#that game gives me such intense anxiety because of the gameplay LOL

[kingdomtual]

I wanted to play some spooky games but then I realized...my spooky games...they’re only on my ps2 and it’s broken LOL

[ziracona]

hey zira, what are your hot takes on all of the fo4 companions?

Haha, I don’t know how hot they are, but I can give you a speed run! (Also I am very excited to get this. FO4 was the first open world game I ever played and just the concept of that and the hugeness of the world and branching story & sudden feeling changes towards me in companion characters totally blew my mind, & it still lives rent free in my heart).

Ada, Old Longfellow, and Strong I /still/ haven’t maxed despite having too many hundred hours to want to list on this game—the former bc they were DLC, Strong because honest to god I left him at a nice settlement and then completely forgot about him and remembering that I am the energy in this Ryan O’Flanagan video but abt leaving my super mutant in a tiny settlement alone. I will get there! To max affinity I mean. But anyway, I don’t truly know those three, so my takes are incomplete. So far though, I really like Ada. She is a good girl just trying her best. Fucks me up I can tell her to self destruct. Even though I feel sure she would ignore me, I cannot imagine ever saying that to her. It was really sweet she was willing to forgive the Mechanist and move on with her life. A good girl. Longfellow I am maxing rn (was last time I played anyhow). I enjoy him. Gruff grumpy old man but he seems quite decent and I like his idle banter and when he sings to himself a lot. Seems like he’s had it rough. Strong I liked. He’s wild, and I loved how insane meeting him was, and am worried about him eventually understanding poetry and how that might mess up his sense of world understanding. But he’s a chill dude in his own way and I am glad they gave us at least one nice super mutant.

For the companions I actually do know like the back of my hand, the speedrun:

Nick Valentine: Best man on earth. One of two fictional characters I ever called husband. I would die kill or live for him. I want to be 1/4th the man Nick Valentine is. One of the best characters ever period and I adore literally everything about him. It fucked me up early in game where right after he offered to basically risk destroying his mind to help a stranger look for her son, he asked me how I was doing. First character in the entire game to do that. His first companion dialogue is abt how you’re doing TuT. The man is very kind and forgiving and fair, but knows when the draw the line and take no shit. Emotionally mature, kind, caring, longsuffering. Incredibly damaged and broken by life, but holding on and living kindly and to help others anyway. One of the four most marryablen fictional men I’ve ever seen.

Preston Garvey: Brave, kind, sweet man. I would defend him with my life. He really just wants so bad to make the world better and life has been so hard, but he’s still trying. A beautiful and underrated companion and I would throw hands for him on sight. I adore how he whistles. A true and gentle and loyal friend. Take him to Quincy and let him get his justice it’s what he deserves. People who hate him because he tries to get help helping civilians in that game are weak. I love him so much... please give him enough time to reach max affinity he’s so worth it.

Deacon: *To the tune of You Are My Dad* You are my friiiiend! You’re my friend! (Boogie woogie woogie). Initially, he pissed me off bc he lies all the god damn time, but after we got close enough he actually trusted me, he stole my heart and I would also die for Deacon. He’s a really good person who thinks he’s shit because of who he was on his past. Also him 🤝 Preston: massive survivor’s guilt. They should be friends. Poor Deacon has been the last member of the Railroad like four times, and it’s awful. Help him. Give him love and support. He’s one of my all time faves. Also, Railroad hands down best faction and if you kill them for any reason other than like a walkthrough route video and I ever get the chance I would 100% clock you in the face as hard as I can, like going for losing teeth, and feel no guilt. I know it’s a game and that’s wrong, and I’d be wrong, but I’d still do it. Also, Ryan Alosio (his VA) saw me do cosplay for Deacon once and told me it was great and it filled me with even more love. Anyway Deacon is great. Also, his whole “There are other organisations out there. And, in time, I'm sure they're going to spoon-feed you their own patented form of bullshit. Ignore the verbage and look at what they're doing. What they're asking you to do. What sort of world they'd have you build and how they're going to pay for it.” Is one of the like, two most iconic quotes in all of FO4 & just super good in general.

