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bulgariansumo · 4 years ago

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The Messy Relationship Between Sonic and Localization

Ask any Sonic fan and they’ll tell you that the fandom is one of the most fractured things to ever exist. It’s a miracle whenever we can all agree, and that usually comes from us collectively hating something (Sonic Movie’s original design, Ken Penders, etc.)--and even then, there’s a dedicated few who disagree. Many of us have such differing opinions on what the series “should” be, that satisfying all--or even a majority--of Sonic fans is next to impossible. How did it get this way? I think it has a lot to do with localization.

Classic Era

The 1990’s wasn’t the best decade when it came to localizing anything, especially not video games. Often, some creative liberties would be taken when adapting a source from Japanese to English. The Sonic franchise was no exception to this. The first split comes from the game manuals. Me and @rontufox already made a post discussing this, but the Japanese manuals gave a little background info on the series’ lore and worldbuilding. The English versions gave a bare-bones description of the premise of each game, but that’s about it. There were no mentions of an apocalypse caused by people misusing the Chaos Emeralds, of Sonic finding the ring that would foreshadow Knuckles Chaotix, or of Knuckles thinking the Death Egg was a ‘Dragon’s Egg’ described in ancient legends. Sonic went to a bunch of colorful zones, beat up Dr. Robotnik, collected some magic stones, and maybe a new character or two would tag along, but there was nothing else to it. There was no dialogue and few cutscenes in the games at this time, so the English localizers could get away with this.

Since there wasn’t much to go on games-wise, English fans at the time got their perception of Sonic and his world from various comic and cartoon adaptations. The American-produced ones portrayed Sonic as an in-your-face smart aleck who was almost completely full of himself. The UK-produced Sonic the Comic starred Sonic as a self-described “cool guy” who cared little about the people around him, including friends. Whatever worldbuilding these adaptations had either didn’t exist or diverged completely from the games, because the writers, even if they did care, didn’t have much to go on. There also weren’t a lot of Japanese Sonic adaptations at the time, and the only one that got localized was Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie (aka Sonic OVA). To English-speaking fans, Sonic was an arrogant but funny hedgehog who despite everything, got the job done. Aside from Dr. Robotnik, other characters were an afterthought and could be replaced as needed.

Adventure Era

Sonic Adventure released in 1998 with fully voice-acted cutscenes, and localization differences started catching up. Some things were easy to fix, such as Dr. Eggman (Robotnik’s name in Japanese) being a nickname for Dr. Robotnik. Other things weren’t that simple. For instance, some of those little things mentioned in the Japanese manuals started showing up again, specifically the apocalypse caused by people misusing the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic Adventure was a soft-reboot, where most previous characters and worldbuilding are still there, but some details are left behind so that newcomers have an easier time entering the series. There also might be changes in the series’ tone. For example, Sonic Adventure was somewhat more serious than previous games could be, but still overall lighthearted. This was also the first of many mainline games during this time to have an ensemble cast. Instead of just playing as Sonic, or maybe Tails and Knuckles, you were required to play all three of them plus other characters, with different stories and gameplay styles. This was a tall task, but these games pulled it off well enough to be very popular at the time. Themes of friendship became very prominent in the games around this time, and to further cement it, Sonic X, a Japanese-produced anime came out and got localized in the United States. Sonic was still a little cocky in English dubs of the games and anime, but he was also free-spirited and very supportive of his friends instead of being preoccupied with being the coolest person in the group. For the most part, his English and Japanese portrayals were nearly indistinguishable. Other characters also got more screentime and focus on their personalities, and popular new characters like Shadow and Rouge were introduced to the cast. All was going great.

Then 2006 came around. Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (aka Sonic 06) came out, ushering in a period of very poorly received Sonic games, the latter being seen as a contender for the worst game of all time. Shadow the Hedgehog was an attempt at explaining why the titular character was alive after apparently being killed off Sonic Adventure 2, but the gritty and somewhat melodramatic tone was seen as ill-fitting for the Sonic franchise. The gameplay was also lacking, in part due to other characters tagging along with Shadow and repeatedly telling him hints and mission objectives. The problem of characters talking a lot mid-gameplay was present in Sonic Heroes, but the gameplay itself was passable enough that the game didn’t completely suffer for it. Shadow the Hedgehog tied up the last plot threads the Sonic Adventure series left behind, so the series had to go somewhere different. Sonic 06 was another soft-reboot, so that newcomers wouldn’t have to study up on the games from Sonic Adventure to Shadow the Hedgehog. Because the game was rushed for the holiday season, it was glitchy, didn’t feel good to play, and the writing was… very flawed. The game’s tone was slightly lighter than Shadow the Hedgehog, but still a little too melodramatic for most fans.

With all of these changes in mind, further splits in the English-speaking fandom occurred. Many vocal Classic fans were thrown off by the series being heavier on plot, worldbuilding, and Sonic’s friends. They wanted to go back to a time when none of that existed, and when Sonic was just an arrogant jokester--a time that only existed in 90’s US and UK. Newer, Adventure-era fans grew up with these new changes and loved them, though many of them were also not happy with Shadow the Hedgehog and subsequent games’s handling of these things. Because of Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06’s spectacular failure in handling different characters’ gameplay, one sentiment was repeatedly echoed--that only Sonic should be playable. Since then, with very few exceptions, only Sonic has been playable in mainline Sonic games. This still wasn’t enough to save the games. Games after Sonic 06 often had a core gimmick to them, many of which weren’t received well, and the ones that were got replaced by the next game. The writing had the same feeling to it, though. It shied away from the melodrama of the most hated entries, but still retained the sincerity of entries like Sonic Adventure.

Modern Era

That changed in 2011 with Sonic Colors. Instead of Sonic Team writing the games, they hired Ken Pontac and Warren Graff, two American writers known for working on Happy Tree Friends. Neither had much knowledge of the previous games’ characters, worldbuilding, or stories, but this was intentional. Sonic games sell less in Japan, so Sega probably wanted to put more focus into pleasing audiences in America and Europe. The two went off some basics about the characters and setting, and what little they knew previously. There is some supervision by Takeshi Iizuka, a longtime Sonic Team member who is currently the head of the series after creator Yuji Naka left in the mid-2000’s, but he is interested in the series going in a new direction. Sonic Colors was another soft reboot of the series, but because of the writer’s lack of knowledge about the series a lot more details were lost and changes made than in any of the previous ones. The writing is lighthearted, but most of the sincerity has been traded for attempts at comedy, which tend to be hit and miss. Sonic as a character retains his free spirit and some kindness towards his friends, but some of the self-importance of his English interpretation is making a comeback. Many of the characters from previous games make returns, but they’re written oddly (“Y’got this, Sssonic!” - Shadow, Sonic Generations (2011)) and the writers don’t quite know how to integrate them. Sonic Colors was well-received for its gameplay, and even the writing was praised at the time, but most subsequent games have middling reception. None are considered outright bad (except Sonic Boom, but that was a spinoff that Sega contracted a different company to do) or outright good (except Sonic Mania, which Sega contracted a team of fans to do.)

Conclusion

As it stands now, the Sonic franchise is a strange hybrid of the Japanese and English interpretations of Sonic. A lot of the Adventure Era fans are old enough to start noticing the changes in the writing in the Modern Era, and some aren’t big fans. Some are, though. Some of the Classic fans are satisfied with these changes, others aren’t impressed either preferring the Classic or even Adventure Era. Some people like the Classic Era, but not the English interpretations of the series. There are likely Modern fans who grew up with this version of the Sonic franchise and love it, but there may be ones that have seen previous iterations and prefer those better. There are many differing opinions and few can agree on what would be good for Sonic. Would things have been different if localization had been handled differently in the 90’s? Who can say? All we have to go by are ripples from the errors of the past.

#sonic the hedgehog #this concludes my text-form video essay #in this essay i DID #can write an essay about sonic but not for college

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moved-attre · 4 years ago

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Here is my review of Cyberpunk 2077! It is a bullet point list of what I liked, and did not like about the game. I mean no offense in my writing, and am, of course, willing to be educated if I am wrong about anything! But please do not send me anonymous hate. I know many fans and haters of this game can be very, uh... So take it all with a grain of salt, and form your own opinions.

This is very long and likely boring so if you manage to make it to the end, I will be very impressed! Also, I may ramble or repeat myself, sorry. There’s more bad points than good, since the game is very glitchy and I couldn’t not mention the glitches I have experienced.

Obviously, this contains major spoilers! 👁👄👁

I’ll start off by saying, this is a game where you will likely not get what you expected. If you expected Cyberpunk 2077 to be a game filled with features that were never before seen, to revolutionise the gaming industry as we know it and become the most iconic video game ever made... You will not get that. If you expected it to be the worst, most irredeemable video game ever created that you’ll hate... You will not get that, either. If you expected a game that is a fairly standard RPG with some impressive graphics when played on a high spec PC, albeit with some bad glitches and a wonky story with lots of potential, then you’ve got it!

Pros:

The majority of the voice acting, such as in V, Johnny and Viktor, was very good and emotional. Viktor in particular made me tear up! And the way V manages to sound almost like Johnny with the subtle accent change was amazing!

The character’s such as Takemura, Jackie, the LIs, Johnny, Viktor, Misty (I could go on) and even many random NPCs were interesting! I wanted to know them and loved their relevant missions. The best ones were unromanceable, of course, but that’s what imagination is for.

THE ALDECALDOS! I love them! A found family, and I wish there was more to do with them other than Panam’s missions and a few side missions. I love found family, and I’m disappointed V couldn’t form their own, so I’ll take what I can get and love the Aldecaldos, even if V can’t join them until the very end. Panam had the best missions of all the LI’s, even if the last one felt very abrupt. (At least, on her friendship route.)

Night City felt alive. There was always plenty going on, it felt like a real city, and it could be beautiful.

Jackie and Corpo V’s friendship was lovely. I loved their “To this!” inside joke, and I loved how Jackie roasted V but would jump to their defence in a second. It didn’t feel forced at all.

There’s lots of environmental storytelling. The atmosphere of a city choking to death under it’s own pollution/corruption was very apparent in the areas not lived in by the rich. Lots of homeless characters, violence, drugs, absolute poverty, trash (The dump! I felt sick just looking at it, and I couldn’t even smell it! Poor V, though.) and general apathy from a lot of the residents really sold the concept.

Johnny and V’s dynamic was the best part of the story! I hated him at first, but slowly came to enjoy his commentary and advice. His interactions with V were very funny at times, and thoughtful at other times. He was an interesting perspective for the player to consider, while still being an asshole you could dislike for much of the story. He has some really emotional scenes and I played a V that viewed him as a friend, so it was really nice hearing him call V the closest person he’d ever had. They became so devoted to each other! CDPR did good with this element, but I can’t help wishing for more. The dynamic had so much more to give, and a romance/happy ending could have worked.

And to add on, the mission where Johnny takes over V’s body to go on a bender was great! I loved all the moments to play as Johnny in V’s body. All the symbolism between them was so good. Every mission matters, and you can replay to look closer at details! He also comments on other side missions with no personal relevance to him, which was neat.

All the enemies had unique names. A minor detail, but it made me feel some guilt over killing them. 🤣 I think all character’s had unique names, which is such a nice detail.

The soundtrack was incredible, I loved every original piece and radio song. I have several saved on Spotify, which is big praise coming from me! I very rarely listen to video game soundtracks.

V can adopt a cat! 🐈‍⬛ It was adorable, and Johnny’s interaction with it made me tear up!

The size of the map was good, not too big or too small. I got about 100 hours of play in by exploring, which is pretty good to me! I got lost a few times, but always found something interesting to do in the meanwhile. I loved the Badlands especially.

Some of the side missions, particularly the more mysterious ones involving investigating deaths and the cyberpsychos, were very enjoyable! I’m a big slut for mystery, and there were some interesting cases to figure out. I wish we could’ve done missions like that with River, though, especially once he becomes a PI.

I was complaining about the lack of aliens in CP2077, but I suppose we did get a couple space themed missions which was pretty fun. I still want to go experience going into orbit, though. 👽 Or the moon!

Separating voice and body in the CC was a good idea, even if it was handled a little strangely. I’ll talk about this more in the ‘Cons’ section below!

Act 2 was my favorite part of the game, but it blended weirdly with Act 3 and that put me off. I am nostalgic for Act 1, but not eager to replay it because it felt so slow... I’m not sure on this point! I liked Act 2 because the story picked up and I was excited for more, but the more I got wasn’t as I expected. So, yes, Act 2 was good.

The scenery is very beautiful, and sometimes the outside lighting is absolutely perfect. The Arasaka parade mission was lovely to look at. I always stop the car and watch the sunrise/sunset, and I like going out to the Badlands to look at the stars!

An addition to that, is the lighting in some main quest missions. Very noir! It made for some beautiful screenshots. (Of which I sadly can’t share because my game doesn’t record well on medium settings. 😳)

The motorcycles are fun to drive! Mainly because I can zoom in between cars and Jackie’s motorcycle has a lot of sentimental value, as well as other vehicles like Johnny’s Porsche and Jake’s car. You can open the trunk to dump bodies in, which was a cool detail., and each one drives differently!

There could be amazing attention to detail, such as making Jackie look like his mother. I expected his mother to be a randomly generated NPC, but she was completely unique. It’s the minor things like that which stood out to me the most.

The scanner was a fun tool and very useful! I liked being able to find alternative ways to do a mission, it felt more realistic than the standard “massacre everybody, pick up an item and get out” fetch quests normally seen in RPGs. I could sneak in a tunnel or a side door! Perhaps irritating and unnecessary to some, but I liked it. I love utilising every possible option.

The interface color changes if you have Johnny controlling V’s body. Another small but good detail! The game is good with the minor details.

The sex scenes were not... awful. I expected much, much worse! I expected fully animated first person porn. Instead, I thought they were fairly realistic and intended to be romantic. Still very awkward, though, and unnecessary.

When they didn’t glitch, the animations were very good. Not as impressive as I hoped, probably because of glitches, but in line with other AAA games like Horizon Zero Dawn, I suppose? I noticed Judy’s animations in particular as being good, and Johnny had lots of unique ones too!

The clothing options are very fun, I like the holographic items and “Bitch” clothes, hehe. Also including Hijabs! 🧕 Great idea, and more games should do that.

The diversity of the NPCs was welcome. I enjoyed seeing Native American, Asian, Black and Latinx NPCs who weren’t there just to suffer! They would occupy important roles in the story, such as Fixers or friends/romance options for V, so they were pretty much unavoidable! It felt very natural, and they helped Night City feel more realistic.

Adding to that, the different cultures included were interesting too! I liked the Haitian characters in Pacifica.

The photo mode is pretty good. Not as good as I expected, the camera angle presets were useful but the filters weren’t very good. I liked that the photo mode could be used in cutscenes, though! It was standard, and I hope more bits will be added in for it.

A lot of the glitches are hilarious, but I recognise not all will share that opinion so I’m just adding this down here. The T-Posing NPCs are a highlight for me. Call that the Skyrim effect.

Cons:

No NB gender options/No pronoun options. Would they/them have been so difficult to implement?

No body or height sliders. There’s so many fat character’s in the game! Why can I not make my V fat? Or muscular?

Gender restrictive hairstyles and clothes. Come on, guys, it’s 2020/2077! Aren’t we beyond gender restrictive appearance options?

No tattoo parlours, no plastic surgeons and no hairstylists for V to change their appearance. I don’t understand why a CC was included at all, since we spent the majority of the game in first person. It reminded me of Far Cry.

The main story started off strong, albeit slow, picked up in Act 2, then felt very rushed in Act 3. The point of no return was very abrupt!

The celebrity cameos felt very gimmicky. The one exception to this is Keanu Reeves, who did a very good job as Johnny. Genuinely brought tears to my eyes at times... but Grimes was just embarrassing! Why was she there! A talented VA could have done Lizzy Wizzy much better, giving her actual emotions instead of just monotone “boredom”.

I don’t know what the point of owning apartments is. You can only sleep in V’s bed, what is the point of looking in the mirror? V has no use for their terminal in their apartment, they never get any messages after the first time they meet Johnny. It was so unnecessary, especially when there’s several across the map. I can access the stash of weapons and clothes from my car! Why would I ever need to go home? Judy gives me her apartment and I’m like, girl, I’m never visiting unless you have a mission to give me.

