#that being the protagonist from the first game who was a spawn of the murder god

[killjoy-prince]

Have to keep telling myself "We're playing the bad guys in this run" whenever I come across a good option I want to pick

[dioptre-hertz]

here's a very long, very convoluted story about how i completely fucked myself in Demon's Souls this week:

so i've had Demon's Souls (the remake) since i first got my PS5. a friend lent me their disc and i started playing it at the time, but only got up to the first boss; after beating the Phalanx i just kinda fell off it. i'm not sure why, maybe it was Elden Ring fatigue, who knows.

anyway, fast forward to a week or two ago, when my partner urges me to start playing Demon's Souls again. so i pick it up and keep going from the same save file i started years ago - why not, right? i'd barely made any progress anyway, and it's not like anything important happens at the very start of the game, does it?

(this is foreshadowing for later.)

anyway. i get pretty far into the game, and towards the end i realize i'm actually pretty close to unlocking the King of Rings achievement, which you get for obtaining one copy of each of the game's various magical rings. i'm not normally much of an achievement hunter, but when i really enjoy a video game, it can be fun to create these little personal goals for myself! so i figure i may as well go for it. i start plotting out all the contrived things i'll need to do in order to complete every relevant sidequest and obtain every ring.

now, if you're not aware, Demon's Souls has a ludicrously complicated morality mechanic called "Tendency", a set of metrics that can lean towards either Black or White depending on your actions in the game, and which determines what items and NPCs show up. each of the game's five levels has its own World Tendency, which shifts towards White when you defeat bosses and towards Black when you die and become a soul (i.e. if you die while your character has their human body, as opposed to being a disembodied spirit, which is how you spend most of the game). in worlds with White Tendency, enemies are weaker but drop less loot, and certain friendly NPCs with their own little questlines show up; in worlds with Black Tendency, enemies are stronger but drop more loot, and certain hostile Black Phantom NPCs show up to fight you.

on top of that, your character has their own personal Character Tendency, which shifts towards White when you slay evil Black Phantoms throughout the game and shifts towards Black if you murder friendly NPCs.

a variety of items, including some unique rings, are gated behind either Black or White Tendency of both kinds. so if you want to unlock that stupid achievement, you have to be both very evil and very good within the same playthrough.

the catch here is that you have a limited number of opportunities to alter your Tendency (unless you're willing to go online and coordinate some bullshit with other players). there's a finite number of boss fights in each world, and they don't respawn, so after beating all the bosses you have no (single-player) means of shifting your World Tendency towards white anymore. similarly, there's a limited number of (non-player) Black Phantoms and friendly NPCs to defeat, so after you've killed everyone you no longer have any way to modify your Character Tendency.

still, if you're very careful and methodical about how you approach the game, you can obtain every ring in a single playthrough! here's how you'd go about it, roughly speaking:

proceed through the game normally, defeating bosses in the five levels until you reach maximum White World Tendency in each one. this unlocks all the "good" sidequests and NPC encounters and lets you grab their associated items and quests, including some of the rings we need. along the way you can also pick up whatever rings and items are just lying about, obtained through normal progression.

next, repeatedly die and lose your soul in each level, shifting everything to Black World Tendency. this gives you access to some more unique items, including a ring, and it also spawns a bunch of deadly Black Phantoms.

kill all of the aforementioned Black Phantoms. this shifts your protagonist to White Character Tendency, because it's so heroic.

next, go talk to a character called the Monumental, in the hub area. if you've been a very good and sweet warrior with maxed-out White Character Tendency, they'll give you the unique Ally's Ring.

once you've got the good-morality-good-boy ring, you can now start wantonly killing NPCs throughout the game (ideally the less crucial ones). after a while you'll have Black Character Tendency.

at this point, an evil lesbian named Mephistopheles appears and tasks you with killing off the various named NPCs who have come to inhabit the hub area over the course of the game (assuming they're even still alive, you monster). after you assassinate everybody for her, she rewards you with the Foe's Ring, and thus your journey is complete! hooray!

so i follow this basic plan, smoothly unlock everything except the last two rings - the Ally's Ring and the Foe's Ring - and then realize i've missed something.

at the very start of the game - after beating the first boss - the Monumental explains the basic plot of the game to you in a cutscene, and then asks your character if they're up to the task of demon-slaying. you get two seemingly inconsequential dialog choices: either you say "yes", in which case the Monumental thanks you for your courage, or you say "no", in which case they patiently explain that you do not in fact have a choice, what with being a disembodied soul and all. this doesn't appear to have any bearing on the game whatsoever, except...

... if you say "no", then the Monumental never gives you the Ally's Ring. regardless of your Character Tendency.

and, as it turns out, i must have picked the "no" option when i originally booted up the game 4 years ago. so i can't get the fucking ring.

well, fuck, right? but at this point i'm so close to finishing this stupid project, and i'm so invested, i have to see it through. and there's still a way: the Souls games famously have a New Game+ feature that allows you to start a new playthrough with your existing character. this lets you keep your equipment, your level, and your World/Character Tendency stats... and it also makes enemies significantly more powerful... but otherwise it bumps you back to the start of the game. so i could finish my playthrough, go into New Game+, answer "yes" to that one fucking question, and then immediately obtain the ring. it would be pretty much trivial to do it, really.

... but this opens up another problem: i was supposed to get the Ally's Ring, then turn my character evil and do the sidequest for Mephistopheles and get the final ring. recall that i can't go back to White Character Tendency after i start murdering NPCs, so i have to do things in that order: Ally's Ring first, then Foe's Ring.

but, ah, if i start a New Game+ run, then all the NPC sidequests reset...! meaning i have to replay enough of the game to actually collect all the necessary NPCs for my murder spree... alright, that's a bit of a hassle, but i'm out of options.

so i go for it. i pop into New Game+, quickly rush through stage 1-1 to beat the first boss, go talk to the Monumental, pick the dialog option i didn't pick four years ago, and immediately receive the Ally's Ring. easy peasy. all that's left is the Foe's Ring, which would have been effortless if my original plan had worked, but now, well... here's all the additional steps required because i said "no" to that asshole that one time:

play through stage 3-1 until you can rescue Sage Freke from his prison cell. he's one of Mephistopheles' assassination targets, so he needs to be freed so we can murder him for fun and profit later.

defeat the Fool's Idol boss in 3-1, proceed partway into stage 3-2, where you can kill Mephistopheles' silly little knight man. this is required to get her to show up in the hub area.

beat the Adjudicator boss in stage 4-1 and continue a little bit further into 4-2, where you can meet Patches and Saint Urbain, both of whom we need to assassinate later.

beat the Tower Knight boss in stage 1-2 and progress partway through stage 1-3, so that you can free Biorr of the Twin Fangs and Yuria the Witch, two more assassination targets.

oh, but the doorway to 1-3 only opens up if you've defeated one of the other X-3 bosses, i.e. your choice of clearing 2-3, 3-3, 4-3 or 5-3. you need to defeat at least one of these archdemon bosses before you can access stage 1-3.

also, do all this with the increased enemy damage and health they get from being in New Game+.

and also, remember how i deliberately died a bunch of times to shift the World Tendency in every level towards Black, meaning extra enemies and phantoms appear and try to kill me super dead?

by the way, there's a Black Phantom standing at the entrance to level 4-1 called Satsuki. he's a pretty dangerous enemy who, as it turns out, will aggro the very moment you enter the level - as in, you don't actually have to even move, he just fucking sprints towards you as soon as the loading screen is gone - and, with all these modifiers in place, he kills me super dead in one single, beautiful hit.

so that's cool.

so, uh, yeah. all of the above is what i had to put myself through... because... i said "no" to that one fucker four years ago. fuck me.

... still fucking did it though.

[adachimoe]

Who really created Heaven?

First off, there is a no-fun-allowed answer from ATLUS in the Persona Club book where they directly state that Heaven was born from the repressed thoughts of Nanako, who wanted to see her mother, and how its appearance is how it is because it was molded by the heart of a 6 year old child:

It continues that the area where you fight Namatame / Kuni no Sagiri has 13 steps, which signifies that something bad is coming (13 steps to the gallows for execution).

But honestly, No Fun Allowed answers aside, the idea that Heaven was actually created by Namatame never really made much sense to me tbqh.

For one thing, Nanako goes into the TV before him. This is confirmed by his journal entry, as he wrote in his journal after Putting Her In but before the car crash. Wouldn't this mean the dungeon was formed by the time he jumped into the TV?

Another thing is that while this isn't exactly stated or explained very well, the player knows from simply playing the game that the dungeons are created by the repressed thoughts of people who appear on the Midnight Channel. Remember how the protagonist/Yosuke/Chie didn't create a dungeon when they first entered the TV? If everyone who just fulfills the basic requirement of "enter a TV" made a dungeon, then the 3 of them should have made one too. But it was Mayumi, Saki, Yukiko, etc who made dungeons, and they were all on the Midnight Channel. Namatame was on TV before due to the scandal, but that was back in April. If anything, spawning a dungeon when you enter the TV seems to be a result of the term "living rent free in someones head" taken literally, given that the TV World is Persona 4's collective unconscious. Sorry Namatame, but I think the only person who's head you've been living in rent free is Adachi's. Speaking of him - the exception here is stuff like Adachi, and his dungeon is hand waved in the book as being something he created - rather than from his repressed thoughts - to fuck with the Investigation Team. Adachi was probably getting boosted by Ame no Sagiri anyway. Cheater.

Lastly, this dialogue is new to Golden (the concert wasn't in the PS2 game), but the dungeons are shown time and time again to be some kind of representation of what the person is repressing inside. As Namatame talks to you in December, he comes to terms with him having a feeling that the TV was dangerous all along. It's likely also what drove him to jump into the TV after Nanako to begin with, instead of just letting himself be arrested.

I think this new dialogue for Golden kinda seals it (before invoking the No Fun Allowed excerpt) because if what Namatame was repressing inside was the realization that the TV was dangerous, why would his dungeon - or one he went 50/50 on with Nanako - look like Heaven?

That said, the book also notes that the protag/Yosuke/Chie created the pattern on the floor of the TV studio because they MURDER on the brain when they entered the TV, so it seems possible for someone to influence their surroundings in the TV World; perhaps the note from Atlus about the gallows steps can be interpreted to hint at Namatame creating that imagery when he went inside?

[doamarierose-honoka]

The Yakuza (or Like a Dragon) franchise is known for being a tad wacky, but publisher Sega is bringing the weirdness to the real world by basically hosting a funeral for all the series' dead characters in Tokyo.

As reported by Famitsu and translated by Siliconera, Sega is teaming up with department store chain Parco to host an exhibition where players can visit fake gravestones and leave flowers at portraits of the deceased video game characters.

A play on the latest game, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, the event will be called Like a Dragon: The Men Who Perished. It will cost ¥700 (around $5) to enter and will run from December 30 to January 15 in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Subsequent exhibitions will take place in Nagoya from January 20 to February 4 and Sapporo from February 16 to 25.

Starting in 2005, the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise spans seven mainline games but 19 entries in total including spin-offs and remakes. And while its main protagonists Kiryu Kazuma and Ichiban Kasuga swear against murder, there are still plenty of dramatic deaths. One character was blown up atop a skyscraper alongside ¥10 billion, for example, while another was thrown from the top floor of a secret underground castle.

We won't say exactly whose graves can be visited in the exhibition to avoid spoiling the games, but fans can also buy merchandise of their favourites. Dioramas, bookmarks, "death portrait charms", face towels, gravestones, incense sticks, postcard books, stickers, tear-shaped can badges, tote bags, T-shirts, and more are all on offer.

The Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise is growing again in January 2024 with the release of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which despite being the 20th game overall, is basically Yakuza 8. The series had a name change following 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon (Yakuza 7), with the subtitle becoming the series main name going forward.

The Yakuza Games In (Chronological) Order

Originally released as a PlayStation 2 game, Yakuza (known as Ryu ga Gotoku in Japan) spawns a lengthy series that follows the steps of Kiryu Kazuma, a member of one of the most important yakuza families (the Dojima family, under the Tojo Clan), in the game’s fictional city of Kamurocho, Tokyo. He and his multiple allies and friends try to avoid the conflicts and plans being schemed by other powerful mob groups.

