#theres so many side quests in this game where im like

[freckledbastard]

redid the reaper quests for funsies and this was all i could think the whole time

"hey zenos, yeah theres this voidsent dude calling me his prey? yeah you need to have a pact with another voidsent to beat him and he was being real intense the whole time and talking about how he was gonna devour me and how glorious it would be? yeah- yeah no i know thats your thing dude i tried to tell him and everything but idk, he seems pretty set on the idea of me being his prey... oh youre heading his way already and are gonna super murder him? oh weird thats crazy, anyway."

[shmowderslut]

I recently started a "im going to read EVERYTHING" bachelor playthrough, and im surpriced i havent seen anyone talk about the many-legged fugitive side quest. Im sick and feel like my brain is filled with rats, so here's my unorganized and unholy feelings about it.

MINOR MECHANIC SPOILERS BELOW!! PLOT SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

First of all the house you need to go in is *not* easy to find, it is not the nearest house to the staircase (also theres two of them!) and definetly isnt visible from the stillwater. I have to confess, i needed to look it up online, and even the guide had misplaced the marker! As always, the frustration fuels me, and makes my love this game even more. And this is day 1! Its a nightmare and i love it. If youre stuck here, its okay, it seems like so many people were too.

Plot and character spoilers under the cut!

Okay now into the juicy stuff. Technically not about the quest yet, but we're getting there.

You get the quest talking to Lara Ravel, after learning about her from talking to Yulia in the main mission. A thing i dont think is mentioned a lot is that Yulia dislikes Lara Ravel. Now Yulia being a queer woman in stem (i will not accept criticism on this) She raves about all the other women like theire goddesses (they are) but she sees Lara as ungenuine and almost sad.

"She pities everyone she comes across, for she knows they will all die just like her dearly departed. She sees a corpse in everyone she looks upon"

And maybe i havent been paying attention, but this is very different from how Lara is usually portrayed, as a literal angel and a philanthropist. She always stood out to me as a surprisingly simple and good character is pathologic, so i was exactic to find out this detail of hers. Also the relationship says a lot about Yulia and her no-nonsense attitude, that she values honesty over good deeds.

Then we finally get to the quest in itself, where Lara tells you the children have brought an old dangerous game back. They used to play doctor using a dangerous mix of medicine and pretend healed eachother. She asks you to find a secret stash these kids hid and destroy all the shmowders (again, i went a lil insane trying to find the house). Unfortunately the bachelor is just too late, again, and the stash has been distributed among the children.

Theres 2 dogheads you can talk to, one of them tells you more about shmowders. That they doent believe in shmowders and its the little kids who are playing epidemic with deadly conjuctures. They blame Capella for distributing them, and all the kids should just go to the polyhedron to stay safe.

The second doghead tells you that yes, the shmowders do work and they came in use the last outbreak. That the kids were safe in the polyhedron, but some of them wandered out and made shmowders. Shmowders that were stored in this stash, but have now disappeared. Also as a fun fact, he tells you the spesific people who made the shmowders. Now i dont recognize these, but if you do please tell me.

"The original ones were made by Catchfly, but they were no good; the disease would pass, but the person would pass away along with it. But then Beaker's brothers made some nice ones. Crowfoot's weren't too shabby, and neither were Flanky's..."

I just think its neat to have an in universe reason the pumpkin girl sometimes carries a shmowder. Also this plays into what i think is the most prevalent pathologic theme, two impossible truths existing at the same time. The shmowders are a live saving medicine AND poison. Its childrens imagination AND real. You get the jist, my head hurts and im going to sleep

Also if you read this far, thank you?!? I am in no state to check this for clarity, but im pretty rambly (battling to not write a fanfic about this quest) and this is not my native language

[sol-paredes]

My thoughts now that i've finished it (spoilers for the whole game)

-hate that you cant make your character fat

-love the characters and how they are introduced

-kinda hate astarion sorry. Didnt do his quest cause he was mean to me.

-the absolute being a big ass brain was so fucking funny to me i cant explain

-lae'zel is a failgirl and i love her

-i fucked that squid and regretted it. Found out that if you dont have tentacle sex with him he shows you fucked up shit he did. Really mean tbh 👎 will side with orpheus next time

-theres not 17000 endings there's like 3

-lots of weird visual glitches at least in the low settings

-i spotted a few continuity errors in the dialogue but i can forgive that cause there's so many routes to take

-game starts with a really nice pace in act 1, then it becomes reeeeeeeally slow in act 2 and way too fast in act 3.

-The combat system is really fun i love casting spells and fireballs 💥 the fight against ketheric was really good but the other two were meh. So much hype for orin and then she does nothing and dies. And gortash is like if elon musk was a dnd character (i deactivated his iphone robots and killed him in like 2 hits)

-best luck to the tiefling kids i hope the giant brain falling didnt kill them

-omeluum my love. The highlight of the game im not being sarcastic. Extremely good character reveal he has 2 lines of dialogue and i'd give him a hug and help him plan his wedding with blurg.

-game feels half cooked in general. It's a reeally massive game and they should have given it a few more years

-karlach... I love you dude

-seriously the ending was really rushed

-the giant ass brain is cool as fuck though so its ok i guess

-but i wanted to see more. What will hapen to the githyanki now. What about the illithids what about avernus. And the grove's tieflings and all of the people we met. They just show you the yay happy ending screen where are they where is omeluum

-cant we just give karlach heart surgery please. I have revivify spells

-overall good game solid 785/1000 i will play it again and be a cool dragon this time. And also destroy the druids this time cause they suck. Will steal their idol and eat it

-also when your character is rowing the boat towards the final fight they're only using one oar so they should be spinning in circles

-omeluum

[windmills123]

what if... you told me all about your fansession (i would love to learn more about it)

no way the real moss guy in my inbox... heehe... im actually really excited to ramble about this!!! =D back when i first read hs i made many fan characters but i got an idea to make a fansession where, instead of the 12 zodiac signs it was the 22 major tarot cards..... and it kinda went from there!