Hancock: Hardcore badass man but also a good dude and a champion for the people. Man really puts his money where his mouth is and you gotta respect that; another favorite companion for sure. Big fan of the way he stabs a guy for you upon meeting, and is a cool leader who organized his crime and does a decent job actually leading. He works hard to help people and bites back hard. Social justice advocate, dangerous man about town, not afraid to cosplay a revolutionary war hero 24/7 & u gotta respect the no fucks given attitude. A chill dude. Like that he fights the institute, hates the Brotherhood, helps the Railroad, and is friends with Nick. He’s legit af. Also, his VA gives a different answer every time someone asks him about the voice he did for hancock and they’re funny af.

Piper Wright: A cool spunky lady. Lois Lane on the case, kicking butt, and taking name. She’s nice but also hardcore and smart, supportive, fun. A good person. You always get points if you like Nick (which most companions do), and they’re good friends. She’s funny and I love her. A good heart.

Codsworth: He’s great. He’s family. He’s like my...weird brother. Getting to max affinity is heartwarming and also makes my heart go :’-] . Great early-game companion bc he kicks ass and doesn’t need stims to heal. I love getting called by my name and think that was a great feature (well, my PC’s name). He’s a wonderful funky little robot dude and I am so glad he likes me.

Dogmeat: Amazing. A good boy. Doggo of the year. His actor deserved the game award she won. Cute, full of love, and plays with a teddy bear if you give him one. 100/10z

Cait: I like her a lot. She’s been through so much shit, and it makes sense she is how she is. I like they actually gave her an emaciated and messy (though still pretty) design, since she is a drug addict. And that they make her main quest about taking that seriously and wanting to get help, and that she’ll call out the player if they fuck around and do drugs in front of her after she gets rehabilitated. Her relationship to the PC if good is really sweet, and I am a fan. I like that while she’s not sympathetic to synths and thinks they aren’t people, she forgets that every time Nick walks into a room and is like “Oh hey Nicky : )”. She’s a good girl who has been through a lot and still needs time to heal and find herself, but she’s making great strides.

Robert Joseph MacCready: Human disaster (loving). Homeboy a goddamn /mess/ but I love him. He tries so hard to be cool. I love he makes you pay him to come with, then chickens out and gives it back lol. A fool ball of anxiety and bad decisions and what he thinks brovado is. I wish he, Preston, and Deacon would quit fighting, bc I am always like “ :’-] </3 Boys Please” when they swap out, but I love them just the same. He’s doing his best, he’s just stupid and a fool. Like Philip J Fry. Keeping his goddamn soldier toy, which somehow is listed as junk instead of sent to Misc with quest items where it would be fine, safe?parylizes me with fear. I’ve lost 2 hours of gameplay reloading an old save bc I accidentally lost it.

X6-88: A more complex one to answer about. He’s bad, but like, I’m pretty sympathetic to how he got that way. He was created in a lab and had his emotions mostly dragged out of him in intense psychologically damaging training so he would be a weapon and view himself as an object. I was relieved he chose me over the institute even if he wasn’t a fan of the chocie, and think that means there’s a lot of hope for him. Wish he’d chill the fuck out and quit intimidating civilians for 6 god damn seconds, but I like him. I bring him fancy lad snack cakes home from travels all the time, bc Synths are supposed to like them. Really like that he’s the /most/ sympathetic companion towards Danse in Blind Betrayal, even though he should not be programmed for that, and Danse hated him and made it clear any time they interacted.

(EDIT) Curie: I FORGOT HER BABY IM SO SORRY. I like Curie a lot, despite the fact I temporarily forgot she existed. I stg I thought she was in here. Uhhh, okay. Curie: like her character and personality, HUGE un-fan of both the way her desire to get a synth body is to be ‘more real,’ as if Codsworth isn’t a fully realized person while the same robot type she is, instead of just like. Because it would make her happy. ALSO hate how much of a Born Sexy Yesterday she is, even intentionally in not-determinate affinity talks. It’s gross. But her herself, I like a lot. She’s my daughter and I will protect her. She works at The Castle right now as their on-site medic.