1. Yakuza 0 (2014)

The sixth released game is actually the first Yakuza when it comes to its chronology. In Yakuza 0, we play as a two protagonists. The first one is a young Kiryu Kazuma in the late 1980s, who is being framed for a murder set up by one of his lieutenants in the Dojima family. The reason behind this has to do with an ‘Empty Slot’, where the apparent murder took place. This is a piece of land that will be a key asset for the person and group who owns it.

2. Yakuza (2005)

The first Yakuza game stars Kiryu Kazuma as its only protagonist after he goes to prison due to taking the blame for a murder he didn’t commit. The victim was Sohei Dojima, Kiryu’s boss, and he was murdered by Akira Nishikiyama, our protagonist’s best friend. The reason behind this crime was that Sohei tried to rape Yumi Sawamura, a friend of both Kiryu and Nishikiyama.

3. Yakuza 2 (2006)

Yakuza 2 starts with Terada, the Fifth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, asking Kiryu to help him prevent a war between his clan and the Omi Alliance, their eternal rivals. After being shot in an ambush, Terada seems to be dead and Kiryu looks for Daigo Dojima, son of Sohei Dojima, to make him the new chairman of the clan

4. Yakuza 3 (2009)

The first entry released on PlayStation 3, Yakuza 3 presents an unusual beginning with Kiryu far away from the yakuza lifestyle. Instead, he’s taking care of an Orphanage in Okinawa called Morning Glory Orphanage. He’s assisted by Haruka, and he looks after many new kids living there.

5. Yakuza 4 (2010)

One year after the events of the previous game, Yakuza 4 raises the stakes and brings another type of story to follow. This is still a tale of families, betrayals, and crimes, but on this opportunity, it is shown from the eyes of four protagonists

6. Yakuza 5 (2012)

If Yakuza 4’s story got complicated with the multiple protagonists’ points of view, Yakuza 5 went all-in in the same direction. This time, you play as five protagonists in different scenarios, making this one the biggest game in the series.

7. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (2016)

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is presented as the final beat in Kiryu Kazuma’s life in the Yakuza series. Our protagonist spends some time in prison again, but on this occasion, it is for his past crimes and not by being framed by anyone. At the end of the previous game, Haruka revealed in a concert broadcast that Kiryu was her father and that he was an ex-yakuza member.

8. Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020)

A fresh new start, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a big turning point in the series. For the first time, the main protagonist is not Kiryu, but a Tojo Clan member named Ichiban Kasuga, who went to jail for 18 years to protect Jo Sawashiro, his captain. When he gets out, he finds out that nobody is looking for him because the Tojo Clan has finally been defeated by the Omi Alliance.

Infinite Wealth takes players beyond Japan for the first time with a Hawaii map three times the size of the previous game's. Developer Ryu Ga Gotaku Studio has otherwise promised a "monster class" video game.

In our preview of the game, IGN said: "[Our] time with Infinite Wealth was about as brief as Ichiban’s board shorts, but it left [us] to ponder the infinite possibilities for fun that might be hidden around its sizeable Hawaiian island expanse."

[yunoteru4ever]

Platinum End is plenty different enough from Future Diary

So I've finally tried Platinum End, which I mentioned over 18 months ago as a PURPORTED Mirai Nikki-like. At first I was going to read the manga, but I shifted over to the anime adaption and just finished watching.

When Platinum End's manga first got going in late 2015, it had a lot of expectation surrounding it because it was Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata follow-up to their incredibly popular Death Note series. Those of us who were around and paying attention back then like also recall how Platinum End got a lot of flack during its early manga run for supposedly being a Mirai Nikki ripoff. I remember plenty of derisive comments pointing out "12 13 unstable people compete to be the next god? A depressed and weak-willed guy + his love interest team up to fight off the rest? One of their opponents is even a wannabe-sentai superhero???"

(Mind you, this was in the mid-2010s — back before the Internet Hive Mind largely decided that Mirai Nikki was always secretly shitty. :( *siiiiiigh*)

But nevermind all that: In actuality, Platinum End is very good at doing its own damn thing!

The male protagonist is deadass named "Mirai." Sadly, the girl's name is not "Nikki."

Major setup differences:

There is no Survival Game built into the contest for god. All candidates could just meet up and agree on a new god if they chose to do so. But of course, more than one of them decides that the best course of action is to kill all challengers, so survival definitely becomes a factor FAST. But in this story, unlike Mirai Nikki, there is no real reason NOT to team up with other candidates... provided they aren't planning to off you later.

The god candidates in Future Diary get to have Future Diaries. Obviously. But the god candidates in Platinum End instead get divine powers gifted by their guardian angels. Yes, once you're a candidate, you can see and interact with your guardian angel. Only other candidates can see your angel and your powers. Based on your angel's rank in heaven, you might be gifted either one or a combination of the following: (A) angel wings capable of lightspeed flight, (B) a "red arrow" that makes anyone hit by it instantly adore and love you, making them very susceptible to your wishes... but only for 33 days, and/or (C) a "white arrow" that kills a person instantly on contact.

Mirai's angel, Nasse, might secretly be the series' best character. She's a delight. She does get a lot less focus in the second half of the series, though.

What spawns from this setup is a story that maintains a largely serious tone while veering between very different styles of conflicts. The first half of the series is heavy on suspense and action — complete with the shonen-like tropes of multi-episode showdowns that feature characters standing in place while inner monologues go over their attack plans. :P The second half of the series, by contrast, is heavy on debates about existential concepts and personal morality.

If that sounds good to you, I can recommend 23 out of this series' 24 episodes! But the very last one is, IMO, best ignored/skipped. It's a shitty denouement that, for me, ruined a lot of what came before it while simultaneously failing to answer the questions it raises. However, ep. 23 has a very satisfying conclusion; you'll be good there.

FINALLY! I must warn y'all about this: If you're someone who thought Mirai Nikki's Yukiteru was too "whiny" or too averse to violence? You are not ready for how weak-willed and confrontation-averse the male protagonist of Platinum End is. Somebody took those traits and turned that dial up as HIGH AS POSSIBLE.

For example: For a LOOOONG time, Mirai can't even bring himself to use a "weapon" GUARANTEED TO NOT HURT HIS OPPONENT IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER, even when said opponent is TRYING THEIR BEST TO MURDER HIM RIGHT FUCKING NOW. He just won't use his guaranteed-peaceful solution, because it still represents some form of "attack." The other person has a one-shot insta-kill attack, and Mirai is over here like "How could I live with myself if I hit this person with this ultra-plushie boxing glove?!" It's truly unbelievable.

[anistarrose]

Seeing some requests to cite my sources now that this is blowing up, which I will do gladly, because I think we'd all love a quick refresher on Bill Cipher lore to pre-game for the new book!

"His backstory is basically the novel 'Flatland' from 1884 with more arson": For those who don't know, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a novel of satire/social commentary from Victorian England, and deals with a Square protagonist living in a 2-D realm before eventually becoming aware of a third dimension after meeting a Sphere.

Bill, in Weirdmageddon 3, calls his home dimension "the second dimension" and describes its inhabitants as "flat minds in a flat world with flat dreams."

[ID: Bill in the aforementioned scene, with his eye showing a flattened 2-D version of a planet. End ID.]

Additionally, in the official Bill Cipher Reddit AMA (get ready for several references to this), we were told:

[ID: a reddit user asks: "Do you know what spawned your existence?" and Bill replies, in all caps, "Edwin Abbot Abbot has a decent idea". End ID.]

Edwin Abbot Abbot is the author of Flatland. What's more, in Journal 3, Ford describes a similar 2-D dimension called "Exwhylia" that's inhabited by shapes, and that he initially believed to be Bill's homeworld.

[ID: a drawing of Ford from Journal 3 with a two-dimensional plane bisecting his head, and miscellaneous shapes moving about in that plane. End ID.]

Of course, Ford later learns that this dimension only resembles Bill's homeworld — and that Bill's actual home has long since been destroyed. In his words, he "liberated" his dimension, and in the words of the Axolotl from the Time Pirates' Treasure book, well...

Saw his own dimension burn. Misses home and can't return. Says he's happy. He's a liar. Blame the arson for the fire.

His dimension was "burned," which tracks with the fiery visual Bill provides when explaining this to Ford, and some explicit intentional arson was involved.

Interestingly, the Axolotl poem uses a very passive voice when describing his role in this ("saw" it burn rather than "made" it burn), so I've seen some people make very compelling theories that Bill is taking credit here for arson he didn't do, maybe even as a way to compartmentalize his pain about it, convince himself that he wanted to see his dimension destroyed — but I digress.

(Regarding a very different interpretation of Bill's guilt, but still very much pertaining to Flatland, go read Flat Dreams by PengyChan if you haven't already. It's so so good. Just do it.)

"He projects his family issues onto a 12-year old girl and subsequently tries to murder her": This is a bit more "extrapolation from character analysis" than it is "canon trait," but I hope to convince you of it regardless.

First off, in the AMA, a fan asked Bill if he had a family, and he replied: "Not anymore." Moreover, at a Comic Con panel in 2015, Alex Hirsch revealed: "If you Stan’s relationship with his family is bad, Bill’s is worse."

This brings us to his relationship with Mabel, and in particular...

"I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?"

[ID: Bipper threatening Mabel in Sock Opera while saying the above line. End ID.]

This line is very pointed and specific, and Alex Hirsch talks about it more in the DVD commentaries:

“My concept is that Bill genuinely believes that Mabel’s kind of like him. He sees Mabel as a chaos agent… she’s a little bit selfish, she likes to have fun at whatever cost. And Bill is all those things times a billion.

So he thinks when he lays it all out for her, like ‘How about, instead of being lame, you do something fun! And crush whoever you want in the process!’ He thinks that’s going to go over. And, uh, he’s not wrong in seeing that side in Mabel, but — but Mabel is a better person that Bill Cipher.”

This is one of many moments of Bill seeing himself in Mabel — hell, in the Guide to Mystery and Non-Stop Fun, he admits he genuinely likes her ("fun is just another way of saying chaos!"). There's also a strong argument to be made that Bill is afraid of growing up, and that he projects that onto Mabel, too — the point is, though, that this interaction becomes a lot more meaningful once you realize just how bad Bill's relationship with his (now dead) family is/was.

"He's a fan of Dr. Strangelove": The film ends with nuclear bombs falling — ie, the apocalypse — while "We'll Meet Again" plays. Also directed by Stanley Kubrick, whom Bill helped fake the moon landing, according to the blacklight Journal 3 (though they did later have a falling out).

"He's questioning his sexual orientation": When asked in the AMA:

[ID: a Bill reddit comment reading, in all caps: "My dimension has 14 billion different genders. It's very confusing. I'm honestly not sure. It would take years of paperwork to sort it all out." End ID.]

"He was defeated by kittens, then tickles, then by a senior citizen in his underwear": Probably speaks for itself, but this was Dreamscaperers, then Sock Opera, then Weird 3.

"He's utterly terrifying. He's pathetic and cringefail": I editorialized a bit here, but like. C'mon. You get me.

"He lies about being happy 'for courtesy.' He lies until he's not lying anymore": We know he lies about being happy according to the Axolotl poem, mentioned above ("misses home and can't return" / "says he's happy, he's a liar"). And in this charity stream, Alex responds to a chat question with:

"Alex, why is Bill lying about being happy? Um, you know. For courtesy."

The other half is from the AMA, once again:

[ID: a reddit comment from Bill reading: "Little tip from someone who's been around the block- 'truth' is a tattletale with no friends. 'Truth' is your annoying uncle who spoils the movie. 'Truth' is a concept invented by powerful liars to guilt you into giving them more power. Dont fall for the trap. Lie until what you want to be true becomes true. Lie until you cant remember whats a lie and what isnt. Lie until you arent lying anymore." End ID.]

