#this plotline is one of the few i do in every playthrough even in a speed run of main quests

[chloefraazers]

“burden of command” should have been about negotiating a deal between whichever desert commander you chose, and the oseram trespassers in desert tenakth territory settling in an area with an abundance of drinking water, and i will die on this hill.

regardless of who you chose, it could have been a great opportunity for growth of aloy and both tenakth npcs. yarra would have to realise she can’t solve everything with bloodshed and to give diplomacy a try. drakka could easily have set himself apart and shown that he has the capacity to lead the entire clan, not just a small settlement. and aloy could have brokered a peaceful resolution that provides desert tenakth with a precious resource, while maybe the oseram could, idk, not colonize more land with absolutely no repercussions.

it also could have addressed why there are so many oseram “trespassers,” as the tenakth call them, building settlements in tenakth territory and making themselves at home when there are tenakth who even say that if they catch oseram, they bury them alive in sand.

it’s obvious that aloy needs the different tribes aligned for the final instalment of the trilogy and this could have been a small but wildly important stepping stone in that direction.

and if they need a machine fight in the quest, there’s a tremortusk right there, it and a stormbird and heck, throw in the slitherfang too, could have all interrupted negotiations and aloy, the desert tenakth, and the oseram could have had to work together to take them down.

i love aloy with kids but this errand as-is had no real impact on the decision aloy made on choosing a leader, especially since the dialogue was almost the same regardless of who you chose.

for the most part, horizon forbidden west did a good job with the side quests and errands advancing aloy as a character as well as (to a lesser degree) npcs, but this one fell a little flat for me personally in the overall-arc regard.

[inbarfink]

I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas…  Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale.  Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue. 

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him. 

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman… 

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head. 

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?  

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter. 

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.) 

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence. 

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

[protagonistheavy]

So, Life is Strange: Before the Storm... HAD to be a rushed product, right? I only just recently got around to (watching) a playthrough of it and wow, that final episode is hugely lacking. It absolutely feels like there should be at least one whole other episode to round things out and for the consequences of your actions to pan through. So many plotlines that were promising just drop dead, and almost every character gets short-shafted for the spotlight -- I can't even remember half of these characters' names because they have so few interactions.

A lot of this is in exchange for giving more time to Chloe and Rachel, but even their plot seems so rushed and quick. It's hard to find romance genuinely between these two characters when their whole history unfolds into a major drama over the course of, like, 56 hours. Rachel feels so back and forth that I was always uncomfortable with her, and the nature of LiS games make me inherently suspicious of characters and their motives, since this series knows pretty much nothing else except twist villains. Maybe if there was a bit more casual time spent between the characters, and not so much huff and drama? But after all these episodes, I'm hesitant to say I want more Rachel Amber on screen lol.

But at least she's a fine, developed character -- I just spent too long scrutinizing her. Everyone else? They just feel like ideas for characters to put into the game. Playing D&D with Mikey and Steph was one of the coolest moments and I had hoped we'd get a second session, buuut then the plot happens and we never get to just hang out with these guys again. Mikey's brother is EXTREMELY awkward, but to his credit, I think my issue with him is that he's very different depending on your choices -- I probably need to see some alternate routes to really understand who he is... but at least in this playthrough, it felt like they were writing him on the spot.

Nathan is also a really weird issue in this game. I just dont get why Dontnod is so persistent on making Nathan also a victim, forcing us to sympathize with him so much, when we KNOW he's a school shooter. Like sure, he isn't a shooter in this prologue, but we know what he becomes! And while I appreciate some concern existing for how exactly people like Nathan come to be, his inclusion here feels immature and shallow. It feels rather uncomfortable for the writers to try so hard to tell the reader, "He's not all bad! He's human!!!" considering they were already doing this in the first game. And what about the girl that follows Nathan around? What's her deal? She's a new character for this story and not a great one lol. She exists just to give Nathan a sympathizer, to guilt-trip readers that still felt friction against Nathan that they should at least feel bad for his little girlfriend. What happens to her? Nothing! She just disappears from the plot, same with Nathan.

I think what ticks me off most about this prologue is that it does nothing a prologue should be doing. Do we learn about the Prescots? Do we learn about Jefferson? Do we learn about the origin of these powers? No, but thank god we learned how Chloe got her shitty truck. For goodness sake, Frank is such a major part of this plot, and even he gets screwed over, because we never even learn what got him and Rachel together before she went missing -- a critical part of the original story!! It's so frustrating to have this chance to see how shit came together, but instead of learning more about the base game, we're treated to a melodramatic sidestory, involving a girl that just couldn't keep her shit together after finding out about her dad cheating. It's totally unrelated and not at all what I think LiS fans were wanting when given a sequel.

And one last thing about Rachel Amber, man, I really just didn't vibe with her. I think my big issue with her is something similar I have against Chloe, and that's that I don't quite understand what makes these girls "punks." They're more like... rebels, and even then, not very fascinating ones. Rachel Amber comes from a very privileged home where she had almost no problems in her life... so it's really hard to sympathize with her when the only dilemma in her life is just her dad cheating on her mom. And yeah, that sucks, but maybe I'd feel more for her if her reaction to that wasn't to recklessly cause a whole forest fire. Ugh, maybe Im thinking too much about it, but seriously, that moment put a wedge between me and Rachel for the entire game -- I just felt so bad for the forest animals lol, like wtf, they didnt deserve that and Rachel never once feels bad for destroying a whole swathe of nature + endangering the lives that have to go and fight it.

This plot really needed to be slowed down or given more space to breathe. I was agasp when I realized it was the ending of the game and everything was just getting summed up anticlimactically. The fact we can't even get a solidified fight between Frank and Damon also tells me that they had to hurry up and finish this with as little budget as possible. Such a shame considering LiS is full of mysteries with so much promise, but virtually NOTHING from any of these games is intent on actually exploring any of it -- and at this point, it's outright too late, as the greater plot of the games has just moved on.

[silver-rings-and-rabbits]

Open Heart: Second Year

I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t already been said before but this is bugging me like crazy. I don’t use Tumblr very often but I don’t know anyone else who plays Choices, so here I am (I guess spoiler alert for those who haven’t played Open Heart).

Open Heart book 1 is one of my favourite books, possibly even my most favourite. I genuinely couldn’t decide between Bryce, Raf and Ethan. I switch between the male and female MC and I’ve been able to give them different personalities. The book had strong writing and a coherent plot with probably three main storylines: Patient X, Panacea Labs, and Mrs Martinez, which all tied together beautifully at the end. Even all our patients came back in the last chapter.

And then Open Heart: Second Year. Where to start.

Obviously Ethan is our boss, mentor and colleague so he will have a vital role in the story, but why push the other LIs aside? Why can���t Bryce romancers steal a few minutes in the hospital corridors where Bryce gives you a flirty wink and a pat on the butt? Why can’t Jackie romancers sneak into her room every so often?

And let’s get started on Rafael. First of all....what the fuck?

I love a little bit of angst so I wasn’t initially too mad when Sora was introduced (actually I think it made me want Rafael more, because apparently I only like men I can’t have...and I’ve gone off Ethan because he would be too easy). But there was none. Sora appeared in chapter 2, where it’s described as ‘stings a little to watch’, but doesn’t appear again until the baseball game in chapter 8 where they cheer for Edenbrook a couple of times. The only kind of ‘angst’ Rafael romancers got was dancing with Raf at the music festival where Sora is briefly mentioned and MC closes their eyes and listens to Raf’s heartbeat (which was a sweet moment, to be fair). Are you seriously telling me that none of their friends acknowledged that he and MC used to date? That they wouldn’t have asked if MC was OK at least once? That they would have invited Rafael over to the apartment without giving MC a heads up? And when PB was asked about this they gave some crap about making things realistic and exploring the mature themes of a medical drama. If Open Heart were realistic, MC would have been fired halfway through book 1 (one of the dialogue options with Ethan in book 1 chapter 6 actually leads him to say ‘consider yourself lucky you’re even getting a next time’) but NO, we get ‘realism’ by losing a beloved love interest and character that people have grown invested in and spent money on, and then completely waste the opportunity for drama.

And then there’s chapter 10.

And going back to realism, they couldn’t think of anything else apart from vengeance and terrorism? Not, I don’t know, just a highly infectious patient which is probably more likely to happen within a hospital?

I do think that chapter 11 is one of the strongest chapters of Second Year, and the book has got stronger since then. But knowing that it might have ended with the death of Rafael leaves a VERY bitter taste. I’m very glad they rewrote it...but what on earth was the thought process behind that?!? Going back to realism again, if they wanted drama and emotions, why not have Kyra die of surgical complications? At least we’d have been somewhat prepared for that as she was introduced as being a cancer patient, and there would have been more angst (especially for Bryce romancers) as he would have had the guilt of not being able to save her when he promised MC he would, even if it was out of his hands. But sure, have Rafael caught in an assassination attempt, that makes sense. And it still doesn’t really excuse Sora, I mean, imagine the pain if he was still an LI and he and MC were saying their last goodbyes in that room??

I was happy with the rewrite to chapter 11 and the kiss between Raf and MC in chapter 12 was beautiful. And PB have actually made something of an effort to include Raf in the rest of the story; I was half-expecting to not see him again until the obligatory 30-diamond scene in the last chapter.

Chapter 12 was so emotional and it was so clear that each character and LI was struggling with the events. And the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13 made it very clear that MC was terrified of returning to work. MC has butterflies in their stomach as they walk in to Edenbrook and then...nothing. That was that. As if they just needed to face their fear and they’d be alright again. Now I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure PTSD isn’t as simple as that? It would go far deeper than ‘Oh, I’m alright, just taking it one day at a time’. And the narration specified that MC was uncomfortable at the idea of going back into the diagnostics room where the attack happened, but chapter 14 we’re back in there without batting an eyelid.

Someone (I don’t know who...if you’re reading this let me know!!) pointed out that Danny and Bobby could have been mentioned at the gala...there could have been some kind of ‘in memory’ and donors could have been guilt tripped by MC. But no, not a peep. I keep thinking that we could have had Baz, Zaid and Inez (I miss her) catching up with MC and asking how they’re doing and how worried they were. If you’re going to the gala with Raf there could have been a highly emotional scene between them about what happened in the room. Raf alludes to it in a line of dialogue but there was potential for so much more.

And how about the fact that a group of doctors cured the incurable OVERNIGHT and it worked without proper testing? NO ONE has mentioned that since! Surely there would be papers being published and deeper research being conducted now that lives aren’t on the line? We had a whole chapter about how a research grant would save the hospital but now...nothing?! Ed Farrugia hasn’t been mentioned since chapter 12. No one in the team is talking about how it was June’s idea to convince him to switch to Edenbrook. Surely that would be a huge elephant in the room? Wouldn’t she at least say something like ‘I never wanted this to happen, we went too far’? Something?!

The fact that there has been no follow-up to the attack suggests to me that it was purely for shock value. They just wanted drama and didn’t care about keeping it grounded. And assuming that Rafael died in the original, that’s more upsetting. I can’t believe that he was the least profitable character in the history of Choices ever. And even if he was, was it because no one bought his diamond scenes, or because he didn’t have diamond scenes to buy? I romanced Bryce in my first playthrough, but I remember choosing to assist on his surgery without even thinking about it, I didn’t even look at the diamonds it would cost. So a beloved character would have been killed, and it would have brought nothing to the story.

Furthermore, Sora would never have been explained. Rafael almost explained in chapters 2 and 12 but both times MC cut them off. If Rafael was originally going to die in chapter 11, Rafael romancers would never have got that explanation, unless they were to hear it from Sora themselves afterwards (doubtful). And it’s highly unlikely it actually will be explained. PB will probably say ‘it’s up to you what happened!’ like they’re doing us a favour by creating our own headcanon, but to me that’s just lazy writing; they wanted to write off Rafael and they didn’t care how they did it.

If Second Year hadn’t opened with a funeral scene we might never have been clued into what was going to happen and demanded a rewrite.

Aside from that, there’s Esme. She’s introduced as breaking Dr Thorne’s hand and then has to diagnose and treat him in chapter 10. Depending on your choices, he gets surgery and thanks Esme for saving his life and apologises for the bar incident. Otherwise she doesn’t run further tests and he messes up a surgery which eventually forces him to resign. And then Esme gets her plotline with Levi. If Dr Thorne wasn’t her main plotline, what was the point in introducing him? It’s another storyline that had huge potential--sexual harassment in the workplace, for example--but had little to no payoff and fell off the radar. If PB wanted to introduce MC and Esme the night before they both started working then MC could have just literally walked into Esme and either apologised, asked if she was OK, or told her to watch where she was going, and that would have affected how she greeted you in the hospital the next day. But no, we get this storyline hinted at which is then written off and replaced. Maybe it was a rewrite, I just don’t see why it would have been.

Like I said before, the main storylines of book 1 all tied together in the end, but the storylines we’ve had in book 2 have just felt like completely separate events, just a bunch of stuff that happens and is quickly forgotten. I think the balance of the LIs has been better since chapter 11; even when the gang went to Vegas, Raf romancers got a quick phone call with him. As a Raf romancer, I appreciated that, and it only goes to show how PB could accommodate for all LIs whilst having Ethan integral as our boss (see before, bonus scenes for Jackie romancers sneaking into each others rooms, bonus scenes for Bryce romancers having flirty interactions in the corridors). 

There is such a difference in dialogue if you’re playing Ethan’s romance route or not. I had him stay behind in chapter 11 and I thought it came across as a sweet conversation between a mentor and his protégée. But the other LIs don’t have anything close to that level of detail. Ethan romancers get pretty close to being official in chapter 17 but I’ve heard Jackie and Bryce didn’t get that. And Raf romancers didn’t even get caught sneaking back into the gala. I’m still holding out hope that book 2 will end with all LIs saying ‘I love you’ and being official with MC, but the inequality makes me sad.

I might have had some more to say, but this post has been longer than I intended and I don’t remember what that might have been. I really wanted to like Open Heart: Second Year. Book 1 will always be a favourite, but book 2? It’s like going from the classic era of The Simpsons where Homer was a lazy dumbass but genuinely loved his family, to the modern era of The Simpsons where nothing makes sense and Homer is a straight-up jerk. I just hope that, if we get book 3, they would have learned from their mistakes and Open Heart can be saved. It doesn’t deserve this.

Well, that’s my two cents. Sorry for the long post. If you got this far, thanks for reading.

[loreweaver-universe]

And that’s the episode.

All in all, I have mixed feelings about that one.  The Adora/Swift Wind plotline was fairly predictable in a boring way, and I find Swift Wind pretty annoying, so I didn’t really have fun there.  Catra was great, and I enjoyed her very much, and the Entrapta reveal was decent, but all in all I feel like the episode was...lackluster?  It just didn’t really have any oomph.  Not bad, just not exciting at all.

Ties That Bind didn’t even have all that much oomph as a title, even.

Ties That Bind comes in at my new #1 for Season 2, above The Frozen Forest, and my new #10 overall, between System Failure and No Princess Left Behind.