Also, there are no penalties for not showering or sleeping. I wanted character’s to comment on that! Call me stinky or tell me I look exhausted!

V doing side missions makes no sense, and no explanation is given for why we can do them. Why would V, who is dying and has precious few days left to live, be driving for hours on end to deliver packages and shoot random criminals? When they could be figuring out how to survive the biochip! Who the hell would care about a some extra money or buying every available car for sale, when they’re dying of something that could be preventable?

Some side missions were either very poorly done or obviously majorly glitched, since it felt like they skipped important parts and I was often very confused at the end of them! For example, the Corpo V side mission was so short! I expected to be able to hunt down Abernathy and get revenge for V and Jenkins, but instead, I shoot some random assistant I don’t even remember? And that’s it? Done in 2 minutes! If that! What is the point of that? I didn’t even have fun! Also, what happened to Garry? I wanted to save him but V just never follows up on it.

And, I wish we got closure with T-Bug. The fact that V never bothers to find her body and give her a proper burial was just poor form.

The endings were not... good. There are technically 6 different endings, all wrapped up into 3 parts. In my opinion, the best ending is the one where V kills themselves and has a very “Arthur Morgan watching his last sunset” vibe. It made me cry. Another good ending is having Johnny take over V’s body forever, as you can really see how much Johnny has changed as a person thanks to V’s influence. But they still felt very... eh and the story just never got that boost it needed, ending before it could take off. In the “best” ending, the Nomand ending with Panam, V ”survives” but has only another few months to live. So they die off screen. Satisfying? Uh, no. Not at all. There’s no possible ending where V has any hope of survival, but I much preferred being there with V until the very end. I disagree with the people calling Johnny’s ending the “bad” ending, because it really isn’t! I ignore all of this of course, and my V is living happily ever after.

I kind of hate that CP2077 has this illusion of options when some are clearly intended to be chosen more than others. Judy and Panam have the best endings in term of romance. Why bother with River and Kerry? Kerry is more of a fling than an actual romance, and is met very late in the game at a point where you can ignore him completely and just end the game, and River’s romance is so glitched that many people can’t even do it fully, and in every ending he dumps you, so it feels like none of it mattered to him despite him being the most “domestic” of the possible LI’s...

Takemura’s ending! He died in my playthrough, because the game didn’t tell me I could save him. That really annoyed me. Also, I recognise that V is in no place to lecture him, and there is some wisdom to his quote: “You speak against corporations yet offer no valid alternative.” But, Goro, bro... anything is better than fascist mega corporations keeping most of the city in absolute poverty, while waging devastating wars against other mega corporations? I wish we could have opened his eyes a little. There’s a good, even ground between Takemura believing Corps to be doing the best for humanity and Johnny being willing to kill 12k people for a revolution. This game went a little “capitalism is bad, but the alternative is worse!” at times, in my opinion. I wish more could have been done against the corporations, instead they just kind of... exist... in the background. And I know, “Realism! “ because we live with massive corporations like Amazon in our lives and can do fuck all about them but we’re not V. V is an absolute unit who survives death multiple times... I wish there had been two paths, like do Johnny’s path and work against the system or do Takemura’s path and work with the system? Sort of like The Witcher 2?

You know how in Saints Row, The Boss has homies they can call on for help? I wanted V to have homies to help them out in fights. It felt pointless building trust with the Fixers only to not have them help out at all with fights against the NCPD/Militech/Arasaka in their territories.

The stealth mechanics are not good. They are funny! But not very good. Often, It’s better to just attack and save yourself the trouble of sneaking only to get caught by a guard who can see through the back of his head.

The fact that you cannot get arrested and have someone bust you out of jail. Maybe RDR2 set my expectations too high, but I thought this would have been included.

I’ve read about the cut content, and I’m really disappointed they weren’t included in the game. Wall running would have been amazing! And the police hiring mercs to hunt V down? I would have loved to see it! 😔

Driving cars is terrible. Just awful. Sometimes, you crash. Other times you’re flung up into the air and break through the sky into the void, spinning for all eternity.

River’s glitched romance deserves a special mention. The relationship just drops off suddenly and you cannot interact with him properly again. It does not affect the main story at all, so you wonder, what was the point? The text messages also glitch and V will sent messages that you can’t control, leading to disappointing dialogue, like with Joss.

The romances in general were just not all that impressive. I was expecting something great, considering there was only 4 and thought they’d really affect the main story, but I’d only recommend Panam and Judy. I would have played the game just as well without romances, and they felt very unnecessary but I wanted to do one to get the most possible story content. I think we should all leave romances in RPG’s as the exception, not the norm. Some studio’s can do them well, other’s cannot. CDPR cannot, in my opinion...

Obviously the many glitches and bugs, several of which are game breaking. I usually have to reload a save at least once an hour, because an NPC won’t talk to me or I can’t move the mouse to select different dialogue options! Or my gun won’t equip, so I die.

The AI in general is very bad. Sometimes cars will stop in the middle of junctions for no reason, causing you to crash or mount the sidewalk to get past, meaning you’ll likely run someone down and get a police warrant. NPCs just walk from one end of the road and back again, over and over on a loop. It’s very creepy!

The lighting, mostly inside buildings. Everything is pitch black! Why does V not own a flashlight? The amount of enemies I’ve barrelled into and alerted because I couldn’t see is too much.

The lack of dialogue choice, it was less interactive than what I’d been told to expect. There was only two or three options, with one only ever rarely being unique to one of V’s three possible background choices and most will yield the same results with a few exceptions, like avoiding combat.

V’s personality is already decided by the game, and is not really customisable. Do not expect full control over your V’s personality, as they are very much a canon character and exist outside of your (limited) choices. I didn’t expect Baldur's Gate 3 levels of customisation, but I did expect something more like Dragon Age 2’s dialogue wheel? Nice, Sarcasm and Angry? You know?

Obviously, the seizure inducing scenes were very dangerous. I get a headache whenever I have to do a braindance, and I wish it was skippable!

Accessibility as a whole is very much an afterthought in this game, I think. The subtitles are in “speaking English”, so instead of: Hey, how are you? It’s: Heyyy, how’re ya? It is often difficult to understand, and sometimes I just couldn’t work out what was being said.

It’s nitpicky but I wanted to do a pacifist route and I realised you can’t, you need to kill certain character’s...

The main “villains” such as Yorinobu and Adam Smasher were very forgettable, and V had no personal stake in taking them out. I honestly forgot all about them. Takemura was talking about revenge and I’m like, who? Who are you talking about? Why are we kidnapping Hanako Arasaka, again? Johnny, why would I bother killing Adam Smasher? If they’d personally murdered Jackie, then yeah, I’d understand! But all V needs is to remove the chip and I don’t know... I just didn’t feel anything.

So, to summarise: I think CDPR were out of their depth. The long, very long, troubled development process was an indication of this before the game was even released, and the story I’ve experienced in the game is proof enough. I don’t think they knew what they wanted from this game, and as a result, we have a game that is honestly very confusing and frustrating with a story that always got close to gripping, but never quite makes it. All in all, I found this game to be pretty average. When the bugs are ironed out, I will think better of it. But as it stands, if I had to score it, I would give it a 6.5/10 or maybe 7/10. Good concept, somewhat misguided execution. The best part of the game was the Johnny/V dynamic, but I wasn’t satisfied with how it ended. They needed more time together! Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens next.

#cp77 spoilers #cp77 critical #cyberpunk 2077 #I’ve already been vagued about a few times for my CP2077 opinions so I expect more to happen now I’m posting this hehe

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imthepunchlord · 4 years ago

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What dragon age game do you like the best?

This will be controversial, but DA2 is the one I always put as my favorite.

Of the DA leads, (sarcastic/funny) Hawke is easily my favorite. She is one of those characters who cracks jokes to deal with her pain, which is a rarity for a lead. At least to my knowledge. And that’s a character type I really love. And she does genuinely crack me, and for all that she deals with and goes through, she’s very strong for it. I have a lot of admiration and love for her.

Companion wise is a very mixed bag for me, there are really only two I genuinely like and adore, and the rest either have issues or I like them, but they’re not my favorite, and that ranges from just not clicking with them as much (like Isabela, she’s kinda in the same boat as Zevran for me; I like them enough but not my favorites), or I just don’t like them at all (looking at you, Anders).

On the more positive side, Varric is easily my favorite video game best friend. I both love and hate that Hawke can’t romance him, cause on one hand, I love their friendship, I love that they love each other as friends and will readily have each others back and that connection isn’t defined by romantic love. But on the other, this is easily my favorite dwarf and I’d love to romance him. Maybe DA4 will allow it, since the 3rd game finally allowed Cullen to be romancable. Either way! He is incredibly funny and is one of the best inclusions to the DA series ever.

Romance wise, I think I’d put Fenris as my favorite. Easily is my favorite elf, I like to regard him as the first (demi)ace romance instead of the egghead. And one of the biggest sellers for me is the factor that its a slowburn, and romance isn’t always the primary focus, there’s more going on than just that. And there are just nice little details. Like Fenris wearing a red band when romancing Hawke, even if not with her. Hawke willing to teach Fenris how to read and keeps notes about what books he likes and he keeps a look out for what he may enjoy. Alistair is great, funny, and sweet and his romance is great puppy love; but I like the slowburn through the years more (though I shall continue to believe that my Warden and Alistair are still happily married).

Combat wise its my favorite for how quick it is. To me, this was when the combat system was at its best. DAO was... slow. DAI, I don’t care for the combat. Actually in general, DAI has been the hardest DA game for me to be invested in playing. I got to the new Keep and took a break and hadn’t picked up again till recently, trying it again now that its had a lot of updates to fix the bugs (which were so bad the dragon T posed during the cutscene of him attacking and then I was T posing afterwards and would just glide along; it was hilarious but I had to restart the game and skip the cutscene), but even now I’m just not that all invested or interested in playing it. I want to see it through before the 4th game is out but that means getting back into it but I got to like, motivate myself.

So! Back on track!

So from best DA lead, best dwarf, best elf, best combat system, all in my opinion; DA2 is one I like to come back to the most. It is definitely not perfect, I wish they had more time making it, and if Bioware ever does remasters/remakes, DAO I hope gets a remaster with updated animation and combat system, maaaaybe DAI’s open world but I’d be fine without it; DA2 I wouldn’t mind remade from the ground up, cause there are issues and its a lot shorter than I would like. I’d like to see the Free Marches. Wish we could get Ketojan as a companion, wish there were different options with the Qunari (which were easily the most fascinating aspect of DA2 and them being gone left Act 3 kinda lackluster). I wish there was a true neutral option cause both templars and mages just went to shit and neither I could truly support. For that hot mess of a situation, chaos was truly a ladder it just kept climbing.

I know it was supposed to end in chaos and both sides going crazy, but the handling of it was incredibly rushed and neither of them ever won me over in picking a side. And flipping freaking Anders I swear--

Dragon Age 2 is my favorite, but that is largely because the handful of things I love, I love so very much. But, of the DA game that’s the best one, that would be DAO. Its got the best story that’s not complicated or muddled, the over all most likable companions (Alistair is funny and sweet, Morrigan is a hoot, Wynne is best video game grandma, I stan Sten, my mabari Mabobby bEST DOGGO, and Shale. BRINGSHALEBACKPLEASE. I miss her. I miss her so much.) Of the leads that are true self inserts, whereas Hawke is more of a character whose story you play, the Warden is leagues better than the Inquisitor.

#ask Punchie #dragon age #I always think they should've named DA2 The Champion of Kirkwall #or something along those lines #cause its not a true 2 to DAO #its Hawke's own story #unless you played Amell there's no true tie in between Hawke and Warden #I got strange tastes I know

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regrettablemeasure · 4 years ago

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Cyberpunk 2077 non-spoiler review

Anyways here’s my writeup about my least favorite parts of 2077 for people who are interested in seeing if it’s for them. Both going to talk about content as well as gameplay. This is for PC version, too, because I know last gen consoles are suffering terribly rn and I wouldn’t recommend the game if you’re not going to be playing on PC. At least not until it’s on sale or the issues have been resolved. It really, really shouldn’t have been released on last gen consoles at all in my opinion - or at least should’ve been released on consoles LATER.

If you like Saints Row, GTA, Mass Effect, Shadowrun, or the Cyberpunk genre in general - I definitely think this is something you might want to take a peek at! I wasn’t anticipating the game until about a month or two before release - so maybe that’s why I’m having a blast - but It’s one of my favorite stories from the past decade as far as sci-fi goes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and It’s really impressed me. I can’t even go into detail about all the things I LOVE because I really want folks to experience it themselves. Just know there’s a very intricately detailed world, all the characters are memorable and insanely well realized and complex, and the story is great fun. Also made me cry like 5 times. It’s become one of my FAVORITE games very quickly.

I’d also recommend Neon Arcade if you want someone who’s been covering the game for quite a while, including the technical and game industry aspect. He does well to go into some detail and even though he’s a fan, I’ve found him to be largely unbiased. I’m not going to go into industry politics here because I feel that’s up for everyone to decide on their own terms.

No spoilers, things to keep in mind, content warnings, etc. below!

CONTENT WARNINGS and issues with plot/story

this setting is dark. very dark. if you struggle stomaching things like dystopian landscapes, body horror, physical, mental and sexual abuse, corporate and gang violence, abuse of children, harsh language, and concepts that mess with the perception of reality - this game might not be for you. It’s a very mature setting, and I don’t mean that in the Adult Swim kind of way. I mean it in the ‘oh shit, it went there’ way. In my opinion I haven’t run across anything in it that was handled distastefully when it dipped into the depressing, but dark and gritty isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I wanted to give a disclaimer.

The game’s universe in advertising and working for the lower class also exploits sex/sex work quite a bit. This is part of the lore itself because in this universe everyone’s become desensitized to sex and violence to the point that marketing embraces it and makes it ridiculous. I feel it’s very obvious that it doesn’t condone this message and is instead a commentary on consumerism - but people still might be uncomfortable seeing a lot of suggestive stuff all over the place regardless.

Women in game are naked more often than men - even though there is nudity for both. This is likely a mix of appealing to the Gamer Boy demographic (even though the story does NOT actually), or the fact that media is way more cool with seeing naked women than seeing full frontal nudity on men. They probably had to tone some of it down to avoid going above an M rating.

The story is amazing, but sometimes it dumps a lot onto you at once. It’s one of those sci-fi stories that you have to really be following the names, faces, and concepts continually to get it all down. There’s a lot of betrayal, background players, etc. I think by the mid-way point I’d mostly had it, but It’s pretty dense. However it’s still amazing. You might just need two playthroughs before every tiny detail clicks - because there’s a LOT of details.

Honestly I think it would help to read up on the lore first so you’re not going ‘what’ constantly. But people have seemed to manage fine without that also! Neon Arcade has a really nice series of videos (like 2 or 3) that get you up to speed with the universe. It also helps you decide if the tone is right for you.

I think the main story should’ve been longer, also. I don’t mind a 20 hr story, especially in a massive RPG, but It feels like they really struggled to cram as much into that time frame as possible. It skirts the edge of being nice and concise, snappy, and tight - and needing just a few more moments to take a breath and wait a second. This is helped if you do a lot of side quests.

The straight male romance option, River, is INCREDIBLY well written but he doesn’t tie into the main plot in any way whatsoever. It’s very strange and feels like they either ran out of time with him, or slapped together a romance with him at the last second. All the other romances at least know what’s going on with V’s story - meanwhile River has no idea, and you can never tell him. He’s an amazing guy though and I highly recommend his questline. He appears in ACT 2.

In general I’d say not to bother with the romances. There are only 4 total, and while the romancible characters on their own are really well written, the romances themselves are just kinda meh. One romance you don’t even meet until act 3. I don’t think they should’ve been included in the game at all, because they definitely don’t feel as fleshed out as everything else.

CDPR also sometimes forget that women players or gay men exist. Panam and Judy have a lot more content than River and Kerry for example. I don’t think this is intentional, they just have a large fanbase of dudebros. It only shows in the romance content and the nudity thing though.

