#this was like. an rpg point blank 2 the chest.

[harbingersglory]

Perhaps the Shogun Puppet and Sara (both trans) sharing the reader? The puppet offering up a volunteer (reader) as a reward for Sara’s devoted years of service, that quickly ends up with the reader getting spitroasted between them. Sara has the privilege of claiming the reader’s pussy (and by extension, their womb and eventual firstborn child) while the Shogun takes their mouth—this is meant to be Sara’s reward after all.

{☆} characters kujou sara, raiden shogun [ puppet ] {☆} notes drabble, fem reader, sub reader, transfem kujou sara, transfem raiden shogun {☆} warnings 18+ content, breeding kink, restraints, fingering, face fucking

Kujou Sara was many things– loyal, devoted and first and foremost a soldier. There was little time between a strict schedule for anything but honing herself like a dulled blade. She assumed she simply did not care for worldly pleasures, but now..

Her throat feels impossibly dry, her palms clammy as she tries to ignore how tight fitting her uniform feels all of a sudden. She cannot look away from the meek figure at the feet of the Shogun, her Archon, stripped bare and tied in an intricate display of winding ropes that accentuate your figure– she feels lightheaded at the sight, a broken groan tumbling from her lips, just barely muffled in time by her trembling hand.

"A reward," The stoic, unyielding voice of the Shogun rings in the room like the swing of a blade, cutting through the thick air with the ease befitting of such an imposing figure. "For your service, General Kujou." She gestures so easily to you, as if presenting an object to be owned rather then a person– she cannot find it in herself to dispute it. You are..beyond words. Ethereal, even as you are bound in tight ropes and left at the mercy of an Archon and a tengu.

"..I am honored by your generosity, Almighty Shogun." Sara replies quickly and stiffly, her eyes never drifting far from your body– always drawn back. "Yet you are still hesitant." The Shogun snaps back coldly, eyes narrowed�� her shoulders grow stiff in tension, her mind scrambling for an excuse, yet she cannot manage to speak a word.

"If this reward is not suitable.." Sara nearly balks at that, her hands twitching and her teeth aching in an urge she thought long buried. Try as she might, she cannot ignore the desire she feels towards you..and she cannot simply refuse a reward from the Shogun herself. Archons, she is a weak woman, she realizes– her will broken by a pretty face..

"..It is suitable, Almighty Shogun."

Yet she steels her resolve like a honed blade, kneeling before her "reward" and clasping your ankles in her calloused hands– your skin is smooth, at least compared to her own, as she eases your legs apart. Archons, you are even more gorgeous up close. The satisfied hum of the Shogun, watching with piercing eyes as she claims her reward, spurs her on. She leans close to your face, cupping your jaw in her hand and taking a moment to appreciate your features. The bob of your throat as you swallow, the haziness of your eyes..she leans down further, pressing almost reverent, apologetic kisses to your jaw, exhaling heavily against your skin.

She cannot stop herself now. The sickly sweet scent of shampoo, likely the courtesy of the Shogun, fills her lungs and makes her feel dizzy. You're like a fine dessert and she wants to devour you.

Even still, however, she keeps a close eye on your face– watching the slightest changes like a hawk. She leans away from spots you seem to show discomfort from, pressing more kisses and nips to the spots that have your breath hitching in your throat. She likes it– seeing you beneath her like this..Archons, her uniform feels so suffocating now, her cock straining against it.

But she wants to take it slow, if only for her own inexperience. She wants to see your face twisted in pleasure, not discomfort.

So she takes her take unraveling you, her chapped lips kissing down your throat to your chest, the barest hint of bruises marring your skin as she drags her tongue across your nipple, a low growl building in her throat at the way you arched your back into her mouth. It's so distracting that she almost forgets the Shogun stands above her, watching like a statue as her hand slips between your thighs to sink a finger into your cunt– and how easily she does so, your thighs already sticky with arousal. She is slow in her movements, fingering you more like a lover, intimate in a way that feels foreign to her.

"You're so pretty," She murmurs in a haze, words slurred through the fog of desire, sighing softly against your shoulder as she eases another finger inside you, her tongue finding your other nipple. "Does this feel good?" Her eyes meet your own as she presses a kiss to your chest, practically pleading for the answer to be yes– she wants the validation, to know she's making you feel good, at least as good as she feels. Her touch is still uncertain and clumsy, but she has always been a quick learner.

It does not take long before you unravel beneath her, your squishy walls squeezing around her fingers as she eases you through your climax.

Your cum sticks to her fingers when she pulls her hand back, her own breath hitching in her throat as she swipes her tongue across her digits– had she not been in such a daze, she might've been embarrassed, but the taste upon her tongue only made the fog worse. She almost considered burying her face in your cunt for a better taste, but her cock was..painfully hard. So with a hint of reluctance, she fumbled with her uniform, tugging her aching cock free with a broken groan.

For a moment she almost seems embarrassed by your stare, her hands pushing your thighs further apart– but the look of raw need..it matches her own, feeding the almost animalistic urges that urge her to claim you, to push your legs up to your chest and fill your womb till it's bursting with her cum. Archons, she wants to. Just seeing her cum spilling out of your cunt would be enough.

Her nails dig into your thighs as she aligns her cock, dragging the tip through your folds before gently sinking into your cunt. It almost breaks her– the tight, wet heat of your folds around her drags a whine unbidden from her throat, breaths coming out in shallow panting. Her grip on your thighs tightens as she presses a shaky kiss to your chest, satisfied by the moans that tumble from your own lips. She wonders what it would be like to kiss you, but the thought is swept from her thoughts as quickly as it came, her cock slowly stretching your cunt around her, forcing you to take every inch.

You've never looked prettier in her eyes.

But her moment of admiration and awe is short lived, her body falling into complete stillness as she watched the Shogun step forward– Sara can feel her stare through the back of her head, sweat beading on her brow and her throat so dry it's difficult to swallow. Rather, instead of whatever Sara expected, the Shogun kneels.

It's only now she sees the twitching cock between her own legs, stilling any protests that bubbled up in her throat. She watched, transfixed as the Shogun slid a thumb past your lips, tilting your head back enough for her to sink her cock into your waiting mouth. The sight of it makes her heart stutter in her chest, her own cock twitching inside you as she bucks her hips instinctively, hissing at the sudden burst of pleasure.

Sara doesn't dare to speak up, but she can't help but feel transfixed by the way your throat bulges around the Shogun's cock, her hands digging deeper into your thighs. The ease in which you take the Shogun makes her wonder if you were hers– the idea of fucking the Shogun's pet..she was surprised to find the idea so enticing, her hips snapping harshly against yours as she fit herself fully inside your cunt, hands clasping your thighs to the point even her hands were beginning to ache.

The Shogun was still watching her, she could feel it, but it felt less suffocating and more..curious, maybe. Whatever rhythm Sara set, the Shogun would adjust, the gentle rolling of her hips accentuated by the short thrusts into your mouth. She felt dizzy at it all, burying her face against your chest and sliding her hands up your hips, along your ribs, clutching you tightly against as she pulled her hips back, nearly slipping out of your cunt altogether before snapping her hips forward harshly, the slap of skin making her groan.

She couldn't help it anymore– she needed to claim you, to see your face contort in pleasure as she claimed your cunt, filled you to the brim with her cum..she wanted it so badly it made her feel dizzy. A part of her wonders if the Shogun would even let her impregnate you, but she didn't care– she'd try anyway. Even if she had to fill you up again and again, as many times as it took.

Sara's gentle thrusts quickly crumbled into something much rougher, all sense forgotten at the promise of claiming you– of making you hers, from your cunt to your womb, and even your mouth, if she ever got the chance. She was practically an animal in her desperation, stretching your cunt to fit her with every harsh thrust and growling against your chest, leaving visible bruises and bites on your chest. The Shogun matched her with a robotic rhythm of her own, the sound of you gagging around the Shogun's cock making her shudder, her eyes following the drool dribbling down your face.

It was far more arousing then she wanted to admit, watching the Shogun use your throat while she used your cunt, giving you no room to breathe.

It is with a great reluctance that she pulls her gaze away from you and the Shogun, burying her face against your chest once more as the pressure builds, her lips caught between her teeth until the taste of iron flooded her taste buds. But she had no time to dwell on it, pressing her hips firmly against your own with a muffled groan as the pressure exploded, her cum painting your walls, still bucking into you in short thrusts.

She could only imagine the image of your throat being filled by the Shogun's own climax, her lungs straining as she gulped down air between shaky moans, pressing a kiss to your chest.

She was far from done with you, but you deserved at least a moment of respite before she filled you all over again.

[dourpeep]

Seeing people complaining about the lack of anniversary rewards is getting so tiring. The game's ratings dropped to like 2 on Google play, all comment sections of official accounts are full of complaints. I know and understand that people are upset but it's just so so tiring to the point where I unfollowed most accounts that aren't related to fanart or fanfiction because of all that negativity

I personally spent (a little) money on the game so I get where p2w players come from but idk. I saw that we didn't get anything and moved on pretty quickly. Maybe that's just me, idk

Maybe you have a different view on this and if so, I'd like to hear it

Sorry for ranting in your inbox

hehe no need to apologize because I have quite a bit to say myself nodnod

Read if you like, don't if you don't--this is just my opinions and stuff based off my experience knowing Eastern gatcha games as well as talking about using a 5* vs 4* of the same build + slot

This got kinda long ehe-

Like really long.

Anyway

My turn for a Hot Take (tm)

Yeah I understand this--I've been feeling so drained and my enjoyment of the game and writing has diminished immensely because all I see everywhere is just that.

I understand that the event rewards suck but at the same time? I realize how gacha aren't really popular here in the West--and I have seen a lot of comparison between Genshin and Cookie Run but they're also two entirely different genres despite both being gacha. Not to mention that Cookie Run is fast at first until you get to around uhh Kingdom lvl 37~~ and you're stuck and can't go forward because things cost too many materials or your cookies aren't strong enough even though you have several stars on your team consisting of epics built as optimally as possible-

So the maintenance rewards for Cookie Run have been the only significant amount of gems I've been getting for a few weeks now compared to when I first started and could do 10 roll after 10 roll.

Also also, Cookie Run is PvP (arena, guilds, etc). Being able to get more rolls is absolutely a gamechanger. If you can't get a good defense cookie or healer cookie, you're fucked.

So!! That's why Cookie Run is more generous with rolls. You're not going to want to keep fighting other people in the Arena or doing Guild stuff if they don't add in those generous rewards.

On the other hand, Genshin Impact is an open world rpg w/ co-op (note, co-op doesn't count as pvp because you're collaborating) where you can build pretty much any of the characters to be viable (dps/vampire Barbara is one major example, Noelle is a guarantee roll character for that beginner's banner and she can easily be built to be a tank/healer/dps to fill whatever slot you desire)

So they're not going to be incredibly generous w/ rewards because the characters you have--meta or not--don't really effect your ability to play the game (unless we're talking spiral abyss which really is considered endgame anyway) when you're able to get at least one character of each element for free I mean, you start out with traveler who can be anemo, geo, or electro once you get to the respective places, Amber, Kaeya, Lisa, Barbara (iirc, you need to get to rank 20?), Xiangling (complete spiral abyss floor 3), and Noelle (reduced cost 10roll w/ guaranteed Noelle).

Which would be one of each element and a variety of one of the 5 weapon types nodnod.