Paladin Danse: I know I’m gonna take heat for this but honestly? He didn’t do much for me. I like that he looks and sounds kinda like Buzz Lightyear, and that’s fun, but idk at all why people think he’s so hot. He’s very boring & generic looking to me. Like you’re valid! Taste all be different. But he doesn’t do it for me personally in looks or personality. I don’t at all like, hate him. Or even dislike. Tbh I am fairly neutral on him. It was funny making affinity with him though. Every other companion I had maxed, I liked more and more with each affinity talk. They’d be like “So my dad was a minuteman and died and I want to honor him” or “I just want to really feel like I’m a person, for real, myself, and I am glad I met you, because the good we have achieved together is ours, even if I can’t be sure of anything else,” or “My brother threw the cultural minorities out of our city for clout bc the rich citizens were all racist, and I tried to help—I snuck them food to the unsafe ruins they set up in for weeks, but eventually, they just vanished, and I still bear immense guilt and self-hatred over not having stopped that.” And Danae’s would be like “One time a buddy of mine got kidnapped by super mutants. They turned him into one of them, and they’re all abominations, so I killed him and it made me really sad.” And I was just like “...Oh danse. I really wanted to like you more. But what the fuck.” His relationship to Haylen is sweet though. And ofc I saved him in Blind Betrayal. I blew up the Prydwin so he’s safe now too, and he lives in the garden by my house and tells me how glad he is we’re friends, and I’m p into that. Overall, my feelings on him are not strong at all though.

Porter Gage: Not a fan. Like, I appreciated he helped me kill the old boss, sure. And bc I owed him for that, I went to max affinity to see what there was to him as a person. And like, as far as raiders go, he was okay. But he wasn’t deeply sympathetic, and he’s a slaver, and if you try to liberate the slaves he and the others own, he /will/ turn on and attempt to murder you immediately, no matter how close you were, so he made his choice, and it was to be a bad person and an asshole to the last. Really enjoyed the VA’s work a lot on him tho.

And there you have it 👈👈😎. Thanks for asking!

[ellie-s-machete]

My thoughts on The Last Of Us Part II

This is my general opinion about the game as a whole. Spoilers ahead

The main reason why I love this game is because of its bold story. Playing half of the game as the antagonist and trying to make the player understand her point of view is ballsy. It worked for some people, it didn't work at all for others but you gotta admit that this isn't lazy storytelling, or bad storytelling. I totally get that some players didn't like the game, this is a divisive, polarizing game, and it achieved its goal. But once again, and I cannot stress this enough, not liking the story doesn't mean the story sucks. On the contrary, The Last Of Us Part II is brilliant.

To appreciate the game, three things are required: (1) try to understand each character's point of view, (2) keep in mind that there is no hero and no villain, (3) analyze what you're seeing, especially characters' behaviors and actions. I'm not trying to sound pedantic, but you have to use your brain and analyze the shit out of this game. You don't need a high IQ or whatever, just make the effort to understand what you're witnessing. The Last of Us Part II is not comfort food, it's not something you play to just relax (and if that's what you're looking for in a game, great! just play something else, because you won't get what you like with part II). If you're out there playing the game and draw conclusions just by looking at the tip of the iceberg, no wonder you will find the game shallow. Dig deeper, I swear it's not that hard. Maybe you still won't like the game, which is fine, but if you don't make the effort to try to understand, then you're not giving the game a chance in the first place.

Gameplay wise, Part II is far better than Part I. The melee combat with the dodge mechanic was amazing. It felt like stealth was harder in Part II, probably due to the improved AI. The AI was sooo good, and I played on moderate so I can only imagine how tense the gameplay would be on survivor. Because let's face it, even on grounded the AI in part I was clunky, stealth was so easy. Part II offers you a real challenge. The only thing I didn't really like was the different weapons in the second part of the game where you play as Abby, I didn't like the crossbow and the other guns. The only good add-on was the pipe bombs.

Now I have to say that I didn't enjoy Abby's part of the game as much as Ellie's (I still liked it because of the intense combat sequences though). And what I'm about to say is the biggest flaw of the game, at least for me: at one point it didn't feel like I was playing a tlou game (feel free to share your thoughts about this because I didn't see any player bringing that up). For me the most important element of this game is your connection to the characters, and unfortunately it didn't happen for me. I was completely neutral regarding almost all characters in Abby's part. The two only engaging characters were Abby and Lev. To be quite honest I didn't care at all about Owen, Mel, Manny, Nora etc... And this aspect of the game really contrasted with Ellie's part: I loved every single side characters (Dina, Jesse, Tommy, or even Maria). So the lack of attachment to secondary characters in Abby's part was what made the game feel off for me. The only thing that really grounded the story in the world of The Last of Us was the presence of the infected, with multiple memorable encounters which overall made Abby's part more intense than Ellie's. It's just a shame that I didn't really care about the characters. I'm not saying that the second part of the game was bad, I'm just saying it felt underwhelming for me. But I see a bunch of people say that they preferred Abby's part which is great!