Up next is going to be the start of the Patron Picks for the month!  We’ll be starting Episode 11 of Paranoia Agent on Wednesday.  That’s going to be the last liveblog this week, though, because I’m taking my birthday off on Friday!  I’m turning 32!  I feel SO OLD!  PLEASE HELP ME

As for streaming, I’m going to be continuing Final Fantasy VIII after my doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so stay tuned for that.  You can watch me live at my Twitch channel, or watch the streams I’ve already uploaded to Youtube by clicking here.

Thank you all for tuning in, and to the 66 patrons that make it possible for me to do this for a living!  I’ll see you guys later!

IN OTHER NEWS:

I recently completed my kinda-blind playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild!  You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

I recently completed my blind playthrough of Transistor!  You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

I recently completed my playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Remake!  You can see the full playlist of those streams by clicking here!

If you’d like to help me pay my rent, buy me some food, or help with my bills and medicine, please use my direct donation link!  If you’d like to support me per liveblog completed every month, please pledge to my Patreon! Becoming a patron not only allows you to vote on what shows I do whenever I choose a new one, but also grants access to the community Minecraft server to $5 patrons or higher!

You should also go pledge to Gio’s Patreon, or his Sponsus–our Discord server maintenance tech, creator of Rubybot, and community Minecraft server overlord deserves far more than I can afford to pledge to him by myself.

If you’d like more of me and my content:

My Episode Lists master page, where you can find every show and liveblog I’ve done!

My Discord server, where you can come hang out with me and other fans, check out member liveblogs, and join community gaming guilds!

My Twitch channel, where I stream variety games every so often!

My Youtube channel, where you can check out past streams!

My ask blog, where you can send me questions and comments!

My Twitter, where I make announcements about liveblogs and streams!

It’s your kindness and support that lets me do this stuff, and I wouldn’t be where I am without all of you to do it for.  Thank you all so much for your support, and for tuning in every episode!

OTHER PEOPLE YOU MAY ENJOY:

I may have been one of the earlier Steven Universe liveblogs, but a whole community of livebloggers has sprung up over the last five years!   I linked to a bunch individually for a few wrap-ups, but honestly, this end-slate is already eight billion miles long, so I’m just gonna link to my links page.  Click here if you want recommendations of other livebloggers, or other neat people, or webcomics and podcasts that I recommend.

[bltngames]

Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine is a weird game for a lot of different reasons. It was among some of the first game reviews I ever wrote for the internet, for one, all the way back in 2005. I was proud enough of that review that when it came time to relaunch TSSZ News in 2008, it was one of five archived reviews I transplanted on to the site. It was also a strange case where I became convinced it was a game I’d never play, originally. I was 23 years old, with no job, no money, and no prospects. I was desperate to play the game that was being sold as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but I could not envision a future where that would ever be possible.

Eventually, I reached my breaking point. Earlier that same year, somebody had linked me to something called “Quake Done Quick.” It was attached to a relatively new site, called the “Speed Demos Archive”, a hub for videos of people finishing games as fast as possible. The site was small, updated manually, and featured a list of roughly 100 games -- maybe less. This was before Youtube, so these were downloadable video files, usually in AVI or MPG format. And it was here that they had a Super Mario Sunshine speedrun. Even on my fledgling broadband internet, it took a considerable amount of time to download. But, with nothing more than two hours of raw, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage, I watched a user named “Dragorn” play through the entire game (his old run is still viewable on the Internet Archive). Watching a speedrunner flip, spin, and trick his way across levels, I became convinced that Sunshine was incredible.

A few months later, I was surprised by my brother with $200 for Christmas, stuffed inside a greeting card. He said it was for “all the Christmases he missed” since moving out, years ago. Combined with other money I’d received in gifts, I headed to a Gamestop and purchased a Gamecube with my own (used) copy of Super Mario Sunshine. In my mind, it did not matter that I had spoiled the entire game for myself only three months earlier with the speedrun video. Watching someone else play is no substitute for a controller in your own hands. I needed to play it for myself.

In the modern context, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the games attached to the recently released Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection. Full disclosure: I will not be buying this collection, and I have not played the version of Super Mario Sunshine it includes. It’s not that these games are bad, but even from the outside looking in, the collection looks underwhelming. It’s full of basic, bare-bones ports of games that deserve more. But it does mean that these games have been on my mind, particularly Super Mario Sunshine, which I finished replaying, separately, a little more than one year ago. It was the first time I’d finished the game since that fateful Christmas of 2004, and it provided a refresh in perspective.

The truth of the matter is, brushing aside everything else about it, Super Mario Sunshine is an easy game to hate. Nintendo was trying a lot of new things with the Gamecube, struggling to figure out what could be done with the leap in horsepower over the Nintendo 64. Their pitch was a Mario that was subtly more serious and realistic. Sunshine is a game with a surprisingly large number of cinematics, and a considerable amount of narrative setup. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: the game opens with Mario taking a long-deserved vacation on a tropical island, only to be arrested and wrongfully accused of crimes he did not commit. He is sentenced to community service, forced to clean the island of a paint-like substance its residents claim he has used to vandalize their resort town. This is accomplished with the F.L.U.D.D., a backpack-mounted squirt gun perfect for washing down walls and floors. It was the first manual labor he’d been shown doing since the NES version of Wrecking Crew in 1985.

It’s odd territory for Mario, but it leads to the game’s first real problem: Plot. Sunshine is not a game that’s packed with story -- there aren’t a lot of named characters, and there aren’t a lot of genuine story arcs to get hooked in to, but it’s way more than you got in most Mario games. Regardless, the influence of a narrative structure is definitely felt within its levels. One of the benefits of Super Mario 64 is that there was no set order to anything; you might drop in to a level with a specific goal in mind, only to accidentally stumble on to something else. You were encouraged to follow your curiosity, collecting stars more through natural exploration. Even though it’s not always obvious on the surface, the objectives in Super Mario Sunshine are following a specific plotline, which means flat, rigid linearity.

So you might reach an amusement park area, but you can’t go inside until you finish the mission where you open the front gates. Even once you re-enter the level for the next mission inside the amusement park, exploring its various rides will be a moot point, as the game will want you to focus on a specific goal instead. Want to ride the rollercoaster? Too bad, the story dictates it’s not available yet. Though you still have that go-anywhere, do-anything world design from Super Mario 64, the current mission is the only thing that’s ever active. Another example: at the beginning of the game, you open up the first stage -- Bianco Hills. Even though you have a whole village and a sizable lake area to explore, there’s little to do out there, because your mission is about reaching the bottom of the windmill. The second mission, again, doesn’t involve the village or the lake, but now asks you to reach the top of the same windmill in order to fight the game’s first boss, Petey Piranha. And so it goes: big zones to explore, but most of it useless as Sunshine slowly trickles out objectives one at a time, following a barely-visible narrative that drags everything down.

Nintendo had other intentions for the game, too. The company was known for taking its time with game releases -- Super Mario World released in 1990, and it took six years for Super Mario 64 to follow it up. Even once a game was announced, there were often months or even years of delays as the game got pushed back, and back, and back, as with Ocarina of Time. Similarly long waits happened for many of Nintendo’s other flagship franchises (Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, etc.), and the peanut gallery was getting restless. With the release of the Gamecube, Nintendo made a vow to explore other avenues to release more games, more quickly.

The problem was, all of those delays are exactly what lead to Nintendo’s extremely high bar of quality. Rushing these games out the door meant cutting corners and finding easy ways to tack on extra play time, skipping necessary fine tuning. In The Wind Waker, this notoriously led to the last fourth of the game, wherein you must find and decode maps to dredge up half a dozen pieces of the magical Triforce. For most, this meant hours of sailing out to random, completely featureless areas in the middle of the open ocean hoping to find a single golden tortilla chip. “Tedious” is putting it kindly, but it saved Nintendo from having to delay the game too many times in order to add more in-depth content.

In Super Mario Sunshine, this manifested in a degree of repetition that is difficult to ignore. In both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, most mission objectives are unique. There are occasional repeated missions, like finding 8 red coins, but by and large it's things like rescuing a baby penguin, opening a pyramid, assaulting an airship, or finding your way through a gravity-bending maze. There's enough variety that you don't notice as much when you're asked to do yet another one of Galaxy's purple coin comets.

Sunshine still has unique goals like that, but they are much fewer and farther between. Instead, the bulk of the game is filled with doing the same four or five missions over, and over, and over again. Finding fruit to hatch Yoshi or hunting red coins can be fun occasionally, but Sunshine often makes you do this stuff multiple times per level. Most bosses also must be faced at least twice, sometimes up to three times, and very little changes from fight to fight. And then there are the races -- a man named Piantissimo is waiting for you in most stages, looking to race you to an arbitrary landmark, and every single level has one penultimate mission where you must chase down the hero's evil doppelganger, Shadow Mario. It’s padding, basically, and thanks to a tenuous grip on narrative, there’s few ways to skip the things you don’t want to do.

This isn't even touching on the game's blue coins. They're one of Sunshine's rarer collectibles, and ten blue coins can be traded at the shop for a single Shine Sprite (the main item central to the story). The majority of blue coins can be found by hosing down graffiti found around the island. Spray a circle-shaped pattern on one wall, and a blue coin pops out of another circle-shaped pattern on the opposite side of the level, which you must run to and collect before it disappears. Then, the opposite: spray down the second pattern, and another blue coin will appear back where the first graffiti used to be. In a game full of rerun objectives, this is the worst offender. Rarely are these blue coin graffiti spots interesting or challenging; they primarily exist to fill space and fluff up the Shine counter.

The level concepts themselves also suffer from this repetition. In any other Mario game, “tropical island” would be one theme among many other level types, like deserts, volcanoes and frozen lakes. Sunshine tries to stretch its one theme out to last an entire game, and in practical terms, this means that even after 18 years and two complete playthroughs (three, if you count the speedrun video), I still can’t remember most areas in any kind of specific detail. I remember a couple stage names, maybe a few environmental traits (like the hotel at sunset or the amusement park), but anything beyond that and it all starts blurring into homogeneous beaches, docks, and villages. Even the music -- beyond the iconic acoustic guitar of the Delfino Plaza hub world song, absolutely nothing about Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack stands out as memorable in the slightest. Every part of this game plays, looks and sounds like every other part in the worst way possible.

And yet, through some miracle, Super Mario Sunshine does not come out the other end being a bad game. It’s not necessarily good, either, mind you. But when I finally managed to get my hands on this game back in 2004, it made me angry. Super Mario 64 was a tough act to follow, and rather than build on those concepts, Sunshine felt like a massive regression. Nowadays, it’s easier to see the bigger picture. Super Mario Sunshine was a stop-gap as Nintendo slowly pushed Mario back to a more linear, level-based structure. Super Mario Galaxy was another step in this direction, doing away with the open worlds in favor of traditional, straight-forward level design, something that would later be perfected in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.

That makes Sunshine more of a curious black sheep than anything else. It’s definitely not a game worth hating -- its biggest offense is simply being dull, and there are worse fates. For my replay, it became the sort of game I chipped away at, bit by bit, over the course of nearly three years. As it turns out, the best cure for repetition is to forget everything you were doing the last time you played. It’s even fitting on some level that a game about Mario taking a vacation is best served in lazy, slow, indifferent chunks. Make no mistake -- there are better, more polished, and more engaging platformers out there for you to play. It is in no way a stretch to call Super Mario Sunshine the worst 3D Mario game, but it speaks to the franchise’s high bar of quality that even the worst 3D Mario game really isn’t so bad.

[thesaltyoceanwaves]

You know Jack Ryder? The reporter in the game Batman: Arkham Knight? He reminds me of the type of reporter/person Alya is slowing turning into. Especially in your story. You get a good taste of his character by watching a playthrough of the side quest Most Wanted: Lamb to the Slaughter

With Alya’s interlude in “Paper Sky” and the first chapter of “All the Laughs” out, I think now is the time to give some commentary on Alya.

I have mixed feelings on canon!Alya. On the one hand, I think we’ve all had to sit through some toxic relationships or rough patches in our friendships in our life. I, for example, was not a good friend in elementary school. I would actually go up to my friends and tell them “I don’t want to be friends this week” only to go up to them three days later and ask to be friends again. Of course, as I got older, I stopped doing stuff like that.

And I’ve been on the other side of the fence too. I can think of three friendships that really messed with me at different points in my life (one in middle school, one in high school, and the third in college, which I alluded to in another post), as well as someone I would have been friends with if things were different (as in better, but that’s another story). 

With how Alya has been acting this season, and her growing friendship with Lila, I thought it would have been an interesting plotline to have Marinette and Alya have an actual fight. Marinette isn’t allowed to disagree with anyone, not without either being wrong or suffering for it. But her and Alya have legitimate sources of conflict that ought to be addressed - I stand by my opinion that The Puppeteer 2 would have been a great place to address this.

And in general, I haven’t been a big fan of how Alya’s been acting this season - with the dismissiveness in Chameleon, the pawning off of babysitting duties in Christmaster and Timetagger, and the pushiness in Puppeteer 2, and no consequences to be dealt in sight, it’s a wonder she hadn’t become my least favorite character in the entire show. I don’t blame anyone who does feel this way.

But on the other hand, I definitely get where the backlash to the backlash is coming from. Alya is one of the few dark-skinned WoC characters on this show, and black women in media tend to get the worst treatment from writers of their own shows (mostly referring to shows where these women aren’t the protagonist, or are co-protags with another character, likely white) and fandom. 

By contrast, fandom tolerance for white dudes and their antics tends to be a lot higher, even if they make the same bad decisions like Alya has. So when you see enough salt fics going the direction of “Alya is a bad friend” and sometimes take it even further than that (”Alya is the absolute worst!”), it can feel particularly hateful and even racist, even if the writer isn’t intending to be.

I’m a white woman, so I was anxious when trying to respond to this. How far is too far? While it seems most people tend to like how Alya has been handled so far and the trajectory of her arc, it wouldn’t be fair of me to just write off anyone who feels like that’s not true.

I want to note however, that I don’t think fic writers should just stop critiquing Alya in their writing or feel like they have to have Marinette and Alya makeup just because of this anxiety. Different writers have different ideas for how they want to handle the scenarios presented to them, and depending on execution, that’s not an inherently bad thing. Fiction is the space meant to explore possibilities, after all. I just think, in this specific case, it’s a hard rope to walk, mostly if you’re white. If there were other prominent dark-skinned girls in the main cast, or if the story didn’t always focus on the rich, white kids (coughChloeandAdriencough), this probably wouldn’t be as much of an issue. 

I don’t want all writers to feel like they have to go this route if they don’t want to. I chose to give Alya another chance because I like the redemption arc that was set up for her in Nice Guy Adrien and wanted to do something similar for TOtMiS. I wanted Marinette and Alya to work things out in the end, regardless if they remain BFFs or teammates. And at the end of the day, every character on this show deserved better writing (yes, including my least fave Lila and Hawkmoth).

TL;DR: Alya hasn’t been a good friend to Marinette in canon and should answer for it, but I don’t think she’s The Worst™ and should be crucified. 

