#so i was expecting to immediately go out and explore EVERYTHING in my first playthrough

[drakonovisny]

i am suddenly so excited for bg3

[shefellofftheworld]

Please lose the last shreds of your self control and yell about bd-1's arc and its place thematically in fallen order

Ahh I was not expecting anyone to want the rant but SINCE YOU ASKED

So I absolutely love JFO and everything about it, because at its core it’s a story about hope and healing when everything has fallen to pieces. I can’t get enough of that. I’m going to do my best to keep this post to a reasonable length, but I am going to be honest: brevity is not my strong suit when it comes to stuff I like. You have been warned. 

Here’s the thing about BD-1: he didn’t need an arc. They didn’t need to thread him through the thematic and emotional heart of this game as much as they did!! That’s part of why his arc took me so much by surprise. He basically has a stealth arc, and it works so well because he’s already serving the game really well before I even got an inkling of it. So first I’m gonna go through BD-1 as I experienced him in my first playthrough, and then look at the ways that JFO retroactively adds a TON of meaning to his interactions with Cal. 

Long post and many spoilers for Jedi: Fallen Order under the cut:

Bogano: First Impressions

BD-1 is a cute lil droid companion, and frankly Respawn could have stopped there and I would have been entirely on board. I mean, look at him.

He’s adorable. 

Respawn didn’t stop there though! BD also serves to make several game mechanics diegetic in a really cool way. He provides the map, he does the healing, and he analyses stuff for the codex. Again: Respawn did not need to go as hard as they did. Cute Droid That Serves Gameplay Purpose would have been more than enough to sell me on BD-1. But! They not only used BD-1 to make those mechanics fit inside the narrative of the game, they used the gameplay mechanics to inform BD’s character!!!!

Excuse me while I take a moment to be incredibly excited about good game design. 

So we first meet BD-1 on Bogano, just after the prologue/tutorial level for the game. We met Cal on Bracca, got introduced to our initial exploration and fighting mechanics, and played through JFO’s inciting incident. Cere and Greez drop Cal off on Bogano and give him two goals: meet someone important, and find the key to rebuilding the Jedi order. 

We’re now introduced to the Meditation mechanic (Star Wars Brand Bonfires). It’s yet another example of how Respawn took a mechanic specific to the genre of game they were making and then turned it into a core part of the narrative. 

I love this game so much.

It’s already been established that Cal’s trauma is hindering his ability to connect to the force—whenever he tries, he relives his memories of Order 66. After we finish the Meditation Tutorial, we exit to a cutscene that reinforces that character beat:

And introduces someone new. 

I know I talked a lot about Cal here, but that’s because BD-1’s characterisation is intrinsically linked to his interactions with Cal—he’s a Companion Character. It’s important that we first meet BD here. The first time we meet BD, Cal is in pain and BD-1 wants to help. 

(I love him) 

Throughout the game, we understand BD’s dialogue through other character’s responses—mostly Cal’s. In this scene, BD introduces himself and then asks Cal if he’s OK. Awww. Cal says he’s looking for someone, and BD-1 perks up and responds. “No, not you,” says Cal immediately. He’s looking for a Jedi! We’ve definitely never seen this play out before. BD-1 is not discouraged. He knows about a Jedi! He is Very Excited to lead Cal where he needs to go. 

We learn a lot about BD from this scene! First: he’s adorable. I know I’ve said that a lot, but it bears repeating. 

look at him

In terms of characterisation, we learn that BD-1 is helpful, important to Cal’s quest somehow, and apparently full of love and enthusiasm. He wants to know if Cal is ok!!! And he wants to help!!! BD stands both for Buddy Droid and for Best Droid. This scene has done its job well: the story has progressed, and presumably there remains not a single member of the audience who hasn’t instantly fallen in love with the Loveable Droid Character. This is good, because he’s going to be with us for the rest of the game. 

Now we get to mechanics. First, we’re introduced to the map. Cal sees the Vault in the distance, and says that whoever he’s looking for must be waiting there. BD-1 stops frolicking to show Cal his map of the area, and the game takes a moment to do a tutorial. BD has helpfully put an objective marker over the vault! Thanks, lil guy. The holomap also highlights unexplored areas—more standard game fare, but because the map is diegetic, it’s also technically information about BD-1. He wants to help us explore! 

The next thing we learn about BD-1 is that apparently he, uh. Likes to improvise. “Any ideas?” asks Cal. “We’ve got to get across this gap somehow.” BD-1 proposes that he serves as a tool to help Cal zipline across gaps. Both of them seem to have fun ziplining. 

“How’d you know that would work?” 

“Bee bo-boop!” 

“Wait, you didn’t?” 

Don’t sound so concerned, Cal. Nobody fell into any bottomless chasms. You don’t have any room to talk, anyway. I saw you on Bracca. 

We run around a little more, and then the unthinkable happens. BD-1 rushes to the defense of a lil critter that’s about to get eaten by a predator, and gets his leg chomped for his troubles. He does a heartbreaking little limp away from danger while Cal practices his lightsaber skills 

poor baby

Words cannot do this scene justice so I'll just give you a video:

This scene reinforces how adorable BD-1 is (very adorable, in case anybody wasn’t sure) and continues to set up his friendship with Cal. It also serves to set up an in-game way for the devs to control access to certain areas of the map—BD’s busted scomp link is going to stop us from opening a few doors until we’ve hit a few more story beats. 

This scene is also one of the most important in BD-1’s arc, but that doesn’t become apparent until later. 

Shortly after this, Cal happens to receive some injuries that nobody could have possibly forseen or prevented by not swinging lightsabers at live wires. We get one of the most adorable cutscenes in the game:

And then BD-1 presents Cal with the Star Wars Brand Estus Flask and joins Cal as a permanent companion.

(he's so cute)

Cal asks BD-1 how he got to Bogano, and BD-1 says he doesn’t remember. Weird for a droid to be forgetful, but oh well. To the Vault!

Ok but first we need to get some cosmetic loot, because the real goal of Jedi: Fallen Order is to collect ponchos.

BD-1 goes rifling through chests for us, because the devs at Respawn saw an opportunity for adorable character moments and grabbed it with both hands. Over the course of the game, BD-1 continues to fling himself at the nearest poncho receptacle. Cal in response takes a journey from confused through resigned and lands on indulgent. I love this game so much. 

Ok, now to the Vault!

Wait wait wait BD-1 has found something cool and he really really wants to show it to you. 

Now for real to the Vault.

There’s some more story stuff that happens before we get there, but that’s the bulk of our initial introduction to BD-1. We make a friend and learn a bunch of new mechanics, which themselves teach us about our friend. BD-1 is a friendly little droid who wants to help and likes to explore and learn things. He’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie and gets excited when there’s something to scan. He doesn’t like it when Cal gets hurt, and for some reason wants to go to the same Plot Location that Cal does.

He’s probably not the person Cere wants us to meet, though. That’s a Jedi! A great warrior. For sure. 

(I think I’m funny)

At the vault, we learn that BD-1 is, in fact, the person Cere wants us to meet. In fairness to Cal, though, there is also technically a Jedi. Technically. 

BD-1 contains encrypted messages from Jedi Master Eno Cordova, who has hidden the holocron we’re looking for. In order to find it, he wants us to follow in his footsteps. Thus follows one of my favourite scenes for Cal, but this post is already going to be too long so I’ll spare anyone who’s made it this far that particular ramble. Cal and BD-1 officially team up, find some more clues, access a couple of Master Cordova’s video diaries, and head back to the ship. 

I will now proceed to exercise incredible restraint and move on to the next section rather than giving you a play-by-play of BD-1’s every move for the rest of the game. I would say 'you’re welcome', but you’re missing out on BD-1, so. 

The Burgeoning Friendship

I want to emphasise how constantly present BD-1 is in JFO’s story. Not only is he literally present on Cal’s back for the vast majority of the game, but he’s also constantly interacting with both Cal and the player. 

For one, there’s all those mechanics I mentioned earlier. Every time we look at the map, heal damage, or find something new, JFO is drawing our attention to BD-1. Granted, some actions are less obvious than others—we don’t pause in the middle of any given battle to show a long ‘BD-1 gives Cal a healing stim’ animation, and rightfully so—but when we’re just running around the map, BD-1 manages to feel like a character in his own right. He gets excited when Cal finds more healing stims (or literally any box for him to jump into), he runs around to show us things, he’s got his own adorable little idle fidget animations, the whole shebang. Mechanically he pretty much ends up functioning as a secondary player character. 

Teamwork!

There’s also a bunch of incidental dialogue between Cal and BD as we run around. Cal likes to comment on what’s going on—be it a new force echo, a distant objective, or even just his thoughts and feelings about whatever is happening at the time. It’s a good way to keep an audience in touch with a character, but it can feel a bit weird to have a character start talking to the air about whatever it is the devs/writers want the player to know right now. Enter BD-1! Now Cal is talking to the cute robot buddy, which is incredibly relatable. 

I, too, would tell this little guy all of my deepest darkest secrets. 

BD-1’s trustworthy face aside, it’s also a good design choice! Now not only do we have a way to naturally insert whatever information Cal needs to deliver at any given time, we can turn that information into character beats for both parties. Cal and BD respond to each other, and so both of them feel more like independent characters who are present in and reacting to their circumstances. It helps keep us immersed in the narrative even when we’ve temporarily left the narrative behind to attempt the same jumping puzzle 15 times in our endless quest for ponchos.

My compulsion to give Cal as many ponchos as his little heart desires aside, Cal and BD’s conversations are really effective at keeping the player involved in what Cal is feeling. Some of my favourite moments are when BD-1 checks in with Cal while they explore the crashed Venator (ow), or when the two of them find Cordova’s old workshop. There’s definitely more, but I’ll be honest I have neither the time nor the energy to play or watch through the entire game to find it. If you’re reading this, though: you absolutely should. It’s such a good game. 

Where was I? 

Right! Narrative! 

I’ve spoken about gameplay, but we really see BD-1’s narrative presence in cutscenes. He’s constantly involved in every story beat, even if sometimes he gets a little distracted. 

He's very worried about your salt intake, Greez

BD-1 cares about our quest and about our characters. He has fun hijacking an AT-AT, and intervenes to help Cal when a fight is getting a bit dicey 

To outline the full extent of BD-1’s involvement in the narrative would be to outline the whole narrative, and I swear I am trying to keep this post to a somewhat readable length, so I won’t do that. But I want to highlight these moments. They’re moments that get us attached to our characters, and moments that build the story. They draw us in to the relationship between Cal and BD-1, and also in a sense build a relationship between BD-1 and the player. I know that when I play JFO, I’ll often talk to BD-1 myself. If he hops off of Cal’s shoulder to look at something, I get excited too. NG+ removing all of the chests may make completing every corner of the game more convenient, but sometimes I’ll start again from scratch just to let BD have his fun. One of the benefits of games as a narrative medium is how involved the player is in the story—even at its most linear, the player is still an active participant. Another benefit to a game like JFO is the length. More is not always better, but in this case Respawn uses the player’s time well. No matter what we’re doing, we’re interacting with the world and the characters—and time spent interacting is time spent building a connection. 

All this is to say that by the time we take our little detour via bounty hunter coliseum, I am right there with Cal panicking about our little friend 

Those monsters

Dathomir and Ilum: The Payoff

This section is going to be hard for me to write coherently, mainly because whenever I think about this part of the game my brain stops forming words and instead descends into incoherent screeching interspersed with playbacks of various moments. I have to take a minute before I even go to Dathomir because I know what’s coming. I love this game so much and this sequence wrecks me every time. 

I’ll do my best though! 

Cal and BD have been through a lot together by this point. They’ve joined a rebellion, fought Inquisitors and delved into ancient ruins. They’ve been hunted by the Empire and by bounty hunters. We’ve done all that with them, too. As we go to Dathomir, Cal is wrestling with a lot of things. He’s back to the level he was at before the Purge, but he’s still hurting and traumatised. 

I could talk at length about Dathomir, but this is a post about BD-1 and I am ostensibly trying to keep this somewhat concise. 

(laughs in over 2500 words so far)

It is on Dathomir that things come to a head. Cal has a flashback of the events of the Purge, then faces a vision of his dead Master Tapal. When he comes to, his lightsaber—the one passed on to him by Jaro Tapal as he died—is broken. He is forced to flee Dathomir, and returns to Cere and Greez on the Mantis. 

It’s a heartbreaking sequence. The player is right there with him throughout—we are high-fiving the trooper who teases Cal. We are navigating the vents of the Venator as clone troopers hunt us down. We are watching Jaro Tapal die defending Cal, and then we are fighting a vision who verbalises what Cal has been feeling this whole time—he has failed. His master died because he was weak and slow and useless. He can’t save the Jedi Order. He isn’t fit to wield his Master’s saber, and he isn’t fit to be a Jedi. 

BD-1 is not there for any of it. 

BD-1 has been with us for practically the entire game. In every cutscene I can remember, he’s been involved. He’s been running around doing his thing, or peeking over Cal’s shoulder. In this sequence, he is not present. He’s not there in the flashback, and he’s not there when we fight Jaro Tapal. He is present when the vision ends—but not really. He’s positioned so that we can barely see him behind Cal’s head. 

Cal goes through all this alone. 

(I will note that having now watched the scene a few times with special focus on BD-1, it does look as if he’s watching the rest of the room? Which gives me the impression that he’s tried to get through to Cal, realised he’s not responsive, and decided to watch his back while he deals with his Trauma-Based Force Stuff. Which. Ow. That’s so cute but he must have been so worried.)

It’s not until after Cal starts to leave that we check back in with BD-1. He sounds wrecked. And BD-1 can’t help. 

The saddest wooo

We now proceed through a conversation with Cere and also, incidentally, several tissues. 

Ow.

But! There’s hope! New goal: Get Cal a new kyber crystal to replace the broken one, then everything will be fixed and we’ll be ok. 

:(

After some more troubles, because poor Cal can’t catch a break, we finally get to the crystal. Cal seems upsettingly close to freezing to death, but we’ve made it! 

And then the crystal breaks. 

Cal gives up. 

Like, it’s-open-for-interpretation-but-I’m-pretty-sure-he’s-just-decided-to-lie-there-until-he-dies gives up. 

not pictured: my distressed yelling

And then: Eno Cordova speaks, and BD-1 enters the frame. “Failure is not the end, my friend.” It’s Cordova’s words, but BD-1 is playing the recording. BD-1 is encouraging Cal. Cal doesn’t really believe him. 

So BD-1 shows Cal Master Eno Cordova’s final recording:

Look, I am trying my best to be something resembling coherent here but. SCREAMS. 

S C R E A M S

I could talk at length about how much I love this whole scene but I have been basically just recounting for a while now so I will be brief. 

This scene completely reframes BD-1 as a character. He was already more than just a cute mechanics delivery system, but in this scene we learn that he chose to have his memories erased, and also that he chooses to believe in Cal. His faith in Cal gives Cal faith in himself, so he gets up and keeps fighting. 

Now please excuse me while I cry a little more. 

The First Meeting Again: What Makes Us Who We Are

One thing I really want to highlight from the above scene is that line from Eno Cordova: 

“Only with a trusted connection will your memories be restored.” 

I know it’s already pretty thoroughly emphasised by the game itself, but I didn’t quite understand its full impact on Cal’s journey and the themes of JFO until I replayed the game. 

Remember that scene way back on Bogano where BD-1 injured his leg and Cal fixed it? 

When I first played, I found it a little odd that BD-1 scanned Cal here. Why not earlier? Why now? I also thought it was a bit of a clunky story moment—Cal has already indicated that he’s going to the vault. Why are they repeating that goal here?

Because Cal fixed his leg. 

BD-1 was hurting, and Cal helped, and so the first memory was unlocked—a drive to get to the vault and show him the way forward. 

It’s a sweet little moment, and it’s cool to understand it better on a replay, but I think it’s also a moment that’s core to the themes of the game. On Dathomir, Cal’s fears are revealed: he is no Jedi. On Ilum, he gives up. 

And then BD-1 says: you were a Jedi all along. 

It’s been a repeated refrain throughout JFO: we are who we are because we choose to keep going. Jaro Tapal tells Cal that failing and getting up is the only way to succeed. Cere says “it’s the choice to keep fighting that makes us who we are.” Cordova says “Hope will always survive in those who continue to fight.” 

Cal has been doubting himself ever since his Master died. He’s been hiding, cut off from the force and from his people. But over and over we see him choosing to help. He helps Prauf on Bracca, knowing it could cost him his life. He helps BD-1 on Bogano, just because he can. He helps Saw Gererra’s fighters and the Wookies on Kashyyk, because they need it. He struggles and he messes up, but over and over he chooses to help. To quote another piece of Star Wars media: His compassion leaves a trail. BD-1 shines a light on that trail. 

Respawn did not have to go as hard as they did with BD-1. He’s a cute little droid who delivers some mechanics in a cool diegetic way. They could have stopped there. Instead, they use BD-1 to enrich the story and the characters, and to drive home one of the the major themes of the game: how we work out who we are when everything has fallen apart. 

In the end, our gang won’t rebuild the Jedi Order. In that sense, they’ve failed. But each and every one of them is fighting. They’re holding on to hope, and sharing it with one another. It’s what makes them who they are. And by being who they are—in Cal’s case, choosing to be a Jedi, they have won a victory, even if they fail. 

Man I love this game.

