#the aesthetic of baldur’s gate FUCKS

[impossible-rat-babies]

I have so much to do still in act 3 aaaaaa

[jojea]

you’re not friends. you’ll never be friends. you’ll be in love ‘til it kills you both.

[notjustdrwhoboards]

BG3 moodboard: Gale Dekarios/Philipp (Tav)

[bloody-kissezz]

🗡️𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖔𝖓𝖊 🩸

[archivestarlyht]

the way ye old tattooing was extremely painful and sol'rys has an entire blackout extending one side of his neck beneath his jaw and fades down past his collarbone and along his shoulder. just for aesthetic purposes i fear.

[crowrelli]

SHES SO CUTE WTF

[fangsandfeels]

The appearance and name of Jerra's mentor were a mystery to me so far...

...until they weren't.

Taros Swiftwater

(also known as The Dead Eye, The Hound, The Scorner...depends on who you ask)

The white eye is pretty much alive and organic and is basically a normal eye. It was implanted in him when he lost his original eye to the wound as a gesture of gratitude.

Received his training in the Hidden Hand of Fate temple in Archwood, but rarely returned there once he started roaming and offering the assistance of vengeance to the downtrodden. Whatever his reason is, it had something to do with him sending Jerra her own way instead of directing her to the temple.

Hates the Zhentarim like it's personal: even before Jerra learned who the Zhents were, she had already known they were "curs, all of them"

Was friends with an Eldathyn peacewoman. Mostly, he befriended her accidentally while repeatedly debating her during their forced cooperation as they repeatedly saved each other's asses and patched each other back to health. Her patience and manner of weaving words were infuriatingly impressive. He ended up respecting her for the person she was and for her sublime sword-wielding skills as well as the art of parrying. He always thought that she wasted her talents on worshipping a goddess who basically demanded her followers to let everyone walk over them for the fragile semblance of peace. Sadly, his point of view was proven correct, when he visited her temple only to find her grave.

Of course, the age sliders can only go so far, so this is how he looked when he found Jerra and took her in (which happened when she was around twelve years old). Accordingly, he is older by the moment they meet again. Not that it really was a problem for him. He probably abused the General Iroh trick more often than you can imagine. Oh no, it wasn't not an old age that got him...

[scalpelsister]

The Waning Moon

[thorne1435]

Every time my character dies in BG3 I grow closer and closer to telling Shadowheart to use Reanimate Dead on her so I don't have to put up with my godawful character anymore.

The elf girl dick isn't worth it if she KEEPS FUCKING DYING

[transslyblue]

I realized I should probably follow up on this post to mention another thing I found funny about Gale.

He fuckin died!!! When I went back before ending act one to harpies!!!

I was wondering why I was taking necrotic damage until I saw him. Just laying there. Dude, you are so smart but the harpies bested you?

Well. Then the panic set in during the cutscene when he explains his little pouch. I almost legit died from the necrotic damage and just bright him back with my own scroll and he was upset I didn't want to use his??

Been playing Baldurs Gate 3 for the better part of the day, and man. I just love Gale. Dude is so awkward

[avocado-writing]

I will forfeit all my worldly possessions for some gortash nsfw, you’re amazing keep up the good work!

cws: hate sex. gn!reader x gortash. enjoy!

you fucking hate him. oh, you hate him.

you make sure he knows it every time you run your nails down his back, rake them, really; leaving hot red welts in their wake. you want him to cry out in pain. instead he hisses in pleasure and buries himself in your further.

it is delicious. it is torture. it is heavenly.

when he’d suggested you’d work together, you’d swallowed your pride and done it for the good of baldur’s gate. the people loved him after all, even if it was all due to his campaign of faux grandeur. ‘a man of the people’. as if. if he was in a lineup and you had to choose the person who you thought had crawled out of the hells, you’d pick him every single time.

but still, despite it all, despite his devilish upbringing and baneite loyalties, there was a bigger enemy to face, and he was a powerful ally.

so ally you did.

it started off innocent enough, him calling meetings with you, just you. strategising, he reasoned. no point in not sharing information. you looked at him with disdain over his map of the city, he just arched a brow.

you hated yourself for having a reaction to it, burning white hot in the pit of your stomach. a mix of rage and lust. when everyone was asleep that night at the elfsong, you shoved your hand between your legs to ease the pressure he had built up, cursing him as you came.