Anyway, I actually really liked writing commentary on my own story, so I might do something like this again in the future - maybe with Chloe or Adrien when we get further along.

[obsidiancreates]

Okay so i watched SnapCube’s Resident Evil 2 dub.

So I never actually watched Mark’s playthrough of that, so this was the first time seeing all the uh, the nastiness.

But. It gave me... and idea for a game. A disgusting, disturbing, horrific, skin-crawling horror game. 

Personally, those don’t scare me much. I’m way more frightened of what I can’t see than what I can see in detail. Like um... that Firewatch game? Scared the shit out of me, way worse than any gore-or-gross based horror game I’ve seen. 

So anyway, about my game idea.

It’s a similar style to RE, horror-shooter-adventure type of thing. For the first chunk of gameplay, that seems too be it. Collecting guns and stuff, using that to kill monsters, trying to figure out what’s going on.

And then. You meet an evil scientist in this lab where all the bad shit started. And you find out that it’s some weird fleshy blob thing, probably from another dimension, and the lab was experimenting on and with it. 

Well it turned out the thing could make parasite-type creatures. Just like... birth them, from it’s gross fleshy-ness. So the scientists started studying those.

Yeah, those things are what made the monsters. It basically gets into people and turns them into monsters and makes them apart of this blobs hive-mind kinda thing.

 And then the people-turned-monsters, at a certain point of horrible you-an’t-tell-that-was-once-human, can spew out the parasites as well. Probably through like, a nasty monster mouth or something disturbing like that.

The scientist, he’s not infected. But he also doesn’t want to kill the thing. He thinks it’s fascinating, beautiful even, what it can do to people. You know, because this is a horror game and he’s an evil scientist and like there’s got to be some kind of human antagonist.

The scientist and the hero (player character) fight. And then! The scientist grabs one of his live specimens of the parasites and lets it loose onto the protagonist. This is a cutscene. You cannot prevent this. The protagonist gets infected, and slowly starts turning into a monster.

The second part of the game!

The protagonist is now turning into a monster. But, they still have their right mind, at least for now. They learn about a cure that will kill off the parasite, in another lab a few towns away. 

As their infection worsens, they mutate absolutely grotesquely. Like the doctor scientist guy in the RE game! :D See, that’s how RE inspired this, I’ve always thought of having a game like this (mostly thanks to Halo 3, I wanted a version where you can play as a Flood and just fuck everything up) but never had a clear idea. It was always just “Good guy slowly becomes monster and tries to find a way to stop it”.

The infections rate is affected by style of gameplay, actions, and choices! The protagonist has abilities and powers that come from their infection, but using those worsens the mutations. They’re stronger than guns, though. The protagonist also has more health the more they mutate, and if it gets far enough, they develop health regenerating powers.

The more mutated you are, the less likely it is that people will talk to or trust you. They may even attack you!

There’s also bits, this part is mostly inspired by Halo 3, where the flesh-blob talks to the protagonist. Usually where there’s a cutscene showing the mutations happening (I figured I might as well lean into it, the guy in RE was disgusting and horrible but like kinda cool in terms of a good gore-like body horror villain? So yeah) and it’s saying creepy things about “Stop resisting” and “The more you fight it the longer it takes and the more it hurts” and all that. The typical “evil psychic monster” bullshit, you know?

So the halfway point of the game. The hero has found the lab, gotten to the cure, but, uh-oh! The evil scientist who got them infected in the first place is there! And he’s taking the cure and the files on how to make more of it!

Another fight. 

Depending on how mutated you are, there’s two ways things can go: You get the cure and go on a typical path of saving the world with it.

Or you don’t. If you’re too mutated and monster-like, during the fight the hero character keeps hearing the flesh-blob. They’re enraged at what the scientist has done to them, and the scientist is going on about how beautiful they are. In their rage, the hero ends up destroying the cure and file.

They end up pining the scientist down, and then, a parasite comes out of their mouth or something. I don’t know, but they’ve reached the point of no return. The scientist gets infected, and the hero fully looses themself to the flesh blob.

The rest of the game plays out as the hero, now a near-mindless monster and fully part of the hive-mind, going around to finish infecting the rest of the town. They’re super gross, I don’t know exactly how but I’m thinkin’ that whole “human head is now hanging limply to the side of monster head” thing from the one stage of the RE scientist might come into play.

There’s still like. Puzzles and challenges and enemies and stuff. Like other humans who are infected but still have their own minds, and of course normal humans too.

That route ends with the player infecting the last human, and then leaving this destroyed and nasty town with an army of other monsters to go and take over the rest of the world.

Bad ending, for sure.

The good ending of course kills all the monsters, maybe some sort of super-healing agent is somehow developed from what’s left of the monsters. All is well, and the player leaves the town a hero, happy and relived everything is over.

:D

I like this idea. Wouldn’t that be fun? Halfway through a game the player becomes a villain/monster? Every game, the player always stays the hero, stays human and in their right mind, and that’s nice but... not super interesting, plotline-wise. I think this is a fun idea!

What do you guys think?

I have no skill in coding or anything by the way. Literally just a concept. This probably won’t ever get made but... whatever, I want to know if you think it would be fun anyway!

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.13

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

…Okay, since this is the very last post of the main storyline, admittedly this spoiler warning has become completely moot at this point. But, you know. Tradition!

Last time as we got even closer to the end of trial 6, the audience literally murdered Keebo in the most pointlessly gratuitous death in the entire game, the narrative tried to insist this was necessary in order for Shuichi to both realise he needs to change their minds and actually be able to do so (but it wasn’t), Shuichi was adorably inspired by Kaito to make the impossible possible and Maki adorably agreed that a sidekick of Kaito’s could do that, I had A Lot Of Feelings, ones very personal to me (thanks to Kaito!), about Shuichi’s sentiment of how fiction can change the world… and then things abruptly mood-whiplashed into the worst Argument Armament both gameplay-wise and in terms of how it should have been literally actually impossible for Shuichi to change any of this asshole audience’s minds, even though things really could have been written such that it wasn’t if this audience had just been reacting to all this like actual human beings.

(…I did it! I found a reason to mention Kaito in every one of this chapter’s summary bits! Okay, admittedly I had to kind of shoehorn it a few times – though not remotely all of the times, mind you – but shush, Kaito deserves it, I have no regrets.)

Anyway, with the Argument Armament over and Shuichi having achieved the literal impossible, we’re about to go to the “vote”.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… I think hopeful Keebo should vote for despairing Tsumugi, without a doubt!”

My god, Monokuma is so transparently just trying to keep things on script and pander to the Danganronpa buzzwords when it doesn’t even make any sense. When at any point during this trial has Tsumugi herself ever seemed to be in despair? And Keebo has hardly been advocating hope recently – Monokuma’s just desperately trying to make it sound like that’s totally still his character. Plus, he’s Monokuma! He’s supposed to be the poster bear for despair! He’s not supposed to want anyone to be voting against despair!

Monokuma:  “Cuz that’s what the outside world wants to see!”

Since they’re in control of Keebo now, the outside world is already going to vote for what they want to see and shouldn’t have needed Monokuma to tell them what they supposedly want. Someone’s getting worried. (He really shouldn’t be, because what just happened should not have been possible, but.)

It’s pretty neat how it turns out that the real reason the game made you do the vote yourself the whole time is for the purpose of this bit in which you don’t vote. Though I guess technically they still didn’t need to do that and could just leave you to assume that Shuichi didn’t vote.

(If you do vote here, regardless of who for, there’s just a very brief game over in which Shuichi laments that he was a coward after all.)

Maki:  “If she had cast one vote for Keebo then it would be a tie, but—”

Tsumugi:  “Oh, there’s no need to worry about that. I didn’t vote either.”

Maki:  “…What?”

Shuichi:  “Just as I thought… You wanted hope to win.”

Of course she wanted hope to win, but then… why couldn’t she have just voted for herself, just in case Keebo’s body didn’t vote? I suppose this could be a sign that she actually does care about what the outside world wants and would be willing to accept it if they didn’t want the “hope” ending after all, rather than forcing it on them against their will anyway. But the rest of her behaviour a bit later when she realises they didn’t vote doesn’t really add up with that, so, eh?

Also it’s interesting how Maki seems particularly surprised to realise this. I guess she really was taken in by Tsumugi’s manipulative argument earlier that she’d want to be the lone survivor because she’s the big bad evil mastermind, and that Maki’s desire to not vote was all part of her plan.

(It’s okay, Maki! You were right to believe in your own feelings and stand with Shuichi after all!)

Tsumugi:  “No matter who he voted for, the only one who survives is Keebo… So in other words, the winner is hope.”

I was going to question whether it’d really be the same even if the audience voted for “despair” to win, which should mean Keebo’d be executed after all and we’ll get the boring everybody-dies ending anyway. But actually he’d just be “punished”, aka being put into a new killing game, so no, that would end up the same as the “hope” ending in which he sacrificed himself to that fate, wouldn’t it.

Tsumugi:  “He’ll be participating in the next killing game.”

Maki:  “Hold it! Why are you punishing Keebo? If Keebo survives, then there’s no need for him to be sacrif—”

Maki, I appreciate your desire to try and protect your friend, but Keebo is already dead. She’ll just be “punishing” his empty shell.

…Actually, that’s a good question. What would she have done to put Keebo’s empty shell in a new killing game? Would he have gotten a new personality? Would it be the same as his old one with his memories erased, or a different character? Or would the audience have been in complete control of him like they are now? That would have been… disconcerting to his fellow students, to say the least.

Himiko:  “Th-That’s not fair! Are you twisting the rules again?”

Tsumugi:  “It’s fine, cuz this is all fiction. Maybe it’s a bit forced… but that’s fiction for you, right?”

Ha. Haha. There sure have been a few forced bits in this fiction here and there, both in terms of things Tsumugi did in-universe, and also in an out-universe sense.

Not that this is an excuse. Writers should be trying to make the best fictions they can, not writing off their mistakes and problems with “oh but it’s fiction so it doesn’t matter, right”, as if that’s an excuse to not even try in the first place. This is more of Tsumugi’s mindset of seeing fiction as enjoyable but ultimately meaningless because it’s “just” fiction.

Tsumugi:  “And how about this for the next plotline? Hope has won but the lone survivor, Keebo, remains trapped… Now he’ll challenge the killing game anew. Will he be able to grasp true hope…? Yeah, an ending like that can work, right?”

My god, Tsumugi, you are a terrible writer and I hope you’re starting to realise this yourself. All of Keebo’s friends are dead and now he’s forced into a second killing game? That’s not hope winning! That’s the most despair ending if ever I saw one! And what the hell does “grasp true hope” even mean? She’s definitely not talking about “true hope” in the sense of the actual meaning of the word, so it’s clearly just a superlative to refer to an even more hopey kind of hope than the hope he already supposedly has. This “plotline” is so dumb, and at least this has got to be out-universely on purpose.

Maki:  “What? This is the worst possible ending.”

Himiko:  “But… this is bad. At this rate, our deaths will be meaningless!”

Shuichi:  “…”

Shuichi is smiling, and he’s been silent for most of this, because he somehow has confidence in the literal impossibility he just pulled off when he really shouldn’t. I wish I could enjoy this final moment of Shuichi being a hero and living up to Kaito’s words as much as the narrative wants me to, but it just falls flat and I hate that it does that.

Shuichi:  “Phew… I’m relieved.”

This is Shuichi after the voting results showed that the audience also didn’t vote. I’m glad he was at least a little nervous that he might not have been able to do this, because he should not have been able to do this.

Tsumugi:  “Danganronpa is going to end? This killing game full of tense standoffs and backstabbings amongst friends…”

Oh, that’s what Danganronpa is to you and the audience? I thought it was meaningless yelling about hope being better than despair and people getting gratuitously killed because executions are fun or something.

Seeing the audience’s faces disappear from the trial background as they all switch off and stop watching is a satisfying moment all on its own. I just wish the buildup to it had been as good as it should have been to make it feel like this was actually happening for an organic, meaningful reason.

Shuichi:  “You never appreciated us… And it looks like you didn’t appreciate the power of fiction!”

I still love hearing Shuichi talk about the power of fiction, even if his use of it here was so, so badly executed. If this audience had actually understood the power of fiction and appreciated these characters like a decent audience should, then things would never have needed to happen in this nonsensical way!

Shuichi:  “No one wants to hear your sick, twisted stories anymore!”

This is veering a little bit into making it sound like even the existence of Danganronpa as a work of fiction in the out-universe has been bad simply because it involves people killing each other. But if it really is fiction and no real people are getting hurt, it’s still perfectly okay for stories to have bad things happen to their characters – that’s one of the things that makes stories compelling, after all.

Of course, since fiction can affect reality, people have to be mindful of the messages that their stories give off. But just because a story contains murder, that doesn’t mean the narrative condones it. The message of Danganronpa has never been “killing your classmates is totally okay if you don’t get caught”, nor has it been “being executed if you do get caught killing someone is totally deserved”, regardless of what this nonsensical audience may have seemed to think.

Himiko:  “So what are we going to do now? Now that it’s over, there’s no need for any punishments.”

There really isn’t! Now that the outside world has already shown they don’t want the killing games any more, it’s already done. Shuichi and friends have no need to get themselves killed to try and give them a disappointing ending, or to try and make their point about how determined they are to end this.

Tsumugi:  “No, it needs to end with a punishment… at the very least.”

Geez, Tsumugi! This is possibly the most sick and twisted decision she ever makes. With everything else, she at least believed she was delivering what her audience wanted. But this, she’s doing purely for her own satisfaction because she still wants there to be horrible executions, even though nobody else does any more.

Shuichi:  “Now… if we… continue to live after this… the choice we made won’t really matter. The people will just want another killing game, so…”

No, they won’t! You already (somehow) changed everyone’s minds partly by showing that you would have been willing to die if necessary, but now that their minds have been changed, it isn’t necessary! They’re not all suddenly going to change their minds back just because you didn’t actually die!

This bit of writing does rather awkwardly reek of the out-universe writers desperately wanting to give themselves an excuse for one final execution scene so it can end with something of a bang. Out-universe writers, why are you behaving like Tsumugi.

Tsumugi:  “I never expected an ending like that, so I don’t have a punishment ready…”

Don’t you? Not even for the possibility that the blackened wins and everyone else dies? I guess they really never do expect the blackened to ever win, do they. But even then, wouldn’t they have individual punishments ready for every character in case they become the blackened? They could just go through those one by one; that’s always what I imagined would happen in the eventuality that a blackened got away with it. I suppose doing it like that wouldn’t be exciting enough when she wants to kill them all at once for a grand finale. (Have I mentioned it’s fucked-up that she still wants to do this.)

Tsumugi:  “I worked so hard to keep this going for 53 seasons and now it’s all over.”

No, you didn’t, what the hell, stop giving yourself way more credit than you deserve. Tsumugi is a teenager, or at least she’s young enough to pass as one. We saw from that one comment that there’d been three years between this season and season 52. Even if the usual gap is shorter than that, that’s still probably something like at least fifty years this franchise has been around. Tsumugi was born into a world that already loved Danganronpa, and she’d have only been working on it herself for the last few seasons at most.