As I alluded to in the post above, "says he's happy, he's a liar" and "lie until you aren't lying anymore" are two lines, that, together, just absolutely fucking destroy me. Are you hearing this shit? This equilateral menace has such severe depression. I want to put him in a jar and shake him. God. Fuck.

"He refuses to grow up and mature": Alluded to earlier, but the tl;dr is best contained in this quote from Alex (source):

"Bill is a character who has been around for countless billions of eons, but he hasn’t grown up in that time. He’s a character who has accumulated many frustrations, many moments of destruction like that, and they’ve built up over time. Now he’s decided that he wants a world where there is no homework, where there is no bedtime—where you can eat any candy you want, and you can do anything you want. But because he is such a crazy guy, when he does anything he wants, it turns out to be terrifying. So I think little frustrations over thousands of years have built him into a sort of spoiled brat. And he takes it out on the world, and it’s up to our heroes to finally teach him some rules."

"He once fell down a flight of stairs on purpose": And this is just Sock Opera!

So there you have it! This was supposed to be a short follow-up, but immediately turned into an essay — the Gravity Falls (hyperfixation) is real and will never die, etc etc, even though tracking down the sources probably took me a little longer in 2023 than they would've back at the height of my obsession. Now you now it all (or at least the highlights), so go forth and overanalyze this triangle with me!

It's so nice to get a reminder in 2023 that Bill Cipher was/is THE villain of all time. He's the worst thing that ever happened to a random town in Oregon. He's a triangle. His backstory is basically the novel "Flatland" from 1884 but with more arson. He projects his family issues onto a 12-year old girl and subsequently tries to murder her. He's a fan of Dr. Strangelove. He's questioning his sexual orientation. He was defeated by kittens, then tickles, then by a senior citizen in his underwear. He's utterly terrifying. He's pathetic and cringefail. He lies about being happy "for courtesy." He lies until he's not lying anymore. He refuses to grow up and mature. He once fell down a flight of stairs on purpose. No one will ever do it like he did

[our-reb00t-boi]

ok I understand the opinion that DmC devil may cry is not the "Devil May Cry" game or it shouldn't have happened however

as someone who enjoys the reb00t title, to me it also spawns a potential that I feel has never been touched on or thought of by the fans, at least so far as I can see

To me the reason why i think not a lot of people want the reboot is because to them from what I observed is that there's a specific "way" a Devil May Cry game should be, and of course it's main protagonist's character.

Honestly, however, from the five installments that came out, I feel like they couldn't be further from the other apart from the main themes of humanity and being a cool action superhero, and bombastic cutscenes and some fanservice

It could be because of the time/years apart DMC5 is compared to when even the reb00t was, while the first 4 games were during the 2000s and had crossed two platform generations without a hitch in that era.

But anyway I feel like I'm almost off the tangent because my main point is that:

YES! We can make multiple different Devil May Crys.... Or Cries..... Or Cry volumes......

My point is this

Multiverse.

To me I think Devil May Cry, if the potential is unlocked, this franchise could be treated like Final Fantasy.

Think about it: each of the main installments are vastly different, apart from the main theme of the apocalyptic narrative, rpg elements that are made fresh or updated and recurring characters that run alongside new ones.

I just disagree that something could just be made “one” way. I don’t remember who said it but the whole quote “There’s no such thing as a bad idea, only badly executed ones.” ~~by ???

The reb00t unfortunately got the bad end because, I think these days, it’s quite obvious that NT and the devs of Capcom weren’t able to actually do the version they had envisioned because of the backlash.

But that isn’t the reason to not see anymore potential a cheesy, comfort zone power fantasy action game franchise can still reach.

Imagine this scenario:

Kyrie is a demon huntress in her universe, juggling her humanitarian job along with exorcising demons or having to actually fight them (and seriously for a game about humanity, there's not a lot of human representation *ahem LADY *AHEM!!!)!!

In another, the twins are together and co-own the DMC office and drive each other up the wall, but the narrative also depicts their everyday life and struggles of leading double lives.

In another, maybe it's 1940 WWII and we see the Order of the Sword as some neutral paragon of the era who only hunts demons and saves people. But underneath is a shady subset of people who are actually doing unethical experimentations and is led by none other than their "pope" dude!!

And Lucia! Like even just supplementary titles, she doesn't have to have her own title via a different universe, make Lucia a lead playable for chrissake!

And yes, the "reboot" title, which I think from my proposal here isn't a reboot anymore but more like its own universe, much like the rest of the ones I've suggested, deserves its existence and to explore even more bombastic, out-there ideas! And taking a half-assed leaf of page from my fanfic, I want to explore Dante's thoughts on his responsibility and actually buckling from the weight of it! I want Kat's journey to shine as well and show her stuff, expand on the lore of how magic done by humans are made! I want "reboot" versions of characters from the other installments and have a fresh new spin on them and go ape shit! And especially Lady!! Boy, DMC3 Lady is the best and it's non-repeatable, but I want to explore in-depth her relationship with her parents, how she got into her weaponry and how ordinary her life must be before her father murdered her mother! And I wanna see Vergil the oily bastard unleash his most cruel potential! Have him slice a demon's head off because he's racist against Nephilim and Vergil makes an example out of his corpse (and if you know that's from Kill Bill more power to you)

Like dude, how epic would it be for Devil May Cry to expand?? They have ALL the tropes, the characters, the mythology that they can play up even more!! Why are we so scared of just having a fun, edgy and fresh take on a franchise that for some reason had no hope in the eyes of Capcom's executives?? It took Itsuno-san to take over at last minute to make something out of the mess from DMC2 and propelled DMC3 to the classic it is today! It took almost him having to quit because the higher-ups, in my opinion, just don't know the audience, or worse their own creative developers!

[watusichris]

The movie legacy of “Red Harvest”

Strange but true: Dashiell Hammett’s fantastic 1929 hardboiled novel Red Harvest has spawned no less than four movie adaptations – including two certified genre classics – but has never been credited on the screen as the original source material.

The book was the debut full-length work by Hammett, who would go on to create such enduring screen characters as detectives Sam Spade (in The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (in The Thin Man). However, screenwriting sleight-of-hand robbed the writer of full credit for his blood-soaked work, which spawned the samurai opus Yojimbo (1961), the spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and the gangster sagas Miller’s Crossing (1990) and Last Man Standing (1996).

Originally serialized in the tough-guy pulp magazine Black Mask, Red Harvest featured a protagonist/narrator already familiar to readers of Hammett’s short stories: the short, fat, hard-drinking, and clever operative of the Continental Detective Agency known only as the Continental Op. (Hammett never gave him a name.

The book was inspired by Hammett’s own early career at the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was frequently hired by industrialists to break strikes, employing any means necessary. The writer’s biographer Diane Johnson suggests that he may have been involved in the 1917 murder of a union organizer named Frank Little in Butte, Montana.

In the novel, the lone wolf detective arrives in a corrupt, lawless Montana town named Personville (known as “Poisonville” by some) at the behest of a local mining magnate and newspaper publisher, whose empire is being threatened by the warring gangs of mobsters he hired to bust up a labor conflict and have now taken over the city’s rackets. The first corpse hits the pavement in the novel’s first few pages, and the bodies pile up so fast and so high that the Op himself loses count at 19 or so.

Amid the mounting carnage, the Op manages to stay alive by playing the murderous thugs and on-the-take cops against one another. Like Spade in The Maltese Falcon, the nameless detective, who is not afraid to ignore the letter of the law, uses the snares and tactics of his criminal adversaries to defeat them at their own game.

Hollywood made only one ill-fated attempt to translate Hammett’s book to the screen, in the little-seen early 1930 talkie Roadhouse Nights. The Op became a newspaperman played by comic actor Charlie Ruggles, and the film itself dispensed with most of the plot to become a vehicle for two singers, Helen Morgan (the star of Show Boat on Broadway) and vaudevillian Jimmy Durante.

It was left to Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and his co-screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima to make the first, savage movie version of Red Harvest, 31 years later, as Yojimbo (The Bodyguard).

Transplanting the action to provincial Japan in 1860 and dramatically paring down Hammett’s byzantine plot, the movie follows the machinations of a lone ronin – a masterless samurai – who wanders into a nearly deserted town ravaged by violence and disorder. (Played by Kurosawa’s frequent star Toshiro Mifune, he assumes the moniker “Sanjuro,” though his true name is never known.) Deserted by its law-abiding citizens, the city is being torn apart by conflict between a pair of rival gangs in the service of two wealthy adversaries, a sake brewer and a silk merchant.

All the elements that would reappear in later versions of the story are in place here. A master swordsman, Sanjuro sells his services to both sides in the conflict, flip-flopping his loyalties from one minute to the next. His only ally is the town saloon keeper. He slyly rescues a married woman who has been taken as a hostage and concubine by one of the bosses and reunites her with her husband.

His deception is uncovered, and – in a sequence drawn from another serialized Hammett novel, The Glass Key (1931) – he is beaten nearly to death before making a dramatic escape, during which he witnesses the wholesale extermination of one of the gangs. Finally recovered from his wounds, he has a climactic duel with the other gang and its punk second-in-command Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), who owns the only pistol in the town.

Yojimbo was a great enough success that it spawned a sequel, the comedic Sanjuro, in 1962. Perhaps more importantly, a 1963 screening of Kurosawa’s original film at the Arlecchino cinema in Rome inspired a B-movie director to make a Western adaptation, which failed to credit its samurai derivation.

Sergio Leone’s low-budget 1964 feature A Fistful of Dollars – perhaps not the first “spaghetti Western,” but certainly the most famous – translated the elements of Kurosawa’s story to the fictitious Mexican border town of San Miguel. “Sanjuro” became a poncho-clad Western gun-for-hire played by Clint Eastwood, late of the American TV series Rawhide. (Though one character refers to Eastwood’s character as “Joe,” ads for the American release of the film pegged him as “The Man With No Name.”)

The battling factions of Kurosawa’s picture became two outlaw gangs tussling for control of the city, the Rojos (Mexicans) and the Baxters (Americans). The mercenary anti-hero’s main adversary, patterned after Unosuke, was the crazed Winchester rifle-wielding Ramon Rojo, played by the masterful Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte (incongruously billed as “Johnny Wels”). With one major plot addition – the massacre of a Mexican army detachment by the Rojos’ gang – the feature followed Kurosawa’s film point by point, with a uniquely gritty, sunbaked look and operatic approach that set the spaghetti Western style for all time.

Noting Red Harvest as the source of Yojimbo, Leone said in a 1971 interview, “What I wanted to do was to undress these [Japanese] puppets, and turn them into cowboys, to make them cross the ocean and to return to their place of origin.”

But Leone paid the price for his piracy. Sued for plagiarism by Kurosawa – who remarked in a letter to the Italian filmmaker, “[A Fistful of Dollars] is a very fine film, but it is my film” – he was forced to surrender 15% of the worldwide gross and turn over distribution rights of his film in Japan and the Far East to the Japanese director’s company. Undaunted, Leone brought back the Man With No Name in a pair of larger-scaled, more violent sequels, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), with Eastwood returning in his career-making role.

Oddly enough, the slam-bang action of Red Harvest and the heady box office receipts of its two adaptations did not inspire an American rendering of the story for decades. And, when it finally reached the screen for the first time, the tale ended up as an original pastiche of two Hammett novels.

Written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen – who had used a phrase borrowed from Red Harvest as the title of their 1984 debut feature Blood Simple – and directed by Joel Coen, Miller’s Crossing reinstated the Prohibition-era setting of Hammett’s stories. The gang war conflict of Red Harvest is staged in the Coens’ feature between Irish mobster Leo O’Bannon (Albert Finney) and his Italian rival Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito), who come to blows over the activities of Jewish bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro).

However, the film’s stormy central relationship, between O’Bannon and his fixer, friend, and confidant Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), replicates the alliance between mobbed-up political boss Paul Madvig and his faithful right-hand man Ned Beaumont, who fends off gangster Shad O’Rory’s power play in The Glass Key.