his honeyed words dripped on you. dulled your senses to the lurid colours of his purulent personality. he was evil. viciously so. no good to be next to in the long run.

yet when he hooked the finger of his gauntlet under your chin and brought you in for a kiss, you did not pull away. you met his challenge head on. you teethed at his tongue when it slipped between your lips. you wanted him to know you’d take what you needed from him and hate him as you went. he wanted you to know he didn’t care and would enjoy it anyway.

and now: this.

his hand slipping up your thigh during your meeting until he cups your sex. you near-snarling in return and ripping at his fine clothes, hungering for the meat of his body. you are no aesthete. there is no use in pretending you care about what your tear away - he surely has the best tailors in this city at his beck and call, and it goes some way to soothing your wounded ego when his gown is in scraps from your ardour.

and it is wounded, of course, because you debase yourself like this.

he sits you on top of the map of the city, lays you out over it, and fucks you. there’s a poetry to your bodies combining on top of your shared home. he thrusts and you growl in the back of your throat, smothering his smug smile by forcing him into a near-violent kiss. hate him. you hate him.

his cock slides into your body, thick and hard, and despite your better judgement there is a little thrill in knowing that you get this powerful man to have such a reaction. that the roseate of his cheeks and heave of his chest is because he desires you with his whole being. you purr when his head dips between your legs and he ravishes you with his tongue, just as clever when it fucks as it is when he speaks.

you want to take him apart piece by piece. as he thrusts down into you, dark and dangerous eyes boring into yours without missing a beat, you know he wants to do the exact same in return. reduce you both to parts. jigsaw them together and let the combination of the two of you rule this city, rule the brain, rule the world.

every time you couple, you let yourself get lost in the idea of it for just a moment. the idea of him. the idea of him and you.

but when it is over and you are both sated, your mind and sense return. you cannot trust this man, even after he has been inside of you, when he knows the most intimate etchings of your soul.

so you bid him goodnight, and no more. he is once again an enemy held as close as a friend.

“until next time,” says Gortash with an easy smile, and you want to tell him there will be no ‘next time’ - but it would be a lie neither of you would believe.

[lilithfairen]

On Veilguard, "Dark" Fantasy, and "Mature" Storytelling~

Like many people, I've been enjoying Dragon Age: The Veilguard as of late. It's a fantastic game—the gameplay is excellent, the story is gripping, and the cast of characters is fantastic as always in both quality, depth, and diversity. It's a beautiful game with a great aesthetic, a stunning world, and some deeply emotional and dramatic moments.

I am, however, amused by the idea that Veilguard isn't "dark fantasy". That's been a rallying cry for people who pretend their problem with the game isn't just the existence of queer and non-white characters. People claiming there isn't conflict between the companions, even comparing it to...a one-note interaction in ME2 that gets resolved with one dialogue option in the span of roughly one minute. Needless to say, all of this is bullshit. It's bullshit that you would know is bullshit from...playing the game for just one hour. There's plenty of darkness in Veilguard, and there's a direness in the plot that surpasses the mood of previous Dragon Age games.

Because when you get right down to it...was Origins really that dark a game plot-wise? You start with an objective, you go solve issues, you get allies for the final fight. And very rarely does this lead to setbacks, compromises, sacrifices and losses. In fact, most of the plotlines have third-option solutions that let you get off without any costly compromises. These two groups want each other dead? Here's how you get them to stop fighting! Someone has to sacrifice themselves? Actually...! And as it turns out, the "golden" outcome tends to pop up a lot in "dark" fantasy. Games like Dark Souls or The Witcher let you be the hero who solves everything in a world where everyone else is powerless and miserable!

But when you think about those games, you realize what exactly constitutes "dark" fantasy, and what many people's idea of "mature" storytelling really is.

Let's take The Witcher 3. One of the storylines that gets singled out for being so well-written (supposedly) is the Bloody Baron questline. This is a plot where a tyrannical ruler is painted as some sympathetic figure, up to the point where the best ending to the questline (as per the game's perception of such) is to convince his wife to get back together with him...after he beat her to the point of killing their unborn child. That's correct: there are people whom, for some fucked-up reason, think sympathizing with an abuser is good writing!