(Plot twist: Tsumugi’s actually like eighty years old, but because she’s a literal fucking shapeshifter, she constantly assumes the appearance of a high school student as her “default” form. Yeah, no, somehow I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to be getting from this.)

Tsumugi:  “Well, that’s fine… If this is a world without killing games now… I don’t want to be a part of it.”

It seems, perhaps, that the main reason Tsumugi is insisting on a final execution is because she wants to basically commit suicide over there being no more killing-real-people-for-entertainment any more? Which is extremely fucked up in its own right, but even more so that she’s then selfishly insisting on dragging the other three into it when they have no reason to die any more.

Maki:  “But now, it’s all over. We’re the last ones to suffer from the killing games…”

Yes! Whether you die or not, that’s still true, at least. That’s worth it.

Shuichi:  “Come on, everyone! We should be proud! We were able to change the world in the end.”

You were! Somehow. I really wish it was easier to get behind this and be proud of Shuichi and friends for doing this. I really wish it had felt possible.

(The writers are the ones who didn’t make the impossible possible here and I am very disappointed in them.)

Tsumugi:  “My plan was such a flawless copy, it even failed right at the end… So I should be able to hold my head up high as a cosplaycat criminal, right?”

Shuichi:  “A ‘cosplaycat criminal’?”

Shuichi has some… odd deductions based on this statement in the epilogue, which we’ll get to soon enough. But just looking at it right here at face value, all it seems to be is that Tsumugi is trying to look on the bright side of her failure. She’s trying to tell herself that this is just like how Junko’s plan failed right at the end, so she can be happy because it’s like she really was cosplaying Junko and copying one of her favourite characters down to the letter. She calls herself a cosplaycat criminal, meaning she was copying a fictional crime!

I like how Tsumugi keeps trying to be happy about her Junko-ness during the execution by cosplaying her and copying Junko’s final grin… but she’s not Junko, and she’s not happy about this at all. Which is good, because she doesn’t deserve to be. Only Kaito gets to smile in death.

After even more destruction of the Academy, Keebo’s empty shell sees the rubble shifting, indicating that the other three are still alive under there. (Please imagine them huddling together with Maki using her body to shield Shuichi and Himiko as best she can. You know she would.) And the Keebo-shell just leaves them alone, because the outside world doesn’t want to kill them any more. Them not being visible means there’s plausible deniability that makes it look like he sure tried to kill them good and dead and totally didn’t know they were still alive at the end. Not that I’m entirely sure why he’d need to hide it, since right now, Keebo is the outside world, and they all want them to survive, so it shouldn’t need to be a secret. Maybe they’re just trying to give them some privacy and to let them live in relative secret when they escape. That would sure be far more empathy and decency than this audience ever seemed to have any capacity for, but then, Shuichi did a magic, so, whatever.

…Was this button that was in plain sight and easily accessible on Keebo’s stomach seriously his self-destruct button this whole time? Geez, can you imagine if someone had pressed it accidentally?

This execution music still has the usual “wa-wa-wa-wa, wa-wa-ooh” vocal part that they all have. Here, it plays as Keebo flies towards the wall to blow it open, and it’s in the usual lower key… but it shouldn’t be! This isn’t a killing blow, it’s a victory, again! This is allowed to be in the higher key just like it was for Kaito’s!

Based on the power Keebo’s laser gun displays, I’m still convinced that he could have just used the laser gun to blow a hole in the wall and didn’t need to straight-up self-destruct into it. The audience probably only made him do that because his body is a useless empty shell now anyway.

(Did Shuichi’s magic impossible miracle also make them feel bad for pointlessly murdering Keebo? It better have done. Maybe somewhere in the Team Danganronpa HQ there’s backups of his personality and he could possibly hypothetically be saved? Though he’d need a new body as well now.)

(…But then again, there’s backups of everyone’s personality if you use Flashback Lights, yet I can’t imagine Shuichi and co would be comfortable with creating what would awkwardly just be like copies of their dead friends.)

The credits listing the characters’ names are neat. They were all real people who contributed to this work of fiction, after all, right? …Though that idea sort of falls apart after it goes through the V3 cast and starts listing the DR1 and 2 characters, who were not real in this universe, and then characters like Kaito’s grandparents and such who had lines in certain flashbacks but were also not real.

I also like how the credits are being shown on the screen of a cinema, in which we can see people in the audience gradually getting up and leaving. Danganronpa’s over now! They’ll just go and find something else to watch.

It’s neat that it puts you back to what seems like the title screen before cutting to the epilogue. This isn’t a part of “Danganronpa V3” any more!

I’m glad the epilogue exists to show for certain that Shuichi, Maki and Himiko survived. It would have been incredibly frustrating if they’d just left us with some ambiguous moving rubble and nothing more than that. I’d have headcanoned the hell out of their survival anyway, but it’s nice to know for certain that they’re okay and that I’m not just desperately believing something that might not be the truth.

(That hole in the wall is very high up and I am not sure how they’re going to climb up there to get out of it. Awkward. Maybe it’s cracked enough that eventually the whole thing will shatter.)

Himiko:  “To the outside world, huh? I wonder what kind of world it is.”

Maki:  “A peaceful world with no fighting and no despair. That’s what Tsumugi said, right?”

It’s still a world where, until literally just now, the majority of the population was quite happy to watch real people kill each other for entertainment. That’s pretty fucked-up in its own right.

Really, though, the first thing the three of them should be doing before they even think about leaving is finding whichever rooms in the dormitory are still reasonably intact and getting some fucking sleep. They haven’t slept since before Kaito’s trial. (And Maki probably didn’t even get much sleep the night before that trial either.) Then they had the full day of that case and trial, including some very emotionally traumatic experiences, investigated through the whole night rather than sleep, then had this trial in the morning for several more hours, including yet more emotional trauma. They should be exhausted, both physically and mentally.

But the main thing about the epilogue is Shuichi’s odd theories about Tsumugi’s final words.

Shuichi:  “She said ‘copy’… That means she must have been copying someone, right?”

…

Shuichi:  “Perhaps Hope’s Peak Academy and the Remnants of Despair really exist. Maybe Tsumugi was just basing her performance on them.”

No? Tsumugi’s words were not any kind of indication of that at all? It is at least equally likely that she meant she was copying Junko’s fictional plan - more­­ likely, in fact, since she called herself a cosplaycat, not a copycat, and she was always very insistent about not “cosplaying” real people, regardless of whether or not the cospox thing was bullshit.

Shuichi:  “She might have been lying when she said ‘copy’. But if she were telling the truth, then… it would make sense that that was a lie.”

Himiko:  “What do you mean, ‘that’?”

Shuichi:  “What Tsumugi showed us… The way we were when… we first arrived.”

She doesn’t need to have been lying about the word “copy�� for it to still mean that Hope’s Peak was fictional, what the hell, Shuichi. You can copy fictional things.

And by “what Tsumugi showed us”, Shuichi is talking not about the audition videos, but about the flashback of their pregame selves in the prologue being excited upon realising they were chosen. Which means that Tsumugi very explicitly did show them a video of that. Such a video cannot possibly have been faked. Tsumugi may have been a shapeshifter, but she was only one person. So that definitely happened, then! This is just even more proof that it was the truth!

Shuichi:  “I still don’t believe it. I can’t believe that any of us would volunteer for this.”

Because those people weren’t you, Shuichi! And as soon as you realise that, it doesn’t matter what you would have done in their place because you’re different people! It’s kind of frustrating to me that after Shuichi was willingly accepting that he’s a “fictional character” back in the trial, that he was “created” out of Flashback Lights and fake backstory, he still apparently doesn’t get that this makes him a completely separate person from the moron who used to inhabit his body.

Shuichi:  “Even if we were obsessed with this killing game, I still can’t believe we would participate in it. I just… I don’t believe it.”

Because you and your friends here are decent people who would never willingly choose to put yourselves through the terrible ordeal you’ve just been through. Of course you wouldn’t be able to or want to understand the viewpoint of these kinds of one-dimensional assholes from the outside world who apparently couldn’t even accept that people dying and suffering is bad until you magically yelled at them.

(And, like I’ve mentioned, it does seem that the people who chose to audition were specifically people who kind of hated their own lives and therefore wouldn’t mind dying if it meant they got to be in Danganronpa.)

Shuichi:  “Ah, but… I don’t really have any logic behind that…”

Himiko:  “One of Kaito’s hunches, huh?”

I would be annoyed that they’re attaching Kaito’s name to this obviously-flawed assumption… but to be fair I do think Kaito would also have trouble comprehending the idea that anyone would want to do this. This is a fair thing to want to believe, and I’m glad that at least Shuichi acknowledges that he has no proof at all for this part. (And I do like Himiko just bringing Kaito up like that. They’re going to be mentioning him and quoting his inspiring lines all the time in their new life outside and that makes me happy.)

This whole bit is my problem with the epilogue. I’m glad we have the epilogue itself to show that the three of them survived, but I hate the way it then tries to undermine everything we just spent the whole trial on by making flimsy, completely unconvincing arguments for how ooh maybe it isn’t true after all, look, ambiguity~! Despite their attempts to make it seem that way, it’s still not remotely ambiguous to me.

Even disregarding all evidence pointing or not pointing towards it, think about what it would mean if Hope’s Peak and all those characters really did exist in this world. If Tsumugi was lying about everything being fictional… why? What on earth would be the point of telling such a massively elaborate lie? There has to be some motivation to lie, especially when the lie is this huge. She’d have had to deliberately set up all of the of subtle clues that led to Shuichi figuring things out (yes, Tsumugi ultimately told them it was fiction in the end, but Shuichi had deduced himself most of the way there before she did so), and come up with all of the details about “Danganronpa” and its many many series that would all have been completely made up out of thin air. I literally cannot think of any conceivable reason why Tsumugi would have wanted to go so far to lie about this. She indisputably had some kind of audience she was trying to please, but why the hell would pretending that actual history was just a fictional franchise please any of them, if all that stuff really was actual history? And why would they have played along with that lie in their comments?

But aside from the fact that it being a lie simply wouldn’t make any sense, all of the evidence that I’ve discussed throughout this commentary overwhelmingly points towards the fiction thing being the truth of this story. Clues that point away from it are both far less frequent and generally a lot more ambiguous and unconvincing (which definitely includes this one here in the epilogue).

And ultimately, I really believe that the fiction thing being the truth is a better story.

See, the reveal of everything being “fictional” during the trial could be seen as having undermined the entire rest of the story by acting like none of it mattered. But that is not remotely the case. Shuichi goes on to reaffirm that even if their characters were created from Flashback Lights, everything that happened in this killing game still happened, and they still really suffered and died. The story up until this trial still mattered just as much as it ever did – the only thing that was truly revealed to not have mattered was the backstory about the Gofer Project, which was really never that important to the actual killing game in the first place.

But if we’re supposed to believe this claim in the epilogue that actually nothing was fictional at all and Tsumugi was just telling nothing but lies for the entire second half of the trial? Then that really does just mean that none of this trial we just had mattered. And if that’s the case, then why the hell did we even spend several hours on it only for it all to be literally completely meaningless? That is not how to write a story.

Clearly the out-universe writers knew, when they decided to make the final chapter and big reveal of their story be this whole fiction deal, that it would be divisive and controversial. But even then, they had the guts to go and do it anyway, having a whole trial confidently establishing that that’s what the story was about, plus many subtle hints of it throughout the rest of the story that you can pick up on a replay and that I’ve been talking about here. It’s a really interesting, unique premise for a story; I’m glad they went and did it! …And then in this epilogue, after all their conviction, they suddenly get cold feet and go “uhhh actually guys if you didn’t like that story we just told you then here’s a free pass to pretend it didn’t really happen after all, please don’t be mad at us”.

No! You told everyone that story even though you knew it might turn heads, you should be sticking to the fact that that really was the story! Stick to your convictions! Come on, you guys wrote Kaito, you should know what’s up!

That’s what this part of the epilogue reads as to me – not as any kind of remotely convincing indication that this actually is the truth of the story that the writers had in mind all along, but the writers suddenly being cowards right at the end, and it’s disappointing.

The other likely reason the writers threw this in at the last minute is in an effort to make their narrative point about how lies are ambiguous and sometimes you never know what the truth is. It’s that same point they made at the end of Kokichi’s storyline that was apparently half the reason his character was even here. But man, is this an incredibly half-assed last-ditch effort at this that doesn’t really work at all… and while I’m annoyed that they even tried it in the first place, I’m glad that it doesn’t work.

Shuichi’s final observation on Kokichi back in chapter 5 tried to make it seem like his whole character was completely ambiguous; ooh who knows whether he was even telling the truth about hating the killing game, or maybe he really was just full-on evil after all~? But… Kokichi really isn’t that much of an impenetrable mystery. You have to look for it, but if you do, the evidence overwhelmingly points to him being a coward with massive trust issues who did what he did for the sake of petty, selfish revenge, out of no particular evil but also no particular good. The only part of him that actually manages to be ambiguous, purely because there’s never any mention of it at all, is what happened in his past to make him this way. I complained about that part of his character being ambiguous, and I’m glad the rest of him isn’t, because then at least I can appreciate the character that’s here.

Related to this, there’s the plan in case 5, which was designed to seem as though it was completely ambiguous as to who the victim and the killer were. Except there was a very, very easy way to prove that for certain, by opening the Exisal and finding Kaito inside. And there was a less easy but still ultimately convincing way to be sure enough of it, by paying close attention to the way Exisal Kokichi had been acting to realise that actually it was very clearly Kaito in there. Things were not nearly as truly ambiguous as Kokichi had been trying to make them seem.

As for this entire story in general and the whole fiction aspect of it… well, there probably could have been a way to make it truly ambiguous such that it really is impossible to know for sure what the truth is – it would need a lot of rewriting, but I imagine it could hypothetically be done. But that wouldn’t be a good thing, to me, because I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy the story very much at all that way. If we couldn’t ever know for sure what the truth of the story was, it’d mean there’d be no actual truth of the story to grab hold of and enjoy. There’d just be a wobbly ambiguous blob on the surface that’s trying so hard to be multiple possible stories at once that it ultimately isn’t any story at all.

I love subtlety in stories – obviously, or I wouldn’t have done this whole ridiculously long commentary talking about all the subtle bits! But I only love subtlety when there’s actually something deliberate and meaningful that it points to once you take the time to look. And that’s what this story actually is: something with a concrete truth to it, even if some of the evidence pointing towards the truth is subtle and hidden and you have to look for it. It just… also has some extra twiddly bits that are desperately trying to make things seem ambiguous for the sake of making a narrative point about lies, but they really don’t truly throw the core of the story into question at all, because if they did then everything would fall apart.

The writers apparently want one of the messages of this story to be “sometimes things are just ambiguous and you’ll never be able to know what the truth is”. But… the message I’m actually ultimately getting from it, thinking about it here, is that despite how ambiguous things may seem on the surface, there is always a truth, and you can always find it if you look hard enough.

Shuichi:  “If lies can change the world just as well as the truth can… Then lies… are just another way of telling the truth.”

