫠😵)

[thelittlelegends]

Spirit Tracks is a beloved twist on the overworld movement in so many Zelda games: travel between locations is restricted to movement on a train, with combat and mini-games baked in! It is a two-character experience, with many sections requiring you to move Link and Zelda sequentially to cover two positions at once or traverse terrain one or the other cannot cross. It's one of the most intensive playable-Zelda options in the main series at the present time and many fans adore it for that (and for Zelda's strong personality.)

At present, it is only available on 3DS and buying the game quite expensive. A text walkthrough is here from ZeldaDungeon.net, and my favourite video walkthrough (with commentary) is also ZeldaDungeon's. Other Let's Plays without commentary, and without being guides are easily searched online.

Reblog and add what you love about the game, things you would like to see, or other resources for those who would like to learn more about it! Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Links to existing fanworks

Most underrated characters

Your favorite gameplay mechanics, story moments, etc

Analysis of story themes, character arcs, and so on

Favorite game items

Best music moments

That art idea you don’t think you’ll ever get around to drawing

Story tropes that are perfect but no one seems to include

(Don’t know what’s going on? Check out this post!)

[undercityrezident]

My Thoughts on Echoes of Wisdom

So, I thought I had a decent idea of what I was getting into while playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. While the trailers had given me insight into the gameplay and the basic concepts at play, I didn’t envision the sheer synergy of game philosophies being married here: the old Zelda and the new. That and a dash of real-time Pokemon or Pikmin being added to the recipe.

To add to this, Nintendo and Grezzo certainly made this game a lot deeper and more engrossing a game than I thought it would be. And I’m quite glad for that. I hadn’t gone into this game with the intense level of hype I’ve gone into other Zelda games with because I’ve learned to temper my expectations due to my growing level of cynicism with the gaming industry.

However, while this certainly isn’t some 150-hour juggernaut to play through (though it does come at about the same monetary cost as a few of those—thank you, awful Canadian dollar conversion rates), this doesn’t make it feel any less valuable a gaming experience. It packs a lot into its small package through diversity in design ideas, a well-paced story, and thought into how the devs gave a great deal of power to players in tackling challenges.

In short, this means that this game does a lot of the great things I’ve praised Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for doing without falling into some of the same pitfalls those games do. Echoes of Wisdom employs much of the same ideas and aesthetics while keeping a core, classic Zelda experience.

Below the cut, I’ll tell you exactly how and why that is. Beware of complete game spoilers from this point forward:

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Echoes of My Voice

To inform any readers here on the standards that I’ll be measuring this game by, I’ve completed, more or less, everything in the game. I’ve finished the story; collected all the echoes, stamps, and might crystals; upgraded all my equipment; collected all the outfits and accessories, and I’m fairly certain I’ve completed all the quests and side quests. However, I’ve not made every single combination of smoothie, and according to a let’s play of the game I watched, I’ve only missed a few overworld cave chests with some minor items inside.

As often I do with open-world games, I tended to explore the regions to reveal the map and collect goodies before attempting quests in the area. Having done just that, I think my usual method of exploration might’ve minorly taken away from the experience of discovery that comes paired with progressing the story, though that’s less a critique of the game and something I have to resolve with myself as a player.

But compared to the awful consequences of the same exploration tendencies with Tears of the Kingdom where you could spoil huge story points by simply exploring, Echoes of Wisdom, thankfully, keeps such things gated behind proper game progression, allowing players to explore without fear of such things. For open-world games, I think exploration should be either a joy, a curiosity to indulge, or a lead-in to teasing boons that help build anticipation for something to come in the game’s plot. If it ends up becoming a detriment to either story or gameplay, then it’s poor open-world design, plain and simple. But I’m happy to report that this is not a concern with Echoes of Wisdom.

Even with trailers and the like to give some light to the story and gameplay we were getting, I could enjoy this game without feeling too spoiled. That said, if you’re a fan who has yet to play this game, stop reading this commentary and try going into it without watching any trailers or viewing any promotional material. I think this game could’ve been even better for me if I’d gone into it completely blind, as the discoveries of what I could do could’ve hit even harder, though they don’t lack any sort of punch, even with my foreknowledge.

So, for those who need not worry about spoilers and with all the above in mind, let me break down this game bit by bit.

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Echoes of Worlds Gone By

Echoes of Wisdom certainly draws inspiration from other Zelda games in designing its world, first and foremost from A Link to the Past. One could say that that majority of the core central map is derived from the Super Nintendo classic, with a sort of frame of new content around it both literal and figurative. That’s not to say this world’s map is copy and pasted. Far from it, in fact. But fans of the old game will no doubt recognize features both obvious and subtle.

You will find the ruins of the Eastern and Desert Palaces in their respective places as examples of obvious landmarks. However, something less obvious is how, to the southwest of the castle, there is a grove of trees with a tree stump at the centre. However, you’ll find no flute-playing phantom and a gathering of wild animals engrossed by it, but a heart piece instead: a nice nod and reward to those who saw and appreciate the reference.

However, that’s where most similarities to A Link to the Past end. What once could’ve once been referred to geographically as Death Mountain are now Hebra Mountain and the Holy Mount Lanayru instead, now doffing their rocky exterior for an ice-capped one—not terribly unlike Lorule’s equivalent in A Link Between Worlds. Meanwhile, the new stand-in for the fiery Death Mountain we all know and love from later games comes in the form of Eldin Volcano in the northwest. Zora’s river has now been greatly expanded to include not just a larger river system but also a large oceanic bay it flows into. As well, entirely new regions have been added in the form of Suthorn Woods and the Faron Wetlands, the former perhaps being a very subtle nod to Twilight Princess’s Ordon (being the origin for Link in this game) and the latter being a reference to the southeastern Faron jungles in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom.

Regardless of where your era of play experience in the Zelda franchise comes from, you’ll probably find something to look at and point and say with all the sincerity of Captain America, “I understood that reference!”

But while geography is all well and good, it’s only one half of the picture when it comes to creating full and real worlds. The other half is its denizens, and I’m happy to report that Echoes of Wisdom has picked up the slack that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom left unchecked. While this might be an unfair critique or comparison given the massive size differences in maps between the 3D Switch titles and this one, I do sorely believe that the former titles’ worlds could’ve felt so much deeper and richer with greater populations inhabiting them. I completely understand the need for Breath of the Wild to make its Hyrule uninhabited, but I feel Tears of the Kingdom could’ve stood to add some people in various repopulation and reclamation efforts throughout its otherwise empty vistas.

But, focusing on this game, Echoes of Wisdom’s size and population match each other far better. While people aren’t everywhere, I certainly feel like I need to travel a lot shorter distances to find people, whether they be Hylians, Zora, Gorons, Deku Scrubs, or Gerudo. This makes the world feel a bit more lived in, which made me more excited to explore and see who I could meet.

The only thing I can’t say that are improvements over the previous Switch titles is the depth of the cultures. However, neither were they declines in quality. The stories and lore surrounding each area’s culture were fun and characterized each group of people well. But, at the same time, since these areas were scaled down, there was less happening outside of the main quest, giving us fewer opportunities to learn about their associated people and their traditions. And the few side quests there were quite shallow compared to some we completed in the 3D Switch titles. But what we lost in depth, we gained in zany comedy and bits aimed at younger audiences, so I can’t fault it too much.