Important thing about the story: I see a lot of people say that the story is messy, and I don't agree at all. Everything makes sense, everything is meticulously interwoven, everything is logical. What people aren't used to are the multiple timelines, the story isn't linear like the first game was, and I love it. Also it was something that was predictable if you're familiar with Halley Gross' work on Westworld (if you are confused with the timeline of Part II, don't watch Westworld lol). For me the non-linear narration makes the story powerful because you get hit with these mini epiphanies throughout the game, and it's thrilling. And the game was perfectly balanced between action, stressful moments, and moments of levity. What I thought was amazing is that the game first makes you believe that flashback sequences will be moments of levity, which they are in a way. But these flashbacks are also anxiety inducing, as they contain key story elements (mostly linked to Ellie and Joel's relationship and its evolution throughout the 4 years spent in Jackson) that everyone was craving for (like Ellie confronting Joel about the lie). This is awesome because flashback sequences first give you a false sense of security, you feel like it will be a moment where you can just breathe and relax, but nope. It's also reinforced by the fact that they chose to make some of these flashback sequences longer and playable with the inclusion of combat encounters. The pacing was really good in my opinion.

A lot of the encounters were memorable, but the most intense for me was the Abby/Ellie confrontation in the theatre. I hated it and loved it at the same time. I hated it because I really thought I was going to kill Ellie as Abby (didn't see any leak of that part). I was shaking, I didn't want to hold the controller anymore, I didn't want to see Dina get killed, it was by far the hardest part for me, emotionally speaking. I just couldn't believe what was happening, it was insane. No other game had made me feel that uncomfortable before, I was going through a wild range of emotions, the whole sequence felt like a vivid dream, or nightmare should I say. And that is why I love that part. It's the best climax I have ever experienced in any form of media, a real climax. What a ride!

Part II proved that both Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross are fantastic writers, and that them working together was a great collaboration. They figured out a great balance between their respective ideas, considering that they often have diverging ideas. It just proves that a lot of thoughts were put into the making of the game, that everyone's opinion was taken into consideration (even the actors' opinions), which resulted in a well thought-out game that hasn't been rushed.

[praneethgannoji]

Annotated Bibliography

1. Porter, G. and Starcevic, V. (2007). Are Violent Video Games Harmful? Australasian Psychiatry, 15(5), pp.422–426.

The content of this source is about the relationship between violent video games and aggression, It argues that even though there is a link between violent videogames and aggressive behavior, it can be because of hostile traits. It takes experimental, correlation, and longitudinal study designs with 32 students to find the link, using parameters like heart rate. During experimental studies, the participants blasted their opponents with strong noise 0.16 seconds longer and rated themselves higher on the hostility scale after playing a violent video game compared to a non-violent one, remaining studies also found the link between violent video games and aggressive behavior. This source very useful because it addresses the debate that has been going on since the creation of video-games. More research has to be done as there is minimal data to prove and the link between them and as an aspiring game designer it made me more cautious about the kind of games I create.

2. Ventura, M., Shute, V. and Kim, Y.J. (2012). Video gameplay, personality and academic performance. Computers & Education, 58(4), pp.1260–1266.

The purpose of this Journal is to find the relationship between video games, personality and academic performance. this journal states selective video games can actually improve GPA, social skills, visual-spatial skills and attention. Diverse playstyle is linked to openness but habitual playing can reduce a person’s Conscientiousness. I found this journal very insightful because video games are usually linked with violence, bad GPAs, social skills, this journal argues the contrary. One of the strengths of this experiment is it actually contradicts a common notion that Video games have a negative effect on a person’s academic performance. its weaknesses are the small sample size, genre diverseness, gender. This source though not perfect shapes my way of understanding as playing video games with moderation can have a positive impact on social and academic skills.

