#video game discussion

[kay-then-i-guess]

Minecraft nerfing villager trading, making it just that much more difficult getting good enchants is actually just hilarious to me. They do not understand how powerful I am.

Give me a rod with Lure III, Luck of the Sea III, and Mending (relatively easy to get after a few rounds of fishing), a youtube video playing in the background, and a few hours of free time. I will get all those enchants through sheer will and patience. You cannot break me like this, for I have the power of FISHING.

[limbobilbo]

Hey guys do you want to be mentioned potentially in a video essay?

Well, just answer the following question.

Please respond only if you’ve played disco elysium.

Also please reblog for a bigger sample size.

[disappointingcabbage]

I was talking about this a bit on twitch but I didn’t want to spoil anything without a warning that you have to like actively click to bypass so I’m posting it here. Anyways here are my thoughts on Still Wakes The Deep.

Love the Scottish setting, it’s so rare for me as an American to see popular media to have characters with accents and cultural backgrounds that aren’t just American and sometimes British.

Also I think the fact that the captions essentially translate some of the Scots terms into more common English is so funny. Like hearing the characters say “aye” and then reading “yeah” in the captions had me losing it laughing

I think the oil rig was a really cool setting and I love the themes of capitalist greed and I feel like the game was practically screaming at its audience to unionize which is awesome lmao

I also love how detailed the graphics were, parts of the game seemed almost like a movie

Personally I think that there should have been a bit more variety with the appearances of the people-turned-monsters (rather than having them all look and act basically the same)

Like I get that all the people got turned into monsters by the same creature but I just think there could be more variety in how each of them looks and behaves now that they’ve been monster-ified, yknow?

Also I wanted to see like a Cthulhu esque being as the One Big Monster that started this

Speaking of the thing that caused the whole plot, I think it should be made more explicitly clear that the monster thing tearing apart the rig was caused by the workers being forced to drill into it despite warning their boss that something was wrong. Like we get the idea that the drill hit something but it’s not made clear what was hit.

Specifically I think seeing the monster or at least part of it rise from the deep at the beginning of the game when the player character falls off the rig would have been so dope

That said, I love that no one has any fucking clue what’s going on. There’s no lore dump about the monster itself or why it seemingly is either made of or lives in/thrives on oil and I appreciate that bc it makes the situation seem more unexpected and organic.

Also I would have loved to see a segment (maybe dlc or secret ending) where you dive into the water in a diving bell and fight the monster somehow

I understand that the Whole Point of the plot is that the player character can’t manage to redeem himself no matter how hard he tries but from a perspective of I Love Spooky Shit rather than a narrative perspective I wanna see more monster and maybe fight it

Also I think there should be a speedrunner Easter egg where if you get to Roy on the roof of accommodation fast enough you can actually save him. Like it would have to happen too fast for a casual player to be able to do it and it would have to not change the ending but it would be cool if a speedrunner could.

[lena-lena1lena]

a good game should fill you with such a deep feeling of cosmic insignifcance, yet utter hostility from the rest of the universe.

[joanathedummy]

I'm thinking of getting Ark: Survival Evolved for my PlayStation 4, but I am also planning on getting Baldur's Gate 3 and a PlayStation 5, so would Ark: Survival Ascended be better?

[4dmc]

I made this vent post quite a long time ago. I still stand by what I've posted, though there are grammar errors AND looking back, I feel that it looks hateful on the og but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Also someone said that they thought I interpreted the og Dante as lacking depth, so I'll clarify now.

I do like DMC. Its oddball blend of gothic supernatural Judeo-Christian themes with a ridiculously cheesy and too powerful for his own good protagonist are always fun and intriguing to try around.

The og Dante, despite all the B-movie Japonized Western Noir shenanigans he has running for, is a man of many interpretations.

I do think Dante has MORE he has going for. Manga after manga of him in it, Dante is shown to have baggage. Kamiya Hideki saying he's "afraid when doing his thing" is nice to know but... I feel like we SHOULD know that by now, right?