As for aesthetics in the game and its people, I can see plenty of people being turned off by this game’s art style. Yes, it’s drawn from the same DNA as the Link’s Awakening remake, but I found a lot of charm with that game, and I found the same charm here as well, and then some. I hope that those who focus on the presentation of the game and its world can look past the surface of its apparent childish design and see the depth of emotion it presents, ranging from peaks of comedy to valleys of tragedy. I might not have been hit as hard by this game in critical moments as I was in Tears of the Kingdom, but Echoes of Wisdom still had great moments that leaned into its style very well.

It’s also damn adorable, and that counts for something with me.

Yet, this game didn’t just do cute. It managed to do creepy, as well. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Stilled World. It had a tense, oppressing atmosphere that conveyed the threat that we were dealing with. From the disparate floating patches of slowly dripping world stolen from ours to the petrified, photo-negative-coloured people hung in the air to slowly decay to nothing, even the cute art style did nothing to soften this purple-hued world that reflects the rifts we see marking its entry points Hyrule. Art and colour direction go a long way to convey the foreboding nature of the Stilled World, making it a perfect contrast to the more charming Hyrule we know. Yes, it’s another take on a “Dark World” variant, but it works, as it’s both intrinsically tied to the story and provides a contrasting aesthetic to the bright and sunny Hyrule that stands apart from its contemporaries.

Admittedly, this game isn’t beating the Pokemon comparison allegations with how the Stilled World resembles the Distortion World… not that such a comparison is a bad thing in my eyes.

In any case, this game nails its world design on both sides of the coin. If you’re up for exploring a new Hyrule, I very much endorse exploring this awesome version of it.

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Echoes of Gameplay

Super Smash Bros aside, this is the closest we’re getting to a Pokemon crossover with the Legend of Zelda, plain and simple. If you know me and my blog, this is absolutely my jam.

I knew we were eschewing the traditional Legend of Zelda sword-and-shield gameplay in favour of Zelda’s summoner-esque style of combat. What I didn’t expect was such a complex system of monsters and battling.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not 15+ types of dense, pseudo-rock-paper-scissors advantages/weaknesses equations like actual Pokemon, but it definitely keeps ideas like that in mind. Whenever you pick up a new echo—and dear lord, there are so many, it’s amazing but also overwhelming at times—you can read a quick blurb about it, not unlike a Pokedex entry, and see its features. Some, like the Darknut line (yes, there are improvements on echoes throughout the game, so some of your faves can get stronger), move slowly but hit hard. Others are fast but hit lightly or frequently. Certain monsters have weaknesses to certain types of damage, like how plant monsters are typically vulnerable to fire. Environmental factors come into play, too. Some beasts only function or cannot function at all in water, while some are amphibious!

While there are some instances where picking echoes for a particular combat scenario is encouraged, I found you can proceed with your favourites for most of the game without too much issue, though you’ll probably feel you need to use more powerful ones as the game goes on for practicality. That said, you can field a variety of favourites for flexibility, not unlike an actual Pokemon team. I greatly enjoyed thinking about what to employ in a situation for best effect, though I often ended up defaulting to a few of my favourites anyway.

In case anyone is interested, I’m one of the many who used Peahats to steamroll through the early game, though I often ended up using Wolfos around that time for their mobility. By mid-game, I had found a great combination in the form of the Ball-and-Chain Trooper and ReDeads: the ReDeads stunning foes while the troopers revved up before attacking was a favourite combination of mine. Towards the end of the game, I found the White Wolfos and their summoned pack alongside a Guay for aerial support was pretty effective as well.

Similarly, I watched a let’s play of someone who used Peahats about 75% of the time throughout the game and absolutely had a ball with it. I think the mark of this game’s success comes in the fact people can approach its combat in so many ways and enjoy it in all those myriad fashions.

Some might complain that this indirect method of combat boils down to summoning your echoes and waiting—or even literally sleeping if you summon a bed and decide to recover your hearts while your minions fight for you—is very uninvolved, uninspiring, or even boring. I can understand how a person might say this, especially toward the beginning of the game while you’re sitting at a vulnerable three or four hearts and only have Zols or Moblins for summons. However, I find the combat becomes so much more dynamic as the game goes on.

In fact, you quickly gain swordfighter form near the beginning of the game, which allows you to get into the fray directly if you want to or if your echoes can’t do the job themselves. I’m glad the swordfighter form is limited though, as I think treating what is usually an infinite resource as finite is a great twist on the Zelda formula. It puts one’s mind through their paces to think things through differently, making the game that much more engaging and differentiating it from other Zelda games. Considering we’re working with a completely different protagonist with entirely unique strengths and weaknesses, it makes complete sense, and it’s a beautiful way of uniting gameplay with characterization.

Unfortunately, I do have to say there were times when I felt the monster AI could’ve used some polish. I can’t be sure if the instances of this were designed around the idea that not all monsters are smart or if it was a flaw in the system, but even when I targeted specific creatures or objects for my echoes to attack or interact with, they sometimes took ages to comply, making timing or precision-based puzzles or encounters a greater pain than they ought to have been. This was a minor source of annoyance from time to time.

As well, some echoes worked in cycles, and if your monster echoes got into an animation or attack cycle that made them completely ineffectual against monsters around them, it could be quite tedious. If you ever picked a Wizzrobe to fight another Wizzrobe, you probably know what I’m talking about with its spell wind-up time.

But, overall, I found the combat experience to be quite satisfying and engrossing. Granted, it taxed the hell out of my brain at times, especially near the end of the game with the final two boss fights: having to evade attacks, summon echoes, and then also toggle on and off swordfighter mode to intervene or attack the boss while my echoes dealt with their minions was a lot to mentally juggle. It was enjoyable, but it sometimes left me a little frenetic.

And this might’ve just been me, but I barely made use of Dampe’s inventions in combat. It felt great to make them as part of his questlines, but deploying and winding them up felt so much slower than simply deploying an echo and having them do the same job faster. This mode of combat felt almost tacked on to the game, an outlier from the bevy of abilities that Tri granted you to the point of feeling out-of-theme.

But while combat was an intrinsic part of the game, I’d say that, in keeping with the wisdom theme of the game, the puzzles were an even bigger and more crucial part. While monsters made up a great deal of your echoes, more mundane—but no less important—object-based echoes made up a significant portion of your echo arsenal. And damn, were they used to great effect.

Both in the isometric top-down and the side-scroller-like 2D sections, the game employed puzzles that forced you to think about everything you had available to you. Yes, I felt quite stupid when I forgot that I had the bind ability a dozen times at the start of the game, but as I discovered the game’s MO with how it expected you to solve puzzles, they became incredibly satisfying to solve with a combination of echoes, bind, and reverse bind—though I will say the latter of those three tended to go unused for long portions of the game for me.

But, having watched another person play this game after I finished it, I was so pleased to discover just how flexible the solutions were. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom often fostered numerous approaches to problems, though many still expected one kind of solution. However, this game feels like it perfected the art of freeform puzzle solving.

People often refer to Oracle of Ages as having some of the best puzzles in the series, as it was designed to be the puzzle-solving complement to Oracle of Seasons’ combat-focused gameplay. However, I felt that many of Oracle of Ages’ puzzles had solutions that were too obscure or unintuitive. Echoes of Wisdom, in contrast, is a game focused on puzzles (both in and out of combat) where, with very few exceptions (I’m looking at you Eastern Temple…), the puzzles feel very satisfying to solve. While there might be a few that absolutely stumped me for a while, if I looked at it long enough and tried enough solutions, I eventually got it.

That said, on seeing other people solve the same puzzles, I often had that 20/20 hindsight reaction where I wondered “How did I not think of that? That was so simple!” Such is the brilliance of this game in its variety, though I will concede that some echoes (the Flying Tile and the Platboom in particular) do rob a lot of creativity of certain puzzles where traversal is key.