because obviously 22 character session would be insane i at some point formed out 6 kids who were having The Session, and the rest of the characters were "npcs" made by sburb. but yknow, more humanlike than the carapacians, so kinda akin to the trolls. oh yea i changed some of the sburb worldbuilding for this, so i suppose its an alternate version of the game.... ;p also the session would take place around 2019.

okeeey anyways heres the players!

ester olsen (the star) is a knight of hope from sweden who's foolish and hyperactive but also very hopeful and loyal like a dog, she's internally a deviantart kid who draws exclusively on ms paint and sburb's quest for her is to become a typical hero. her land is a field with a country town inhabited by animal people.

her older brother emil (the chariot) is a rogue of breath who moves trough life very fast and always thrives to make progress by any means, and also takes care of ester... because hes awesome... his land is a giant sea of energy kind of similar to terezi's.

elio cassini (the sun) is the heir of light, he's just a really lucky boy who likes jrpgs and magic spells. he's anxious and keeps to the rules but well meaning; best friend of ester. he learns to accept the dark sides of the world instead of escaping from them. his land is an orange desert full of broken glass, ancient bones and mysteries.

elio's sister is nastia the maid of space (the empress)! she's kind of a snarky girl next door who likes art, gardening, fashion and baking but she struggles with persistence. her land is a field of giant flowers.. and frogs of course ;p

selene's the mage of void (the moon). (no surname i thought of for these two..... whoops....) she's the oldest one and also very lonely, although she isn't expressive she tends to cling to other people. she used to like weird and fascinating things, her land is a broken apart mountainous area flooded by dark water!

then selene's younger brother rasmus the prince of time (the emperor)! hes your average delinquent scriptie kid who tends to get into fights (usually with ester), but he's never completely malicious. his land is a fiery lava pool that's hard to navigate.

the goal is still to make the next universe via a frog, but theres no derse and prospit and instead dreaming just teleports your ghost self to a random location. there's still a fight between dark and light though, but this time it's the magician card (light) and the high priestess card (dark) who have their forces battling it out, which is pretty much everyone else, on a skaia stand in which is no longer a chessboard and now just a black and white planet. they're also the final bosses in place of king and queen, and they get stronger the session goes on so the party needs to act fast!!!

idk how to summarise the whole duration of the session to be honest because too much stuff gets involved.. but basically they do make it out in the end! (with some major character deaths though... hehh..)

well uhh this makes wayy more sense in my head lol, but i hope you like it! =D i have some drawings but i havent really made anything properly rendered that has all of them... also i would love to hear about your fansession!

[triptrippy]

im gonna give the hinterlands a 8/10, it has distinct areas, at least enough that im not confused where i am most of the time, the intentional paths to each area arent TOO hard to find, it has tons of quests you can pick up in almost every area, it has a dragon, theres enough camps that make it so even though the quests that send you to the opposite side of the map dont take too long to get to, redcliff is from da:o and even though the change is massive it still kind of reminds me of the original map so thats fun, and it has a door behind a waterfall. its main problem is that of every map which it has too many rocks, it could be a little smaller and even with a horse sometimes its annoying to get places and since i also spent a couple hours in the storm coast ill rate that too 3/10 nearly everything looks the same so i think im on one part of the coast when im 500 feet away and every path up and down the cliffs looks like a path until it turns into a slide theres spiders hiding in the dark. there IS a dragon but its only accessible until later i think. the rainy stormy atmosphere is cool though. the secret hidden dwarven caves are also cool but there should be a lot more. severely wet just like half of the game

[heliianth]

how are you enjoying TotK's story so far?

on the dragons tears side i only have 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 so by no means the complete picture, but unfortunately i have been spoiled for the end of it, i think? ive also only completed the rito regional disturbance quest. ill talk abt what i think so far below the cut

from what ive seen of it, the story is interesting. i dont particularly like time shenanigans stories, more often than not they enable lazy character/writing decisions, create plot holes, and wander around too much to have coherent themes. when time travel comes up in stories i always feel like there needs to be a justification, some lesson or reason that is realized for why it needed to happen. so u can imagine that my experience with the dragons tears so far has been waiting for that justification moment, which i think i already have?

apparently zelda turns into a dragon. tear 5 talks about draconification and how people lose themselves, and ive seen fanart and dragon zelda's actual model in-game flying around the eldin archipelago (made me pretty emotional, though i do suspect any significant reaction i might have with this has been ruined by being spoiled). this is where the story is treading ice for me, and im being super careful to avoid the leadup to the whole dragon thing. because if its a situation where zelda is forced into it, theres no other way and she HAS to do this or else the world explodes or whatever, then i dont think ill be super fond. itll feel like a rehash of what happened during the calamity in botw, where zelda is forced into holding it back for 100 years until link heals. i dont like it when stories have good arcs (in this case, zelda's) but just retread it because theres a sequel and it doesnt know how to further develop the character.

on the other hand, if zelda chooses to make this decision with her own autonomy and reasons, like thinks about it, then i think this writing decision could work as a way of showing how much she's grown when placed in that similar situation she was in during the calamity. zeldas arc is all about love and connection, whether that be with link or her other friends, including love for herself. all i ask for is that the dragons tears story builds upon this instead of just redoing botw but worse

on the rito side of things, i thought it was fun. tulin is a fun little dude. i think its fascinating how hes positioned at the beginning as seeming arrogant and uncooperative, but grows to realize that he needs to rely on others to do the things he wants. hes almost a character foil of revali in that way. the wind powers being revealed as a sage thing is also interesting. obviously i and many other players have made a connection between tulins wind gust (i like to call it tulins tornado c:) and revalis gale, and we know teba isnt related in any way to revali like the rest of them are to the champions. so it does feel like a little extra W from beyond the grave on revali's end. turns out he really did bootstraps his way into rediscovering lost magic. TLDR; i love tulin to bits, even if i wish teba got a tad more screen time. who knows, maybe he'll show up more later.