Despite its obvious derivations from Hammett’s books, Miller’s Crossing was a wholly original piece of work that transcended the uncredited glosses on its sources. The same could not be said for the other gangster-pic adaptation, Last Man Standing, which, while it more or less restored Hammett’s original setting, credited the Kurosawa-Kikushima script for Yojimbo as its inspiration.

Bruce Willis plays a freelance gunman calling himself “John Smith” – a name that draws cackles from his foes – who rolls into the Depression-era Texas border town of Jericho in a Model T Ford, packing two shoulder-holstered .45s and an immutably sullen expression. Dressing the ceaseless violence of the plot in a dusty neo-Leone palette, writer-director Walter Hill trots through Yojimbo’s original plot points, turning the warring factions into rival bootleggers (Irish and Italian, of course) and tacking on the massacre from A Fistful of Dollars to lift the body count.

Willis’ Smith is the putative hero of the piece, and, while he rescues the damsel in distress like his samurai and spaghetti Western predecessors, his relentless misogyny and utter humorlessness, and the actor’s silly, open-mouthed “shootout face,” make him a difficult figure to root for. The lone bright spot in the picture is the reliably weird Christopher Walken’s chilly turn as the scar-faced top gunman Hickey, a clone of his psycho precursors Unosuke and Ramon Rojo, who wields a Tommy gun instead of a pistol or a repeating rifle.

Last Man Standing is a poor excuse for an American rendering of Red Harvest, and it leaves one hoping that someday a truly gifted director will take up Hammett’s grimly funny, dark novel and its pudgy, boozy, cagey hero and give them the widescreen homegrown treatment they deserve. The book is an American classic, and it deserves a rendering in its own, long-buried name.

[twistedtummies2]

Okay, so you've magically gotten the resources, time, and skilled developers you need to create your dream game, what would it be? It can be any genre (fighting, platforming, open world), starring your own original ocs you've had for a while or completely new ones made just for the game. Or a game adaptation of a movie,show, or novel, or even a sequel or spinoff of a video game franchise. Or you could just tell us about both options if you want.

I think someone has asked me this question before, but I'll answer again, since it's been a while if so. If I had the chance to make any video game in the world, it would be one of two things. Both of which are adaptations of earlier works, and both are SLIGHTLY on the obscure side. Only slightly though. LOL

First up is The Shadow. The Shadow is a character who started off as the narrator for a crime/mystery program. The character became so popular, he was turned into the protagonist of his own pulp magazine series, and then a new radio show all about his adventures. Since then, he has mostly survived in comics, and has passed through various publishers over the decades - both DC and Marvel owned him at different points, and he is currently the property of Dynamite Entertainment. The character is most well-known today for being "the father of modern superheroes," as he inspired characters like Batman, Daredevil, the Punisher, V from V for Vendetta, Rorschach from The Watchmen, and - to a lesser extent, mind you - Superman. He also spawned a series of other pulp-y characters with similar concepts, such as the Green Hornet and the Spider. He's even been parodied in cartoons: Darkwing Duck is actually based largely on The Shadow, with a bit of Batman thrown in. For you all, you'll probably recognize him best because his universe was the inspiration for my "Black Dragon AU," with Malleus Draconia as the Shiwan Khan to the MC's Shadow-esque hero. I've always loved the Shadow, and I've always wanted to see him in one of two types of games. One is a Telltale-style choose-your-own-adventure murder mystery game, similar to "The Wolf Among Us" or the "Batman: The Telltale Series" titles. The other is a stealth-action game similar with controls similar to the Arkham series or the PS4-started Spider-Man games. The big draw in either case would be the style: everything done in black and white, with a noir-esque sort of aesthetic and matching music, with splashes of color - like red and maybe occasional hints of gold or green - to emphasize characters and moments. I'd pick Maurice LaMarche or Roger L. Jackson to voice the character, personally; not sure who I'd choose if you wanted someone more celebrity-like.

The other option would be a game based on Frank Beddor's "The Looking-Glass Wars" trilogy. This is a series of novels (with some spin-off comics) that are reimaginings of the "Alice" stories. The premise sees Wonderland as a war-torn universe, with elements of dark fantasy and sci-fi sort of blended together to create its world and aesthetic. The overarching plot of the series has Princess Alyss Heart and her allies - including Hatter Madigan, Bibwith Harte, and Dodge Anders, just to name a few - battling the sinister forces of Alyss' evil Aunt Redd, and a mutual enemy of both of their sides, the treacherous King Arch. I would specifically like to see a game based on this universe done in either a "League of Legends" format, or, even better, a "Star Wars: Battlefront" format. In the former, you can play as different major characters from the books, with different types of enemies to conquer depending on where in the conflict you stand. Or, in the latter, you can actually play as soldiers from each of the warring factions, as well as Hero figures from each end of the spectrum, with perhaps some minigames that allow you to play with those different elements more. Admittedly, both of these TECHNICALLY have games already: the Shadow was originally planned to have a beat-em-up game in the 90s, but the game was canceled. However, you apparently CAN find the unfinished game if you look hard enough to play; not sure if it's an emulator or something, but it's out there, trust me. LGW, meanwhile, has (or had, not sure if it's still up) an online card game you could play themed around the books. However, neither of these are really what I would like to see from either franchise (and the Shadow game wasn't even really properly released or completed), so there's still room for these dream games to exist. They likely never will, but there's room. :P

[something-very-special]

they ran over the seals

More Replicant playthrough observations and general nonsense under the cut. For reference, up to the keystone quest; completed the Forest of Myth and Junk Heap.

This fucking game I swear to god.

A vaguely coherent ramble about sidequests An observation about sidequests in general in this game -- and I don't recall if I ever voiced this somewhere public or it was just a personal observation from my time with the original -- is that the quests in the first half of the game are all relatively easy to complete. There's that one asshat who wants 10 goat hides, but other than him, most of the sidequests are either very much based on finding characters, or gathering a sensible number of items that are either relatively common, purchasable, or given a guaranteed spawn for the duration of that quest.

The sidequests everybody remembers having to do are in the second half, where everybody is demanding and awful and I'm sorry ten MACHINE OILS do you know how goddamn rare those are? They're goddamn rare.

(We'll not discuss Life in the Sands.)

This is generally agreed to, in the technical vernacular, 'suck'. And it's always funny that the most interesting sidequests are the ones with very minimal requirements (Yonah's cooking, getting Popola drunk, the Lighthouse Ladoh my god everything's gone blurry I'm not crying you're crying who am I kidding we're both crying). That particular aspect of the design also feels intentional, not really gating your ability to progress the really meaningful or funny sidequests behind an unreasonable number of rare items. The other aspect of the design is that these quests are not meant to be completed in a single playthrough; most of them are single-stage and just absolutely unreasonable, but if you're going through the game four times you have a... reasonable chance of getting everything you need more or less naturally.

Nobody does that but I think that was the intended design. I think it's a good idea, although the execution of expectation is flawed so I don't really blame people for saying those sidequests suck. (Although I will in turn blame people for saying the sidequests suck as a blanket statement. Yeah getting that guy who burned his kitchen down a billion Broken Motors is aggravating but did you not find that old man's dog? Speak to Ursula on her death bed? Solve a murder? Then again I think tracking down that rotten son who's trying to get away from The Family Business only to learn his father is a con-artist and get literally no reward is the height of comedy so maybe I'm not the greatest point of reference.)

But that asshole in Facade can get bent. I can't exploit my garden properly, jackass! I am no longer a god of time. (I kid, of course.) (This guys sucks even when you can fix your clock.)

Forest of Myth It didn't even occur to me to wonder how they would incorporate the comprehensive voice acting into the Forest of Myth. I like how it plays out, although I wish the voices maybe had a fade as you went deeper into the dream instead of just cutting out at some point, especially for the lines where the characters are being ascribed actions by the narrator that they themselves aren't doing near the start of the Deathdream. But it's just delightful to go back to it. The second half of the game really sticks in your mind both for emotional reasons and because you play it at least three times per full playthrough of the game, but the first half is just so much fun.

Protip: Talk to everybody after you've finished the dream sidequest. Weiss tries to dissuade you. Don't let him dissuade you. I'm still delighted by the Mayor; "We're building a statue of you, made of solid gold. I know you don't own a horse, but we're going to put you on a horse."

I forgot about Yonah being a disaster chef Papa Nier's reaction to the stew is better. Brother is still funny but Papa Nier just expecting to die is comedy gold.

For anybody curious, the joke about the cakes is that Yonah made 'fruit cake' using some of the worst possible fruits for cake-making. If only she'd thrown a tomato into the mix, too.

Lighthouse Lady Every time. what the fuck is a canal I'm aware of the addition of the new-old content but it didn't occur to me until Popola suddenly starts nattering on about fixing the canal when I'm expecting Yonah to talk about a penpal that oh, yeah, I guess Seafront would have had something going on the first half that would play into the second half? (I assume it does. Be weird to introduce these characters just to have groundwork for an added sidequest. ...but it was a cute sidequest.) But look Popola my boy is supposed to be in the next area I visit could we-- I mean he's on the way could we just-- no-- fiiiiiiiiiine. (It was short and sweet, though, and I appreciate that the couple's love is exemplified by them both calling Weiss a floating magazine in tandem.) On a related note but was I the only person suddenly concerned when the sidequest completion maxed out at 50% and not 51%? I had to double-check with a guide just to make sure, since I've spent the last decade telling people to make sure you hit 51% before going on to Part II.

MY BOY I love that nowadays, Emil is everybody's son. But I really wish I could go find somebody only familiar with Automata and just watch their reaction. (I'm guessing there are streams out there that fulfill this but man I'd love to get it in-person.) If you're only familiar with him from Automata this has to be a mindfuck.

Personal anecdote, but I've had the privilege of playing NIER with somebody else almost every time I've gone through it. I had a wonderful experience of doing a replay some years back with somebody who had experienced it with me before but didn't have the most solid memory of the beginning (and had actually missed the entire weapon's lab the first time through). I get to the boy at the piano introducing himself and the 'Wait, what?' was a thing of beauty.

MY ANDROID This was a welcome mindfuck for me; finding Sebastian and having him 'reactivate' in such an unnatural, mechanical way. I don't recall if it was ever officially confirmed that Sebastian is an android (I know that it's just understood that this is the case but I'm not I can't recall a specific one) but the little flair they added to his animation caught me completely off guard. I liked it!

Destroying the food source A lot of people will cite a major inciting incident for the game as being when the protagonist heading back into the village and killing the child Shades just outside the entrance. This moment is such a great bit of subtle foreshadowing that's so easy to miss... but kind of joining that, just before the Knave of Hearts attacks, I realized that the Shades out on the Northern Plains are clearly ramping up for an assault of their own by murdering the sheep. The sheep population at this point is decimated (which is great when you realize you haven't gotten the Sheepslayer trophy and you're about to enter Part II and you don't know if the boar drifting minigame got carried forward with the inclusion of 15 Nightmares). You go out onto the Plains and you will find not only small clusters of sheep left behind instead of the vast, terrifying herds from the start of the game, but until you get their attention the Shades are prioritizing killing the sheep. (Also annoying because that doesn't count toward my sheep murder number.) The Shades will be out there also killing sheep earlier on, but since the whole map is in Overcast mode after talking to Yonah it's especially prevalent to go out to the Northern Plains and seeing the slaughter. And I realized-- they're cutting the Village off from a primary food source. Shades don't eat and they don't have any beef with the local ungulates (at least, no more so than anybody else does), so why are they hunting down the sheep? To deprive their enemies of resources. Sheep are extinct by the timeskip. It's actually really clever of them, and a really clever indication of their sentience and intelligence before it's fully verified.

"Let's get these shit-hogs!" Everything about the way Kaine and Emil interact across the entire game is perfect I will brook no argument this is objective fact.