Navigating around the world was also a challenge, and I mean that in a good way. In many games nowadays, climbing a mountain has been made to not feel nearly as daunting as it once did. If it is a challenge, then it’s only so in a cinematic way and not a gameplay one, with curated paths in the form of marked scalable walls or other easy-to-execute controller maneuvers.

In Echoes of Wisdom, scaling mountains, cliffs, walls, and gaps does require some forethought, especially when the game provides some wrinkle in the form of enemies or architecture. This truly makes this game a thinking-person’s game, as everything you do requires some measure of planning and execution, making even world traversal feel validating in some way. This also has the added benefit of giving the world’s fast-travel points even more value than usual, something I think we in the gaming community take for granted now.

Where the features of puzzle-solving and traversal blended beautifully was in the game’s dungeons. Yes, true-to-form traditional Zelda dungeons returned in this game, and I couldn’t have been happier! While most of the dungeons were fairly linear—the exceptions being Jabul Ruins and Faron Temple—I didn’t mind their structures at all. Most dungeons featured a series of great individual sequential puzzle challenges that tested me and my knowledge of the game and what I had available to me very well. How these features and ideas tied into both navigating the dungeon and fighting the bosses of each dungeon were also fantastic and usually very intuitive. While I very much appreciate the idea of dungeons whose entire layout or form is some sort of puzzle itself, Echoes of Wisdom’s dungeons are a variety I love as well.

The fact these dungeons blended the threat of the Stilled World with the traditional perils of delving into classic Zelda dungeons made them even better. A few of them have even been given the “Skull Woods” treatment from A Link to the Past, allowing several points of entry and exit. This, like Skull Woods, gives these dungeons a welcome sense of being tied to the world around it.

I have to say that my favourites are—the first being unsurprising given my love for desert-themed temples—the Gerudo Sanctum and the Lanayru Temple. Both are long, complex, and feature fantastic puzzles that iterate throughout the dungeon. Both also nailed their respective aesthetics, though the same could be said of any of the game’s dungeons.

Returning to the topic of traversal, one criticism I have is how the isometric view leads to some issues of perspective, whether in aiming projectiles, echoes, or in executing jumps. It was only through a video online that I discovered you could press the right stick into the controller to have the view centred above you directly. Whether this instruction was present in the initial tutorials or not, I cannot recall. If it was, it was easily missed on my end.

Another thing that contributed to some frustrations for me was the game’s controls. As with Tears of the Kingdom, I felt like it took too long for me to adjust to the game’s complicated control system. There are so many things you can do and features your character has that it can feel easy to press the wrong button and execute the wrong command all too often. This most often happened to me in combat when I wanted to summon something, and hit bind instead, or when I wanted to switch to a new echo and accidentally hit swordfighter form. This could be less an issue of the game and more of something to do with me, but considering I’ve heard the same from others, I feel like there could be something done to better align the controls to something more convenient or to streamline features somehow.

A lesser, though still often equally frustrating thing I felt when playing was how it was hard to deploy echoes, monsters or objects alike, in the exact spaces you wanted. While the game didn’t force you to move on a grid as it did in Link’s Awakening or other older 2D Zelda games, you generally deployed echoes on an invisible in-game grid that often forced things to spawn in spaces I didn’t intend. When this happened numerous times in a row, despite me repositioning myself many times—or having to muck around in the heat of combat to do so—I definitely found myself grinding my teeth a little bit.

Further, with regards to selecting echoes, this game does slightly improve on Tears of the Kingdom’s menuing issue. While you still generally must scroll through a seemingly endless selection of echoes by the game’s end through the side-scrolling “quick menu,” at least you now have a proper pause menu to equip echoes when you want to. Still, I think a great way to solve this would’ve been a better allocation of controller buttons so that we could’ve had two or three buttons dedicated to multiple echoes rather than only one. Having to swap between echoes constantly due to our limited buttons dedicated to them was a definite pain and one of the biggest flaws in the game.

But, even with these criticisms, I felt like the overall gameplay experience with Echoes of Wisdom was fantastic! Yes, there were moments I absolutely wanted to chuck my controller out the window for repeated issues occurring in crucial moments. But for the great majority of my time spent playing this game, I was very happy. From solving mind-bending puzzles to seeing my army of echoes wreck enemy faces, I thoroughly enjoyed how this game played.

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Echoes of Music

This game brings its own musical compositions and twists, reflecting its originality but also its ties previous games in the Zelda series. You’ll be hearing new tunes in familiar places, but if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear references and traces to classic tunes associated with those locales. From Hyrule Castle to the Ranch to Kakariko Village, you’ll find notes of familiarity amongst engaging new tracks that, for the most part, fit this game’s tone and mood very well.

One track I want to bring particular attention to is the overworld track. It’s based on the game’s main theme, which is already a banger. Then, in the second half of the game, once Zelda is free to wander about without concealing her identity, the track is redone with an intro containing an upbeat version of Zelda’s Lullaby before transitioning back into the reprise of the main theme once more. I feel this is a fantastic way of not only varying one of the tracks you’ll be hearing most often but also showcasing the progression of the game’s plot.

Moreover, I’m just happy to have an overworld/field theme that has that bombastic Zelda feel that I’ve been missing since before Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It truly conveys that grandiose sense of adventure that I adore about Zelda games.

At the same time, I can’t say the atmospheric pieces aren’t also memorable, as the Stilled World theme is tense, creepy, and subdued, suiting that world and its void-like presence perfectly. It’s certainly a highlight for me as well.

I have to say, though, my favourites are the new dungeon themes. I’ve always been partial to the music of dungeons, but that’s also meant that I’ve come to expect more of them. Thankfully, this game delivers with them in particular, with my notable favourites being the Gerudo Sanctum and Eldin Temple themes, both of which feature some fantastic violin-work.

It’s safe to say that I’ll be listening to this soundtrack for a while and integrating this game’s tunes into my Zelda D&D campaign.

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An Echoed Story

For a new, original 2D title, I will admit I was not expecting such revelations relating to overall Zelda lore. Like a lot of one-off Zelda projects, which I had written this game off as being, I expected this game to have a relatively simple plot with a greater focus on gameplay and a reuse of old plot ideas and villains. Such has been Nintendo’s philosophy toward Zelda games for a while, and I expected Echoes of Wisdom to conform to this ideology as well.

Colour me surprised when this game debuted a great story with a whole new villain whose scale I don’t think we’ve ever seen in a Zelda game previously.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I do love how we begin the story as many a Zelda game might end: as Link finding Zelda and defeating Ganon to rescue her. This was a great way to not only tutorialize the start of the game but also to introduce us to two of the principal characters while also tying us back to previous Zelda games.

Following a quick escape as Zelda once she’s freed and Link is lost to one of the rifts, we find ourselves finally loose on the world as criminal-branded Zelda, along with her new companion Tri, finding that the rifts can not only take people, but spawn dark imposters of them, a theme we’ll see recurring throughout the game. From there, narratively speaking, we follow a fairly typical Zelda formula: we visit regions and complete dungeons there to help the residents of each area dealing with a particular calamity. Only this time, the calamity is a universal one they’re all dealing with, but with each with a unique wrinkle, courtesy of the rifts’ ability to spawn imposters.

From a surface level, the above formula seems pretty on-brand for Zelda. The main difference is how we go about it. Besides the obvious gameplay differences I listed in a previous section, we also get a brief, simple, though ultimately interesting story involving Zelda and each resident culture from these regions. The first ones we deal with in earnest are the Gerudo and the Zora, with our choice of which of the two to tackle first after we’ve finished our “tutorial” in Suthorn Woods.