[nukaberries]

Hello! Could you do reactions of Arcade, Veronica, Benny and Mr. House to the courier being relatively new to Vegas and came all the way from the Midwest (like Indiana or Ohio or the farm land states) maybe they did it for a fresh start or just to get out of the cold. Up to you. Thank! Have a good day

Hi hi!! <33 This is the first New Vegas ask I'm writing and I'm super excited already!! On that note though, please bare with me if I write anyone a little out of character (Mr House especially, I always end up murdering him during my playthroughs of NV lmao) I'm also from the UK, so if I get any locations wrong I'M SO SORRY I'M CLUELESS JSDJSJ

//

New Vegas Characters React to the Courier Being New to the Mojave

Arcade Gannon

At first, Arcade can't really understand why someone would want to come to Vegas, considering everything that was currently taking place with the NCR and the Legion. It's something he'll question you on at first, but he supposes there's some wisdom in turning over a new leaf and having a fresh start somewhere where nobody knows who you are.

As insane as he thinks you are for coming to the Mojave with no idea what to expect, he also feels like he has to keep an eye out for you - even when he isn't accompanying you on your travels - just to make sure you stay out of trouble or that one of those thugs in Freeside doesn't get the jump on you.

When the two of you are travelling together though, he's sure to point out different places to you if he thinks they could help you out. Whether that be doctor's clinics, relatively welcoming settlements or safehouses that the Followers have set up, he wants you to know places you can go to if you need help.

Once the two of you become closer, Arcade will often suggest you both returning to your home - unless you had a specific reason for leaving and then he won't push any further. It could be nice to get away from New Vegas for a little while and he'd like to see the place you grew up in.

Veronica Santangelo

Not being from the Mojave herself and having an insatiable thirst to explore the wasteland and all it has to offer, Veronica immediately jumps at the chance to join you in your travels - once she makes sure you won't be any kind of threat to the Brotherhood of Steel, that is.

Exploring alone is interesting as it is, but having a partner by her side is something Veronica finds to be even better. Not only do her own eyes light up when she first sees the Strip and all its bustling casinos, but she notices how yours do too. It's nice to share those memories with someone.

But Veronica can't always be by your side, sometimes you want to take Boone to go fight the Legion, or you want to deal with Crimson Caravans and the Van Graffs with Cass. Veronica doesn't mind, really, but she worries about what she might miss when she's not by your side. You might come back raving about finally clearing out Quarry Junction all by yourself and she'll start to feel like while you're finally fitting in with the Mojave, she's still stuck on the outside alone.

She'll try to voice these concerns to you, trying her best not to come off as jealous or selfish. She loves seeing you grow and adjust to your new life, but it's hard to not feel left behind. But you showing her your Pip-Boy, with specific places marked with a V for Veronica next to them as places you can go explore together, makes her worries practically non-existent.

Benny Gecko

Truthfully, Benny actually feels a little guilty when you reveal to him just how new you are to the Mojave. You'd barely had time to do all the stupid tourist shit before he decided to bury you in a shallow grave.

On the bright side though, he ran one of the biggest casinos in Vegas. You need a tour guide? He's your man. Not only does it clear his conscience, which isn't something you'd assume Benny Gecko would want, but you're not complaining at the offer for help around the Strip.

Plus, he gives you all the gossip he has on the other factions in the area - which is a lot, if you were wondering. You actually find out about the White Gloves being cannibals thanks to Benny letting you know, although you had your suspicions there was something off about them based on appearance alone.

You may be waiting for Benny to finally turn on you, but having him in your corner - even if temporarily - turns out to be a pretty good thing. He's a good source of information and he actually seems apologetic about the whole Platinum Chip run in with the Great Khans, no matter how much he tries to steer your conversations away from the subject.

Robert House

For a man that's been rotting away in the Lucky 38 for the past 200 years, Mr House is extremely clued up on the ins and outs of New Vegas, although you could've guessed that pretty easily, he does run the place.

At first, your lack of knowledge of the area is a problem for him, one he makes clear from the moment you meet. How is he supposed to recruit you and have you help him if you don't even know how to get from Goodsprings to Primm without checking your Pip-Boy every two seconds?

While he can't show you the ropes in person, he does make the effort to have the Securitrons keep an eye on you, offering to give you directions if you seem like your lost. If you thought Victor followed you around enough on your way to New Vegas, you're not prepared for what's to come.

Deep down, and while he won't admit it, House does have good intentions. He'd even go as far as to say he's relieved when you make it back to the Lucky 38 safe. But that's just because he needs you to help him deal with the other factions, not because he actually cares about what happens to you, right?

[animefreak1145]

The Brilliance of Break On Through

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Mission Break on Through—An Analysis

I have replayed the campaign of COD:BOCW numerous times—too many times truly. Did a whole playthrough where it was Hardened and soon I’m sure I shall do Veteran(something I have never done for any COD game. Not even Hardened.).

All missions have their own unique qualities—parts where the player gets a little rush of adrenaline depending on the kind of mission and how they choose to play it (Nowhere Left to Run just a plain shooting match while Brick in the Wall you can choose to remain stealthy like the good spy you are or go crazy like an eager homicidal maniac).

Even within the safehouse, there are plenty of little details to discover if you take the time to look around and observe everyone. Or, everything. (The radio if turned to a Russian station/correspondence, Adler changes it back immediately before Da Nang mission. Watching Park’s body language, as you talk to Adler and she periodically looks over to you two. Adler suspicious when you go to the Red Room or the locked room with the arcade. The T.V. being turned on in the Red Room)

But the amount of details, details, in the mission Break on Through is outstanding. I have played this mission more than any other due to me wishing to look at all the details. There’s so many, I think I may miss some. And I can’t show them off all to you cause I suck at creating gifs and don’t know how to transfer that from Xbox to my phone.

To lighten it up a bit, I won’t focus on the four different scenarios you go through—at least not each one. That would take too long and I do not have gifs/pics to show it off since Tumblr limits it to ten anyways.

I will, however, try to guide to what parts of the game you all can explore if you choose to do so. As well just how detailed they did this mission.

I am going to start with the different statements Adler says to you throughout all the Scenarios(17, 6, 11, 1). We only go through four in the actual game—but the fact it goes up to 17 or possibly more shows just how far they went in and messed with Bell’s mind.

Now, Adler seems to be a bit bipolar on how he talks to you whether or not you listen to him and all his directions. Either totally blasé and cold to giving you and pumping you up with more MK or meds, or actually a tad concerned and patient as he guides you through.

If You/Bell Stands Still/Does Nothing:

Example 1

“So you did nothing? What were you, in shock?”

He throws the words callously, mocking. As if Bell isn’t confused and lost at what is going on. He even sounds irritated that you might actually be in shock due to these memories that are just fake��not even real. Not like what he has.

Example 2

“What’s wrong with Bell?” -Adler

“I’m not sure. . .” -Park

“I guess we’ll just wait on you to proceed, Bell.”

The contrast is dizzying. He sounds concerned when he asks Park on what could be wrong with you. If he pushed you too far and now you’re just frozen. And, instead of rushing you due to how the fate of half of Europe is at stake, he decides to give you space. Just wait for you and you’ll come out of it soon enough.

He does these sort of reactions numerous times. Jumping from intimidating to the Adler we knew as the player, as Bell—kind and always in your corner that believes in you. He switches tactics based on what he believes will work really—or he just felt really on edge at times and threw the farce that you two were friends out the window.

Other examples include:

Scenario 11–Napalm Strike-in the lab in the room where you were brainwashed

“Christ, what’s happening with them?”-Adler

“A mild seizure. Sims, past me a benzodiazepine.” -Park

Again, concerned. Worried. Almost…at unease?

In the lab—tripped up on drugs. If you run through the tight shrinking hallway back and forth like so(I suck at making gifs, I’m sorry):

“Why is Bell repeating themselves?”

Or

“Bell, stop speaking in circles.”

Now, as others may have suspected, Bell is talking to everyone as they’re stuck in this horrible loop of mental torture. Most likely muttering, hands clenching and arms pulling against the straps of the gurney, moving their head back and forth depending on what they’re seeing. I always saw Bell as muttering quickly in Russian as they go through all of this—their mother tongue where it may comfort them as they’re panicking and speaking to Adler.

It’s just a nice detail showcasing how exactly Adler knows that Bell is on script—Bell saying what they’re seeing and doing and what’s going on. It shows also just how hard they put Bell through the ringer(badum tss. I’ll leave now).

All the details too when the game shows how the drugs they put in Bell affects you. Like so. The hallways appearing long. The lights looking yellow. You feel so fast—look how quick you can run. Run towards the Red Door that Adler so desperately wants and maybe this can stop. Ah, why is it running away from you? What’s going on?

I don’t know about you, but I was so lost and confused at what was going on my first playthrough. For the majority of this mission, the possibility of me being brainwashed didn’t reach the BACK of my mind till probably I actually saw the flashes of scenes about Vietnam and calling Bell a subject. So like right here.

I personally thought that I had a repressed memory or something due to me going through the Vietnam War. That whatever I saw with Perseus, I—or rather Bell—repressed it from our mind due to how violent or horrible what we saw or experienced was. And that Adler suspected and just really wanted to know about it.

I didn’t expect for the man to actually brainwash my character—us—Bell! The game made Adler your mentor, who always defended you from Hudson and believed in your skills very highly. How he and Bell were basically perfect partners when the two of you were together.

It’s amazing—cause I think that’s what the developers were going for. The absolute trust. The loyalty. The denial that ‘maybe Adler is being a little harsh but hey, this is to help Perseus so it’s okay?’ It’s perfect. Because I’m sure that is what Bell actually felt in real time.

Yet, if you go through the total rebellious choice of not listening to Adler, some thing’s make sense. The Rebellious Side shows you way more than if you just listen to Adler like a Dutiful Soldier.

You go through this room if you choose the rebellious route, the T.V.’s automatically turning on the closer you get. Of Vietnam. And now, all those T.V.‘s that turned on by themselves(the Red Room, Lubyanka, Cuba) make sense. You were actually being brainwashed. Poor Bell probably can’t ever have a turned off/broken T.V. again. The trauma.

Said trauma being shown multiple times too. Not just the T.V.‘s. But the absolute terror that Bell felt, before they became Bell, with Adler.

Like do you see this? This terrified me when I saw it at the end of the hallway. I just saw a red shadow in the distance and I legit thought I was about to be chased. Call of Duty became a horror game(I also went through the door to the ground too my first playthrough, so before this I went through zombies and I think my heart was going to jump out my chest) I thought. I didn’t want to get closer. I had to, with each step I see that it’s not a shadow but a body. And than I see the familiar jacket, the sound of whirring in my ears and see it’s Adler’s head being twisted back and forth, side to side, up and down, in a speed that in inhumanely possible.

Makes one wonder if Bell themselves sees Adler as inhumane. Not human. Adler seeming to just be a god in their head. All the Adler shaped rocks/boulders you go through and see. Even one point the V.C. becoming Adler and you killing him over and over and dead bodies of Adler being everywhere.

The man has entered Bell’s head and won’t leave. Just like Adler won’t leave Bell alone.

Heck, there’s one point in my playthroughs of this mission I was by the bridge yet there were parts of the lab by it. I jumped towards it, noticing down below there were different floors of the lab that eventually reach the ground. I jumped to reach the next floor and missed and I died.

And Adler mocked Bell committing suicide.

That was the kicker really that Adler truly is indifferent towards Bell. Like complete disregard. I know it’s fake. We know it’s fake. Adler knows it’s fake—but to Bell, it felt real. That’s the crazy part. All of this—this whole sequence feels real to Bell so each time they die they actually feel it. It’s insane. It’s cruel.

But we all know that Adler isn’t known for his kindness. Still like his character though, he’s layered.

I don’t have the exact quote he said, didn’t wrote it down like the others. I was shook he said it at all.

Moving on to the final details I’m going to talk about.

When you go through the room, I believe this comes out for both rebellious and dutiful, really depends. You see it filled with post it notes, articles, plans, and newspapers. And you see once more just how Bell has been scarred.

I don’t know Russian or German, but I imagine the notes are similar to what the English one’s say. If I’m wrong, please point it out.

There’s also post it notes which I believe is in code as well due to all the numbers—I’m not sure what those could mean since I am no decoding expert.

Poor poor Bell. And with all these pictures and plans—of Adler included—it begs the question that Bell may have been warned about the famous America’s Monster beforehand. Had to have—since Adler is basically Perseus’s adversary due to how stubborn the American man could be. It just adds more to the story, despite Cold War having quite a short campaign, they made it up somewhat with all these details everywhere.

When you finally and actually reach the room.

As you grow closer to the table, to your chair in the conference room while everyone else seems to have their own spots, there’s something I noticed.

There’s glasses. As well as a hat. And it’s Bell’s. Or at least, it used to be. Why else is it on their side of the table? By their chair? I believe it might be reading glasses due to all the decryptions Bell does, whether on paper or through a computer, it’s hard on the eyes. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed this. For look at @second-vtoroy ‘s Bell)

I believe through the brainwashing, Bell might not need glasses anymore. After all, apparently they were a smoker like Adler before too but they took that out of you. What else they changed of Bell? It makes one wonder how far they truly went into molding a person.

Which just adds onto how mind boggling this mission is—this game is. This is my favorite COD game, despite how short it is. The details and choices and interactions with everyone and able to create your own character(albeit it’s very standard and not specific but it’s good enough for me) is AMAZING. I’ve always been a sucker for RPG’s and able to get that even a little in a COD game? Truly wonderful.

I couldn’t touch on everything because it would’ve gotten long, but the fun of the Break on Through mission never gets old. It’s genius multiple ways you can do it. All the details. The feelings you feel as a player as you go through it.

They truly did a unique job with this and I hope they continue with this type of game storytelling. Hopefully longer as well.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this rant basically!

Gifs made by me and used the video down below to help.

https://youtu.be/t6QkmkGGHSQ

[smilepal]

CyberAsk 2077

1. When did you buy the game?

I first played Cyberpunk a couple weeks after it came out at a friends house, when it was still a buggy, almost unplayable mess on the PS4. I loved it immediately, and got used to saving all. the. time. But despite the flaws, I was immediately pulled in by the depth of the world and the connection you felt with the NPCs, and the overall aesthetic of the game. It was what gave me the kick to evnetually order a PS5 and in Jan. I started my first playthrough with Hiro. I had no idea how much CP would stick with me, and I definitely think the community both on discord and tumblr, and in person is part of the reason it's resonated so much 💖

2. When was the moment you knew you loved the game?

Walking out of V's apartment for the first time, and immediately feeling immersed in the world CP had created. It felt like such an adventure, and the plot managed to keep me engaged, but part of the fun was exploring the map, and discovering all the little secrets there, and just stopping to enjoy the surroundings on occasion. And how much fun I was having with photo-mode, slowing down and playing tourist with everything Night City had to offer.

3. Which character did you romance in your first playthru?

As one of the one's who was disappointed as hell we couldn't romance our talking brain-tumor (hello, than why the roller-coaster date?), I didn't expect to warm up to as many of the characters I did. Kerry was my first romance, followed by Panam. I didn't warm up to Judy or River the same, but I still appreciate their characters a lot, and had a ton of fun with their storylines. That being said, I would have liked a few more romances, or at least more attention to the ones that existed. Don't get me wrong I adore Panam and Judy but River and Kerry felt like afterthoughts, and you can definitely tell who the game was catering to.

4. Whose your favorite NPC?

Okay unapologetic Johnny simp over here but there were so many good NPCs. I adored Viktor and Kerry from the start but Takemura and Panam really grew on me too! And Dum Dum, which I absolutely did not expect. There were also a lot of side characters I enjoyed and would have loved to see more of--Regina and Pepe, and Tom/Roxanne and the Clouds crew.

5. Did you have inspiration in mind when designing your V(s)?

Oh absolutely. I was inspired by some of my favorite protagonists from TV shows/video games, that sort of headstrong and reckless but well-meaning character, with a good dose of angsty backstory 😂 One of the strongest things that influenced him was the aesthetic of cyberpunk, and the tattoos. I saw a mod of the Tyger Claw tattoos and started thinking about a character with a checkered past, and a boatload of enemies who followed them, trying to start over and build a new life.

A lot of what influenced Hiro was my own playing style. I went into CP expecting to create a character who was good at stealth and sniping, and realized I didn't have the patience for it, and preferred to brute-force my way through most obstacles instead. So this shaped a lot of Hiro as well, and he's only become more fleshed out over time, and with some inspiration from friends. 💖

6. What's your go-to vehicle?

I started out driving Jackie's bike and switched to the Yaiba Kusanagi and didn't look back from it. The speed was a lot of getting used to, but the bikes feel easier for me to control, and I'm an absolute menace with the cars in that game. I'd intended to drive the Porsche more, but I couldn't get a hang of the squirrely turning. The Kusanagi fits Hiro better anyway, so I'm okay with it.

7. What's your favorite gig/mission/job?

I really enjoy the Judy and River quests, just for the overall storylines and how well they set the mood. The Judy ones are interesting, and you meet some really vibrant characters, and the River ones are just flat out creepy. I really like horror movies/games and it almost felt like something out of one. Definitely one of the few points in the game I was genuniely freaked out, and I still remember playing that one with the lights off and slightly regretting it. As for smaller quests, definitely enjoyed the Pepe one, especially with Johnny's narration. The Maelstorm quest where you have to go fetch Nancy was interesting too, if only to go poking around Totentantz in the meantime.

8. Which NC radio station do you switch to the most?

Radio Vexelstrom is my favorite, followed by Principales and the Dirge. Anything with a good beat, really. 👌 I love jazz in real life, but I was never able to get into the radio station that much. It felt out of place for me, or at least for my character. Maybe it would feel better suited for a Corpo playthrough.

Tagged by @roads-rise-to-meet-me thanks!! ❤️

Tagging: @rindemption @faepunkprince @wraithsoutlaws @onlymeandlife @katsigian @shinycorvidae @noirapocalypto @a-pirate @gloryride @saevus-brutalis @dreamskug @ladyizunia @erectum and @angelwhispersunknown (and anyone else who sees this and wants too, no pressure tho!