Time to talk about builds and why it's not necessary to have a 5* unlike in other gatcha games like Cookie Run (again, a kingdoms builder) before going back to the anniversary stuff

But continuing, like Eula is considered a fantastic 5* character who features a kit that is based around her being a physical damage character. My sibling, C, has her built and she does some insane damage.

On the other hand, I have Xinyan built as a physical dps and if you were to compare their damage?

With crit, C's Eula deals 9k to 14k with Skyward Pride (5* claymore w/ energy recharge substat). With crit, my Xinyan deals 8k to 13k with Song of Broken Pines (5* claymore w/ phys substat) OR 7k to 10k with Prototype Archaic (4* craftable claymore w/ attack substat).

Both C and I agree that they're pretty evenly-matched in the sense of damage output.

We have similar builds focusing on physical damage, however, C's Eula uses 4pc Pale Flame and my Xinyan uses 2pc Bloodstained, 2pc Pale Flame (both have the 25% phys damage bonus for the 2pc). It's also good to note that both their Eula and my Xinyan have a physical dmg % cup.

So just by stacking up more phys on Xinyan, you get a physical dps (with some elemental support capabilities due to her E and Q) you can easily make her deal consistent, reliable damage that is comparable to a fully built Eula. Ofc, I'm sacrificing Xinyan's shield, but since she's built to be a physical dps, it doesn't matter anyway.

Another thing is Zhongli is an incredible shield support. His shield?? Absolutely insane because it's based off his hps. Guess who else has a hp-based shield and heals??? Diona. Another incredibly good support 4* with a shield and healing would be Noelle!

But with Diona, specifically since I did kinda cover over Noelle already, she can easily be built along with her shield having over 100% uptime (like how Zhongli has over 100% uptime). The fact that Diona is also a healer definitely is a perk too.

Ofc the difference with this is that Zhongli can be built as a burst support/dps while Diona is not. But the point isn't that--the point is that you don't need a 5* shield support to have a good, reliable shield support.

But regardless of 4* or 5*, to get a viable character, you need to build them well. So if your character isn't doing satisfactory damage, you just have to take a quick peek at what artifacts they're running and fix as needed!

Another thing--

Talking about the rewards and stuff for the anniversary-

Generally, gatcha games aren't really that generous with rewards and instead usually have some sort of event. In this case, I'm pretty sure that Moonchase is considered a part of the anniversary which is why it's giving so many rewards- just the primos from the first day alone with the chests and quest was enough for two rolls (40 chests * 5 primos each + 60 from the quest and a few that I forgot where they come from but are from the event) as well as the 4* Luxurious Sea Lord claymore.

Before you say that it's shitty for them to make a festival into the anniversary event, I'm certain that people would complain if the anniversary rewards were just a little more than the 10x fates and stuff and that's it because it'd feel like they're skipping over the anniversary entirely. (keep in mind, festivals don't normally give this much stuff in terms of primogems from what we've experienced so far--they're mainly focused on the free event weapon you can get and build like with Festering Desire, Windborne Ode, Dodoco Tales)

Also companies love taking advantage of festivals to make an event bigger + more fleshed out. It'd be otherwise kinda boring to have to just log in every day for a week (not to mention, not everyone does that) and encourages players to play to get rewards.

yeah, that's supposed to work in their favor because they want to keep interest.

So the fact that there's a lot of backlash on everything going on is tiring and also?? I want to make the point that they'll only listen to so much. Getting heard is important, but there will be a point where Mihoyo will just stop listening to the players entirely because all they're getting is a constant barrage of "this event is the worst" "no one likes that character" "(insert character) when???" "okay but where's (blank) rerun?" pasted over the forums, discord, twitter, facebook, instagram--

You can't keep demanding more while also talking shit constantly about the new stuff added because then they'll just not add those new stuff because we (general) seem to never be satisfied.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they end up just cutting Genshin Impact as a loss entirely if this continues as it has and gets even worse.

But I digress.

Anyway, I agree that it sucks that the daily login rewards for the anniversary are just cut and pasted from the Lantern Rite, but as someone who's played a lot of gatcha games, it's pretty much the standard.

Have a daily sign in for rewards and a big event featuring a ton of stuff you can get instead of having an 'official' anniversary event.

I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing because it's not coming to mind, but yeah. These are my general thoughts on what's happening with the discourse.

[myheelsdontmatchmysweatpants]

Manifest Part 2

Warning: mentions of panic attack

A/N: I finally did it.....Here is part 2! Made this part a little longer cause..... I can? Let me know what you think!     Part 1  

You let go of Denki’s face and back away towards the bedroom. “This…. this doesn’t make any sense; I can’t understand what you’re saying. This is supposed to be a dream, why are you speaking Japanese?”

“Dream? Why would you think this is a dream... wait do you not know Japanese? Is that why you’re only speaking English?” Denki is still sitting in the love seat while Bakugo and Kirishima are making their way towards you slowly.

As you are in the middle of trying to stop an oncoming panic attack, all three of the guys look at each other. They did not hire you; and since its clear Denki did not somehow find someone to hook up with him last night, they are gonna get to the bottom of how you managed to get into their apartment.

 “Let us all stay calm. Why don’t you tell us your name?” Kirishima has his hands up, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. Shit, I really feel like I should know her name; she looks so familiar.

“Screw that shit, she broke into OUR APARTMENT shitty hair! You grab her and make sure she doesn’t get away; I’ll knock her ass out if she tries anything.” Bakugo did not like the weird déjà vu feeling he got looking at this chick. I just want to slap her upside the head for thinking I would let her cook in MY kitchen, not attack her. NO DUMBASS GET IT TOGETHER.

Denki is looking between the three of you feeling like something is very wrong with this situation. He can tell that you are trying awfully hard to calm yourself. Have I seen her before? Why am I remembering playing video games together? Did I short circuit myself one to many times?

Thoughts are running rampant in your mind. What is going on? I’ve had this dream dozens of times, but this is new. I only recognized some words, but I know they are dead ass speaking fluent Japanese. I just need to wake myself up. Wanting this to end as soon as possible, you pinch the inside of your arm.

Hissing in pain you rub the spot you just pinched “FUCK that really hurt…. wait… nonononono, why did that hurt?”

Looking up incredulously, glancing at the three men slowly surrounding you, panic gets its fat ass comfortable on your chest and you start to sweat.

“Did you just pinch yourself and ask why it hurt? You really are a dumb ass, aren’t you?

“Takes one to know one Kaachan.” This has to be a dream… maybe I just need to try a little harder to wake up.

“What the FUCK did you just say to me!?”

 “I know you heard what I said” an idea pops in your head and before you can think more about it you look at Bakugo. “Now do me a favor and hit me.”

You clasp your hands behind your back and tense up in anticipation.

Not one to hesitate Bakugo throws one of his hands out, curling his fingers in to the keep the blast concentrated on just you but not so much that it kills you.

Snapping your eyes shut right before the impact you feel the blast hit you square in the chest, sending you flying, right into Denki. He lets out a yelp as you both topple over into the loveseat that he had been previously sitting in. The seat flips and you both fall to the ground; Denki is under you trying to catch his breath and you are somehow still conscious. As you are groaning in pain and trying to get off Denki without hurting him further you can faintly hear Kirishima trying to calm down Bakugo through the ringing in your ears.

“Bro! What are you thinking? She clearly isn’t trying to attack us; she looks like she really doesn’t know why she is here. You can’t just blast a someone that can’t defend themselves!” He stands in front of Bakugo keeping him from causing any further damage.

“Can’t defend themselves my ass Shitty hair!” Bakugo points at you accusingly. “Oi! Why are you gonna ask me to hit you and then protect yourself against it?!”

The ringing in your ears goes away fairly quickly after a cold feeling passes over your body.

“Okay everybody, don’t PANIC. I am clearly not dreaming and…. Holy shit what am I wearing?” With most of the pain gone you had opened your eyes only to see you were no longer wearing the clothes you had walked into to the living room in.

Your body is covered in all black leather armor with a hood and a black mask that covers your face. A strange glow receding from your gloved hands. It seems like the attack from Bakugo caused what your assuming is your quirk to activate on instinct (self-preservation is pretty handy). The armor looks vaguely familiar and it takes a moment before it clicks in your mind.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. Out of all the quirks I dreamed of having THIS is the one I end up with?” You flex your hands, and without taking your eyes off of Kirishima and the still yelling Bakugo you reach behind you to touch Denki.

Heal him, just heal him, don’t think about anything else.

The glow returns to your hand (thankfully) and you hear him take a deep breath and start sitting up. Once it’s clear he has recovered you stand and back up so that all three men are in your field of vision

“Alright, you obviously don’t know me, and I really have no FUCKING clue how I got here, but I know I have information that might help trigger your memories of me if I’m guessing correctly.” You bring your hands up similar to the way Kirishima had a moment ago. “Will you at least let me try to explain myself?”

“Why don’t you take the stupid mask off your face first shitty woman and then you can talk.” Bakugo was still in a defensive stance but you could tell that he was slightly interested in what bullshit you had to say.

You shrug your shoulders and put your hands down.

Not wanting to be in this obnoxiously cliché outfit any longer you try and think of how to get it all off at once. It can’t be hard if you easily were able to shift into it in the first place.

“Alrighty then, well I’m gonna try to shift out of the whole outfit at once and with my luck I’m gonna fuck it up.” You pointedly look at the red head and explosive blonde.  “You are more than welcome to keep looking but if you don’t want to see me in my birthday suit you might want to turn around. You on the other hand- “turning your gaze to direct it at the still sparking blonde. “- you can keep looking if you can handle it.” You wink at him before you take a deep breath and focus.

Okay, just imagine you are in the video game and you are changing out your armor.

It takes a moment, but after searching your memory for the correct RPG a small screen shows up in front of you. Hovering just below eye level. You spare a glance at your companions to see their reactions.

Denki is turned towards you with a blank look on his face (probably from short circuiting). The other two have not turned their backs on you, making sure you don’t sneak attack them or try to run away. However, Kirishima is so focused on the ceiling you would think Michelangelo painted it. Bakugo was looking into the kitchen, mad that the ingredients you pulled from the fridge were still sitting on the counter. Clearly you were the only one who could see this, or you were the only one who was excited about it.

You reach out to touch the screen only to find that your hand goes right through it. I know I won’t be able to do anything by just looking at it… how do I work this thing? Looking around in a panic you notice the gaming console under the tv with a couple of controllers on the coffee table. You can NOT be fucking serious. Not wanting to drag this incredibly weird situation out you walk over and grab one.

“Don’t at me alright… I’m just gonna see if this works.” You don’t even bother checking to see if the guys were looking at you. Using the controller, you select your “character page” low and behold your armor shows up and underneath it is the lose t-shirt and shorts you were wearing. You remove your gloves, bracers, boots, hood, and mask first, leaving only your chest piece and pants. Taking a deep breath, you remove both and immediately select the normal clothes. You look down and your naked body shows for a moment and then your clothed. Putting down the controller you feel the hot red blush creep up your neck and envelop your entire face.

You look up and notice that Kiri is still staring at the ceiling, Bakugo has left the living room. The sound of the fridge being opened let you know that Bakugo is in the kitchen, putting away the food you took out. Turning you can see Denki doing what looks like breathing exercises to recover from short circuiting.

“Alrighty then, I hope you guys remember because the only information I have that might help you remember me is that if I actually made it here then you guys dreamed about me.” Not wanting to give anyone a chance to interrupt, you turn to Bakugo as he is walking out of the kitchen.