Johnny, Takemura, and Claire should’ve been romances and I will fight to the death on that.

There are gay and trans characters in the game and their stories don’t revolve around their sexualities. It’s very Fallout: New Vegas in it’s approach to characters: IE. you’re going to love them. All of them.

V’s gender isn’t locked to their body type or their genitals- but to to their voice. I don’t think it’s the best solution they could’ve used but given how the game is heavily voice acted I assume that was what they had to work with.

Some of the romances are locked to both cis voices AND body types (not genitals if I recall but body shapes). That’s disappointing but I assume it was because of scripted scene issues and/or ignorance on the dev’s part considering the LGBT NPCS are so AMAZINGLY done. There’s no homophobic or transphobic language in the game - though there are gendered curse words and insults if that bothers you.

Some characters MAY suffer from ‘bilingual people don’t talk like that’ syndrome. But it can be hard to say for sure given that translators exist in this universe and the way they operate aren’t fully described. It’s only momentarily distracting, not enough to take away from how charming the NPCs are.

The endings are really good don’t get me wrong but I want fix it fic :(. All of the endings out of like 6 (?) in the game are bittersweet.

Both gender V’s are very good but female V’s voice acting is out of this world. If you don’t know what voice to go with/are neutral I’d highly recommend female V. Male V is charming and good but he feels much more monotone compared to female V.

V has their own personality. To some this won’t be a detractor - but a lot of people thought they’d be making absolutely everything from the ground up. V is more of a commander shepard or geralt than a skyrim or d&d pc, if that makes sense. You can customize and influence them to a HUGE degree, some aspects of V will always be the same.

Streetkid is the most boring background - at least for it’s introduction/prologue.

GAMEPLAY/TECHNICAL

If you can run your game on ultra, don’t. It actually looks best with a mix of high and medium settings. Unless you have a beast that has ray-tracing - then by all means use ray tracing and see how absolutely insanely good it looks.

There are color blind modes for the UI, but not for some of the AI/Netrunning segments in cutscenes. Idk how much this will effect folks with colorblindness but those segments are thankfully short.

There was an issue with braindances being an epilepsy trigger because for some reason they decided to mirror the flashing pattern after real epilepsy tests - probably because it ‘looks cool’. I don’t have epilepsy but it even hurt my eyes and gave me a headache. Massive oversight and really goddamn weird. Thankfully this was fixed.

There is no driving AI. Like at all. If you leave your car in the street the traffic is just going to pile up behind it. It’s one of the very few immersion breaking things I’ve encountered.

Sometimes when an NPC is driving with you in the car, they’ll drive on the curb and/or run into people. It’s kind of funny but can occasionally result in something weird. Feels very GTA - but nothing excruciating.

The camera angle feels a little too low in first person mode when driving on cars. You get used to it though.

The police in this game feel slapped on and I hope they improve it. Right now if you commit a crime, you can never tell what will actually trigger it. And if you just run away a few blocks the police forget about it.

Bikes are just way more fun to ride than the cars are.

You CANNOT respec your character after you make them. Ever. it sucks. Go in with an idea ahead of time what you wanna do - it’s better than being a jack of all trades.

as of now you also CANNOT change their appearance after you exit the character creator. This, also, sucks. Make sure you REALLY like your V or you’re gonna be replaying the openings over and over like I did.

Photomode on PC is the N key. Had to look it up. The mode itself is great though

Shooting and Mele fighting feel pretty standard. I don’t have a lot of shooter experience besides Bethesda games so anything feels better than that to me. So far I’ve enjoyed stealth and mele the best, but that’s just my own taste! The combat and driving aren’t groundbreaking by any means, but they’re still very fun. I look forward to running at people with swords or mantis blades, and zipping around the city on a motorcycle to see the sights. The story, lore, and interesting quests and characters are the real draw here.

I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs in 80-ish hours of play time. One or two T-poses, a few overlays not loading or floating objects - but nothing terrible. Again, my experience is with Bethesda games. This is all usually fixed by either opening your inventory and closing it again, or exiting out and reloading your save.

The C button is mapped for crouching AND skipping dialogue by default. That’s terrible. Change it in the settings to be HOLDING C skips dialogue and you’ll be gucci.

There’s apparently a crafting system. I have never been inclined to touch it. But I also play on easy like a pleb so IDK how it all scales otherwise.

The mirror reflections can be a little bit weird, at least on my end. They always end up a teeny bit grainy despite my computer being able to run everything on Ultra Max. You can still get good screens out of it though!

So many people text me to sell me cars and I want them to stop. Please. also the texting menu is abysmal. The rest is ok tho

It’s pretty clear when you’re going to go into a ‘cutscene’. all cutscenes are rendered in-engine BUT you often will be talking to other characters at a specific angle or setting. The game locks you into this usually by having you sit down. It works for me - after all we do a lot of sitting- but it IS very obvious that it’s a way for the game to get you in the frame it wants to display.

That’s all I can think of rn! If you’re interested but wanted to get a slightly better idea of whats going on, I hope this helps. I’m really enjoying it and despite my issues it’s exceeding my expectations. I’m going to be thinking about and replaying this game for quite a while.

#cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2077 review #2077 review #cp2077 #rosetxt #txt

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revengerevisited · 4 years ago

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Maddie rambles about Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road

Let’s just get this outta the way: Xehanort is my least favorite character in Kingdom Hearts. Now there are certainly more boring and underdeveloped characters but as far as evil deeds go, it doesn’t matter how ‘cute’ or ‘relatable’ Nomura tries to make Xehanort. I will never forget that he tore Ven’s heart in half, tortured Vanitas for four years, killed his own best friend, possessed Terra’s body for a decade, possessed Riku’s body as Ansem, unleashed Heartless on the worlds resulting in countless deaths, manipulated Organization XIII for years, and experimented on Kairi as a child and eventually murdered her in front of her best friends. Any attempt to make me sympathize with him just ain’t gonna work.

Also, I’m not taking any of these ‘Character X is secretly Character Y’ theories too seriously until they actually happen. Yes, it can be fun to speculate that Bragi or Odin is secretly Luxu or the Master of Masters, or that Brain is Eraqus’s ancestor, or that Demyx is the MoM, or that Ava or Vor is Kairi’s grandma, or whatever other theories are out there. But until there’s conclusive evidence that’s all they are, speculations and theories.

On that note, I don’t know why Xehanort is having dreams about the KHUX Player’s adventures but I don’t think it’s because Xehanort is the Player’s Nobody or a reincarnation of the Player. Reincarnation has never been a concept present in the KH series, and honestly it just sounds like bad fanfiction. Plus, if Xehanort does turn out to be the Player, then I feel bad for everyone who spent a lot of time creating their own unique character only to have it be replaced by the generic default Player in KHDR’s opening cutscene and then re-replaced by Xehanort of all people. Perhaps Xehanort simply has a unique, unexplained power to see into the past like Namine’s memory manipulation or Terra’s precognition.

Either way, this past-sight just makes it harder and harder for me to believe that Xehanort wanted to learn about the Keyblade War in BBS, since it seems he already knew all he needs to know. Xemnas knows that Luxord, Marluxia, Demyx, and Larxene are from the past, young Xehanort lives in Scala ad Caelum which was built over the ruins of Daybreak Town complete with a huge machine explaining Daybreak Town’s demise, Eraqus talks about the Book of Prophecies like it’s common knowledge, the list goes on. Also, I don’t like the implication that Xehanort chose Ventus as his vessel and later as material for the X-Blade only because he knows him from the Player’s dreams. Then again, if his dreams of the Keyblade War end before the Player meets Ven and Lauriam, then Xehanort wouldn’t know about them and would instead be more familiar with Skuld and Ephemer.

I will say that one thing I do like is Xehanort comparing himself to a starfish laying on the beach, both for the humorous imagery and also just a bit of that islander backstory flavor. Xehanort being the outsider of his friends group and not telling the whole truth of how he ended up in Scala is also an interesting Kairi parallel, although him being found unconscious in the middle of a city is kinda overused. I do like that the surrounding cities around Scala are all uninhabited, since trying to wrap my mind around these huge mountain-sized cities with potentially millions of people in them was a little too much for my brain to handle.

I do however find it quite bizarre that it’s taken some worlds so long to recover from the Keyblade War. Not only that, but apparently people just appear out of thin air once their world is restored. Like, how? It just feels weird and uncomfortable, almost like these people only exist for the protagonist and audience’s amusement rather than being independent living beings in their own right. I dunno, there’s just something deeply unsettling about those implications. It also makes me wonder how long ago the Keyblade War was, if places like Agrabah still aren’t finished only 75-ish years before KH1. The characters refer to it as a legend, so it must’ve happened a long time ago, right? Some fans think it’s only been 100 years since the Keyblade War, but that would be like the equivalent of calling World War 1 a legend.

The worlds all being on different timescales is also extremely headache-inducing, both as analyst and a fanfic writer trying to keep track of the plot. Couple that with time travel and the whole thing just falls apart. Of course, if each world runs at a different time, then perhaps this is why Xehanort looks so much older than Eraqus, or rather why Eraqus looks so relatively young when he’s supposed to be 80-ish years old. And if that’s the case, then do any of the characters’ ages really matter? I’ve already proven that their ages have been retconned before. Also, this renders timecodes such as ‘75 years later’ and ‘one year later’ from Re:Mind and other parts of the series completely meaningless. The timeline is broken.

Anyway, I’m not sure how much Norse Mythology will play into the story, but all the new characters have Norse names with two that stand out the most. The first is Master Odin, named after a Norse god who sacrificed one of his own eyes for knowledge, which is an interesting parallel to the MoM. The second is Baldr, the as of yet unseen seventh student who has a missing sister, because evidently Nomura likes recycling his previous plots before they’ve even finished. In Norse Mythology, Baldr is the god of light whose death kickstarts the events of Ragnarok. How this’ll be relevant in KHDR remains to be seen, but after seeing those four gravestones in the timeskip/flashforward, I can’t imagine this ending well for anyone not named Eraqus or Xehanort.

Now, as funny as I find it that the new characters have all been killed off this quickly, I’m not entirely convinced that those are Urd, Hermod, Bragi, and Vor’s graves. They could actually be the graves of the missing upperclassmen, if some of them turn up dead. Speaking of the upperclassmen, I would hope that Yen Sid is one of them, but I have a feeling he won’t be allowed to show up simply because of Disney’s stranglehold on its own IP. It’s pretty sad and ironic seeing as this series used to be all about Disney, but I assume that’s why Nomura is straying further and further from the brand.

About the four new student characters, I don’t have any particular attachment to any of them, beyond Vor’s name being hilariously unfortunate. I find it a bit eye-rolling that fans continuously snub Kairi but will instantly latch onto any new characters like Yozora and these four despite barely knowing anything about them. It doesn’t help that, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that any of the four who you choose to be in your trio will have the exact same dialogue in cutscenes no matter who you pick, meaning that these new characters don’t even get much of a chance to develop their own personalities because all of their dialogue has to be generic and bland enough to fit all four of them.

Young Eraqus is probably the best character so far, simply because he’s the only one with any personality. Granted his supposed cowardice has yet to be seen, but it’s mentioned so often that I assume it’s gonna be an important plot point later. However, I’m finding it hard to relate young Eraqus with his adult counterpart seeing as their personalities are just so different. I’m aware there’s a 65-ish year gap between this Eraqus and older Eraqus, but there better be some major character development to explain this, especially since even standing in front of his presumed classmate’s graves he still seems fairly chipper.

On that note, as humorous as ‘Tardy Fleetfoot’ is, just like with Xehanort, don’t think I’ve forgotten that this guy caused Terra’s insecurity and self-doubt with his overzealous anti-darkness stance, probably heavily influenced Aqua’s black-and-white anti-darkness keyblade-first-ask-questions-later thinking, was also probably the one who told her to lie to Ventus about always living with them, and attempted to straight up kill Ven and Terra. Eraqus’s actions aren’t as bad as Xehanort’s, but they certainly aren’t acceptable in any capacity.

Something odd I noticed is that Eraqus knows what the Heartless are called, and even the difference between Pureblood and Emblem Heartless-- well, part of the difference; I’m assuming he doesn’t know that future Xehanort created them. But anyway, my point is that Aqua doesn’t know what the Heartless are called until Mickey tells her in BBS 0.2. Before that she simply calls them ‘dwellers of darkness’, and even mistakes one for an Unversed. Does this mean Eraqus never taught his students about the Heartless? Why? Perhaps after his classmates died, he decided to shelter his own students from the worlds, hence why their Mark of Mastery was so simple? I’m just guessing at this point. Of course, there’s still no real explanation as for why the Emblem Heartless are here in the past. My best theory is that someone used the Book of Prophecies to summon them... somehow. It really just seems like an excuse to gloss over the corner Nomura wrote himself into with the whole ‘Emblem Heartless were made by Ansem’ thing, but we’ll see.

Honestly this whole series is just one big endless death-spiral of constant retcons and nonsensical plot twists and at this point I’m just exhausted. My view on KH has become one of mild and morbid curiosity, rather than expecting anything truly great. Is that cynical? Yes, but I’ve watched other once-great series (Star Wars, Voltron) worsen over time to the point that they just fizzle out and die, and I’m afraid it’s the same deal with Kingdom Hearts. I don’t think I’ve truly enjoyed a KH game since BBS, and if the series just continues down the path of introducing bland new characters every time Nomura gets bored rather than developing the already established ones, I don’t know how long I can stay interested. The Dark Seeker Saga is over and he really needs to let Xehanort go.

To end this on a positive note, I am tentatively hopeful about Melody of Memory. The gameplay looks cute and fun and the story looks like it will have more development for Kairi and her backstory, which is something I’ve been wanting for a while now. Focusing on the original cast is definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope this series can keep moving forwards rather than backwards.

#khdr

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craftmanatee · 4 years ago

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Dread X Collection 3 Games Review

Once again, my friend and I have played through a new Dread X collection and I would like to make a short concise review for each game including the Hub area. We each played 1 game resulting in 6 each. The order of games reviewed is not the recommended order to play as we went on a very simple roundabout on the graveyard, and the games have a strong sense of quality unlike Dread X Collection 2 which had many great quality games and many low quality games.

Lets go!

Game X: The Castle (A bit unremarkable)

Scare Type: Cute

Player: My friend

The castle in some way is a step back from the awesomeness of the house. As it proceeds with forced dialogue cutscenes with your character and a ghost character that possesses in you. The puzzles and areas are also larger and more spread out and easier than the house. The Dialogue cutscene itself even give the idea to not compare the two, which is understandable. But let me tell YOU that I enjoyed the house more than I did the Castle (Even if it was not I who was doing the Castle Bit), so even if they are different, one was in my opinion better than the other.

The forced Dialogue cutscenes weren't to bad. The Voice Acting was not bad. Its rather the script and subjecting the player to sit through it. Its not the most fun to sit through and could have been handled better. In the house, a dialogue still happened but you were still free to move around while listening to the pre-recorded message. The ghost possessing you could have done the same with you, but instead this YOU is a character that must go into a dialogue and stop your gameplay.

The STYLE of the castle is where I think it wins the best. The very cute spooky aesthetic is great, and hold a lot of details we noticed near the end of the game. Like the paintings being famous paintings, replacing the characters of the paintings to goofy ghosts. Time passing between each game is also a great detail, making the castle ever so slightly different all the way to night time. I love the castle for this.

We quickly figured out that the theme for this Dread X collection was not just Cute and spooky, but also the inevitability of death.

Nate Berens – SATO WONDERLAND (Ok)

Scare Type: Surprising!

Player: My Buddy

This game was alright, nothing too amazing as pulling different topics to make a new dialogue box appear was tedious and a bit annoying. But the story itself was pretty cool, resulting in a surprise ending. Each game have different endings which we did not try to explore, but for this I think we managed to get the best ending. Not much to say about this one.

Blood Machine – Soul Waste (Eh...)

Scare Type: ...None?

Player: Me

Soul Waste is a 3D action platformer about this... post apocalyptical world, and you happen to be the “Saviour”. We got Ending C for this as we felt the tedium of the collectables and we weren't going to sit around collecting them all in this weird to navigate map. The enemies did not make much of a challenge making the game bit boring. The end boss was the only thing that gave me some ounce of real fun. There was a lot to explore, but my patience wore thin due to not being that interesting of a platformer. Although it did look good for what it did. There is some to explore which we did not, but I simply noticed that there was some things here and there that we did miss. We just did not feel the need to go back.

