#we had a huge bossfight with him but he got everything he wanted and gave us the genesis fragment anyway

[morgenstern16]

me when cao lee explains that gaolang, a new Super Strong guy who we haven't met before this game, is actually his long lost brother and that's why he should be the head of the brand new lee family, which was actually destroyed years ago or something:

[legionofpotatoes]

we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

[pluvillion]

this morning, i dreamt about Taylor Swift crying.

it’s not a straightforward dream like i slept and then boom she’s there, it started out as a game-like sequence taking place inside of a castle.

supposedly, my objective was to collect a certain amount of undisclosed “something” (i legit don’t know what it was) via “souls” (in a weird-looking human form) scattered all around the castle. i’m not sure if it was a horror game considering how sunny the outside was to the inside and how clean the interior was, but i had a feeling that there will be grotesque beings and “bossfights” in some innocent-looking rooms the souls are directing me to. think of it as Resident Evil but weirdly for kids.

however, there’s someone that will catch me if i happened to lingering outside of the “playing area” and will punish me for not “doing my job” which will result in a game-over (literal death).

flash-forward to a few minutes later, i was walking in the Great Hall as i looked for any leverages that could pull myself up with to the inner bailey. luckily there was one platform with items used commonly in construction just at the southern-west part of the gigantic area. i made no noise approaching it.

successfully climbing up the platforms and through the window without making any ruckus, i found myself facing the ocean and to the humongus backyard of flowers and paths leading to the beach. the land slopes downwards as well so you can’t see what’s behind it — even from the highest vantage point of the castle. the only way for you to see it is if you go down there yourself.

it really was a sunny day, and from the looks of it, i haven’t seen the outside for a long time (in that dream). since i knew there wouldn’t be anyone or anything scouting the area, i walked to my left and towards the tower located at the corner of the Great Hall opposite to the small window i came out of.

midway through walking, someone popped out very silently which made me almost shout. i could not make out their face for the life of me, but they were wearing all-white clothes. i looked down to look at their shoes, but i noticed i was also wearing all-white. it was at that moment when my brain assumed we’re in “The Promise Neverland”. the confusion towards my objective earlier turned into fear because knowing the anime, shit happens when shit hits the fan.

the person informed me that we had to rescue someone named “Daniel” locked in a room from the courtyard and is bound to get killed in the next hour so we had no time to waste. i asked why he was locked in the first place, turns out he tried doing the same thing i did but got caught and is now facing an extreme punishment.

i didn’t insist. when they ran to the tower, i followed suit. i mean, it could’ve been ME.

flash-forward again, and we’re now standing on the outer bailey overlooking the front courtyard with the outer court just right behind us. the courtyard was fully visible and i could see a “soul” walking inside. the person told me to wait here as i watched them run inside as fast as they could.

the hid behind tables, sneaked around chairs, and when they were almost near Daniel’s door, they threw a distraction right across the room that wasn’t visible from the outer bailey.

they ran to the door to unlock it (almost kicking it) and there he was, Daniel. the duo ran back up to the outer bailey as fast as they could but the soul caught them just as they crossed the tables so by the time we reformed, we immediately ran to the backyard through the inner bailey.

after learning how to run in my dreams, i used that to my advantage to run without lagging behind and jumped over the ledge down to the turf below. without wasting any second looking back, we ran further into the backyard and down the slope where no one from the castle can see us. we then crouched behind the Clematis flowers (at least they looked like it) to make sure we’re completely hidden.

there was food and water. apparently the person was here before and waited so they can rescue both me and Daniel.

we planned on waiting until the sun’s out so we can exit the premises via the beach, but we still had to plan on being completely hidden in the event where they start searching the backyards later in the day.

as i was catching my breath after the long run from outside the huge castle, i saw a light-haired figure walking from afar.

it was her.

it was Taylor Swift.

she was wearing a Kate Spade New York Carolyn dress — the same outfit she wore when she attended the KIIS FM’s Jingle Ball back in 2012, and slung around her left shoulder was a Coach Classic Court Bag. she was also wearing a pair of rounded glasses she also wore in the You Belong With Me MV partnered with a red lipstick that gave her this really casual and friendly aura.

amongst all that, she was talking through someone on the phone (literally a phone like the ones we use). i could tell it wasn’t a good talk because she was very pensive.

since i couldn’t trust anyone (not even Taylor herself), i tried my best to hide underneath the blue bench as she approached and sat on the same bench Daniel was seated. i knew she saw me, but she didn’t even acknowledge the fact that i was squeezed under the low bench.

she then sung “Love Story” in a whispered manner as she hugged Daniel.

i left the enclosed space and raised an eyebrow. sure enough, when the sun hit her face at the right angle, her eyes glistened — she was crying.

out of all the people i could’ve seen crying, it had to be Taylor Swift; the strongest and the most unbothered woman I’ve ever known despite people dragging her down for literally breathing. of course, i was concerned, surprised, and amused that she was at her most vulnerable state in the area which we were trying to escape from because we’ll be dead if we got caught.

regardless of that, i approached her and asked what was wrong.

she looked at me straight in the eyes and smiled despite her reddening face and wet cheeks. she then told us the story.

unfortunately, everything was gibberish. i can only picture her walking in her house, her boyfriend getting mad at her, him slamming the door shut, and her crying in her bedroom.

once she was done talking, i immediately wrapped my arms around her and whispered “I’m sorry”. that was enough to put her into sobbing. Daniel and the other person (i still can’t see their face) stood there with Daniel seemingly wiping his eye with his sleeve.

after making sure she let it all out, i pulled away and smiled at Taylor who was now wiping her tears. she asked us if we wanted to leave the castle for good and live a new life and the three of us nodded simultaneously. it made me her giggle.

she gestured us to hold her hands and we then walked towards the path to the beach. knowing that Taylor’s feeling okay, the sunny day became even brighter, and before we knew it, the beach disappeared, and so did the backyard and the castle.

the scene shifted within a blink and i almost could not believe where we were.

New York City.

we were still holding Taylor’s hands (the person was holding Daniel’s) as she welcomed us to the location. i was still trying to gather the surroundings because we were in Times Square, but i swear the fact that the buildings were towering over me was enough to give me mixed emotions.

she told us she could stay in her penthouse, but as soon as we stepped forward, that’s when i woke up.

without second thought i immediately stood up, grabbed my phone, and started writing despite still being dizzy after waking up. it’s 7:25 am when i started writing this, it is now 9:45 am. i made sure i get all the details right because this is surely one of the dreams that i won’t forget.