Um, no? Having a tangible impact on the world does not stop something untrue from being untrue. Shuichi, why are you the one saying this? You’re supposed to have more sense than that. Apparently the writers are just trying to get him to to wax lyrical about their intended theme of this story even in ways that don’t make any sense for him.

Himiko:  “I guess it’s not important whether it’s a truth or a lie. Just what it leads to…”

Shuichi:  “Yeah. That’s what I believe.”

That’s a better way of putting this! Some lies or fictions can have a positive impact on people, sure, and maybe you can argue that that’s what really matters. But that doesn’t magically make them true.

(If it did, then, welp, I guess that means Kaito is real you guys, you heard it here first.)

They’re also still not properly distinguishing between deliberately-deceptive lies and wilfully-bought-into fiction, which I wish they had done. There is a meaningful difference between the two.

The training spot is still intact, despite everything! Obviously they’ll hardly be able to use it any more once they get out of here, but still. I am glad it is okay. And leaving it miraculously intact even seems pretty deliberate by the out-universe writers, because man is everything around it nothing but rubble. It is good that they understand how important the training spot is. There are precious memories of Kaito there.

Shuichi:  (Was this lie able to change something? Was this lie able to change someone? If it was able to change even the smallest thing…)

Yes, Shuichi! It was! It really, really was.

---

[Chapter-end bonus ramble] [Commentary-end bonus ramble] [Bonus content posts]

[jesawyer]

The Deadfire Post-Postmortem

Since the video of my Digital Dragons postmortem for Deadfire went up, I’ve seen a few questions and comments that I think are worth addressing.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can find it here:

First, it’s worth saying that this talk was only supposed to be 45 minutes, with ~15 minutes left for questions.  I overran the 45 minute mark, so please understand that I couldn’t address every criticism people leveled at the game.  I tried to talk about the things that came up most frequently in player and reviewer feedback.

1) Do you think the open world nature of the game contributed to the story/plot/pacing feeling weak?

Yes.  I made the choice to make the game more open and knew that would impact how tight the story and its pacing would feel.  However, even with that choice being made, I still could have done a better job with structuring and pacing the critical path.

For a while, we had a hard limit on where the Defiant could go in the archipelago.  The in-story justification was that the Defiant was damaged and needed expensive repairs that you needed to raise money for.  It could only move in the shallows, which comprised about 1/5 of the total map, encompassing Maje Island, Neketaka, Fort Deadlight, the Woedica pyramid, and some other places.  We removed that, but we weren’t really doing anything with that restriction, story-wise, other than preventing the player from sailing from Port Maje to Hasongo without stopping at Neketaka.

I don’t have hard data for this, but I haven’t seen much anecdotal evidence that many/any players actually make that skip on their first playthrough.  I think whether we (for example) forced the player to funnel through Neketaka/the palace before going to Hasongo is less important to the pacing of the story than disconnection between the factions and Eothas.

Re-working those plot elements may have required explicitly gating the player in the same way that the trial at the end of Act 2 creates a high-drama gate before going to Act 3, but then we’re really going back to the core issue, which was two disconnected plotlines.

Maybe this seems like an evasion, but I’m trying to explain that the plot was not conceived as disconnected to support the game being more open.  The game was actually more closed during development.  We did gate the player until we realized that the plot didn’t demand it.  One could say, “Then why didn’t you change it then?”  Because I made a mistake.  That’s why I cited the plotting and pacing, not the open nature of the game, as the bigger issue.  If the story had demanded more restriction and the pacing felt solid because of it, maybe I would have erred on the side of more restrictions.

And while a weak story is almost purely a negative for players, the map being almost entirely open does have positive aspects, that being the freedom to explore.  Was it worth the trade off?

It doesn’t seem like it, no.

2) Why wasn’t the Penetration system discussed?

Considering the broad nature of the postmortem, the Penetration system seemed like too fine a point to discuss in detail.  The systems aren’t easy to talk about in less than a couple of minutes, and a couple of minutes would have pushed me past the time limit.  Also, in the end, it seems like more players ultimately preferred Penetration to the previous DT system.

I’d like to step back to talk about something at a higher level, which is vertical progression in RPGs.  Most RPGs/CRPGs focus on the vertical progression of numbers: damage, hit points, armor values, resistances, etc.

These numbers feed into formulae to produce a range of outcomes.  The more inputs a number has and the wider the range of values on those inputs, the more quickly the formulae start to break down.  This is why MMORPGs often abstract values and do arcane under-the-hood adjustments or go through periods of “squish” where all of the numbers get recalibrated/normalized (in the case of WoW, both).

Penetration was an attempt to retain the transparent vertical progression of armor and weapon values while constraining/normalizing the input > output of damage vs. armor.  The Pillars 1 DT system is easier to understand on a basic level, but I maintain that’s still harder to make tactical choices based on it.  This is based on observation of players using the system.  The Pillars 2 Penetration system takes longer for players to figure out, but once they figure it out, they generally make better decisions in the system.

Is vertical progression important?  That depends on the audience and the nature of the game as a whole.  Horizontal progression (i.e., unlocking different actions/capabilities) can have much more of an impact, and I prefer games that emphasize horizontal over vertical progression.  But I didn’t make Deadfire to my tastes, specifically, and Pillars 1 + the Infinity Engine games were dominated by the importance of vertical progression.

Personally, I would like to try an armor system where you have light/medium/heavy armor and attacks simply have light/medium/heavy penetration, there is no numerical progression in that relationship, and armor and weapons (including magical ones) gain extra/additional cool abilities instead of progressing on a numbers treadmill.

3) How was ship-to-ship combat, which is seemingly not that complicated, so expensive?

It was so expensive because it was an entirely custom system that re-used almost no assets from the rest of the game.  Every sound you hear in ship-to-ship, every drawing of a ship you see at various distances/states of decay, every custom string listing actions and consequences, the cue system, every piece of user interface, was custom.

One of our system designers came up with this concept of ship-to-ship combat because he believed it would be resource-light.  I cut it after two iterations because it was very obvious to me at that point that it was going to be arduously resource-heavy.

I honestly think that if we had made ship-to-ship combat a real-time with pause system more like combat in Pirates!, it would have ultimately been less expensive and much more fun for more players.

4) Wow, you really don’t get why the game sucks, do you?

A game can suck in myriad ways for different people.  The ways I talked about are the ways that came up most frequently for players and reviewers.  I mentioned that at the beginning of the talk, but it’s worth saying again here.

If you’d like me to address the way in which you thought the game sucked, just ask me a question here and I’ll try to answer it.

[annakie]

Thoughts on a DW Rewatch & Mass Effect replay.

So I’m in the Eleven / Clara half-season now.

Also I’m now replaying Andromeda.  I have thoughts, about both.  I’ll start with Doctor Who then label it when I get to Mass Effect stuff.

Oh my God this gets long and rambly.  Apparently, I have a lot of thoughts.

So, season 702... I’m ready for it to be over.  I miss the Ponds.  I felt like most of the first half of this season was pretty great, honestly.  I’d forgotten how fun some of those episodes were, I think at the time we were anticipating a new companion so heavily that it was harder to appreciate those episodes?  I feel like there was a lot of criticism levied towards them that now I felt like was a bit too much.  The western episode was kinda meh but still not bad.

I’m not sure what exactly it is about these Clara / Eleven episodes that I’m still not connecting with but I’m in the middle of the Crimson Horror episode (which is a Vastra/Jenny/Strax heavy episode and enjoying it more than anything else so far this half-season.  

*edit later* NOPE NOPE NOPE I’D FORGOTTEN HOW THE DOCTOR FORCES A KISS ON JENNY.  GROSS.  SUPER GROSS.  SHE’S A MARRIED WOMAN, A LESBIAN AND DID NOT CONSENT TO ANY OF THIS.  BAD DOCTOR, BAD.

Honestly even with some excellent guest start acting, the Russian Submarine episode was STILL a slog and the ghosts in the 1950′s episode no better.  Like they still weren’t ridiculous and unwatchable but... just didn’t feel fun or interesting at all?  The Journey to the Center of the TARDIS episode was decent, and I felt like that wasn’t nearly as cool as it should have been..

I remember reading a criticism of these episodes early on where they said that the biggest fault is that they failed to give Clara any real characterization or solid personality other than “girl the Doctor is obsessed with”.  She’s SUPER IMPORTANT but not only do we not know why at this point but it really doesn’t feel... earned?  I don’t recall it ever feeling earned that Clara was supposedly always so important?  “The most importantest companion EVAR!”  

And as someone who stanned the hell out of a character who was hated in the fandom for “replacing” a previous companion I’m checking myself to make sure it’s still not because I Miss the Ponds.  Like, I don’t HATE Clara, I just, at least at this point in the rewatch, can’t find any reason to really LOVE her?  She’s there, she’s fine, Jenna-Louise Coleman is doing a great job with what they’re giving to her but... I don’t know.  It all feels... off.

I had forgotten all about the “the Doctor rides a motorcycle up the side of a skyscraper” moment and something hit me in that moment that made me remember that wow people hated that moment.  It felt really... shark-jumpy somehow.  

I love Eleven, but this half-season isn’t connecting with me, AT ALL. It feels like the writers just went and dug through a bunch of rejected script ideas, polished them up and were likle “let’s just do this until Matt Smith is gone.”  I’m anxious to get to Twelve.

Mass Effect Stuff

OK TECHNICALLY I haven’t finished ME3.  I still need to do the party and the goodbye scene, (Citadel Epiloge Mod installed) but I’ve gotten all the Stuff and done all the missions in the arena.  I just wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye yet, so I started Andromeda a bit early.

-----------------

OK look I had a point I wanted to make and never quite got where I wanted to go with it right here.  I’m too tired of trying to fix it, so this stands as written.

This playthrough had me ruminating a lot on Kaidan and Garrus.  I really love both of those characters, though in my heart I’ll always primarily love Kaidan, I’ve done the Garrus romance and wouldn’t mind playing that character again to see the romance one more time.  In ME1, I bring Kaidan everywhere all the time, and pick which other companion I bring to the story-based missions based on what I know is gonna happen like I’m sure most people do.  Wrex for Therum, Tali for Feros (though I REALLY wish you could switch before going to see the Thorian), Liara for Noveria, Ashley on Virmire, Garrus for Ilos/Endgame.  I rotate through all five for sidemissions.  

In ME2, Garrus is my always-bring companion, with Garrus + Miranda being my favorite team.  Except after the Omega relay, where characters with Throw really shine with all those husks running at us, Jack holds the bubble, and Miranda and Thane, who both have Warp to help take down the Reaper Baby, are the preferred team.  Also so Miranda can tell TIM to fuck off.

Then in ME3, once the game opens up, Garrus is back on the perma-team, with a preference towards bringing Liara along... until we get Kaidan back.  And then I realized I didn’t bring him to a single thing except a side mission or two until Earth.  Mostly, this is because I’m following the Kaidan Banter guide and it turns out Garrus is a real banter hog for most of the missions.  At leat he’s not James, who I literally never use unless I’m going on an N7 mission and feel bad that I haven’t taken him off the Normandy in awhile.  I mean, even Javik gets more play.  Also EDI doesnt leave the Normandy til near the end when all of a sudden she gets real important.  

But Garrus is always on the team for Priority Earth.  And that always felt like the way the main game should end, with your two favorites.  (Also what kind of monster wouldn’t bring Wrex to the combat-centric areas of Citadel DLC?  I keep thinking I should have runs where I bring other people but... Wrex is my other fave and we don’t get him with us AT ALL since ME1.)  

I love Garrus, so much.  And I was thinking with this whole parallel DW rewatch / Mass Effect replay think I’m doing right now how both Rose Tyler and Garrus Vakaraian are characters that were ruined for me for awhile due to their respective... overly enthusiastic fanbases who a small percentage of were dicks to people who loved other characters.  The Kaidan tag (and from what I understand Thane got some of this too, but not nearly as bad) was a pretty hostile place for awhile (and yeah I used to check the Garrus tag too and there was a small amount of tag-invasion there but uh, like 5% of what the Kaidan tag got) which made loving the character of Garrus a lot harder for awhile.  But when actually watching seasons 1 & 2 / the end of 4 of DW, or actually playing the games, those characters are awesome.  

Fanbases can be amazing or terrible, and time and time again I think you start to realize that no matter how great a fandom is, there are going to be a few people who can only enjoy themselves by feeding on drama, or on lifting up what they love by stomping on other people/characters/plotlines.  Going back through my blog reminded me that even the TAH fandom had some of this, with a small percentage of fans being real dicks to two prominent female characters in favor of their favorite ship, which soured even that just a tiny bit.  

It’s not fair to characterize everyone who loves a popular thing as someone who does this.  It’s also hard to avoid completely because there will always be jerks, or young/new people who don’t realize what bad form they’re showing.  I did learn by trying to fight it for a year or two, that responding might help that one person not do it again, but it’s not going to stop overall.  Maybe yelling a lot about Martha Jones did change some people’s minds.  It still isn’t that good of a look now, even knowing that in general I was pretty polite and logical about it.  I might respond to an odd comment now and again in some favorite character tags, but in general, turns out that kind of fight just isn’t worth it.

And those fights seem so stupid in the light of everything else happening in the world today.

Anyway, don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like.  

-----------------------

I also wanted to say, and I know I said it in a few other posts about this ME3 playthrough, but seriously I cannot believe how much ME3 is a changed game because of the modders.  I cannot imagine ever playing ME3 again without these mods.  There were so many small things that I kept thinking I should take note of to talk about and I’m sure I forgot 90% of them, but there’s things like... adding in mentions of the Andromeda Initiative, closing a few plotholes, mentioning Emily Wong, adding in many more Spectre console options which end up having their own plotlines, adding in an entire plotline about the VI civilization that had previously only been talked about in like, social media or Cerberus News Network posts, having the Normandy be so much more populated, seeing so many more other species on the Citadel with more variety in clothing for those species that have clothing / could have more variety, way more female Turians.... every time I play ME3 the game is more and more like the game we wanted when it came out.  

I am kind of itching to go back and replay it even now.

But hey, instead, its time to talk about Andromeda.

-------------------------

So first of all, yes, mods for Andromeda.  A few appearance mods, a lot of convenience mods.  

After having recently played DA:I and I think Andromeda and DA:I are a lot more similar than Andromeda and the previous trilogy, I had decided it was time to cut down on the stupid stuff Andromeda does, like “Oh, you want minerals?  Spend 10 minutes in each mining zone finding the PERFECT place to gather materials or you’re fucked”  No, thanks.  I’ll mine but give me that “one probe placed anywhere and you’re done” mod.  

Make the modifications and crafting materials I use actually matter. 2% damage increase is nothing.  Make my squadmates not suck because I remember doing 90% of the work myself before and that got exhausting with the number of spawns.  

I tried to not go overboard so things feel like cheating, but there’s enough out there to just get rid of the stupid stuff, and it’s nice.  And works together a lot easier than the DA:I mods did.