To me I think it's not just fear but exhaustion. Perhaps it must be exhaustion. He's killed thousands of demons by now, including his own brother (And Vergil has PLENTY of baggage as well..). And nothing's changed much in his world. That aspect would be nice to explore even further right ..

But it's been 2 decades already, and I feel like despite loads of supplementary media (some are in this vague state of semi-canon? Retroactivity?) about Dante and the characters, there's this distance or gap in between the tone/focus on their stories when we're experiencing them in the games.

Like it's okay to have supplementary media to support the games' on-going narrative..😬.. but I feel like it became the other way around, if that's even what happened.

I also have to say this..as much as I deeply appreciate the DMC fandom's efforts on providing more interpretation on the gaps of the franchise's lore (especially before 5 came out), I can't help feel that Capcom has to really rely on the efforts of the fans when it came to polishing out what were even the events that game didn't provide.

Sure, it's interpretation and lore-diving that has so many of us clamoring like bees to pollen, and it's probably a very lucrative move on their end.

But on criticizing it on how legible it's narrative is structured and the on-going story has gone so far, all I'll say is that I've managed to understand the fandom's collective interpretation and it's trajectories, MORE SO than what Capcom has provided. It's so colorful, and there's at least an understanding of Dante's characterization AND pushes the envelope even further with him when it comes to fanfics, compared to the Too-Safe-Everything-Is-Cool-Again-Nothing-To-Worry-Look-He's-Doing-Wacky-Wahoo-Pizza-Moments-Again!-Isn't-That-What-You-Wanted moments he's always expected to go through..

And now that DMC has Pinnacle Of Combat and an upcoming Netflix Anime (and I'm calling it now, even if it's not from Adi Shankar or the one being teased in the Tudum Drop Trailer, it's still the one that's gonna be made because Capcom has already seen how lucrative enough DMC seems to be for their higher-ups & shareholders and such..), what are they adding and subtracting in the lore now, or is the anime gonna be like Arcane LOL type of adaptation, etc. IDK...

In closing this new mess, I just wanna say that DMC fans deserve a much bolder move on the og as a character.

I remember (quite vaguely, if anybody has any research on this article/artbook, lemme know because I'd read that, I crave for info) how their lead writer Bingo Morihashi has wanted to do something about DMC's story for quite a while now, but Hideaki Itsuno himself advised against such a move because it wouldn't fit the style and expectation about DMC.

If this is true, I'm like ??????? 😨

Bingo Morihashi is a novelist by career. I'm not wondering why so many of the supplementary novels are written AND taken well by the fans because I believe what he has written was always crucial to DMC. However why such skills aren't put in the same vein for the games? The games are the highlight of the franchise! It would be even more lucrative if they had let Bingo Morihashi do his thing (I really want to find this article/written interview..)

Video games today benefit a lot from narrative. It always did but with the tech today, video game screen writing is even more significant today!

I don't blame Itsuno (again if that was true....) because I actually understand because he knows the DMC fans😓 and yes I'm sure his experience with DmC has lent to some decisions from his part.

But imagine the better possibilities with the og Dante. I really think it's been long overdue to push some new boundaries with DMC.

[spyres]

[snake-shifter]

This discourse is mainly On Twitter but I don't post on twitter on principle so you're getting my thoughts here (honestly that's like half of my opinion posts)

But I feel like the people who are complaining about indicators of where to go/what to do in video games (paint of doors or objects for example) are the same people who were complaining about games having an easy mode a couple years back.

By that I mean it feels like there are hard-core video game players who are upset that devs are making room for casual gamers in their games. I obviously can't confirm that these are same people, but as someone who does play on easy mode, and needs those indicators of progression alot of the time, it very much feels the same.

[digitalsatyr23]

I keep thinking about the psychological effect many From Software game fans must have on people playing the games and how it often discourages engaging with many of the items and systems in them. The games are purpose-built to be difficult so you feel a sense of joy in overcoming the challenge, but the devs also give you a million different options on how to overcome that challenge so you can figure out your own strategy. Yet the moment a method is found that is clearly effective, certain FS fans start harping on people using those methods because they see them as OP or a cheapening of the experience.