i would try commenting on the events of the actual game and how they effect link, because link's arc (which happens during the actual game, which i guess the player guides him on) is really important to botw, and i assume it'll be structured similarly here. but obviously im not done with the game so theres not much for me to talk about. i will say that, god. link must be feeling like SHIT. i know when i went to hateno and saw he and zelda lived together, then saw that all the kids in the school loved her enough to draw pictures, i got really choked up. i know i said any significant reaction to the "zelda is a dragon" story beat ill have will be muted by being spoiled beforehand, but depends on how its actually revealed/how link reacts i might still take it like a little baby

so yeah. those are my thoughts

[kazumasougi]

so what’s your verdict on ragnarok? i saw some people say that it was good but not as good as the first game so i’m curious to know what you think. going to play it this summer 😎

okok this might get long so here’s the non-spoilery short of it: i really loved playing through ragnarok but i do agree that i liked 2018 more! I’ll put the significantly longer portion under the cut and ill do my best not to spoil any main story portions while talking about it lol

ragnarok definitely lets you explore far far more. i think theres a couple of places where you can tell they didnt want to drag the story out so they cut stuff for time but i personally feel like the game could’ve very well used that. and i think the fact that 2018 is like a good number of hours longer than ragnarok makes it a little bit surprising when you get to the endpoint.

also unlike 2018— though this matters less to me— there are parts of the game that you can only actually finish once youre done with the main story. it has a few epilogue pieces which are definitely a nice send-off for the game and you can explore just a little bit more, but if im honest it feels a bit empty..? though im not done with postgame so when i get there ill probably post abt it more 😼

storywise i feel like there’s some things that could definitely have improved or been changed in some way… i absolutely loved the new dynamics between old characters and getting to see how theyve grown with each other since 2018. its super heartwarming to me. but some parts really did feel rushed and while the ending was good some parts just felt kind of… abrupt??? i’d love to know how they would have refined the story with just a bit more time because personally it feels like theres still a loose end or two that hasnt been addressed. that said its by no means a BAD story— i really liked going through it! the best way i can think to put it is that it’s an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish.

in terms of MECHANICS… i’ll be completely honest some of them were so incredibly frustrating that id considered giving up on some of the fun side stuff they encourage you to do (like nornir chests and whatever else may have you). even some parts of the main quest were a little bit confusing to me…?? at some points there are puzzles that aren’t super straightforward and it got a little tiring to play guess and check. that said there aren’t a lot of them, but it definitely left me a little bit annoyed during gameplay. i should mention though for some of the mechanics in question they DO have a crazy good range of accessibility settings that help you more clearly see things like interact-able objects and targets etc. so making use of those definitely lessened the annoyance for me personally lol. that said it does not work for all of them and if you Want to go collecting extras then you might have to sit there frustrated a few times before it works out 🥲

one more thing i should probably mention in regards to game mechanics is the skill trees… i’ll keep this explanation light as to avoid heavy spoilers but essentially they give you a LOT of skills to upgrade with XP. and i mean a lot. i have not used even half of them they do nothing for me 💀 i would guess this is their way of letting you do more with XP since in 2018 you rack it up faster than you can spend it but there are so many in ragnarok. and if im honest it feels like a lot of them are kind of … useless in combat. or at least very very situational. they do give you the chance to upgrade skills you use the most which i really like but i find it kind of weird how many of them are reliant on hyperspecific situations while also costing a significant amount when you unlock them.

OH. and also. i kind of wish the companion armor had some sort of effect…???? like in 2018 i loved atreus’ healthstone effect because it suited my playstyle. but all companion armor is purely cosmetic. they seem to have replaced that with accessories you can equip them with that have different effects but i also didnt really feel much of a difference with them until postgame 😿 an edge ragnarok has on 2018 though is definitely that you can customize what your armor looks like while taking the stats of another. which is awesome because im tired of making him look like hes wearing a sweater vest at a holiday gathering. ill admit though the menuing is a little bit more confusing lol

ANYWAY. to finish this off i feel like i loved a lot about ragnarok but after having seen what they did in 2018 i feel like they probably couldve pushed it a bit more. that said the story is absolutely crazy and i loooove certain routes they went with it so it definitelys worth playing imo. i just wouldnt expect it to be just like the first game 👍 there are some major changes i havent listed because i think seeing them for yourself will be awesome

[lostacelonnie]

Hey no worries i have to interact with people i dont wanna all the time & have to take a moment & not be like that myself. Oh shit its school time already? Maybe some will know but the beauty is that eventually you reach a point where nobody will who you dont want to so fuck it we ball on that one. Lakeside beaches are also very good i think mt fuji in japan has some like. Lakeside beaches that offer a good view of it & i wanna see that. Im not sure what the definition of fancier english words is here but mostly you dont need them in my experience anyways. Even specific words have workarounds. Ah so making it easier & more generic but not going into the details like they used to. Thats a shame especially with how confusing english can get. I went one town over a week or two ago & it was 108 F, or 42 c i had to convert that, at like 8 at night i was dying. Totally fair sometimes knowing when to hold off is best & its nice to enjoy stuff later for certain things. Turned out i had enough for 2 ten pulls but kafka came home on the first so my luck got burned for a bit i think. Cant wait to use her. The story is interesting but ive been having. So much fun diving in fontaine i ignored the story for a whole day. Good luck on your gear maxing & eventual ender dragon fight! Ah yes a tough choice. That i guess boils down to how much you like your family. So good luck on that decision as well! Oh please do! I found a purple that should work with my hair just need to use it when i have time. I would like to grind more but it kills my phone battery. Oh i got sampo too but i dont think i need to worry about building yet. So no artifact grind for me. The aeons are conceptually really cool & i cant wait for more simulated universe. When i get back to it. So many side quests. My brain is a sponge for fish facts mostly. Its weird. Like antarctic sponges are theorized to live so long because the low temperature & high pressure slow their aging dramatically