Bryce Bucher – Disparity of the Dead (Great!)

Scare Type: Horror that sticks around even after the game.

Player: My pal

This game I think pulls off the themes of Dread X Collection 3 very, very well! Perhaps the best thematic one? Nevertheless, this is a 3D platformer that lets you talk to fun characters collecting collectables and piece together a mystery. The topics that which the game introduces to you are all very good and sad in many ways. It also had a lingering effect on me personally. This lingering horror reminded me of SOMA by Frictional Games. Anyways, the game in general is not horrifying until you get to a certain point. Then when the actual ending plays, it all gets sad. We do not know if there are different endings, but the ending we did get was a sad one in my opinion and was great.

Amon Twentysix – Bete Grise (Cool!)

Scare Type: Uneasy, then relief!

Player: Me

I really liked the aesthetics of this game, reminded me a lot of some obscure old-school games. The gameplay is mostly of you going floor to floor doing cleaning and... repairing? Anyways, there are a few hints here and there that foreshadow the great revelation at the end. I saw some of them and felt very uneasy when going through the process as it all felt like a facade. But once the revelation hit, the game turned into something more funny, stylish and well, just felt good. Its rare for a horror game to kinda blue ball you into satisfaction.

DIRIGO GAMES – REACTOR (Disappointing)

Scare Type: Betrayal

Player: My Homie

This is a game I spoiled myself with, which is why I had my friend play it instead. The game is mostly a walking simulator in which it feels like you shouldnt be there in the bad/useless way as there is a robot buddy who keeps you company and doing everything for you. When the time comes, you are then obviously, chased to the ending of the game. Its not scary, sad. Its just a simple experience. The aesthetics of the game is great, by being a gradient of blacks and whites as well as minimal uses of colour. Other than that, this is disappointing.

Moya Horror/Amos – Nice Screams at Funfair (humorously frustrating)

Scare Type: Dont fail

Player: Me

This is a very short game that was short enough for us to also explore a different ending. There is no real inherent horror here. Its mostly thematic to being like Halloween. The game has you serving icecream to people, the challenge is to serve them the ice cream that they want, and take the money into your tip jar or cash register. The real challenge is the controls, as throwing ice cream into the ice cream cones often fails for no reason, and clicking on to activate anything just sometimes did not work. Resulting in funny scenarious. We got 2 different endings for this, one that made sense, and another that we didnt understand. The game looked great, the intro did not have to be as long as it did but it was a fun little ride.

Basalt Tower – Matter OVER Mind (Woah!)

Scare Type: Loosing progress...

Player: My Amigo

Matter over mind absolutely felt like an old-school platformer, it was also unique, colourful and funny/cute! Crawling around as a little parasitical monster and possessing scientists in order to escape the labs just looked great. Like many of these games, it had a collectible that meant... NOTHING. And if you died collecting them, you will loose them all. Prompting you to reset the entire game. Nevertheless, it was an impressive game that felt great.

Corpsepile – Submission (Fuck yeah!)

Scare Type: Scary, but also funny

Player: Me

This game had so many unique and cool twists and ideas. Maybe one of the best games in this collection. It was absolutely creative, funny... everything! It was also scary at times, referencing P.T. Its puzzles were great and fun, so much good about this one! The gameplay switches often, the horror amps up... Man... Submission was super good! Cant really say much other than that.

Torple Dook – Chip’s Tips (Funny!)

Scare Type: Friendly?

Player: My guy

Super creative point and click adventure game, hamming it up to 101%. It is also so patronizingly friendly that it becomes funny. Probably the most unique game on this list. And you can pet the dog in this game. I absolutely love the aesthetics of the unhinged masked textures, as well characters being flat cutouts. What is sad is this game feels like the end to Torple Dook’s streak of being in Dread X Collection games as it references his previous 2 games as well as more.

Breogan Hackett – Bubbo: Adventure on Geralds Island (Woah! x2)

Scare Type: JUMP

Player: Me

A very well done 3D platformer, with some challenge. The game is not scary, although it does come to a point. The platforming was very good albeit a tiny bit weird when turning in a specific way. It also features hidden collectibles that we unfortunately did not find all and left it at that. It sounded and felt good, looked good and was fun to get to the end with. There are different endings, we (me) only got to see 1. I jumped at the right time and made my way out!

Modus Interactive – EDEN: Garden of the Faultless (Chaos?)

Scare type: None, just weird.

Player: My hombre

This is literally a game akin to raising your Chaos in Sonic Adventure games. Just that you raise your little Evangelion. This game I think, has the best Ps1 look than the other games. It has a very weird control scheme, as well as being weird in its own right. And it nails the aesthetics very well. Too bad the game is finicky or boring, sporting long paths and lots of waiting. I guess you could have some fun minmaxing your wittle angel. I guess you always need at least one super unorthodox entry in a collection.

Adam Pype & Viktor Kraus – SPOOKWARE @ The Video Store (Quintessential)

Scare Type: brief moments of panic

Player: Both of us

This game... is actually really fun. Spookware is literally Wario ware but with horror movie themed events. The style, game and everything is perfect. Although very short, I would honestly buy a game like this if it was fully complete. I also think this is the most fitting game for the theme of the collection. Although, not much is done about the “inevitability of death” theme here, but everything else about it carries the collection thematicly. Such a fun and quirky little game.

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Conclusions

And so, the best games in the collection In my opinion were...

#1 Submission AND Spookware

#2 Chips Tips

#3 Disparity of the Dead

The collection was not at all as scary as the first or the second collection. Although, that is understandable as it had a more Fun and goofy vibe to it. I love seeing these collections and it introduces me to people ive never heard of before. Like Viktor Kraus who made the music, like in the trailer for the collection. Thats a great one. I wish to keep seing them make these and I hope that it is profitable for them in the end as well.

#dread x collection #Dread X Collection 3 #horror #Halloween #Spooky #Scary #video games #realtalk #review #torple dook

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secret-engima · 5 years ago

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Hey, all your stories have inspired me to try the ffxv game and i haven't played the other games are there any tricks to it?

Hmmmmm You don’t need to play the other FF games to get into FFXV? So there’s that. Get the Royal Edition, PLEASE, it has all the extra DLC barring Ardyn’s and an extra map to explore plus quests.

For tips/tricks lemme think-

Overlevel. Side-Quests are your friend, Hunts are your friend. Until you get comfortable with the various combat systems and strategies having a higher level is Great. Even after you get comfortable having a higher level is Great.

Collect everything. If you see a shiny blue spark on the ground, go over and collect it. Be careful what you sell. There are guides on what is safe to sell or not but as a shortcut tip DO NOT sell Rusty Bit, Glass Gemstone, and if you somehow get a Sturdy Helixhorn while taking Hunts for the love of the Astrals DON’T SELL IT. Those three ingredients are what you need to upgrade your Engine Blade, which brings me to my next tip-

Talk to Cid after you’re in the open world (so ... post Noctis learning of Insomnia’s fall and the cutscenes/short quests associated with that). I forget when you’re free to go talk to him (probably after the set of Cor quests? I think? Been a while.) but just- try as soon as possible and keep trying. He has these nifty quests where he will upgrade certain kinds of gear, including your Engine Blade. If you upgrade the Engine Blade three times (Rusty Bit for the first one, Glass Gemstone for the second, Sturdy Helixhorn for the last) it will turn into the Ultima Blade, which is easily the highest powered blade in the game for like- 99% of the game. I’ve been in post-game for a LONG while now hunting down the really hard post-game dungeons and I still use that thing. It’s a relatively easy set of quests to get the highest level blade in the game and you can do it REALLY EARLY on in the game.

Wait System is Your Friend In Specific Instances. So- there are two kinds of combat mode in the game, Real Time and Wait System. I usually don’t bother with Wait System because I prefer Real Time BUT when hunting for specific monster parts (like the Sturdy Helixhorn), if you pause in combat and go down to ... i forget what it’s called but the came will show you in the tutorial, there’s a spot where you can swap to Wait System. That essentially pauses the game while you’re holding still (on a timer though so don’t dally too long) so that you can look around and lock onto desired monster parts. If you want the horn- lock onto and repeatedly warp attack the horn until it breaks. Repeat for any other part you particularly want on a given monster. I only do that with Hunts when I need a specific part though so (shrugs).

Take your time. You are in no rush, exploring and overleveling are your friends, and really except for specific quests, nothing is timed. Just enjoy the game and get comfortable with the systems before trying to tackle the late game/Altissia/post-Altissia content. There. Is. No. Rush. Stockpile potions and elixirs, enjoy the scenery, go catch some funny colored frogs. Saving the world will wait for you.

I’m sure everyone has a different opinion, but for me, I like to upgrade the Exploration branches of the Ascension menu (basically your skill tree, it has sub categories for upgrading magic, upgrading health, upgrading/unlocking your companion’s special attacks, etc) There are ones that will allow things like Gladio picking up extra items while hiking as well as gaining EXP and Ascension points (skill points) just by driving the car around and another for riding chocobos. I’d recommend getting the car and chocobo = ascension points ones first before moving on to snag whatever boosts or abilities you want because that way you can just- earn skill points by doing whatever on the open world map.

Pay attention to the exp bonus rates of various hotels. You only “level up” when you Rest at either a Haven or a hotel or caravan. Haven’s have the bonus of Ignis cooking meals (pay attention to the buffs offered, and if you see a chibi figure of one of the chocobros next to a recipe that means they like it and will get a passive exp boost for eating it), but hotels and caravans will boost how much exp you get per Rest. The best one early-ish in the game is Lestallum’s, which doubles your points when you Rest there (so if you go in with 100 points, it will tally 200 points instead etc etc). The Best one is the hotel in Altissia but that’s later game and also much more expensive.

Do the Dead-Eye quest as soon as you think you’re leveled up enough for it, because it unlocks Chocobos and those are priceless for running around the map in places the car can’t go (make sure to have a few flasks of Fire Elemency in your inventory, because there are red barrels in his lair and it is satisfying to set him on fire).

Elemancy is your friend (as long as you throw from far enough away, because your own bombs WILL hurt you if you throw too close). It took me forever to get the hang of Elemency and I still prefer using blades BUT it’s a fun system to play with. If you combine raw elements like Fire with an ingredient from your inventory (say, a banknote or silver coin) you can get additional effects like boosted exp, slowing the enemy down, poisoning them, even instant death (though that one is ... iffy).

Pay attention to the numbers that come out of monsters when you fight them. Purple means that whatever you’re using isn't effective. Gold means it’s super effective, white is normal. If you’re getting purple numbers, try swapping to another type of weapon like spear, dagger, great sword, or pistol. If you watch close enough, you can spot if one of the other chocobros is using a super effective weapon and as Noctis you get to use all of them, so just swap to that.

Don’t Fast Travel unless you have to. Filling up the gas tank on the car and running everywhere on chocobo may be boring sometimes but if you get the exp and skill point bonuses for doing those things, it will be worth it. But if you fast travel you don’t get those skill points.

There’s an mp3 player thing you can buy in the car store menus under key items, it will let you play music from other games while you drive/ride/walk. You can buy the soundtracks from various stores and gas stations throughout lucis so make sure to check for those when you stop.

Do the Cindy quest chain. The sooner you successfully complete it, the sooner you get a car with an unlimited gas tank, so no more worrying about having to spend gil refilling the tank while earning ascension points. Also the fully upgraded car can fly, but I don’t recommend it because landing is hard and one mistake will murder your entire party. Also if Cindy sends you into a dungeon to get a part, look it up ahead of time on the internet, because chances are you don’t have to go too far into the dungeon to find it, but if you do, it’s probably a scary high-level dungeon so good luck.

Prompto is a Gem. I mean that. He is one of my primary tactics in the game other than be Warptastic with Noctis. He is also a Glass Cannon so if you get/buy decent health and defense items I recommend giving the best ones to him (there are ascension slots that can unlock more accessory slots for specific characters, I recommend upgrading Prompto’s and Noctis’s first). The longer you can keep him alive in a fight, the more times you can use his Piercer ability. It’s his basic special attack, but it doesn’t take long to recharge and you can use it to break an enemy’s defense VERY often if you level it up all the way (just spam it, more use = higher level special attack). I still use it post game because it’s short and fast and relatively powerful. But that’s just me.

Try to keep everyone alive. If you don’t have phoenix downs to spare obviously you CAN just let them lie there until the fight is over, but if you do that then the “dead” member won’t get exp for the fight. This is bad because you need all the bros to be at their best to survive the whole game. Try to keep an eye on all health bars and if you can’t get over there to manually revive them, there are ascension skills that let them use health kits on themselves or you can just go into the potion menu and order them to use one on themselves before they get too bad off health wise.

If you think you are overleveled enough to handle the boss fights in Gralea. You Are Not™. Either don’t go to Altissia until you are higher leveled than you currently are or when you go to Altissia, take advantage of Umbra’s new time-travel ability and go BACK to Lucis to level some more. I recommend being like- at least level forty-five, PREFERABLY FIFTY+, before going to Altissia but that’s just me. Check the “recommended level” of each quest before doing them and decide if you want to tackle it. They are fully beatable if you are at the recommended level or even a little under but personally I saved a lot of potions and elixirs and tears of frustration by just- making a point to be 5-10 levels higher than the recommended at minimum.

Strategy Guides on the internet are your friend. I suck at explaining my strategies, and other people have actual numbers to crunch to prove their methods. If all else fails, there is no shame in looking up how to handle a boss fight on youtube or ign or whatever.

That’s ... all I can think of atm though I could ramble on for ages on different tactics and things I find useful. Hope this helps!

P.S. be polite to people in the dialogue options. You will be rewarded with exp and skill points for Not Being a Jerk and in one case in Altissia a conversation can literally decide if your game kicks into Hard Mode or not. So Be Nice. For Your Own Sake.

#SE asks #theladyinthedarkforest asks #Secret Engima Rambles #ffxv #tips #my tips #i am not good at hard strategy okay #over leveling is my friend #so is being nice to npcs

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mrjamesie · 5 years ago

Text

More P5R Thoughts

Finished the Madarame Palce and just churning out the days before his change of heart. Thought I’d post more thoughts and stuff.

His Palace

- All the gimmicks of his palace are the same if I remember correctly (the unopenable gate, the giant marshmallow ann, the paintings, sayuri real or not etc etc)

- But I think the addition of the will seeds, the changing up of the layout a bit, as well as the addition of grappling hook locations helps to spice it up

-Speaking of grappling hook, there is a really cool grappling hook location towards the end and when you land you can see that smug Joker expression and it’s just great

- Just judging off this palace and the Kamoshida palace I really like the addition of will seeds. You don’t have to go to far away to find them but you still needa put a bit of effort. I just think it’s a nice balance not to mention the slight recharge in SP you get from each and the accessory you get after collecting all 3 just adds incentive to go look for them.

- They changed the boss battle. Before it was just kill his paintings, damage Madarame and repeat. But now after you kill his paintings it’s just Madrame... along with a bunch of clones he creates. He creates clones that are either fire, electric, ice or wind. After you take down one set of clones he summons more. And it repeats until soon he starts breaking under the pressure and the clones he summons are just asleep and can be technical damaged.

- His boss now really incentivizes baton passing but you also need to balance that out with dishing out damage to the real Madrame. Overall I like the change they made to his boss fight, makes it more and you actually needa think about ordering and such.

Mementos

- So I‘ve only done one real run of mementos with 2 targets but from what I’ve seen it might be a lot less mind numbing maybe.

- The new character Jose seems very interesting, drinking flowers asking for tokens and I can’t wait to see his relevance to the plot.

- The flowers you collect for him are just items you collect as you travel through Mementos same as normal treasure/items like before. You can spend them on some SP restorative items and such and they go away when you leave Mementos so spend them all in the run you’re in.

- There are now stamps you collect for Jose in Mementos as well. There’s one in each level of Mementos and you use them to change either the exp, money or item (either rarity or chance not sure) of Mementos. You can also redistribute how you spend your tokens if you change your mind, but at the cost of flowers.