“You had a dream about losing a baking competition to a woman who laughed at you because you didn’t realize that the judges would be children and you decided to make cream cheese cookies with habanero icing.”

“I DID NOT LOSE ……. Wait- “

You turn to Kirishima next, “You had a dream about practicing close quarters combat with a girl. You accidently punched her tit, so she threw you to the ground and then profusely apologized after doing so.”

Kirishima’s face goes red and eyes go wide.

Lastly you turn to Denki, not wanting to embarrass him you walk closer and whisper.

“You had a sex dream about me.” Seeing the disbelief on his face you lean closer.

“You gonna be a good boy for mommy and cum in this pussy?” His face goes so red you can feel the heat radiating off of him.

You pull back and look at all three again hoping that this information worked for everyone. Considering all of their reactions you are betting that they do remember.

“Samantha?”

Kirishima is the first to say something, bummed out that it wasn’t Denki first you give him a sad smile and nod.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

@angelofdarkness1020 @insertcooluser55 @cujoatemyhomework @dynamightslittlehotpocket 

[theconfusedartist]

hm

there’s this idea that popped on my tongue, and it kinda has to do with villians/anti-heroes. so like, most of the stories i’ve seen nowadays usually have the hero be purely good or the ‘hero’ a terrible person that shouldn’t be the good guy, but for some reason is framed that way, and some of the best villians i have seen either are cruel because it’s something inborn with them (cersei, joffery, just the entire targeyean and lannister family lines) or they do what they do because they feel like they have something to prove (the queen from snow white, loghain in dragon age, meredith in 2, saren in mass effect) they have some stake in the chaos that they’re causing and it’s to protect/save or prove their points

so i had this idea, after playing through a lot of the soul calibur 5 story and remembering vividly why i hated the story mode in that game and why i used to be able to rant about it for hours on end even though i’d only played through it once, and most of my time was spent just playing the arcade mode, which held up to the soul calibur 4 prequel. potrokolos is the main character, following his line of justice, that just so happens to mean that he’s going around mass murdering innocent people. his only purpose is to find his sister and he lets himself do whatever anyone tells him bc he ‘doesn’t have a strong will’. honestly, i hated every minute and i felt icky with every match that i won playing his character, but the thing is. i realized that like, potrokolos is a character cookie cutter hero, down to his core. he follows justice (or at least what he perceives it to be) to the very law and as he goes further in the journey the fact stares him in the face that he’s a terrible fucking person and it just made me think of playing all those games. the ones that i listed in the above paragraph. I hated potrokolos with the same intensity i had for meredith, denarius, and petrice and so i handled it the bloody violent way, as one does in an rpg. 

just because you have a hero that ‘follows the law’ it doesn’t make them good, and breaking the laws don’t make a person inherently reprehensible. the way i went about in games, killing anything that came in my path without bothering to think about them as people and more as targets, that was essentially what ‘vilians’ do that makes them so terrible, because the people that they think are a reasonable loss or that they think are expendable, are at their core forcing their will onto someone else based on their world views

and the hero that i wanted to write, i didn’t want to make her any different than any other character that i’d make a hero, gave her friends, family, and connections and then i thought to myself, “what is something that makes me consider someone to be evil?”

which was a tricky question, because people can grow, learn, change and repent for their ways, people have the choice to make their bad decisions and keep making them, so what is it about villains that i would consider inherently evil? 

well, dehumanizing others and forcing your will on people who are in a tough position because you know you can get away with it. that’s what i consider evil. to do inhumane things to others or to allow it to continue when you have the absolute power to do something about it

then this ‘hero’ would have to do that. and for potrokolos, it was his intense hatred for the malfested, for loghain it was his lack of care for the lives he sold into slavery, and meredith who allowed rampant abuse on the people under her watch and even participating and encouraging it. these are all things that i consider inherently evil things and thus why i hate those characters so much, but in the same vein, when i was faced to play through dragon age origins and the architect appeared, i didn’t feel bad about killing the architect, who could’ve stopped the blights, who could’ve fixed things. while he does pose a threat, in that same vein, is that not a choice to force your will on others, to doom an entire race to no possibility of ever improving or changing. like killing the geth/quarians, or choosing to lead the krogan to extinction, you’re forcing your will on others but this is something that the ‘hero’ can do. and the fact that they choose not to or they do give into the call of something else, it’s the choice that gives insight onto a person/characters thoughts. 

and now, with all the rambly shit out of the way, i’m gonna talk about the ‘heroine’

i want her character traits to be all things that i love in characters; a silver tongue, the ability to laugh off a bad situation, mischievousness, and curiosity. she comes from a common family, with no real prestige to her family name, but she goes out in the world in the name of adventure and glory, like all other heros do. 

she hits a snag the first time she tries to make it out on her own, and returns home much earlier than anticipated, but with a lifelong friend in the making. a young girl who had been running from the beasts that had killed her town and set it aflame she brings back with her, finding her equal and rival for her intelligence and wit, but was compassionate to all as she never wanted anyone else to be hurt by her actions like she was by those that attacked her. as time goes on, the two live together in a quiet peace, getting stronger and getting to know each other, their friendship and rivalry growing until they get the news, the news that some of the hero’s aunt who had been returning from visiting her had been attacked by the same beasts that had killed her friends town. 

she did what heros do, and ran off to help her aunt, sword raised, and her friend followed behind to try and find a more peaceful solution, money tucked into her furs. they arrive on the scene just in time, or maybe not, as her aunt is attacked, the hero rushes in and before her friend can try to negotiate or look for a peaceful end to the situation, the hero charges in and kills them all for hurting her family. as the hero stands in the pile of corpses, tears gathering at her eyes at the sight of her dead aunt, she falls to her knees, ignoring the other dead bodies that had started to drain of their blood into the ground, and cradles her aunt to her chest, sobbing loudly. 

the hero buries her aunt, not bothering to wonder why the bodies where no longer littered on the ground, just happy that she had her friend by her side through this hard time. they return home only to grab their things, though the hero’s friend is worried and somewhat distant, looking past the hero with a somewhat blank look in her eyes, and says ‘there’s something i need to find...’

the hero grabs her hand and lifts her chin so they’re looking eye to eye with one another, ‘come with me! i can help you find what you’re looking for and you can help me travel! it’s gonna be great fun!’

the heros’ friend looks up, seemingly in the present moment, again with a light blush on her cheeks. “i suppose were going to be together a bit longer then”

and so they travel and have many adventures, but as things go on, frictions increase. the hero hates the beasts, the ones that attacked the hero’s friends town, the race of adnae, and on sight goes to kill them, despite her friend’s ever growing protests to act with peace instead of violence. then they find it, a settlement that they had been to not long ago, sacked by the adnae. as the hero sets off in search of the adnae to strike down, she refuses to listen to her friend who tells her that these aren’t the normal tracks made by adnae. the hero refuses, and keeps going, aggressively taking on anything in her path, and they find adnae, but it’s not what they expect. 

adnae, wearing clothes, treating to the wounded, helping the people in their time of need. the tracks that had been left behind were certainly by the adnae, but they were caravan tracks, wagons, and animals that had been brought to assist rather than harm. the hero storms off in a fit of rage, looking for the ‘real’ adnae who committed the crime, and hunts down a few passing by without her friend, who stuck behind to help the wounded. they had weapons, but they hadn’t been there to pillage, it was obvious, the traveling truck they’d brought with them full of supplies. the hero wipes their blood on the fallen and leaves the mangled bodies, feeling vindicated in her actions. 

after the hero and her friend continue on, one day Naima turns around to find herself being afforded every luxuary, pampered with affection and sweet words, until the hero finally gets the courage to pop the question. the tender look in her eyes is what captures Naima’s heart as she accepts the ring.

the hero noticeably doesn’t talk to adnae, consistently talking about them in dehumanizing ways, getting more and more irritated that Naima is defending them and arguing with her about it, trying to changer her ways. one day the hero bursts, “you wouldn’t keep bringing this up if you really loved me!”

It’s the mark of her decline in her lack of humanity and compassion, the very moment where the ‘hero’ no longer looks like something that shines in storybook covers

Naima stops bringing it up, at least overtly. But it creates cracks and rifts in their tight bond

i wanna write more but i need to lie down and drink some water, I’ll come back to this later

[furederiko]

Countdown Counter: 10. Kyuranger 39 is calling for a Hero, in order to save a 'Princess' in need! It's my first post for December 2017 too...