Emotive Rectangles I wrote an essay about this before but it really bears repeating that the job the original animators did with this scene is just phenomenal. The way Weiss drifts, flits, flips, fans his pages, drunkenly swerves, shoots around the room in defiance... He's a goddamn rectangle, but there is so much emotion and personality in this scene just based on the movements conveyed through a what is effectively just a box. Ten years later and triple-A titles with full facial capture don't have this much seething personality. I really have to give props to the cavia animators, wherever they wound up. That studio could really put some subtle love and care into their titles, utterly unnecessary and easy to miss but you can tell that whoever was working on it was giving it their all. The books are probably the exemplification of this, but every time I go into Seafront and visit the seals I can tell that the guy on seal duty was having just the best day. They made Emil so pretty There's an FMV cutscene right smack in the middle of the original game after the battle against Noir. I understand why it was a necessity on a technical level, but it always looked pretty out of place and a little uncanny valley compared to the rest of the graphical fidelity. That's no longer a necessity so this cutscene is rendered in-engine. I admit I was actually curious to see it redone this way and it looks fantastic. I single out Emil since he is the focal point of cutscene and because his particular high-poly model had some pretty weird difference from his in-engine model, but he and Kaine both look great. But, like, it's almost mean how pretty he is.

They made Brother Nier so pretty Yeah okay you got me he's kind of hot. Kaine's expression when she wakes up and looks him over is... significantly easier to read now. Good voice, too. (Ancient rumors tell that one of the issues with international releases of RepliCant was that they couldn't find an English VA with a voice that 'fit' Brother Nier. He sounded good out the gate but hearing him growl "Let's go TAKE CARE of those KIDS" during the thief sidequest-- I got chills. It sounds so silly but there's a kind of percolating fury to that delivery. Papa Nier was like frustrated but mostly disappointed dad; I felt like Brother was going to take care of those kids, and nobody was going to find the bodies. Younger Brother Nier just never stops looking goofy to me but Older Brother just looks great in motion, between the alterations they made to the movement and just the entire weaponry system. The distinction between the two halves of the game was always a little odd in the Gestalt version-- not odd enough to really raise eyebrows if you didn't know about RepliCant, but of course you can tell that this age gape between the optimistic doe-eyed dogooder and a man largely ruled by his fury and calloused by tragedy is what the timeskip was going for. Swab me down and call me Ishmael, it works. Younger Brother wasn't quite clicking with me-- not because of any writing or voicework issues, but I've got Papa Nier on the back of my mind and it's impossible not to compare and contrast the delivery and dialogue between the two. I know that this is intentional, too; Younger Brother is supposed to be that happy-go-lucky video game protagonist, always doing the right thing and helping people, in order to contrast against the man he becomes. Even just edging into Part II the effect is dramatic and it recontextualizes Younger Brother into a much more effective overall character. And let me reiterate, I enjoyed my time with Younger Brother just fine, I have no issues with him. But he's up against Well Meaning Big Dummy Part I Papa Nier. No contest. And I'm excited to see where Older Brother goes from here.

Speaking of voices I mentioned this before but the delivery on the character's lines is different. The entire game was re-recorded and quite a few lines are still pretty similar to the original, but there are some that are... definitely different. Part of this is a difference in the relationship between characters based on their life experience and ages-- Weiss is much more of an ass to Younger Brother but has a much more even respect for Older Brother (neither of which are like the rapport he established with Father). Some of Kaine's lines feel more aloof, dismissive, and almost tired in the front half of the game. I haven't really gotten to a point to dig into Emil's rapport with the other characters, but the delivery feels more hesitant and uncertain (which I think is more in line with his Japanese VO, but I'm prefacing that on an untrained ear and a presumption rather than recent memory). It's been interesting to see not just where hey adjusted dialogue (and how-- there are some lines that didn't need to be rewritten), but also how they adjust tone and delivery. Dealing with Younger Brother is one thing, but as I said, I'm very excited to see what's different in the second half, especially being much more familiar with that part of the game. Speaking of Voices! Halua got dialogue! I... preferred when it was inferred (and the implications of "I'll always be watching over you" are borderline malicious given the results of their fusion dance, yeah THANK YOU HALUA this is GREAT). Halua's delivery also felt a little too innocent and upbeat both for the situation and when compared to her narrative voice in The Stone Flower, where she comes across as much more cynical and cold. But given what she's been through and the nightmare she's finally escaping I guess she's allowed express happiness. She's certainly earned the right to having a spoken line. No matter what. Every fuckin' time.

"Here we go." This was always a great line to kind of ease in to the officially-official start of Part II-- every time you start up a New Game+ you're greeted with Emil musing about his conflation of Halua to Kaine, and then the phrase "Here we go". There's a lot in that one line. On a personal level he's grounding his thoughts in the moment and steeling himself for what comes next and pushing through his pain and sadness and fear. Whatever Nier told him in the facility he's still terrified, desperately terrified, that Kaine -- who was the one who told him his life had meaning -- is going to reject him. And why wouldn't she? Ultimately they don't know each other, not really. He understands at that moment that his relationship with Kaine is based on confused memories of his sister, that maybe the bond he thought they established isn't actually real. As soon as he frees Kaine he's going to have to confront her, like this, and how could she ever-- she won't-- but he can't just leave her. Whatever happens next. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. (God it matters.) "Here we go." On a meta level, that's our introduction into the second half of the game. The first half is all prologue. This is where we'll be spending the rest of our time, even to the point that 'New Game+' skips straight ahead to this moment. Now that we've finished the establishment, this is where it all builds and where it all matters. Here we go, audience. The ride starts now. You get up to this point now in Replicant. You get the same lead-in. My dumb ass even whispered "Here we go", because I can't help myself. And he says, of course he says--! "Anyway." ... ...a-anyway? What the hell kind of line is that? "Here's some deeply personal musings that are also an indication of my own discomfort as I babble to myself just to fill the void so I can stave off thinking for just a few more seconds. ANYWAY." What a... bizarre decision. Just bizarre.

Upgraded melee combat The introduction to the armored Shades always feel kind of rough-- the defenses on those Shades are significantly higher than anything you've faced and the new weapons you're given to combat them just aren't that good. (If you got lucky you could have a fully-upgraded Faith by now, which is nearly three times as powerful as the 'heavy' two-handed sword you're given; if you downloaded the 4 YoRHa pack for Replicant you've probably been able to upgrade one of those weapons once, which are also a really nice strength boost that leaves the freebie heavy swords and spears in the dust). As an introduction to the new weapon types it always feels like rough going. But then you get a chance to get decent weapons and the combat system truly opens up, and compared to the first game you really feel it. At this juncture I would always just bustle off to Facade and grab the Phoenix Spear and never look back-- the raw power compared to the rest of your arsenal coupled with the triangle dash is basically the bread and butter of the rest of the game. It's not exciting, but it's effective. No more triangle dashing, which was deeply disappointing... but both weapons definitely feel good. I am also somewhat ashamed to admit that it wasn't until now that I realized attacks weren't just about rhythmic input-- you can hold the attacks down to do different charged hits and combos depending on when you execute them in your combo, similar to Automata. I, uh... I felt a bit dumb. But hey, wow, it's a welcome adjustment and it makes all of the weapon types feel equally valuable for different purposes. I never liked using the heavy blades in the original release because they just felt too slow for the damage output they did, even if their 'point' was mostly to sheer off armor (and they definitely felt too slow for use in crowd control). Now they're still heavy and slower, but not to the point that you're basically leaving yourself open just trying to attack. Spears now do crazy sweeping combos and multi-hits. Both of these properties were borrowed from Automata and I find myself prioritizing melee combat and almost forgetting I have magic because honestly it just feels intuitive and fun. I feel like Kaine and Emil might have gotten a power boost as well? Not that I can really confirm this but going into some of the Junk Heap rooms I'd focus on killing a few robots in the corner and then turn around and just see a field of item drops and no more robots. Don't take my word on that, of course, but they felt a little more effective, and a placebo effect is still an effect. "You're staging a protest? That's fun!" Emil. Rebel without a cause. Will not hesitate to kill you if you trespass on his property. (Might explain the statues in the courtyard, actually.) I'll have to double-check this dialogue because I definitely remember more of a melancholia before we get to roasting marshmallows. I think Papa Nier actually offers to talk to/implicitly threaten the villagers to let them in the Village whereas Brother offers to sleep outside with them... which is actually kind of funny. In the former it comes off as Emil and Kaine maybe kinda-sorta not wanting to be allowed in the Village for their own reasons (they're not happy reasons but they're reasons nonetheless) and reassuring Father that no, it's okay, it's fun! The latter is almost telling Brother to stay inside because he'll ruin their sleepover.

(They're absolutely having giggly girl talk about him outside the gates, 100%.) they ran over the seals All I want in Seafront is to enjoy the music and run out to the big beach and hang out with the last living seals and they put a fucking pirate ship on top of them. Oh, wow. Gideon. Wow. OG Nier featured a Gideon that tried to keep himself together and then had fits of mania. You'd be concerned about him during some of the dialogue but generally speaking he came across as... functional. The delivery on all of his lines is now so insanely murder bonkers, like every line he's addressing you like you're already chained to the wall of his serial killer dungeon and it's glorious. I don't know if the distinction between the games is deliberate (in that Gideon in Gestalt was just more even-keeled between his 'rip 'em apart' snarlings and was always just totally nutso in RepliCant) but I do appreciate it. It's a good mirror to Brother Nier's own anger, which only ever seems to be mollified when he's talking to his friends (even kindly accepting sidequests there's a pretty consistent -- not universal, but consistent -- air of barely-bridled frustration). The other characters that Brother encounters are various reflections of himself if things had just been a little different-- Gideon was a representation of the kind of obsessive madness that would have eaten Brother alive if he hadn't had his network of support. Gideon's constant fury and bloodlust even bleeds into him just saying "What can I do for you?" He has no anchor to keep himself sane, nobody to stay human for; he's all mania, all anger, and he only takes any real interest in Brother on his return because he sees an opportunity to act out his vengeance. After defeating Beepy and Kalil he even goes so far as to not only blame Beepy for killing Jakob, but for also killing their mother, which is patently insane but really speaks to how far his justifications and fury have taken him. Papa Nier responds to his anger toward Beepy by basically backing away slowly and saying "Oookay then". Brother, however, actually commiserates; "That's enough. [...] We get it. We really do." This is definitely one of those moments where Brother's context works better than Father's; he absolutely sees himself in Gideon. He completely understands him and sympathizes. He recognizes the madness of his own quest, he sees where it could take him, and there's a resignation when he speaks to Weiss: "Revenge is a fool's errand." "...yeah." Papa Nier has a similar delivery and similarly implies that he understands how terrible his quest is, but there's something decidedly haunting in Brother's sympathy. Also just verifying something on the wiki and this bit of 'Trivia' really jumped at me:

Gideon is the only character to only cause the deaths of other characters. In his case, he caused a platform to crush Jakob and ordered the deaths of P-33 and Kalil, with P-33 surviving.

Metal AF.

[aniledotpng]

Death ? Preposterous ! a review

What we're being sold

Death ? Preposterous ! Is presented as a small RPG with an accent on non-violence, ten different playable characters, puzzle-like encounters and a wide panel of characters to meet and interact with.

The story starts as Darling, the first protagonist, comes on an island to live with his wife, who is a maid to the local lord. Problem is, the lord is an asshole that kidnaps his personnel, closes off half of the island around his property with a deadly magical barrier which kills Darling.

In short

Although I enjoyed the encounter mechanics, most of the game felt really frustratingly long and text heavy for nothing. The mechanic to change characters is hidden, and it does not really matter what character you play as, since only the ending really changes, which really deters from replaying. There's a lot of promising ideas that sadly fail to deliver, and a lot of unnecessary text and redundancies, and some honestly questionable philosophy behind some of the gameplay decisions that I will get to more in details in the long review. I'd give it a 4/10, because I love a good puzzle but the game feels unfinished and unpolished in a really frustrating and disappointing way.