3. Dubey, R., Agrawal, P., Pathak, D., Griffiths, T.L. and Efros, Alexei A (2018). Investigating Human Priors for Playing Video Games. [online] arXiv.org. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10217.

This paper deals with the difference between human beings and computer learning when it comes to video gameplay and how human beings can solve a complex video game that they have never seen before by bringing prior knowledge, unlike AI. This paper covers how vital are these priors and the ways to measure them. Its main arguments are, unlike machines, human beings bring a great amount of prior knowledge to solve a problem and the removal of it can cause a drastic difference in speed. To prove this the researchers recruited 40 subjects and made them play an unfamiliar game. They completed the task very quickly, for the next test they adjusted object semantic, hidden object locations, removed affordance and found a drastic difference in-game time, with this experiment the researchers found how important each prior is to complete the given task and it will be very useful to me as an aspiring game developer.

4. Michailidis, L., Balaguer-Ballester, E. and He, X. (2018). Flow and Immersion in Video Games: The Aftermath of a Conceptual Challenge. Frontiers in Psychology, 9.

This article looks at the differences between flow and immersion, these two terms are often used in the video game literature interchangeably, this paper critically analyses both of the concepts and argues flow is more descriptive not definitive in nature as it varies from person to person, it is labeled as an intense experience. while an average immersive experience can be defined as engagement and engrossment which is not much different from the flow and concludes that the word flow and immersion can be used interchangeably until further behavioral and neurophysiological evidence is provided. I found this source very useful as it looks at the subtle nuances between flow, immersion, presence which can be very useful in video game design as games are all about immersing a player in the world developers created.

5. Pallavicini, F. and Pepe, A. (2019). Virtual Reality Games to Enhance Positive Emotions and Decrease Anxiety: A Pilot Study on the Role of Body Involvement (Preprint). JMIR Serious Games.

This paper is an experiment conducted on how Virtual reality can increase positive emotions of the player, decrease anxiety and negative emotions by looking at the level of body involvement requested by the game. the subjects were 36 young adults who were made to play a low body involvement and a high body involvement game, fruit ninja and  Audioshield respectively, using The Visual Analogue Scale and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. They concluded VR does improve positive emotions and reduce anxiety especially during playing high body involvement games. I found this article very useful as games cannot only be for mindless fun but can also have some positive effect on your mental health, few downsides are that the games did not have a control group, small sample size, no physiological measure, short game time periods.

6. de Las Heras, B., Li, O., Rodrigues, L., Nepveu, J.-F. and Roig, M. (2020). Exercise Improves Video Game Performance. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, p.1.

This source is about finding how physical exercise can help gamers to improve their performance in-game thus promoting physical activity, by investigating how a short session of cardiovascular exercise has an effect on performance in League of Legends. Researchers investigated short term effects on twenty individuals. They were told to do high-intensity interval training (HIIT), during rest they were told to sit on a cycle ergometer for 15 minutes without pedaling after that they were told to read a book for 20 minutes to eliminate any external stimulation, after that they were told to fill out a self-reported questionnaire(PANAS). They were tasked to play a customized LoL match for 20 minutes and eliminate targets with a single attack and performance was accessed along with enjoyment and concluded even short-term exercises can improve game performance. I found this source very novel as the results are very clear without any assessor bias.

7. King, D.L. and Delfabbro, P.H. (2018). Predatory monetization schemes in video games (e.g. ‘loot boxes’) and internet gaming disorder. Addiction, 113(11), pp.1967–1969.

This article is about monetization schemes like ‘Lootboxes’ that can influence players to spend real-world money to buy virtual items. It states how predatory these schemes are and how Videogame companies take advantage of loopholes in the law and also about teenagers who spent thousands of dollars, some of them undergoing treatment for internet gaming disorder(IGD). It also states the countermeasures taken by different governments to tackle this issue, like China which passed legislation for game developers to reveal the chances of getting their desired item in the loot box, and Belgium declaring they are in violation of Gaming legislation. This source is very useful to me because as a  gamer who never had any sort of addiction problems, always thought the government should never involve in markets but looking at the problem I think some form of government regulation is necessary to stop videogame companies to take advantage of gullible people.