Like, I'm a HUGE fan of these games and have been playing them for years, but the amount of shitters I've seen in twitch/youtube chats complaining about streamers using bleed or frost or poison is staggering. At the same time, if these same players don't "optimize" their build then they get complaints there too. Like I get wanting to give tips for people struggling because you want them to enjoy the games you enjoyed, but there's a difference between that and dictating how a person should or should not play. I'm sure this happens with other games but it feels so synonymous with the FS game fandom that I can't help but puzzle over why that's the case.

[kay-then-i-guess]

I get the mob vote discourse to a certain extent (I have a post on it), but I genuinely don't understand everyone hating on the new updates. I keep seeing all these videos being like "IS THIS THE END OF MINECRAFT?!?!?" or "MINECRAFT IS BORING NOW!!" and I don't really get it. These "labor of love" games that keep updating constantly are rare, y'know? Most companies would've come up with a Minecraft 7 at this point or paywalls covering updates (*cough cough* EA *cough cough*). The fact that they're still putting all this content into it after all these years is cool. And it clearly isn't dying, I mean, QSMP and Hermitcraft have a MASSIVE fanbase, and if you were to hop onto hypixel you'd still see a bunch of players. And pinterest is full of new builds and stuff all the time.

I feel like the people who are complaining are maybe just in a Minecraft slump? I know that sometimes I just. Don't feel like it. And that's okay, I'll wait for a month or so and then hop back on. But whatever their reason, I feel like putting all that negativity on the devs and the community (especially the people who are still hyped about the new updates and stuff) just really brings the vibe down. I get constructive criticism—that's important and good talks to have—but I feel like right now, people are just complaining. It's borderline toxic fanbase stuff, sometimes.

Anyways remember that above all the point is to have fun!! If you aren't having fun, you can just, y'know, not engage. But if you are having fun, keep at it! Don't let anyone else kill your vibe.

[willowwitchart]

I love the design of the goblin camp. The level design in general is top notch in this game, it's given me a ton of ideas on how to make battlemaps for my games.

Let's say I want to use this staircase for an encounter:

Using theater of the mind, you could describe this to your players as "ahead of you is a crude torch and small set of staircases that loops back to the higher level. The ground is made of old stone. Where the stone has given out, between the stairs, is wet and muddy."

You can maybe throw in that the mud slows you down, or you have to trudge through it when the players move forward, but it sets the stage for the rest of the encounter. It could be that the torch was lit, and now a goblin is coming by and they need to extinguish the flame so they aren't seen. Maybe a bunch of goblins are chasing them, so they have to choose between getting in the rough terrain, which would now be drawn on a battlemap, or risk getting knocked prone by jumping the ledge (potential athletics or acrobatics check).

Overall, the game is so well crafted and lovingly made that it's inspiring me to actually play DnD again. It bridges that gap between tabletop and video game so well without many of the drawbacks of it. DnD and BG3 are still wildly different systems and play as their respective medium, but it's such a good marriage of the mediums

[theghostslim]

I’ve always liked the idea of “circus” or “funhouse” being the synonym in some games for “weird.”

[unionizedwizard]

the funniest thing about ffxiv is that there is absolutely no way to get Too Deep or Too Erudite about it. like i loved to overthink about warcraft lore and stuff but i always knew it was tongue-in-cheek at BEST because they can't fucking write to save their lives, but the delightful thing about ffxiv is that it's objectively the correct and intended thing to do to Fully Understand the deeper motivations of (checks notes) anime catgirls. they're really like. yeah you should take some time in between slutty glam-making to painstakingly translate every single ancient greek name in the game because they create a subtle foreshadowing tapestry that directly quotes aristotle in the original greek. i dont know to which extent my tinfoil hat theory was actually meant to be understood as such under close scrutiny or if i'm completely off my rocker but it WORKS. in any case. it really DOES work. is the thing

[undertalethingems]

Unexpected Guests Chapter 10, Act Two: Page 6

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Out of sight doesn't mean out of mind.... Gaster won't let anything interfere with his goal.

Look for the next update on Nov. 16th!