One thing I did do was install the Multiple Romance Mod.  I enjoyed it in DA:I, even though ultimately I only did 2 full romances.  I am **NOT** romancing Gil or Cora with the mod, I just wanted to experience all the content available for female Ryders at once, since I’m not going to have the energy to replay this 100+ hour game enough times to see every romance on its own.  So I am poly-romancing Liam, Jaal, Vetra, Suvi, Peebee, Keri, and if it lets me, Reyes when it’s time.  

I’ve only gotten all the way through Andromeda once (where I romanced Liam)  My second playthrough was right after my first and stalled out about halfway through (was romancing Jaal.)  It was one of those “I’m totally gonna get back to this! (She didn’t.)” things.  I’m gonna be honest, I enjoyed the Liam romance and was enjoying the Jaal romance, I’d done a fling with Reyes but not the full romance my first time through and the fling with PeeBee on my second.  Reyes was probably my favorite out of all of them.  So this time I decided.. let’s see which I love the most, all at once.  I don’t know if I’ll do this in the future, but this game is too long to not see all the content I wanna see, TBH.  

And you know, I still really do like Andromeda.  It’s a GOOD game.  And I’m forever going to be mad that we’re not going to see how this story ends.  This story deserved to finish being told.  Like, there are a lot of very legit criticisms about Andromeda, but it didn’t deserve the harshness it got.  And the worst thing about it, and DA:I both is that... there’s just a little TOO MUCH of it.  100 hours is an amazing amount of game but... it’s also just too much.  For now I’m not trying to 100% this playthrough.  My plan is on each planet to get the planet to 100%, take out the Kett or whatever major base, the Remnant Architect, and yeah probably clear out the sidequests that show up on the map, but fuck quests that are like “visit random Kett camps until you find the right datapads that don’t show up on the map!” or “scan random blobs in the forest that don’t show up on the map!”  

So like, do the content, not the filler.  

I still hate the vaults.  The first one is cool.  The rest are tedious.  But they’re mandatory.

I love everyone on this spaceship though.  They did the Tempest stuff SO WELL.  All the companions I think are... good?  There’s no one I don’t like, even the non-squadmate shipmates ship have so much interaction and so much to do/say.  It’s not like “a bunch of randos and Joker, with occasional appearances by Chakwas and the Engineers”  There’s no randos, it’s just a few people you have real interactions with, and its great.

The lack of enough beds in the bedroom will never not annoy me.  There’s 4 beds for... Lexi, Liam, Cora, Suvi, Kallo, Vetra and Gil?  Even if Liam slept on his couch, and Vetra put a bed in her supply room... still doesn’t add up.  What, do Salarains not sleep or something?  Does Lexi sleep in a medical bed?!?  Peebee sleeps in the escape pod, Jaal brings a bed with him, and Drack’s like “Eh I’ll just sleep in the kitchen”.  WHAT?  THE KITCHEN?

I mean sure there weren’t enough beds, even with the sleeper pods, on the Normandy either, but somehow that was less disturbing.  

Also, I know you’re supposed to HATE Director Tann but I love Kumail Nanjiani so I find it hard to be a total dick to him, even if he usually deserves it.  If he wasn’t an anti-Krogan racist I think it’d be easier to like him.  He was thrown into a pretty shitty situation and... did actually hold things together for some time.  He’s not doing anything out of malice.  He’s a dick, but also doing what he needs to do to keep the Initiatiave going.  Oh, except for being a anti-krogan racist.  (Honestly, I also think  “until he turned Cerberus Udina was just doing his job pretty well” too, so...)

Taking some screenshots as I go.  I mostly just take screenshots for me now.  I have a few thousands screenshots from a dozen or more games rotating through my desktop background, and I keep adding to it, and love it.

Anyway, I’ve gotten Eos, Voeld and Havral to 100%.  Time to go save the Moeshe.  I’m having fun.  

*edit from later* I’d forgotten that... idk if the dialog they recorded for Jaal was the first thing they recorded for him or they used a different VA or what but on the Save the Moshe mission his voice is VERY DIFFERENT and oh man, that is still bad.

Might take a break for when Onslaught comes out for SWTOR, though.  I haven’t really played SWTOR in months. Oops.

[ghostmartyr]

Pokémon Black 2 Randomized Nuzlocke Run [Part 9]

All eight badges earned, so what does that leave?

Pirates.

Team for the task?

Vertex (Luxray)

Caspet (Gengar)

Stormy (Metagross)

Photon (Rayquaza)

Nessy (Milotic)

Diego (Gardevoir)

...Those who did not participate in the last Gym, raise hands or whatever you have in place of hands for grinding.

#LET ME LEAVE THE GYM WITHOUT A CONVERSATION GEN 5 CHALLENGE.

Colress, I swear, if you pull a Euicine and make me fight you for the honor of not fighting the Terrakion...

He does not. He gives us a toy and basically says to check out the cave that I need Strength to go through more thoroughly. The Giant Chasm pirates are still blocking my way, so.

Siiiiiigh.

Box crew! What have you got for me!

I will take out Bessy, the level 33 Miltank, and teach her Strength.

Bessy is Modest and somewhat vain, but that doesn’t matter because she’s just here for HMs. She’s temporarily taking Vertex’s place, since Vertex isn’t in need of more experience.

Ah. Actually, Strength just lets you get Toxic. Which is fine, but sorry Vertex, guess I threw you out of the squad for nothing.

Hey we found the boat!

Marlon lets us aboard. Thought: I should go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex in case something goes wrong. Except that would take time.

...I am going to go put Bessy back in the box and grab Vertex.

After shifting a boulder on Route 22. And grinding for a bit.

Okay. A few hours later, I am more comfortable entering the pirate ship. Team levels are now 56-60. That is absolutely a balanced assessment of my current team. It is in no way misleading.

Me!

...This is the greatest grunt ever. He calls Marlon Smiley Swimsuit. Yes. You have perfectly boiled down his character essentials.

Oh wait, he has a Watchdog.

Sorry pirate friend. We can’t be friends.

Russell, my actual friend, is trying to go on his roaring rampage of revenge. Only as a responsible big brother, not a Sasuke.

I used to have a Sasuke. No more.

...I should have named Russell Itachi. If there’s ever a next time...

I continue to find it delightful that after N leaves, Team Plasma ditches their knight theme for a pirate one. I don’t even know why, I just love it. I love knight aesthetic, I love pirate aesthetic. My castle was right next to my pirate ship for most of my childhood, and it rocked.

Though my pirates wouldn’t steal people’s pets. A key difference. Pirate in name only. Well. And clothing. Pirate is just a more fun word than sailor, and pirates have looser fashion.

Mook time over?

Technically this one isn’t stealing.

Just animal abuse.

The villain of this game is just a salty old man who spent so much time in a refrigerator he decided the rest of the world should spend time in a refrigerator, too. Then he found out his region has a legendary Dragon/Ice type, and the rest is history.

Only history I have to repeat.

Because the villain of a Pokemon game decided his winning strategy would be shooting bolts of ice down at the world below.

Video games are the greatest.

...Wait. How did me and Russell get down here? Did Team Plasma just throw us off?

Also, yes Cheren. They use everything for evil. They’re the bad guys.

And then Cheren asks where the people Zekrom and Reshiram recognized are and. I wonder if he misses his friend. his best friend, [last game protagonist]. How much does it suck that he spent a full game with [person], and now they’ll never see each other again because [person] is bound to a different dimension. A world Cheren can’t touch.

Canon has, what. Red who comes back? Every other protagonist kind of just. vanishes as far as future references to that world are concerned. And Red spends quite some time up on a mountain. Alone.

These games are all about people who swoop in and birth legends, then vanish.

I made myself sad.

Anyway, to the Giant Chasm!

Totally bro.

Aw crud. Do I need Strength? I think I might need Strength. Can I mayhaps avoid that?

Oh. I could just go down the giant stairs.

Wow. Talk about your parties.

ONE MORE TIME ON THE BOAT.

I hate password games. At least the ship supplies a doctor early on. I wasn’t to the point of active concern, but I was feeling a bit itchy about using up healing items. I haven’t grown out of my usual standard in these games where I just let everything in my party die to avoid spending money.

Agreed, let’s roll you.

This guy just keeps throwing Cryogonal at me.

You know, I don’t have a lot to complain about regarding these games and their choices. I whine about everything, but all in all, I find all of them very solid and enjoyable. Even if gen 4 has too many HM requirements wtf just stop.

This isn’t really a complaint, but it is a confusion. Zinzolin is fought multiple times in a relatively small window, and his team never changes. We just keep beating him. I get the sense that they wanted a villain, but as a sequel game to a gen that went all out on that, they didn’t really have anything they were willing to turn into a threat.

Really, I feel like a better path to pick would have been giving one of the Plasma grunts a different hat and having them be the captain of a very confused and angry crew. But eh, whatever.

....Oh. You.

Why is the most anime hair dude in the game so gosh darn forgettable?

For the sake of my flawed memory, he wants to bring out the full potential of pokemon, and is willing to us whatever means are necessary. The only question is which approach actually yields results.

I like you, Colress. I am never going to remember you, but I like you.

Good grief his theme sounds like it came out of Phantasy Star.

First up is a level 50 Magneton. Caspet’s an okay choice, so I’ll just Shadow Ball it. Magneton Thunder Waves Caspet, then uses Volt Switch to swap in Beheeyem (also level 50), who takes a Shadow Ball and dies instantly.

Sorry, ‘faints.’

A level 50 Metang is switched in next. Out of twitchiness over Caspet’s paralyzed state, I put Nessy in and go with Surf. Metang uses Agility from the red. Colress uses a Full Restore. Metang hits a Zen Headbutt, but Nessy has the last laugh.

Ugh. Colress is going to send in a Magnezone. Stormy’s the best answer to that, I think. Stormy knows Hammer Arm. It hits, but like everything I hate, Magnezone has Sturdy. A Bullet Punch handles that.

A level 52 Klinklang is next. His only thing over 50. Stormy is paralyzed thanks to Magnezone, but a Hammer Arm that hits should end it, and I don’t think Klinklang knows anything that’s a threat.

Even if Stormy feels like being paralyzed.

Only once, though. Hammer Arm + Bullet Punch does the job, and we only have that pesky Magneton left.

Hammer Arm and we are done.

Please don’t make me fight another one of these clowns. I don’t wanna.

Aw heck, Russell’s having his moment with Purrloin drama. And I guess I’m not fighting robe dude. It’s all ninja for now. With my four pokemon who aren’t paralyzed. Maybe I should have fixed that.

:(

For real though, our rival’s plotline here is pretty dang sad. He wants his little sister’s pokemon back, and by the time he finds it, it isn’t hers anymore. It’s had an entirely different life without them, probably committing crime. Because it’s been told to.

This is why you get the pirate Plasmas and the knight Plasmas. It’s fantastic that you, the protagonist, has a crew of pokemon perfectly happy fighting and doing whatever you want. But living things being forced to do whatever you want them to because you happened to throw a ball at them is pretty screwed up.

There’s not really a satisfactory conclusion to all of this, since critique of a game mechanic that is never going to stop being a game mechanic doesn’t get to start dramatic revolutions regarding that mechanic, but it’s all very sad and sobering.

That pretty ice tho.

BUT WHERE IS THE PROTAGONIST FROM THE LAST GAME.

No, but thank you N. I was not ready to die at the hands of Kyurem. Your assistance is much appreciated, and pretty great in your sequel. Props.

Gee, that looks bad.

Cue dramatic anime battle sequence.

Followed by anime transformation sequence.

Welp. Time to kill you. Let’s just hope I can.

...Stormy. I think I might want you to tackle this. To the front you go.

But really.

So damn cool.

It’s dead now, but so. cool.

There are too many fights going on. I think I wouldn’t mind in a normaly playthrough, but for a Nuzlocke, this is needlessly stressful and I am not a fan also I beat Ghetsis in the last game and it wasn’t fun then, either.

He has six pokemon, and he opens with a level 50 Cofagrigus. That is not Stormy’s friend. Nessy, if you would. Hydro Pump hits. Toxic hits from the other side, and I will deal with that in a moment, after the Cofagrigus is gone.

Ghetsis, naturally, uses a Full Restore.

Nessy handles it in the end, but is down to 73 health. Eelektross is coming out next. Time to switch. To... uh. I’ll give Photon a whirl. Feeling lucky, I use Outrage, and Eelektross faints.

Ah. Hydreigon is out next.

That is a nasty type combo for my team to deal with. I think. Geez, mark this where I have all the regrets, but Photon’s staying in to murder the Hydreigon with Outrage. Ganbatte.

IT’S SUPER EFFECTIVE AND A CRITICAL HIT, GOOD JOB PHOTON.

Seismitoad is next. Diego, time for you and your Magical Leaf to shine. Shine they do, and we’re on to Drapion, which I will leave to Photon. Two Air Slashes make their mark, and all that’s left is Toxicroak, so in you stay Photon.

AND WE’RE DONE HERE, SCREW YOU GHETSIS!

But where is that certain Trainer, N????

Anyway, with that, it looks like the plot portion of this Nuzlocke is over. All that’s left is heading up to challenge the Elite Four.

I think a battle like that can have its own part.

[bubonickitten]

I’m loving Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon. The plotline diverges enough from Sun/Moon to still be novel imo, and I’m loving the added character development for Lillie and Hau, who (along with Gladion) are probably my favorite characters in SM/USUM. I love getting more exposition regarding Ultra Space and Ultra Beasts. I wasn’t sure if I’d like the Mantine surfing minigame, but once I got the hang of it, it was fun, and definitely worth it to get that Surfing Pikachu. And the Ultra Wormhole thing is one of the most fun post-game activities yet, especially considering all the possible Legendary encounters. 

BUT three things could make it better right off the bat:

- Please, Gamefreak, let me skip cutscenes, I’m literally begging you. I love doing back-to-back playthroughs - one of my favorite things is breeding perfect IV and (if I’m lucky) shiny Pokemon to use on my next playthrough - but SM and USUM have so many long cutscenes compared to past games, and they’re truly enjoyable cutscenes, but after three playthroughs I’m just like let’s go let’s go let’s go. Same w/ tutorials - I know it’s sort of standard for Pokemon games to have those mini-tutorials and detours to introduce you to new features and stuff, but with each new game that comes out, there are SO MANY more new features and there’s much more area to explore than, say, Gen 1 and 2, and I love that, but the first few hours of gameplay can feel really faltering when I get stopped every ten steps for a tutorial or tour of an area or w/e. Again, it’s nothing new for a Pokemon game, but I think there’s just a lot more of it now since there’s just... so much more going on in the newer games. Like, in Gen 1, it was “here’s how you catch a Pokemon, here’s a Pokemart, here’s a Pokemon Center, bye”; in the newest games, it’s all of those PLUS “here’s how to use Festival Plaza, here’s how to use the PokeFinder, here’s where you buy clothes or change your hair, let’s take a detour to get malasadas, come over here and check out this thing, OH and here’s a photo club...” SM/USUM feels even bulkier than ORAS and XY in that way.  It’s cute the first time around, and very valuable for people playing a Pokemon game for the first time, but when I’ve already done several playthroughs, it can really drag on for too long. It feels like there’s this huge uphill battle I have to trudge up every time I start a new game. 