And this is pretty damn endemic in the genre, to put the victimization of certain groups on display...and then not really give a shit about it. Let's take Baldur's Gate 3, where one plotline involves an oppressed group who were forced from their homes. This storyline constantly shits on said oppressed group, by painting them as a bunch of leeches with criminals among their number. There's a token air of "racism bad", but people who spout racist garbage at them are still considered good people somehow. And what happens to them, even if you help them in the first act? They continue to suffer. You have to save them again, or what's left of them, all while they are helpless to do anything about their situation.

In fact, there's a lot more than just victimization of other groups in BG3. There's entire races where every representative of the race is just cartoonishly evil. They exist to be enemies and killed off without qualms because their way of life is innately wrong. And it just so happens, totally by coincidence, that these groups...are all non-white people. Much as it's totally a coincidence that almost every female character in a position of power and authority in the game turns out to be an awful evil person. And just like it's also totally a coincidence that the one character the developers consider to be canonically queer (as opposed to "playersexual") is a character whose sexuality is constantly associated with his being a monstrous predator.

And what about the characters of the game? You have a woman who goes surprised-Pikachu-face when her religion of evil turns out to be evil. A man who goes surprised-Pikachu-face when consorting with devils has a price. (Which is at least better than the early-access "I'm a wannabe who needs to consort with devils to get magic powers, unlike the white guy!") A non-white woman who is condemned to death or damnation because the writers never finished her storyline. A non-white woman whose entire characterization revolves around her non-white race being Evil and Stupid. And then you have...a white guy who was so awesome at magic, the goddess of magic had the hots for him (and then turned out to be Evil and Stupid). A white guy who serves as a writer's unsubtle sex-fantasy self-insert, and gets more post-launch constant than any of the non-white companions despite not being one of the main party members.

You contrast that with other "popular" dark fantasy games, and you get the recurring resolution: people are allowed to have happy, positive endings in this genre...when they're not certain types of people.

And that, more than anything, sums up why you have a bunch of people whining that Veilguard isn't "dark" or "mature". There are plenty of dark things that unfold before you. There are plenty of mature themes handled in the story. Arguably, the plot goes to even darker places than any previous game in the series.

But it's not "dark" and "mature" for one reason: It isn't a power fantasy for certain people, where they get to relish in The Other being victimized and dehumanized while a certain group of people enjoy privilege and power, both in-universe and through their treatment by the writers.

Which I think sums up how "mature" such gamers are, if rather than a game where characters are fleshed-out people whose storylines reflect a variety of themes and topics, you'd rather play Generic Edgy Fantasy #431 where Generic White Guy can save the world from Evil Foreign People but can't save women from the writers of the game.

[oxfordthyme]

Intro / My Story

Hello, I'm Thyme and I only recently realized that whump was a thing!

Putting the TL;DR up top: I'm a (mostly NSFW & non con) writer new to the whump community, & very interested to see what's shaking here! Would ultimately love to find some new, like-minded readers to enjoy my fics and offer their thoughts.

(Also please forgive my lack of aesthetic, Tumblr has changed a lot and I'm still figuring things out)

Here's the longer story: I've written whump from the shadows for going on 20 years; no one had ever seen it until I made an AO3 account earlier this year.

In the shadows there is no community and no audience, so I had no clue other people enjoyed hurting their favorite characters as much as I did and always had weird shame about it.

Shame is a huge part of the way I grew up and has hindered my quality of life at every turn. I'm only just taking steps to shed it, and it's a process. I wish I had started it long ago, but better late than never, I guess.

The first part of my "fuck shame" journey was to try writing smut. I'd always just implied it in my fics—because shame—which is so crazy because again, I wasn't even showing these to anyone!!!

I don't even read much smut either so I did some *ahem* research and added some smutty scenes to what would become my first published fic. (It's a Baldur's Gate story reimagining, if Cazador bit a female elf bard instead of Astarion, and that bard embarks on the BG3 storyline with this new version of Astarion.)

The second part of the journey was to step out of the shadows (sort of) and post the fic. So I did that and expected no interaction. But when I started getting kudos and comments... man, I never realized what a dopamine junkie I am because that positive feedback was like a drug. I have never written so much nor so consistently in my life. I've published over 200,000 words since the end of April. Apparently ADHD is no match for my feral dopamine hunger and pathological people pleasing tendencies!