- Targets can be handled differently now. You can actually talk them down now once you knock them out, as long as you make the right choices. This is a nice change and really makes you feel like you’re changing the hearts of rotten adults instead of just beating them up.

- These changes seem interesting and at least make the grind through Mementos later on seem less dull, and I guess it also may also be to make you go more often, instead of waiting for missions to stack up.

- Also something funny but the cutscene for when Jose changes up Mementos is literally him taking a hammer and talking about the pressure points of Mementos and just hitting a random spot to change it up lol.

- It seems that weather may have less of an effect, at least for pollen. You cannot cheese the reaper with pollen anymore, as it just makes shadows literally asleep and just easier to ambush.

- One last thing but it seems that floors now sometimes have a random effect, i.e. all the lights out and only treasure demons. I guess this is just to spice up the monotony of Mementos.

Random Things

- The way they’re weaving Kasumi into the story seems so far pretty natural. Yes they add in an original school event to properly introduce her but I liked it. It didn’t seem like padding and also got to see Haru for a bit which is always welcome.

- Takuto Maruki’s confidant storyline so far seems like it’ll heavily play a part towards establishing the dream scenario teased for the 3rd semester. As for the how that is still to be determined much later on I’m guessing.

- The scenes where Joker is waiting for a train and someone approaches him seem to mostly have VO’s now when I’m pretty sure they weren’t voiced-over before at all and I am happy about that change.

- I forgot how much it sucks when you need a certain stat level to progress a confidant. Please just let me help Takemi or get better guns from Iwai.

- Speaking of guns, they ALWAYS recharge after every battle now and it is so great. THEY’RE ACTUALLY VIABLE NOW.

Overall, I’m liking P5R more and more with all these little changes that just add up to a quality game, and P5 was already amazing, at least imo. Can’t wait to play more and GET UP TO MY QUEEN.

Sorry if this is a lot, I just don’t really have anyone to share this with and it’s just nice to express my thoughts about a game I love dearly. Though it’s gonna be hard to choose when FF7R comes out. EARLY TOO for Australia.

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 spoilers #persona 5 royal spoilers #p5r spoilers #spoilers #mythoughts

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years ago

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FE16 Golden Deer Liveblogging

Chapters 16-18. Just like the Lions route, until it isn’t. There’s also some Dimidue content here, but not enough for its own post.

Chapters 16 and 17 are virtually identical to those chapters for the Lions apart from which army you’re controlling. Ferdinand still shows up to die on the Great Bridge, with a generic taking the place of Lorenz. (Oh, and I’d forgotten to say last time that Ashe appears in Ailell. I read somewhere that he can be recruited somehow here, but I didn’t see it.) The big battle at Gronder Field is a fair bit easier with the Deer; the Lions are less mobile and I believe fewer in number, with the only thing that surprised me being Sylvain and Ingrid coming from behind with reinforcements a few turns in.

Keeping Dedue alive is fairly simple in Chapter 17 since you only have to defeat Edelgard and Dimitri to end the chapter, but I’m not entirely certain I got anything special out of it? In any case, I did so by rushing Edelgard’s lines as fast as possible to get close to taking her out before the Lions start moving. Once they move it looks like Dimitri and his two boyfriends’ AI is specifically trained on Byleth (...why?) unless that’s only because mine was about 30 levels below the rest of my army and cowering in a bush because I’m not using him. It’s therefore not too hard to leave a few units behind to rush Dimitri on his way north as soon as Edelgard is down.

Chapter 18 at first looks like it’s going to be a retread of the Lions’ Chapter 20, the showdown vs. the Death Knight in Fort Merceus, but then the plot happens and you’ve got a bunch of Almyran NPCs led by Nader backing you up while everyone other than Claude assaults the fort from a different starting location. Then the DK surprises everyone by retreating, turning it until a rout map unless you can kill him before he leaves. On that plot point, see below.

Claude’s paralogue is technically the first new map I’ve seen on this route, although it’s really just the story map for the Sreng desert one used for skirmishes. It’s not completely awful to navigate once you realize that there’s a path of normal terrain circling the central structure, which was very helpful when trying to grab the loot from a bunch of thieves determined to commit suicide by dragon. The Wind Caller/Macuil wasn’t particularly worse than any other major monster boss I’ve yet encountered, and he was great for dropping little worldbuilding hints. It’s funny to me that the other house leaders’ paralogues target major military installations while Claude goes on a field trip to another country for information.

Character/Story observations

Let’s start with the Dimidue. The reason I say that I’m not sure that sparing Dedue accomplishes anything is that he retreats from battle and the post-chapter cutscenes play out as if this had happened anyway. Hilda describes Dimitri charging after Edelgard alone before collapsing and getting run through by Imperial soldiers. Claude then asks after Dimitri’s vassal whose fate was unknown - and then it cuts to Dedue alone, saying this: “Your Highness! Your ambitions are my own now! I...I will bring you Edelgard’s head... I swear it!” This is indeed the route where these two go full Quan/Finn, and although Dimitri’s offscreen end lacks the poignancy of Yied the results are no less tragic or less gay. And because Dimitri has no son to be fueled with righteous anger, Dedue has to carry within him not only Finn’s unbroken loyalty but Leif’s rage. I know he’ll be making a reappearance in a later chapter, too, so this isn’t the end for them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the anons I’ve gotten on the subject were really about the chapter where you kill Edelgard.

I made a point to defeat Dedue first before rewinding time to see what would come of it, and actually I think that adds even more to where their relationship is/was on this route. In this version of events it’s left ambiguous who’s leading the mysterious Faerghus army until Dimitri appears on the battlefield, and apart from the bit about Cornelia’s coup right after the timeskip no explanation is given for why Dimitri is his one-eyed feral self. Unless the game says otherwise, I’m going to assume that events played out as they did in the Lions, with Dedue rescuing him from prison but needing to sacrifice himself and inadvertently leaving Dimitri to wander alone as a vagrant for five years. This Dimitri is as such violent, contemptuous, and obsessed with revenge, and when his allies die in battle his “mourning” quotes are nothing but ellipses (Sylvain), dismissive grunts (Mercedes), or their names (Felix, Ingrid). For Dedue, though, who protests that he can keep fighting after being defeated, Dimitri says this: “Shut up and retreat. You must live, Dedue.” So I was right about how this storyline plays out; per his Gilbert support, Dedue has to have his prince command him to live for him to have not charged to his death alongside Dimitri. Also, way to have all that homoromantic co-dependence flow both ways to have even a feral, death-seeking Dimitri insist on Dedue’s survival while all his childhood friends (and Mercedes) are dying around him and he barely spares them a word.

Anyway...let’s talk about lighter things. Not many supports left for me to get; I finally finished off Catherine and Shamir’s line, and it is blatantly romantic down to marriage propositions. As a counterpoint Claude’s last support with Shamir is one of his more romantic and one of the few endings that sees him eventually abandon Almyra. Flayn/Manuela dances around prostitution - good thing Flayn is secretly hundreds of years old, right?

Monastery tidbits: an NPC soldier confirms that the Fódlan year begins with the Great Tree Moon - the April equivalent. This means that numbering the months to match up with the Gregorian calendar was solely so the player could give Byleth a real world birthday. So worth it. I’ve also noticed that there’s a line of minor quests for supplies and skirmishes in Part 2 that are the same across all routes, with the only difference coming from who’s handing them out. For Edelgard it’s Hubert and for Claude it’s Hilda, but for Dimitri it’s Gilbert as yet another thing Dedue misses out on by being dead by default.

In a rare bit of honesty that’s kind of hilarious, Claude admits that he’s using Byleth for their connection to the church, now as a means of smoothing over tensions within the Alliance.

I complained about how the Alliance’s presence and behavior at the Gronder Field rematch on the Lions route has little explanation, and unfortunately the way the Kingdom remnant is handled is only slightly better here. Claude’s forces don’t try allying with them first because their movements have been erratic, and then later because it’s foggy at Gronder...fog that doesn’t stick around for the map itself, thankfully. Dimitri may be feral and unable to be reasoned with, but what about Gilbert or Rodrigue? The rematch is a big marketing moment, but having the Kingdom and Alliance fight each other instead of unifying against the Empire feels like a contrivance either way.

One thing I think Three Houses does really well compared to earlier games is that there’s less of a sense of what I think of as arbitrary chorus characters: people aside from the leads who show up in most dialogue scenes for the protagonist(s) to play off, who get to be there because they have plot armor or are NPCs so they can’t die in battle and therefore don’t need to be written around. FE16 goes out of its way to include every character in your army at one point or another in story cutscenes, sometimes even in plot critical ways. For example, after Chapter 17 it’s Lysithea who provides the plot hook to bring Those Who Slither back into the story by sharing her traumatic past. Meanwhile in Chapter 18 it’s Hilda who comes up with the ruse of invading Fort Merceus disguised as Imperial soldiers...as well as a gag about dressing Claude in drag that’s mildly amusing but goes nowhere.

Oh, right...I need to talk about the DK, and Those Who Slither’s nukes. The DK retreats from Fort Merceus because his side has “javelins of light” that totally obliterate it in the same way that Arianrhod gets obliterated in Edelgard’s route. As this happens in a cutscene I assume the DK doesn’t die there if you defeat him, as he does in the Lions route. If it seems odd that I’m not dwelling on the fact that the enemy now has anachronistic nukes, it’s nothing compared to Claude, who takes the opportunity to have an extended discussion on racism. Lorenz takes him to task for allying with the Almyran general Nader, and Claude reveals his plan to solve racism with imperialism. As silly as that is, he’s still deft (and manipulative) enough not to do so by revealing his own heritage but rather by dragging Cyril into the spotlight as an example of an Almyran among their own forces. Cyril protests, but that’s just how Claude rolls.

Part of Claude’s big speech references the Officer’s Academy bringing together people from many different backgrounds, among them the princess of Brigid and a man of Duscur. You know, an Imperial hostage and the vassal/boyfriend of the mentally unstable crown prince of Faerghus, because those are completely normal circumstances for adding diversity to the student body. It’s also strange to me that he considers Duscur as outside Fódlan. Ethnically and culturally distinct from Faerghus, yes, but Fódlan is a continent with three independent political entities that also includes the peninsula on which Duscur rests. To use a real world comparison close to how I imagine the relations in question, this would be comparable to saying that the Basque people do not live in Europe because they are an ethnic group distinct from the people of France/Spain. I’m clearly putting more thought into this than the game does, but still.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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characteroulette · 5 years ago

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Hey PQ was pretty good!

so I’m having trouble getting into PQ2 because of several factors, so I thought I’d write a half-think piece, half-essay on why I think the first PQ gets more flak than it deserves. So here’s that.

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I genuinely don't understand why, when talking about Persona Q, people are always saying things along the lines of, "The gameplay was good, but the characters were trite and the story wasn't that great." Like, as a fan of the Persona series, I genuinely don't understand that assessment.

Not saying PQ is flawless, oh no. There are PLENTY of things in PQ that I have an axe to grind with (the small door scene with the P4 gang, for one), but the overall story? The characters? They're both fine. Good, even, dare I say. And here's my argument as to why:

The returning Persona series characters (from 3 and 4) in PQ do a good job of representing their games and their own personalities, even if a little more light-hearted than their source material,

AND

The story is genuinely in-line with the rest of the Persona/SMT series, even if it ultimately doesn't matter due to time shenanigans (and I'm okay with that).

These are my two points. Just those two. Because these are the two most contested parts of PQ, as far as I can hear, since we all agree that the gameplay is the real breadwinner here hahaha

Anyway.

First, let's talk about the returning characters, since they seem to be the ones who matter most. The P4 cast are generally less griped about (save Chie and Teddie) and I believe this is largely due to the brighter, more hopeful tone of P4 as a whole. (Aaand, in my opinion, they're done a MUCH BIGGER disservice in the Arena games, but no one ever talks about that so let's not bother with those right now.)

P4 was a game about making friends, the hijinx that come from that, and finding the truth about a string of murders and confronting the worst parts of yourself in a harsher world in the process! And it executes this with the appropriate amount of balance between serious moments and comedic relief. The theme colour for the whole game is bright yellow/gold, a happier and more friendly colour which helps remind you that this game is all in good fun.

(Side note here: I honestly think that P5 really failed in this respect, despite my liking its tone slightly more. I just personally like darker-themed games, but P5 was a little too dark and oppressive right out the gate, with hardly a friendly face, which helps make your gradually growing group of friends much more appreciated but also a harder atmosphere for jokes to really land well. Most of the 'funny' sequences felt very undeserved and really dragged because uh guys we literally just fought a rapist, an abusive father figure, and some other fucked-up shit. Can we please acknowledge that a bit more instead of pretending it never happened by laughing at the expense of Ann's autonomy of her body? Especially when she was a target of said rapist??) But that's its own discussion for later.

Really, the fact that most of the P4 gang get out of this with little criticism shows how accepted their caricatures have become. I guess? At least, except for Teddie and Chie.

Teddie being a wannabe Casanova must've been a huge hit with the Japanese audience, because it's just the hill he's going to die on for the writers. There was more to Teddie than his hitting on the girls in P4, believe it or not! (And there's a whole thing about it being brought on by him mimicking the type of behaviour he saw Yukiko's shadow exhibiting, which has a lot of really interesting undertones, but it makes him more swappable with Junpei, so whatever, I guess.) Meanwhile, Chie's not as meat-crazy, either, but I guess it's a better trait for them to roll with than her (cut in the translation) glossed-over sexism.

Both work fine, however, and aren't really too annoying enough to be that egregious. (Though they both go right up to the line sometimes. Teddie more so, but none of the girls playing along really helps show how gross his actions are. Most of the time.)

No, the real complaints I see directed at the characters being 'too cartoonish' are usually reserved for the P3 gang.

P3 is, really, such a bizarre game to go back to now when compared to its two successors. It's dark and hopeless, like P5, but formulaic and mystery, like P4. It's actually a natural progression when looking at its two/three older siblings (both P2s are bleak. As. Hell!), but, at least to me, it's the odd duck of the bunch, being the first to implement this winning formula of being caught in a time limit of a school year and managing spending time exploring this other world. It adds Social Links and social stats with this new time limit and this idea that the Persona and Shadows you fight don't just happen out on the streets in 'normal' circumstances for everyone to see. It pretty much went from an RPG to a management game with RPG elements.

And its emotional, impactful story, like P5, had a lot of tonal whiplash due to the attempts at comedy!

I feel like a lot of people forget this about P3 (and maybe I think more about it because I haven't actually beaten the whole game yet myself), but the story is actually a goddamn mess of tonal confusion. You got kids shooting themselves in the heads and a Social Link dealing with a classmate's crush on his teacher. You got wacky foreign exchange student and kids taking experimental drugs to suppress their Persona and slowly poisoning themselves to death as a side effect. The protagonist is an orphan who lost his parents in a huge, plot-relevant accident... But he's able to date every single girl at the same time and be the most wish fulfillment charming guy if the player so desires.

P3 being messy isn't a bad thing. P4, P5, and even P2 and PQ are all a little messy in their own rights, too. But because P3 was a lot of fans' first in the series, and PQ is just a spin-off, it gets way more flak for this than I feel it deserves.

(I mean, hey. Both P3 and P4 have those classic anime scenes of the boys walking in on the girls while at a hot springs. All PQ's got is an awkward group date scene and the implication that Yosuke and Kanji kissed each other while getting knocked out.) (They all. Have. Problems.)

And I know a lot of this comes down to personal preference. I'm not saying you're wrong for liking P3 or P4 more than PQ. I'm just saying I feel like PQ is often wrongly accused of being worse and less well-written when, really, they're all pretty much on par with each other. (And someone on the team really doesn't understand how to handle large casts of characters sharing the same space...)

But, personally, from everything I've seen from P3, I don't like the way most of the characters get presented to me in the source material. Junpei is way more insufferable in P3 than in PQ and Yukari is way more uninteresting in P3 than in PQ. Really, PQ helped me appreciate these characters more than P3 itself did. And, yes, they're more funny when they're trying to be, too. Because PQ is set up better for comedy than the 'remember you are mortal' tone of P3.