8. Zadro, J.R., Shirley, D., Simic, M., Mousavi, S.J., Ceprnja, D., Maka, K., Sung, J. and Ferreira, P. (2018). Video-Game–Based Exercises for Older People With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Controlled table Trial (GAMEBACK). Physical Therapy, 99(1), pp.14–27.

This study is about an experiment conducted on older individuals(>55 years) with chronic LBP randomized 1:1 to continue usual physical activities or to play Wii Fit U exercises to test pain self-efficacy and care-seeking, it revealed people playing Wii Fit U had more pain self-efficacy at 6 months compared to people with the control group. Thus proving Wii Fit U exercises improve pain self-efficacy, pain, and function in older people, The interesting part of this experiment is that it proves video games actually improve pain resistance which is the core part of continuing any physical activity, unlike other experiments, it expresses adherence in different ways by showing how compliant a participant is, few limitations of this experiment are the exercises done on Wii Fit U are unsupervised, using a paper exercise diary to track adherence, possible differences between Therapist and participant interaction.

9. Formosa, P., Ryan, M. and Staines, D. (2016). Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames. Ethics and Information Technology, 18(3), pp.211–225.

This paper is about exploring the themes of a video game called Papers please (2013) to demonstrate the systemic approach in video games for moral engagement and showing the difference between strengths and weaknesses between systemic approach and scripted approach in video game design by using Four Component model of moral expertise(moral motivation, moral sensitivity, moral judgment, and moral action) which can help to design games that are morally engaging. This paper is very useful to game designers as it shows the advantages and disadvantages between scripted and system approach in games, This source shapes my understanding as to how a simple gameplay mechanic like checking papers can give rise to such complex themes such as dehumanization, loyalty, etc., but it lacks the strong characterization provided my more scripted games.

10. Gros, L., Debue, N., Lete, J. and van de Leemput, C. (2020). Video Game Addiction and Emotional States: Possible Confusion Between Pleasure and Happiness? Frontiers in Psychology, 10.

This study is about differentiating pleasure and happiness within the addiction sphere, an experiment was conducted between game addicts and nonaddicts with video game-related activities and neutral activities between the subjects and emotional reactions were taken by self-reported scales and psychological data through relaxation and heart rate. Out of 105, 61 video game players were made to complete three questionnaires anonymously, after that they were welcomed to a testing room that made them choose their favorite video game and the examiner observed them. 6 types of experimental phases determined their emotional state through self-report questionnaires or through physiological measures and the result is game addicts show high craving and low relaxation level which is in contrast to associating video games with happiness. I found this study very insightful because generally, people associate happiness and craving as positive emotions it's actually a negative one this made me research more on the nuances between pleasure and happiness.

[tumblunni]

AH FUCK I REMEMBERED IT AGAIN I swear its like clockwork, i keep making this post like once a damn year

OKAY SO THIS SCENE

now i like i never actually cried at persona 4, its actually my least favourite persona game cos it has so much bigoted stuff you have to ignore to get to the actual plot. At least those sorts of moments were sidequest only in P3 and P5 BUT THE ANIME ADAPTATION I knooooowww that the anime has a load of flaws but like I think I’m the only one who preferred it to the game. or at least this ONE SINGLE EPISODE was great, and SO GREAT that it was better than the anime and the game combined! and I never cried at anything in the game but this one damn anime scene made me sob like a happy equivelant of P3′s ending scene sobs... and now i end up associating this one particular remix of the boss battle theme with that scene instead of the game and GAH i cant hear it without being hyped!!!

so yeah TO EXPLAIN THE CONTEXT FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVENT SEEN IT In the game: shadow mitsuo is a tough boss fight but has no emotional story stuff around it, also is not very climactic at all cos its obvious from the start that he’s a fakeout final boss In the anime: THE OPPOSITE OF ALL DAT In the game: protagonist has no dialogue and no canon personality In the anime: THEY GAVE HIM A DAMN GOOD ONE In the game: protagonist never gets a Shadow and thus never gets any doubts or fears or triumph over them which unlocks super extra power and makes you cry like a damn bitch In the anime: GUESS WHAT THEY ADDED

And FUCK it is SUCH a good plot and I am SO angry that it wasn’t in the game cos now I have to tell people to watch a terrible anime adaptation just to see this one uncharacteristically impossibly universally good bit that somehow snuck in! It’s so great because they establish Yu’s personality as ‘the comically serious guy’ and he’s just so much more loveable when he’s quiet but not silent, and only pipes up when he needs to break his own badass rep with a really silly comic relief moment. I will forever imagine his anime personality as canon, it makes the game so much better! And like once you’ve got so attatched to him you get the surprise awesomeness of him getting a Shadow episode, which you weren’t expecting cos its just Game Rules that the protagonist is always infallable and voiceless.