I do like the Gerudo’s take on the classic “traitorous vizier” centred storyline, with Facette, who is eventually revealed to be an imposter, giving poor directions to the Gerudo Chieftan, Seera. Meanwhile, Dohna, the chief’s daughter and head of Gerudo soldiers, is attempting to solve problems along with Zelda. Getting a clone reveal of Facette and the subsequent merciless actions by Seera to dispatch the imposter was a great and far more decisive action than I expected from a Zelda NPC. Let’s just say, I’m a fan of both her and Dohna.

Meanwhile, over in Jabul Waters, we have two Zora tribes: the River and Sea Zora. I was stoked to see both types of Zora getting representation in one game. I love the idea of the two contrasting tribes having their own traditions and perspectives through the two chiefs, Dradd and Kushara. Navigating the waters of both Zora Cove and the rivers, not to mention the waters of the chiefs’ tumultuous relationship, was engaging, especially when it came to dealing with the raging Jabu-Jabu, who turned out to be an imposter as well. Having Jabu’s antics be disguised as displeasure at having their den consumed by a rift was a decent red herring for the true cause, though it wasn’t that hard to see what the real deal was.

In the end, having the Zora chiefs reconcile and play their song together to access the den was a heartwarming moment, with that cutscene in particular really driving that point home.

With those two problems resolved, two major rifts sealed, and two of three victims from Hyrule Castle rescued, we brought about the game’s second venture into Hyrule Castle and the mid-game twist. As it turns out, Ganon was never the threat here, as he was just an echo created by something far older and far more malevolent. It’s not Demise, but a being that could be put on par in both age—and potentially power—with the three Golden Goddesses: a void being named Null.

As we learn shortly after this, Null is a being who existed in the nothingness before creation but was dismayed when the goddesses made the world and imprisoned Null inside it. Continuously spawning rifts consuming places and people (something that was established to be happening long before this game began and the canonical reason for this incarnation of Link’s muteness), prompted the Goddesses to create Tri’s people to mend and contain the rifts. Unfortunately, now, Null has now-taken Link and imprisoned the Goddesses in the three lands of their namesakes: Faron, Lanayru, and Eldin. Naturally, it falls to the newly exonerated Zelda, the newly dubbed priestess, to put things right and rescue Link… for a change. Oh, and we also need to free the goddesses to find this “Prime Energy” that might help us.

From there, we choose to attend to any of the three areas first. I chose Faron first, though I feel, in retrospect, Eldin was probably the most natural first choice. Regardless, we got to visit the wetlands and all the Deku Scrubs who, much like the Gorons of Tears of the Kingdom, find themselves amid a cultural addiction. This time, it’s the spider webs spawned by the rifts in their region, which they’re eating as cotton candy on sticks. I’m not sure if this recent trend of addictive foods in Zelda games is indicative of Nintendo taking an active interest in making allegories to help kids say no to drugs, but two such cases in a row can’t be a coincidence. Funnily, this one is also framed as a cautionary tale against following trends blindly, as the Deku Scrubs seem to be epitomizing popular kids trying to stay popular by any means.

Either way, through doing small tasks throughout the region, we managed to access the temple, now swathed in the biggest rift in the region, and tackle the dungeon to take out the latest incarnation of Gohma. While interesting, I feel this regional story is one of the weaker ones in the game due to us not connecting to a particular individual or individuals through it, but all the same, the game’s charm is on full display throughout, with a lot of comedic bits coming through here strongly.

On Eldin Volcano, we have to deal with the fallout of the rifts while helping a newly minted Goron chief in Darston. The poor lad is coming to terms with his new role, relying on the 56 teachings of his recently-passed father in tablet form, leaving him paralyzed with indecision during this unprecedented crisis. Through rescuing two elders and traversing a secret path all chiefs must undertake to reach the volcano’s crater, he gains some level of confidence and recognizes that he must rely on his own perspectives and ideas to become a fully realized chief. While we don’t really get enough time with him to feel like this newfound confidence is fully developed or earned narratively, it’s nice to see the effort made. In any case, I do like him better than Yunobo, effectively his equivalent in terms of role in the 3D Switch games.

Regardless, we take on the Eldin Temple, and after its myriad tense and heated challenges we get to face… holy shit, Volvagia! You’re back! I was not expecting to see a new Volvagia, but it was a fun fight and a good conclusion to the dungeon and the region as a whole.

Lastly, I visited the Holy Mt. Lanayru, by and far the most desolate (even compared to the desert) and least populated area in the game. The only resident there is a Yeti named Conde, easily a contender for the character who wears his heart on his sleeve the most in the entire franchise. With a series of fun and sometimes bittersweet encounters with him as we travel up the mountain, we discover he once had a father who has since passed on and a brother who is travelling the world on an adventure. However, he believes he’s returned as we see something akin to him going up the mountain ahead of Conde. In one of the more, if not the most, heartbreaking moments in the game, we hear—thankfully not see—said supposed brother strike Conde and continue up the mountain.

We follow this unknown yeti into the Stilled World, finding out through a mural that Conde’s brother doesn’t hate him, and he is in fact excited to take him on an adventure someday, leading us with some new motivation (aside from saving the region) to delve into Lanayru Temple and confront the beast. Naturally, we discover that the beast is not Conde’s brother—though I’m as of yet unsure if it's an echo of him or not or just something that resembles him—and defeat them in a great boss battle. Following that, in another touching moment, we get to deliver the good news to Conde, that his brother is still out there adventuring and thinks the world of him.

Finally, with the power of all three goddesses on our side, we make ready to go to the Eternal Forest, but not before Null creates an echo of us, the perfect agent to infiltrate the resting place of the Prime Energy.

After some comical buffoonery of one of the Castle NPCs we rescued earlier in the game and the briefest of conversations with the Deku Tree, we catch up to the echo of Zelda and find that the Prime Energy is nothing less than the Triforce. At this point, I’m unsure if it was named that to throw us off the true nature of the power or if there’s some significance to the “Prime Energy” name. I’ve heard some people speculate that it’s called that so the Triforce can get its name from our companion Tri as a result of her role in this game. If this game sits where I think it does in the timeline, that explanation doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m not too concerned with the logistics of that as far as this game’s plot goes.

In any case, as often happens with the Triforce when someone impure and out-of-balance touches it, it splits—though kudos to the worrisome cutscene where it seems to radiate dark power before stopping and splitting, I appreciate a very tense moment like that—with the Triforce of Power coming to rest with Null’s Zelda echo, Wisdom with Zelda herself, and Courage going to Link imprisoned in the Stilled World. After a brief pursuit through said dimension, we finally get our battle with our echo, and a fun one at that! Once defeated, the Zelda echo retreats into the Null’s main body, a horrifying dark mass, and we finally free Link—I did so in the same way he did us at the start of the game: with a single arrow. Man, I love things coming full circle!

With an awesome cooperative segment with Link through Null’s ghastly body, we finally make our way to the final boss, Null itself, who has a startingly familiar appearance, seeming to have taken on aspects of Tri’s people, who have been largely their jailer for aeons. This seems perfect to me, considering the echo power they possess. Considering, throughout the fight, we see imprisoned members of Tri’s race both in its grasp and throughout its body, this seems like a great way to reveal their true, domineering or even parasitic nature.

The final boss fight was a spectacle and a ton of fun. I loved yanking on Null’s arms, only to have Link leap into a flying spin attack to sever said arm. The whole encounter left me absolutely thrilled as it ended with Link and Zelda both making that final pull to yank the Triforce of Power from Null’s form.