In long (spoilers ahead)

Hooooooooooly shit do the characters talk a lot in this game. Now hear me out I love a story heavy game and a lot of exposition, but here it feels more like the annoying guy at a bar that won't stop talking to you and repeating himself. The afterlife zone is fucking huge, and it's only there so you can spend a whole hour talking to a dozen different characters exposing the creator's heavily buddhism-inspired philosophy on death that's like in short "death is actually fine, it's even nicer than being alive tbh. Also there's some sort of reincarnation thing going on but it's not really important. Death is full of love really ! Also God's hanging out around lol". There's a whole scene where you barge into someone's living space and they rightfully ask you to leave, and instead of immediately fucking off, the protagonist has four or five text bubbles repeating in different ways "actchually you shouldn't be scared of me because I'm a really nice guy. I didn't want to scare you but see, I'm really nice so although I'm acting like a total fucking creep you should actually be my friend. I know I'm staying when you told me to leave but see, I'm really nice", and I've rarely felt so violent playing a game that's supposed to be about non-violence.

Speaking of non-violence ! I really loved the puzzle aspect of the encounters but here's where I'm annoyed: given the structure of the game, they shouldn't be random encounters at all ! You're collecting pages corresponding to each creature you encounter, and the correct pages will open some areas. Given this, it would have been much funnier if all the encounters were more like treasure hunting, the correct interaction with the correct part of environment making you meet a creature instead of spawning a fucking teethed carrot or a murder shroom every three fucking steps because once again I felt so fucking violent and murderous my guys. It's especially frustrating when the last two encounters are actually more treasure hunt-y and you have to actually find where they are rather than randomly spawning.

One extremely frustrating aspect of the so-called non-violence of the game is that it is not voluntary like nonviolent actions are, they're a political design. No it's baked into the game, you just don't have a weapon. It also feels like it's severely lacking when you finish the game by "appealing to the humanity" of the guy who murdered half of the island's inhabitants to find some random shit for his dead wife. Like at least give him a judgment by his pairs or something ? He's a mass fucking murderer by the end of the game but it's aight, we're non-violent, a grief counselor will suffice. Death is chill after all, so torture and murder are alright.

On the point of people dying, here's a detail that could have been interesting: when you die, every time you come back to life as the same character, a named NPC disappears. You'd hope to find them in the domain of the bad guy but no that's it. They just straight up disappear and that's an interaction you've missed until you restart the game OR until you decide to kill your current protagonist for good and it gives another one of the ten protagonists, with a good change of it being one of the above mentioned disappeared person. Without any mention of the previous disappearance.

One last, honestly minor compared to everything above, detail. The art. The music is nice, that's because it's Kevin McLeod's copyright free music, every DM's favorite composer. The graphisms of the game are also sort of lacking. Most of the environment feels too big, with weird dimensions. The buildings especially feel super awkward, with huge walls and tiny randomly placed windows. A few places have noticeably been worked on more and are really beautiful though so it's worth mentioning that the forest, the meadow, and the garden are really pretty. But most of the other environment feels like it's just there to be there, without much effort to be pretty or much intent besides "I need places for the protagonists to visit".

Not that it matters, because your interactions with the cast will not change depending on the protagonist you're playing as, only the ending does. The creator of the game even explicitly recommend to kill your protagonist right before the end and change protag if you want to experience all the endings, rather than having ten+ different playthroughs depending and who you play and when you change. So what's the point ?

The game also encourages save-spamming because you can die ridiculously easily, and you always restart in your house. Nothing more frustrating than having many random characters disappear because of a bad choice, and having to re-cross the whole map. It's frustrating because it breaks the already fragile rhythm of the game.

[solesurvivorpaigeargot]

Okay but let’s talk about the opening of Fallout 4

And I’m not talking about the part where you gotta pantomime your way through a half-hour of BS at least before you’re actually allowed to step out into the world and get shite started [seriously Bethesda, if you’re gonna keep making openings like this, please include a ‘get to the point’ option and stop making modders do it for you. First time it’s interesting, second time it’s mind-numbing.] I’m talking about when you roll up on the museum and have to help out Preston and the gang-- and I’m just gonna rant for a few paragraphs here so here’s a read-more cut so I don’t clog up dashes too badly. 

Fallout 4 never gives you the chance to value human life. 

Fallout 3 had this issue as well, but it’s even more glaring in 4 because in 3 an order came down for your death. When you aren’t given a choice, what you’re doing can at least be penciled in as self-defense. 4 expects you to devalue raiders and treat them as unreasonable threats, to see them as a shooting gallery and nothing else... but there’s a serious problem with the framing.

You made me pantomime being a normal person for the first 30 min to hour of your experience, and now you’re telling me a normal person can just pick up a gun and start popping people with no moral issues. 

This is required to even get close enough to talk to Preston. He might take out all the raiders if you’re willing to wait 20 minutes, but when you put yourself into the role play head space of a character, what kind of person ducks behind the sandbags and waits for the dude with the laser to pick everyone off? And there is no force preventing you from simply running away, this is true-- but doing so simply removes your ability to interact with what is a core mechanic of the game a-la the minutemen and establishing settlements. So if you wanna keep the game experience intact, and follow along with the mission? Murder is required, without any time taken out to consider the value of human life or if that murder is justified, or if your character is capable of that kind of violence. 

To say I dislike this headspace in shooters, that whomever the denoted ‘bad’ group is are just okay to treat as squishy playthings, more so in shooters that try to integrate choice and morality, is a massive understatement. There are plenty of other things in the commonwealth that could threaten a group of settlers that aren’t people, and framing us as a normal person [PARTICULARLY IF YOU PLAY AS ‘NORA’ WHO WAS NOT A MILITARY MEMBER] who is just immediately ready for this is ASSUMPTIVE BULLSHIT. More so when you remember that if you played as ‘Nate’ this dissonance would be less-- it assumes a male audience who would choose the male protagonist, and his military service makes this opening a lot smoother. But when you don’t? It becomes batshit insane. Your average lawyer is not ready to just pick up a gun and wreck people, even when there are innocents on the line. 

So, if ya like, I’m gonna propose an ‘alternate’ idea for what this mission could have been that would have kept all the same elements. The raiders, the power armor, the deathclaw-- but not forced the player character directly into murder. 

Step 1: Finding Dogmeat. 

When we find Dogmeat, he appears to be just... wandering the gas station? And yeah, he’s in our path, but Mama Murphy appears to think that Dogmeat went and found you, so let’s take that a step further. Let’s say Dogmeat actually ran and found you-- that he spawns into the world when you get past the footbridge, and no matter where you go from there Dogmeat will find and bark at you. That no matter how you treat him, Dogmeat will try to lead you to Concord and ruin your stealth by running in circles around you and barking if you try to go the wrong way. That this pupper is trying to find someone to help his group, he found you. 

Step 2: The approach.

So say we follow Dogmeat, who leads us to where the raiders and Preston’s group are in standoff. And yeah, sure, we pass the main road where they’re all sandbagged up, but Dogmeat leads us around back to a rear entrance the raiders have not yet realized exists. Possibly a fire escape that has a ladder that could be released from above that was pulled up when Preston and co hunkered down. While, yes, the player could choose to engage the raiders at this point, deciding they’ve seen enough and take on the museum from the front? Going around, Dogmeat barking, and Mama appearing to let the ladder down because she probably knew you were coming gives you a non-violent in. Why haven’t the group left? There’s too many of them to just sneak out, Mama is old and slow, and Jun is nearly catatonic. No changes have to be made to the group to make that path out non-viable, it’s simply a way for you to get in, speak to Preston, and understand what the fuck we’re dealing with here without the one and only solution being kill everyone-- though the power armor is posited as something that might be helpful in a show of force to get the raiders to fuck the fuck off. 

Step 3: The Raiders.

Banditry is not something ‘bad people’ do. It is an act of desperation. The idea that all the raiders are just the most repugnant people on the planet, and there appears to be no fuckin’ end to them is the same flavor of bullshit that’s used in all that war on drugs propaganda 50′s politicians were so high on. The idea of ‘Oh, the raiders are just bad people, so it’s okay to shoot at them’ ignores that they are people. People with lives. People with motivations. People who had their own path that led to where they are and what they’re doing. And what motivates a person to this kind of violence?

Starvation, usually. And I’ll be the first to say I don’t make great decisions when I’m hungry, either, but let’s dig a little deeper on this. Let’s step into the role of the leader of a raider group for a few seconds, get into this head space, and think about what’s going down with Preston’s group. 

Imagine that I am a leader of a raider band. Let’s imagine that it started as me and a friend getting forced out of Diamond city, possibly given exile, because we couldn’t find work and decided to steal some food. The lack of work was no fault of our own; me and my friend may not have known the right people, or had the right skill sets, or been willing to take work that risked our lives as if we were worth nothing. Maybe we survived on good will for a while, but after so many hungry days got desperate, held up the Dugout for all the caps they had, or stole food from the general store, and tried to run with the take before we got caught. Whether we were caught, stripped of our gains, and then thrown out, or we got away-- we now have a place we can’t go anymore, and are at the mercy of the outside world. Are we bad? Are we bad because we were starving to death and desperate? Am I bad for coming up with a not great plan but at least trying to take action rather than just quietly dying in a gutter? I just wanted to eat. So now me and my friend are drifters, and we stick together because we’re all we got. And maybe we meet another drifter here, and another one there, and on some hungry night someone gets the idea that hey, if we all jump out from the side of the road and threaten a trader, maybe they’ll drop some of their stock without a fight?

We don’t want caps. We want food. We can’t spend the caps, and we don’t wanna get into a fight because none of us can get treatment-- we’re exiles and criminals. We don’t want blood, we want to eat.

So we threaten a trader, and that goes well-- we got supplies! But those supplies don’t erase our records. We still need to live, and this food is only gonna last so long. The traders know about us now, they talk-- even if we got money, who the hell would trust us? No one, that’s who. Even better, sounds like our little hold-up horned in on some other group’s territory that we didn’t even know about, and they ain’t happy with us. We all have guns, but none of us have ever killed anyone. None of us want to. We just wanted to eat.

So did the other group. They just wanted to eat, too, but they saw us horning in on their territory. Their take. Those supplies belonged to them. They have mouths to feed. More than us, probably. We stole from them, and all we wanted was to eat. 

Whatever happens next is desperate, and it’s a baptism in blood. It’s a process of alienation. While there may be a select few who are actually out of their gourd and enjoy the violence, the majority of people who engage in banditry are desperate and hungry. 

So what the hell does this have to do with the group holding up Preston’s group?

By all rights, Preston’s group does not have anything a gang of raiders wants. Even if they’re far enough along that caps have value to them again, able to do trade with their own network, injuries are expensive and often lead to permanent disability because these groups lack consistent access to medical supplies and knowledge, and fatalities means your crew is down an important and useful member. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO THEY WANT? 

In the canon encounter, what they want is nothing. They want to wipe out Preston’s group because the game said so [I think there’s a terminal entry about it later, like they’re getting paid or something, but no payment is worth getting wiped out the way they did, and you don’t run a group that big on blind arrogance alone. Gristle woulda been displaced by then. All the caps in the world aren’t worth your life; you can’t feed dead crew members, and greed is useless when you’re blacklisted from all the settlements with any sense of luxury] They exist to shoot at. But when we ascribe motivation to them, what the fuck do they want? 

The power armor. 

It’s a tool; something that would change the balance of power in the area, make other groups think twice and lower the chance of losses when trying to gain supplies. Screw wiping these morons out, there’s only five of them left-- hold them at stand-off for a day or so until someone breaks and asks to negotiate, make them drop everything they’ve got as the toll for getting out, and then the group steps in to take the prize. There’s no need for anyone to get shot, just gotta starve ‘em out a little and then let them run with their lives. 

Step 4: The Death Claw

So we have a stand-off situation that could... probably be pretty easily negotiated through without major loss of life. Your player character is a third party, after all. Opens up some non-lethal ways of doing things if you wanna convince Preston and co to give up all their stuff if it means getting out with their lives. Likewise, a high speech character could possibly go to Gristle and convince him that you’ve seen the power armor and it’s wrecked, no worth the effort he’s spending on bottling this crew up, and the men he’s probably already lost in the process. Or maybe a character with high intelligence could work with Sturges to sabotage the power armor, handing it over to the raiders knowing that in a day or two it’ll fall apart. All of these make for some interesting shades-of-gray choices...