(Which makes dramatic moments hit all the harder when they happen) HEY check that segue! It's time to talk about the story and the two original characters of the game!

So, second point: people say the story isn't very good. To which I wanna ask... "Did you stop playing before defeating the fourth Boss?" Because it really sounds like, to me, everyone who says that didn't actually finish the game and reach all that juicy character development that happens for both sides around the fourth dungeon, where all the issues they've been building up (like Yukari's issue with Mitsuru for the P3 side and Kanji and Ken's awkwardness in the P4 side) start getting resolved in a satisfying way. And it comes with a reveal for the two characters we've been getting to know, Zen and Rei, as well.

(And, from here on in, there be spoilers. You've been warned.)

The two new characters to this game are Zen and Rei, who were in this place before the P3 or P4 gangs were called to the scene. Zen is quiet and a bit unsettlingly dense, but devoted to Rei, who is bubbly and full of life, but terrified of the dungeons you have to traverse. The two have been in this place for (what's implied to be) a very long time and enlist the help of the P3 and P4 teams in order to find a way out through defeating the bosses of each Labyrinth/dungeon. Simple enough, as it also helps the P3 and P4 team's goal of getting out. With each new dungeon, it feels more and more like something about Zen and Rei aren't quite right, but the length of the dungeon and all the team chats help you put it out of your mind each time. Rei can even get kinda annoying with her loudness and big appetite if you don't find her cute (which: how dare you. But yeah, I get it).

And then, at the end of a fiery festival fourth dungeon, you find yourself in a dark tomb at the bottom level. The boss awaiting you is Rei's shadow (a nice callback to the way P4 works) whom she still doesn't accept after you defeat it.

All the locks are gone and the P3 and P4 teams can return to their worlds if they wanted. Except Rei gets kidnapped after Zen reveals that Rei has been dead all along and it was him who trapped them here. It was he who created this place and even he who called both teams here.

And this was a plot twist that I friggin' loved.

It definitely had more impact on me because Zen and Rei easily became my favourites out of the whole cast, to the point of having them on my team for the whole game, but to find out such a fucked up twist is wild! (Seriously! Go watch the cutscene and tell me it isn't super fucked up!) You can say the P3 and P4 twists were shocking (or P5s I guess), but for my money, this is the best reversal of expectations I'd ever seen in a Persona game. In any game, really!

Zen was, in effect, the villain the whole time. His true identity as Chronos, God of time, makes sense with displacing the teams from their own times and the time here being erased once you reach the end. His own power that he sealed away growing impatient and taking matters into its own hands by drawing the teams to this haven displaced from time also makes perfect sense! And the entire climb through the last dungeon is his redemption arc and it makes for a super emotionally investing final dungeon all the way. (Which is great, because I hate every single one of the enemies that appear in this god-forsaken place.) (Even P4 and P5 can't really boast that, I felt very little investment through Izanami's dungeon and Baldabaoth's distortion.)

Of course, if you found Zen and Rei to be annoying and pointless, I can see how this would fall flat for you. The fact that they hinged such an emotional climax on these new characters, characters that don't even matter outside of this game!, was such a risky move. Especially when you consider this is just a fanservice game made basically under the promise of seeing the P3 team interact with the P4 team. But, for me, it really paid off.

And whatever complaints you had with the P3 or P4 characters, I feel like the resolutions to those character moments I mentioned earlier get explored even further during the climb through the final dungeon. From the P3 gang coming together to finally communicate with one another to the P4 gang reconfirming their bonds with one another, it's a really investing and emotional journey. I do wish the writing had been this tight and impactful through more of the game, but I believe it's worth it in the end.

Perhaps this moment comes too late in the game, though. I can definitely see others giving up before reaching this point due to the repetitive nature of the dungeons and the tidbits of character development that are meant to build up to this moment that can be too sparsely placed. (But, really, it's the same from P3 to P5, Social Links don't really add much variety when they can be just as repetitive and boring, just saying. Especially when you get caught in waiting to rank up hell, ugh.) For me, however, this really sealed the deal on this game being an incredible experience that I adored from start to finish. 7/10. Final score.

....

(7 outta 10?? Not perfect??) Well, it's not perfect. Japan's blatant homophobia and sexism really ruins a lot of scenes for me. I'm super salty especially about how the fake marriage scenes are handled so differently from the girl choices to the boy choices. (But you just argued in its favour for 2000 words!) Listen. ALL the Persona games wouldn't receive perfect scores for me for this aspect alone. There are a lot of other factors as well, but they vary from title to title and PQ in particular is guilty of spending too much time focusing on Teddie and Junpei being girl-crazy. And Marie is in this game more than she really should be. UGH.

But I digress.

In conclusion, this game's story and characters are better than most give it credit for. Hopefully, my argument helped you see why I believe this and why I think claiming that both aspects are just 'bad' is lazy.

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blazehedgehog · 6 years ago

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A few weeks before SAGE, I was interviewed by Corentin Lamy of french newspaper Le Monde. I answered questions about why I started SAGE, what I think makes Sonic unique, the origin of fan games, and various community history stuff. It was a lot of fun! You can click above to read the full article, which was published in french (translated, its title is something like "When There's No Good Sonic Games, Fans Develop Their Own"). Corentin also interviewed folks like Rlan for the article, too!

But, well, you know me: I’m long winded as heck. I ended up writing nearly TEN PAGES of text in response to my interview questions. I went on some kind of deep dives. So, with permission, I have been told it’s okay to publish my responses in full here on my blog. Just follow me behind the “read more” tag...

Corentin: Could you tell me more about the fangame scene? Is it as active nowadays than it was 5, 10 or 20 years ago?

Back in the day, SFGHQ was a huge resource hub. It hosted things used to make games, like graphics and sounds, as well as games themselves. When Rlan (Ryan) moved on, SFGHQ slowly fell into disrepair for a long time. Maintaining the database of files was more work than most people wanted to deal with. The forum community was always active, but people were gradually starting to move on. Maybe not even move on, but spread out a little more. Back in the day, it was difficult to host large files by yourself, so submitting your game to SFGHQ was the only way to put your work out there. That was a big draw. As services like Dropbox grew in popularity, hosting your game on SFGHQ began to matter less, and you started seeing more fangame projects show up in other corners of the Sonic fan community.

As SFGHQ's forums began to slow down, some of the people in charge wanted to revive it by merging with other Sonic fan communities. At one point, SFGHQ merged with another forum called Sonic United, and there were also suggestions being floated about trying to make SFGHQ a part of Sonicretro.org (one of the largest, oldest Sonic fan sites). Eventually the Sonic United merger was undone after Sonic United itself was bleeding users and shut down due to a lack of activity, and Sonic Retro opened their own fan gaming subforum in partnership with SFGHQ, which kinda-sorta meant SFGHQ as a stand-alone entity ceased to exist. SAGE went on like normal, and even grew, actually. Big names started making guest appearances, like a Q&A sessions with Naoto Ohshima (original character designer for Sonic and Dr. Eggman) and Mike Pollock (the current English voice of Dr. Eggman).

SFGHQ itself laid dormant, with years worth of promises about relaunching the site. Last year, as part of SAGE 2017, SFGHQ finally, actually relaunched. Instead of having an administrator manually add content to the site, users are now free to publish and maintain their own files. Unfortunately, it's a forum in the year 2018, so it's been kind of quiet. Most of the discussion tends to happen in the SFGHQ Discord, which is almost always active.

Of course, this is just the Sonic side of things. SFGHQ had a knock-on effect and others tried to make their own fan gaming websites for other gaming franchises. I think the only one that's still around is MFGG (Mario Fangame Galaxy), which even today still remains very reminiscent of what SFGHQ used to be like back in its golden age.

Overall, I'd probably say the fangame scene is more active than ever, though. SFGHQ's rise to fame was helped by the availability of easy-creation tools like Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker. Now, there's even more options for first-time developers getting in to game development, what with Unity, Construct, and even stuff like Twine. Everybody makes games nowadays it feels like, and you can draw a lot of parallels between how a lot of professional creators got their start drawing fanart or writing fanfiction. The more tools there are to make games with, the more likely somebody's first game development project will be a fangame. These people may not all be centralized at SFGHQ anymore, but they're still out there.

Corentin: How big is it? Do most developers know each other? Help each other? Sometimes are jealous of each other?

Back in the day, when everyone was centralized in SFGHQ, everybody knew each other, yeah. We were like one big family (in both good ways and bad). Nowadays, with everyone so spread out, it's almost impossible to keep track of it all. There's always a bunch of games at SAGE I've never heard of before, because they come from Gamejolt or some other fringe community I don't frequent. As a result, I imagine the fan gaming community is fairly large.

People don't usually help each other very much. Not for any kind of rude or territorial reasons, but generally because fangames tend to be a very personal, focused thing, and most people have tunnel vision regarding what they want. Everyone's trying to fulfill their dreams and that usually means going it alone, as everyone else is doing the same thing, with their own dreams. There are always exceptions, though. For a long time, Sonic Epoch, a fangame that continued the 1993 Sonic Saturday Morning Cartoon, was a team of three or four people writing the game's script and two or three musicians. Sonic Robo-Blast 2, one of the oldest fangames still in active development, has probably had dozens of people work on it over the years (I personally worked as a texture artist for them briefly). I also helped out on Sonic Time Attacked, one of the most famous classic fangames. Its developer, Jamie Bailey, was nearing completion on the game, but was struggling to produce the small handful of cutscenes he planned to have. I was kind of known for having nice cutscenes in my games, so I helped him out. Also, nowadays, with the advent of Unity making 3D games more viable, teaming up with multiple people is starting to become increasingly necessary. Sonic Utopia is being developed by at least four or five people, I think. Sonic World, a fangame written in Blitz3D, has probably had a dozen contributors by now. You can't really be a solo developer on those kinds of games, they take too much work.

Jealousy is definitely a problem. It's unsurprisingly difficult to draw the line on what's okay when you're making games that are 99% made from content borrowed from official games. If we're borrowing sprites from Sega without asking, why can't we borrow sprites from each other? The answer was always because that person was a member of the community, and they went to great lengths to custom-make something for their game, so obviously they weren't going to let anyone else use it. But, then, nobody had ever asked Sega if it was okay, so why should any of it be okay? That was occasionally a debate, and never with clear answers. Regardless, there were always accusations flying about who was stealing what from where. In particular, I remember a huge war breaking out over the usage of sprites created by a user with the handle "N8Dawg." He had custom-made a set of sprites all by himself, practically professional quality, and after abandoning his own project, decided to turn his artwork over to the community. But he did not do so publicly; he selected a few individuals that he thought would benefit from his sprites, and very quickly, access to these graphics turned in to sort of status symbol in the community. It was a nightmare. There was a lot of arguing over who got to use those sprites, and who had obtained them officially and who had stolen them from another fangame. Eventually, I think N8Dawg agreed to just release them publicly to stop all the arguing. I still have the files.

Corentin: How do you explain than the Sonic fangame scene is so active? What make Sonic so special? Is that because of the characters? Of the mechanics?

Generally speaking, I think fans make content to fulfill a need they aren't getting from the source material in question. This is why you get fanfiction that is so centered around romantic pairings. If nobody is giving it to them, people will always make what they want to see. Fans started making their own Sonic games after the franchise was more or less put on pause for five years in the mid-1990's. Sonic Team stepped away from Sonic games after making Sonic & Knuckles to try and let things rest, but there were a lot of people out there that were clearly hungry for more. So, they simply started making it themselves. You saw the same thing more recently with AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake). By the time that project finished, it had been something like 12 or 13 years since the last 2D Metroid game. Fans just made their own, because that's what they wanted to see.

The funny thing about Sonic is that Sega hasn't really kept the franchise under control. There are many, many different versions of the character, each one unique to itself. The Sonic from the Saturday morning cartoon is a different character from the Sonic in the classic games, which is a different character from the Sonic in the Archie comics, which is a different character from the Sonic in the Fleetway comics, so on and so forth. What this ultimately means is that you have tons people who come to Sonic the Hedgehog for wildly different things. Even narrowing it down just to the games, the Sonic franchise has had enough variance that there's a lot of debate over which games are "the good ones." When you consider what I said earlier about people making things that they want to see, there are a lot of Sonic fans out there who feel as though they aren't being served. Fangames end up a very good way to work out those frustrations.

Unfortunately what this means is that everyone has a different answer for what makes Sonic special. For some, it definitely is the characters. A lot of people were upset when Sonic Adventure 2 was first announced, because early media implied Tails wouldn't be making an appearance in that game. There are people upset right now because characters from the canceled Archie Comics haven't made it over to the new IDW Sonic comics. Other people are more about the game mechanics. The biggest splits there are between people who like the Classic 2D Sonic games, people who like the Sonic Adventure games, and people who like the super fast modern games like Sonic Generations.

Sonic faces some very interest design challenges, I think. The controls in those classic 2D games are still very unique, even among today's games. I think that also contributed to the sense that some fans were being under-served, because for the longest time, through games like Sonic 4, Sega was quite clearly trying to replicate those old games, but they weren't getting it right. Because it's not an easy thing to get right, really. Sometimes, it can almost feel like Sonic is successful by accident, like the stars and the planets align in just the right way at just the right time to produce something that could never exist at any other point in time. That'd certainly explain some things.

Corentin: According to you, Sonic fan games are popular because it's been a while since the last decent old school Sonic game. That's probably a big part of the explanation, but that can be the only one : Metroid fan games aren't as popular, F-Zero fan games aren't as popular, etc. How do you explain than Sonic resonate so much with his fans?

Not to dodge the question more, but I think that’s the riddle a lot of people have tried and failed to solve, even Sega themselves. As I said earlier, Sonic almost seems to be successful by accident. There’s a long story to be told here about Sega in the 90’s, some of which was told in Blake Harris’ “Console Wars” book. The gist is that Sega of America and Sega of Japan didn’t get along. Information I’ve read suggests that Sega of Japan saw themselves as genius artists and Sega of America pushed back against their esoteric ideas because they weren’t seen as financially viable. The two sides were constantly disappointed by each other’s demands, and Sonic was born out of this clash of ideals.

The entire reason it’s been so difficult to nail down what makes Sonic special is because Sonic was not the product of a single person, a single art style, or a single anything. It was more like an inexperienced chef haphazardly adding ingredients to a meal and accidentally making something amazing, but never being able to replicate the recipe.

In Sonic’s case, by the time anyone asked what the recipe for Sonic the Hedgehog was, the whole thing had gained too much momentum to be stopped. When something gets popular enough for a long enough period of time, it ends up taking on a life of its own. Once enough fans embrace it, it cannot be killed or destroyed. Think about Transformers, and how sometimes there were many years between movies or TV shows, but were still Transformers fans out there on message boards or at conventions. There will always be Transformers now, in some form or another, until the eventual extinction of the human race. The same is likely true for Sonic the Hedgehog. I mean, the Sonic franchise has already weathered some pretty dark times, but it’s still here. You couldn’t destroy it if you tried.

If you really want me to define what I think makes Sonic special, I think it’s because there’s never been anything like it. Not in 1991, not in 1999, and not even now. It really comes down to two things:

One, Sonic was one of the first true “characters” in gaming. You had guys like Mario, or Mega Man, that were duty-bound to be heroes. They didn't have much personality beyond that, if they had any personality at all. Sonic had that smirk, he was always waving his finger at the player, or getting visibly impatient if you made him wait around. Sonic brought the next level of characterization to games. That continued through games like Sonic Adventure; having that many playable characters, each with their own narrative threads that wove together in to a larger story was unprecedented in 1999.

Two would be how Sonic plays. We've had games like F-Zero, or Burnout, games that are really really fast, but never anything like the way Sonic does it. Sonic gives you the ways to interact with the world that most fast games shy away from. The best Sonic games make you feel like you're driving a rollercoaster, combined with the controlled chaos of a pinball table. You're supposed to be bouncing off stuff, getting thrown into the air, and feeling a little overwhelmed at first. The danger of losing control is part of the fun, but it's a difficult line to walk, and it has to be in balance with the other elements like platforming or enemy combat. It’s a unique blend of high-speed action with a sharp personality that you can’t get anywhere else.

Corentin: What are the biggest difficulties of developing a Sonic fangame?