Null’s dying breath rattling with a need for more power to overcome the Goddesses’ perceived wrongdoings against them was fantastic, giving me light chills at the pure hunger and desperation of this primordial being. This is probably one of the best-done villains the franchise has conjured in a long time, and I’m wholly surprised it was devised for a 2D game that probably took a fraction of the time that the 3D games did. While I’ve seen far more complex villains in other media, this is a big step up from the simple, nearly one-dimensional incarnations of Ganon or Ganondorf we’ve seen recently (the exception being Ganondorf’s Wind Waker incarnation—I still think he's fantastic and I hope he gets that level of depth again someday).

We get a bittersweet ending with Tri departing from us as they reminisce on what they’ve learned of the nature of the people in Hyrule, especially in their gratitude toward Zelda. The reprise of the “thank you” notion from earlier in the game hit particularly hard, and I have to say, I had my hand over my heart “aww”-ing in that moment.

With Link and Zelda returning to Castletown, the citizens coming out to celebrate us, including the King and his formerly missing advisors, was wonderful, and getting to see Link speak for the first time since… who knows how long, provoking everyone’s shocked expressions, was a great moment to cap off the story before Zelda’s wistful look into the sky to where Tri vanished. This was only made better by the credits roll showing everyone in the wake of the events—including Conde’s brother coming back in his balloon! Heck yeah—and the final post-credits scene showing the framed Tri Rod enshrined on Zelda’s wall. What a brilliant, heartfelt ending!

As a story, Echoes of Wisdom wasn’t an epic for the ages, but it was a story told wonderfully and a return to form after some worrisome practices had crept into Zelda’s storytelling in the last two games. This game saw the—heh—wisdom in correcting previous games’ errors and opted to design their world and gameplay to cooperate with their story. While it’s not as narratively innovative as other games I’ve seen and played, it’s good to see the Zelda series bouncing back in this department.

In terms of characterization, Princess Zelda, of course, suffers from Zelda protagonist syndrome in that they don’t get much characterization besides a few great expressions drawn on her face during key moments. That said, such is a price to pay for seeing our girl finally get to be the active agent in the legend of her namesake. This doesn’t lessen the poignant emotions I felt at the end of the game with Zelda’s sadness on Tri’s departure. Like the departure of companions of Navi, Midna, and Fi from Link before, sometimes, we don’t need to speech to know there’s deep-rooted feelings there.

And on Tri’s side of things, I appreciate Tri having been characterized as a being unfamiliar with Hyrulean traditions, expressions, emotions, and ideas. It gave her a few funny and interesting moments to dissect the nature of human emotions involved in this game, not to mention the aforementioned “thank you” moment at the end.

Besides this, supporting characters got to have a few moments here and there, but they were few and fleeting and rarely recurred outside their regions besides when we revisited them for additional side quests. Still, the fact they’re there and had an impact made the story and world feel just that bit more whole than it otherwise could’ve been.

Overall, this game’s story was a wonderful surprise, and I’ll be continuing to mull it over time goes on. And I’ll likely learn and gain new perspectives on it as I consume more media about the game in the near future.

---

A Reflected Echo

So, in the wake of the Echoes of Wisdom and all these reflections on it, what’s my final verdict on it?

While I’ve had plenty to say about what the game needs to do to improve, I feel all my complaints are rather diminutive in the face of its accomplishments. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, tells a wonderful story, and does fun things both new and old that blend the best of old and new philosophies in the Zelda franchise. This marriage of ideas is something I hope Nintendo and its partners iterate on to create better and ever-evolving Zelda games.

Nintendo seems to be learning from some of its mistakes in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and I’m truly grateful for that. In some ways, it’s still not quite up to the standards other games set in the industry, but in other ways, it exceeds them. So much attention to detail and quality has clearly been paid to this game, and I hope to see that attention continue to help refine the series further.

In the end, I’m glad Zelda’s first outing as a proper protagonist went so well. There was an underlying fear I had going into this game that the game wouldn’t receive the attention and love it deserved from the developers because it didn’t feature Link or because it wasn’t a proper 3D Zelda game. In the wake of Princess Peach: Showtime being received less-than-favourably, I couldn’t put the worrisome idea that Echoes of Wisdom could suffer a similar fate. Thankfully, I was proven wrong, and Zelda got to be the hero she deserved to be after carrying the franchise’s title decades.

Well done, Princess Zelda! You saved Hyrule, the world, and have set a new precedent for your character moving forward.

Now, after that final segment of the game leading up to the final boss battle, not to mention the battle itself, Nintendo has demonstrated that they can make a co-op Legend of Zelda game featuring both Link and the titular princess. I’m expecting you to come up with something great for us, devs! My Zelink-shipping-heart is depending on it!

[mariacallous]

In early September, Warner Bros. released a teaser for A Minecraft Movie, the studio’s new film based on Mojang’s nearly 15-year-old sandbox game. Directed by Napoleon Dynamite helmer Jared Hess, it was, frankly, very goofy. Jack Black was Steve; Jason Momoa was sporting maybe the worst hairdo he’s ever had. Everyone involved, even the animated creatures, seemed to think they were in a different movie.

But that wasn’t what the trolls latched onto. Instead, they fixed on the fact that a Black woman—Orange Is the New Black’s Danielle Brooks—was in the Overworld.

As the trailer racked up dislikes, right-wing influencers like Elijah Schaffer and Nick Fuentes posted Brooks’ image next to disparaging comments and made references to “forced diversity” and “woke” Hollywood. It was Gamergate 2.0—a reimagining of the decade-old harassment campaign aimed at rallying against diversity, equity, and inclusion—but aimed at a kids’ movie, rather than a video game.

According to Wendy Via, cofounder and CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which just published a report looking at the far right’s racist comments about the trailer, the response comes from a new, and also quite old, playbook. “Large-scale campaigns against trailers specifically are a relatively new phenomenon, but attempting to frame ‘wokeness’ as an invisible enemy infiltrating the entertainment industry is not,” Via says.

Via points out that back in spring of 2023, the far-right X account End Wokeness made similar noise about a “Protect Trans Kids” flag that appeared briefly in the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The goal of these campaigns is to target “spaces where young, white men are influenced,” like sci-fi movies and video games, which appeal to younger audiences, Via adds. “Providing racist and homophobic commentary on popular franchises through large social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube serves as an effective means to propagandize and recruit young people to hate movements.”

Take, for example, The Acolyte. Earlier this year, the Disney+ show found itself the target of fan backlash while star Amandla Stenberg was subjected to racist comments online. So, too, was Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the most recent Star Wars movie trilogy. The minimizing of her role in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalker, perhaps emboldened diversity detractors further.

Reception of The Acolyte seemed, almost, to be a solidification. Fan unrest in the Star Wars universe is a cousin to, if not a direct descendant of, Gamergate, and since former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon harnessed the energy of that movement and used it to fuel the then burgeoning so-called alt-right, influencers have used similar tactics to convince aggrieved men that their games, their shows and movies, and their country are somehow being taken from them.

By the time the Minecraft Movie trailer dropped, the script was already set. Influencers just had to pick which lines to say.