Then the deathclaw shows up. In the middle of negotiation. Everyone gets forced up to the upper floor; no time to kill each other, there’s a giant murder machine prowling around the lobby and it is only a matter of time before it climbs up to the second floor and starts ripping out walls and doors to get at people.

This could have served to make the situation even more interesting-- if you’d gone aggro in the beginning and started killing raiders in the streets, you have less people to deal with a massive threat that could kill the fuck out of you. If you’d been in the middle of convincing the raiders to take a sabotaged set of power armor, you’d have to explain to them why the power armor isn’t gonna help you... or let Gristle take it and get murdered when it freezes up and leaves him stranded to get ripped out of the can and munched. Is that murder? How’s the player feel about that? Meanwhile, if you hadn’t killed anyone and were in the middle of negotiating a bloodless solution, you might have a chance of unifying everyone to take down the deathclaw-- possibly with a future bonus that Gristle and his crew wanna go straight and giving you the choice to set them up within your settlement system, or becoming yet another ‘civilized’ system that won’t work with them because they’re too far gone. 

...................... I may have to write another fic just to explore these ideas in a modified canon. 

[adachimoe]

Remarks from Persona Club P4 about the Midnight Channel and the TV world

On my previous post about the Club book, 2 of the things I mentioned were:

Compared to Persona 3, there are more silly shadows because the Midnight Channel is influenced by the people who watch it.

The design of the people on the ground on the floor of the staging area when you enter the TV world from Junes is the result of the main characters having murder on the brain when they first enter the TV.

As the book explains various locations inside of the TV, it becomes apparent that what we see inside of the TV is a formed on a mixture of both "the public's perceptions" and "the thoughts of people inside the TV". From my experience, there are a lot of fans who discuss Persona 4 who seem to believe that what shows up on the TV is influenced by people, but what is actually inside the TV is not influenced by people. Like the dungeons reflect the "real" victim.

The book just describes stuff like so:

The staging / landing area resembles a studio where TV shows are recorded because the public who watches the Midnight Channel are expecting some kind of television show to appear.

Teddie is able to provide you with a TV to exit back into the real world because a TV is something you'd expect to find in a TV studio.

Teddie's bear mascot appearance is a combination of Teddie's desire to be liked by people and also the thoughts of people watching the Midnight Channel.

Yukiko's Castle spawns from her thoughts about getting away from Inaba, the design is based on Neuschwanstein (as is every fictional castle), and it's European to counter the image of her being a Yamato Nadeshiko-type girl working at a traditional Japanese ryokan.

But then for Rise's Theater, it specifies that the public's expectations flowing in from the Midnight Channel play a part in the creation of her dungeon and why it's the way it is.

Yomotsu Hirasaka's design is very different from the other dungeons because it's not supposed to represent or be based on humans.

The Velvet Room, as know from the other games, is a special case and is different from the rest of the TV world. But the appearance of it is still actually shaped by the protagonist. In this case, the protag being anxious about the murder mystery case has turned the Velvet Room into a limousine which drives through the fog. That you can't see the driver makes you more anxious. Even if you were able to turn around and look at the driver's seat, it's unlikely there would be anyone there.

The appearance of the shadows is also based on the public who watch the Midnight Channel. The king-type shadow was influenced by people watching shows for children, the nyogo-type shadow (the tree wearing a kimono) was influenced by people who historical dramas tuning into the Midnight Channel, the mecha looking shadow comes from anime fans, etc.

For Adachi's dungeon, it's something he made to lure in and confuse the Investigation Team. The structure of the dungeon having two levels represents his thoughts. The red and black zig zaggy circle-y line pattern shows Amenosagiri leaking fog from the center.

The places in the TV world correspond to real life, kinda sorta. If you were to put another gigantic TV in the Junes electronics department and enter from there, you wouldn't wind up in the studio plaza, but you'd be fairly close to it. When you fight Amenosagiri on top of Magatsu Inaba, you can see the city beneath you, as if the TV world were layered on top of the real world.

My rambling corner:

The book doesn't talk about like, "Why don't the protag, Yosuke, Chie or Adachi auto-spawn dungeons when they go inside of the TV". Perhaps it's because of the 4 of them didn't appear on the Midnight Channel before going into the TV and didn't have some public perceptions that helped form dungeons beforehand? Or are the dungeons that form around the victims related to their own shock of being thrown in unexpectedly? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Or the "staging area" *is* the protag, Yosuke and Chie's collective dungeon.

The bit about the structure of Adachi's dungeon... It might sound like they mean "Magatsu Inaba and Magatsu Mandala are 2 separate things" (e.g. the journey and the destination), but when I read "二層", I think of a house having 2 stories. My take personally is that it refers to how when you progress further into the dungeon, you find Adachi on a "2nd story" of sorts up that's high in the sky. Like it reflects how he looks down on other people and also looks down on Inaba?

[mamthew]

On Final Fantasy XIV and Asymmetrical Memory

I plan to spoil large chunks of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansions in the following write-up. I will probably go most in-depth into the Heavensward expansion, but I expect to at least allude to plot details from other expansions in such a way that people who haven’t yet played them might work out what happens, so steer clear if you don’t want that to happen.

Every time I play a Final Fantasy game, I constantly think about what a remake/demake would look like. The cutoff for this is between IX and X – from X on, I parse out a potential demake in the style of VI or IX, while from IX earlier, I think about what a potential remake of the game could look like. I figure this cutoff is pretty indicative of what I most enjoy about Final Fantasy games. I really like the ATB battle systems of IV through IX, but I want the stories to be presented with voice acting and cinematic cutscenes (I was a little disappointed in the gameplay depicted in the XVI trailer for that reason, but that’s only sorta tangentially related).

I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in the potential for a demake as when playing FFXIV. The game is an MMORPG, and I do not like MMOs, so that’s definitely part of it. I kept thinking in the back of my mind that I would much rather be going through dungeons with the characters accompanying my character in the story, rather than the random fellow players rushing me through them. The developers, clearly, had heard this criticism before. As the game progresses into newer updates, more options become available to make the story feel more like a single-player experience, culminating in the ability to choose to explore dungeons with a party of NPCs and a story explanation for why randos appear around the protagonist for boss fights (neither of which apply retroactively, unfortunately).

Over the course of the game, then, I went from wishing I could play a game with this story in the style of VI or IX to wishing I could play this game, but developed from the beginning by the developers who made the Shadowbringers expansion with six years of experience under their belts. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes fantasize about the ways this story could be handled in a more traditional style, but with Shadowbringers, the game has essentially become a single-player game I am made to experience next to other players, which is much more bearable than a traditional MMO.

Like many games in the series, FFXIV is about memory, but it tackles this theme in a very different way from most. Rather than focusing on amnesia or memories fading, it looks instead at the conflicts that arise from asymmetric memories.

The second expansion, Heavensward, is about a holy war fought for centuries between dragons and humans (slash-elves). Over the course of the story, it is revealed that the main disagreement in this holy war arose from the differences in the lifespans between these two species. The humans have developed a religion explaining to them why dragons attack them every few decades, in which it is taught that their original king was murdered by the dragon Nidhogg, and one of his loyal knights took the dragon’s eye in revenge. The dragons, this religion teaches, are a scourge on the earth. It is heretical to consort with them in any way, and those who do often change into dragons themselves. Thus, from the humans’ perspective, not only are humans and dragons locked in a constant war, but the dragons are the aggressors for attacking every few years and for turning their own fellows against them.

Dragons, however, live for a much longer time than humans. Nidhogg is, in fact, still alive, as are several of his siblings, and his father. The dragons are at war with the humans because those many centuries past, the humans discovered that they could gain strength by killing and eating the dragons, and they did just that to Nidhogg’s sister. There is an asymmetry of memory to this conflict, meaning neither side is truly in the wrong. The humans, who only live for a hundred years or so, can only remember the dragons’ attacks to their cities. From their perspective, they are attacked by these monsters without reason. The dragons, however, still vividly remember the inciting incident of the conflict. The wound of the murder of Ratatoskr is still fresh, to them.

The game has an overarching conflict that’s framed in much the same way: neither party believes themselves to be at fault because the discrepancy in their respective lifespans has created an asymmetry of memory. Summons in the FFXIV universe take on different forms depending on what stories the summoner had heard about the god, meaning that the look and behavior of staples like Shiva and Ifrit can vary wildly depending on the memories of their worshippers. The game suggests, too, that the perfect empire would be one that can create and manipulate this asymmetry of memory, to have subjects who do not remember ever having not been subjects, but who the imperial structure still remembers are not sovereign citizens.

Difference in experience can allow for this asymmetry in memory, too. The protagonist has counterparts in parallel worlds, but each of these counterparts is, by any metric, their own person, with their own life and experiences. The protagonist’s power allows them to view others’ memories, which works well as an expository tool, but also maintains in the forefront of the player’s mind that everyone’s actions and ideologies are informed by their experiences and memories. Our diversity, the game reminds us, is literally a product of an asymmetry of memory.

This way of exploring memory is a pretty stark departure from the rest of the series; it’s much more subtle than the series’ usual focus on the acts of forgetting or chronicling experiences. This theme was absolutely informed by FFXIV’s status as an MMO; I can watch as hundreds of fellow players experience the same story events in radically different ways. Everyone’s protagonist is a different race with a different name, aesthetic, and class. They start in different towns, each of which has its own unique first thirty or so story quests. How we each experience dungeons and bosses is determined by our “role” - do we deal damage, or heal, or sponge damage from enemies? Our characters essentially do everything alone but with company, and we can stand and watch as others’ characters criss-cross fields, spawning enemies only they can attack, or standing in front of random NPCs, experiencing stories we ourselves are not seeing. Some players are “legacy players,” and the story is very different for them, as it is a continuation of a story us newcomers cannot access.

While this theme was made for the MMO medium, though, I think it is also well-suited to the Final Fantasy series as a whole. We all experience the series very differently. Some were introduced through Final Fantasy I on an NES in the ‘80s, others were introduced through VI, or X. Some were introduced through Kingdom Hearts, or Super Smash Bros, or a Dissidia arcade machine. We all picture a different character when we think of Cid, whether that’s the spandex-clad Cid from IV, the cantankerous astronaut from VII, or the cranky garage-owner from XV. When a Final Fantasy game references a previous game, we all might have different games we connect that reference back to, informed by our differing memories and past experiences.

I saw a complaint once that FFXIV fails to be its own game because it is too caught up in nostalgia. It would rather remind people of other games than stand as its own game. I disagree, especially when it comes to the stories of Heavensward on. I find it and Shadowbringers to have some of the better plots the series has ever done, with characters who earn their right to stand among the most iconic characters in the series.

I do think, however, that it is impossible to play a game in a long-running series without your experience being affected by your memories of other games in that series. Humans naturally have a tendency to seek out and find patterns, and we write connections and patterns into series, pretty much by definition. This is what I do when I imagine remakes and demakes while playing Final Fantasy games. I use my memories of other games to inform my understanding of the one I am playing. I find throughlines between vastly different games and cross the yawning void of divergence to imagine what it would be like if they weren’t so different after all.

[aion-rsa]

Upcoming Movies in September 2020: Theaters, Streaming, and VOD

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Movies are back! Granted they never really left either, with Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and others keeping us satiated with content these past five months. Still, the streamers are about to be reinforced for those willing to return to movie theaters: Major Hollywood blockbuster releases are coming, and limited rollouts are slowly making their way back into cinemas around the world.

For that reason, we’ve assembled a list of potential moviegoing experiences in September, whether on the big screen (please consider the risks of attending a theatrical screening) or at home via video on demand. It’s time for the popcorn to get popping.

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Now playing in theaters and VOD in the US (September 23 in the UK)

One of the biggest movies yet to eschew its intended theatrical window for a premium video on demand (PVOD) release is this most excellent adventure. It’s been 29 years since we last saw Alex Winter’s far out Ted or Keanu Reeves’ perpetually astonished Bill, yet it’s good to have both back in their legendary stoner roles. 

The fact they’re middle-aged and still having adventures through time and space, and against the visage of Death—he’s still cheating!—is pretty sweet. As is Keanu coming back to this role one Speed, three Matrixes, and nearly five John Wick chapters later. But this time they’ve got daughters (played by Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine)… but rest assured, the children are as amused as their dads.