thanks ahdfkjg i appreciate it. it is indeed school time already! i start in just under a week but the beginning of the school year is pushed back this year bc september 1st is on a friday so its starting on the 4th instead! yippee! and yeah defo but luckily the people who already know, that being my mother and a couple friends, are very chill about it so even More fuck it we ball. yeah im pretty sure it does but not completely certain. speaking of which maybe ill go see mt fuji if i end up traveling more when older. and well its hard to explain shdfj i mostly mean like, rarer words used, for example, in poetry, or more specific words, lets say the parts of a ship- which, yes, i DO know the basic ones, but theres a couple that i only know the polish equivalent of [for example, a dziób is called a prow! i had to look that up!]. but yeah it doesnt really hinder my day to day understanding of the language, its just occasionally mildly annoying. and yeah it is like that but oh well. GOOD LORD 42C????? id just Perish. the moment it starts getting uncomfortable for me is like 27c [80f]. yeah ill see What Life Brings!! and oh congrats!!! tbh i didnt really have the energy to play star rail recently sjdnflgk but at least i converted that time into actually drawing so id say its for the better. and oh cool!!! im back in warsaw so ill probably check it out any day now sjdkfjm if im not too busy with rain world that is. god i love rain world. and thank you!!!! its extremely funny bc while ive liked minecraft for YEARS now i never actually ended up beating the game cos i have an unfortunate tendency to abandon saves.... but ill try to finally do it. beat the fake gamer allegations. i do actually like my family, or at least my mother since im not really close with my half siblings [all adults, also 2 outta 3 dont moved out of poland] or the rest [live like half the country away] so yeah i still have to think about it. anyway, dye update: i actually managed to do it! finally. thank god. and oh i feel you, my phone was dying bc of memory so i play on pc now. best decision of my life tbh. YEAHHH im so curious about them...... SWARM DISASTER GAME MODE SOON THO....... AND EPIC thats so cool!!! i love hearing fish facts knowing damn well im Not going to remember anything

[tears-of-boredom]

the need to interact with amd seek out dicor ely content isso strong but also I still havent fucking finished it and I dont want to get spoiled so its a constant battle in my head. also I dont like it when the game gives me a normal dialogue option, but when you repeat the conversation because you want to pick a different one, the one you wanted is god damn gone. with no real reason. also I fucking hate the cryptid stuff but im also that bitch who has to do every single god damn side quest they can before proceeding with the main story, so im picking all the options where im excited about it when in truth i feel kim so hard. like come on you dont have to ask about every single cryptid. but also what if theres some secret info or achivement you get from this. also I'm straight up, again, considering starting all over, just so i can complete all the tasks. like I saved SO few times in the start of my playthrough and i regret it so fucking much. i crave to go back and do a "perfect" run. i cant finish it when I have so many regrets. plus i think it'd be kinda fun, and id be able to strategise a bit and not waste so much of my time running around. you have no fucking idea how long it took me to find that fucking map. even with the hint that it gives. i ran around that place frustrated as shit, and was even more frustrated when i found that it was just on the god damn wall. i had ran past it so many times. but also thats honestly just me being stupid, i dont blame the game for that.

[serenedash]

Theres been so many amazing additions to this post I love khux so much jfhdkhdid

I cant believe I forgot to mention spirit pets and pvp!!!!! Remember when we all thought Brain made the dream eaters and then the finale Did That lol

Tbh I remember when pvp was added I was extremely impressed with how it was handled lore wise, it was an incredibly smart move to let wielders fight each other but without any real competition that could lead to another war due to everyone understanding it was just data recreations and how that fact alone led to new developments irt strelitzia and the reveal that they were still in the data

Another thing I forgot to mention is how in unchained chi/union cross, there is NO keyblade war in the main quests. I remember everyone was really confused when we got to that point in the game and everyone was like??? But in chi this is when the war happened????? And now we know its because we were just reliving the events but without those sad memories like I mentioned in the original post, and how that manifested in khux as dreams and it was a side event disconnected from the main plot.

Playing in real time gave the player real impact when it came to Ephemera too, which I saw people mention in tags. Like there was a very noticeable empty space with him gone and some people might know I used to actually really hate Ephemera because I felt so betrayed lmao, and I think people now don't understand how much khux fans love Skuld for that reason because in those months you played without Ephemera, you did EVERYTHING with Skuld leading up to the war so it made it easy to get very attached to her so imo it made me sad how skuld was kinda shoved aside in union cross but that's not what this is about,

But also speaking of Skuld, someone mentioned parties being important to plot too! And if you never played khux, you could form parties with friends and help each other in boss battles or play multiplayer. Skuld was a party leader and had Ephemera in her party before he switched unions, which I always thought was a neat bit of lore (fun fact canonically the player, Skuld and Eph are in Anguis and Eph switches to Unicornis, most likely to get closer to Ira as the leader of the foretellers to get the book lbr) and a MAJOR part of khux gameplay thats rarely talked about is the NPC's the player is friends with. In English fandom a lot of people call them the sewer squad since you first meet them in the sewers and they're in basically every event and holiday sidequest and it can be read as this is the player's party if you didn't have one yourself. And tbh I know it meant a lot to see these NPCs in the ending scene with the dream eaters because these guys really were loved by the player base and tbh its a real shame the only one that has a canon name is Mog but regardless, their sidequests always showed how important parties and friendships were in khux and you never see anyone talking about them since it was side quests (this can also be said for the "friends ARENT my power" guy and his friend, who were also important NPCs) like you see people make cutscene compilations for khhx and they're just. Never there. Truly another part of the khux experience that's lost on most fans who never played

I mentioned this in on another post but Im gonna put it here too for everyone, a major impact on the khux experience was kh3 trailers since kh3 released in the middle of union cross and I'll go thru it for those that didn't play, SPECIFICALLY on Lauriam and Strelitzia-- marluxia and larxene were shown in a trailer after they were introduced but BEFORE the sibling reveal. For many people this was proof that Lauriam killed Strelitzia since they drew parallels between namine in castle oblivion and rapunzel in the tower and figured Strelitzia was in a similar situation. And THEN it was reveled Strelitzia was related to either Lauriam or Elrena BUT the Japanese was very vague and it wasn't specified and we had a length of time where we had no idea who she was even related to but with the appearance of Larxene in Frozen in a trailer, people thought her appearing in a movie about the bond between sisters was proof she was Strelitzia's sister. It really was a wild fucking time to be alive. You can tell real intense khux fans from casual fans when they tell you to play kh3 in the middle of union cross and then go back and finish khux,

Let's talk khux gameplay and plot,

imo I think part of khux's story telling and the impact of the story gets lost now that the game is defunct. I always thought people didn't appreciate how the gameplay and the mechanics actually had an impact on the story and while that impact become virtually nonexistent later on, I always thought it made the story far more engaging when the game was just chi/unchained chi and also the English translation didn't do it too well ngl