Whereas 2014’s rallying cry was a more broadly misogynistic, racist one, the Gamergate of 2024 seems focused on the idea of the “DEI hire”—a woman, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC person who ends up blamed for “ruining” something. Pundits used this language to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Right-wing talking heads pointed the finger at female Secret Service agents for not fully protecting Trump during the July attempt on his life. Fans have lobbed it at the inclusion of a Black samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Campaigning against diversity in games came into particular focus earlier this year when Sweet Baby Inc., a Canadian consultancy, became the focus of a group of players upset at what they viewed as the “wokeification” of video games. Online harassment of the company’s employees hit new heights last winter when a Steam curation group called Sweet Baby Inc Detected popped up purporting to list all the games the company had advised on, giving people an easy way to boycott certain titles or post bad reviews of them. Even though the company hadn’t touched several of the games, and as founder Kim Belair told WIRED this winter, the company “[doesn’t] want forced diversification either,” the harassing comments continued for months.

On September 4, the same day the Minecraft Movie trailer went up, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two employees of the state-backed Russian news network RT, in which it alleged that they had secretly funded the right-wing influencer network Tenet Media. The DOJ accused the company of posting content full of Kremlin-approved talking points, though individual influencers working for Tenet say they knew nothing about the ties to Russia and are not accused of wrongdoing. A WIRED analysis of Tenet’s videos, since taken down by YouTube, found several frequently used three-word phrases. Among them: “Black Lives Matter,” “diversity equity inclusion,” and “Sweet Baby Inc.”

Into this firestorm landed Minecraft. As Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor at American University’s school of communications and author of the forthcoming book Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, points out, Minecraft (the gaming platform), already had some right-leaning fans. Its creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, who sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, has sent some dumb tweets about race, and Minecraft “has a reputation for being connected to the far-right pipeline,” Massanari says. Being based on a game connects the Minecraft Movie to Gamergate-like responses in some ways, but it’s also possible that a movie based on “this particular game,” she adds, has activated a certain kind of fan.

Back in August, Deadline reported The Acolyte would not be getting a second season. It was, Stenberg would later say, “not a huge shock” considering the response online. Other reports claimed it didn’t get a second season because it was expensive and didn’t attract a huge viewership. Regardless of the reason, Via says the far right saw it as a victory of the “go woke, go broke” narrative they’ve been pushing.

“Going after The Minecraft Movie may be an attempt to recreate this ‘victory’ and provide the far right with the opportunity to craft the narrative about a series or film themselves,” Via says. “If Minecraft were to perform poorly at the box office, they could point to “diversity” as a reason for its failure and justify petitioning for more media that excludes everyone but straight, white men.”

[aquaquadrant]

In that last ask that you answered what point did Atlas miss? That Hels players aren't really monsters? Yes they have extra bad parts but that there's more to them than that? Sorry I'm kinda tired tonight and my reading comprehension is a little meh right now.

nah ur good it’s just *gestures vaguely*

they both jumped so quickly to their own conclusions. patho tells them that hels players are made from the worst parts of overworlders but he makes no commentary on how that should influence who they are. he wasn’t bothered by the revelation bc he knew that data (like DNA, for us), isn’t what ultimately makes you who you are. meanwhile bravo takes that as evidence that he’s inherently better than hels players and doesn’t ‘deserve’ to be there, while atlas takes it as a convenient scapegoat for all his horrible horrible deeds.

and patho’s just like “that sounds like a you problem lmao✌️” he knows that when he eviscerates someone just for touching him, he’s doing it bc he made a conscious decision and truly wanted to do it 😤 not bc of some monstrous impulsive nature he couldn’t help that was determined by his data.

now lemme take this chance to say that there ARE definitely some hels who fall into that category (ren’s hels is basically a feral wolf. pearl’s hels is a giant feral moth… lady… monster. thing. they both eat other players, like fr) but as we’ve seen time and time again, just being a hels doesn’t automatically make a player a horrible person or monster. and that’s the point they missed.

[annoyingblondebracket]

Round 1 | Poll 6

~ Note: This poll is being done out of a genuine love and affection for these types of characters! Please keep that in mind when adding commentary.

Propaganda (very long on both ends 😭) under the cut!

Madeleine Cookie:

~ everyone he has any kind of relationship with thinks he's insufferable (espresso cookie, financier) except for his family and he is so full of himself and always makes a show out of being a noble divine hero or something like that. His in-game story description says " On the day of his Commander's Oath-taking, Madeleine Cookie dedicated himself to the Divine and was granted the Sword and Shield of Radiant Light, which he prizes the most among his numerous possessions. The glorious Knight Commander's usual duties included trotting around the city on his snow-white sugar horse or letting his heavy cape flutter dramatically on the wind during his sparring sessions." (this is not all of it btw just the part abt him being annoying) and just fuckin look at him that's the face of a man who is never going to shut up about himself ever some trivia from his wiki page: - According to his unique loading screen's flavor text, "Madeleine Cookie excels at swinging his sword to heroic music with his cape fluttering in the wind." - According to his aunts, Madeleine Cookie has a sweet tooth and wouldn't eat anything if it wasn't sugary as a child. They also mention that he used to kick the blanket away when napping as a baby. -In the Halloween Commotion Costume Set Story, Strawberry Crepe Cookie analyzed Madeleine Cookie's dough and found "the most ridiculous amount of narcissism", alongside a considerable amount of light energy. also an interaction between madeleine and espresso M: Another magnificent day of my cloak waving in the wind! Wouldn't you agree? E: Of course. Yes. How marvelous. Please excuse me, I have rather urgent business to attend to. M: Too busy to even marvel at moi? What's the point of living then? also has a bond story with him and espresso called "we've never met" and it's about espresso avoiding him like the plague after seeing each other for the first time in a long while (if i remember correctly) another thing: just compare him to Financier Cookie, who is essentially madeleine 2 except she's not annoying and actually has respect for people and tries to protect people without looking for the satisfaction of being given praise or adoration. madeleine and financier are both paladins, they both are sworn to the divine, they're both from the same place, and YET financier turned out SO much better than he did. in one of financier's quotes, she says "Ser Madeleine Cookie could be so much more than... that." and in the kingdom overworld quotes, she also says "Light, guide my blade! ...What?! Madeleine Cookie says that?!" GIRL DOES NOT WANT TO BE COMPARED TO OR ON THE SAME LEVEL AS HIM JUST. WHAT IS HIS FUCKING PROBLEM

~ Theseus was an auto-admission and thus has no proganda! However as a Theseus yumejoshi it would be remiss of me to add nothing here, so here's some of my favourite lines of his <3

[we-goin-go-end-end]

Starting to check out 1.20 and I love that it's hinting at lore-accurate dimensional art styles and clothing!! I'm not sure how these armor-modifying templates are found, but could End and Nether ruins have ended up in the Overworld? I wonder how...?

I don't have much intelligent commentary to add to this rn because I've just reopened minecraft after forever, but ouuuhhhhhhhh thank you mojang for the LORE

[semper-legens]

24. Not Good For Maidens, by Tori Bovalino

Owned: No, library Page count: 358 My summary: Laura and May had their whole lives planned out. They were going to be witches, like their mothers and grandmothers before them. Then May was tempted away to the goblin market, and all hell began to break loose. Now, eighteen years later, Laura's daughter has lost her cousin to the market. She knows nothing of her family's heritage...but now, she has to brave the worst parts of it. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Witches and goblins and magic, oh my! When I read the blurb for this book, I decided it was most definitely in my wheelhouse. The Goblin Market, though not among my favourite poems, is still one I think of fondly. ('We must not look at goblin men/We must not buy their fruits/Who knows upon what soil they fed/Their hungry thirsty roots?') And this book is very consciously based upon that poem. The problem is that I'm not sure that the narrative bore out its promise. The ideas that were brought up on the blurb didn't go much further, and the characters were largely forgettable. It was a shame, really, because I feel like this is the kind of thing I would have been a lot more charitable towards and even enjoyed as a teenager - but alas, the adult version of me was not too impressed.