Tenet

Now playing in the UK (September 3 in the US)

Already playing in the UK, Tenet will be making its much vaunted North American debut in “select U.S. cities” in September. We’re still not entirely clear what that will look like, but hopefully it will be worth it for this mysterious and visually dazzling Christopher Nolan epic. 

Early reviews are in, and the majority promise Nolan’s most exciting use of IMAX spectacle to date, though even without spoilers, this one might be too big for its own good. Our own Rosie Fletcher describes it as Nolan’s long-whispered about James Bond movie meets Doctor Who…

The New Mutants

Now playing in the U.S. (September 4 UK)

Josh Boone’s journey into the X-Men universe has been pushed back so many times it almost feels like a mythical lost movie. So when it finally arrives in UK cinemas on Sept. 4 (it landed in the U.S. at the end of August) it might feel like a bizarre flashback to another era – namely that of 2017 when the main shoot took place. 

Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga star as five young mutants held in a sinister facility against their will. It’s been positioned as an action horror which in theory sounds pretty cool, though what the final cut will look like is anyone’s guess.

Mulan

September 4 (Disney+ with premium)

One day after Tenet makes its U.S. debut, Disney, and more specifically Disney+, offers a starkly different vision for the future of cinema with Mulan. Whereas Tenet will attempt to jumpstart moviegoing, Disney has pushed one of their biggest 2020 blockbusters exclusively to streaming in all markets featuring Disney+, including the U.S. and UK. That means if you want to see Niki Caro’s anticipated reimagining of the 1998 animated Disney movie, you are going to have to pay $30 on top of your Disney+ subscription to get a load of this bad boy on a new PVOD model.

Read more

Movies

Mulan and Tenet Show Competing Visions for Future of Movies

By David Crow

Movies

UK Cinemas Slam Disney After Mulan Streaming Announcement

By Kirsten Howard

Even so, the film’s need to step away from the 1998 version’s iconography—Chinese moviegoers generally dislike musicals—appears to offer an opportunity to make a modern 2020 epic that can stand on its own two feet.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

September 4 (Netflix)

Charlie Kaufman does horror? Well, uh, maybe?! For his first Netflix original production, the idiosyncratic writer-director behind Synecdoche, New York, and the Being John Malkovich screenplay is adapting Iain Reid’s thriller novel, I’m Thinking of Ending Things. But Kaufman is expected to come at it from his singularly off-center perspective.

With a somber setup about a young woman (played by Wild Rose’s talented Jessie Buckley) going to meet the parents of her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons), the movie is actually about an unhappy lover planning to terminate her relationship. Yet when she meets Mom and Dad (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), things are going to get weirder, if not necessarily better for the relationship…

The Roads Not Taken

September 11 (UK)

Sally Potter’s wistful drama was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival earlier in the year before the world went into lockdown. It follows Leo (Javier Bardem), a man with dementia, as he imagines different paths in life he might have taken, while his daughter Mollie tries to help him keep various appointments and struggles with decisions about her own future. A very personal study of mental illness, grief, and regret.

The Devil All the Time

September 16 (Netflix)

Southern fried noir might be the creepiest noir. With its rural and sunny backdrops, and a smiling Christian face, its pleasantries belie an evil heart. And Tom Holland of all people will be driving right to the dark center of it in The Devil All the Time, a new thriller by writer-director Antonio Campos. 

Ready to bow on Netflix this month, the all-star cast, which also includes Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, and Robert Pattinson, as a fire and brimstone preacher no less, The Devil All the Time reimagines post-WWII Tennessee backwoods as a hotbed of corruption, hypocrisy, and murder. Sounds about right.

Antebellum

September 18 (U.S. Only)

Co-writers and directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz appear to have cracked the code in making one of fiction’s favorite fantasies terrifying. You know the type: From Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to Midnight in Paris, some congenial fellow travels back to a point in history he loves and has an all-around splendid time. Now imagine that same scenario except the protagonist is a Black woman. And she’s sent to the Antebellum South on the eve of the Civil War. Scared yet?

It’s a disturbing premise that aims to put Antebellum in the same wheelhouse as recent horror movies that have tackled American racism head on, including Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us. The movie stars the ever compelling Janelle Monáe as a 21st century author trapped inside a 19th century nightmare, and it’s one of the most intriguing setups of the year. It also will be available on VOD and in select theaters.

The King’s Man

September 18 (September 16 in the UK)

Kingsman: The Secret Service was one of the nicer surprises of 2015. A better Bond movie than that year’s Bond film, this Matthew Vaughn directed and Jane Goldman co-written spy adventure was both a satire and loving homage to 007 movies of the 1960s and ‘70s, with excessive swagger and style to boot. Unfortunately, Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) didn’t live up to its predecessor. It did, however, make enough money to spawn a prequel. Which brings us to The King’s Man.

As Disney/20th Century Studios’ latest release, this movie sees Vaughn return to the director’s chair as he travels back in time to World War I and the origins of the Kingsman secret service. With the same daffy style but now in period garb (it worked for Vaughn in X-Men: First Class), the prequel hopes to recapture the charm of the original. It certainly has a winning cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Bruhl, Djimon Hounsou, and Gemma Arterton.

Kajillionaire

September 18 (October 9 in the UK)

One of the happy discoveries out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Focus Features’ Kajillionaire is a movie we’ve had our eye on for a while. The picture is writer-director Miranda July’s pleasant vision of criminality and heists being the stuff of family team-building. Take Evan Rachel Wood as Old Dolio. She’s an adult daughter whose depression has forced her to live at home with her small time crook parents. But Mom and Pop (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) have a plan; they’ll incorporate their daughter in the next heist and bring her out of her funk. It’s a charming premise that won over almost every critic who saw it back in January.

The Nest

September 18 (U.S. Only)

Another apparent highlight out of Sundance this year, Sean Durkin’s The Nest presents itself as a foreboding drama. As the follow-up feature from the director of Martha Marcy May Marlene, the film intends to be an unsettling account of a wealthy marriage descending into Gaslight levels of manipulation. With Jude Law as the rich patriarch and Carrie Coon as his quietly suffering wife, a sudden move to the country reveals dark dimensions to their relationship and the brittleness of domesticity. If the buzz is to be believed, the wound up WASPy tension in this could strangle an elephant.

Enola Holmes

September 23 (Netflix)

Did you know Sherlock Holmes had a little sister? You’re about to thanks to some strong synergetic mojo going on at Netflix with Enola Holmes, a new mystery/adventure that stars The Witcher’s Henry Cavill as Sherlock, The Crown’s Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Holmes, and Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown as the eponymous Enola. That’s right, Eleven’s going to use her own English accent and play Sherlock’s kid sister. 

Often kept in her famous brother’s shadow, it is up to Enola to do him one better when she sets off to find their mysteriously vanished mother. In the process, she proves she’s a super-sleuth in her own right and brings to light a deadly conspiracy. The game’s afoot!

Misbehaviour

September 25 (Open in the UK)

A crowd-pleaser that debuted earlier in the year in the UK, Misbehaviour has all the markers of a charming dramedy with real world ramifications. In fact, it’s set during the events of the Miss World competition in 1970, a televised beauty pageant in London that was then the most-watched event on the planet. In this context, the Women’s Liberation Movement reached international acclaim by disrupting the proceedings, and a Woman of Color from Grenada became a contender for the Miss World title.

Director Philippa Lowthorpe (The Crown) reportedly explores these events to winning results with an ensemble of players that Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley as lead activists, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Jennifer Hosten (aka Miss Grenada), and Greg Kinnear at his greasiest as an aging Bob Hope.

Greenland

September 25 (U.S. Only)

Imagine this: A comet that is supposed to gently pass Earth by was misjudged by the science community, and instead a cataclysmic extinction level event occurs with comet fragments destroying parts of the world one action scene at a time! Yeah, in 2020 that sounds about right. It’s also the plot of Greenland, a new high-concept survivalist action movie starring Gerard Butler as a family man who, realizing Florida is gone and his home state is next, tries to save his wife (Morena Baccarin) and child by getting his family to the last place that may be spared: military bunkers in Greenland!

And you thought U.S. leadership was being ridiculous when it tried to buy the country a few years ago…

The post Upcoming Movies in September 2020: Theaters, Streaming, and VOD appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[simone-boccanegra]

Filling the video game asks

VIDEOGAMES

First videogame ever played - Mario, sometimes in the 90s

Two favorite videogames genres - fantasy and horror

Three favorite videogames’ soundtracks - The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, Dragon Age 2

Four favorite fantasy rpgs classes - mage (all Dragon Age), sneak archer (Skyrim), dual wield (Dragon Age), conjuration mage (Skyrim)

Five favorite gaming companies: I don’t really care about companies enough to remember 

Six (or less) videogames played in 2019: Skyrim, Oblivion, Dragon Age (Origins and 2), The Witcher 3

Seven (or less) videogames you plan to play in the future: Bloodborne (I need a PS4), Dark Souls 3 (I need at least an USB gamepad, the controls are shit on PC), Elden Ring, Dishonored, Dishonored 2 (I’ve watched let’s plays of all that are out, but I want to play them too)

Eight favorite videogames’ locations: 1. The Shivering Isles 2. Blackmarsh 3. Ostagar 4. Whiterun 5. Sovngarde 6. Deep Roads (DAO) 7. Velen 8. Denerim during the siege

Nine underrated/unknown videogames: I know ONE that’s very little known and I LOVED, Animamundi: Dark Alchemist

Ten videogame/videogames series: Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Assassin’s Creed, Dishonored, The Witcher, Sekiro, Bloodborne, Hollow Knight

CHARACTERS (any game)

One character creation screen you love: Dragon Age: Origins is easy to navigate, easy to mod and you can get right to it by skipping the intro

Two of your player characters (share your protagonists!): Idun Brosca, my first Warden, and Rowena Shepard, my first and canon Shep

Three characters you wished you could romance: The Arishok, Legion, and Lucien Lachance

Four family members (characters who are your protagonist’s family): Bryce and Eleanor Cousland (I’m still not over them), Bethany Hawke, Ciri

Five best outfits (for any character): Daedric Armour (Skyrim), Sentinel Armour (DA: Awakening), franky all the rest are from mods. Vanilla outfits generally suck.

Six pre-made protagonists you love: Geralt, Ezio, Altair, Corvo, Sekiro, Bayek

Seven villains/antagonists: The Arishok, Loghain, Samson, Sovereign, Jyggalag, The Illusive Man, Ludwig the Accursed/the Holy Blade

Eight secondary characters (non companions): Regis, the Bloody Baron, the Fire Keeper, the Doll, Duncan, Caridin, Captain Anderson, Ketojan (he should have been a companion!)

Nine favorite companions: Zevran, Anders, Legion, Thane, Mordin, Solaire, Alistair, Isabela, Tali

Ten favorite characters: Sheogorath, Regis, Legion, Mordin, Anders, Thane, Iris von Everec, Vernon Roche, Flemeth, the Outsider

EXTRA/RANDOM

One frustrating plot hole: 

Two moments that made you cry: only 2? XD Okay, Mordin’s death and Thane’s death. But there are so many more...

Three games where you would like to play/played as evil: Dragon Age: Origins and 2 (I did), Skyrim (not all-out evil but I murder NPCs for the crime of being annoying)

Four plot twists: 

Five rpg choices you could never make: I could never sell Fenris to Danarius or give Isabela to the Arishok, never keep the Anvil, never destroy the werewolves, and NEVER KILL ANDERS 

Six pets/animals: BARKSPAWN!!!, Rieklings (they are classified as pets!), the space hamster in Mass Effect, Roach (spawning in the weirdest places), Ser Pounce-a-Lot, Arvak

Seven spells: Storm Atronach (Skyrim), I don’t know the spell names in DA by heard but the crushing cage, various ice spells, various lightning spells, heal/group heal, resurrect!, that pull thing you have as battlemage in DA2

Eight (your choice)

Nine (your choice)

Ten (your choice)