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)

Ultima 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs, and I could not have asked for a better pair of games to ignite a lifelong passion into that genre. There is a real reason why this is still considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

While Ultima 7 is often discussed as a singular entity, it is actually two separate full-length games with one expansion each. For this post I will focus on the first one, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, as well as its expansion: Forge of Virtue.

I recommend playing the game using Exult, which adds some quality of life features (such as a feeding hotkey and a “use all keys” hotkey) as well as the option to use higher quality audio packs, implement bug fixes, and change the font into something easier on the eyes.

Summary

The protagonist of the Ultima series is “the Avatar”, a blank slate isekai protagonist from our world who has previously travelled to the world of Britannia several times and saved it from many threats, also becoming the shining paragon of the virtues meant to guide its people.

In this game, you once again cross the portal to Britannia to save it from a new and mysterious extradimensional threat. As soon as you arrive, you immediately discover two things:

1- A violent ritualistic murder has just taken place.

2- There is suspicious new organization called “The Fellowship” gaining adherents throughout the land.

It is up to you to investigate these developments.

Freedom

In terms of freedom, the Black Gate has plenty overall but there are areas where it is not quite there.

Once you can manage to get the password to get out of the locked-down town of Trinsic you are free to go nearly anywhere in the game right away and have multiple means of transportation to accomplish this, such as moongates or ships.

And there are some very real rewards to exploring like this as well, such as various treasure caches and other interesting findings. 

The world is actually very small by modern standards, especially when settlements occupy so much of it, but both the towns and the wilderness areas are dense with content.

Notably, the game also allows you to perform various activities. From stealing to making a honest living by baking bread (which is something you can do thanks to how interactive the environment is) or gathering eggs at a farm.

Where it falls short is in terms of having multiple possible solutions for quests. Generally there is only one correct option for how to complete them.

That said, there is a bad ending you might be able to find in addition to the canonical good ending.

Character Creation/Customization

This is one of the big minuses of the game. While you can select your name and gender (and with Exult also have a wider selection of portraits) that is about it for character creation.

All characters will start with the same stats and there are no character classes. You can develop your stats through training and specialize through your choice of equipment, but by the end of the Forge of Virtue expansion you will have maxed stats and the best weapon in the game (a sword) regardless, and you will definitely need to cast a few spells to progress the main quest as well.

This can make every playthrough feel much like the last, as there isn’t that much of a way to vary how your character develops or what abilities they’ll end up having. You will always be a master of absolutely everything in the end unless you go out of your way to avoid doing the Forge of Virtue expansion.

Story/Setting

While the game is a bit too obvious and heavy-handed about its villains, there are still many interesting storylines in the game that deal with mature subjects that remain relevant today, such as cults, drug abuse, workplace exploitation, and xenophobia.

However, the setting as a whole is greater than any individual storyline taking place within. With the exception of most guards and bandits, every single NPC in the game is an individual with a name, schedule, living space, and defined personality. This was not the norm in 1992 and even today there’s not many games that really implement this well. The world is also very detailed in terms of things like the services available to you, the general interactivity of the game world, and the sheer amount of things that populate every corner of it.

The initial murder is not only a strong hook for investigation but also a shocking scene in its own right. The Guardian also proves to have a significant presence as a villain, using a mental link to remotely taunt you based on the context of what is happening. For example, if your companions die he may offer you some exaggerated, mocking pity.

Immersion

There is something very interesting and comfortable about just watching the various inhabitants of a town just go about their daily lives. They work during the day, eat at certain times (either at home or at one of the many taverns in the land), and sleep at night. They don’t just strangely repeat one single action during the day either, they may do things like open windows when the weather is nice or turn candles and streetlamps on at night.

In terms of immersion, Ultima 7 is my primary example of a game that does an excellent job of it even if there’s some weirdness going on with the setting. Even after having played so many more games throughout my life, only a few are on the same level as either part of Ultima 7 when it comes to immersion.

Gameplay

There are three broad aspects to the gameplay here that I want to discuss.

The first is combat. It is actually simple enough that you can call it almost entirely automatic. You simply enable combat mode by pressing C and your party will automatically go and fight nearby hostile enemies based on whatever combat orders you have selected for them (by default, attacking the closest enemy).

This is certainly better than having an outright bad or annoying combat system as the whole process is simple and painless, but I still wish there was more depth to it. Your stats, and especially your equipment, still play a role but other than things like pausing to use items or cast spells the whole process is very uninvolved.

I kind of wish there was more depth to it, but at least the other two areas of the gameplay are reasonably good.

The next aspect of gameplay is dialogue, which uses dialogue trees for the first time in the series. Previously, it required typing in keywords, which are retained but as dialogue options you can just click on rather than remember and type.

While the keywords are not really written as natural language most of the time (requiring some imagination to determine the specifics of your dialogue), the system is very easy to use regardless. It definitely lacks depth compared to something like Fallout: New Vegas, but so do most games.

The third and most notable thing is the way you interact with the world in general. It is both extremely simple and very immersive at the same time.

Ultima 7 is a game that can be played entirely with the mouse (though keyboard hotkeys make everything much more comfortable). You can right click a space to walk there, you can left click something to identify what it is, and you can use double left click to interact.

For example, double left click over an NPC to talk to them (or attack them, if combat mode is enabled), double left click a door to open it, double left click a loaf of bread to feed it to someone, and so on.

But there is more. By holding your click over an item and dragging it, you can move it. This has various applications beyond just being how you pick things up and add them to your inventory. For example, sometimes objects may be hidden beneath other objects, or objects may need to be placed in a specific location.

There are some downsides to this system. Particularly, the issue that keeping your inventory organized can be time-consuming when it has to be done by manually dragging objects around, and this can also make looting relatively slow.

Despite this, I think this kind of interaction system has a lot of potential. It just has some clunky aspects to be ironed out.

Aesthetics

Ultima 7 was very good-looking for its time, and although modern players will not be very impressed by how it looks or sounds, it still remains easily legible in a way that some other old games are not. That, and the ability to identify anything with just a left click, makes this a very easy game to make out at the very least.

Some of the music of this game is very distinctive too, and will likely stay with you after a full playthrough.

In terms of style, the Black Gate does have a bit of an identity while still having a very familiar medieval fantasy setting with things like trolls, animated skeletons, dragons, and liches. While there are aspects that help the setting distinguish itself a bit, they are relatively subtle.

If I had to describe the feeling of playing this, I’d call it “open and laid back”. While the main quest deals with a looming threat to the entire world, the game does not follow this overly closely at first, letting you deal with it at your own pace and without having your exploration options limited by the story.

In fact, when I was young I often just ignored that and went to live in a creepy ruin in the swamp.

(Don’t expect many pictures in these reviews, but have one of my “childhood home.”)

I’d say that Ultima 7′s second part (Serpent Isle) has a much stronger and also darker and more isolating atmosphere overall and that has a lot of appeal to me in particular, but the Black Gate is definitely more open and less linear, and I also appreciate that.

Accessibility

It pleases me to say that Ultima 7 remains extremely easy to pick up and play. Even setting up Exult is not complicated in the least.

The gameplay is intuitive and simple, the UI is minimal, stats are basic (and not even that important), and the combat is automatic. I expect that this is not only the easiest point of entry into the Ultima series as a whole but also likely even easier to get into than many modern RPGs!

It does have some aspects that may be a bit clunky, like all the inventory-related dragging, but it’s definitely not obscure or complicated even to someone who has not read the manual (though I’d still recommend doing that). I literally played this game as a tiny child who could barely read or understand English and still got really into it.

The one thing I’d like to point out is that the game uses a type of copy protection where at a couple of story points (including an extremely early one to leave the first town) you will be asked some questions that require using the manual and external map to answer. You can just google the answers for these.

Conclusion

As I write more of these reviews there will be many games that are interesting, but deeply flawed. Games that are worth trying out but maybe not finishing, as well as games that had interesting ideas but that I can’t entirely recommend due to serious problems that will easily put people off.

But I do not think the Black Gate is such a game. I can easily recommend it with no qualifiers despite the fact that it is almost 30 years old. This is really a game that all RPG fans should at the very least try for a few hours, and not only for its historical significance. It is genuinely a good game worthy of its praise.

I will review its sequel, Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, next.

[originalcontent]

Well. Forgot to make our final pathologic post, because we did it, we finished the game. We just played all the remaining days at once. Not going to go super hard on the plot details bc if you know them then you know them, all I can say is holy shiiiiiiit this was such a good story/mystery/choice/everything.

First order of business: casualties.

All the children except Grace survived. When we had five panaceas, we chose Sticky, Murky, Khan, Notkin, and Capella, and we weren't able to find any more shmowders until it was too late. Taya was lucky and Grace wasn't. I feel kinda bad but also I don't know what more we could have done. God all of the kids and their final conversations when they all think they're going to die, they're so sad and sweet and I love them all so much.

The thing I'm SUPER bummed about is that Stakh, Lara, and Bad Grief all died. Like we did everything we could for all of them, but I'm still sad about it. One regret from this game is that I think we should have spent more time with them. I should have tried to make things right with them. I was so focused on the kids, and I don't regret that, but also I kept putting other things before them as well and I should have tried harder.

The other casualties were Big Vlad, Maria Kaina, Eva Yan, and Anna Angel, who was apparently a character but I think we literally never spoke with her in our playthrough. And Aglaya, although I don't know how we could have saved her either. Everyone else survived. I don't know the typical death toll for this game, but we did better than I was expecting us to, all things considered.

Oh wait, Nara's also dead. That wasn't an incredibly disturbing scene or anything. Like I'm getting ahead of myself a bit but jesus the kinfolk terrify me sometimes. My sister mentioned that it's probably a very different game if we commit super hard to exploring their plotline, and she's probably right. That whole sequence though... the blood, the hearts... it's a lot. I'm not going into detail bc if you've played the game then you already know what's down there, but hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I feel like replaying this game knowing everything would put a LOT of earlier conversations into new context.

Still! That was the only place we death spiraled this time! Death spiral escaped! That's probably due in no small part to the presence of the soldiers. Like yes they're terrible and them burning people alive is terrifying, but also we discovered the strategy that every time we were attacked by someone we could just have them chase us past a soldier who would protect us. We still had to sneak around a lot but overall it meant we had a lot fewer fights.

The polyhedron was gorgeous. We probably wasted a lot of time visiting it, but it was wonderful. I wanted to go back when all the kids were there but they didn't let us. Super into the earth/sky dichotomy of Notkin's and Khan's gangs.

Block was sure something. When I first met him he was meeting with my three [living :(] best friends but none of them would talk to me. Anyway. When he arrives everyone's saying they loved him, then later on we accidentally walk into the most obvious coup ever, and then the next day he's back in charge like nothing happened. And then on the last day there's this massive violent internal conflict? Plus the whole thing with him and Aglaya (weren't they working together in the prologue?) and plus they keep giving us heart attacks saying they're going to level the town and then changing their minds. Thank god for Changeling who was apparently the single persuasive voice in saving everyone? I guess? We've had our ups and downs but honestly she was waaaaaaay more reliable than Daniil at the end.

I told her I'd help her cure a patient in the hospital, but I didn't have any panacea or shmowder so in the end I couldn't, but afterwards I was glad I hadn't helped her. I already felt terrible I didn't have enough living blood for all the children when they were all spontaneously infected, and it would have been so much worse if I had been able to help another but I'd wasted it on a random person earlier.

... Is Aglaya in love with Artemy? Or are they just two agents who recognize said agency in one another? Everyone spent all game hyping her up as some sort of monster but she was my friend and she listened to me. And she died trying to save everyone I guess.

The kids...just. All of them. Notkin and Capella both told us to let them die but to make sure Khan was okay. Murky saying she'd loved Artemy since the first time she saw him. God everything they said and did I love them. I can't imagine playing this game as either of the other characters because I can't imagine going through this town and not carrying deeply about all the kids like this.

So I think...I think I made my choice long before I actually made the choice itself, you know? There was only ever going to be one choice.

Day 11 was the first and only day when I knew exactly what I had to do. I mean I guess it was in the stage directions and everything. Thank you dear Fellow Traveler for feeding us the night before--did you know we'd never visited the dead item shop until the last night? Probably would have made finding food and medicine a lot easier. But anyway, when the day began I didn't quite understand the significance of the stage directions because the Haruspex looking for couriers did not sound like the dramatic climax to the story that I knew this day was supposed to be. Still, I looked for the couriers.

I think I visited the three locations in the order I was supposed to. Seeing Daniil like that with his gun and bloody hands, sitting in a room of corpses...hearing him ramble...oh man I was so conflicted, this whole game I'd thought that even though I teased him, I would always ultimately back his plays because I trusted him and I knew that ultimately he wanted to help people too. Hearing him tell me what he wanted me to do then at the end of everything...he honestly scared me a bit.

The Changeling and I seemed much more on the same page at the end of everything. Being in the middle of a field with armed soldiers closing in from all sides was kind of terrifying though. I didn't stay to witness what she did with them. She’s okay though, she’s alive.

Wild goose chase for the final courier eventually took me to the bar where I met an injured bandit and was able to actually perform a surgery for the first time in the entire fucking game. I really enjoyed that because I'm supposed to be a fucking surgeon.

Meeting my understudy fucking killed me. I cannot BELIEVE that the final courier who was carrying the only file that could save the whole town was canonically murdered by the understudy of the protagonist. How the hell is that a real plot point, do you have any idea how much I adore that, that is more meta than literally anything else that has happened in this whole game. I fucking died. I definitely have been playing this game as Artemy rather than as Actor, and I think that made the whole scene even funnier. His whole thing about taking a new direction with the character, the whole "you're getting paid for this??", the fact that Artemy was so offended by literally every aspect of his existence that we didn't even know what to criticize. At the end I was like "yeah I'm definitely going to kill this guy" but we're nice people and we let him surrender. His inventory consisted of a rusty scalpel, a hazelnut, and a single piece of twyre, which was the most incredible parody of Artemy's inventory that I can imagine and killed me all over again.

The kin folk all met with me and begged me not to let them die. Maybe things could have been different, but again, I knew my choice and deep down I always knew what we were going to choose at the end. When you start the game, day one, there are two things that are immediately striking about the town. One, it's full of living folklore, and two, it's full of children, and those are the two things that make the town special and wonderful. When you look back on it all, there was only ever one way this could all end.

The dead courier (murdered by my own fucking understudy rather than an actual character, still dying) was a dramatic sight. It's lucky I had to sleep then or I probably wouldn't have found him.

After I made my choice, the disease tried to murder me. It infected literally every district I moved through, manifesting in every single passageway. I just chugged my tinctures and moved as well as I could, because fuck you disease, you are nothing to me. Obviously at that point nothing really could stop me. I considered saving in the cathedral, but what would be the point?

Day 12 was so bright and peaceful and nice. I could just walk around for once with no fear of getting lost or hungry or running out of time. I'm still really sad my childhood friends weren't alive to share it with me, but I enjoyed talking to everyone. My favorite little end conversations were Taya and Notkin for sheer adorable factor, Yulia so Artemy could say he wanted her to be the one to tell his story and to make it as undramatic as possible (fuck you Mark), Daniil because it was super cute and I’m glad that after it all things are okay between us and I got to make fun of him for trying to talk in my language, and Andrey and Peter because literally nothing made me feel better about my choice to destroy the polyhedron than listening to them complain about it.

And then the theater, where I talked to everyone who'd died and to Mark Immortell. He told me he'd need to try again with a different protagonist (gee I wonder who he could be referring to, such a shame we'll never know) and that I could go into the back and take off my mask now. I considered it for a bit, but it didn't feel right, so I decided that I was Artemy and I went back outside.

This game was wonderful. It was beautiful. It has such a fundamental understanding of what theater is and what makes something theatrical (lose me with your cinematic games, theater and cinema are completely different things and the former is impossibly beautiful but is also almost impossible to recreate when not in person). It's worldbuilding was immaculate, and for all the stress it caused I'm really happy for it.

I say this every time, but I love Artemy so fucking much. Give me a character who is a monster and a healer and who is full of anger but also so much love, and then just have him adopt 7+ children why don't you. He is so wonderful and good and interesting and I am in love with him.

(Edit: And then like a month later, just now, we went back to our last save and threw the documents in the trash so we could play through the other ending. I think the diurnal ending is definitely the better one, although it was nice to see the polyhedron again and to talk to all the game developers. <3 Also the goodbyes to Daniil and Notkin were super sad in that one, I did what Daniil wanted, he won’t even stay? This is so sad.)

Well that's our pathologic playthrough. We know there's a lot we missed and we may return to the game at some point. (Looked up a plot summary afterwards and there’s just so much else. Must save my childhood friends next time.) Game is very good though. It's been wild. Marbles sometime in the next few days. :)

[tumbling-odyssey]

Games I played in 2020

Just felt like getting my thoughts out on all the games I played this year. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years but I always let it pass me by. Well not this year! Fuck you laziness! 

I played the first half in 2019 but finished it in 2020 so I guess I'll count it. DQ11 was my intro to Dragon Quest and what a good starting point. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of the best traditional JRPGs on the market. Characters, story, combat, it all clicks in just the right way to make a flawless game... until the end credits roll that is. 

I have no idea what happened with the post game but by god does it dive off a cliff. It undermines everything you worked to do in the main plot. The characters act brain dead and it shamelessly reuses events from the main game. Please pick up and play DQ11 but for the love of god just stop when the credits roll.

Doom is a game I knew I'd like. The heavy metal ascetic and soundtrack were right up my alley, but I just never found the time. With Eternal on the way though and having found it on the cheap at a pawn shop I figured there was no time like the present. Needless to say but I was right. I loved everything about this game. The thrill of combat, the screech of the guitars, and the silent take no shit attitude of Doomguy. Make no mistake though, I SUCK at this game. I played on easy but still got my ass handed to me on the regular. But I don't care, I was having way to much fun.