- PLEASE MAKE CLOTHES GENDER-NEUTRAL OH MY GOODNESS. I’m playing a female avatar right now and I desperately want that cool shiny-Houndoom-with-glasses tank or that neat post-game Kommo-o armor outfit, but they’re gender-locked. And I just completed my Pokedex and got a Shiny Charm and I was surprised that we also get a new outfit, which is a Nurse outfit, but I was reading that male avatars get a karate gi, and I would much rather have a gi than a nurse outfit. Likewise, there are some really cute clothes for female avatars that it would be cool for male avatars to have access to. 

- I do a lot of Wonder Trade and GTS trading. Like I mentioned above, I do a lot of Pokemon breeding looking for shinies or perfect IVs, which means I tend to have boxes and boxes full of the same lvl 1 Pokemon, and I think it’s fun to put them all up on Wonder Trade and hopefully give someone a pleasant surprise when they get an uncommon Pokemon with some nice IVs. BUT - and I’ve mentioned this in past games that have the GTS as well - I would love to be able to not only search the GTS for Pokemon I want, but Pokemon that other people are looking for. When I have multiples of the same Pokemon and I want more variety in my PC boxes, I can head over to Wonder Trade, but what would be even more fun is if I could go on GTS and find people who are specifically looking for something that I have, and trade with them to help them get what they want. Also, a way to somehow communicate with someone when initiating a direct trade with them would be cool. I haven’t tried it in USUM yet but I’m assuming it’s the same as SM - you can see each other’s PC boxes and stuff, but it’s really guess-and-check when it comes to figuring out what the other person wants. I feel like I’m trying to telepathically communicate with them: ‘No, no, not that one... two over to the right, how about that one? Ok they haven’t moved their cursor in awhile, maybe they want me to show them something else... but I have no idea what they want.’ It’d probably be easier if we had some pre-programmed responses we could give - stuff like “I like what you’re showing me”, “I want to see something else”, or even “top row, [number] from the left” or being able to specify a particular Pokemon like you can in the GTS. 

[sidwellxcen384-blog]

Grand Theft Auto PC Download gtadownload.org: What No One Is Talking About

Grand Theft Auto V Review Game

For me, GTA V ’s extraordinary range is summed winning inside two favourite moments. Individual becomes from the mid-game mission where I rushed a flat in a different plane, attacked the folks, hijacked the thing, and then parachuted ready and inspected it crash in the ocean to escape death for the supply of pay military fighter aircraft. One more occasion, whilst travel around in the off-road buggy, I got distracted in something looks like a means up among the San Andreas mountains. Turns out it was a avenue, after that I finished 15 minutes respect on the meeting, wherever I nearly ran over the faction of hikers. “Typical!” one of them yelled by everyone, as though he practically gets run over by a rogue ATV together with a mountain every time he goes on the hike.

I could go on this way for ages. GTA V has an plenty of like moments, deep with tiny, that make San Andreas – the location of Los Santos and surrounding areas – feel like a living earth in which anything can take place. It both gives you tremendous freedom to investigate an amazingly well-realised world and orders a story that’s gripping, exciting, and darkly comic. It is a step advance into narrative style for the lines, with there’s no physical component of the gameplay that hasn’t been strengthened over Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s immediately obvious the insurance routine is far more dependable and the auto-aim less touchy. The cars feel less like their tires are made of butter with shove better to the road, although the exaggerated handling still leaves plenty of place for spectacular wipeouts. Also on long past, Rockstar has completely killed among their most persistent demons, mission checkpointing, making sure that you never have to do a long, tedious take six when you repeatedly fail a mission ever again.

GTA V is also an intellectual, wickedly comic, and bitingly relevant commentary about contemporary, post-economic crisis America. All about it drips satire: it flies into the Millennial generation, celebrities, the much exactly, the widely effect, the core school, the media... Nothing is safe from Rockstar’s sharp tongue, including modern video games. One prominent supporting character spends mainly of the moment wearing their bedroom shouting sexual threats in public on the headset whilst showing a first-person shooter called Righteous Slaughter (“Rated PG – pretty much the same as the last game.”) It is not precisely subtle – he practically has the word “Entitled” tattooed in the throat, plus the in-game radio and Television outright piss-takes don’t put much for the imagination – but it is often extremely weird, and a bit provocative with it. Grand Theft Auto’s San Andreas is a fantasy, but the issues this satirises – greed, corruption, hypocrisy, the hurt of right – become many very real. If GTA IV happened a targeted killing of the American dream, GTA V takes point in the new American reality. The attention to factor that assumes making the world feel lively with believable is also what makes the satire so biting.

Grand Theft Auto V ’s plot happily works in the boundaries of plausibility, sending people away to drive dirt bikes along the highest of schools, hijack military plane, and engage in absurd shootouts with tally of policemen, yet it is three main figures become what keep it relatable level at it is many severe. The well-written and worked interplay between them provides the biggest laughs and most affecting times, with the way to their associations with just one another polished with my opinion of them changed throughout the history produced the plot their right. They think that people – albeit extraordinarily f***ed-up people.

Michael is a retired con work into his 40s, block out across the heart like he drinks beside the band now his Vinewood mansion with a layabout son, air-headed daughter, serially unfaithful wife, and very expensive therapist – most of who hate him. Franklin is a son from downtown Los Santos who laments the gang-banger stereotype even as he’s reluctantly seduced by the prospect of an better score. And then there’s Trevor, a hazardous career criminal that days from the wilderness selling drugs and murdering rednecks; a psychopath whose bloodthirsty lunacy is fuelled with a arrangement of methamphetamine along with a genuinely messed-up childhood.

The objective flit among their own original tale then a good overarching plotline which means all three, and a glory to GTA V’s versatility and universal quality that each person cover his bit of standout vision. When the arcs developed I sense very differently on both ones by different ages – they’re not exclusively the archetypes that they are.

This three-character structure causes for excellent rate and extreme form in the storyline, it also allows Rockstar to compartmentalise different aspects of Grand Theft Auto’s personality. In doing this, it sidesteps some of the troubling disconnect that appeared when Niko Bellic abruptly changed between anti-violent philosophising and sociopathic killing sprees in GTA IV. Here, many of Michael’s missions revolve covering their ancestors with the past, Franklin is usually on demand vehicular disorder, with severe murderous charges are permit to Trevor. Each state a unique ability matched to help their talents – Franklin could to help slow time while taking, for example – that ends them a unique touch. Narratively, it’s powerful – even off-mission I found myself playing with nature, acting like a mid-life-crisis gentleman with frustration issues because Jordan, a thrill-seeker as Franklin, and a maniac as Trevor. The first thing I did as Franklin finally do some good cash was believe him a great amazing car, since I touch like that’s exactly what he’d want.

Trevor considers a like a tiny get-out-of-jail-free license for Rockstar, presenting an outlet for all the preposterous actions and deadly behavior which otherwise might not fit in with GTA V’s narrative ambitions. I found his violent insanity a minute overblown and boring at first. Because get-out clauses go, even though, their pretty successful, with Trevor’s over-the-top missions are most of GTA V’s action-packed highlights. It’s a successful way of fixing a quandary that’s prevalent in open-world games: the tension between report the writers want to request, then the tale you develop yourself in their structure and its world. Grand Theft Auto V accommodates both, masterfully, allowing not to challenge the other.

The actual pretense of moving between them also provides a window in personal days with problems, fleshing off their personalities in a way that feels usual and story. Collect a atmosphere and the video camera moves out in the San Andreas map, closing back happening upon where they happen to be. Michael can occur at home watching TV when you release here on him, or race beside the motorway blasting ‘80s attacks, or using a cigarette on the golf club; Franklin can live moving away from a strip club, munching a case of snacks at home, or arguing with his ex-girlfriend; there’s a good prospect to Trevor could be tossed out half naked on the beach surrounded with over groups or, one memorable occasion, down in a stolen police helicopter.

It could be nearly everything, because there is a bewildering variety of details to do in the original San Andreas – tennis, yoga, hiking, people on sea then about ground, flying planes, golfing, cycling, diving, hunting, and more. The vision are a great intelligent leader to both San Andreas’ locations and its activities, visit people about the map and whetting the appetite for free exploration of it all. How that we’re established to San Andreas never feels artificial – the plan is fully open in the opening, for example – which says to the notion to the a real place, where you can get to know. If GTA IV’s Liberty City feels like a living city, San Andreas feels like a living world. I get people going their pet alongside the sand in the country so I jet-skied past, arguing for the street outside a cinema with Los Santos, and camped – with covering then anything – overnight in Support Chiliad, before packing positive with lasting a backpack in the morning. The astounding.

The ambience changes dramatically counting in where you are, also. Trevor’s dusty trailer out in the middle of nowhere in Blaine County feels like another earth through downtown Los Santos or Vespucci Beach. It wasn’t until the first time I take off a jet from the capital with on the mountains I became cycling around a few hours or that the total range of it became obvious. It shoves the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 more than it has any fine near, and it looks incredible. The biggest spring in property as Grand Theft Auto IV is the character animation, but the world can be much more expansive, detailed, and crowded. The price we buy of which is rare framerate drops and texture pop-in, that i found became more prominent the longer I played, but certainly not significantly taken away through my personal feel. For like a colossal and variable world it is also remarkably bug-free – I met just three minor problems from the 35 hours I spent on the primary playthrough, none that affected everyone to go down a quest.

San Andreas’s extraordinary intelligence of house is heightened by the fact that so much of it isn’t on GTA Full Game the place. There’s so much taking which it is simple find things organically, rather than waste your own lifestyle following a mission marker. I when take a passenger jet from the airport for the hell of it, then parachuted onto the top of the tallest building in Los Santos. (I then accidentally jumped off the highest and reduction toward my death, forgetting to I’d currently employed the parachute, however I normally put that piece off.) Out driving in the country, I fell across a man to a phone rod with womens’ underwear. I tracked down criminals who randomly swipe purses on the lane, with went off across gunbattles between police and other miscreants, incident to give a feel that world isn’t completely uneventful if I wasn’t below to interrupt normalcy. I believed an exclusive mountain cycle with cycled around in the hills, enjoying the sight. These small moments can be got about your own telephone camera – which, brilliantly, can also use selfies. I have some shouts of Trevor completing his unhinged account of a laugh within his underpants on top of a hill.

The rumor to GTA V tells during their missions takes full advantage of all this kind beyond getting with killing (while the maneuver with direct is supremely enjoyable). It’s cause a lot of good times. This included us racing Michael’s lazy blob of a boy across Vespucci Beach in one of many misguided attempts on father-son bonding, utilizing a thermal scope to look for someone from a helicopter before chasing them along the city on the ground, torching a meth lab, towing cars for Franklin’s crack-addict uncle to thwart him through shed the profession, getting into a facility on the beach in a wetsuit and flippers, piloting a marine, impersonating a structure worker, doing yoga, escaping on plane skis, failing multiple generations to earth a jet burdened with drugs at a hangar shown from the wilderness… it goes by with by. The days of a repetitive collections of “get now, find this gentleman, shoot that guy” stay after us. Still missions that would usually be set are filled with novelty with excitement by the capability to compete them by a few different views – in a shootout, Trevor can be exciting RPGs from a rooftop what Jordan and Franklin flank the rival on the ground.

It is the heists – multi-stage, huge-scale experience that help as the story’s climactic peaks – which demonstrate Grand Theft Auto V at their most dedicated and obtained. Usually there’s a choice between a more involved, stealthier option that will (hopefully) attract less boil, along with a great all-out option that will be less tense yet more explosively chaotic – with what exactly crew to take along with you on the job. All of GTA V’s missions are replayable at any time, allowing you relive favourite seconds before look at out a different method. They also have optional objectives in the vein of Assassin’s Creed’s synchronisation challenges, but crucially, these are invisible once people play a quest, therefore they don’t distract a person from performing things your way.

Sometimes your way won’t are the means that this designers require you to do something, with although GTA 5 is usually very good at bending close to people as you do, here were a few situation wherever that wasn’t train for our personal name of chaos. Overtake a car you’re not meant to overtake and it may close in pad of travel as if with secret. Despite the opening of different stealth mechanics, enemies will miraculously make sure you when the mission dictates they should. Kill someone or you’re supposed to, and that’s sometimes Mission Failed. Most of the time the drafting is suitable to be invisible, but as it is not, you really discover this – if only because most of the time it’s so seamless.

As always, some of the wittiest record shows through to the in-game radio to shows behind all of the search and confusion. “There’s nothing other effective, more masculine, new American than a big lump of coins,” blasts one of the in-game ads. “We learn times are tough, but they don’t have to be tough for you. Still cause several liquidity in your home? Are you insane?” The tune selection is also typically excellent, leading to most of those serendipitous moments where you’re driving combined with the right music happens by. During a heist, when the radio isn’t blaring the background, a vibrant soundtrack seriously builds tension.

The satire is improved with integration of advanced life in the game world. Every individual turns around their smartphone – it’s used to trade stocks, call up friends to meet in place then launch emails. There’s a great Facebook spoof, Life Invader, on the in-game Interne, with the slogan “Where Your own Personal Data Becomes A Marketplace Page (Which We Can Go)”. You’ll hear adverts for preposterous parodic TV shows that you can actually watch with your TELEVISION at home, optionally whilst enjoying a toke. It might not be realistic, but it certainly feels authentic.

It’s significance mentioning that when this extends to sexual, drugs, with assault, GTA V pushes boundaries much more than at any time or. If the morality authorities were concerned with Hot Chocolate, there’s a lot here that will provoke moral hysteria. It’s deliciously subversive, and safely tongue in cheek... but after before twice, this shoves the borders of experience, too. There’s one instance scene, a personal world in which you have no alternative bar to help actively participate, i gotten so troubling that we took problems playing this; yet couched in obvious assessment in the US government’s choice to torture post 9/11, it’s a surprising moment that will attract justified controversy. It brings to mind Label of Function: Modern Warfare 2’s No Russian mission, except worse, and without the selection to omit over this. Another stuff, like the ever-present prostitution with extensive strip-club minigames, feels like it’s present even if this may be rather than as it gives anything to say.

There is nothing in San Andreas, though, that doesn’t serve Rockstar’s resolution with creating a exaggerated projection of The usa that’s suffused with crime, assault and sleaze. There are no nice gentlemen in GTA V. All you know is a sociopath, narcissist, criminal, lunatic, sadist, cheat, liar, layabout, or about combination of these. A good guy which gives good funds to help shoot Los Santos’ worst examples of corporate greed is playing the stock exchange to help the help whilst he does it. In the world like this, it’s not tough to escort why violence is often the first option. All the pieces fit.

Verdict

Grand Theft Auto V is not only a preposterously enjoyable video game, but also an intellectual and sharp-tongued satire of contemporary America. It signifies a elegance of the lot to GTA IV gotten to the record five years ago. It’s technically more accomplished in every conceivable system, yet it’s also tremendously committed into a right. No extra earth into record games comes near that now magnitude or scope, and there is strong brains behind the logic of humour and surprise for mayhem. This shows a compelling, unpredictable, and provocative story without actually letting this get in the way of your self-directed journey through San Andreas. It is one of the very best movie games yet produced. Write: That journal exclusively involves the single-player section of GTA 5 , since it launched without any multiplayer mode.

