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the-bitter-ocean · 5 months ago

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oceaaaannn hiii! let's go with 3, 5, and 15 for the isat ask game c:

(MAJOR A6SE / 2HATS SPOILERS + FULL GAME SPOILERS AHOY) Thank you for the questions @dekupalace ! Since I’m going to be talking more in depth about the game for one of these questions I’m going to put my responses under a read more:

3- favorite soundtrack?

Oh god that’s such a hard question the whole game has certified bangers. The musicians at Studio Thumpy Puppy were not messing around or pulling any punches. The soundtrack of the game elevates literally every emotional beat. If I was forced to choose only one song out of the soundtrack my favorite track in the whole game has to be “How Can You Help Me, Stardust?” aka the theme that plays when you fight Loop at the Favor tree during act six. Hearing that for the first time while getting the full context of loop’s backstory made me go crazy. It was so fucking emotional and well done. That and it’s just objectively a super intense high energy song that makes me wanna dance around. If anyone deserves the coolest fight theme in the game, it’s Loop.

5- favorite optional event?

Ooh this is also a hard one! I adore a lot of the optional story events because each of them really shed light on Siffrin’s mental state /characterization, as well as gives depth to other aspects like the other character of the world building as a whole which strengthens the themes of the story. Aside from the obvious choice (2Hats Ending/ Act six loop encounter) I think my favorite optional event would have to be the “Who Was Phone” achievement (Change God event). There’s something so fascinating about learning about the Change God. Someone who clearly adores their certified little guy (Mirabelle) and is willing to offer words of kindness and assurance in her identity even if it knows she won’t remember in one instance..and then in the very same breath tell Siffrin that they enjoy watching Siffrin in the timeloop torment nexus because they’re curious to see how they change in a situation where everything is forced to stagnate. It was so genuinely fucked. I will think about it always forever.

15- anything you’d change about the game? be it game mechanics, a new feature, a change in plot, etc

Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the game both in story and gameplay actually. I think Adrienne did a good job writing and expanding on the characters and story that was set up in the prologue. The quality of life in terms of gameplay got improved since the previous game as well ( those who played the prologue can attest to this) . The fact that it was a in universe story reason as to why makes it all the more satisfying (if you want to know what I mean by that please read my mutuals @felikatze analysis about it here.)

I just am happy that Siffrin got to be happy in the end and stay with their family, to be able to talk things out and escape the loops. I know some people didn’t like that or expected a more darker/sadder ending or wanted the gameplay to be more challenging … my response to that is Literally Just Play Start Again: A Prologue. To me it would be extremely reductive to have Siffrin just suffer with no reprieve or escape from the loops (because that’s just a repeat of what happened in its predecessor) or have the group just split off from each other immediately after everything happened. It would have been extremely unsatisfying and ultimately missing the point of the themes of the game as a whole gonna be real lol.

The only things I’d maybe change or add is like it would’ve been cute to see Euphrasie and Claude be together/ reunite on screen in act 6. They should kiss. Lol. (That and just I would’ve personally loved to see Euphrasie in canon expanded on a little more but that’s not necessarily needed she serves her purpose in the narrative. I just like analyzing her and giving her more depth and I like when others do too, but that’s what fanart/ fics and aus are for so I’m not fussed.)

I don’t mind that the game is sort of open ended and doesn’t answer all the questions. I think that gives artists, fanfic writers, Au makers and people who like to analyze the game more freedom to come up with their own interpretations for things that happened in pre canon and post canon which to me is more interesting. I know Loop disappearing at the end of the game in both endings is sad/ bittersweet but I wouldn’t necessarily change the way that was structured either. I like that their fate was ambiguous because it leads the viewer to come up with their own theories as to where they went. ( personally I love seeing stuff where loop gets to travel on their own and form a new life and identity outside of the loops and learn to heal, as well as post game getting to meet back up with the party and learn to navigate this new life/ change one step at a time. )

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lawleon · 1 month ago

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Some thoughts on Echoes of Wisdom

Recently finished playing Echoes of Wisdom and I felt like writing down my thoughts about the game and the "state" of the franchise as a whole. Spoilers (Story, Puzzle, Items) under the expand.

[Clear file, the only thing I was missing was the Level 3 Bombs.]

I'll just say up top, EoW was a great Zelda game. I'm glad Nintendo was finally willing to make Zelda the playable character. I think the strongest positive that came of the protagonist swap was the mix-up on the general narrative. Having actual connections to the King, Impa, the retainers, soldiers, and citizens of Hyrule Castle Town was enjoyable. These are the NPCs that are most often in peril alongside the princess generally to raise the narrative stakes. A decent job was done incorporating them into the story and weaving them into a few side quests once you do rescue them. It's also fun to speak with NPCs who have interacted with Link prior to the events of the story and hear them speak about the swordsman who traveled around the villages clearing out monsters and helping the townsfolk. Which is a fun contrast with how NPCs talk about how great and wonderful a princess Zelda is when you play as Link in the other games.