And I love how they pulled off that surprise, too! They show the gang about to fight Mitsuo before the opening credits, and then afterwards it seems like we’ve flashed forwards to after the fight. And like, it being a bad adaptation somehow makes it work even better?? It wouldn’t seem out of character for them to have skipped some minor fights in a montage sequence. And then the episode just continues, and you’re expecting that any second everyone will find out that Mitsuo wasn’t really the real villain, but instead it just keeps rolling into a happy ending?? And it just keeps going AFTERWARDS, and shows it all turn sour and scary and Yu has to face his demons And its so relateable what his troubles are! his biggest fear is losing his friends and finding out the people he cares about don’t care as much about him, or that he’s useless and could be easily replaced by someone better. His bad ending isn’t anything big or supernatural, it’s just the ordinary anxiety of finishing high school and wondering how long you’ll be able to keep in touch. And it works so well as a love letter to the game?? Cos you see him struggling to get the words out, you see him slowly becoming actually silent, and becoming actually superfluous in his own life. You see him fading into the background as everyone else leaves and nothing would even be different without him. if anything IS different, its them being HAPPIER without him! So its a deconstruction of his original gameplay limitations, and also a dark subversion of the game’s happy ending of everyone finishing high school, etc.

And then its just SO GOOD and SO CATHARTIC in the end HOLY FUCK Cos you find out they’re ACTUALLY STILL FIGHTING MITSUO And Yu is trapped inside an illusion of his own shadow and you never even noticed it happening! And then he has his big triumphant moment of facing himself and moving forward and you see his friends reach through the illusion world and pull him back to reality and then he unleashes THE MOST WELL COREOGRAPHED BEATDOWN IN ALL OF HISTORY God, this gives me the same sort of feels as Garnet vs Jasper in Steven Universe! Its a similar moment of a normally unflappable character being defeated, then coming back stronger after an emotional sequence and winning in a rematch that’s synced super well to an awesome song! (tho an instrumental here, not as cool as having relevant lyrics!) But MAN the fight is so fucking cool even with the anime’s sometimes terrible animation and tendancy to have the friend characters not actually do anything, lol. That’s still a problem here cos it’s unintentionally comical how they stop fighting and step back to let Yu deal the final blow, but I mean it works cos its A REALLY FUCKIN GREAT ONE, and they still contributed more than usual by holding bac mitsuo offscreen while Yu was trapped, yknow? BUT ANYWAY THE SCENE AND WHY ITS MY FAVOURITE THING EVER AND I REWATCH IT WHEN I’M DEPRESSED TO KILL ALL SADS Yu does an epic rolling thunder of Every Damn Move In His Moveset All One After Another In An Animation Train (Holy Fuck This Explains How Every Other Episode Had Zero Budget) And cos of how the magic works in this setting he gets to dramatically call out all the names to the beat of the music and the english voiceactor fucking nails the exact nuance of the original and I am SO HAPPY cos he barely got to say two words in the original game! its just Good. its just Really Good.

anyway have a link its probably not as cool out of context or maybe its not as cool if you dont relate intensely to anime Yu’s neuroses or have a dumb bunni brain that’s easily manipulated by Cool Musics And A Guy Yelling Ara Mitama but have it anyway and now i am gonna shut up about this until probably twelve months later when I remember it again

i cry evertiem

seriously man i know that feeling of like.. the triumph of realizing a certain negative thing you believed about yourself is wrong, or standing up to an abuser, or conquering some part of your depression, or just generally a triumph over self hate against all the odds! And I really wish that i could get an awesome theme tune and gloriously animated boss battle actually blowing up those negative feelings and then they never return. But I guess that just means that real life people are even more badass, cos we don’t get one big epiphany moment, we keep fighting and defeating all those self doubt boss monsters throughout our lives. I’m like twelve yu narukamis! :D