Specifically regarding Sonic games, the biggest hurdle is probably control. It's such a big problem that a lot of fans have banded together to write programming guides and even create collections of code to make it easier for newbies to wrap their heads around how it all works. The physics and momentum of how Sonic moves are so tricky to properly implement that not even Sega really does it right, for example with Sonic 4, and they're the ones that invented those physics in the first place.

In general, I also think a lot of people underestimate how much work it takes to finish a game, even when most of the coding is already done for you. A lot of fangames get started, but never finished, because people lose interest before they cross the finish line. Staying focused and keeping perspective are probably the two most important things when it comes to developing any sort of game. You have to know and respect your own limits. You aren't going to make a game in a weekend. Depending on how ambitious you are, you won't even finish making game over a single summer vacation. You have to be ready to commit for the long haul. The best fangames take years and years of work.

Understanding criticism would be another difficulty. Over the years as I've reviewed games at SAGE, I occasionally find someone who gets really upset when I criticize their game. If somebody doesn't like your game, you have to learn to not take it personally. Criticism is valuable data that can be used to make better games in the future, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and use that information to improve. There can always be a next time, so don't get discouraged.

Corentin: Few fan games come to fruitition. Do all developers of fan games hope they will finish their game, or are they aware that's very unlikely?

Yes, I think nearly all fangames are started with the intention they’ll be finished some day. I can only speak from my experience, but it really seems like everyone, including me and all my friends, initially gravitated towards fangames when we were young. Especially in that youthful innocence, you never really think about how much effort goes in to something. I remember sending letters to Sega in the Saturn era, 1996 or so, regarding the cancelation of Sonic X-Treme. I tried to give them reasons to keep working on the game, and the things I was suggesting were so incorrect it was beyond the point of comedy and was actually a little bit sad. How movies, or video games, or whatever actually get made seems like a kind of magic until you’re faced with the reality of it all. It’s easy to see how somebody might decide to make and finish a video game without fully realizing how long that’s going to take.

It also depends on your definition of what “finished” means, I guess. I’ve created fangames that are not complete, full games, but I consider the project done, because I finished what I set out to accomplish. Even if that was only a couple of levels and a boss fight.

Corentin: Is Sega ok with fangames?

They seem to be, at least for right now. A few years ago, there was an Unreal Engine fangame, "Green Hill Paradise", and the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitch account left a comment in their stream chat congratulating them on a job well done and encouraging others to keep making fangames. Sega operates that account, so while it was not a legally binding document, it was at least some kind of official statement of approval.

But I say "at least for right now." Fangames are, according to copyright law, illegal. Technically speaking, so is fanart and fanfiction, because any unauthorized use of copyrighted content is illegal. Fair Use mostly covers educational or academic purposes, which don't apply here. So the only reason fangames, fanart, and fanfiction are okay is if the company in question turns a blind eye to the law. Sega is turning a blind eye to the law right now, but that might not always be the case. Obviously we've had decades worth of fangames at this point, but it only just recently lead to something like Sonic Mania. Hypothetically speaking, a few years from now, maybe somebody changes jobs and now there's a different person overseeing how Sega handles protecting their copyright. Then, this hypothetical person decides fangames are no longer okay and shuts the whole thing down. That could happen, and the law would support it.

Something like that actually happened very recently. Sega opened an online shop where they sell t-shirts and other merchandise, which triggered a wave of cease & desist notices directed at fans who were selling their fanart on shirts through sites like Teespring and Redbubble. Fans have been doing this kind of thing for years, even bringing their custom-made shirts to conventions and selling them there. Again, the law says this is illegal, but Sega never seemed to care before. They turned a blind eye to it. But now Sega is selling their own official shirts, they have manufacturing partnerships they want to protect, and the circumstances changed. They stopped turning a blind eye to it and shut the fans down. So, really, who knows what the future holds.

Corentin: In your Sonic Mania review video, you regret that Sonic Team relies too much on nostalgia. But doesn't nostalgia what drive you as a developer of fangames?

Not always. The very first fangame project I started back in high school was called "Sonic Infinity," which imagined a future where Sonic was brought back to life with cybernetic implants in a world that resembled Mega Man X. I just wanted my games to be popular, so I figured by merging Sonic and Mega Man together, I could be popular in two places at the same time. That was around 1998 or so. I ended up getting bored of that pretty quickly, and a new project caught my attention: a fangame called "Sonic: The Fated Hour" which was to be a Metroid-style Sonic game where you'd explore an open world and find gear upgrades. I started that project around the year 2000. Everyone else was still making fangames that continued the story of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but I wanted something that felt closer in tone to the Sonic Adventure games, which were current at the time. So it had a lot of story and cinematic sequences with artwork I drew myself.

I spent nine and a half years on The Fated Hour trying to figure out the best way for Sonic to work as a Metroid game before I gave up. When you work on something for that long you start to forget why you even started the project in the first place, so I decided it would be best if I just moved on. I still think about that game from time to time, about ways I could do certain things, but I refuse to let myself get trapped in that cycle again.

Along the way there was also a fangame I was working on called "Shadow of Chaos" that would have parodied how self-serious Sonic games are sometimes. That game didn't even really play like a Sonic game at all. You controlled Shadow, who could shoot guns and drove a Vespa scooter. It was intentionally ridiculous. I ended up getting a lot of friends to help me make levels for that one, but I lost a lot of the files to a hard drive crash. Many years later I ended up finding a backup of those files, but by then, the moment had passed.

And those are just my games. In my Sonic Mania review I had footage of other projects from my friends. There was “Thirdscape”, which was part of a trilogy of fangames about an alien invasion. The game took place many years after Sonic Adventure, and featured a grown-up Tails that was taller than Sonic. After Sonic Adventure 2, a lot of fangames were Sonic and Shadow working together, like Aytaç Aksu’s “Chaomega” and Showoffboy’s “Sonic Ki”. Then you had truly weird games, like TLSPRWR’s “Sonic Bible Adventure”, which fittingly takes Sonic through the events of the bible, or RC’s “Crazy Cabbie Sonic” where Sonic must deliver pedestrians to their destination before time runs out, like in Crazy Taxi.

Then you even have games like “Freedom Planet”, which originally started out as a Sonic fangame starring “Lilac the Hedgehog” as she traversed Dragon Valley collecting gold rings. Now, Freedom Planet is an original game starring Lilac the Dragon, available to purchase on Steam, Wii U, Playstation 4, and soon, Nintendo Switch, with a sequel in active development.

The connecting thread is that these were all side-scrolling games, but that was more about the limitations of the tools than any real desire to focus on nostalgia. The fangaming boom happened because of easy-to-use game creation software, but that software was universally limited to making 2D games only. Making 3D games often meant knowing real programming languages. The only 3D fangame for the longest time was “Sonic Robo-Blast 2”, which itself mainly started as a mod for Doom 2. In the big picture, Unity is a fairly recent invention, and we’re only just now starting to see a larger number of fangames using it.

If there was a focus on nostalgia, it was largely because those old Genesis games are the most universally beloved. It’s like I said earlier, fans tend to create the things they want to see. So you had a lot of fangames over the years about returning to Green Hill Zone. I think it was that fact by itself that probably pushed Sega to invest so much more heavily in nostalgia with Sonic 4, which in turn sparked even more nostalgia-focused fangames from fans determined to right Sonic 4’s wrongs. In a sense, that’s sort of why we have Sonic Mania now.

Corentin: What are the 3 or 4 best fan games people should absolutely give a try?

Sonic Robo-Blast 2 is unique to fangames insofar as it’s big enough to support its own community. It’s worth looking in to just to see how far the development team has taken the Doom engine; they converted a first person game in to a fairly decent 3D platformer. There’s also a huge modding community for the game, and an active multiplayer scene. Though it’s not ready yet, the next big update to SRB2, version 2.2, will finally overhaul the entire game to add proper support for sloped surfaces, something Doom didn’t originally support. It’ll probably be the most significant update the game’s ever had in its 20 year development. (trailer for 2.2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cfK3EWnn2E)

I don’t want to be negative, but a lot of people would probably say Sonic: Before the Sequel or Sonic: After the Sequel. Those are two games by LakeFepard, who managed to crank them out in record time. Something like a year each, maybe less. They’re very creative games with incredible soundtracks that rival even official Sonic games. But something about them has always felt a little “off” to me in a way that’s hard to describe, and recently Lake has apparently had a falling out with SFGHQ. I’m not really in the loop on the drama, though, which is probably for the best.

I’d recommend Hez’s “Sonic Classic.” It’s a massive fangame that was inspired by Sonic 4. It can feel a little messy, but its heart is in the right place, and there’s tons of stuff in it. It was almost like having Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania even existed.

That’s already four, but gosh, there’s more. Petit Hedgehog is just a demo, but it’s a cute Sonic-Advance-inspired game with 100% original graphics. I’d also recommend OzcrashSonic’s Sonic World, which I mentioned earlier, because it’s so big and complex; it has something like 30 playable characters and 50 levels, it’s nuts. Sonic vs. Darkness is also just a demo, but it’s a fantastic game in the style of Sonic Rush. There’s probably more, but those are the games I think about a lot.

Corentin: Could you tell me more about SAGE? Why did you start it? You're not responsible of it anymore, right?

No, I’m no longer responsible for organizing SAGE. The people handling SAGE now still check in with me from time to time when they want my opinion on big decisions, but I mostly just cover the event by writing reviews for the games available. It’s been long enough that I my memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I did the first four events, two every year, until I gave it up. I was going through some difficult emotional things in my life at that time, and the additional stress of putting together something like that was having a negative impact on my life. Since then, it’s grown to become much bigger than something I could have accomplished on my own.

The first SAGE was on September 9th, 2000, one year after the launch of the Sega Dreamcast in North America. I was still in high school at the time.

I started it because it was hard to talk about my fangame projects with anyone who wasn’t already in SFGHQ. There was a long-running stigma fangames faced; many people thought they were a form of piracy. They were put in to the same category as pirated bootleg games you’d see on the black market. So it was impossible to have a conversation or get much coverage on gaming-oriented sites.

I think it was around this time I started reading a website called Insert Credit and learning of what Japan called their “doujin gaming” scene. Doujin is a Japanese word often used to describe fan-created content, and in Japan, you can sometimes find doujin manga sold on shelves right next to the official thing. Now there were doujin games -- Japanese fangames -- that were gaining traction on the internet. That kind of acceptance was fascinating to me.

So I started SAGE to try and bring that kind of acceptance over to what my friends and I were doing. I wanted to dispel the stigma that fangames were a type of piracy. Or, at least, not any closer to piracy than fanart or fanfiction.

It didn’t really work. We got a couple smaller sites to post a small blurb about the very first year SAGE launched, but nobody bigger than that would touch it. The stigma remained.

SAGE ended up being successful as a secondary function, as it gave the community milestones to orbit around. Instead of just making games and releasing them whenever, now people were working to get things ready to show at SAGE. Milestones like that are something professional studios use throughout game development to measure progress, and SAGE gave the fangaming community something similar to strive towards. It created a healthier structure for making fangames, and to be honest, it had done so kind of by accident. It wasn’t until many years after I stopped doing SAGE that I realized the entire reason it’s still around is because it became that anchor for development.

And, in the long run, I think SAGE lasting for 18 years did end up helping fight back against that stigma, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent back when I first started. The stigma still exists, you still get comments from people who don’t understand why someone would risk spending all of that time on a fangame that might get shut down, but at least the conversation is more open now than it ever has been.

Capcom sponsored a fangame a few years ago called “Street Fighter x Mega Man”. Microsoft has openly stated they’re fine with fan-content of their original properties, which has lead to things like the “Red vs. Blue” Youtube series and Halo fangames like “Installation 01.” Valve has been increasingly open with its fan community, even co-publishing a fan-remake of the original Half-Life, called “Black Mesa.”

And, of course, we now have Sonic Mania, whose team is made up almost entirely of old SFGHQ users.

Somewhere along the line, SAGE may have helped bridge some of those gaps. That’s pretty cool.

#sage #sonic amateur games expo #le monde #corentin lamy #fan game #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic mania #interview

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dragonkeeper19600 · 6 years ago

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New Mario Movie: Plot Prediction (Part 1)

Yo, folks!

As you may recall, around six months ago, we received word that a new Mario movie was in development over at Illumination Studios.

I’m pretty optimistic about this movie, but I feel like I might be in the minority here. Yes, Minions are oversaturated, but it’s not like Illumination makes bad films. The Despicable Me movies do so well not just because of Minions but because they’re genuinely funny and fun. All of Illumination’s work is gorgeously animated, even the stuff that doesn’t do well, and I feel like their fun and bouncy animation style suits Mario pretty well. I feel like the Mario characters may end up looking and moving like they do in Mario + Rabbids, which had a more fluid and expressive style than Nintendo’s usual cutscenes.

But, a lot of you may be wondering, as I am, what the plot of this movie will be. Mario games, with a few exceptions, tend to be light on plot, at the request of Shigeru Miyamoto himself, who thinks games are at their best when they’re light on story. It was also Miyamoto who approached Illumination for a Mario movie and is producing the film, so presumably he’s not against a story with Mario, just a story in a Mario game.

Well, I’ve given in a lot of thought (more than I probably should), and I’ve come with a story that might work as an animated film. The story below may have no similarity at all with the actual plot of the actual film, but at this point in development, I have just as much a clue as anybody else what that film will be like.

This is the first of several parts, so please bear with me:

Right, so, in my mind, this movie will be in a separate continuity from the games. Whether or not a whole AU will branch off from the movie depends on if the movie is successful enough to get sequels, which, to be honest, it probably will be.

As such, the film, will serve as an introduction to the Mario world and characters to attract movie goers who have never touched a video game. So, this will be a retelling of Mario’s first adventure. However, simply adapting the first Super Mario Bros. will not work. Traveling from world to world fighting silent monsters only to get cockblocked by seven Toads does not a movie make.

Instead, they’ll have to come up with something more dramatic for Mario’s first rescue.

But, first, we open with a prologue that goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there were two neighboring kingdoms.

A kingdom of light

and a kingdom of darkness.

The kingdom of darkness was a place of smoke and fire and fearsome monsters. But, the kingdom of light was blessed by the goodness of their ruler and the power of the stars.

You see, whenever the denizens of the kingdom performed an act of kindness, selflessness, or goodwill, a star would appear. And the people were so good to each other that there was never a short supply of stars.

The people of the Mushroom Kingdom used these stars as a source of power. The stars were powerful enough to keep the lights on at night, their homes warm in winter, their appliances running smoothly. Everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom lived comfortably because of the stars.

But the neighboring kingdom, sadly, was not so blessed. No matter how kind or good anybody was to anybody else, no stars would appear. And so, the people of the kingdom lived in darkness.

The fearsome ruler of the kingdom of darkness envied the light of the neighboring kingdom.

“Light,” we are to understand, refers both to the stars and to the fair princess.

So, he decided to take them both for himself.

The film proper opens with Bowser’s forces invading Peach’s Castle.

Oh, yes, that’s how we’re starting.

Because there’s no hero to stop them, you see.

So, a couple of Toads are up on the battlements, patrolling idly, asking about baseball scores

WHEN SUDDENLY the air becomes smoky and ashy. The smell is horrible.

They cough and cover their faces. “What is that smell?”

A shadow falls. They look up and see Bowser’s airship hovering just overhead.

Without any power stars, it runs on coal, and a huge plume of black smoke rises behind it. Monsters begin to drop from above onto the castle. Fly Guys dropping Goombas, Lakitus dropping Spinies, Paratroopas dropping themselves. The scene turns to chaos within seconds.

The Toads on the roof are swatted aside like flies. But a few manage to get inside and sound the alarm.

The scene that follows is not unlike the opening of Mario Galaxy, except it in the castle, rather than outdoors. Toads fight valiantly against the onslaught of monsters. What’s more, the Toads receive assistance from the power stars.

When a Toad protects another in battle or takes a risk, a star appears, and he grabs it for a power boost, giving him an edge against the monsters.

However, the power of the star soon fades, and even with the stars, the Toads aren’t battle-ready enough to stop the invaders.

Joining the battle is none other than the princess herself, aglow with star power (tee hee!)