Anyway what I'm specifically talking about is the medal system. Also I feel like the whole bangle thing wasn't explained well in game but really it just comes down to leveling up medals specifically. If you never played khux, you equip medals to your keyblades and they doa specific attack and to level them up you combine multiple of the same medal and you could see how leveled up a medal is by the amount of yellow dots next to it and, in JP at least, this was called "guilt" and like wow that name fucking slaps. And when nightmare chirithy reveals the player has been collecting darkness this whole time thru the medal system, you have literal guilt on your conscious. You are guilty of collecting darkness and negative emotions like guilt to use for your own power. And in Back Cover when the foretellers are made aware of this, there's no stopping it and ofc the player can't stop either, they HAVE to get stronger, you literally have to keep playing the game,

Another part of the game that I appreciated is the way the name changes factored into the game; chi was the original "world line" that the dandelions existed in and at first unchained chi had come off as just a remake but really what we're playing is the continuation, where the player and the dandelions are now in this unchained state/new world line and they're reliving their time as wielders but now without the war/"dark" memories and finally when they relive everything and get back to the "present," they continue on after into "union cross" which I feel like. wasn't explained well in game that much tbh but if you didn't understand what that meant in game, it was just to say that unions didn't matter anymore and they were all dandelions so the unions. when the unions are crossed.

and tbh the experience of playing this game in real time also added to the experience a lot and the impact of the story especially with a player insert character. I think the most effective use of this game being played in real time was Strelitzia. Now in the english version, everything with Strelitzia was all one update and the english ver was behind so honestly they had to do catch up they couldn't really afford to lag behind. But in JP, which most khux fans kept up with using fan translations, Strelitzia's introduction and her death happened about a month apart so it gave the players time to actualyl grow attached to her and THEN we get crushed. You can easily pin point the exact time certain khux fan art was drawn bc in a group drawing of the dandelions Strelitzia is there instead of Lauriam since he was only introduced after her death

and another thing! It only became apparent by the end of the game but khux actually takes place over the course of about 4 years. which is fucking insane. because the dandelions were stuck in the data for 4 years and didn't know it until the glitches started. and the game ran for roughly the same amount of time and we weren't even aware of that either until the glitches! ("why 4 years" there are cutscenes that literally say "4 years ago" so yeah girl what the fuck haha)

Anyway yeah this was just me rambling I think about this so much all the time can you tell. I hope missing link does something like this too tbh it makes it more fun and makes it feel that your actions as the player actually have impact on the story

[kuukigajan]

Okay, I will bite. What is Disco Elysium about? You got me curious.

Ohhh boy hang on a minute I gotta stop vibrating at dangerous frequencies first!

Disco Elysium is a video game; Its a mostly text-based game that is basically an RPG on steroids. You play as an amnesiac, deadbeat detective trying to solve a murder in an eerie fictional world.

Theres some exploration but as I said earlier, the gameplay is mostly text-based, in the form of conversations, either with others or yourself. The protagonist (Harry) doesnt remember anything about himself or the world, but has many inner voices guiding him around in good or bad ways. These voices are presented in the form of skills you can level up (24 skills total, including things like perception, empathy, pain threshold...), so the inner dialogue changes depending on your build. There is also some dialogue skill checks where you have more or less chances of succeeding depending on your skills, but failing these checks doesnt mean a bad outcome will happen; failures are acceptable and sometimes *better* in this game!

The game always presents you with multiple ways to finish quests; you can finish the game without even inspecting the body of the murder case you're investigating. The murder is the main arc but theres a ton of side-quests too; exploring and sinking in the world is just as fun too. The OST is absolutely insane and fits the game well.

Id say the story itself is kind of secondary (despite how full, well written and interesting it is); characters are truly the heart of this game. (This includes the world-building; their world is amazingly real and breathing and can be considered a character itself) The writing in this game is so so good and the character interactions are just... 👌 Your detective partner (Kim) is so so well written. I dont even know how to explain how funny, intricate, and smart the dialogue is thoughout the game. Its *really* funny. Like actual irl laughing funny. Harry is a weirdo while Kim is An Angel and their interactions...

I think its worth noting you can potentially make Harry go into a big desperate spiral of sexual questioning. Which is always cool! Harry questioning himself and things around him usually works through the Thought Cabinet, which are thoughts he internalizes and they give him different bonuses or maluses. There are also a significant amount of drugs and alcohols you can use that give insane bonuses; since Harry is a recovering addict, you will get a lot of peer pressure from his thoughts, but you can remain 100% clean if you want.

Theres the older original release (late 2019) and the recent final cut release (2021) which are both very good but id definitely recommend the final cut since theres a TON of new content, fully voiced text (1.2 million words!) and various bug fixes. Its available on all current generation consoles and PC. (Im not sure if its out on Switch yet but its planned soon if not)

Im going to stop here before I make this a novel but feel free to ask if theres anything you want to know!!!

[actualbird]

Heyo! I hope you're doing okay! I haven't messaged you in a long time and I hope you're feeling great!

I haven't played the game since the last time I messaged you (was it November or December) and I would love to go back into the game but I'm really lost? What did I miss and how could I "catch up"?

If you played it, should I give Mystic Messenger a try?

🌺 The I'm-not-dead-yet-Hibiscus-anon ♥️

eyyo, hibiscus!!! long time no talk!! i hope youre doing alright :D

last you messaged was a little bit after luke's birthday event so u stopped i guess mid december!! so the only things u missed was the Xmas Partyland event and the currently ongoing event A Love Poem To Skadi

for Xmas Partyland, there wasnt any plot to that event! tho if u wanna catch up on stories there, u can watch the cards (SSR for marius and artem, SR for vyn and luke) on yt, im quite sure theres vids of all those

Skadi event has a bunch of plot going on so i'll break it down in hopefully a more digestible action plan kdfbsjfd

main plot: the manor

intro

this plot kicks off in the intro scene upon entering the skadi event!! so all u have to do is play through that to see why mc goes to skadi and also why all the boys are there too HAHA. this will take like, half an hour tops. dont have to debate or anything, just enjoy the hilarious coincidences hehe

manor exploration

the intro thus leads into an exploration bit of the event where u and an nxx boy (u can only unlock one at first but u get to unlock them all as u play the other event bits) investigate and explore a manor. thru investigating objects, u learn more about the story. you need to have explored with every boy and investigate key objects with each of them to finish this plot

which i havent even finished HAHA. ive unlocked all the boys, im just taking my time cuz exploration is kinda overwhelming, i gotta move around.....