The third part of the journey was to find a community! I joined a whump discord server and now I'm back on Tumblr for the first time in like, twelve years?? I've been lurking in the whump tag and it's so heartwarming to see so many creative people finding community with each other. We don't have to feel like freaks anymore. 🥹

The Baldur's Gate hyperfixation is on the shelf at the moment, and I'm in the middle of a very dark Stranger Things non-con centered longfic in which an 18-year-old Max Mayfield is the whumpee. Three guesses as to who the whumper is 🙄

Anyway, excited to see what's up around here!

[preeningpisces]

Non-curse AU! Choso is a big ol' nerd

A/N: As a big ol' nerd myself I feel passionately about this, so I have way too many thoughts repost bc it wasn't showing in the tag for some reason

Below the cut because I'm a yapper!

♠ Definitely the type to meet his S/O through discord because I think non-curse Choso is much shyer than regular Choso

❥ He wouldn’t be an admin. He’d be the quiet type that’s always there reacting to posts but rarely talks. Has the sickest emotes tho

❥ Prefers smaller discord communities, mostly video game servers

❥ I think he'd like the vaporwave aesthetic and all the RBG setups. Keeps his computer area neat and tidy

❥ Choso fucking loves video games. He'll buy those $300 special edition pre-orders and get the cool figures

❥ HUGE Soulsborne fan. His favorite is Bloodborne (on the nose but I couldn't resist). Also really loves Monster Hunter. Cares a lot about the monster's details, like their eating habits. I think his fave would either be Odogaron, Nargacuga or Zinogre.

❥ Picks the edgiest weapons lmfao. Definitely a longsword user in Monster Hunter. Went blood build in Elden Ring

❥ *Sigh* he does consult reddit for his builds and is a min-maxer. I'm afraid Choso is a reddit user but in a 'I need a thorough understanding of this' kind of way

❥ Function over fashion: he dgaf if that helmet is as ugly as sin, it gives him +2 endurance and he's gonna wear it

❥ Lets you create his character & name them & everything.

❥ If you can't be present for the character creation portion, he'll make his character you! Definitely made you his dream guardian in Baldur's Gate 3 (which in the early access was called the Dream Lover, which is even cuter)

❥ Not pretentious at all about what is/isn't gaming, and plays all sorts of genres

❥ LOVES NINTENDO GAMES. Mario has a special place in his heart. DEFINITELY mains Shy Guy in Mario Kart

❥ Will literally cry and die if you play video games with him. You don't have to be good because he'll happily teach you. Just watching him play and asking about the details will make his day

❥ Definitely would do those cute Animal Crossing museum dates. Loves the relaxing, chill music so much. Despite his min-maxer approach to other games, he's absolutely not a time traveler in Animal Crossing. He's of the mindset that it ruins one of the core features of the game

❥ Stardew Valley? Stardew Valley. Honestly, I can't decide who he romanced first. My heart is telling me Leah, but chat pls advise

❥ Speaking of chat, you just know he's a fan of let's players. Always watching a YouTuber or Twitch Streamer. He's a Markiplier fan. You know it, just accept it

❥ Tbh that's a cute thought: Choso being a fan of the reader that's a small twitch streamer. Should that be a thing?

❥ Really good at singleplayer games. AWFUL at pvp

❥ He'll play something like Fortnite or Overwatch for Yuji, but needs to be hard carried because he only plays when someone asks him to. He can't stand how toxic those communities are, and doesn't want to socialize with strangers just to play a game

❥ He gets HEATED SO EASILY when people are toxic, especially if it's directed at Yuji or someone else he cares about. Definitely the type to step in and check other ppl when they're being toxic. Like those clips where it's a woman in a lobby and the dudes all start being sexist. Choso will not let that shit fly!

❥ Teabag him if you want to see him lose his shit

❥ On the note of Overwatch: the only character he can and will play is Mercy, and he just pockets Yuuji the whole time. Yuji has to beg him to heal/boost their teammates

[kraviolis]

someone liked one of my TOH headcanon posts from earlier this year and it reminded me about the specific headcanons i have for exactly what types of games the hexsquad plays and how they play them.

luz is obv an RPG fantasy fan. anything with a juicy story and a character creator and complex lore she’ll love. she definitely plays series like elder scrolls and baldur’s gate and final fantasy. she also plays final fantasy 14 and has her character as the good witch luzura and she isnt good at playing it like an mmo is supposed to be played but she loves the story. when endwalker came out luz couldnt stop sobbing to the point that camila was actually worried about her. also enjoys roguelikes such as hades or binding of isaac even if she can only play for so long before getting too frustrated. she also 100% plays genshin impact and gets into arguments online with other genshin fans.