First of all, the narrative is actually two narratives - the focus is split between Lou's rescue of Neela in the present day, and May's ill-fated journey into the Market eighteen years ago. This more hampers than helps the narrative. May and Laura are pretty clear on what happened to May in the present part of the story, meaning that there isn't a lot of tension, more just learning the details of what happened. But Lou's story isn't all that better. Lou isn't a particularly proactive character - outside of insisting she goes to York with May, she doesn't really do a lot, just allowing herself to be pushed and pulled with the whims of both witches and market. It's only in the last section, where she goes back to help Eitra, that she really takes matters into her own hands. She's static thanks to the greater focus on Laura and May; Laura and May are static because their story is flashback, because it can only lead to the point at which we started. And certain things are made obvious by the framing - obviously the older goblin lady helping Lou is Eitra, there's nobody and nothing else she could be. The narrative doesn't even bother with a big reveal of that to the reader! Eitra just casually tells Lou her name, and so any sense of threat Lou could have from her is instantly negated.

And the worldbuilding here…sort of isn't? It's established that the people of York are fully in on the goblins and magic, but not a lot of time is spent among them exploring that. What is the Market, when it's being enticing? It's built up as a threat so much that, purely under the logic of the book, I struggle to understand why people actually go there. Even when May or Louisa are being drawn in, there's still lurid descriptions of market stalls selling human body parts. Do the genuine revellers…just look past that? If we saw the Market from their perspective, it'd add a lot to our understanding of it, but the narrative doesn't seem that interested in it. Furthermore, the whole 'Laura and May are on the verge of their witch graduation' thing doesn't come up until halfway through the book. Nor does the magic ice that can kill goblins. And what worldbuilding and exposition there is just seems to circle around a few key points, so I was sick of hearing about the Market and the fruits and the Doctrine and this and that over and over and over again.

I feel like I've been too negative on this book, though. The fact is that it did have some good ideas. The Goblin Market in itself is not a bad concept, and some of the manifestations of its creepiness did genuinely work. The bleakness of the lower levels Lou traverses came through quite well, even if the overworld was not shiny enough to contrast it. May was a fairly engaging character, with her struggles with sexuality and obvious attraction to women caught up with the Market and the traumas she underwent there. This book had a lot of promise, that's what I'm trying to get across. it's just that the actual narrative as-writ didn't quite live up to that promise.

Next…sigh. I've put this off long enough. Back to the House of Night.

[doomstarmagician]

“Not yet. It isn’t time for you to come home.”

Go live your life.

“…”

I’ve lived long enough.

[miloscat]

[Review] All Our Asias (PC)

Another thought-provoking combination of retro-style graphics and emotional sincerity!

Between Even the Ocean and Anodyne 2, Melos Han-Tani (one half of Analgesic Productions) created this short adventure game. Well, Marina Kittaka (the other half) made some contributions along with others but All Our Asias is mostly a one-person project and a personal story-driven experience.

The game is a meditation on various topics. What does it mean to be Asian? How well can you really know another person? What kind of impact do you want to leave on the world? Through Yuito’s quest to discover more about his estranged father his own motivations and identities are challenged, and by extension the player’s. He struggles against bureaucracy, finds truths mundane and profound, and encounters compassion and community. There’s a lot going on in the game’s 90-120 minute runtime.

All this is wrapped in an exploration of low-poly 3D spaces that feel very much like Anodyne 2’s 3D overworld. The trademark Analgesic melancholy is here in spades accompanied by a familiarly haunting soundscape. The environments are abstract, built from the dreams of a dying man of real places and memories, made surreal and twisted. Trundling around them is slow, which gives you time for the atmosphere to wash over you. They may just feel like a vehicle for the story at times but they’re still very evocative in their own right even if the “gameplay” of navigating them is relatively shallow.

Like other Analgesic games, there is naturally a postgame. Infinite flight is unlocked along with warps to the different game sections. Developer commentary and behind the scenes material is however relegated to a separate book which can be purchased in a “fan pack” along with the soundtrack. The game itself is free so it’s a good way to support Melos and get more out of this piece.

Since it is free, there’s little barrier to trying it out… I did have to set up a Joy2key profile since it failed to natively recognise my controller, but it was worth it. The low-poly stuff is a good way to get you in the door and then you just might find that the game makes you think about things a bit! We need more of that in our games, I reckon.

[identityarchitect]

hey so i noticed you're a mcyt fan... ive been meaning to get into hermitcraft but there's just so much of it that idk where to start, do you have a recommendation for that?

hmm. it depends!

hermitcraft 8 is finished, and the shortest season of them all, so you can watch that if you'd like. you can also start from the very beginning although itll take you some time to catch up

there are lots of different creators on hermitcraft, and some people watch all of them, but you really, really don't have to.

i only actively watch grian so im making some assumptions about the hermits, but in general:

scar, gem, grian, joe, pearl, xisuma, cleo & bdubs to my knowledge tend to focus more on buildings

impulse, mumbo, tango are to my knowledge kind of a mix between redstone and building stuff

zed's doing his own awesome custom achievements thing

doc is definitely more redstone focused, doc does some absolutely crazy stuff so if youre looking to see someone capture an ender dragon and keep it in the overworld, go watch doc

i dont know enough about xb, ren, beef, hypno, iskall, stress, wels (by god i am really showing my lack of hc knowledge here) etho, false, cub, keralis or jevin to make commentaries on what they do, but most of the time hermits tend to do building stuff either way (altho i know etho and iskall are both redstoners)

if youd like you can just pick a hermit and jump off at their latest episode! there's a hermitcraft recap channel, and you can watch through their s9 recaps for everything that's happened so far if you really wanna know, but imo you dont need to know what's happened in the season thus far to just start watching at any hermit's video

you can also, of course, start at their first s9 video and work your way through those

hopefully this was at least slightly helpful lol

[besidesitstoowarm]

"Gridlock" thoughts

the couple from american gothic is exploded in the new york subway. i would like to take a moment of silence on behalf of these amish bitches.

this one is awesome. davies is a master at making the show feel old (a deep cut monster like the macra), current (sociopolitical commentary), and ongoing (the new time war direction). i'm certainly no expert of all the eras of classic who, i'm a 60s bitch myself, but i don't know that anyone has done it like davies. he's a genius and again i am so excited to have him back. quel domage indeed.

we kick off with ten being reluctant to take martha home. he reiterates that he promised her only one trip but then says "i suppose we could stretch the definition" and offers a future trip to complement the past trip. he's clearly reluctant to be alone again and clearly enjoys her company when he allows himself to

and he tells her about gallifrey! we get to hear what it was like in its prime, how he remembers the sky and the moons and the grass and the cities. he's so warm and fond in his recollecting, and she's entranced. he refuses to explain that gallifrey is gone, but enjoys the remembering. on the one hand, martha is not the first companion since the time war (rose saw him raw and open, rose understood his pain), but on the other, she is not the first (she's a blank slate, he's not working out his traumas on her, he can start fresh). it's such a good basis for a friendship and it works out well this ep

heavy "new earth" parallels, obviously, w the cat people and new new york and the face of boe. "ever heard the word rebound?" martha asks. correct. they come across pharmacy town (mad max ass location) where they can buy patches for happiness, forgetting, anger, honesty, and bliss as we learn later. i think this is a natural extension of the heavy drug epidemics in big cities

after martha is kidnapped we learn it takes 6 years to travel 10 miles on the motorway. i have no idea what the highways in england are like, but i have driven the mass pike at rush hour and i find this deeply relatable. ten ends up in a car w a homophobic cat man and his VERY ADORABLE kittens