I flipped my shit when this game got leaked at the tail end of 2019. Zero 3 is my all time favourite game. To celebrate this getting announced I went and 100% Zero 3 as I hadn't done it on my current cart, and Zero 3 was still the first thing I played when I got this collection! I love that game to death and I’m glad to have it on modern consoles again. As I was under a bit of time crunch with other games releasing soon I only played 2 other games in the collection Zero 4 and ZX Advent. Until the DS collection those and 3 were the only Zero/ZX games I had so I have a lot of nostalgia for them. 

Zero 4 hold ups better then I remember. Not as good as 3 but a damn solid game with tweaks I honestly wish hit the series before its end. I remember having issues with the stage design and ya it’s not perfect, but it’s far from as bad as I thought. For ZXA this was the first time I beat the game on normal difficulty. For some reason the ZX games have always given me more trouble than the Zero games, so finally beating one on normal was very exciting. Maybe I can now finally go and beat ZX for the first time...

The Mystery Dungeon series rising from the depth to punch all those unexpecting in the face was a very welcome surprise. I had a lot of hype going into this one as I have very fond memories of my time with Red Rescue Team and even more with Explorers of Darkness. And the game lived up to it! The remastered music is great and crazy nostalgic, the 3D models are well used and don't feel as stiff as they do in the core series, and the QOL changes are near perfect... So why did I drop this game like a rock once I finished the main quest? 

Anyone familiar with Mystery Dungeon will know that the post game is the real meat of it. The story is short and all the really cool shit comes in after it's done. But I just couldn't bring myself to put more time in after I finished said story mode. I'm definitely chocking that up to me just not being in the mood then an issue with the game. Here's hoping we get an Explorers DX sometime soon. That will fucking hook me for all it's got.

Second verse same as the first. I loved this game and sucked at it horribly. Out of all the games I've played this year Doom Eternal is the one I want to go back to the most. I was not the hugest fan of some of the changes made and retained a stance that I liked 2016 better. First person platforming has never been a fun experience in my opinion and Eternal did little to change that. And I know this a lukewarm take at best but fuck Marauders!. They are so unfun to fight and ruin the pace. The Marauder in the last mook wave took me so long I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the game. But the more I've seen of Eternal after my playthrough makes me think I was being far to harsh. I haven't played the DLC yet either. Mostly cuss I haven't heard great things about it. Gonna wait for the rest of it to come out to see if it's worth getting. Might just replay to whole game at that point to see if it clicks with me better.

This was my second favourite game of the year, and was going to take the top slot until a certain other game came out. Addressing the elephant in room right away, I hated the ending. But I was expecting something like that, I think we all were. I won't let the ending ruin the rest of the game though. Not gonna let 1 segment colour everything that came before it. We have to see how the later parts play out to truly see if this ending was trash or not anyway. 

It took Square over a decade but they finally got an action RPG battle system that works and feels good to play. This may be my favourite battle system in an RPG period honestly. All four characters are a blast and it only gets better the more time you spend with it. Figuring out the nuances of each character’s skills and how to combine them not only with the skills of the others but how to enhance them with the right Materia set. This makes fights thrilling and satisfying when you finally best whatever was giving you trouble. Tis was the best way to bring 7′s mechanics into the modern landscape while also fixing the BIGGEST issue the OG had. The fact every character feels the same aside from Limit Breaks. 

All this on top of graphics that just look fucking stunning, a few glitched out doors aside. Fuck I still feel blown away looking at the characters models (mostly Tifa) and see how god damn pretty everyone is. Also Tifa’s Chinese dress is gift from the Gods and I still haven’t picked my jaw up from the floor after I first saw it.

In my circle of the internet there was a lot of hype for this game. So much so that I ended up buying it to see what all the hubbub was about. I had never played a Streets of Rage game before and my only experience with beat'em ups was playing a LOT of Scott Pilgrim and last year's River City Girls. Turns out Streets of Rage plays quite a bit different and it kicked my ass! So sadly I had to switch to easy to make it through but I still had a fun time with it. 

I started playing mostly as Blaze but once Adam hit the scene oooooh fucking boy. I didn’t play anyone else. There's a deceptive amount of content in this game. You can unlock almost every character from the previous games and all of them rocking their original sprites and moves. If I had more of a connection with this series I'm sure I would have gone nuts on unlocking everything. I stopped after my one playthrough and I was happy with that. Always glad to support a long overdue franchise revival.

To properly talk about P5R I think I need to air a lot of my feelings on the original game and the importance it has to me. You see, prior to 2017 I barely played games, only sticking to specific franchises. AKA Pokemon and Mega Man/Mega Man like games. Until 2016 though I still bought a lot of games. Eating up Steam sales and deals I found at pawn shops. This lead to a Steam library and shelf filled with games I've never touched outside of maybe an hour or 2. So in 2016 when I took interest in the newly released Kirby Planet Robobot I made a deal with myself. I could get the game but I HAD to beat it.  And I did just that, gaining not just a new fav Kirby game but a new rule for game purchases. If I knew I wouldn't beat a game I was not aloud to buy it. Now what does ANY of this have to do with P5 you may ask? Well... almost everything.

 I was immediately interested in P5 when it hit the west in 2017. I loved the 20 or so hours I but into P3 years ago and really liked the P4 anime I had watched around the same time. So of course with all the hype around it I wanted to dive into the series full force with P5. But I knew myself. Putting over 100 hours into a game was beyond me and I had a weird relationship with home console games as I was predominately a handheld gamer. Add in the fact I didn't even have a PS4 and I was convinced P5 would be something I always wanted to play, but never would. So when I went to the mall with a few friends and they showed me that P5 had a PS3 version, I had a dilemma on my hands. I knew I wanted to play it and I now had a way to do so. But doing that would require me to change 2 HUGE hang ups I had with games. Would I being willing to waste 60 bucks with so much working against me? Apparently I was. I immediately started going to town on this game. Making sure I spent no less then 2 hours a day playing NO MATTER WHAT. Which may not seem like a lot but it was to me... at the time.. I also had just moved to my current house, so coming home from my still relatively new job and going straight into P5 was the first real routine I formed during this heavily transitional part of my life. 

I of course ended up loving P5 and put 200 hours into it. As such my outlook on gaming was forever changed. Console games were no longer out of reach and I knew I could handle playing monster length game. I started playing way more games then I ever did before and trying out generas I never thought I would play. P5 is the main reason for this and why I'm able to make a post like this. To actually touch on Royal though? It's unarguably the better version of the game and Atlus learned all the right lessons from P4G. The new characters are great and the added section at the end is possibly the best shit Atlus has ever written. I only wish Yoshizawa joined the party sooner so I could play as her more. 

The release of this really came out of nowhere huh? Wayforward announced it was being made mid way through 2019, then there was its weird half release on the Apple store... and then suddenly it was out! Very little fanfare for this one. Is that indicative of the games quality? Luckily no. Seven Sirens is a solid addition to the series and follows up Half Genies Hero nicely. The game goes back to Shantae's Metroidvania roots and makes a TON of improvements. 

Transformations are now instant instead of having to dance for them (don't worry dancing is still in the game) making the game feel more like Pirates Curse in its fast flow. They also added the Monster Cards which take heavy inspiration from Aria of Sorrow's Soul system. A feature I'm happy to see in any Metroidvania since Aria is one of my all time favourite games. Sadly though the game does not take the best advantage of these improvements. 

Over all the game feels kinda empty. The dungeons aren't super exciting to explore nor are they challenging in any way. And the plot is very repetitive, with each dungeon repeating the same beats. Really this game feels more like set up for a better game down the line. The mechanics are all here and Wayforward has a solid art style with the sprites from Half Genie Hero. Hopefully they capitalizes on this for Shantae 6 and we get the best game in the series.

While it may not have been the most thrilling game, Seven Sirens really put me into a Shantae mood. So much so that I went back to play the 2 games in the series I had never touched. This being the first game and Risky's Revenge. Shantae 1 really is a hidden gem in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, it's the definition of jank, but there's a lot of heart to this game. The sprites are great, the soundtrack is good, and the characters are funny... but it's still on the OG Gameboy and that's a massive hindrance for any game. I'm hard pressed to recommend this with how poorly its aged but I think it's better then it looks. 

Risky's Revenge on the other hand was a game that shocked me by how little it had to offer. I know this game went through a hellish development and what we got was far from what Wayforward planned to make, but it's hard to imagine a world where this was the technical BEST Shantae game. It's not a bad game by any stretch... just a boring one.

For the record my ranking of the games goes Pirates Curse>Half Genie Hero>Seven Sirens>Original>Risky’s Revenge

Sword and Shield are mediocre games at best. I know, real steaming hot take there. I managed to make my Sword playthrough a lot more fun by not spoiling myself on the new Pokemon designs for the first time since Gen 3. Either way, I enjoyed myself enough that I didn't mind playing more of it with these DLC campaigns. Plus I love the idea of Game Freak switching over to this method as apposed to making a third version, so I wanted to support it. 

Klara is a fucking top tier Poke Girl both in design and personality and is probably the highlight of Isle of Armour. GF actually went out of their way to give her multiple expressions to sell her toxic bitch personality and I love every minute of it. She sadly drifts into the background for the second half of the DLC’s story which hurts an already rough section even more. Not more then having to grind Kubfuu all the way to fucking level 70 though! That put a serious hamper on my motivation to finish the story but I pushed through anyway. Having to solo the tower with Kubfuu was at least a fun challenge though, as was the final fight with Mustard. Fuck the Diglett hunt though. Ain’t no one got time for that.

Crown Tundra may be my fav of the 2 though even if there isn't a character as good as Klara in it. The hunt for the legendaries was just pure adventure and I had a fucking blast doing it. The joy I felt when I figured out Registeel’s puzzle put a smile on my face unlike any Pokemon game since I was a kid. The whole Regi stuff was honestly a nice Nostalgia trip to my times with Emerald. The story around Calyrex was enjoyable, even if I still hate its design. Not revealing the horses before release was a good call to as it gave an honest surprise. Having to chase down the Galar forme Birds in the overworld is a great way to evolve the roaming legendaries idea and I hope GF sticks to this. Plus the Galar forme birds are some of the best legendary designs since Gen 5 and I love Chocodos way to fucking much. 

Here we are folks, my GotY. I love Panzer Paladin so fucking much. A combination of mechanics from Mega Man, Castlevania, and Blaster Master? Sign me the fuck up! This game is tailored made for me and I knew I had to play it once it started making the rounds on social media. I'll admit though, I was a bit worried when the the first full trailer dropped and showed the weapon mechanics. Breakable weapons that you have to sacrifice for checkpoints and power ups? I'm not sure about that.... Luckily I was being a complete moron and those mechanics are near perfect. 

I love the set up of each boss being a mythological creature from different cultures. They didn’t just pull the easy ones either. A lot of these things I learned of for the first time here. I love how Grit controls. Using the upward stab as a double jump and being able to pogo off enemies Shovel Knight style just felt great and satisfying. Flame was limited but it made her sections feel tense. She does more damage then you think she could at first glance. Also the only way to heal Grit being to use pods that only Flame could access was a cool idea. 

I am begging you Tribute Games, you have to make more Panzer Paladin games. Slap some new upgrades on Grit and expand what Flame can do and you have an even better sequel  on your hands. Also maybe not have so many 'gotcha' moments with enemy placement. That's really my only complaint about the game. Great music, great sprites, giant robots, unique premise, and a reference to Canadian legends. The ultimate self indulgent game for me.

It felt super out of left field for Curse of the Moon to be getting a sequel. The games fucking amazing but it was really just a tie in for the main Bloodstained product. Not something I expect to get a continuation. Either way I was pumped. If this was even half as good as the original then I was in for a great time. Which held true... cuss this legitimately is only half as good as Curse of the Moon. I still like the game, quite a lot actually. I mean how could I not with a fucking Corgi piloting a Death Train Mech. 

Something was just missing here that never made this click like the first game. Maybe it was the stage design, maybe the bosses, maybe the fact that it's a bit to long. I'm not sure. All I know is I couldn't bring myself to play all the modes like I did in the original. . Stopping part way in to the one where you can get the first games characters. I want to go back some day... I just don’t know when someday is.

This was an announcement I never saw coming. A Gundam Verses game coming to the west? That hasn't happened in the entire time I've been a Gundam fan. I had played a bit of Full Boost on my old roommates PS3 thanks to him having a Japanese account and I played Force on the Vita a few years ago. But to have the latest version fully translated with open servers? Holy hell that's a dream come true. 

Having the open betas every weekend leading up to launch was some much needed fun during this shit hole year. I had a lot of fun just fucking around with different suits and seeing what I could do with 'em. Absolutely trashing two Bael players as the Kapool is a memory I'll keep with me for a long time. Fucking danced on their graves. This gave me some new appreciation for suits like the Baund Doc and Hambrabi, the later becoming a lowkey fav as it was my main.

I've fallen off with the game in the last few months but I definitely want to go back. I hope to start learning the game and take parts in tourneys when cons aren’t death sentences anymore.

It felt like everything in my life was SCREAMING at me to start the Yakuza series. From 2 of my friends playing 0 recently, a youtuber I following live tweeting as he played through the WHOLE series back-to-back, and Yakuza 2 having a run at AGDQ 2020. Plus the constant pleas to play this series you get from following Little Kuriboh on Twitter. I finally broke and picked up 0 in the middle of August. Boooooooooy howdy did I not know what I was getting in to. And no I don't mean the content. I knew Yakuza was a series of wildly conflicting tones between the main story and side quests. What I mean is the length. I legit thought this was gonna be a 20-30 hour game. When i reached hour 30 of my playthrough and realized I wasn't even close to a conclusion, I think I knew I had bitten off more then I was planning. That misstep aside I ended up loving this game and want to play the rest of the series.... I just need to rest up first before I dive into Kiwami 1.

 Let's actually talk about the game for a moment here. Kiryu and Majima quickly clicked as likeable characters to me and I cared about their stories. Combat is fun and the multiple styles are all great.... though both the default styles take a while to get there. The mad rush I felt at the end was fantastic and the last bosses are a joy to fight. Only real complaint is the pacing of the side stories. I loved being able to just stumble into various different events while on route to the next plot objective. But this became less common as the game went on and side stories started getting more tucked away. Also hot take here, the host club mingame is more tedious then fun and I like Kiryu’s business stuff as I could do that in the background. I’m excited to dive into Kiwami and probably Kiwami 2 this year... Though I’m not sure when just yet.

Just gonna say it flat out, I think this is better the the 2018 game. The smaller scale helps in this style of game and Miles just naturally has a better move set then Peter. I'm not sure if they actually tightened up the combat system or if they just threw less bullshit enemies at you but fighting feels so much better in this one. Traversal is better too,  simply because they changed the button for tricks. In the original you have to hold down 2 face buttons to enter trick mode??? In hindsight that was such a bad call. 

Having both the heal and venom powers run off the same meter was a good idea. Making the choice between keeping yourself alive guaranteed or potentially ending a fight quicker/disposing of a problem enemy is super fun. The player having to make small choices like this during combat is what helps it not be brainless. I love all the different venom skills you get. While they all achieve the same thing in stunning opponents, how you achieve that goal is up to you. Do you want to just slug the bastard, throw 'em up in the air, tackle the shit out of them? The choice is yours. 

Only real big complaint is certain upgrades being NG+ locked. I know you want to encourage replays, but this is a shitty way to do it I feel. Also can we retire Rhino for the next game. Man has had 2 shitty boss fights now and I need a break. Between this and Spider-Verse, I'm honestly starting to like Miles as Spider-Man more then Peter.

I got this game more on a whim then anything. I was definitely interested when it was first announced for the west. Vanillaware's beautiful art style in a story about giant robots beating the shit out of Kaijus? Sign me the fuck uuuuuu-oh wait it's an RTS? I had never played an RTS's before, mainly due to the sheer concept stressing me out. So I let it fall to the wayside. The game started coming up again though towards the end of the year with GotY on everyone's minds.  This revived my interest, especially as what I HAD planned to be playing around that time was... well. Cyberpunk. Don't think I need to say much more. Also I had worried for nothing as the Real Time Strategy was not that Real Time. 

This game really lays on the analysis paralysis once you're out of the tutorial. Do you want to fight, do you want to do story, who's story do you want to do, what branch should you follow, how much should you play with this one character? It's very overwhelming at first. I decided to not go ham on just one character and swap around all the time. The twists in this game are equal parts exciting and infuriating. Learning something new always came with the caveat of more questions, or something you knew 'for sure' being disproven. Like when I learned 1 characters was actually 4 separate ones! Anyone that's played knows exactly what I'm talking about. 

Natsuno ended up being my fav and not just because of.... obvious reasons. BJ was cute if unfortunately named and her relationship with Mirua was my favourite in the game. Not that there was much competition except for maybe Ogata and Tomi. I ended up really liking the combat but I can see why RTS fans say it's the weakest part. It's far from complex and I had a winning strat by the third or so real fight. Aka spam turrets and have the Gen 1′s gank all the bosses.

One quick thing I want to share was how I beat the boss at the end of Area 2. The one where Inaba is singing. I had Hijiyama use the limit break skill to bum rush the boss right off the hop. I took out half its health in one hit but Hijiyama’s Sentinel was on death’s door. Only thing that saved him was sending in Amaguchi to blow up a bunch of missiles. Hijiyama took it out on his next attack but lost his Sentinel at the same time. It was a real clutch victory and crazy fucking anime. 