amity is a fighting game girl. she is highly competitive and practices combos with her eyes shut. she prefers the tekken series but when luz wants to play with her they play guilty gear bcus luz likes it’s art style the most. she also likes fantasy RPGs but is way more picky about which ones she plays. she likes fire emblem. she also plays ff14 with luz and is actually good at the game (she carries luz sometimes) but isnt a huge fan of MMOs. she also is the one in the friend group with the NASA ass PC rig with a custom case and the most organized wiring you’ve ever seen with the lcd screen on the liquid cooled cpu and the azura figurine inside the case. she also does custom wraps for all her consoles.

hunter likes games that are very much like, micromanagement sims. like civ5 or cities skylines or factorio (i dont know anything about it but ive been assured by my sister that hunter plays modded factorio) but he’s also a fan of like, old school FPS games like doom and half life. i can see him doing speedruns of those games. (also he 100% once got addicted to some game like fuckin. galactic pinball or something to the point where he was staying up all night and not sleeping so he could play more pinball. in order to get him to stop playing so much and actually get some sleep, gus used illusions to make hunter think he was hallucinating about pinball and scared him into not looking at a single screen or monitor for like three weeks.)

gus is a very chill gamer but he likes games that he can sink hours and hours into. instead of playing a wide variety of games he has a select few that he dedicates his time into learning every last mechanic, but there’s also some games he just plays casually. like with pokemon games he’ll put hundreds of hours into them and carefully curate his team and does like nuzlocke runs but when he plays on his and willow’s shared-custody new horizons island he’ll just walk around and catch bugs and shit and not really worry about upgrading his house and make matching fits with his favorite villager.

willow prefers cozy games, like slime rancher or stardew valley or the aforementioned shared new horizons island, but she’s also a fucking menace about them. like she goes HARD on the min-maxing and automation and shit. while gus is wandering around their island catching fish, willow’s busy rearranging her fully upgraded mansion up in the hills and harassing any villagers she doesnt like with nets and deciding what hybrids to plant in front of her bell trees (she only has bell trees for the aesthetic. gus isnt allowed to harvest them) she would also be running the most high profit slime ranch ever but the way she treats her slimes makes hunter upset whenever he sees her just fuckin throwing them off a cliff the second they arent useful to her anymore. (meanwhile hunter names each one of his slimes and always feeds them their favorite foods and cried over casey & beatrix)

vee enjoys survival/strategic horror games, like DBD, resident evil, deadspace, or even FNAF. she’s the type of person to see the goriest most violent death in a video game ever and just go “ew yucky” then carry on. masha and her are often playing DBD together while in a call and are the most annoying pair of suvivors ever. she also likes games such as original katamari and pikmin 1 and chulip. she's also the undefeated DDR champion of the friend group.

and of COURSE they all play video games together. they all have a terraria world they play on together where they all are focused on their own little projects while still working together and are slowly building up their own village/mansion/castle/fort but luz keeps rushing ahead of everyone just bcus she's so excited and she definitely somehow ends up summoning the wall of flesh accidentally

they DID have a modded minecraft world for a few months with both tech mods and magic mods but while hunter, amity, and vee all focused on their factories and computers and technology, gus, willow, and luz fucked around with all the crazy magic and accidentally found out by blowing up a factory. this is where heightened tension between the the warlocks & the scientists began. this spark eventually turned into a full fledged war that lasted two months before it ended in mutually assured destruction to the point where no one could actually load into the server without their game crashing.

bonus: camila isnt much of a gamer with one exception-- when she was in college manny introduced her to WoW and got her hooked. it was Their Game that they played together all the time. they made cosplays of their characters together. they had several dates in game. they optimized their characters to perfect compliment one another when they ran dungeons with their guild. even since manny passed camila still plays every so often and keeps in touch with their guild members. for the longest time luz has 0 idea that camila plays WoW at all and only finds out after the whole secret nerd confession.

[lakemojave]

Mojave's Top Ten Games of 2023 (3 of which actually came out this year)

I figured I should make a list like this at some point, but I didn't actually play many new games this year. Well, I played tons of games for the first time and loved so many of them, but few of them were new releases. At my current stage as a game critic, I'm playing a lot of catchup, trying to get context for current games, playing the classics and the seminal franchises of the medium. I do not have a game of the year pick. Even though I was behind the curve, I still wanna talk about the experiences that moved me this year.