The gameplay difference from the protagonist swap takes the form of the Echoes mechanic. After encountering an item or defeating an enemy you can learn it's/their echo and summon those echoes to assist you in puzzling or combat. There are a lot of echoes to learn, somewhere around 130 total with varying degrees of usefulness. If you've played BotW or TotK you can see some UI similarities in the images above. Both types of echo selection UI have their uses in game and learning when to use each type will make for a better experience. Technically, it's more about avoiding the annoyances with each UI type. The catalog menu is great for seeing a bunch of stuff all at once and finding a new echo or an echo you haven't used in a while, but you'll never be able to muscle memory anywhere since the order of the catalog is always changing as you pick up new echoes. The quick swap is great for when you're using the same 5 or 6 NPC/Items to solve a series of like puzzles or combat encounters, but locating an echo for a new puzzle or enemy type is incredibly cumbersome. It's best to use both UIs, you just need to learn when the situation calls for it. EoW also features a "Link mode" for Zelda called Swordfighter Form. You can only be in Swordfighter form for a limited time and it can be difficult to regain meter if you're not in the Still World or have plenty of Smoothies. Swordfighter form is powerful, incredibly so if you level it up, but the game does a good job of gating how much of it you have throughout the story until the actual endgame, so you still do need to mostly rely on the Echoes mechanic throughout the main dungeons. I think the biggest problem with the Echoes mechanic has more to do with the sheer volume of items at your disposal. There are a few puzzles that you'll encounter than can be difficult to solve due to how some echoes will interact (or won't interact) with the environment. You might have 3 different ideas and try out 15 different echoes to implement those ideas, but they just don't work. Then you try the flying tile out of frustration and surprise, it works underwater. [Always try the flying tile.] These moments are few and far between, but they can be incredibly frustrating for someone who is playing blind.

There are a handful of mini-games and activities to dive into in EoW, Acorn Gathering, Mango Rush, Slumber Training, and Flag Racing. Be wary of two of these for two different reasons. Flag Racing is a horseback race where you run around and touch the flags on the course. There are three courses with a clear time and a mastery time each. Mastery time will give better rewards, but they can be quite difficult. I think the Short and Long course mastery times were the most frustrating part of this game for me. Any error. on the short course especially, will cost you the clear time. There is no quick retry and each try costs 10 Rupees each, make sure to come with a decent amount of money. Slumber Training is a series of timed enemy gauntlets. Each dungeon you clear will add more courses to the mini-game. The game generally does a good job of limiting your access to Swordfighter form, however completely clearing this mini-game will reward you with three "time extension" accessories for swordfighter form that can be worn simultaneously, greatly extending the time you can use it. Just be careful as these accessories in conjunction can trivialize pretty much any late game combat encounter.

My final honest thoughts can be summed up as "Damn, it sure is nice to play a new traditional Zelda game for the first time in over a decade." Yeah, that's how long it's been. A Link Between Worlds was November 13th 2013. (I'm not counting Tri Force Heroes since it had a heavy focus on multi-player.) I finished BotW with all 120 Spirit Orbs, but couldn't stomach more than 10 hours of TotK. I found myself occasionally thinking about TotK and why I disliked it as much as I did, I was honestly afraid that the future of Zelda games was going to be 6 to 7 year stretches between releases for big open world games that feel wide, but are miserably shallow. Imo, TotK was a sloppy asset flip. A copy that didn't spend any time thinking about why BotW made the choices that it did. TotK stole BotW story presentation, but didn't think about why it worked in BotW. TotK stole BotW's NPC and then overwrote their memories. TotK stole BotW's weapon durability for no reason, stole it's horses for no reason, stole it's paraglider for no reason, stole it's garbage UI for no reason, stole it's shrines and progression for no reason. TotK's heavy emphasis on what I can only describe as manipulating 3D objects on a 2D screen felt like a chore to me. When I attempt to solve a puzzle I want to be able to instantly try my solution. I want to be able to receive that feedback on the screen. Did I do it right? Was I close to the solution? Should I try that again from a different spot, maybe different order? I don't want to be dropped into a box and given a bunch or car parts. There's no puzzle there, just a waste of 2~5 minutes building a janky vehicle so I can attempt a solution. Echoes of Wisdom feels like someone over there is trying. They're trying to claw back so much of what was lost in the big jump from 3DS to the Switch. They're attempting to keep the ideas that did work and use them with intent rather than just jangling keys. I genuinely hope this game sells well, not just because it's more traditional, not just because playable Zelda. I hope it performs well because I want to see more Zelda games. I don't want 7 year gaps between big shallow sandboxes that just steal proper nouns while abandoning the gameplay that made the series what it is.