But as soon as her star wears off, Toadsworth pulls her aside.

He tells her to wait in a hidden compartment in the wall, where she’ll be safe.

Peach is reluctant, but Toadsworth half-convinces, half-shoves her into compliance.

Not long after Peach hides, the battle is brought to a halt with the Boos appear and use their powers to rust through the bolt holding the door outside shut.

And that thing flies off its hinges.

The Toads cower as Bowser himself steps into the room

Preceded by Kamek, who’s in this movie, too.

Bowser grabs Toadsworth and demands that he tell him where the princess is.

Toadsworth claims that Peach has already fled the castle, but Bowser’s not convinced.

“What kind of ruler turns and runs while her people fight?

“You calling Peach a chicken?”

Bowser’s about to sauté Toadsworth right there in front of everybody when someone yells, “STOP!”

Bowser turns and sees Peach herself.

“I’m right here, Bowser.”

Bowser is all simpering smiles as he drops Toadsworth like seven feet to the ground.

“Princess, look at you!

“Lovely as ever, I see~!”

Peach ignores him and runs over to Toadsworth.

“Princess, what are you doing out here?”

Peach: “Bowser, please don’t hurt them anymore.

“I’ll go with you. Just leave them alone.”

Bowser is thrilled. “You mean it?”

Peach: “I’ll go wherever you want. All I ask is that no harm comes to my citizens.”

The Toads are frantic. “No, Princess! Don’t leave us!”

Toadsworth is the most heartbroken of them all.

“Princess, you can’t!”

Peach helps Toadsworth to his feet and whispers.

“Toadsworth, I need to take care of everyone while I’m away. Promise me.

“And, Toadsworth, find someone who can help us.

“I’m counting on you!”

At this moment, two Hammer Bros. grab Peach and physically drag her away from Toadsworth, onto the airship parked outside.

A star float behind her in her wake, created by her choice to sacrifice herself.

That star is clenched in Bowser’s fist.

“Finally. Everything is mine!”

Toadsworth is still defiant.

“You're not my ruler or any of ours!

“This kingdom belongs to Princess Peach!”

Bowser: “Yeah, but see, Peach belongs to me.

“Funny how that works out.

“This is your own fault, you know.

“None of you weaklings were tough enough to save her.

“You twerps don’t get to decide anything. I do.

“And nobody can save you.”

Cut, that same night, to the home of the Mario Bros.

The phone is ringing, and Mario is asleep.

I mean, mouth open, drool on pillow, covers kicked off the bed ASLEEP.

The phone rings four times, goes silent, then starts ringing again.

So Mario has no choice but to get up.

He blearily gets up, moves past Luigi on the bottom bunk, who has not stirred at all, by the way, and answers the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mario Bros. Plumbing?”

Mario and Luigi run a plumbing service in the Metro Kingdom. They barely make enough to get by.

Mario apologizes. We don’t take business calls before eight am... which is four hours from now.

The woman on the other line insists its an emergency.

Mario can hear water running over the phone. Wait, what’s going on?

It turns out the woman is standing in her kitchen up to her waist in water. The sink is spraying like a Super Soaker.

Mario gently suggests she try shutting off the water.

She insists that she did, but the handle on the faucet twisted off in her hand.

Mario attempts to clarify. “No, not the sink, I mean-”

But then thinks better of it. “On second thought, we’ll be right there. What’s your address again?”

Thus begins the long process of getting Luigi out of bed. Mario resorts to dragging Luigi out by his ankle. His face drags on the floor.

Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s still dark when the Bros. arrive in their van at the woman’s house.

The job is a real drag, not just because the Bros. are walking around in water almost to their shoulders and have to bail out with the house with buckets before they can work on the sink

But also because the woman herself is an absolute nightmare.

She frequently berates them for working too slow, watches them like a hawk out of paranoia that they’ll steal something, and weirdest of all, seems to object very strongly to them speaking Italian.

Even when they’re just speaking to each other about the sink.

“Don’t you know, English?” she asks.

Mario dearly wants to say, “Of course I do. Did you not hear me speaking English on the phone with you at four am this morning?”

But, of course, he can’t say that, so he just apologizes and whispers to Luigi: “English.”

Which leads to an awkward moment when Luigi can’t remember the English word for a chiave,

So he asks Mario for a “swish-swish!” while awkwardly pantomiming.

By the time the job is done, the sun is up. Both boys are sitting in the van completely soaked. Their hats are still dripping and everything.

They both look incredibly exhausted.

Mario, a little punchy: “Hey, Luigi,

“You think people would like us better if we were buttons?”

Luigi has no idea what Mario is talking about.

“You’re driving. Don’t fall asleep yet, bro.”

“You know, if we were like buttons. All you had to do was push us and the sink was fixed. It seems like people would be happier if they didn’t have to deal with us talking or thinking or whatever. Just push the button and we go.”

Luigi shrugs. They’re little guys. People don’t care about them. He’s used to that.

Luigi is asleep by the time the van pulls back up to their house. Mario looks down at his brother and wishes he could give him more.

To be continued...

#mario #super mario bros #movie #illumination studios #princess peach #bowser #luigi #toadsworth #prediction

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imjustthemechanic · 7 years ago

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The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Now that our heroes have figured out what’s going on, the next question is what they’re going to do about it.

“Well done,” Steve said as they headed for the trailers, amused in spite of himself.

Nat smiled. “I don’t get to do full-tilt diva very often,” she replied.

“You just enjoy watching people who hate you have to put up with you anyway,” Steve said. He’d done some of that during the war, with the generals and politicians who hated that this musclebound fool in a costume was showing them up. It did make him feel powerful.

“Everybody enjoys that,” Nat said. “It’s the evil queen in all of us.” She chose one of the RVs at apparent random, and grabbed the door handle. “This one’s yours.”

“No, it’s not ,” said Steve. The sign on the door had the same name as had been highlighted on the front of the script: Chris Evans. It was a very nondescript name, Steve thought, like John Smith. Or, for that matter, Steve Rogers.

“Considering that Mr. Evans is probably picking himself out of the remains of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo right now, I think he’s got other things to worry about than who’s in his trailer,” said Nat. “You can tell him we borrowed it, if that makes you feel better.”

“I’ll do that,” Steve promised.

Nat opened the door.

The first thing Steve saw was the dog, which had stood up on its hind legs to rest its paws against the inner screen. When Nat opened that second door to climb the steps and go inside, the dog bounced out past her to greet Steve. It was a floppy-eared, brown and white animal of indeterminate breed, and like most of its kind it seemed to have recognized Steve immediately as a dog lover. He knelt down to rub its head and neck, and the dog wagged its tail and lolled its tongue out happily.

“Hi, there, boy,” said Steve. “Or girl.” He held out a hand for the dog to sniff. It licked his fingers, and with his other hand, Steve found its collar rand tag. “Dodger,” he read. “Nice to meet you, Dodger. Did somebody leave you here all alone?”

“Steve!” Natasha called from inside. “Come and take a look at this.”

“Coming,” said Steve. He straightened up and gave Dodger’s head a few more pats. If this were Chris Evans’ dog, he thought, somebody was going to have to take care of it until its owner returned. Evans might be badly injured, or even under arrest – if he looked so much like Steve that nobody had noticed the two switching places, right now he was probably telling a SWAT team that he wasn’t Captain America. They probably didn’t believe him.

With Dodger right behind him hoping for more affection, Steve climbed the steps into the trailer. The first room was a kitchen that was practically the size of Steve’s entire apartment in 1940s Brooklyn, and it was a mess, with dishes in the sink and half a bowl of cereal uneaten on the table. Script pages were scattered around, and books and magazines on the American space program – but the first thing to draw Steve’s eye were the photographs taped to the cupboards. Some of these were of strangers, but many appeared to have Steve himself in them. If that were Chris Evans, then yes, the resemblance was absolutely uncanny.

Some of the pictures were probably of Evans’ family and friends. Others were perhaps from his movies. There was a photo of Evans standing next to an astonishingly tall black man, both of them smiling. A picture in which Evans was bundled up against winter cold and looked like he’d just been beaten black and blue, but beaming as he posed with a younger man and a very schoolmarm-ish looking woman. There was, of all things, one of those ridiculous Doritos bags Stark had found so funny, framed on the wall as if it were a work of art.

Then Steve’s stomach seemed to drop out and hit the floor with a splat, as he moved further along the cupboards and started finding people he knew.

There was a picture of himself, Natasha, and Sam in street clothes, grinning and laughing. Worse, there was one of Steve, Bucky, and Peggy in uniform, leaning on the counter of that café in northern Italy in 1944… where had some actor gotten that? Another was of Peggy making a face and pointing at a smiling Steve, both of them with twenty-first century clothing and hair and looking directly into the camera. Yet another was of Steve, Stark, and T’Challa with their arms around each other’s shoulders like they were all best buddies, standing against a background of advertising images. Steve didn’t remember any of those pictures being taken. Some of them could not possibly have been taken, because the people in them were dead!

“Steve!” Natasha repeated.

“Nat, have you seen this?” Steve asked. Whatever she was calling him for, it couldn’t possibly be as distressing as what he’d just found.

“Steve,” she insisted, “have you seen this?”

When Steve tore his eyes away from the impossible photographs, he found that Nat was in the living room, at the front of the trailer. This was built around a fake fireplace that was really just a television screen playing video of burning logs. Steve had never understood the point of such a thing, since it didn’t keep anybody warm and couldn’t be cooked on in an emergency, but there it was – and hanging above it were three framed movie posters.

These were done in what Steve recognized as an old-fashioned style by the standards of the twenty-first century. Modern posters tended to go in for teal and orange and a lot of photoshop filters. These were in watercolours, and were for separate but related films: Captain America: the First Avengers, Captain America: the Winter Soldier, and Captain America: Civil War. Each bore a list of actors’ names, but the portraits were of people Steve knew. There was himself, Peggy, Bucky, Natasha, Sam, Stark… even Pearce and the Red Skull.

There had been Captain America films, of course. There were the ones Steve himself had been in, and then there’d been a couple more made by Howard’s Stark Pictures in the late forties and early fifties, starring Burt Lancaster, Ronald Reagan, and Angie Martinelli. There’d also been the two terrible made-for-TV movies from the early eighties, in which Steve had been played by a guy who looked like his name ought to be Bolt Vanderhuge or something, and who was, if possible, a worse actor than Steve himself.

The last few years had produced more recent Avengers-themed movies, too. There’d been that one with Eric Bana as Dr. Banner, and the Battle of New York movie The Tower, which everybody seemed to have hated except for Dr. Foster’s friend Darcy. The team had watched those, and had a good laugh at them. These were different. The faces were too perfect, and the titles suggested events uncomfortably close to the last several years of Steve’s life. Anybody making movies about that was doing so without his permission.

“Those… aren’t real movies, are they?” asked Steve, taking in the lists of names on each. He recognized none of them. If these were actors they were none he’d ever heard of… or most of them weren’t. He did see the one from the trailer door. Chris Evans. His own apparent doppelgänger.

“They’re not real movies in Kansas,” said Natasha thoughtfully.

Steve turned his head to look at her, and found her in her ‘thinking’ pose, head cocked and brow creased. After a moment, she caught his eye, and took a deep breath.

“This is going to sound weird,” she warned him.

“Weird?” He snorted. “What’s weird? We were just in Oslo fighting an alien who thinks he’s a god, and now we’re making a movie. I don’t know what weird is anymore. Tell me.”

She didn’t, though. Instead, she stood there thinking a moment longer, then looked around the room. “Find me a computer or a cell phone,” she said. “I want to try something.”

They searched the living room, which was neater than the kitchen but only slightly, with Dodger doing his best to help and mostly getting in the way. Underneath a pile of magazines Steve found a laptop. When he turned it on a password screen popped up, but Nat got them past that easily, and Steve sat down on the ottoman and brought up google.

“All right, what am I looking for?” he asked.

“Museum of cultural history explosion,” Nat said, leaning on his shoulder to watch.

Steve typed in the terms, slowly – SHIELD had gotten him lessons in touch-typing, but right now his fingers, like everything else, were clumsier than normal. The search engine thought for a moment, then presented a list of results.

To Steve’s surprise, none of them were about what had just happened in Oslo. Never mind that it had been less than an hour ago, in this age of instant communication and constant media presence, an event like that ought to be all over the news. Instead, the first page of links was mostly articles about an exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was being taken to task for neglecting black history.

“Try Avengers in Oslo,” Nat suggested.

Steve tried it, and read off the first result that came up. “Oslo – Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki,” he said, and clicked on the link.

The article that came up was in white text on a black background surrounded by ads, and it was very brief. The first paragraph discussed the paganist riots, which were something Steve vaguely remembered hearing about, although he’d been busy elsewhere at the time. The second part of the article was about Stark’s visit to the NEXUS, and it quoted a conversation Steve remembered having with Stark, Banner, and Fury about Ultron’s attempts to launch nuclear weapons. The men’s names were all highlighted in blue – they were links to other pages. Steve licked his lips, then clicked on his own.

Nat leaned a little further forward, and this time it was she who started reading aloud. “Captain America is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics,” she said.

“What?” Steve asked. “Fictional?”

“Scroll down,” said Nat, and when he didn’t, she put a finger on the touchpad and did so herself. “Here we are! In Other Media. Actor Chris Evans portrays Steve Rogers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Films Captain America: the First Avenger, The Avengers… yadda yadda yadda.” She kept scrolling through a list rather longer than the three movies whose posters were on the wall.

“What?” Steve repeated. When he’d first awakened, back in 2012, he’d learned that a lot of people did assume Captain America was a fictional character – somebody invented for comics and old films as an embodiment of the optimistic allied war effort. Five years later, after Steve had been on the news, the Ellen Degeneres show, and that stupid Doritos bag, they ought to know better.

“I was right,” Nat said, sounding uncharacteristically surprised by it. “Huh.”

“What were you right about?” Steve asked. “What’s going on? Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be any weirder than this already is, so just tell me.”

Nat reached over his shoulder and clicked on one of the movie titles, apparently just out of curiosity. “Are you familiar with the idea of parallel universes?” she asked.

Steve had heard the phrase. It was something Stark and Banner occasionally talked about, but he had only a very vague understanding of the concept garnered mostly from movies and television. “That’s where there’s an alternate world where things happened differently, and it somehow exists at the same time and place as our world, but we can’t get there.”

“Right,” said Natasha. “Supposedly there’s an infinite number of them, where all possibilities happen. There’s a world where we lost in New York and Loki now rules the planet, there’s a world where Ultron destroyed the earth…”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working,” Steve pointed out. “We’re in another universe?” Could the tesseract do that? Well, if this were actually happening, then yes, evidently it could.

“Loki said he would find another planet to rule,” said Nat. She found the cast section of the article on The Avengers, and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen to write down the names. “I figured he was talking about a different planet.”

“I didn’t stop to think about it,” said Steve. Though if he had, he would probably have come to the same conclusion. “He went to a universe where we’re fictional, so we can’t stop him from taking over.” That made a certain amount of sense, although in that case… wouldn’t Loki himself be fictional, too? How did the people of this world know what to put in their movies, if those events had never happened here?

“Maybe – maybe we all ended up here by accident when Thor broke the rune stone,” said Nat. “So if you and I are the actors who played Captain America and the Black Widow in these movies… although I don’t know why they’d name the movies after you when I’m the one who does all the hard stuff…” she added with a smirk.

“Thanks, Nat. That means a lot,” said Steve. He could guess where she’d been going with the first part of that statement, though. “If we’re here, we can assume that Thor and Loki must be, also, while the Steve and Natasha from this world… I mean…” he looked up at the central poster. “I mean Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson…”

“They must be in our world,” Nat agreed.

Steve had already assumed that, but now he started seriously contemplating what it meant. “Getting arrested for breaking into the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo,” he said.

“And then handed over to the World Security Council for taking on a supervillain without the permission of the Norwegian government, in non-compliance with the Sokovia Accords,” Nat agreed, with a grimace of concern.

“All while they insist that they’re not Captain America and the Black Widow, they just play them in movies!” Steve groaned. That was a very bad situation indeed. “All right, how do we fix it?”

“That,” Natasha said, “is a very good question.”

#fanfic #steve rogers #natasha romanov

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