Honorable mentions:

Baldur's Gate 3 (2023): One of the densest, fleshed out, satisfying narrative RPGs the gaming industry has seen in years. Immersive, well written and charming, no two people can have the same experience with this game because of how much variance and player choice is accounted for in the gameplay and script alike. It's for that reason it's not on the list though--not only have I not finished it, I'm also not doing it singleplayer, and am missing out on much of that juicy story content in favor of me and my group's meta-narrative.

Black Mesa (2020): The remake of the first half life is sharp, smooth, and immersive, combining what was visually and narratively compelling about Half Life 2 back into the original story. It has some of my favorite setpieces of the entire half life catalogue now, which is saying a lot. It's off the list in favor of the original.

Dead Space (2023): A triumphant return to the horrors of the Ishimura incident, with insidious twists to the game design and story that disrupt a fan's familiarity with the game world time again. It scared the fuck out of me so many times, but the bittersweet feeling I get thinking about the fate of the Dead Space franchise means RE4 gets its spot.

10. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals (2023)

The long awaited sequel to 2016's Oxenfree caught me by surprise after playing the first game just before it. Playing the original teen horror, I'm struck by how grating some of the dialogue can be, how sophomoric and cheap it can feel without drinking deep of the content. What makes this version of teen horror so compelling, though, is that through sympathetic participation with Alex, you catch yourself from griping at the young characters for making foolish choices, which is very effective.

What's stunning about this sequel is that in the 7 year gap between games, it's not just the team and the audience that has matured, it's the writing all around. Your character, Riley, is in her early 30s, returning to her hometown and feeling very existential as she peers into the past, the future, and the unknown in between time and space. The world of Camena and Edwards Island is expanded on those lines, the thematic focus becomes resonant and emotionally devastating, and the dynamic with young characters, familiar or not, demonstrates how strong this second chapter to the oxenfree story really is.

9. Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Look. I love a horror game. 2005's Resident Evil 4 may be among the best of them, and it may be timeless in its own right, and it may be foundational to so many other games I love today, but god damn is this remake fun. With sharper visuals and atmosphere than the original, intricate new resource systems like knife durability and parries, and some updated character work, it's safe to say this is a categorically different game than the original. Plenty of material was cut from the main game, like the IT fight or the laser hallway, which found their way into the DRASTICALLY improved Separate Ways expansions, starring Ada Wong. It's not my favorite Resident Evil, and it's far from the scariest, but it's the one with Leon's spin kick, and there's nothing more satisfying than that.

I do maintain a lot of early gripes I had with the remake. When Resident Evil 8: Village came out in 2021, it borrowed a lot of mechanical, narrative, and aesthetic tropes from RE4, updating them to a new game in the wake of the remakes of RE2 and 3. Those remakes were truly transformational masterpieces, blending all of Resident Evil's best aspects to create new, distinct experiences. RE4, the original, didn't really need much updating, it's been ported to hell and back already and is so ubiquitous that there was no real need to bring it back into the zeitgeist. Nothing can really be gained by this remake except for a victory lap for Capcom.

Cynicism aside, FUCK YEAH, TWO CAKES!

8. Mass Effect (2006)

I should say that the version of Mass Effect I'm playing is not the one that came out in 2006. The Legendary edition does a bit of graphical and mechanical tweaks to update some of the dated aspects. That's kind of a shame, because the dated aspects are what's so fascinating about Mass Effect. Between Baldur's Gate 3, Disco Elysium, and now the early Fallout games, I find myself taken by classic CRPG design, which accommodates such a wide variety of player choice. Mass Effect doesn't have too much choice in it--the progression and ending are pretty much fixed from the beginning, you basically choose what flavor of the script that you want.

In that way, I like Mass Effect as a transitional piece--an attempt to bring the aspects of early CRPGS into the modern, console games market, with all the budget EA would give them. The writing and design are...satisfactory. The shooting could be more robust, the characters could have more personality, and to the series' credit those things do come about in Mass Effect 2 (which I'm sure I'll gush about when I finish it).