the whole moment where the entire motorway sings "old rugged cross" is so irish catholic that i am again reminded of living in boston

ten explains his connection to martha in the car he has comandeered: "hardly know her, i was too busy showing off. and i lied to her, i just lied" we love the self awareness. he has trouble being vulnerable with her, being honest

the macra are here! crab! they eat pollution! we learn the entire overworld died of virus in seven minutes bc they got too high and died which i relate to! so the crab owns the subways now and they're trapped in endless traffic while crabs eat fumes! i believe this is how most cities operate. i like the deep cut 60s beasts, i'm excited to keep seeing more of them. bring back the zarbi and DON'T skimp on the camera lens vaseline

ten saves the day of course. face of boe dies so that he can release the subway fiends into the overworld. sad! well there's other old men. he tells the doctor "you are not alone" and i make a grinch smile remembering how the season ends. he and martha go to leave and she sits her ass down and says she's not going anywhere til he explains what the fuck boe meant by "last of his kind" and he does actually explain about the time war, and then keeps describing gallifrey. s3 ten is very deep in nostalgia– for rose, for gallifrey, for the master eventually. he's living in the past, he's stuck. it's why martha eventually decides to dip and it's why everything goes wrong. he tries to close himself off more in s4 and control himself and of course that backfires too. bitch.

anyway yeah this one slaps, it's a nice "everybody lives" type ending. rip face of boe. if the macra want to move to 93 south they'll probably still be able to feast just fine

next time is the freakin. ugh. hooverville daleks.

[bluepoodle7]

#Illbleed #TheSensesMonster #AIllbleedLevelTheRemovesTheSensesMeterAndMakesARunAndHideThenTrapTheChaserMonsterSection #MyThoughts

I hope one day I hope someone makes a horror game where the senses act like a Five Nights at Freddy's style game where theses are the mascots to a monster.

And they move and attack in a way that references their senses.

Like have a eyeless nose monster that tries to scent find your player character or a monster with huge ears that can hear your character's footsteps.

Have a hands with feet monster that feels the area for your character or just opens and closes doors your character is hiding in.

Have a pair of floating eyes to scan the area for your character to alert the others by blinking and have the eyes glow in the dark.

Just have a tongue monster taste the area the character was walking in leaving a spit snail trail slime to alert the other senses where your character is to combine into the complete monster to jumpscare kill the character.

Maybe have one monster that separates it's senses from it's body to find you and combine later to capture or eat the player.

Similar to the Greg the zombie plush or plushies that have removeable parts that you can put back together.

Have the player character have weapons or events from the other monster senses knocking into each other that combat these separated monster senses like sneezing pepper to stop the nose, hot sauce to stop the tongue, tricking the hands into poking the eyes or shine a bright light in the pair of eyes to stop them, make the player character to drop toy blocks or glass to stop the feet with the hands while the monster removes the debris, and a very high pitched sound to make the ears go deaf for a short period to stop the ears.

I wish this senses monster was a Illbleed boss and it seems like something the game would do like if the sense bar was just gone like the game forgot but is added later to transform into a monster to fight by only using the sixth sense when the complete monster is close.

Maybe have the controller vibrate in the players hands as a sixth sense guide that the player character is close to the senses monster in the chase and hiding scene then later fighting once the infinity symbol is gone off the senses monster.

21:28

Snek plays Illbleed (No Commentary) (Sega Dreamcast 2001) Part 1 (The Homerun of Death) - YouTube

I imagine the UI is just the strength meter, the heartrate, and the bleed meter if you get hurt like the senses meter is gone.

22:37

Snek plays Illbleed (No Commentary) (Sega Dreamcast 2001) Part 1 (The Homerun of Death) - YouTube

Like this.

I imagine if you do the chaser pause with the opening and closing of the map to freeze the senses monster it slowly gets not effected by the pause then finally just attacks the player character or have the hands unpauses the player's map to capture them.

Like the senses monster is tired of this map pause freeze trick.

You can battle the senses monster parts if they are separated but only if your player character collected all the items that can effect each senses body part similar to fighting a enemy or try to encounter two body parts that can friendly fire each other.

#Enemies Attacking Each other – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

Like dodging the hands and feet to friendly fire the eyes by the touch part of the monster fighting the sight part of the monster by the eyes getting poked.

The player can defeat the senses parts that will freeze them a little in the overworld but act similar to Mary but you can either fight them or helicopter out unless it's the hands then they will try to knock down the helicopter before you can escape.

When you get done watching the Illbleed movie it would start out similar to Killerman like your character is done watching the movie but starts out with a black screen with a sound effect of something being taken away.

The which was the sense UI with the blue brain adrenaline meter are missing.

Now I can see the end boss area for this level just have a animated png of the senses UI with the blue brain adrenaline meter just be on the ground but when your character tries to pick it back up then your controller would vibrate slow then faster while a cutscene plays of the UI falling out of the player character's hands to make the boss of the level to fuse with both missing UI's with the senses monster.

Kind of similar to this cutscene.

#The Double Woodpuppets Cutscene – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

Maybe have the longer version of the Illbleed twinge play when this happens when the senses monster makes it's beast noise and then have the player character run away to the movie theater trying to set off all the traps on this senses monster.

#The Longer Twinge Sound Effect – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

Then ask the Illbleed worker to cut off this senses monster just for the worker say that they didn't make this monster since the boss of the movie was explaining was mysteriously destroyed by something but couldn't see or hear what did it due to the camera's being destroyed.

Then have the senses monster kill the Illbleed worker in a way that effects their senses like it screams loud that it makes their head explode, glows super bright that it makes the worker burns up, or have a smell that kills the worker, and summons a ghost that possess the worker then falls into a dangerous area to die.

#True Ending to Good Ending Clothes Change – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

But have the Illbleed worker death cutscene randomized and just have the player character defeat the senses monster by disarming it with the horror monitors in the workers area.

7:55

Snek plays Illbleed (No Commentary) (Sega Dreamcast 2001) Part 5 (Killerman) ---Both Endings--- - YouTube

I wanted to know what it would look like without the senses UI and the blue brain adrenaline meter.

So I used level 2 since there are no shock events but have battles in it but the adrenaline gained is useless.

I made a gif of that.

https://gifmaker.me/video-to-gif/viewimage/20241025-13-N0IBknp1Hl2ly9uJ-jGvMC1-HNET

47:28-47:41

Snek plays Illbleed (No Commentary) (Sega Dreamcast 2001) Part 2 (The Revenge of Queen Worm) - YouTube

Maybe have the Illbleed staff worker tell the player character that their senses UI with the blue brain adrenaline meter is gone but will give the player character the item sensor to make up for the missing UI's.

#Item Sensor – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

#What It Feel Like To Play Illbleed – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

But make the controller vibrate close to a shock event or a fight then try to find a item in the level to disarm the shock events.

Like make a new item called a sensor blocker clicker to make a alternate animation play where the shock event is disarmed or just doesn't activate.

#The Mystery Voice – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

#Empty Movie Theater – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

Greg the Zombie | stupidiotic 2021

Premium Vector | Cartoon 5 senses Smell taste sight touch and hearing mascot characters in 1930s rubber hose style

#UI Design – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

#Illbleed #IllbleedSensesUI #GifAndGifVideos I wanted to make a gif of the senses UI when it reacts to finding the concealed... – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr

I had another Illbleed level idea similar to Cork Inda Goes To Hell mixed with Killerman.

The Tale Of The Zoo Kreeper With The Unknown Creature.

Search: Zoo kreeper – @bluepoodle7 on Tumblr