[entergamingxp]

Ghost of Tsushima Review — My Precious Sense of Honor

August 4, 2020 10:00 AM EST

Way of the samurai.

Sucker Punch began this generation with one of the first major exclusives on PS4 in the open-world action game Infamous: Second Son. While it may not be the PS4’s best exclusive, it gave players a glimpse of what the Sony console could do. So, it only seems fitting that the Seattle-based studio’s newest game, Ghost of Tsushima, would be the PS4’s last exclusive before the PS5 hits this holiday season.

It is obvious Sucker Punch has learned a lot about crafting an open-world since its last game; the island of Tsushima is one of the most captivating and beautiful worlds I have ever had the pleasure of exploring. But with combat that is deceptively simple and a pretty weak main story, Ghost of Tsushima is more of a fun love letter to samurai cinema than a completely original take on the genre. Personally, I was hoping for the latter.

“Ghost of Tsushima is more of a fun love letter to samurai cinema than a completely original take on the genre.”

In Ghost of Tsushima, you play as Jin Sakai, a samurai and the leader of Clan Sakai. The story begins with Jin and his uncle, Lord Shimura, who is the jitō of Tsushima, defending their home against Khotun Khan and his Mongolian army. It does not end well for the samurai, as Khotun Khan is able to kill nearly all of them while capturing Lord Shimura and taking control of the island. Jin is fatally wounded but is saved by a thief named Yuna. Jin then proceeds to save his captured uncle at Castle Kaneda, but fails in defeating Khotun Khan, and is thrown off a bridge. It is at this moment Jin realizes he needs some help and seeks the aid of some friends to assist with a charge against the Mongolians to hopefully take back the island of Tsushima.

I’m not an expert in Japanese history, nor am I a Kurosawa enthusiast (which the game is obviously inspired by given its “Kurosawa Mode”), so I can’t really tell you how accurately it depicts this battle or how it utilizes its blatant inspiration from the lauded filmmaker. But as someone who plays a lot of story-driven video games and watches a lot of movies, this tale isn’t all that original.

The idea of getting a group of “misfits” to take on a major threat to save life as they know it isn’t anything new. Jin’s journey in becoming the “Ghost” and questioning the samurai code isn’t this new, either. Even when putting these two plotlines together, nothing quite novel comes about as a result. And because it doesn’t take this well-worn formula into any new territory, I kind of just lost interest in the main story after the first act. The narrative is told well, but it lacks any surprise or suspense. You can tell where Jin’s story is heading right from the beginning.

Despite its lackluster main tale, the side missions have some pretty compelling stories of their own. Without spoiling anything, Lady Masako and Sensei Ishikawa’s questlines are among the best-told stories in Ghost of Tsushima. I was way more invested in what was happening in their lives than I was Jin’s. Even some of the one-shot side missions have more interesting and original stories to tell. It’s awesome that the storytelling didn’t take a hit on these smaller quests. However, I wish that originality was more ever-present in the main story.

This notion of the lack of originality is also present in Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay, albeit in more interesting ways than its storytelling. Combat is similar to the Batman: Arkham and Shadow of Mordor series. Essentially, it’s a slower-paced hack and slash that relies heavily on your ability to counter or dodge enemy attacks.

Initially, I really dug the combat. You really feel like a powerful samurai as killing enemies only takes a few hits. It also felt like I was unlocking new abilities at a good pace. From standoffs to the various stances, it felt satisfying as I progressed through the story. Having to switch stances to take care of enemies effectively kept me engaged with just about every combat scenario.

However, once I unlocked the Ghost stance (which is one of the coolest moments during Jin’s story), it didn’t really feel Jin was improving on much else. It also didn’t feel like I needed to improve at this point. Although I didn’t play this way, you could easily mainline the story, and still feel in control of every combat scenario. As long as you’re good with switching stances and utilizing some of the Ghost weapons, fighting off 5 or more enemies is pretty easy.

“The combat does feel good, it just doesn’t feel all that thoughtful.”

I also didn’t use many of the Ghost weapons that were available. Really, all I used were the sticky bombs and kunai. Both of these weapons were incredibly helpful in not only stunning the more annoying enemy types (I’m looking at you, staff boys) but also taking out anyone who was low on health. But other weapons, like the smoke, just didn’t see much use. A lot of it has to do with how clunky it feels to switch between different Ghost weapons on the fly. By default, I just made sure I had enough kunai for each fight. Otherwise, I didn’t really bother with ghost weapons unless I was really in a pickle.

All in all, those gripes are pretty minor. The combat does feel good, it just doesn’t feel all that thoughtful. There were points where missions definitely favored a stealthier approach but I was still able to charge in head-on and take care of any group of enemies pretty easily. My biggest gripe with Ghost of Tsushima’s combat is the lack of a lock-on feature. It really feels like I should be able to lock onto enemies, not just so I can single out certain enemies, but so I don’t have to also fight a camera, which does get a bit annoying at times. But once I got used to the combat, that gripe became pretty minor.

While Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay and story may not be revolutionary, the island of Tsushima itself is the real star. I don’t think I have ever been so drawn to an open world. It’s odd, because there really isn’t much, in terms of the actual environment, that makes it stand out. There are even times when I look at a still, and it doesn’t look all that great. But how the world is designed and looking at it in motion is a sight to behold.

“I think some of the intricacies of Ghost of Tsushima’s presentation will be written off as novelties, but I really do think it boasts some of the smartest design I have seen in a video game.”

I think some of the intricacies of Ghost of Tsushima’s presentation will be written off as novelties, but I really do think it boasts of the smartest design I have seen in a video game. Using wind as an indicator for which direction to go would get annoying after a while. However, it never got old and is an awesome way to clear the screen of more visible indicators, like an arrow or a mini-map. The clean HUD allows you to take in the views, which again, look great in motion. Seeing the leaves fall, or grass moving in the wind really looks incredible, and at times tranquil. This is paired with an equally impressive photo mode that really showcases just how beautiful the island of Tsushima is.

Ghost of Tsushima may not be the perfect send off to the PS4 generation, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a great time playing through Jin’s life-changing journey. The worst thing I can say about Sucker Punch’s newest game is that it lacks originality. It just barely stands out. But if you really love well-crafted worlds and taking gorgeous pictures, Ghost of Tsushima is definitely worth a playthrough.

August 4, 2020 10:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/ghost-of-tsushima-review-my-precious-sense-of-honor/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ghost-of-tsushima-review-my-precious-sense-of-honor

[dapperkobold]

Review at Random: Diablo 3

Just finished the main plotline of Diablo 3, and I have some thoughts on it. If you’re settling in to hear my analysis of its in-depth systems... don’t. I just finished my first playthrough of the basic story, and while it’s a good game those in-depth systems I basically didn’t notice.

Presentation

The Diablo series of games is pretty much the iconic example of the isometric hack and slash RPG, and while not a lot wowed me the presentation is without a doubt solid. Graphics, performance, voice acting, music, UI, it’s all really solid. I never hit a bad bug, or something that was just ugly, or wonky voice acting, or any such nonsense.

You’ll spend a lot of time in dungeons, and the rest of the time in I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-dungeons, and each dungeon has its own unique tileset and atmosphere. Really, they clearly went the extra mile to get good graphics and environmental details, such as one point when you’re on the walls of a fort and sometimes you can look down and see a battle raging on the ground, without letting them overtake the gameplay and writing.

That said, those dungeons aren’t perfect and especially the longer ones with larger floors got a little monotonous. More on this later, but the issue is partially presentation; I realize that these dungeons are procedurally generated but having one or two kinds of halls and maybe half a dozen rooms per tileset was FAR too few. Since those tilesets are really the core of the presentation of the game, it was disappointing. 

Overall, while everything was solid nothing was spectacular. Nothing really made me stop and say “that’s so pretty!” I don’t want to really force games to do that to please me, but it’s still an area that could have used improvement. Nothing even was too shocking to me, each area has a custom tileset but never really has a surprise in store. As a result I really focused on the gameplay and story instead of the presentation, which I’m all for but doesn’t really say good things about the presentation itself.

There is one more issue, though. I feel a need to address it because it has a sizable impact on the game: The always on-line connection. Now, I’m not militantly against always on-line games. I’ll sigh about it, I’ll roll my eyes about it, I’ll note a good long list of reasons why it’s a bad idea if asked, but I’ll generally only throw a snit over it if there is just NO reason to enforce an always on-line model. For example, Overwatch is so focused on online play that singleplayer is borderline unheard of, so an always on-line connection is (while still not needed from my point of view) understandable.

Diablo 3 has NO excuse.

Yes, it does have a co-op mode, yes it has challenges, BUT that’s no reason to lock the singleplayer campaign from offline access. And this has been a problem for me, Diablo 3 has the touchiest netcode of any game I have ever played. I’ve had this game for a long time (since the necromancer expansion) and only now have I gotten around to finishing it, because every time it was “but do I want to suffer the threat of it disconnecting right now?” This game has disconnected me more than any other online game I have ever played, including ones I have logged a lot more time in.

Yes, it is honestly that bad. The saving is consistent enough that I never lost a meaningful amount of progress (with one weird exception) but it was just aggravating enough for no good reason that I’d go as far as to call it this game’s fatal flaw.

Final Presentation Sore: B

A solid core, no doubt, but the not enough breadth in the tilesets and no wow factor for extra credit keeps this at an A or A-. Then the connection issues kick it down a letter grade. YES, I am that grumpy about them.

Gameplay

The real meat of this game, make no doubt, this is clearly a very deep complex and nuanced system I do not give a whit about!

...yeah.

Class mechanics seem solid. Okay. Mechanical character customization? Mainly just what you choose for your ability loadout. The famous loot? I basically just equipped up a new piece when the total + from the three broad categories was more than the total - and I was fine.

“But but but what about elemental damage, and heal on kill vs heal per attack, and intelligence vs dexterity, and thorns vs straight damage?” I didn’t care. The game did not explain how all the stats worked together, I did not need to know how the interactions worked out, I just played through and had some fun. Did this result in me making less than idea decisions? Yes. 100%. I likely would have made MORE nonideal decisions if I had all the information, that’s just the kind of person I am!

But I didn’t care, and didn’t need to care. I guess that could have a good spin on it, ‘good depth for those who care that can be ignored by those who don’t’, but I’m not sure it’s quite that true. You see, I’ve only completed one run through on Expert level, and it was pretty easy. I only died once, chasing a treasure goblin into a mass of angry super-enemies, and after that I only really gave respect to arcane enemies and other outliers that did a lot more than normal damage. For all I know that becomes massively untrue on higher difficulties, it’s possible that by clicking over to torment you suddenly need to actually know stuff to go anywhere.

That said, ‘Expert’ could have afforded to be more challenging. I basically found one loadout of skills that I used the entire way through, never changing because I never hit something that it couldn’t take on. I was playing a crusader, if it matters, but I solved basically all my issues by throwing hammers or occasionally calling down a sky laser. Ideally a ‘takes all comers’ loadout should have trouble in one situation or another, but the only time I changed was when A. I got a bit of equipment that gave a huge boost to something or B. I got a new customization option that did it better.

And I know what you’re saying. You’re saying ‘so turn up the difficulty!’ You can’t turn it up past expert on your first play-through. I would have if I could have.

It doesn’t help that basically all the enemies are interchangeable. Okay, I mean, sure some have range attacks, and some have knockback, and some cast spells, but there’s nothing I hit that made me say ‘ooh, these are trouble!’ Or ‘oh this is bad’ other than running into two groups of rares at the same time. I just tanked and threw hammers. Sometimes straight hammers, sometimes hammerangs, sometimes sky lasers, sometimes I became big so I could throw infinite hammerangs for a bit. I never found a situation that made me change up my strategy.

The only monsters I remember as being of note are the tremblers, because I thought at first they were protected from the front but they weren’t, the fat demon casters that were annoying, and the punishers from the start of the expansion act because I recognized them from Heroes of the Storm. Turns out they were just generic big enemies with hops.

Yes, maybe it is my fault for not experimenting more, but I was just never given a reason to experiment. And if the problem isn’t there at higher difficulties, why force the player to play at ‘low’ difficulties the first time through?

That said, the mechanics clearly are very in-depth, and barring when it drags on it IS A fun game, make no mistake. It’s just that it does tend to drag on.

This isn’t helped by the dungeons being large and not having much variety. Yes, I already said this above but it’s true for mechanics, too. There’s basically no puzzles or challenges of wit, just enemies, things to loot, doors, and the occasional trap. The big exception to this is a keep level where you need to activate things or defend some NPCs for a bit, but that’s the only time I remember odd mechanics other than one quick townsfolk saving bit. I seem to vaguely remember something from a prison that was slightly unusual, but I think that just boiled down to activating a thing before killing the things.

Maybe this just isn’t for me. I dunno.

Final Gameplay Score: C+

The gameply isn’t bad, or even just disappointing, just... not a big deal. It’s a little disappointing, I guess, to not have to worry about the advanced systems even a little. It was too easy and became monotonous, but (despite my gripes) it’s not a bad game. Maybe it’s just not my thing, but by the end I just didn’t care.

Writing

I had heard good things about the writing in this game. I went in with high hopes, and was... well, I was a little disappointed. It has a good plot for a non-narrative-focused game, but it wouldn’t make it in the ring if put up against gaming history’s writing heavyweights. A lot of the twists are really obvious, not a single one of the villains are the least bit trope-savy, and the logic partaken in by some of the characters is laughable.

Likely this game’s biggest saving grace is some of the character writing, however. There’s a fair amount of it scattered around and a good chunk is quality stuff. My favorite characters are, without a doubt, Lyndon the Scoundrel and Covetous Shen.

Neither of those are main characters. It’s that kind of game.

That said, I would like to take a moment to give a shoutout to whoever wrote the Crusader’s dialogue. This is how you do Lawful Good without being a pain, people. If you want to play a paladin in D&D or Pathfinder and want to know how to do it without being That One Paladin, check out the D3 Crusader.

Final Writing Score: B+

The poor plot logic is the vast majority of lost points here, but some honestly lovable characters and solid writing around the shaky plot means that it’s still enjoyable.

Overall

I mean... it’s fine?

Okay, this game is a success, and it deserves to be a success make no mistake, but it’s not amazing. The gameplay doesn’t stand out for me, the presentation doesn’t stand out for me, and while some of the character bits are good the core plot is pretty trite stuff. There was no one point where I went ‘ooh’, no one thing that grabbed me. Maybe it’s meant to be played several times, with friends, and I’d be all for playing it some more with friends, but it doesn’t really stand tall enough that I want to turn around and play it again right away.

Presentation: B

Gameplay: C+

Writing: B+

FINAL GRADE: B

It’s fine, make no mistake.

Awards:

Fatal Flaw

Get an Interior Decorator

The Most Honest Thief You Will Ever Meet