The best way to really describe Carrion is that it's a fantastic proof of concept. Can you make a game where you play as The Thing? Why yes, yes you can. Carrion just needed a bit more tweaking to really bring this concept home and be the A+ game I know it can be. As it is now the game is a bit empty. The level design is super samey and the lack of a map is fucking brutal at points. I know it would make no sense for a blob monster to have a map but somethings you just have to gameify for convenience. The level design must have done something right as even though I was completely lost I still moved from area to area properly. Hell by the time I actually looked up a map I had 1 more item to get and I learned I was one door away from beating the game. 

I love the idea of losing mass as you take damage and gaining more by eating people, but having abilities tied to size was a terrible idea. It just leads to tedium as I have to go and shed myself to the right size, do the puzzle, then of course I'm going to go back and rebuild myself to see if I can do the next segment at full power. Just make it so you can swap between abilities using the d-pad or something. I hope this game gets a sequel just so this sick ass concept can be fully realized.

[blarfkey]

for the ship ask meme - Reylo and Shay/Solas, hit me! :D

Reylo:

What made you ship it?

Listen, I’m always a sucker for villain ships. But that scene where he knocks her out in TFA an carries her BRIDAL STYLE to his ship. And the scene where he immediately takes off his mask when she says she hates it and it makes her afraid? That was it for me. And TLJ only made it even stronger.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I love that the entire time he’s known her, he’s admired her. Even when she’s trying to kill him on StarKiller Base he offers to be her teacher and I don’t think that has to do entirely with Snoke’s wishes for her. He says she could be turned so that Snoke would want to spare her life.

I also love how soft he is with her. He rages and screams and fights everyone else, but he’s always quiet with her. In their force connection sessions, she’s spitting venom and he’s engaging back with utter calm. You can tell that no matter what she says to him, he is always happy to see her. And at the end, when she looks at him from the lift of the Falcon and he’s kneeling on the floor in the rebel base, he looks up at her with regret and guilt. He’s not angry even though he should be, even though he was earlier.

I think she is someone who doesn’t want anything from him, doesn’t have any expectations from him, and he needs that from someone

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Lol, oh yeah. Now, I by no means want any censorship on fic. But I have to say that I really really hate the fics, whether it’s AU or otherwise, that make Kylo/Ben into some kind of obsessive stalker, or cruel sadist, or a rapist, or inherently violent with her. And it wouldn’t really bother me if those didn’t make up a huge amount of the fics about them. He’s an antagonist, he does shitty things, but I never saw him as outright villainous, like Snoke or Palpatine, and I wish there were more fics that explored the nuance of his character rather than having an OC with basically his name slapped on it for the purpose of a dark fantasy.

Like I said, I’m not advocating that these fics are bad and shouldn’t exist. I just don’t get why it feels like they are the majority of the “popular” fics to me and its’ frustrating trying to filter them out.

Solas X Cadash

What made you ship it?

I love dwarves, okay? And the first playthrough of Dragon Age, I tried like hell to get with the mysterious apostate elf and he would have nothing to do with me and I was outraged, haha. So I replayed as an elf just to see what it was like and I was even more outraged.

I also don’t like feeling like Solas would only be attracted to someone who fits a strict standard of beauty that I am so sick of seeing in media regardless and the fact that I’m supposed to have a lot of freedom of choice in DA and still get slapped with the “Solas wouldn’t want anyone who isn’t exactly like him or taller/thinner/conventionally beautiful” just enrages with me.

It’s not my fantasy to have an OC/player insert that is everything I can’t be in the real world be romanced by a character I like because it’s just demoralizing to have that message that I have to be an ideal before I’m worthy.  It’s my fantasy to be romanced exactly as I look like in this world because I’m still valuable without being conventionally beautiful.

What do you like about it?

I like that Solas has very few ways to push a dwarf aside and put distance between them. A dwarf is as neutral as you can get with him. They aren’t necessarily raised with the Chantry’s fear of magic, they don’t have a complicated and fucked up history with elves, he can’t be superior with them like he is with the Dalish or the Qunari. The balcony scene with a dwarf is the least insulting because he doesn’t really have anything beyond the fact that dwarves don’t dream, except this dwarf does. So I feel like he could have a romance that isn’t hindered or colored by negative perceptions that you have to hurdle through the way he can be with a human or Dalish or Qunari.

At least, that’s how I wrote it.

Unpopular Opinion about the ship

Um . . .that there isn’t enough of it? Idk if there is an unpopular opinion because you have to be popular first, haha. But I do feel like some people shy away from dwarf characters because you can’t make them tall and thin and conventionally beautiful and some people are desperate for that because they haven’t accepted the way they look IRL. Not everyone, of course. Some people just don’t think dwarves are interesting and that’s fine! But I do think there’s a connection between a dwarf being thicker and stouter and shorter than what is generally considered attractive and the severe lack of dwarf OCs that I see in fandom compared to humans or elves or even Qunari.

And if that makes me sound kind of stuck up then . . .oh well, I’m kind of stuck up. Do I wish I could be thinner/healthier/in shape? Of course. But I know I have value outside of the way I look and I like to have characters that go against this ingrained message that we have to be beautiful according to an unrealistic standard in order to be the heroes of our story and dwarf characters are as close as I can get to that.

[sewerpigeonart]

literally no one asked but that’s never stopped me before; my inhibitions are low bc i’ve been awake since 4am and idk if any of this is even going to make sense when anyone reads it but i want to talk about my 𝑓 𝑒𝑒 𝑙 𝑖 𝑛 𝑔 𝑠

having to choose between hawke and alistair in the fade is literally like the most stressful video game decision i have had to make—and actually, considering i’ve done alternate playthroughs where i choose each of them, i still technically haven’t “chosen” because it’s. so. hard.

if Loghain or Stroud are the warden, they’re obviously the expendable option because loghain has no rights and stroud simply isn’t a character the player was given the opportunity to emotionally invest in.  unless you make a specific party decision in da2, you never even meet him. but when it’s between alistair and hawke, now the emotional stakes are astronomical, because not only is it hard for me to pick on an emotional level, even when thinking in terms of narrative for each of these characters it’s hard to decide which is the better option.

we’re invested in both these characters; we traveled with alistair through origins and either romanced him or became his best friend through our wardens, our wardens with whom i think most players have also developed an emotional attachment to because they’re our own characters.  and hawke was our character in da2, and you could sort of “mold” him into one of three general personalities, he’s still a pretty strong character on his own, regardless of if he’s snarky or angry or benevolent.  and sort of opposite the case with alistair, we know that hawke’s friends are attached to him.

so now it’s down to the wire and you gotta pick one. there’s no other way out. it sucks. and i think on one hand i can actually appreciate that because it means the games did a good job of making me care about not only both of these characters themselves, but their impact on the characters around him.  when i think of sacrificing hawke, my mind at once goes to varric, the living hawke sibling, and the love interest.  with alistair, my mind goes to my warden, who in terms of the game itself isn’t a strongly defined character because like most custom protagonists a lot of the emotional investment comes from our own imaginations and projections. but in that regard it’s like the relationship to alistair is more personal to the player themselves, in my opinion.  when choosing who to sacrifice, i think about who is going to hurt.  i literally burst into tears when i played the hawke route and varric comes up to you in adamant and says, “where’s hawke?” like i fuckin lost it man lmao, and when you talk to him later and he tells you the story and they play hawke’s theme sadly in the background?????? im like im going to pass away now but ANYWAY

so not only do i think about the emotional consequences on hawke and alistair’s companions (and myself), i struggle to choose which option is better narratively. because i feel that both of them have a very strong reason to stay behind. for hawke it’s obvious: with corypheus, it’s personal—way more personal than it even is with the inquisitor who is meant to defeat him. it’s literally in hawke’s bloodline. not only did his father cage the magister, but hawke is assuming the responsibility of “releasing” corypheus upon the world. of course he would give up everything remain in the fade and deal this huge blow to corypheus. it’s more than playing hero, it’s about vengeance for him, and you could even say it’s about protecting his family, if his sibling is a warden and if you romanced anders, protecting him too.

alternatively with alistair: all through origins alistair is characterized as believing himself expendable. “i wish i had died instead of duncan, i’ll kill the archdemon so you don’t have to,” etc. and yes he is young and insecure in origins, and it’s clear when we see him again in inquisition or even the cameo in da2, we can see him more confident, more assured, capable of making his own decisions. but—and i acknowledge this is largely headcanon, but this whole post is explaining why it’s hard for me to choose—i think especially with the romanced hero of fereldan still alive, in that pivotal moment in the fade i would assume alistair would be thinking of her, sorry to leave her and knowing she’ll be hurt but confident she could be the capable hands the wardens would need to recover, even if she is sort of in the shadows by that time, i project that the HoF would assume a sense of duty in helping them recover, even from the background somehow if she insists on kind of staying in “hiding.”

i think characterwise, alistair is always going to have some degree of innate self-sacrifice, that when it comes down to it, he’ll be the one to take the blow. so it would make sense that in the fade, he’d say “no, hawke, you go,” maybe no longer from a place of lower self-esteem like in origins, but i think in his mind, especially since he’s literally been a fugitive from the wardens, he makes the decision in a fairly rational state of mind. he acknowledges the wardens have messed up, and maybe this sacrifice can even be the start to redeeming their honor because he cares such a great deal about them. even hawke changes his tone in the final moments, saying yeah the wardens fucked up but they’re not beyond saving. so even then i think alistair would take comfort in knowing whether it be hawke or the HoF or the Inquisitor or whoever, the wardens will be left in good hands.

i know a lot of the alistair stuff is more headcanon than anything, but going off my own world history with the games and my own role play ideas and stuff, these are the associations in my head and how i interpret the cost of his sacrifice alongside hawke’s.  and i’ve even tried jotting some fic ideas exploring so many different post-fade concepts depending on which was left behind to see if i could construct some mental narrative to help me “commit” to sacrificing one of them, and in honesty, i think in the end i would go with hawke, because even though it’s more of an immediately impactful death (VARRIC IM SO FUCKGIN SORRY), it is personal, and i think that motivation is beyond alistair’s more “honorable” motivation. i think alistair could be convinced to help the wardens before hawke could be convinced to step back and let someone else take care of corypheus “for him,” for lack of a better term.

HOWEVER. it may be wishful thinking in order to cope, but i would be willing to bet that in da4, we find out whoever was left in the fade is not dead after all, because if it is hawke you leave behind, or even with alistair, these are both two protagonists that would have rather unceremonious deaths. narratively, that’s kind of lame writing if we were to forgo the closure of their actual deaths. even in the choice tree it says the person will “most likely” die; in the cut scene as the inquisitor and the non-sacrificed character run toward the rift, you see in the background the other character fight the monster and hit the ground under an attack, but we don’t see an explicit “death.”  they are then, understandably, assumed dead.  but there’s no actual confirmation. and i don’t know the writing team personally, who am i to say they’re indisputably above this, but i would like to have enough faith in them to expect they would not commit to such an unsatisfying ending for that character’s story. even with a more “expendable” character like stroud, i think there’s too many questions left behind. 

the introduction of walking physically in the fade and surviving is a huge revelation in-game. it’s reiterated that that literally hasn’t happened since the first magisters entered the black city.  that’s ENORMOUS. and if they’re only going to explore that twice—or more like one and a half times because we get the vague opening cut scene of escaping the fade, then the adamant sequence—it again feels very inconsistent and sloppy. dorian even says that essentially once people realize it is possible to survive the fade physically, they are going to try it, however unwise and irresponsible.  i think the da4 teasers alone (i haven’t followed da4 updates very closely tbh bc i haven’t been able to play trespasser yet bc i only have a ps3 and i’m trying so hard not to get too spoiled beyond the main inquisition ending asjkfd) imply our experiences with the “real” fade are so far from over.  and thus, i feel “comfortable” leaving hawke in the fade because i would like to believe he’s going to come back. i mean, he’s hawke right? and if hawke’s character can come back, that would then further suggest if you left the warden in the fade, they would have to come back too for whatever the da4 narrative might be.

ok sorry this is rly long and disorganized im bad at communicating ideas effectively but i have been thinking about this lately way more than i care to admit lmao

[sazorak]

Every Game I Played in 2020, Ranked

2020. Boy, what a garbo year huh? Didn't actually play that many games this year all-in-all. Happens! My backlog is getting pretty big, but I just find it hard to focus on games when I could be working on something. Or put off working on something, as it may happen to be at times.

My arbitrary decision from years ago to only attach a numbered ranking to same-year releases is getting increasingly silly, especially given my propensity to wait on playing games until I’m in the right mood, but whatever. That order matters than the dumb numerical numbering anyway.

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019

Later Alligator – 2019 – Steam – ★★

The style of this game is very cute, and the jokes are funny enough. But… ok, look, I’m not one to be precious about what is or isn’t a game. But this really isn’t a game. It’s a series of disconnected, unrelated challenges clipped from Atari Free Mini Game Collection 100, wrapped in a very non-interactive adventure-game. It’s cute, it’s kind of sweet, but it’s dull. Dull dull dull. There’s a pointless, mandatory sliding block puzzle early on that infuriated me by its mere existence. Them giving the ability to skip it because “wow you’re bad at this huh”, which, while accurate, also just sold the whole point meaningless of the “““interactive experience”””.

Also: when a huge part of your game is WOW WE ANIMATED EVERYONE REALLY GOOD, text boxes that reveal word-by-word, far away from the animations that occur when said characters talk? Kind of stinks!

8. Carrion – 2020 – Steam – ★★

What Carrion does well— the whole “You’re controlling The Thing and just rippin’ people apart!” shtick— is really neat. They made that bootleg The Thing animate real-ass good.

The actual game as a whole though? Kind of garbage. Imagine a Metroidvania with zero actual exploration, where every opportunity you have to venture off the path instead results in immediate railroading with constant, utterly inexplicable one-way pipes. It’s not that it’s linear, it’s that it actively slaps you when you attempt to explore. It’s very frustrating! Add the fact that the tentacle-monster-shtick makes challenging to actually, y’know, move around and control all your bits…  the only reason I finished the game was due to foreknowledge of its extreme brevity.

I think if the game were more open and less obsessed with constantly handing out upgrades, as well as having less of a focus on pure combat, I think I’d have enjoyed it more.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays – 2019 – Steam – ★★

It is well documented at this point that I am both an active Gundam fan, and as well as an on-again-off-again tactical RPG aficionado. A SD Gundam game appearing on Steam with a good English translation and localization is… exciting, to say the least. That said, I have never had much context for this game series beyond the basic facts that the combat tended to be pretty well animated CG, and that it’s vaguely similar to Super Robot Wars. Turns out… it’s really different from SRW? I dunno how the rest of the series fairs, but Cross Rays is weird as hell.

For one, there’s zero tutorialization at all. None. Almost all of what I’m going to explain here is me figuring stuff out by trial and error, or by reading junk online. Gundam is insanely popular, you’d think they’d be interested in explaining how it all works, but… nope. Even Super Robot Wars has multi-level introductory bits for new folks to show them the rope these days.

So: Cross Rays is a tactical RPG where you can playthrough the storyline of various Gundam AUs. You can play through them in any order. These playthroughs are fairly literal translations of the stories. You take control of the lead mecha from those series, fight enemy mobile suits that show up in SRW-like tactical RPG combat, until all reinforcements cease. Pretty straight forward. There are occasionally mission variants like “prevent enemies from reaching X” or “prevent enemies from destroying Y”, but even those can be just reduced to “kill everything very quickly please.”

But here’s the thing: while there is a story progression, the characters in the story itself actually have no character progression. These characters and mecha are actually considered guests, despite it being ostensibly their story. Instead, you are able to field “permanent” mecha and pilots of your own choosing, which do have progressions. There is no plot justification for this or anything like it. The game does not recognize that it’s weird that during Iron-Blooded Orphans intro where nobody knows what a Gundam even is, you can have 25 Gundams show up at once and just fire lasers at everything. That’s because this game is actually about repeatedly grinding the same set of missions over and over.

Pilots are recruited by completing certain in-mission requirements. Mecha are acquired by either by getting enough kills with the progression-less “guest” mecha, combining mecha you already have gashopon-style, completing certain quests, or by leveling up mecha and then “evolving them”. This is the actual core of the game.

SD Gundam G Generation Cross Rays is basically Disgaea, it turns out? You’re grinding story missions at various difficulty levels in order to complete missions, try to recruit specific pilots, equip them with stats and levels to make them stronger, and then hitting mecha together in a sort of quasi-SMT fusion system until you get all the powerful mobile suits you desire.

The combat itself is kind of… bland? There’s a lot of systems, but they mostly seem in service of making an already easy game easier, or burning through tedium. There are four different difficulty modes, because there’s not actually that many different missions you can play through. The expectation is you’ll just work your way through every story beat while ramping the difficulty up over time to where the “guest” mecha would not be able to handle on their own. In fact, letting the story mecha act out the story beats is actually bad after a point, unless you’re still trying to get those lead mobile suits, or if you’re trying to complete some mission requirement in order to recruit Named Wing Grunt Pilot #246.

There is something to the notion of “I want to get N and N and N and N on a team, piloting weird but powerful mobile suits, and just solo every Gundam AU in a row,” but the whole premise seems kind of against purpose. Why bother recreating story beats at all, then? It’s not like the game even acknowledges any of that going on.

If the point is that I’m supposed to be, like in other grind-heavy tactical RPGs, breaking the systems to my own end in order to proceed… why not make the missions you play challenges focused towards that? The story progression literally only exists to facilitate the mission-based unlock conditions, which makes all the energy put into making them JUST LIKE THE ANIME really damn pointless.  