- Can't believe it's December already! As in, there are only 2 months left for us to enjoy a rollercoaster ride with Kyuranger. Aaaaawww... -_-. This recap-view was initially planned to be the final post of November, but evidently so, that's not the case. Well, things tend to run off track every now and then, and delaying this one eventually became a conscious decision. I DID watch the episode when it aired last week on November 26th, but I've decided to wait for the fansub in order to get a more accurate view. And I have only been able to catch the subbed version this morning, due to health and internet. - Last we saw the Space Rebellion, the team was divided into two. Tsurugi/Xiao led one half to clear out the wacky Cepheus trials, while Lucky's unit went to Planet Ghem to locate the Perseus Kyu Globe. In case the name and shape of the planet (with joystick and directional pads) aren't obvious enough, it's clearly a pun for the word 'GAME'. - Madako has been converted into Mecha-Madako, and become the Menaster of Perseus System. She wastes no time to trigger Champ's berserk. Worse, she and a Bovine All Purpose Weapon Unit-00 deactivate Champ and snatch him away. How can she accomplish all of these? With the help of one not-that-surprising figure: Professor Anton. Yes, as has been speculated by many and later rumored and reported, Champ's creator is NOT dead. The creepy mad scientist is still very much at large, and has been the brain behind the Vice-Shoguns 'revivals' and continuous modifications. Fun fact: In the mythology, the tale of Perseus is famously connected to the Greek monster Medusa. Madako might be an octopus, but her head design does resemble a woman with snakey hair, am I right? So her being the Perseus Menaster sort of fits the bill. - The world around the team is then altered, and Lucky, Stinger, Spada, and Kotarou suddenly find themselves turned into... RPG characters. Well, duh? Planet GAME, anyone? Kotarou gets to be the 'Hero', Spada gets to be this unit's fan-service master as the shirtless 'Warrior' (he's skinny, but IMO in better shape than Tsurugi LOL), Lucky is entrusted to be the episode's crossdressing master... a magical gir- I mean female 'Mage', while Stinger also uncharacteristically becomes the 'Jester'. Of course, we also know how melancholic Stinger could have been. Prof. Anton created this alternate space with the Alternate World Projection Machine so he can trap them for good. - With the Kyu Globes being rendered powerless, their personalities are also slowly altered to fit their new... ugh 'Jobs'. Wait... WHAT?! Yep, this is... as Hammy notes it perfectly, HILARIOUS. Singing and dancing Musical-Stinger totally steals every attention with his performance outbursts (seriously TOEI, make a Kyuranger Musical already!!!). Macho-Spada allows his actor to play a dumb brute jock (those blank expressions! LOL), while Brave-Kotarou gets to be the COOL leader. And surely I'm not the only one who thinks Feminine-Lucky actually looks pretty convincing as a girl, right? His inner-Eris, perhaps? *wink-wink* - Their mission, should they choose to accept it or else, is to rescue... beautiful Black Cow Princess, from the evil clutches of Demon King. Ouch, so Champ's the 'Damsel in Distress' in this situation, huh? LOL. Demon King is obviously Prof. Anton. He used to be gentle and kind in Champ's memory, so this time his actor gains the chance to ham up his performance into a twisted maniac intent on turning the fighting robot into a weapon of destruction. Sure, it looks campy and exaggerated, but unlike that other show this level of weirdness feels natural and makes sense. And surprise, surprise! Prof. Anton... isn't really 'alive' in the flesh. Great goodness, creepy Anton is CREEPY. He has become the Super Sentai version of Marvel's Arnim Zola!!! That scene with the TV head is a great proof of this homage. Just like Zola, he had uploaded his consciousness to a machine to gain immortality. - But it gets better! The professor was NEVER good, and has been Jark Matter's devotee for hundreds of years. Good-Anton was merely the undesirable benevolent 'residue' left behind in his mortal body when the real one decided to go full-pledged machine. Problem is, Good-Anton acted selflessly by taking Champ away, turning him into a robot of justice. That means the one Champ knew was indeed good, eventhough that was merely a 'defect version'. That's the reason why Scorpio was sent to eliminate Good-Anton. How I love this twist! Did you see this coming? I sure DON'T. Again, Kyuranger keeps on surprising us. - Champ has always been a weapon of destruction, and the 'Berserker Circuit' located next to his heart is the key to all this. Dang it, the Rebellion technicians must have done a FINE job rebuilding him to NOT have noticed this utter crucial thing. This chip explains why Champ occasionally gets out of control. Anton has unlocked its function now, reverting Champ back to his natural purpose. So the team needs to destroy it if they ever want to bring their friend back. But can they do it without blowing away his heart in the process? Do they need to sacrifice one of their own to protect the universe? - That's where Musical-Stinger plays a vital part. Unable to transform, he is defeated very easily by Champ. But following Feminine-Lucky's advice, Musical-Stinger uses the thing he does best to revert Champ's missing heart: SING! And goodness grace, what a tearjerking moment it becomes. Sure, the silly flamenco dance bit at the start made me rolled my eyes, but halfway through the performance turns into very melancholic and deeply emotional. Don't be surprised if out of the blue, smoke gets in your eyes! Fun fact: The song Stinger is singing is none other than his image song that could be heard during Scorpio's death, and was also featured prominently in his V-Cinema. But he deliberately alters the lyric to Champ's condition, that it's no longer about the loneliness of the Scorpius System warrior. This one is about his bromanc... I mean, partnership with the Taurus System hero. Similar to the Dark-Naga conclusion, we get to see glimpses of Stinger and Champ's moment together. A perfect touch for an already strong scene. - Champ partially wakes up from his berserk, and asks Stinger to do whatever it takes. There's a faint glimpse of Good-Anton in a neat metaphor of 'Angel vs Devil', as Stinger succeeds in liberating Champ's heart. Gotta love how the partners play it cool afterwards, with Champ teasing how 'bad' the song sounds. Just hug it out already! We all know you both want it. LOL. - Stinger's strike also short-circuits the lab, causing Digital-Anton to lose his hold. Alternate World no more (which is sad, because I want to see more role-playing... -_-), it's time to duke it out in battle. We get really cool action sequence too! Leo Red Orion, Dorado Yellow, and UrsaMinor SkyBlue take on Mecha-Madako, while the duo of Scorpius Orange and Taurus Black deals with a pair of Unit-00s. Scorpius Orange utilizes his special power up using the #27 Monoceros Kyu Globe, and Taurus Black can send his fist flying now! Being freed from the Berserker trigger seems to have granted him some kind of power up. Meanwhile, Leo Red Orion uses his 'Gate of Babylon' attack to summon projectile weapons for him and the other two. Neat move! - In the end, Mecha-Madako retreats alongside Digital-Anton (along with his mechanical brain, of course). She had sacrificed her regenerative ability so her days is pretty much numbered, while the mad scientist must have forgotten that becoming a machine isn't any better than having a mortal body. Looks like these two will play important roles ahead. Could it be, Digital-Anton is behind Don Armage's secret of long lasting life? Highly likely. But that's the story for the final arc in the remaining 9 episodes. For now, the other Kyuranger's unit arrive just in time during the mecha battle, reuniting the team to goof off locate the prize in the 'palace'. Naturally, it's the BN Thieves who discover one... in a treasure chest: the #36 Perseus Kyu Globe. Only one more left! Next stop, Cassiopeia System...

Overall: This episode was another solid example of how brilliant Kyuranger handles the tone shift. What started out as humorous and ridiculous comical-fest, eventually evolved into a dark emotional turn, while still able to slip in exciting action sequences. Eventhough many including yours truly expected this would be a Kotarou's focus episode, it ended up becoming an excellent conclusion to Champ's story arc instead. In that case, it confirmed that both "Episode of Stinger" and its coupling web-series "High School Wars" took place after episode 34 and before 35. Admittedly, those separate features were rather inconsistent with this fact (the V-Cinema's ending, among others), but I guess we'll just have to take it as is. It's the only plausible and logical placement anyway... *sigh* Nevertheless, the show continues to pull off all kinds of sci-fi plots in general. And that is nothing short of impressive! The Mecha-Anton twist might not be original, but it was also unexpected. And those RPG-nods, they instantly reminded me of the crazy fun "Yuusha Yoshihiko", to the point that I was disappointed we didn't get to see more. And I'm not kidding. Two episodes in a row, and the show has left me wanting more. So just the thought that the series is going to conclude pretty soon, is giving me all kinds of mixed feeling... Next week: Aim for the Big League! Baseball Spada strikes!!!

Episode 39 Score: 8,1 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: December 2nd, 2017 - Version 3.07. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

[lyriumrain]

it feels kinda surreal to talk about this but like. dream daddy has...kinda forced me to look at myself and my identity and honestly playing through the various routes (only completed 2 so far) has been making me feel...weird. Uncomfortable? maybe? not in a bad way or anything...but i’ve thinking about some stuff to do with body image and how i see myself and how i identify. lots of text under the read more, but if anyone can understand my gibberish and want to comment, feel free.

a few years ago I was looking at various people on the internet who were talking about being trans, what it felt like and stuff and i related to a lot of the points they made and i thought maybe i was trans? Im naturally quite laid back when it comes to identity, at least i thought i was. because i didnt really think about it beyond that. until I started talking with and reading posts by non-binary/genderfluid people and suddenly that felt closer to what I feel, their experiences kinda filled in the blanks...so to speak. and again i didnt really think about it too much

and im kind of still trying to figure why it was that i didnt want think about my identity. so i started putting together facts, things i definitely knew about myself:

i am comfortable being referred to as she/he or they. i like being called he, the few times i’ve been talking to someone online and they’ve assumed i’m male and i havent corrected them because it felt...nice? right? im not sure

sometimes i want to present as feminine, sometimes masculine and sometimes i dont want to be either (this confused the heck out of me)

i hated, absolutely loathed my breasts (this sentiment is why i initially thought i was trans)

fast forward to now when I got dream daddy and suddenly i’m having to think about my identity again. because, i don’t know about everyone else, but i personally always put a bit of myself into every video game character i make.. its why in RPGs that let you choose gender i’ll always play a girl, because i’ve identified as a girl for at least 20+ years of my life and never saw any appeal in the male protagonists.

but then DD gives the option of making a dad that’s trans and...honestly it’s been really hard, emotionally speaking, seeing the avatar i made be in loving relationships with characters that love you and accept you, not matter whether you’re gay or bi or poly or trans, etc. 

which is where I come back to why, in years previous, i havent wanted to think about my own identity. it’s something i’m already aware of but had never connected to my identity troubles: I hate my body.  I have E-cup breasts that I find absolutely grotesque to look at and they’re nothing but a pain to deal with, sometimes literally. on top of that i’m fat, something I’ve struggled with since I was a kid. and my face ranges from ugly to average, depending on my mood and the angle i look at myself from. 

Why is this pertinent? because for as long as i remember i’ve only ever seen “androgynous” or non-binary people presented as being slim (or toned at least), conventionally attractive and young. being on tumblr has obviously exposed me to a lot different people that identity as non-binary that dont fit in those categories...but i never applied it myself? whenever I looked at myself i thought, you’re not attractive, you’re not slim, therefore you can’t be non-binary. 

so here i was, excited to play dream daddy because I’d heard it’s funny and sweet and i’m starved for a good dating sim. and i start, i make a character that’d based on an OC i have but he’s also what I’d want to look like if i could completely reconstruct myself (apart from the fact that he’s asian of course, that’s solely a part of his character. im not one of those white people that wants to be a different race cause they think it’s ‘cool’...but i digress. just thought i’d mention that in case people get the wrong idea).

anyway. i pick the ‘slim’ option, because I want to be lanky and toned, always have. and i see the binder/trans option. and i think to myself...well if i’m making him an ideal version of myself i’d be trans, right? so i pick the binder option and move on, give him blue eyes, white hair and the navy suit cause why the fuck not, he looks badass. But as I’m playing?? i’m projecting more and more of myself onto this avatar until i’m starting to feel like i am this character, and that’s not normally uncommon for me, i project a lot (for various reasons i wont get into). but im finding myself getting...not quite upset per se...but I’m definitely feeling uncomfortable. I want a flat chest, really badly, but i don’t get gender/body dysphoria about having a vagina. So at this stage i probably am making myself upset because...I’m just really confused and uncomfortable with my body.

i’ve heard trans people talk about being comfortable with the body they’re in and that they aren’t going to get surgery to change themselves but again...it was never something i thought about in relation to myself? and i’m only just coming to the realisation that I can want a flat chest but also be comfortable with what my crotch consists of. if that makes sense.

like, you know those flowery posts that go around saying shit like “trans men/women are men/women regardless of what their parts are!” with smiley faces and blooming flowers? well i’ve seen those in the past and thought ‘yeah that’s true’ and then scrolled past them without thinking ‘hey loser that includes YOU. YOU can want to change things but be content with others AND still identify as non-binary’. AMong other things of course but as I said at the beginning, i’m still working this out. 

but i didn’t start thinking any of this before working it out with the character i’d made. i’d started giving this character the same worries i have regarding body image and intimacy with others. I ended up romancing craig with this character because i felt like he’d already know about my characters struggles and identity and he’d be...totally cool with it, it’s just another aspect of my character that makes them them. (i’ve since made a new character that’s more like the real me and honestly its so strange (good strange) to see the dad version of me being shown love and care? but that’s for another time)

 I’ve never really felt a part of the lgbt+ community, i’ve always distanced myself from it, told myself it’s not my place. but this experience has...helped me start thinking about myself differently. 

im not saying that dream daddy is a life changing dating sim but like.... it kind of is? just this small amount of representation has nudged me back into the process of figuring myself out, where i belong, who i am. and i think that’s incredible. i love how the developers have formed this game to not only be funny, and silly, and ridiculous, but also serious and heart warming. it’s not a perfect game, but for me it’s been a great experience. Dare I say...an absolute... dream to play? 