It's the presentation I love here. Mass Effect has maybe one of my favorite sci fi settings I've ever seen. A vast array of alien civilizations, a rich history filled with interesting lore, a competent portrayal of intergalactic politics, all delivered by characters that are deep and interesting. The voicework is also some of the best I've ever seen, and although there are many standouts, Jennifer Hale's Shepard is just tremendous. Actually playing Mass Effect may be a slog, completionist play might require some of the worst loot grinding I've ever seen, but that is all secondary to the way I was captivated by Mass Effect's version of the final frontier.

7. Half Life (1998)

I did a whole ass 5 hour video essay about Half Life, and I don't wanna belabor how much I like this game and series too much more. I loved Half life 2 and the portal games for years, but it was only for that project that I actually got around to playing this. It's a real bonafide classic, containing so many tropes of modern immersive action games WAY ahead of their time. The setting of Black Mesa is deep and engaging, the environmental storytelling is strong, and the voicework is natural and believable (for the most part.) Sometimes as a game critic I have to give some allowances to an older game for some of its jank and some of its rough edges, let myself see the thing just for what it is without all my modern hangups. I don't have to do that with Half Life like I do for other games. There's parts of it that are rough, like the Interloper and On a Rail chapters, but Half Life feels just as good to play now as it did 25 years ago.

6. Dredge (2023)

There's an old tumblr post that proposes a fishing game that's secretly a horror game. That post imagines a game that starts out normal and comfortable, but as the game goes on the player would catch stranger species of fish, soon finding monsters lurking in the deep and hidden secrets. It got a lot of peoples' imaginations going and engaged a lot of fan artists and even more comments riffing on this idea.

Dredge is that game. I was so gleefully surprised to see this game go through every single one of those steps in the first region alone. The game has a strong atmosphere and great art, leading to some real weird and nasty fish to catch and fill out the weird and spooky encyclopedia. Fishing at night gives you different and weirder fish, but it also raises your panic meter, which can cause hallucinations and open you up to monster attacks. It's a pretty ambiently scary game for the most part, and I almost chalked it up to being more horror themed than actual horror, until this one lagoon where a giant tentacle suddenly shot up at me out of a sudden drop in the ocean floor. I fuckin yelped, actually screamed in a way only two other games have gotten me to do this year.

5. Alien: Isolation (2014)

I have never, in my life, felt more powerless in a game than when I played Alien: Isolation. I'm used to games like Resident Evil, where you have a toolset for survival that is limited, but allows you to give actual pushback towards the zombies trying to get you. I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent this year too, the opposite of this dynamic, where you have NO means of resistance whatsoever, and the binary outcomes of monster encounters of that game completely broke my immersion.

Alien: Isolation actually gives you myriad crafted tools to overcome your obstacles, from human scavengers to androids to the xenomorph herself. Yet, the impossible speed and predatory senses of the monster means that one slip up means instant death, and the death animations are pretty brutal. Through cunning and cautious play, you can slip past the Alien enough times to where you get a flamethrower, which will repel her in a pinch. However, her AI is advanced to the point where she will learn your habits between deaths, look for you in lockers if you hide in them a lot, resist certain tricks like noisemaker bombs or flares. It's in keeping with how the 1979 movie presents her: a perfect killing machine. In fact, its the way so much of the Sevastopol resembles the aesthetic of that early film that not only helps the atmosphere, but makes the alien's power more believable. Immersive and terrifying, Alien: Isolation is a horror triumph.

4. Undertale (2015)

Yeah that's not actually a joke. I really did only play Undertale this year, and I was really actually completely blind going into it. Of all the games I'm happy I got to experience fresh, it was this one. Undertale seems tropey in its game design, story beats, and writing style 8 years later, but that's because so much of its design has been cannibalized by indie developers going after this aesthetic. As a bullet hell, it's...fine. As a meta commentary on retro RPGs and on the act of violence in video games in general, it's incredible. It legitimately gave me immense joy to reach the end and have my stubborn insistence on pacifism challenged even further, and then rewarded in the best possible way. I got to experience it on stream, too, with some friends who had played it previously and one who did not, and we all did the common thing and did funny voices for everybody. It's created some real cherished memories for me, memories that wouldn't have hit as hard if I did not wait to play Undertale.

3. Metal Gear Solid (1998)

Now here's a game I truly thought I'd never get around to. I'm a big fan of the Metal Gear series and when I learned that konami was releasing the master collection pack of the first 3 games, I was fuckin' stoked. If there's one other game that dictated the trajectory of storytelling and presentation of modern games like Half Life did, it's this one.