I like tactical RPGs, I like breaking RPG systems so as to beat hard challenges (I beat all the insanely hard extra bosses in FFXII for crying out loud), I looooove Gundam. I should like this. But I don’t really have the “god, I NEED TO FILL THIS LIST” gene that some folks have… except as an excuse to continue to engage in gameplay I enjoy. The gameplay here seems in service of the collection, rather than the way around.

7. Pokemon Sword: The Isle of Armor – 2020 – ★★★

Pokemon’s first foray into actually doing DLC is… a mixed bag. As a positive, they’ve improved the Wild Area concept I liked from the main game, and even brought back buddy Pokemon walking behind you. That’s neat. On the other hand: the actual progression in it is completable in like an hour, it doesn’t scale with you, so you’re bound to be over leveled for it, and all the raid stuff, while still conceptually neat, is just as flawed as in the base game. And so, you’re just left with even more new Pokemon to RNG grind on to continue to catch-them-all. Nah, I’m good.

Astral Chain – 2019 – Switch – ★★★

Platinum knows how to make good character action games. They’ve made a bunch of them. Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. They also know how to make some kind of mediocre character action games. Transformers: Devastation, Wonderful 101, their various shovelware character action games like Korra. Astral Chain falls somewhere in the middle, I guess?

Astral Chain has all the production of their good games. It has some stylish, cool action. It has a neat core mechanical idea, in that it��s essentially a two-character action game where you control both characters at once. It has a lot of the old mechanics from some of their best games brought in; witch-time last second dodging from Bayonetta, Nier’s shooting-and-slashing combination, the Zandatsu mechanic from Metal Gear Rising, even Wonderful 101’s multi-unit shenanigans. The setting is different, and there’s some neat world flavor all in all.

But, of all games I’ve played over the past few years, Astral Chain made me more vividly angry than any other. It’s not that it’s too hard— far from it, really, I found its combat incredibly mashy. No, the problem is that it has so many shitty mechanics slathered on that it become a chore to get to the “good bits”.

Why would you put forced stealth sequences in your character action game, especially when your movement controls are not suited for it?

Why the HELL would you put platforming sections in your character action game, constantly, especially when your stupid ghost buddy can accidentally yank you off the edge, your auto-combos can just throw you off the edge, or literally anything can knock you off the edge and make you lose life?

Why would you put so many constant excuses into the world to force me use the digital sensor in the game, that also makes it miserable to walk around while using it?

WHO THE LIVING FUCK THINKS THESE SHITTY BOX BALANCING MINI-GAMES ARE FUN???

These games are supposed to encourage me to perfect everything, right? Why keep putting fucking fights you need to complete in order to get an S rank behind backtracking, or Legions I don’t have yet? That isn’t adding replayability, that’s just wasting my time. There are even in-level missions that have fail conditions that you never even know about. Surprise!!! A lot of them involve chasing after guys and catching them with your chain, which is really obnoxious to do!!!! SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story is just Bad Evangelion, straight up. Every story beat from Evangelion is here, executed worse. They also make your character have a twin just so they can have a character who can talk and feel emotions, because your boring-ass protagonist is stuck being an emotionless audience cipher. Cool!!!

Tetris Effect – 2018 – Origin – ★★★

It’s drugs Tetris. I personally don’t use, or have synesthesia for that matter. I imagine this game is better if you do. It’s an enjoyable enough experience but it feels incredibly slight for what I was expecting from it, or even compared to something like Lumines, which has tons of replayability by way of its difficulty. Tetris just isn’t that hard, unless you’re forcing yourself to do weird shit to get points. I WILL NEVER LEARN HOW TO T-SPIN. Never.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection – 2019 – Steam – ★★★

Kind of an unremarkable Castlevania collection. Neat that it has an official translation of Kid Dracula in there, but also… look, I prefer Metroidvania Castlevanias, OK?

6. Spelunky 2 – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

I’m not entirely sure why this doesn’t click for me where Spelunky 1 did. More annoying intro levels? Too many fiddly requirements for different ending-progression? Gameplay additions that just make things more annoying? Spelunky 1 was hard, but there was a kind straight-forwardness to it, even with its weird secrets, that made it much easier to grok and continue banging your head against. I’m just not having as much fun with this. Difficulty should be challenging, not a hassle.

5. Stellaris: Federations – 2020 – Steam – ★★★

This is the year that Stellaris just broke for me.

Federations itself is a good DLC; it adds some really interesting mechanics tied to various types of multi-national unions (the titular federations, as well as the Space UN), as well as the addition of unique “origins” that allow you to further specialize your gameplay. The origins in particular are a great addition that allows more specialization and roleplay.

I’m just tired of the sheer amount of busywork Stellaris forces you to do. Every DLC adds more junk you need to keep an eye on, and the fact that the AI doesn’t even bother with it (compensating with copious economy boosts in order to keep up) makes the whole thing frustrating. It’s like playing fetch with yourself; you just get tired of chasing after your own ball after a point.

I have to wonder if they’re pivoting towards a notional Stellaris 2 at this point? Might not be a bad idea for them, though it is weird with all they talked up adding more origins when Federations came out.  

4. GranBlue Fantasy Versus – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★

This is probably the fighting game I got most into over the past few years. There’s just this nice, almost Street Fighter-esque ease of execution to the controls, and that Arc Systems Works 3D-as-2D style continues to just do work. I don’t give a single shit about GranBlue Fantasy (frankly, I think I’d enjoy this game more if it wasn’t attached to a property) but the characters are fun enough to play and look at.

The big problem here is two things: no crossplay, and no rollback netcode. In the span of a month, this game became a total ghost town on PC, and it doesn’t sound like PS4 faired that much better. 

Ring Fit Adventure – 2019 – Switch – ★★★★

I’ve fallen on-and-off this game all year. At its heart: it works, it’s a fun exercise game. I don’t think it really feels like a “game” (in the sense that I’m not really coming to it for riveting gameplay or anything) as much as just a guided exercise experience, but… that’s fine? The in-game story is kind of flat, but funny in the fact of it existing at all. Buff Nicol Bolas and all.

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen – 2017 – Steam – ★★★★

XCOM2: War of the Chosen is a great answer to what XCOM2 struggled with. As I discussed back in 2016 (Jesus Christ), XCOM2 tried to push against player’s worst instincts by incentivizing them to keep being aggressive through a whole bunch of timers— which, kind of just weren’t fun given how much accidentally walking into an ambush could “ruin” dozens of hours of play. War of the Chosen dials that back in some intelligent ways, by instead making the encounter designs themselves, as well as much more grab-and-bail mission types, encourage players to push ahead instead. Smart!

The addition of the Chosen makes the game feel more alive, and they really do make missions harder— particularly early on. But they’ve somehow accidentally fell into the hole, where XCOM just… isn’t that hard? Early on it’s challenging, particularly with the resource restrictions and all. But they keep giving you more and more options (that aren’t especially meaningful choices) that make your team more and more powerful, without increasing the strength of the enemy as time goes on. By the five-hour mark, you basically know if you’re going to steam roll the game or not.

The amount of additional character and variety in the gameplay is great, I just wish it had a more challenging difficulty curve. Maybe make the meta-layer of when enemies show up more targeted to where players are at. If a player is doing well, ramp up the difficulty, if they’re struggling, pull it back a bit. I should always feel like I’m just barely keeping ahead with XCOM, not like I’m bored. And by the end of War of the Chosen, I was kind of getting bored, really. Oh well.

3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 2020 – Switch – ★★★★

This is probably the video game that I spent the most time with hours-wise this year. I’m not entirely sure why? It’s a nice evolution of New Leaf, in that the crafting, environment shaping, and general quality-of-life improvements made are quite nice. There’s clearly been some thought on how people play these games, and ways to make the experience less frustrating.

… and yet, they kept so much tedium in the game. Like yes, the schedule stretching is the point, I get it. As someone who for some reason decided not to play with the clock, I only just recently finished the fish, fossils, and insects for the museum. But there’s just so many weird, little things that just make it hard to keep coming back to it. It’s like… to what end? When I’ve unlocked everything, and basically seen the entirety of the item list at this point, and the holiday events all being the game meaningless collectathons…. Why? I’m not going to try completing the collection; the museum stuff is about my limit, really (and even the paintings I can probably pass on).

I guess even an idealized, digital representation of a quasi-domestic life has the spiritual emptiness of consumerism-for-consumerism sake. Thanks???

Hypnospace Outlaw – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I grew up on the internet of the early 00s. I had an AngelFire website, mostly consisting of shitty sprite webcomics and hosted Gundam pics. I remember when Google wasn’t really a thing and you would heavily rely on website compilation sites like the Anime Web Turnpike in order to find anything of value online. It was weird, it was wild. It was exciting!

The internet seemed so different back then. There was a ton of garbage online, but also, like… there was a sense of optimism to it. Folks were shitty, there was plenty of bad stuff online, but it felt so disconnected from the fabric of the physicality of real-life that it was at the same time a perfect escape.

I was young when I first got “online”, something like 12. I remember having this notion that the internet was going to be this great equalizer, that it had infinite potential to change how people behave and interact. Boy, huh.

Hypnospace Outlaw is essentially a splendid alternate universe GeoCities recreation, where you’re a volunteer moderator of a grouping of websites on HypnOS, an internet-analog you access while you are sleep. At the surface level, it’s mostly about poking around the weird alternate-historical version of the internet they created, full of kids feuding, bizarre historical divergences, and plenty of amazing bespoke weirdness. All of this is great; there’s an incredible amount of content that’s just great to poke at, listen to, and explore.

Below the surface, there’s also a rolling plotline about the ethics of this industry-owned platform, those who run it, and the way corporations handle new technology, new platforms, and emerging digital societies. There’s a late game turn that’s pretty damn affecting. And as someone who has moderator his share of internet forums in his time, trying to balance ‘do it for the community’ and what your ostensible ‘bosses’ require of you, it was kind of a weird throwback in more ways than one.

Minecraft – 2011 – PC – ★★★★★

Turns out, Minecraft is really as good still who knew??? Started playing a bunch more of it this year due to Giant Bomb deciding to do so, and yeah: still good!

2. Hades – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again— Supergiant makes damn good games. I’d been holding off on checking out Hades until its full release due to my tendency to burn out on games easily, and I’m glad I waited. Hades is a fantastic rogue-lite experience. The way it makes narrative progression part of the reiterative, randomized rogue-lite structure is just perfect.

It’s got all the usual Supergiant bullet points. Great characters, voice acting, narration, and music. In terms of gameplay, it’s probably their least ambitious game— playing something like a cousin to their original game, Bastion— but it’s also been polished to a mirror sheen. It just feels really damn good to play, over and over and over.

That being said, the second (final?) ending feels kind of…. Tacked on? It’s fine as a goal to go for while continuing to do the game’s relationship mechanics for additional story bits, but it ends up feeling kind of unfulfilling compared to the payoff of the first one.

1. Crusader Kings III – 2020 – Steam – ★★★★★

I never could get into Crusader Kings II. Despite my interest, the sheer mechanical heft and unintuitive interface made the game a wall that I just couldn’t get over. I’m sure if I’d dedicated myself I probably could have learned it, but… ehhhhhh.

Crusader Kings III, on the other hand, has a good tutorial, a cleaned-up UI, and a very helpful highlight and tooltip system that make it much easier to understand how to actually play the game through resources inside the game itself. And, as it turns out: I rather love this game.

I mean, conceptually it’s an easy sell, isn’t it? Historical politics is something I enjoy broadly. I liked Stellaris but wish it had more narrative, roleplaying elements. They outright say that “winning” isn’t really the point of the game. Instead, it’s more about emergent storytelling and playing with the different systems and seeing what you can do with it.

My current game has had me taking the Haesteinn dynasty from its Viking origins into England, forming a London-seated Northern Sea Empire that encompasses all of Britannia, Iceland, Holland, Norway, and Denmark. I am currently working on hegemonizing Norse religious control over enough Asatru holy sites to finally reform the religion, such that more unified feudalization can occur. To that end, my current ruler’s predecessor invaded West Francia and conquered the whole of its territory, substantially reducing the foothold of Catholicism in mainland Europe… which seems to have kicked the hornet’s nest, given the Crusade I’m going to need to contend with next time I boot up the game.

Of course, a complicating matter is that my current ruler— the Emperor of the North Sea, King of Ireland and the Danelaw, liege of the King of Denmark, was elected from the extended Haesteinn family via Thing, the Scandinavian council of his erstwhile vassals. Where the previous emperor, the one who manufactured the invasion of Francia, was quite religious and beloved for his adherence to the old ways, I discovered as I took over as his successor that he really, really is into just boning down across Europe. We’re talking constantly attempting to seduce neighboring Queens and Princesses. His vassals are not thrilled with this. They also don’t care for his propensity for torturing people to death, constantly.

I had no real say in this; attempting to stay on top of a dynasty is kind of like riding a bucking-bronco, so many things are only tenuously under your control that some weird shit can happen. This is especially true when you use the systems that make it easier to maintain the coherency of your domain. The Norse religion encouraging concubinage results in you having a lot of kids, which means there’s a lot of domain partition going on (someday, primogeniture, someday). Naturally, using Thing election reduces that, but also makes you sometimes end up having to play Emperor Stabbo-Fucko because they thought he was the best candidate at the time. Hell, I thought he was the best candidate at the time until I discovered just how many people he’d be laying with on the low. But you just have to roll with it.

The way the game forces you to play ball with character traits is great. Doing things that match with the character’s traits makes them lose stress. Doing things against their character increases stress. Too much stress can force you to make the character take up vices (which can make them suffer health or opinion maluses, as well as altering their aptitudes), or even die outright. And sometimes those vices and attitudes can be boons, given they open up opportunities for different character interactions.

Emperor Stab-and-Fuck-Kingdom is perhaps the most relaxed person alive, it turns out, because his sadism makes him really enjoy sacrificing infidels, which makes the gods happy. It also freaks the fuck out of all of his vassals, so they’re a good supplicant mix of both appreciative of my religious sentiments and also utterly terrified of my skull piles. Some especially brave vassals occasionally try to assassinate me, but my lovers keep jumping in front of the knife and saving my life mid-coitus. Iiiiiit happens! :D  

The game can be incredibly fun to just watch, as it becomes emergently weird. Georgia right now is incredibly Jewish in game. I’m not sure how that happened; I guess someone made a random Jewish guy into a vassal, who somehow moved up enough in the world to make it a movement? The Byzantine princes elected a Coptic as Emperor, which over the course of the decade resulted in very accelerated balkanization as Byzantium just lost its shit. The Middle East and notional HRE haven’t really unified in a meaningful way, so I’m curious how things are going to go if/when the Mongols unify and roll-on in.

It’s one of those “Just one more thing” games that can completely devour time. I have more than a few times checked the clock mid-game to see that it’s 4AM and that I’ve totally ruined my sleep schedule in the process of play. Oooooops.

I highly recommend checking it out if you’re curious; the introductory, pre-release video series Paradox put out showing off the game does a pretty good job of showing the core gameplay loop and also how weird it can get.

[bill-beauxquais]

Blogging my Bravely Default II Playthrough - Chapter 1

I’ve been working all week end, so I haven’t been as fast as others, but also I want to savour the game as much as possible, and do as much side content as I can. Also, taking my time means I don’t need to grind as much later, hopefully.

As usual, be warned that there will be spoilers for the game up to the end of Chapter 1 under the read more (nothing further, please refrain from even hinting an anything after that).

((Ps: I really want that new Gloria plushie Square Enix is releasing, please and thank you.))

Overall opinion: The game keeps on delivering good content. There isn’t anything too frustrating, irritating or plain boring for now, and the game is an upgrade from the previous ones in nearly every regard. I’m starting to feel bad about doubting the devs so hard until release. They have already redeemed themselves in one chapter and a prologue, congratulations. It’s still not the meat of the game, but it has laid interesting bases.

Gameplay: I feel like the strategy element is coming earlier than in past game, in that I’m already starting to build a team and specialise my characters. As of now, Elvis is my primary healer, and Gloria is my tank, but I’m using Berserker to make her a powerhouse as well, hopefully. (as a bonus I really like how she looks in cutscene with these bulky, armored outfits. Looks very regal). Seth and Adelle are a bit less certain, but I like her as black mage, and him as a damage dealer and emergency support.

The asterisks may look like the old ones, but they do actually feel fresh and mix things up, forcing you to think differently. I also like the greater variety in quirks, and what to spend for skills.

I am also using poison on every boss, and it almost feel like an oversight with how cheated it is. But it does feel nice, also has the bonus of wiping off these smug grins as they attack me, then immediately get poison damage. Feel like karma, man.

The difficulty is less than the demos, if anyone was worried, but I was more levelled than I was back them. It’s still plenty challenging, without being frustrating. I won first try against almost every asterisk holder, and the ones I lost to took me 2 tries. Need to mention I’m playing on normal difficulty.

Nothing much to say on the overworld since I already played both demo, but I like being able to explore and find places before the story lead me to it. I also love that there are apparently optional dungeons that do not play into the main story, it’s a nice treat, and the definition of going up and above the minimum. I respect that. For a desert, the overworld was nicely structured as well.

BnD is... okay. I’m stating to get the hang of it, and got all the cards from Halcyonia and Savalon. I also beat Shirley relatively easily at it. I’m just focusing on corners and making an L shape, I’m not sure if that’s a good strategy but it’s working fin for now. It’s a nice little mini game you can sink a lot of time into, but it doesn’t seem obligatory if you don’t like it (well, only if you don’t want Shirley’s asterisk). I don’t think I’ll ever be a pro at it, but as long as I can see it through the game and the difficulty doesn’t ramp up too hard it should be fine.

The dungeons also feel more complex than everything we’ve had before, but not to the point they get boring. They’re still just labyrinths (for now), with chests here and there but they’ve taken off the “chest for later” gimmick. They definitely look more unique from each others than they did in the first Bravely Default (Second had improved on it).