[ciathyzareposts]

Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers: Summary and Rating

              Lord of the Rings, Vol. II: The Two Towers

United States

Interplay (developer and publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS, 1993 for FM Towns and PC-98

Date Started: 5 February 2019

Date Ended: 15 March 2019

Total Hours: 18 Difficulty: Easy (2/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:

A shallower, smaller, shorter sequel to a superior predecessor, The Two Towers tells the second of Tolkien’s three books from the perspective of three adventuring parties. While the top-down perspective and interface (recalling Ultima VI but with a bigger window) are both adequate, and the game follows its predecessor in offering a number of non-canonical NPCs and side-quests, it remains under-developed in RPG mechanics like combat, character development, and equipment. The switching between parties, over which the player has no control, is jarring, and by the end it feels like no party ever got any serious screen time.

*****

I’m not sure that it’s possible to make a truly excellent RPG based on an existing plot with existing characters, particularly ones who live as largely in the imagination as the canonical members of the Fellowship of the Ring. This is different, you understand, than setting a new adventure in a familiar universe. If I had made a Lord of the Rings game, I would have told a story of a group of rangers, or Rohirrim, or even a motley group like the Fellowship, engaged in a struggle ancillary to the main plot, perhaps featuring Frodo, Aragorn, et. al. as NPCs. Games based on Dungeons & Dragons‘ Forgotten Realms largely seem to take this approach, although with much less well-known source material.            

Offering an option to execute Gollum took some guts.

         The problem with using existing plots is that either the player is on a railroad towards a predetermined destination, or he’s jarred by the detours. Perhaps the only way to do it well is to allow such detours (as Interplay did here) and then give it to a player who doesn’t care much about the original (e.g., me). In that sense, the game world worked out very well. Before we get into a litany of complaints, we have to at least admire the flexibility of the plot, plus the game’s ability to introduce side quests that work thematically with the main plot points. It was a strength of Vol. I as well.

The game fails, on the other hand, in just about every possible way as an RPG. There is no experience or leveling. Character development occurs through the occasional increase in attributes and the occasional acquisition of skills as a reward for exploration or quest-solving. None of these improvements mean anything because, first, combat is so easy that your characters don’t need to improve to beat the game, and second, every party starts with all the skills they need spread out among the characters. Inventory upgrades are scarce and essentially unnecessary for the same reasons. Combat couldn’t be more boring, and there’s essentially no magic system: “spells” are keywords that solve puzzles, more like inventory items.              

Very late in the game, Aragorn can learn skills he won’t need for the rest of the game.

           Even worse is the way that it undercuts nonlinear exploration and optional encounters, essentially its only stretjg. While many of the side-quests and chance encounters are interesting, hardly any of them offer anything material to the characters. In fact, every time you stop to check out an unexplored area or building, you run the risk of some extra combats that leave the party weakened for the required encounters. This is related to the game’s absurd healing system, by which characters are only fully healed at a few plot intervals, with meals and Athelas curing just a few hit points in between.

Now, it turns out that I missed a lot of side quests, mostly towards the end. The open world is nice, but the game only gives you any directions along the main quest path. I never returned to Dunland, and thus missed the side adventures there. Ithilien had at least three side quests that Frodo and his party didn’t do, including a crypt, a Haradrim deserter who will join the party, and recovering the eye of the statue. If I’d gone another way in the Morgul Vale, I would have met Radagast. Aragorn missed the entire “Glittering Caves” sub-area, which culminated in a fight with a dragon and would have given him some powerful gloves. I still don’t know what I did wrong here. I did find the way to the Glittering Caves, but I somehow missed the transition to the multiple levels that the hint guide says exist. I guess I was supposed to return after the Battle of Helm’s Deep, but that would have meant embarking on a lengthy side-quest while on the threshold of victory for the game at large.              

I’m not sure how I was supposed to get past this.

             It’s also possible that I missed some of these side quests because of another problem: the interface. There are parts that aren’t so bad. The top-down perspective, the commands, and the auto-map all basically work, and I like the way you can make the interface go away and use the full screen for just exploration. What sucks is the approach to triggering encounters. You don’t see an NPC or group of enemies in the corner of your exploration window. No, they just suddenly pop up because you’ve happened to walk on the right set of pixels or brushed up against the right object. There’s very little correspondence between visual cues on screen and the appearance of encounter options. Sometimes, you see chests but walking up to them and bumping into them does nothing. Other times, you’re in a blank room, and you’re told about items and people that aren’t on the screen at all.             

Note that there are no orcs anywhere on this screen.

           Finally, we have the matter of pacing. It’s like the game itself has no idea what’s going to come next. The battle of Helm’s Deep involves six combats in a row, in two sets of three, with only a little bit of healing offered between the sets. After this epic battle, the party can rest and get fully healed, then (apparently) go off an find some magic gauntlets, when there’s only one more (easy) combat remaining in the game. On Frodo and Sam’s side, late in the game they have to figure out how to cut through Shelob’s web. The option I chose (use the Star Ruby) causes the hobbits to get burned a little bit, which would suck–except that the endgame happens five seconds later. Why bother to attach a penalty to the choice?

And while we’re talking about pacing, it’s important to remember how all the erratic cutting between parties makes it hard to keep track of what any one party is doing. I completely missed an opportunity to recover Anduril because the game lurched to a different party when I was on that quest, and by the time it took me back to Aragorn, it was shouting that Helm’s Deep was nigh.            

Making the least-optimal choice hardly matters when the game is over at the next intersection.

         Lord of the Rings, Vol. I had a lot of these problems (except the last one), and it ended up with a relatively-high 49 on the GIMLET. Before we rate this one, it’s worth thinking about some of the differences. One is size. Vol. I is quite a bit bigger. Although Vol. II is good in this regard, Vol. I offered more opportunities for side quests, inventory acquisition, character development, healing, and general exploration. Pacing issues were caused as much by the player as by the plot.

Vol. I gave you a lot less direction on what to do next. There was a general sense that you had to keep moving east, but you weren’t constantly getting title cards explicitly explaining the next step of the quest. For that reason, NPCs and the dialogue system took on a much greater importance. Here, although you can feed NPCs a variety of keywords, they mostly just tell you what the game has already told you in long paragraphs. You never really need them for any clues.

NPCs themselves were more memorable. They had personalities, agendas, side quests, and even a couple of betrayals. Vol. II only marginally developed any of that. There was a poor economy in Vol. I, but Vol. II had no place to spend money at all despite showing that the characters had it. Also keenly felt is the loss of nice graphical (or animated, in the remake) cut scenes between major areas.

Both games do reasonably well in the area of encounters. I’ve always liked the way Interplay games (including Wasteland and Dragon Wars) require you to read clues and then figure out the right skills to directly employ. Sometimes, items can substitute for skills. But Vol. I‘s encounters of this nature were less obvious and a little less generous in the variety of things that would work. You couldn’t ignore options to improve skills or acquire quest objects. In Vol. II, you can pretty much just walk from beginning to end, knowing that your starting characters have whatever they need.

The rest might just be a matter of bad memory. Recalling the first game, I feel like the graphics offered a little more detail, that encounters didn’t depend on hitting quite such a small set of pixels, that there was a little more character development, a slightly better inventory system, and so forth.             

The game tries to evoke the majesty of Middle Earth without showing much.

          Let’s see how they compare:

1. Game world. The Two Towers definitely makes good use of the Middle Earth setting. The backstory and lore section of the manual are thorough and interesting. It wasn’t until I read it that I finally understood some allusions from the films and the previous game, such as what “Numenor” refers to and what Gandalf actually is. While the game doesn’t do a lot to build on this setting, it certainly is in keeping with it. Score: 6.

2. Character creation and development. There’s no creation at all and only the slightest, near-invisible development. You mostly forget that the attributes even exist. Aragorn started with 70 dexterity, 28 strength, 33 endurance 75 luck, and 75 willpower, and he ended with 74, 28, 38, 79, and 77. Clearly, some development occurred, but never was I notified of any of these increases, and I really have no idea what caused them. The skills system would get more points if the game was a bit more balanced in how you acquire and use them. Score: 2.

3. NPC interaction. I always enjoy keyword-based dialogue systems, but here it’s mostly purposeless. When a title card has just told you that “Orcs have ravaged this village and its people are forlorn,” you don’t need six different NPCs saying, “Orcs destroyed us!” and “We have lost hope!” I did like the few NPCs who could join the parties. Without them, the game would have been forced to either avoid combat with the hobbit parties or make the hobbits uncharacteristically effective. Score: 5.           

I’m sorry we didn’t see more of Eowen.

         4. Encounters and foes. Despite Tolkien featuring a large bestiary, you only really ever fight orcs and men in this game (aside from a few one-off battles). The only points I give her are for the non-combat encounters, which are frequent, require some puzzle-solving skill, and offer some role-playing opportunities. As mentioned, I don’t like the way that they appear, but that’s more of an interface issue. Score: 5.

5. Magic and combat. Combat features no tactics, no magic, no items to use. Just “attack” and select your preferred foe from a menu. The “magic system,” as such, is just the acquisition of some spell keywords that occasionally solve puzzle, but I only had to use one of these words once. (This is in contrast to the first game, where they were constantly required.) Score: 1.            

The easy, boring combat system.

          6. Equipment. I found a few upgrades throughout the game: leather to chain, chain to magic armor, sword to magic sword, and so forth. It just didn’t feel like any of it did anything. Most of the items that burdened my inventory were quest items, and I found no use for a lot of them. Score: 2.

7. Economy. In contrast to the first game, there is none. The game keeps track of a “silver” statistic for each character for no reason. Score: 0.

8. Quests. Perhaps the strongest point. Each party has a clear set of main quests, an equal number of side quests, and even a few options about how to complete them. I enjoyed the side quests most because with them, I was exploring Middle Earth rather than just hitting a series of determined locations and plot points in a row. Score: 5.

  9. Graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics aren’t objectively bad, but I do think they fail to live up to the player’s imagination of storied places like Helm’s Deep and Minas Morgul. The failure to show so many things that the game tells you is also pretty stark. Sounds are mostly beeps and the occasional “oof” in combat.

              The staircase to Cirith Ungol hardly seems hidden, tight, steep, or foreboding, especially with the silly “mountains” on either side.

            There are aspects of the interface that work well. The size of the game window seems practically luxurious, and you have to wonder if Ultima VII took a lesson from this game or its precursor. The automap works pretty well. There are some nice touches like the star that appears next to the most recently-saved game when you go to load a game. I definitely appreciated the use of keyboard commands for most major actions, in addition to the buttons. Overall, the game would earn a high score in this category except for the encounter-triggering issue, which is both a graphical problem and an interface problem, and comes close to ruining the game on its own. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. Vol. II is a bit more linear than Vol. I, but not compared to other games. I suspect that Frodo and Sam could have turned around in the last chapter, left the Morgol Vale, and walked all the way back to the Dead Marshes, cleaning up side quests along the way. The nonlinearity coupled with the side quests lend a certain replayability–in fact, I think the game would probably improve on a replay, with a better understanding of the pacing and terrain.

  I found it far easier than its predecessor, as exemplified by the battle in which Frodo killed the vampire. I was supposed to solve that with a quest item. The game should have made combats harder and the healing system less erratic. Finally, it’s also a bit too short, particularly with the action split among three parties. I suspect you could win in a speed run of just an hour or so. Maybe I’ll try when I get some more free time. Score: 4.

  That gives us a final score of 34, as I suspected quite a bit below Vol. I and even below my “recommended” threshold, though just barely. The engine was a bit better than the game itself, and was used in a superior way in the first title. This one seemed a bit rushed and perfunctory.

               I did like some of the “instant deaths.”