-

side stuff: town quests

so skadi is an island with a bunch of residents and u can do little favors or jobs for a bUNCH of locals and they give u rewards. these rewards can be used to get items (one of which is an item that unlocks a new boy for exploration) and also learn about their respective stories

ive finished the quests for two locals now and their stories r rlly sweet :(((( i like this bit a lot, makes the location charming and brings it to life

-

side stuff: boy encounters!!

so everyday, the boys---aside from exploring with u at the manor---are also just frolicking around skadi. each day, theyll be at a random location and theyve got new dialog bits to unlock. the first 4 dialog bits that r unlocked in the first 4 days come in that order (like, dialog 1 then 2 then yadda yadda) but after those first 4 are unlocked, all proceeding dialog bits are random!!

it's rlly fun since theres like, not rlly a plot. the boys just wanna hang out with mc and theyre all very sweet haha

-

side stuff: debates/dispute resolution

so u can get a certain item currency (it's this cute looking cupcake) thats used in the event wish pool (it's the Fairy Wish in the bottom right corner) where u can get a bunch of free items and if u get all the special items (highlighten in blue for each "pool") u unlock the next "pool". ppl r grinding for these cupcakes cuz thru the Fairy Wish, u can get a free hot boy in the hot spring invitation HAHA. ive been grinding....i want luke.....pls....

u can get these cupcakes thru doing quests for the locals, unlocking achievements, but mostly thru dispute resolution where u can just debate annoying-er locals for as long as ur AP permits with a 5 debate maximum per annoying-er local. it's kinda like the MED thing in lost gold!

the highest strength annoying-er local is a pigeon. thats why there are so many pigeon memes these days HAHA

aaaand of course for this event, there are the cards!!! SSR for EVERYBODY like lost gold with the exact same boy schedule

also!! ive not played mysme kfjgsdj. tho i have heard of it!! but yea since i dont know anything there, i cant say a thing haha

i hope this helps!!!

[volfoss]

PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE SIMS, I am ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING YOU

OK AUGHHH IM ON THE SPOT OK!!!!

So like for me its rly rly fascinating all the side spin off games. bc u have like so so many for console (one day i will have played them all, im still missing like a few as of rn) and theyve been keeping it up since sims 1 (w the sims bustin out, which TOP TIER GAME), and still had them up to the sims 3 gen (sims medieval my beloved oughhh what a game) but w sims 4 they just... dont? and its so interesting to me bc like not just the franchise going so so downhill, but the side games were always such a fun part of playing it. like sims 2 had such good ones like castaway and pet stories and life stories and oughhh theyre just so much fun, and sims 3 and sims 1 did so good, but i think its just bc like sims 4 as a base game doesnt have that many ppl working on it, so its very much a thing of them working on pumping out a million packs and kits 😒 instead of rly working on the game or even doing any kind of side ventures using the engine. like speaking from experience the sims 2 side games and sims 3 one all use the same engine (i havent played bustin out on anything other than the gba edtiion), but imo the sims 4 engine is like SO broken (literally have had multiple times where they release a pack and it completely breaks the game) that theres just not a point in rly releasing side games based off the main game. i just like! not to be like the older days of the sims were better but they legit were. not to get on a mysims tangent but like literally mysims kingdom has SO much more personality than the sims 4 could ever dream of, and the characters and quests are so good... like i think most of the spin off games have so much personality and good story quests. and like the main games def dont rly have stories to them which makes sense, but then uh ts4 was like ok guys hear me out what if we did MULTIPLE story packs. which u would think surely those would be enjoyable and good. they are not. its just like rly rly frustrating to see the franchise go so so downhill. not that ts4 cant be enjoyable but literally the spinoff games have so much more to them. anyways this was uh sdkfjsdf all over the place so im sorry about that but guhhh i have so many thoughts on the franchise as a whole.

[luxelio]

OKAY SO STUFF ABOUT LEGENDS UNITY UNDER THE CUT!!!

SO! legends unity is my idea for a legends unova game. Most of the game doesnt take place in actual unova though! the idea being that Fennel and Professor Brunet have worked together to make the Dream Link- a headset that allows anyone to interact with Entralink. Then from there the repurposed Dream Radar can detect anomalies within it! during your first excursion the radar/link would malfunction, and shatter the fabric of the entralink- effecting the real world! As such, Unova has been split into alternate realities! The ones I have so far are: Apocalypse 0: A unova heavily effected by the Mega Timeline split, this unova struggles to rebuild what was damaged by the meteor! Badlands: A western themed unova- the wild west Unova is harsh, dry, and bright. Though not without its adventures Cybertopia: Cyberpunk Unova! Big cities, big technology, and fun stuff to play with here Mirrorverse: A reverse AU of the main unova, this is where Zoe/Wyatt come in as well as Nat (girl N) and they help you on your adventures through the Shatter! Entralink: Your home base between the worlds where most of your time will be spent when not in a particular Shatter space. Homeworld: Real Unova! The place where you can upgrade your Dream Link and Dream Radar, customize tour avatar, get side quests (from Fennel/Brunet) etc! There's also a bad guy group (like always) called The Unity, trying to take advantage of the Shatter to recreate the original Dragon and rule all of the Unova's! As such, you'll be trying to stabilize each individual unova as the Mirror avatar of Nate/Rosa, and to stop The Unity from destroying things further! It's not fully worked out, but each world will also have a World Piece that's necessary for stabilizing that Unova. Im sure there could be more spaces, but thats the only ones i have for now! Theres so many more ideas in my head so feel free to ask me if you want! sjhfkjsdg

okay so i have a sick idea for a legends game but i cant draw too much cause busy (womp womp) so for those possibly interested more in the reblog from my main dnjgsjdghg