I wasn’t expecting the sword to be improved on the overworld. It’s nice and satisfying to be able to cut down grass AND trees.

Writing: The story actually took me by surprise. For once, I didn’t see a bravely twist coming, and I’m not even mad. For me it worked as intended, I didn’t really see it coming but two seconds before it came through my brain just went “Wait but that was so OBVIOUS I’m an idiot I got played so hard.” I did notice a bunch of hint that I didn’t really look into because I guess I underestimated them (which is understandable, considering the previous games). Will definitely be paying more attention now. Good twist. Ruined my hope for a CastorxGloria, but ah well, I’m used to square ruining my ships by now (*cries in Altdea*).

The only thing I might say is that I felt the personality shift was way too hard, at least in the japanese voice. It looked a bit goofy with the cute baby face and the smoker voice.

However, I must commend them for making us play the start of Savalon as a demo. Because I feel it greatly helped the twist, as most of us where “ugh, I’ve already been there” and we didn’t really pay attention to the story or expected to be surprised in anyway. Good use of your demo, guys. I see they’ve also learnt their lesson not to show your twist vilains’ asterisk from the get go, or else you KNOW we’re going to expect to beat this guy’s ass. I like to think they also played on our expectations from Bravely Default, as asterisk holders usually came by 4 (except in Eisenberg, but all 5 of them were shown to us at the start), so Bernard felt like the obvious last boss/chief.

Anyway, the story was good and I’m glad Anihal is out of trouble now. Poor girl deserved it. I also like the main 4′s characters and interactions as well, and I’m glad I was right about Selene and Dag coming back and having some sort of redemption/moral greyness to them. I much prefer how the asterisk holders are handled this time around.

The sidequests are also still interesting and flesh out the universe quite well.

Writing - Theories: Not much more to mention.

For once, I kinda feel like accepting that a character who fell down off screen is actually dead, because it’s not like they mentioned not finding the body. I’m not sure if the sound he makes is a thud or a splash, I seemed to hear a splash but other heard a thud. In any case, Alternis can #relate.

Adelle definitely is hiding something, and I think she knows her sister is linked to asterisks and this is why she’s following Elvis. She knew what it was when he first mentioned them to her, and it seemed to get her interest. Also, it sounded as if she made the mercenary thing up on the go.

I still don’t trust the crystals and I don’t think their benediction is that easy. There appears to be something the crystals aren’t telling you. Hopefully the ‘Have the courage to disobey’ line will come back somehow. It’d be a nice nod, and a title explanation.

Graphics: Still good, still nothing to declare. I really like the asterisks outfit for now, it’s nice to see feminine bulky armor that isn’t skimpy. I’m fine with skimpy outfits (especially now that Square confirmed all the characters were adults) I just don’t want ALL OF THEM to be that way.

Related to the twist, I like how the NPCs are more detailed now, so there’s not as much of a quality/detailing leap between asterisk holders and NPCs. It makes it less obvious to see who’s going to be important or not. I really like seeing the freelancer outfits and I am irrationally ANGRY we weren’t shown Bernard’s.

Performance: (playing on a lite) It’s still not quite perfect, still struggles with party chats, still takes a while to load, and now I’ve been having lags in the shirley fight as well. At least it’s not crashing like BSel was mid boss, but it’s still jarring.

Music: Last boss theme was a banger. I also really liked the theme of Bernard’s mansion (and the abandonned mansion). Nice to see variety in the dungeons’ themes.

[lordbhreanna]

RE3 Ramblings

I finished a second playthrough and felt like sharing some random thoughts about RE3make. Mostly things I have been mulling over the past few days. As usual, don’t expect many organized thoughts, this is just me rambling away about certain things from the game (mostly the story and characters, to be honest). Spoilers under the cut!

— One thing I love about the initial sequence in Jill’s apartment is that it lets you know her more intimately than we’ve ever known any other main RE character. It shapes her personality a bit, as well as her current mental state after Arklay… which isn’t very good. Her place is a mess, there’s beer everywhere which might mean she’s been drinking more, the board tells you she’s obsessed with her investigation, she’s not sleeping well and resorts to pills, the whole nightmare thing. But there are other minor details that I truly loved, and what I mean is: the girly stuff. OH YEAH. There’s this trend to remove any trace of “femenine” elements from female characters that supposedly fit the mold of “strong female characters” (I hate this phrase with a passion). Because, sadly, more often than not, the masculine stuff is valued as cool or positive (things like strength, power, violence) while femenine stuff has more negative connotations. So I was gladly surprised that Jill was allowed to have the kind of stuff that most likely a 23 year old woman would have in her apartment, like make-up products and nail polish bottles scattered all over her bathroom, a fancy handbag in her wardrobe, even panties, those fashion posters on the wall. I know it’s a very minor detail, but I appreciated it. Jill is allowed to be human in this game, to be caring and compassionate while feral and a true action hero. This just adds more to that; she’s a supercop, but she’s also a regular young woman in her twenties.

— Talking with a friend, I came to realise that the reason why this game feels shorter sometimes is because of the pacing. RE2 initial sequence was shorter and you were quickly left out in the open at the police station. But from Jill’s apartment to the subway, a lot more happens and it’s very quick. Now, I think that part is well done because this is Jill’s escape and this is when the city is falling completely apart. So it feels right that it is so desperate, especially because Nemesis is pursuing Jill already at this point. My only wish would have been that the time spent roaming the city, before fixing the subway, was longer. Mostly because I enjoyed exploring the city and its surroundings. But, in any case, I still think the pace fits the game well and the internet tends to turn these things into an echo chamber, so it seems that it’s a bigger problem than it actually is. (I lived through Mass Effect Andromeda’s disastrous release, and I enjoyed the hell out of that game.)

— Let’s talk a bit about the story. I think all the changes made are there to tell a more consistent tale of the last days of Raccoon City, why it fell and what the city represents as a whole. As I mentioned before in other metas, RE is not particularly subtle with its themes, and it’s not really the point. That’s why I think Jill’s last words are so important to understand every other piece of the story: it’s a story about how true horror is human greed, and how it clashes against selfless people like Jill, Carlos or even Brad. It’s not a cynical story, by any means. As much as RE is horror-oriented, I always find its stories quite hopeful and its endings reflect that. Look at RE2R ending too, or RE5. It’s always daylight, because the heroes have escaped the nightmare, and there’s usually a line about never giving up because it’s worth it, despite all the troubles. 

This game deals heavily with the corruption that runs through Umbrella, the US government and the city of Raccoon City itself - which is something that already showed up in RE2R. I find that Bard is the perfect example of said corruption, and to be honest I believe that he is the worst of them all - because he’s the most real one, the kind of upper-class bastard that was part of the problem from the start, but would actually get away with it had he escaped Raccoon City. Yes, he had the vaccine - but he was complicit in all of Umbrella’s experiments, only took actions when Umbrella turned on the researchers and, well, he was a sexist pig. I don’t think the writers added that particular convo with the nurse for nothing, if only to highlight what a douche (as Carlos says) he is, and how this kind of person can do whatever they want without any consequences to their actions. (Luckily he got a bullet to the head. Nicholai is trash, but he’s trash husband material for things like this.)

Carlos is a super interesting case because he starts on the bad side, but you see clearly that he wants to do good, just like Mikhail. He’s honest about wanting to help people. And he does think they’re there helping, so I appreciated a lot how we got to witness this time his slow realisation that maybe he’s not working for the right people here. It adds so much more nuance to him, and it makes you root for him even more. I also appreciated his comment about how Jill even trusted him, despite knowing what Umbrella did. It speaks volumes about the trust and bond these two characters develop throughout the journey. And Carlos is also there to represent that kind selflessness we saw in rookie Leon, for example: he’s willing to stay in the city if it means saving people. He moves heaven and hell to save Jill, when he’s just met her. 

But Jill is obviously THE hero of the story. And one trait we get to see immediately about her is that she’s devoted to helping others - first she tries to convince Dario, then decides to help the UBCS (despite ALL her hate towards Umbrella, and we shouldn’t play that down) because she wants to save the civilians. Then, once she discovers there’s a vaccine, she rushes to get it, because she wants to help as much as she wants to escape the city. She doesn’t trade one thing for another, and she tries to get the vaccine up to the end. 

Then we have Nicholai, who is the main villain. I know a lot of people consider Nemesis the big baddie, but for me Nemesis is just the product of human greed & hubris, it’s a tool - monsters in RE are never the actual villains, they’re just there to have something to shoot at (there’s a great post around Tumblr that also explains why Nemesis may even have the saddest of stories, but that’s another topic altogether). But Nicholai IS the representation of said greed - he shows us to what lengths people can go for personal profit. This is something that is carried over from the original game, but the way it’s presented in the remake is more tonally coherent with the rest of the story, in my opinion. It becomes his main trait because that’s the underlying theme the story is talking about. Jill even calls him “greedy son of a bitch.” I think it’s super interesting that all his conversations relate to that and being selfish, basically. He wants Jill to see that you should only care about yourself and we see throughout the story that he only values things in terms of money and his own survival. He’s the kind of person who puts a price to everything. “There’s a price tag for everything, even letting the world burn.” “You can’t put a price on life” (meaning his own, as he decides to leave instead of getting the combat data of Jill’s fight with Nemesis’ last form.)

Which is the opposite of what Jill stands for and represents - her literal job was in law enforcement, she cares about protecting others, helping people, bringing justice. She’s a selfless person who can’t be bought by money, which is something that a greedy bastard like Nicholai can’t see. That’s why he tries to convince her to save him because of the information he has, adding that he would pay her anything. But that doesn’t work on her, because she’s not like Nicholai. Unlike the rest of Raccoon City, she remains “incorruptible.” She refuses to be part of that, and leaves victoriously while every other evil character dies along with the city (well, Nicholai’s death is debatable, but you know what I mean). In the end, she doesn’t get the vaccine and Raccoon City’s citizens aren’t saved, but Jill wins in a metaphorical way, I would say, and her resolve is stronger than ever. Her words highlight what was Raccoon City’s demise: 

“All this death wasn’t caused by a monster-making virus. It was greed. Human greed.”

[nofliight]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by: stole it from @sternenteile​ and honestly others tbh tagging: TAKE

my muse is:  canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ for better or for worse, he’s THE face of kid icarus, after all. he’s a dork and funny and likeable and even if the fandom tends to get him WRONG (thanks smash bros) there’s no denying his popularity ]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ i don’t??? think so??? most people are too busy talking about how they think he’s like 5 ]

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ EVEN THE FANDOM AIN’T GONNA MESS THIS UP. MAN FIGHTS GODS. CALL THAT WEAK. ]

Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK. [ make no mistake - pit’s got fans and plenty of them but he’s so MISTREATED by the fandom. his character is a lot more complex than he gets credit for and smash bros in particular is a big reason people think he’s just Big Dumb Baby Man ]

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO. [ HE’S THE MAIN CHARACTER, THE CENTRAL FIGURE UPON WHOM THE NARRATIVE IS STRUCTURED AROUND, YEAH HE’S PRETTY RELEVANT. Uprising is literally made to tell the story of a war exclusively through the perspective of a single side and Pit (and Palutena) are the EMBODIMENT of that whole side. ]

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ and a perfect one at that. he’s literally a perfect protagonist don’t tell me i’m wrong cause i’m not ]

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. [ pit is beloved by humans... and mocked by the Gods. seen by most as a spineless extension of palutena’s will, most “respect” of any variety goes to palutena while he gets treated as a joke 99% of the time... and it’s not like Palutena gets too much respect either ]

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. (????) [ Uhhhhhh... it’s an odd one. Short answer is that Pit’s a good samaritan who’s done a lot of good BUT most of the gods think protecting humanity is a Folly and a Joke and that Pit’s just a pawn of Palutena’s and while the humans do hold a lot of respect for him, uh............. let’s just say, some humans on the surface have reasons not to be too happy with him. ]

How strictly do you follow canon?  —  about as much as I need to to respect one of my favorite video games of all time. while kid icarus uprising is a comedic game most of the way through it has a lot more nuance and depth to itself, its world, and its characters than one can see at first glance, even after a full playthrough. if you let yourself get invested in the characters, take a closer look at the dialogue it provides, and acknowledge the central, core storytelling message of the game for what it is, there’s a lot more to pull out than one would think. that being said, it’s still a comedic video game and one that I think could use some more expansion. though the game is inconsistent there seems to be the consensus that pit is like a child and I’m not into that, mine’s a bit more showing in his cynical and snarky side after all he’s been through and overall there’s a lot of expansion on the base while building it into something unique.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  imagine your typical bootstrapped anime protagonist. someone who, when younger, was a runt who couldn’t meet the expectations of others, was looked down on, and found himself crushed and hurt and near-killed by a great tragedy that he was forced to claw his way out of to make himself stronger. Now imagine all of that with a character who comes out still able to have a very real smile and ultimately comes out of it a self-assured, chipper goofball with a good heart. now put that together with all of the darkness and depth you would have expected to be there, but scattered realistically throughout the attitude of someone who does genuinely want to keep a positive attitude. someone who is sincerely an optimist who’s grown past his weaker days, but isn’t quite so simple as he’d like to believe. all of that combined with someone who can’t read, is willing to eat ice cream off the floor in times of duress, is extremely easy to fluster and can channel his goddess’ power to slay GODS? you got one strong man.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  his positive attitude is what most people will see when speaking to him, because for what it’s worth, he’s not actively lying about his depth. he’s a cheerful, jovial man with a big smile and a love of the world around him - which is all well and good, but his depth is something you have to find, even if it is reasonably clear if you’re willing to look. he’s also portrayed as a bit unreasonably dumb at times, and though I personally justify the worst of it with proper explanations, I can understand reducing some of the value of the character in favor of seeing all of his Jokes

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  i made my original pit blog, flightlesswarrior, on a total whim after playing kid icarus uprising. cute character, fun premise, why not? but over time, and with numerous plots I was able to take part in exploring the serious, not so serious, shipping, tragedy, and going back through the game to keep my muse rolling, it occurred to me more and more with time just how nuanced and interesting pit and co. really are. pit embodies many of the things i really, truly love in a protag, falling firmly on the side of good, having a heart of genuine gold, and having nuances and parts of his personality that are less than savory without making him seem like a contradiction. he’s got depth, he’s got story, there’s a lot to explore and flesh out... and he’s also just a nice, friendly guy who gets along well with others. plus, i’m drawn to dorks.

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  a) love for Kid Icarus: Uprising. a game that helped me gain a deeper and more insightful understanding of character development, subtle storytelling, optimism still tinged with legitimate and healthy cynicism, and overall something that changed my understanding of character development and storytelling forever. and b) spite. the fandom treats him like an idiot baby and smash DOES NOT help matters so i have to remind others that he is a veteran of a war, a socially inept loser with few real friends, and someone who’s kindness and optimism was shaped and molded by its hardships in a way that doesn’t require a near-breaking point or a reminder that “this guy could be evil you know” to show how someone can still keep a positive attitude in spite of all the shit life throws at him.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO [ i’d like to think i have?? but i also acknowledge that he’s become something of his Own in some ways that do intentionally diverge from sakurai’s intentions. ultimately though, even though i may not play him completely true to text, i try to be as loyal as i can be to the spirit of the character. ]

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ when i can!! but??? the problem is my mind really, really likes to reiterate the Same Damn Points i have to make with characters that draws me to them - and you know, writing the same hcs over and over is generally considered poor form?? ngl i also prefer to let the writing do the talking unless it’s something that’s not gonna show so 90% of the time pit’s open enough that all but the darker sides of his mind are lain out before you. ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO [ maybe??? once or tWICE???? but i need to write more ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO [ I REALLY DO, HOO MAMA. i have a lot of thoughts about him, his depth, potential relationships, goofy thoughts, more serious fanfic ideas im never gonna write and don’t get me started on how many SHIPS i have to think about for him ]

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO [ my portrayal is made out of spite for portrayals in the fandom and some supplementary material that gets him wrong - it’s kinda hard to do that without the confidence ]

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO / ??? [ it’s uhh........ complicated??? i don’t think writing is my expertise, tbh. but it is the best way i have to show the passion i have for characters, by putting their nuances into actions, by allowing them to shine from who they are their core, by exploring relationships and scenarios and struggles and hope and everything that can flesh a character out. whether or not i’m a good writer is something i’m still sorting out - but i’m proud of my ability to develop a character, and to that end i feel like i’m doing fine ]

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / SORTA. [ on one hand......... very. i have a tendency to overthink everything i do and look back at moments i made an ass of myself that keep haunting me throughout my day - they haunt me. i only have two fears: what my immediate friend group thinks of me and the crushing existential weight of worrying one day i’m gonna ruin everything i am SOFT. that being said, i’m also hardheaded and stubborn and i’m not afraid to go off on someone i don’t have much respect for if it comes down to it. i’m easy to anger when it comes down to it you know i guess that proves the point huh i’m not stonefaced at all ]

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  i try to? it’s a bit touchy for me I admit just because I do take portrayals and try to make them my own, but i am willing to listen if someone has any points they’d like to make that i haven’t acknowledged properly. if criticism IS had, lemme know, i do wanna hear it!