                Computer Gaming World disagreed with me on the first game by largely hating it: reviewer Charles Ardai obsessed about divergences from the books and didn’t even seem to notice the more revolutionary elements of the interface. He dismissed it as “not special enough to carry the Tolkien name.” But in the October 1992 issue, reviewer Allen Greenberg gave a much more positive review of the sequel. In particular, he addressed the carping of people like Ardai by pointing out that Middle Earth had taken on a certain life of its own, and if we can forgive Tolkien himself for his many appendices and allusions, why complain about a few side-quests and side-characters in a game that’s otherwise relatively faithful to the material?

  Greenberg also offers a relatively nuanced discussion of the party-switching system, pointing out (correctly) that the very approach is revolutionary, and while Interplay might have refined the approach (“Interplay may wish to consider allowing the player at least a vote in the decision making process as to whether it is time to switch locations”), the innovative system offered a “depth of narrative which would not otherwise have been possible.” Greenberg’s comments led me to avoid subtracting points for this element despite complaining about it several times.

MobyGames catalog of reviews for the game has them averaging in the high 50s, which is pretty miserable. On the other hand, the lack of any seriously rabid fan base must have softened the blow when Vol. III was never released. A couple of years ago, Jimmy Maher published an excellent entry on what was happening with Interplay during this period. The summary is that the company was struggling as a developer/publisher, with Dragon Wars not having sold well in a crowded RPG market. Founder Brian Fargo managed to secure the rights the trilogy from Tolkien Enterprises, figuring that the Lord of the Rings name would make the games stand out among their competitors. 

Interplay was already in the midst of a new RPG called Secrets of the Magi that would feature a free-scrolling interface. Fargo pulled the team off that project and put them to work on Lord of the Rings. By the time the game was released, the company had been badly hurt by the collapse of Mediagenic, publisher of Interplay’s Nintendo titles. Interplay rushed production to make the Christmas 1990 buying season. They ended up releasing the game with a lot of bugs and cut features (including an automap), missed the Christmas season anyway, and got lukewarm reviews.

The company was saved by the unexpected success of a strategy game called Castles. Now understanding that the Tolkien name alone didn’t ensure success in sales, Vol. II was produced with a smaller staff. When it, too, got poor reviews, and when repackaging Vol. I on CD-ROM also failed to generate significant sales, there was no impetus to move on to Vol. III. Some sites claim that before it gave up on III, there had been plays to turn it into more of a strategy game. 

“. . . no one.”

         Maher memorably concludes:

          Unlike Dragon Wars, which despite its initial disappointing commercial performance has gone on to attain a cult-classic status among hardcore CRPG fans, the reputations of the two Interplay Lord of the Rings games have never been rehabilitated. Indeed, to a large extent the games have simply been forgotten, bizarre though that situation reads given their lineage in terms of both license and developer. Being neither truly, comprehensively bad games nor truly good ones, they fall into a middle ground of unmemorable mediocrity. In response to their poor reception by a changing marketplace, Interplay would all but abandon CRPGs for the next several years.

              Indeed, the next RPG we’ll see from Interplay isn’t until 1995 (Stonekeep), followed by two in 1997: Fallout and Descent to Undermountain. It’s hard not to see a little of the Lord of the Rings interface in Fallout‘s: axonometric graphics, continuous movement, a large main game window, and commands hosted in a set of unobtrusive icons with keyboard backup. (Vol. II and Fallout even share at least one designer, Scott Bennie.) Fallout shares these characteristics with the Infinity Engine, which was developed by Bioware but with a close relationship with (and financing from) Interplay. I’m probably grasping at straws, but I look forward to exploring the engines’ history more when we get to those games.

The Two Towers was the last attempt to make an official Middle Earth game until after the Peter Jackson film series, which spawned a host of new games that, like the films themselves, are controversial among fans. (We won’t see another one until 2002’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.) The 1990s were the only era in which Tolkien fans were likely to get an RPG that was technologically and graphically advanced enough to be fun, but not yet influenced (“tainted,” as I’m sure some would have it) by the films. While the two Interplay titles have some promise and fun moments, it’s too bad that they were the only attempts.

****

While we’re wrapping things up, I think I might be ready to throw in the towel on The Seventh Link. I hate to do it, particularly when I know the developer is reading, but I can’t seem to force myself to map and explore all the large dungeon levels. I’ll chew on it for another couple days while I get started with Star Control II.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/lord-of-the-rings-vol-ii-the-two-towers-summary-and-rating/

[ninches96]

Why Torna will always be the Golden Country

Apologies to those who have the pleasure of hearing this opinion on a daily basis, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good game. In fact, in a year that brought us Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade stood out as my favourite game I played in 2017. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to defend this opinion shortly, but in the interim I’d like to give a brief backstory of my relationship with Xenoblade.

I didn’t Play Xenoblade 1 or X. Actually, it wasn’t until Xenoblade 2 came out that I even considered buying it at all. The only reason I bought it at all was to round out the ‘Year of Nintendo’ having bought a new AAA Switch game every month. I didn’t even play other Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and games like Octopath Traveller didn’t interest me in the slightest after playing Xenoblade.

The basic premise of Xenoblade is that you are a Driver, basically a swordsman, who has up to three Blades at a time. Depending on which Blade you have engaged at any given time, you have different elemental attacks which have individual effects. Rex, the protagonist, accidentally encounters the most powerful Blades in existence. First is Pyra, an Aegis who becomes the main companion of Rex and is the key component to the story. Then there’s Malos and Jin, the antagonists, who want Pyra dead for reasons that only 100 hours of gameplay can really make clear.

When I played Xenoblade, it took me hours and hours and hours to finally clock the combat system, by which point they’d added various combos, gauges and other factors to start thinking about. Every time it stepped up the complexity, I was drawn further in. And, though everyone else hates it, I found the cutscenes to be fun and enjoyable. The story managed to suck me into learning everything about the universe that I knew nothing about, in a way that Skyrim never coaxed me into.

Where Xenoblade Chronicles 2 falls short is in its length, clocking in at well over 100 hours from start to finish and immeasurably longer if you’re interested in all the side quests. Also the combat system, while is engaging in isolation, can get tedious during grinding and uninteresting side-quests. Oh and the map/waypoint system leaves a lot to be desired. And there’s too many blades which bond with a given driver permanently. And Poppi is a super irritating blade to try and manage. Despite all these factors, the sheer scope, beautiful environments and complicated storyline kept me hooked to the point where a year on I’m still itching to get back on and start a new game from scratch, then start a new game plus to 100% it. If I had another 300 hours to spare, I would.

This year, the Xenoblade team made a magnificently unique choice. They released a DLC pack called ‘Torna: The Golden Country’, a prequel that explores Jin, Malos and the characters you meet only in flashbacks during the main game. Well, yes that’s been done plenty. But this DLC is also a stand alone game. You can walk to the shops and buy Torna without having touched the main game.

Torna is perfectly crafted to exist as a standalone game to those who have no idea Jin is destined to become a villain in the future as well as for those who know everything about Lora’s future but want to learn more about her past. Lora in general, actually, is an excellent protagonist compared to Rex. She is flawed and heroic in organic ways where Rex was built to be a generic, blank-slate, hot-headed but good-willed kid like we’ve seen time and time again.

If you’d not guessed it yet already, Torna: the Golden Country being a standalone game is the perfect way to release this game. Not only because it entices people into the franchise with a much more manageable £20 price tag, but because it lets me get away with calling it my Game of the Year 2018.

Lets start with the squad. Xenoblade 2 has Rex, Tora, Nia, Vandam, Zeke and Morag as the main components of the party, each of which has 1 ‘key component’ blade who has their own character traits and 2 more blades which are assigned by the player. That makes it incredibly busy and gives you lots to keep track of. This works in a 100 hour campaign, but for a 20-30 hour DLC pack it would be far too much. That’s why Torna has just 9 (playable) characters. Lora, Adam and Hugo will always be your party and each has exactly 2 blades. This compacts the experience and allows the developers and the player to focus all their attention on these  characters to develop them all as much in 20 hours as Xenoblade 2 does in 100. Admittedly Hugo felt a little generic, as though he’d already had his story arc, but that’s of little consequence.

The world is compacted down too, Xenoblade 2 sees you scouring dozens of Titans (basically islands) with snow, plains, cities, forests, oceans and all kinds of different environments, each with its own distinct feel. Torna has just two Titans to worry about, the sprawling Gormott, which exists in Xenoblade 2 as a similar but distinctly changed map, and Torna itself, which is divided into several sub-sections for ease of navigation. It would have been nice to have one extra environment to explore, but these two are all you really need. Gormott is so vast that it’s easy to forget what you’re doing because you saw a chest in the distance while Torna is compact and incredibly functional, making it easy to catalogue all there is to do and work at it methodically. This also make the enemies you fight consistent and there tends to be more of a focus on animals than generic human soldiers than the full game.

The story itself is engaging but curiously, fails to address a lot of the questions I was left with at the end of Xenoblade 2. Adam in particular is an elusive character in Xenoblade 2’s flashbacks but we meet him in Torna after he’s done his ‘legendary’ stuff without ever finding out what it was.  It does an excellent job of going over the basics without dwelling on stuff we already heard Rex talk about every half hour in the main game but I can only hope these gaps in the story can be filled in through future games.

Some smaller changes include the campfire crafting, which replaces a majority of the NPC interaction in the main game. Shops are few and far between so you must make do with what you can make yourself. In the grand scheme of things, very little is changed with this alteration besides (as I’m sure you’re sick of me saying) condensing the gameplay down.

The only considerable drawbacks from the game, which if you’ve read any other reviews you’ll be more than aware of already, are that the voice acting is a very acquired taste and the characters will repeat the same half dozen phrases in combat for the entire adventure. More frustrating though is the wall you come against at two points in the game. There are two segments in which your only quest will become ‘do X side quests’, amounting to around 50 side quests that are unavoidable to complete the game. This didn’t affect me because the side quests were a natural part of my progression in the game, so I was only ever a couple away from my target anyway but if you were hoping to blast through the story without touching the optional quests, you will get angry. The optional quests themselves vary a lot from ‘kill x enemy’ to genuinely engaging sub-plots that span the whole game. Generally I found them to be an enjoyable extension of the game rather than a chore but I can see why others would disagree.

When Ubisoft talked about their Donkey Kong DLC for Mario Vs Rabbids, they explained how the DLC was actually quite a lot easier than the main game was in its later levels. It was an expansion, not an extension. Given that Torna is marketed for both newcomers and veterans, it’s easy to see how the complicated gameplay would be a barrier for one of these two groups. Newcomers would have to learn a 100-hour gameplay loop in 1/5 the time or veterans would be left bored that their hours of learning were wasted as Torna becomes too easy. The gameplay is by far the best part of Torna.

The very basic concepts are still in place, Lora still has her Blades and they grant her powers. You still have two other team members and all of you have various elemental attacks that can combo together. Where Torna refines the work of its predecessor is that Blades and Drivers can both be playable in combat. Rather than Pyra granting Rex a fiery sword, Jin can step forward in battle and Lora grants him bonuses. They have special attacks that trigger when they’re ‘tagged out’ which deal more damage and make encounters more interactive. You feel more like a team of 3 characters rather than a Pokemon Trainer with his Fire, Ice and Electric types. There’s also a more effective Elemental Combo system which makes it laughably easy to set up an enemy with all 8 elements and ‘break’ them for a massive chain of damage. This would probably get on my nerves but later in the game, they start to punish you for over-extending. Certain bosses deal immense damage to you if you leave elemental orbs for too long, giving you the choice between setting up and breaking as quickly as possible with the risk of it backfiring or learn new techniques to win battles without elemental attacks. In addition, there being only 9 characters to think about means the developers could build real synergies between them which are easy enough to work out without spending hours trawling through the wiki.