Having played the first two metal gears, the 2D ones from the late 80s, I was struck by how much of the basic design beats of Metal Gear come directly from the early titles. Seeing them translated into 3D is just incredible--all the prototypical stealth design transcribed so seamlessly into a much more legible visual language to me. The shooting may feel like ass and the bosses may have healthbars the size of Alaska, but the moment to moment sneaking in this game is so intricate and thorough that you really do feel like a tactical master as you go about it.

None of that touches on what's most memorable about Metal Gear Solid, and that's the presentational aspects. The animations and models might be worse than Half Life's, but the writing and voice acting is just world class. David Hayter as Snake, Cam Clarke as Liquid, Christopher Randolph as Otacon, and Patrick Zimmerman as Ocelot (hell even an early Jennifer Hale role) are astounding performances, even today. The cutscenes and dialogue are certainly oversaturated and long, but goddamn if I don't like watching and listening to them. I love this damn game.

2. Bloodborne (2015)

Bloodborne has been more of a myth and less of a game for me. I played some bits at a friend's house in 2017 and never owned a PS4 so I never thought playing it would be possible for me. I obsessively watched lore videos and playthroughs which got me into Dark Souls 3, then Sekiro, then Elden Ring, which has fueled much of my activity on twitch and as a game critic in general. It was only this year that that same friend lent me her PS4 and I played Bloodborne 3 whole times until I 100% the game in a matter of months. The experience was so meaningful to me that I ended up scrapping my first bloodborne video and starting from scratch, this time with Bloodborne Kart dev Lilith Walther as a guest.

I have never been more immersed in a game world than I have been in Bloodborne's. Yharnam is not only such a dense and intricate city, it is drop dead gorgeous in such a grotesque and macabre way. Many words and many writers have already described the surreal hypergothic smokescreen shrouding the insidious cosmic beings steering the terror and bloodshed from out of sight, so I won't repeat them here. You don't forget the sights and sounds of Bloodborne--they linger in your imagination, the visual language shapes your own ability to conceive of images and ideas in horror fiction, twisting the familiar into stranger shapes and forms.

Plus it just feels so fucking good to play. I like From Software titles and their style of combat, and I like how fast combat works in Sekiro and Elden Ring, but neither of those games accommodate brutality like Bloodborne does. You're meant to attack recklessly, cravenly, no blocking, just press the attack again and again until you're drenched in the gore and blood of your foes. You feel like one among the beasts--after all, what difference is there between a predator and the man that hunts them?

1. Signalis (2022)

I have not stopped thinking about Signalis since I played it the first time. The game is like a fucking honeypot for me. It's got Resident Evil style tank controls as an option, with similar combat and inventory management, themes and presentation similar to Silent Hill, and a sci fi flourish akin to Dead Space. So what, it's every great horror game jammed into one retro style amalgamation? Sounds like a great time for me!

That's just the surface, the hook of it all. While the game certainly uses this familiarity to pull you in and make you comfortable and excited for its own terrors, there's a creeping feeling of unease as you continue to revel in the horror and gore that's taken over these halls. Your character, Elster, is a special ops android in a fictional fascist regime, who has abandoned her post to search for her human partner, whose identity eludes her as she slips into delusion. After reaching the depths of the first area, where the space mine turns into a hall of flesh and viscera, the very walls pulsing and dripping, the world suddenly resets, and you find yourself back in the very first zone, now covered in the same blood and gore. The characters cry out in pain at you, begging you to stop, to turn back, to stop prolonging their hell with your own pursuit of an ending. A chalkboard in a classroom with a pretty frivolous note early on now reads "YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE."

If I go on I'm gonna spoil the whole game, but that part there is the essence of Signalis to me. Many games will challenge your own enthusiasm for playing, question the time you spend in the game rather than like, going outside or something. Few games will actively blame you for prolonging the suffering of the game's inhabitants and creating a self contained digital hell. Few games will ask you "why do you want terror?" in the way that Signalis does.

Signalis is a triumph of horror game design. The imagery is horrifically cryptic, the worldbuilding is dense, the monster design and soundscapes are creepy and effective, the gameplay feels desperate and every bullet fired feels like a scream for help. Signalis is my favorite game I played this year, hands down.