[duelofthefatesmp3]

i DO actually wanna know how youd make kotor 3 !!!!!

this ask has been sitting on my inbox for so long on PURPOSE! i wanted some time to re read the revan book + watch some swtor gameplays so i could give a concrete answer about why the book and swtor arent satisfactory and what i would do instead (im not like. a storytelling god so i this is just my PERSONAL idea). under the cut!

to begin with, what's wrong with revan the book and swtor, mai?

i am very fond of swtor i think it was such a nice idea to have an "open" world game set in star wars old republic time. but ultimately, it was not a good conclusion to revan and meetra's storyline! now, i don't really know what happened in the development of the third kotor game (if there ever was a plan for one) but it's clear they dropped the ball on that and decided to start a whole different project. i don't think we can blame disney for that one, because it was announced on 2008, launched in 2011, and disney had just bought star wars that year. so who knows.

the thing is that it's painfully evident that a bunch of the story that was gonna be in the third game, ended up in the book + misc parts of swtor. much of the book feels like a gameplay.

now, it was clear when the book was planned that they wanted to keep revan's story open so when the game came out, they could have a cool Revan storyline so he could make a cool villain appearence and draw in some of that kotor nostalgia. which ehhhhhh. uh. i don't really think did any favors for revan's character. he didn't have a satisfactory arc (I'm not saying "a happy ending" because good arcs aren't always happy) but at least some closure?

revan went through many big events in his life. we didnt need to keep his ass in stasis for his fun villain moments 300 years later. we already had what we wanted from him: jedi turned sith turned jedi again to defeat a terrible threat. that was it we could have let it there and it would have been cool! but then they decided to drag and drag his story just to leave him right where he was before. he just suffered a little more in the in-between.

you could say he finally redeemed himself of all of his crimes this way, but wasn't that the whole purpose of the first kotor game (and would have been the purpose of the 3rd?)

swtor does not centre revan in his own narrative. he's a side character for the player to experience. and look, i get it, we've had a different protag on each game, why not have another one in this one. well, because the protagonist has no personal relationship with revan. meetra was one of his closest friends, and fought with him. there is a connection that can be exploited. but the swtor protagonist is just some guy 300 years in the future who happens to stumble into revan and his life. not even his descendants get to fully interact with revan.

also, there is the fact that revan is not the centre of the game itself, only of a particular storyline. and it's weird, because swtor could have happened without revan's involvement.

ms. meetra surik, ms. bastila shan, women of the world I'm sorry

so it's no news that star wars is misogynistic as fuck right. cause it is.

so you decide to make your gender neutral protagonist a guy. then you decide to make your other gender neutral protagonist a woman. cool. now let's guess who gets underdeveloped, turned into a plot device without reason, and promptly fridged in the most unceremoniously fashion just to fullfil some manpain moments. which one do you think got that treatment.

i know the revan book is supposed to be about revan, but why make meetra go through a whole arc just to undermine her character and turn her into the faithful servant of the guy? she leaves everything behind for him, sacrifices herself for him, hell not even dead is she not serving the guy. and she was the second game’s protagonist! she beat up a bunch of powerful people and now she’s just meh, there? she had so many interesting ways to interact with revan (meeting kreia, revan’s first master, encountering another force consuming entity, etc.)

meetra went through a whole arc about dealing with the guilt of doing something horrible and having the consequences of it cut her from the force. we see her broken, then slowly come back to the world and reconnect herself with the force, then stop running and face the consequences of her role in the war. thats such a cool character with tons of potential! and nothing happened!

then we got bastila who is. a whole deal. so you make her go through a “promising jedi who defeated revan, to questioning reluctant companion, to fell into the dark side, to was redeemed thanks to her bond to revan, who helped her come back because he’d been through the same experience” arc, and then you decide to push her to the side to have a baby?? which is... its clear that the writer didnt know what to do with her (or with the other characters outside of canderous) so hey, lets get her to marry revan and have a baby.

my ideal kotor 3

to preface, im not a game developer, so some of my choices could be stunted by what a kotor rpg can do lol. of course, it would follow the same mechanics and have the same format as the first two, because consistency!

the fun way to start the game, would be from scourge’s perspective. we get to play as a sith! i’d even say you get to change scourge’s name and gender and looks (i know sith have different looks)

in scourge’s storyline, we get from his arrival to normound kaas, to his talks with nissyris, to his missions working for her. in some of these, we can make scourge lean into the dark or the light side! fun! plus we get some exposition with dialogue options. it all continues untill we get to nissirys story about the emperor. we get a fucked up cutscene of his childhood and then BOOM when its over, we see revan waking up from a nightmare and their pov starts.

ok, as for revan’s story, since we’d have to pick it up from where kotor ended, i’d have a little cutscene of revan back into the ebon hawk, with bastila, and them telling the crew to take them to courascant. then cut to a council meeting where revan and bastila get scolded in private, then rewarded by the republic. i would also like to see some revan mournink malak’s death mayhaps. since he was their childhood friend and all.

i would 100% scrape the marriage and two years passed part. as the book said, the council had no use for revan aside from the legend(tm), so why would they stay in courascant. revan was very alienated from the jedi at that point, despite being back in the “light side”

then like, to revan asking around for meetra and other jedi from the mandalorian wars, we can cash in that atris cameo, then revan starts to have these visions about the sith emperor, and maybe we could get a playable dream sequence about revan’s fight with mandalore the ultimate (I KNOW I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT.) and we get the whole exposition to mandalore telling revan that the sith are behind it all. i believe we should get a bunch of these flashback/dream sequences of revan’s past doing shit. cut to revan burying the mask in a planet, then back to the present. we see a bunch of mission and juhani scenes trying to reach him, but he keeps pushing them away. revan and bastila meet canderous, travel to the ice planet, meet clan ordo (god i love clan ordo) you get the whole quest, you decide weather to spare veela or not, maybe you get a cheeky mandalorian companion (force sensitive mando oh?) and leave canderous behind.