I wasn’t lying when I said Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was my favourite game of last year, standing tall above Mario and Zelda and Splatoon and Pokemon. It was so imperfect that it’s really easy to talk about the problems it had. And, as I hope to explain one day, it is not as good as Odyssey and Breath of the Wild were last year. But it was by far my favourite game. Torna systematically deconstructs Xenoblade 2 to find out where those faults were and how they can be addressed. Torna doesn’t take a 100 hour adventure and cut it down to 20 hours. It fits 100 hours of depth into 20. It makes me truly excited to see how Xenoblade 3 takes the same 20-hour experience and extends it back out to 100.

If the huge investment and complicated gameplay put you off buying Xenoblade Chronicles 2, or if you’re wanting an excuse to jump back onto the Titans of Alrest, Torna: The Golden Country is a must-have.

[a-man-adrift]

My April Fools Confession

[hat tip to @ozymandias271.  Also, it’s not April the 1st.  Um… April Fool!]

1.

I want to go home.

I was born into this universe some decades ago now; every now and again something happens to me that reminds me of how things are back home — how things… dammit, how things should be! — and I content myself with a Dream of returning there.

It never occurred to me to give my home universe’s analogue of Earth a name: I never studied astronomy but superficially, and the texts I worked off of just referred to it as “the planet”.  Hm, let’s see: I think I’ll call it Web.  We did invent crypto-currencies, onion routing and the vending machine before the idea of the telephone occurred to any of us, after all.

Web as a planet is the same size and shape as all the other Earths out there; Web as a human society is a deal smaller than this one.  There might be a couple of millions of us, spread over roughly the same territory claimed by the nation of Venezuela here.  We’re pretty spread out, and we like it that way. Elbow room.  Fortunately, as you’ll see, our birth rate is fairly low, so we’ll have all the elbow room we need for a while yet.

For us… I guess we’re Spiders, aren’t we?… For us Spiders, life is divided into three realms: Work, Dreams and… well, the closest thing to a one-syllable word for the other thing in English is probably ‘Life’, as in ‘Work-_ Balance’, or ‘Get a _’: I mean hanging out, socialising, all that.  The fact that you people call that ‘Life’ is all a self-respecting Spider needs to know about this universe, according-to-my-scale-of-values (that’s all one very short word in my language).

2.

The most important thing about the three realms, that every Spider learns at a very young age, is that ne’er the, um, thrain shall meet. I mentioned crypto-currencies and onion routing earlier: anonymity is built into our version of the Internet to the point where it wouldn’t function without it.  Actually, Work has been run on an anonymous basis since before anyone invented computers — reading about the silent trade was one of the emotional moments that brought memories of Web flooding back.

The romantic ideal of Work is that of a Spider who builds something huge, like the Internet, or a new kind of power plant, or what have you, completely solo, then generates a new ’nym — er, that’s a unique base64 identifier in a many-to-one relationship with a Spider —, uses it to advertise what he’s achieved, and then never uses it again.  I mean, sure, the royalties flood in, or the usage fees, or what have you, but besides drawing the coin to spend on your Dreams and your Life, you never do anything under that ’nym again.

If I may digress: that’s always been the hardest part of living here for me: the idea that who you are in your Life depends on the Work you do.  Life is Life: for a Spider, who you are in Life depends on, well, who you are in Life, if for no other reason that nobody in your Life necessarily knows anything about your work.  And if they do, they’ll pretend they don’t, or you’ll cut them out of your Life, and nobody��ll blame you.

Anyway, of course Work isn’t like the ideal for almost anyone.  For one thing, of course, most Works need more than one Spider to get them done, and for another, most Spiders spend their Working life under one or two ’nyms at most, because they need a reputation associated with a stable (but still Work-exclusive) identity to draw in enough cash to meet their goals.  Having said that, if you’re not ambitious, you can live fairly comfortably on anonymous piecework: the climate in the inhabited regions of Web is temperate enough that you really have to work at going hungry, and, well, it’s generally considered the done thing to divide up the Work you’ve designed into jobs that are small enough, and well-enough documented, that any scrub can come along, assign themselves to it and get it done quick.  Where possible, of course.  I’ll be honest and admit that Web has a pretty chronic labour shortage, and our infrastructure isn’t the best in the world, but it’s weathered more disasters than it looks like it can, because it’s so decentralised.

I could go on and on about land tenure, education, our version of patents, and how we’re all armed to the teeth when we’re on our own ground, but hopefully you get the basic idea.  I will just mention that when a Work absolutely has to be done face-to-face, like medicine, or the poor souls who learn better from spoken interaction than documentation, dealing with one another if/when you encounter each other in Life is rather like here if you happen to meet socially with a health professional who’s treating you for a stigmatised condition, or a sex worker, say.  Some people are fine with having people they know they Work with in their Life, some even ‘talk shop’, as you Earthlings say, but the safe assumption absent any signalling to the contrary is that you should act like you don’t recognise one another.  Actually, that keys into a principle of Life in general, but that’s Life, of which more anon.

3.

First, Dreams.  Ah, sweet Dreams: my favourite part of being a Spider. The term, as you may have guessed, encompasses everything you’d put under the heading of “entertainment”, or at least the consumption thereof.  Creating Dreams, of course, is Work.  Some of your art forms are immediately recognisable to any Spider.  Novels, for example, have been around Web even longer than here, and video games are absolutely huge — VR was about where it is now when I… left, and I’m willing to bet by now it’s way ahead of you.  Um, no offence.  Moving pictures trend more towards TV than movies, — you’d likely find our movie/TV analogues maddening, like they weren’t finished — and the visual arts and music are valued rather less than they are here. Works like these aren’t treated like they’re the point, in the way art here sometimes is: they exist to be used as adjuvants to a Spider’s own Dreams, something to stimulate the imagination.  The romantic ideal of Dreaming is a Spider who contains a multitude of worlds in their own head, that nobody ever sees.  Once again the ideal falls short of the reality, since any Spider who can pull it off either has to sell some of their Dreams as Works, or devote time they’d rather be Dreaming to more industrial Work to make ends meet. Serious Dreamers sometimes get teased in Life because we… uh, they… oh — who am I kidding? — we walk around with glassy eyes and sometimes you have to repeat yourself when you’re talking to us.  “In a world of their own” is a saying with some hefty resonance for a Spider who’s very into their Dreaming.

I have a little cache of Earth-produced DreamWorks I hope to find a way to take back to Web some day, by the way.  All my fellow Spiders will have to see is the way the highly sensible Solarians in Asimov’s The Naked Sun and Robots and Empire are supposed to seem creepy, and they’ll know exactly what I’ve been through.  Single-player RPGs should be big hits, too.  Actually, that might be my personal taste coming through… I’ll try to take as many games as I can with me: a hardcore Dreamer can build lore around even the most superficial game mechanic.  There’s still something to be said for an immersive world as a Work, though, as long as there’s just enough left blank for a Dreamer.

4.

And finally, Life.  From what I can tell, this is the part of the Web y’all Earthicans would probably feel most at home in.  On Earth, terms like “meeting new people”, “society” and “community” are generally recognised as being hurrah words in a way they really aren’t, or at least aren’t necessarily, on Web. Life is fine and all, and no Spider can truly, um, live without it, but it’s not all there is to, um, life (see how much trouble you’re being?  Stupid Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), and like I said before, it’s a separate thing from Work and Dreams.

I think the best analogue to Life on the Web is the social customs of gentlemen and ladies in the late-19th, early-20th century Western world.  We have the same polite fiction that we’re all too well-off to soil our hands with Work — and if a Spider should mysteriously not have much time for Life, well, we’ve all been there.  And crucially, your standing in Life has nothing to do with your Work, like I said. You’re doing well in Life if you’re good company, if you’re always there for your friends… if people love you.  It’s as simple and as vertigo-inducingly complicated as that.

There are some differences, of course.  The concept of the “cut direct” is unremarkable Spider behaviour: it signals that you’re Working or Dreaming, or just not in the market for new acquaintances right now.  Life is always an explicit-opt-in thing.  To facilitate this opting, we have codes of dress that look positively baroque, but lots of people have put in some good (mostly volunteer) Work documenting them, so with a little study in advance you can tell down to a nicety what kinds of relationship a Spider is open to just by glancing at their clothes.  And if somebody’s wearing unadorned block colours, you act like they’re not there.  Or nod and smile, tops. I’ve been told I have a bad habit of doing that.

Life is about as many-splendoured a thing on the Web as here: we’ve got everything from cliquish Neo-Victorians like me to non-stop naked cuddle piles or whatever it is you people are into.  And honestly, I’m not bothered by that, because I know that my signs aren’t some nebulous pheromonal body-language thing that some people just really suck at reading; they’re right there on my chest, and if you try to go beyond my limits people will take one look, and in general they’ll agree that you’re the asshole.  In general it works: “Live and let Live” is another Earth saying any Spider can relate to.

Life is also, of course, the place new Spiders come from. Child-rearing is considered a Work, of course.  In that sense, every Spider is a Work, although one that doesn’t go on the market for sale, thankfully…  To have a child, you have to get close enough to someone in Life to be comfortable talking about your Work, so you can compare notes on how you’re going to fund the Work of raising a sprog. Spiders tend towards monogamy, at least in parenting, because it’s difficult for most of us to let even one person in far enough to embark on a collaborative Work like that, let alone more.  Aand, now you see what I mean about the low birth rate.  Having said that, it’s a bell curve: we have a small poly minority, and a slightly larger minority of asexuals.  Our Work and Life norms make poly more difficult, and Dreams make asexuality seem like the obvious choice for those that already lean that way.  “Sex should stay in Dreams where it belongs,” is a Spider saying I’ve been guilty of now and again.

5.

Mmm, now, what have I forgotten?  Oh, right, names.  Names on the Web are something anyone can give you.  A Spider will tend to be called the same thing by everyone in a particular community in Life where they hang out, but in a different community, they might go by a different name.  And at Work, everyone has their own directory of pronunciations for ’nyms they know of.

If you want to spot a Spider stranded on Earth, there are some English words and phrases that might make them smile.  The word “workaholic” can be calqued straight to or from English from our written language, and of course the analogues of “dreamaholic” and “lifeaholic” exist too.  If you mention “work/life balance” and they say “What about Dreams?”, then that’s conclusive, of course!

Now that I mention it, social media, that’s another thing we sort of don’t have. Our Internet was built for Work, heck, for that matter our written language was built for Work, so when I left we were only just exploring the possibilities of using it for Life.  Life centres around a Spider’s local area, generally: rural/forest areas with wide open spaces between homesteads for us Dreamer folk, and slightly more densely-populated areas for Lifeaholics.  Having said that, the use of telephony and webcams and such for Life is taking off.  By the time I get back they’ll probably have VR telepresence going.  If you mention Second Life to someone and they laugh for no reason, I’ll be sure.

6.