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —   Y  E  S

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  not that everyone who disagrees with my opinions has to explain themselves of course, but i do sincerely like the chance to learn if something i’m doing doesn’t quite feel right. even if it’s one-sided and i’ll come to disagree, i’m happy to listen! even if i don’t agree with the disagreement head-on, i like to keep them in mind and see what i can shift around to acknowledge them if necessary

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  — neutral?? i mean don’t be mean about it, but if you just think my pit doesn’t seem right or it doesn’t click right with your muse i’m not gonna throw a fit about it. everyone’s allowed to view a character in their own way - and even if i may get salty about those who oversimplify him, it IS anyone’s right to view him how they will.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  — agree to disagree tbh. i can’t pretend it wouldn’t disappoint me, but it’s not like, worth ending a friendship over or anything. everyone’s got their own viewpoints to run on

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  sure, within reason! i take pride in my grammar but i know that with my fast typing and often running on only a few hours of sleep some problems do slip in through the cracks. while i generally either catch them or just Die with them i’m all ears if i mess up

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  uhhhhhhhhhh well i’m?? kind of a socially anxious mess honestly which DOES make being easy going a bit difficult BUT i do try and be friendly and sociable as i....... can. i’m too scared to talk to people and CAN say some dumb things but i’m not a hardass or anything!! i like to talk and Yell and shitpost and pretty much do anything but write tbh DHFLKSJDF

[the-endless-storm]

Nuzlocke Shield Part Six

Part Five

After a bit of training to get everyone up to the same level, and hitting up the move Re-learner, I went back to Route 9 to explore and fight trainers. Everything was going well, until a Cloyster managed to get a lucky 5 hits with Icicle Spear and knocked out Ddraig. Blast it.

Ddraig is KO'd

With Ddraig out for the count, I rely on Chamomile before going back to Spikemuth and sneaking in.

I take Spritz out of storage and evolve him into a Vikavolt. He does have a good SAk boosting nature, so there is room for him to work out well. I don’t have much in terms of Dark beating Pokemon, so I lead with Bullseye to fight Marnie and pray for the best.

The battle animation for Mudsdale using Body Press is one of the worst. It spins around, kicks out it’s back legs then flies up and lands on the enemy Pokemon with its back legs still kicked out. Looks absolutely ridiculous. Still knocks out Leipard in one shot, so I can’t complain.

Bullseye's Stamina kicks in with a Crunch from Scrafty which means Body Press will do more damage. Two hits take out Scrafty.

Toxic rock gets a Sucker Punch in first, more Stamina for me, but swallows an earthquake whole and suffers for it.

Morpeko starts with Torment, which technically should have stopped me using Earthquake (as I’d just used it) but it doesn’t stop me one shooting the little Pikachu knock off.

Ah Spikemuth, the poor man's Po Town. I get that Team Yell are just meant to be over eager fans, but the whole city on lock down just doesn’t cut it. They are officially the worst 'team' and really don’t deserve any kind of promotion. Any other team would have kidnapped Gym Challengers by now.

Team Yell always come out in pairs, and this game really dropped the ball on having more double battles. A handful of trainer battles here and there, one here in Spikemuth and Raihan's Gym and that's it. I love Double Battles (and Hoard Battles and Rotation Battles but let’s not open up old wounds) I want more.

Ok, I might love Double Battles but obviously my lack of doing them often enough has rendered me incapable of doing them properly.

I swap out Chamomile for Pina Colada so Bullseye can Earthquake and hit both Pokemon, with the grass type tanking the hit. I don’t take into consideration a Poison Fang from Draipion which leaves Pina hanging on with a mere 10HP. Luckily, Bullseye knocks the other two out, but that could have been a disaster again.

Time to heal up and use the first Ether of the game to give Bullseye enough PP to spam Body Press for the battle with Piers.

A single Sand Attack from Scrafty has had me miss more than I’d have liked, and Malamar did some hefty damage with various attacks, but they both fell. I heal up and let Obstagoon have a first hit, which is then followed its Obstruct. Thanks to Bullseye's Stamina having maxes out my defence, the harsh drop doesn’t do much, and Body Press knocks out Obstagoon in one hit.

Skuntank leads with Toxic, Earthquake leaves it on a silver of HP, but it doesn’t do enough damage to me again and falls the next turn.

Dark Badge get!

Oh you want me to come help with a disaster on Route 9? I'd love to.

Oh never mind, Leon is here. I guess I’ll back inside then.

Considering the big deal they made at the start of the game about Leon being unable to find his way around, he does a great job of immediately running in the direction he's meant to go in. It would have been hilarious if he ran off down the wrong way, then stopped and doubled back. Having said that..

When a game that tells you “wild Pokemon started dynamaxing all over the place” but fails to show it is such a cop out. Ruby and Sapphire making it sunny or raining everywhere on the map was a far more effective way of showing the disaster taking place than just a couple of characters running around talking about it. They couldn’t even manage an actual “Ka-BOOM” and had to put it in a text box. Such a disappointment.

Speaking of characters talking about it, Hop is hanging around on the outskirts of Route 7. Yep, more talking about wild dynamaxing Pokemon. Thrilling.

Route 7 I’ve already done the encounter, so let's just shoot back to Hammerlocke with a quick trainer battle on the way.

Bullseye is the first of my team to reach level 50.

I have done a lot of cycling around, picking up items, selling and buying potions and heals and levelling up Spritz. Now everyone is at level 50 and I'm going to face Raihan.

As I said about double battles before, I remember that Raihan's gym rookies are all weather based battles. For the Rain Dance battle I’ll use Spritz and Pina Colada, as the latter's Swim Swim will come into play. Pelipper eats a Thunderbolt, Sligoo falls to a Bug Buzz and Energy Ball combo. Next!

Otis should do well in the next Sunny Day battle as he has Flash Fire, and Bullseye can do some heavy damage even without using Earthquake.

Turtonator's Shell Trap is a little tricky, and Bullseye got burned on the first turn. I focus on knocking out Ninetales so I can get both pokemon to attack the Turt'. It's going to spam Shell Trap which is hurting Bullseye but that just means Stamina is going to keep boosting Body Press' damage, so the battle is over before I need to use more potions.

Last up, Hail. Otis is out again along with Cyanide. Cyanide's Quick Draw lets it go first and it knocks Hakamo-o out with a single Psychic. I forgot it was a fighting dragon, so that was a spot of luck on my part. Otis' Fire Lash has the desired and expected effect on a x4 weak Pokemon. Raihan is up next.

It's cool that the Hammerlocke Stadium isn't a standard stadium like all the others and is obviously the castle, but having the battle take place in the same area as all the others is disappointing. I would have loved to see more themed Gyms rather than repeats of the same thing every time. This is why long time pokemon fans were so disappointed with Sword and Shield.

I heal up and swap my team around a little, this match might be difficult. I'm leading with Bullseye and Cyanide. No Quick Draw to start but Stamina lets Body Press do half damage to Gigalith and Icy Wind from Cyanide levels the HP of Flygon down to the same as Gig.

A Crunch from Flygon hurts Cyanide, but he takes it. Another Body Press gets rid of Gigalith and Icy Wind knocks out Flygon. So far so good.

With Raihan brining both Pokemon out at the same time and Gigantamaxing Duraldon straight away, I Dmax Bullseye and swap Cyanide out for Pina Colada. Hopefully Pina can tank any ground attacks. Max Duraldon uses Max Quake in Pina and takes out a third of his HP, and Sandaconda attacks it too, but it stays alive with only 12HP! I heal Pina and continue to attack Duraldon with Max Quakes and Knuckles. Duraldon is tough, it is tanking these attacks.

Ok, GMax Depletion looks amazing, I have no idea what it's done though. Pina has been untargetted so knocks out Sandaconda with a single Energy Ball. The Dynamaxing will be over both both sides after this turn so I can focus all my attacks on Duraldon. Another Energy Ball and Body Press finally knocks it out.

Dragon Badge get!

Final Badge get!

Time to call it. I have to do my AC dailies too. Next time, Wyndon!

Also, if you’re enjoying reading my Nuzlocke progress, you should check out Mattoyaki’s own playthrough which he started after reading through mine. His has pictures and he’s set a lot more rules against himself that in hindsight, I should have used too. You can find his Part One here.

Current Team

Bullseye - Mudsdale (lv 52)

Otis - Heatmor (lv 51)

Chamomile - Polteageist (lv 51)

Cyanide - Slowbro (lv 52)

Pina Colada - Ludicolo (lv 51)

Spritz - Vikavolt (lv 51)

Boxed

Joltik   |   Slowpoke   |   Charjabug   |   Croagunk   |   Oddish   |   Snorunt

Sizzlepede   |   Sneasel   |   Chubcoo   |   Lombre   |   Pelipper   |   Carcoal

Machoke   |   Dubwool   |   Shelmet   |   Sandaconda   |   Delibird   |   Cramorant

Jigglypuff   |   Chansey

Losses

Bandit the Nickit - Knocked out by a fat squirrel

Gumball the Tympole - Devoured by a centipede with a moustache

Castlevania the Rookidee - Torn apart by a cute mole

HaagenDazs the Vanillite - Murdered in an act of revenge by a smelly frog

Ddraig the Druddigon - Speared by a selfish shellfish

Wild Area Tracker

All but Axew's Eye

Isle of Armour Tracker

Final Part

[zephyrthejester]

Three Years Blog Anniversary!

Well, would you look at that. In the blink of an eye, an entire year has gone by! It has now been a grand total of three years since I started up this liveblog, and ever since, it's been a whirlwind of an adventure that has introduced me to amazing shows, amazing games, and above all, amazing people! As has become tradition, it's time for us to gather 'round by the fire, bundle up in blankets, sip some hot cocoa, and reminisce about the shenanigans we got up to in the year 2019.

You know the drill! Click "Keep Reading" to see the rest! Let's go!

January kicked off with the closing episodes to Steven Universe's fifth season, and what a finale it was! In true SU nature, it managed to be wholesome, funny, terrifying, and sad all at once! Not to mention the finale episode specifically, which was rife with both fan service and a breath-taking final confrontation. It even prompted me to type up three whole Addendum posts just so I could get all my thoughts out there. Intermingling with these episodes were some rather poignant and touching episodes of RWBY's 6th Volume, which saw some great plot advancements for some of my favorite characters. And of course, there was one liveblog session early on dedicated to Fate/Stay Night, a series I began back in 2018. And that would end up being the last I'd liveblog about it. Following the technical difficulties of the Visual Novel crashing at an important moment, I lost much of my motivation to keep going at it, putting Fate/Stay Night on the bench... For now. But more on Fate/Stay Night later.

Then came February! Where I proceeded to do absolutely nothing at all. For 42 days, I fell into a pretty bad funk that I called depression, at the time. Well! I must be in a better mental space right now, because until it came time to make this post, I forgot all about it! Moving past the shame I felt for wordlessly abandoning my blog and discord community for over a month, come March I pressed right into a brand new liveblog: Kill la Kill! A frenetic, frantic, freaky series that serves as the spiritual sequel to what was, once upon a time, my favorite anime ever: Gurren Lagann. I was immediately charmed by it's absurdist humor and over-the-top everything. However, it wasn't long before I succumbed to my greatest flaw. I'm exceptionally picky about what I liveblog, and sadly, Kill la Kill didn't tick the boxes that needed to be ticked for me to stick with it. I eventually dropped the series after only three episodes.

Needless to say, I was getting desperate to reinvigorate my lost momentum. It was then and there, at the tail end of March, that I introduced the most significant change to my brand ever: Liveblogging itself was being benched in favor of a fanciful second attempt at running my video game focused Youtube Channel! While I would certainly continue to liveblog new episodes of shows I had previously caught up with, my efforts would be redoubled and focused upon something I hoped would shake things up for me. I put in the effort of buying a new, fancy, high-tech microphone, and set about to new projects!

First up was a tense and troublesome self-imposed-challenge: A playthrough of Resident Evil 2 Remake on its hardest difficulty, with the added stipulation that I can never access the item storage box! My knowledge and skills of that game were put to the test as I skirted by the dangerous zombies and mutants while carrying only the bare essentials on my person. That series lasted 7 videos, plus a Highlight Reel, over about a week. My new microphone really brought out my screams of terror. Yes.

Immediately following the conclusion of the REmake 2 challenge run in early April, a new series debuted: A blind let's play of Subnautica! A simply incredible sci-fi survival game set on a planet that's nearly entirely an ocean... But much to my surprise, it was secretly a horror game all along. Spanning 18 episodes + a highlight reel between April 5th and May 23rd, we descended ever deeper into the abyss, deciphered alien riddles, fled from toothy leviathan-class predators, established a lovely home base, and had a great ol' time overall. A truly remarkable game with a surprisingly good story, for its genre, and it left me eagerly looking forward to making a Let's Play of its sequel: Below Zero.

Simultaneously, beginning on April 10th, I embarked upon yet another adventure that was of such a large scope, I made my channel's primary time slot dedicated to it. The Phoenix Wright Trilogy! A collection of the first three Visual Novels in a wonderful, wonderful series about the titular attorney at law. It wasn't long before I fell in love with this series, big time. It had everything! Immensely satisfying mysteries for me to solve, memorable and lovable characters, great pacing, and it knew how to keep things fresh and interesting. Although I started out the Let's Play by saying I wouldn't read everything aloud, that proved to be a lie. As of now, the series is a whopping 78 videos long (I do expect it to reach 100 before all is said and done), and I have given voice to roughly 50 unique characters so far. The series really helped awaken my Let's Play chops by improving my speech, vocal clarity, and focus. Swapping between my first video ever (for Legend of Grimrock II) and the most recent Phoenix Wright video is a real night-and-day difference! Overall, it's very safe to say that the series has stolen my heart. Unmatched hype, dizzying plot twists, and delightful shenanigans burst from the seams, truly. The Let's Play is currently ongoing, though the end is within sight...

As the Let's Plays of Subnautica and Phoenix Wright Trilogy progressed, so too did the production quality of my videos. I got a better grip on editing, improving the design of my video thumbnails and taking more care to edit out needless and dull moments of gameplay. I even introduced a brief and stylish video intro, which was my avatar appearing over a dark background before it faded off into gameplay. That would be the image up above! However, as we move into 2020, I’ve begun to feel that it could do with a slight improvement... Wink wink!

Following the end of Subnautica came a new Let's Play involving yet another sci-fi horror game: Prey! Spanning 25 videos + a highlight reel between June 3rd and November 19th, it immediately gripped me with its stunning attention to detail, marvelously crafted environments, and boundlessly creative gameplay. It was a pleasure to explore the varied regions of the Talos One space station, blasting aliens, uncovering secrets, untangling the connections between the employees there, and making some seriously difficult moral choices. A truly impressive video game that's just begging for a second playthrough on my own time at some point.

July 20th saw the beginning of new activity on my blog. In a spur-of-the-moment decision that I didn't think out too well, I brazenly announced out of nowhere that I would be doing a re-watch of Steven Universe! I proceeded to liveblog the first 11 episodes of Steven Universe over a week, lovingly looking back at the series' origins, calling out moments of foreshadowing, and analyzing everything with the lens of all my knowledge about the show. And then... Nothing! Just as soon as it began, the project was dropped. I had hoped it would rekindle my interest in Liveblogging (outside of new episodes of SU and RWBY), but I had no such luck. You know I'm burnt out when even Steven Universe, my favorite thing ever, can't help...

By September 3rd, the Steven Universe Movie had finally released! Over a hype-as-hell two days, I liveblogged the entire film. It truly was Steven Universe at its absolute best! Touching, sincere, unexpected, and rife with some stellar songs that are STILL stuck in my head. It proved that the Crewniverse hadn't lost its spark since the conclusion of the original series.

November 5th was my 25th birthday! My family celebrated by all going out for an amazing sushi dinner. Good times! Sometimes, it's really hard for me to grasp that I'm actually 25... I'm a kid at heart, really! Or maybe it's that I'm a social recluse who enjoys watching anime a little too much. Regardless, I feel no shame!

November 10th saw the debut of RWBY Volume 7, and so far it has been an exceptionally strong season. I've long maintained the opinion that the show gets better and better every season, and Volume 7 has given me no reason to doubt that. One episode in particular became my second favorite in the series, right behind a certain one from Volume 6! I'm really enjoying how the characters, new and old, are playing off each other this go around, and the fights and art direction have been no slouch either. This season's a looker! I'm really looking forward to seeing how it ends.

Hot on the heels of the ending Let's Play of Prey, I immediately started up a new series on November 20th... Chrono Trigger! A legendary and widely loved JRPG from the SNES era of gaming that I had somehow gone all my life without playing. Better late than never to fix a mistake like that! I eagerly dived in and nearly immediately understood why it's heralded as an all-time great. The series is currently 13 episodes long, and each one is an endless stream of me being hyped and giddy. I’m already excited to record more!

December 8th saw the debut of Steven Universe Future, a very special epilogue series that's sure to tie a nice bow on the franchise as a whole. As of this post, I have liveblogged the first 8 episodes, and it's fair to say that while it's not holding back in giving the audience exactly what it wants, it's also doing something very unexpected and very, very interesting with Steven himself. Only time will tell how it all ends and whether every remaining mystery will be answered, but so far I have been more than satisfied with it.

And that brings us to the present! Wow, it felt like a lot less happened this year than you would think, huh? No, it's been jam packed with new adventures! I think I am very content with how the year has gone, and I hope you are as well. We'll be striding into the year 2020 with more Steven Universe, more RWBY, more Phoenix Wright, and more Chrono Trigger! Plus, it may very well be that we'll see the return of Made in Abyss and Madoka Magica, both of which (I believe) are getting continuation movies in 2020. I may or may not be entirely wrong about this. Forgive me if I am...

In the near future, the Phoenix Wright Trilogy will be followed up by a Let's Play of Fate/Stay Night! Indeed, the canceled Liveblog will be reborn in youtube video form! And following Chrono Trigger, well... It's mostly up in the air, though I do have a few good ideas. In particular, I recently got a Virtual Reality system set up... Wink wink!

So that's really all there is to it! Cheers, lads! Cheers to a good year, and cheers to the next year being even better! To our good health, our unbreakable friendships, and all the stupid bullshit we’ll get into together! 2020 has arrived!