we can visit like, a couple more planets searching for clues maybe, etc. then when reaching nathema, you are forced to go alone as revan, get to explore nathema a bit (raiding ancient location yay) nathema as a location can be so fun because you can have it weaken you hp bar and also you cant use the force (which, in game is pretty cool)

then we get to scourge and nyssiris arriving to the planet, they fight but since theres two of them and revan doesn’t have the force, they beat the shit out of them, and while running away, they get in a fight with bastila and the companions in the ebon hawk (ebon hawk shooting game my hated). bastila manages to get a glimpse of revan’s thoughts before they take them away. but the ebon is so ruined it takes bastila, t3 and the mandalorian a while to fix it, and they get stuck into the unknown regions for a while. the ebon hawk is left in an outer rim planet with t3 fixing it, bastila and the mandalorian run back to the jedi council, only to get caught in the middle of the jedi civil war. we can have bastila choosing to hide in courascant and trying to make sense of what she saw, reading texts about the sith empire, trying to plot a course to where they took revan (more atris! but shes pissed at her now)

cutscene to meetra’s pov, leaving malachor v behind, getting calls from everyone at the hawk (atton my beloved) but just as she’s leaving she gets a force message from revan, calling for her to find him and sending visions of normound kaas. then, through her force bond with visas, she tells her not to go because they’re gay and in love and whatnot.

then boom, she gets intercepted by bastila’s ship, with the mandalore and the other mandalorian (yes i do love having a bunch of mandos on board) and they go on their way to find revan.

now i want there to be an underlying message of “we can’t take our friends with us because we have to do this ALONE we’re powerful JEDI we don’t need our FRIENDS.” meetra gets asked if she wants to bring any friends and she’s like “no. we have to do this alone.” along the game you get constantly contacted by other game characters, you get the chance to talk to them or ignore them.

so, we get back to nathema, and meetra has a whole “holy shit this is just like darth nihilus but ten times worse. but i beat darth nihilus. i can do this!” then she finds peace in this place without the force, we get a whole speech about how the odds arent against them, they find a way to normound kaas, and get going.

in normound kaas i thought about them getting a whole mission about how to infiltrate the citadel, only to get helped by scourge. he joins the party, we get a little flashback of all the years he spent trying to make revan remember and they storm the citadel. we get to fight the dark council members, fun! then we get to free revan and the game switches povs. bastila hands the mask to revan and he has a cool “yes im revan im pretty cool” then a nice heartfelt yet rushed reunion with everyone.

then have a small CONVERSATION WITH MEETRA where she talks about the sith triumvirate she defeated and revan is impressed with her and is like “we are the last hope of the jedi, we’ve learned to walk between light and dark, we’ve done horrors but we can still make things right, our experience has made us more powerful etc.

then they fight the imperial guard, ALL OF THEM, meetra revan and scourge make it into the throne room, they all fight the emperor. meetra shows the emperor that she has seen the void, she has cut herself from the force, and she’s not afraid of him, revan supports her, talks about redemption and hope  and NOW.

NOW. how the alternate endings could go:

if you decide to take scourge through the light side, he manages to form a forcebond with meetra and revan since they’ve both teached something about the duality of the force, they get 100% stronger, but its still not enough. UNTIL. a bunch of ships (jedi and mandalorian, even non republic ships) arrive to dormound kaas, the gangs from each game storm the room and together they make the emperor and his guard a bunch of punching bags. they beat him! (unknow to them, this was a backup body because the emperor can do weird shit like that, and has only debilitated his plan, but he’ll come back dont worry). then they fly back to the republic, to tell the chancellor about the sith threat, and preparations for the war begin. meetra and revan get to live happily ever after for a while, then they die away from the jedi or the sith (waaah im thinking about them helping canderous rebuild the mandalorians, and them doing it since they killed so many mandos in the war)

BECAUSE IN THE END KOTOR IS ABOUT LEARNING TO PROCESS TRAUMA AND RECOGNIZE YOUR MISTAKES AND LIVE WITH THE GUILT WHILST TRYING TO FIX THE MISTAKES YOU MADE ALONG THE WAY. AND ALSO TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA YOU NEED A SUPPORT SYSTEM SO EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES SENSE TO YOU YOU SHOULDNT PUSH PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU AWAY. AND THINGS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE ITS COMPLICATED SO YOU DONT END UP BACK ON SQUARE ONE YOURE A CHANGED PERSON.

or

if you decide to dark side scourge further, he betrays revan and meetra, they all die, and the emperor unleashes his angry lightning or whatever on everyone + a bunch of visions of all the enemies of past mocking them, and their loved ones suffering. and since you’ve had that “im not calling my friends bullshit” no one comes, you die there, and the emperor is only stalled for a few years. swtor ensues. scourge becomes the emperor’s hand.

now you could of course bring revan and meetra up in swtor, but maybe only as force ghost guides, or have some of the other characters of the game have relevance (visas tries to heal the miraluka planet 2021)

WELL THAT WAS A LOT OF WORDS. HOPE THIS IS SATISFYING ENOUGH

[mekatrio]

theres two main ways to interpret the credits (obviously not Only these 2 ways im speaking like.. theoretically) where either it makes no sense for an ending like this to happen if these side quest werent achieved in the cycle leading up to the confrontation with majora, or that after defeating majora everything you've done in previous cycles culminate into one golden timeline where all ur good deeds are present.

majora's mask is open-ended enough to allow both of these interpretations which is GREAT cuz i like them both. on one hand having the ending just be a gameplay narrative separation so players Don't have to do every single sidequest in one cycle allows for a much more grueling narrative where a child has to tirelessly perfect three days to bring happiness to as many people as he can. it reflects the frustration and stress we feel from playing the game onto link himself, and i always enjoy seeing how this gets explored in fanworks.

and on the other hand, having all your masks stand as proof of all your good deeds and culminating into one timeline where all the fruits of your labor get to exist side by side with each other is very touching. similarly to how all the masks manifest into the fierce deity mask, they then also manifest to reward you with all results of your good work. it also supports the reincarnation theory where the masks that stays with you are the 'proof' of your good deeds, and when you reincarnate these good deeds culminate into whatever form you reincarnate into next. and that 'dawn of a new day' is like, the final incarnation u go thru. both these narratives provide their own strengths and i love them BOTH