Lastly, I want to expand a bit on the whole “Live and let Live” thing.  One of the things that most baffles me about Earth is the way all y’all seem to have your priorities set when it comes to finding things out.  Seems like for humans, your first choice for a way to find out about the world is to find someone in your Life and ask them.  For a Spider, of course, learning is Work, so we find things out by reading them, by experiment, or at the talkiest by Working with a teacher.  It just seems obvious to me that using Life for learning is subject to these awful failure modes: I mean, look at that business with the mass of the electron.

Anyway, the worst part is that you seem to use Life to make your ethico-moral decisions.  You decide right from wrong by seeing what your friends and family seem to think, and to a Spider, that’s… crazyballs.  One constant in our culture is that you’re not an adult until you’ve worked out your value system.  As a matter of romantic ideals, again, you’re expected to choose your terminal values and work out your choices mathematically, but of course nobody’s that rigorous, at least not all the time.  And because we consider having your own value system to be a sign of maturity, naturally letting people make their own mistakes is just basic respect from one adult to another.  It doesn’t stop us teasing the people in our Lives for their crazy values, but it’s all in good fun. And if it’s not, you can just take your insignia off and tap out.

Hm, writing this has been rewarding Work.  I guess I’ll answer questions if you have any, or maybe another stranded Spider will chime in under another ’nym. Maybe it’ll be me under another ’nym instead. Or maybe, just maybe, by the time you read this I’ll be back on the Web, compound interest will have done its thing, and I’ll be checking out the latest Dream hardware!

Regards,

fe7ba17d-80ae-426e-8ae4-976aeb1c7e5a

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resident evil 4 gamecube

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resident evil 4 gamecube

Resident Evil 4 cheats & more for GameCube (GameCube)

Cheats

Unlockables

Hints

Easter Eggs

Glitches

Guides

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Genre: Action, Survival Horror Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom ESRB Rating: Mature Release Date: November 9, 2004

Hints

Strongest Gun!

After unlocking the handcannon, buy it from the merchant (it will cost 0 pesetas). Save up your cash to upgrade it. When you can get the exclusive upgrade the handcannon gets 99. 9 firepower and unlimited ammo!

1 Shot 1 Kill

As you get farther in the game zombies will get harder to kill. To save ammo, if there are only 1 or 2 zombies, just use your pistol and shoot them in the head they will be dazed or dead if there dazed run to them and kick them then if there still alive hack them with your knife.

Invincible Merchant

This is a glitch I discovered in the game. This glitch makes the merchant invincible for a time. To do this, equip the Mine Thrower, and, at point blank range, aim and fire it at his face. The mine should explode instantly. You will be thrown back, but he will still be there. Once this happens take out any weapon, and shoot/throw it at him, he won’t go down. I just have 2 warnings about this glitch. First of all, you will not be able to talk to him in this state. Secondly he will only be in this state until you go to a door that takes you to another section (a door that has a mini cut scene when it opens), and if you go back and shoot him, he will die, and you won’t see him again. I also recommend that you have infinate health using Gameshark or Action Replay, this makes it so you don’t have to worry about killing yourself when you use the Mine Thrower.

Easy Boss Kills

After you beat the game for the first time, each time you approach a boss in the game, you’ll for some reason always have enough money to purchase a rocket launcher. Unless your saving for the infinate launcher, it would be best to buy the normal Launcher for the bosses.

Ambush Congregation In The Castle For $$

In the castle area, right after engaging the Bugs in the sewers, you will see a large group of Ganados Zealots in mid prayer. If you spook them they will run away, and you miss out on ALOT of money. Right before the sewer they give you a flash grenade. SAVE IT. When preparing the ambush on the congregation, go north then swing across the chandelier. When on the other side look down, and try to hit them all with a flash grenade to stun. Immediately jump down and run north to their exit point so you lock them in. If you have an incendiary or frag grenade you could use it here, other wise line them up for some shotgun carnage. They will each drop a spinel and their leader drops an Illuminados pendant, worth around 32000 altogether.

Chicago Typewriter

To get a machine gun called the Chicago Typewriter, succesfully get all 5 plagas samples in Assignment Ada.

Infinite Launcher

To get a Rocket Launcher with endless ammo, the Infinite Launcher, complete story mode once. It will be on sale for 1,000,000 pesetas.

Burn Them

If any zombie has a torch in their hand shoot their hand or arm and they will burn themselves.

Never Lose All Bullets

All of you ppl use those headshots to take care. Not me. Go shoot a zombies knee. He’ll get stunned. Then go right to his face and press A. Leon will kick and the zombie and the zombie is dead. This saves a bunch of ammo, which is what you’ll care about as the game goes on.

Max Out Your Health

About halfway through chapter 2-1, you can max out your health. When you get to El Gigante(the giant, ogre guy), you can find a yellow herb in the area. Look for a green herb in the houses if you don’t have one. Mix the herbs together and use them. Let El Gigante kill you. You should be able to find the yellow herb again and your health will keep its extension. You can do this until your health maxes out. This is the only place it works, so do it there.

Lethal Weapon

At times you can open a door to get the attention of an enemy. Then step back till they are at the door trying to get through. When and if this happens double tap the A button to kick the door open. If you did it correctly it will knock the enemy down, then you press the A button when it shows to suplex them and somestimes it kills them.

Yellow Herbs?

That’s right, combine these with a green herb andnot only do you get your health back but yourmaximum health will upgrade, just like an RPG.

Kill The 2nd Head Easier

Save your flash bang grenades because if you blow their head off and the zombie grows another one throw the flash bang and its head explodes this can save a lot of ammo.

Another Way To Kill Krauser

If you encounter krauser with Leon the best way to kill him and save ammo is by pulling out your knife and simultaneously slash him. Be sure to have a green herb or a first aid spray because chances are he will fight back.

Get Eaten By The Alligator

Go to the pier near the lake and shoot up in the air with a pistol at least 7 times and the alligator should come up out of the lake and eat you right off the pier. Make sure your at the end of the pier.

Get Pimp Suit

Beat the game on Professional. This will also give you Ashley’s armor suit. She cant die!

A Really Good Gun

When you are searching for the little blue stones everywhere when you find 10 you can get a gun for free. For an even better gun shoot all of the little blue stones (15 stones) you will get an even better gun.

One Hit Kill El Gigante

Other people are gonna tell you to use a shotgun or butterfly gun on el gigane, but really the easiest way to beat him is using a rocket launcher. It kills him in one shot, so don’t mind spending 30,000 to get the gun, cause after you beat him your getting 15,000 back anyway. If you don’t have the launcher though, a few grenades don’t hurt.

Beating Krauser

Right before you fight him you’ll come across a camp and you go underground and meet up with the merchant. By then you should be able to fully upgrade the Broken Butterfly. Do it because when fully upgraded it kills any boss in four to five shots. I killed Krauser in five shots without aiming at his head, even at his knees it counts. One shot to his knees and one to his chest 2x, then one final blow to his knees. Enjoy sending this bad boy commando back to training.

Sell Dat Gun For A Little More

When you want to sell one of your guns for another gun but you wont have enough, just reload the gun and it will be worth more.

Catching Ashley

In some levels you have to walk around with ashley behind you, and she cant do everything you can do by herself. Like when you jump down from a spot you will see “Catch” at the bottom of the screen. Push The “A” button and she will jump down and you will catch her. And There are some spots where you can make her hide in places. Do This With the “X” button.

Easy Money

Once your in the caslte always check behindpictures of Saddler, you will find 5,000 goldeverytime.

Ashley’s White Underwear!

When you enter the castle stage, go to places where you go down and catch Ashley from the top. Except don’t catch her, instead you pull out your rifle (if you have one)and zoom in for look on a white underwear! To get a better look buy the better scope from the merchant.

Chainsaw House

When you first enter Pueblo, there is a house on the top right (if you look on your map, the one near the center spot) This place contains ammunition and the shotgun and a grenade. If you want the shotgun, do not go in there until you’ve cleared out the villagers, because a chainsaw villager will come! simply waste all the villagers till they leave, then enter the house, the shotgun will be right there, clear out the houses without having fear of being attacked for the chainsaw bagman can kill you in one slice of his chainsaw, and since your in a small building, this is very likely.

Dog Rescuer

In the beginning of the game after you pass the big house and small hut, you will encounter a dog trapped in a bear trap. If you save him, he will then help you defeat the first “El Gigante” later in the game.If you don’y save him, you will have to kill the “El Gigante” without his help.

Assignment Ada

To get a game where you play Ada, complete story mode once. Assignment Ada will be found at the main menu.

The Mercenaries

To get the mini-game, The Mercenaries, complete story mode once. The Mercenaries can be found at the main menu.

Matilda

To get the rapid-fire handgun, Matilda, complete story mode once. You will get a message saying that you can now buy Matilda.

Hand Cannon

To get a powerful gun called the Handcannon, get a 5 star ranking on each level, with each character in The Mercenaries.

Shotgun At The Start Of The Game

At the very first of the game, at the very first town, after you kill all of the civilians, search all the buildings, in one of the buildings upstairs is a shotgun hanging on the wall. There should be some ammo for it on the table too.

Chainsaw Lady

After you defeat the zombie people from coming in the house where Luis helps you, you could go two ways. If you take the way near the sales man then you will have to fight a chainsaw lady. You should start off by making Ashely hide and kill all the zombie people in the area. You will see a pit but leave Ashely hiding in the trash can thing, dont bring her with you. You need a rocket launcher for this. Once you jump into the pit the chainsaw lady will come with those zombie people. All you have to do is aim your rocket launcher at her and fire. You will be hurt alot so be sure to have a first aid spray or some herbs cause the villagers will jump into the pit after you kill the chainsaw lady.

Kick That Door Open!

When opening a door, double-tap the A buttoninstead of pressing it once. If you’re not at acontinue point, you will kick it open instead ofjust pushing it!!

Saving Bullets

There are lots of boxes and barrels that you canblast open with your gun, they will contain allsorts of items, however, you also wanna keep yourbullets. Instead of shooting the boxes, hold downL and press A, you’ll swipe at the boxes with yourknife. This trick can be used to break windows,display cases, locks and bear traps. Also if youknock a villager down, try knifing them whilethey’re on the ground as one bullet does keep themdown for a little while.

Sell It For More!

You will obtain some items that aren’t worth muchinitially as a trade, however, if you add certainjewels to them, they will be worth way more. Theeasiest example is the beer stein. As is it’s notworth much, but it has room for 3 jewels to beadded. Adding the jewels will up its value!

Death Of A Salesmen

If you’re feeling kinda bored . or hostile andyou feel like screwing yourself over for the restof the game, simply find the merchant and shoothim in the head. Now he’s gone on you’re on your own.

Animal Cruelty

Running low on health without an herb in sight?Simply find yourself a crow, a fish, a dog, achicken or a cow. Shoot them till theymoves-no-more and voila, you have a health item!

Man’s Best Friend

Early on in the game you’ll come across a wolfcaught in a bear trap. You can choose to help thisanimal or leave it by pressing A. If you help thedog, you will be rewarded later when he helps youdefeat a boss!

The Punisher

In the village and the cemetery you will noticeblue necklaces haging in trees and other areas.Shoot these jewels with your gun. Destroying 10 ofthem will unlock a weapon from the stranger in thewoods, a 9mm pistol called The Punisher.

Cheats

Currently we have no cheats or codes for Resident Evil 4 yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Unlockables

Currently we have no unlockables for Resident Evil 4 yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Easter eggs

Currently we have no easter eggs for Resident Evil 4 yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Glitches

Currently we have no glitches for Resident Evil 4 yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Guides

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