Maybe next time there will be dungeon items and a dual narrative where you can play as both Zelda and Link. Guess that'll be a dream for another time. Good luck Echoes of Wisdom.

#echoes of wisdom #legend of zelda #game review #long post

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yeah-yeah-beebiss-1 · 2 years ago

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would you recommend scarlet & violet to someone who really didn’t like sword & shield? (ignoring the obvious performance issues)

Depends on what you disliked about it.

-The fairly low general difficulty is still present, although the nonlinear structure means you can choose between “standard modern Pokémon difficulty curve the whole way through” or “challenging for half the game and then steamrolling through the half you’re overleved for.” People have already figured out an order to do everything in that will give you a fairly typical Pokémon level curve, but anyone going in blind is going to have a weird mix of all-or-nothing difficulty.

-Story is a bit more present than SwSh, although it isn’t on the level of SM or BW. You’ve got 18 objectives divided into three story arcs (typical gym-challenge routine, dealing with school delinquents, learning about the legendary Pokémon) that you have to complete to reach the climax.

-The school setting feels barely relevant, for better or worse. They send you out into the world very early on and while you can go back to take classes (cutscenes likely intended to teach newcomers basic gameplay mechanics), I haven’t seen any real benefit to doing so yet. The history classes offer interesting bits of lore, but that’s about it.

-Linear routes are gone, instead you effectively have one gargantuan Wild Area.

-No HMs. You can use (the equivalent of) Fly to landmarks you’ve already visited immediately, and doing the titan quests unlocks new movement options for Ko/Miraidon (sprinting, swimming, higher jumps, climbing, and gliding).

-Trainer battles out in the field are completely optional, you have to talk to them to initiate a battle. This sounds heretical, but I feel like it’s a wise decision in light of the open world - it would be a massive pain in the ass to be trying to run to a destination only to get interrupted by a trainer you missed whose whole team is now 15 levels lower than yours so you have to mindlessly mash A for two minutes to get moving again.

-Terastal is an improvement over Dynamax, it actually has meaningful strategic implications without being a “BECOME THE FUCKING STRONG” button.

-I’m enjoying the raids a bit more than SwSh’s, they use a weird Final Fantasy-type ATB system for a faster pace rather than just repeatedly bashing at barriers (and the raid theme is a banger).

-Towns/cities feel more barebones because you can only enter 2-3 buildings per town (gyms and sandwich shops, nearly everything else is either a menu you interact with or just a facade).

-Breeding is in fact still present, but there’s no daycare - instead, you set up a picnic and idle and compatible pairs of Pokémon will just randomly spawn eggs for you. The other picnic features are making sandwiches (which give “make X-type Pokémon spawn more frequently for Y minutes”-type buffs), and a clone of SM’s washing mode.

-Can’t comment on online/multiplayer aspects due to lmao pirated copy, but if it chugs this much in single player, I’m not optimistic.

-I know you already said “aside from the performance issues,” but let me reiterate that you can make Ko/Miraidon backwards-long-jump up cliffs like it’s a Super Mario 64 speedrun. It’s very silly.

In general, I feel like they could’ve had something really special on their hands if they’d given it another year or two in the oven, and there are certainly moments where that specialness shines through. But then you find another “city” that’s effectively a bunch of facades and a gym, or the framerate drops, or you have to deal with the clunky-ass minimap and you’re reminded of how half-baked it all feels. If you like Pokémon, have a high tolerance for jank, and can find a copy on sale, you’ll have a solid time with it. But I can’t in good conscience recommend people drop $60 on it.

#anonymous #customer support

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linuxgamenews · 2 days ago

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Record and Share Your Gameplay: Steam Game Recording

Steam Game Recording for Linux and Steam Deck now officially lets you create and share your gameplay with Windows PC players. Thanks to the talented developers at Valve for this game-changing feature. Which also happens to have a Steam page. Steam Game Recording has officially levelled up from Beta to full release on Linux and Steam Deck, as well as Windows PC. Whether you're all about sharing those “did that really just happen?” moments or capturing your best moves. Steam has just made it way easier to record, save, and share all your gameplay highlights. Thanks to the smart minds at Valve, now we’ve got a simple yet powerful tool that takes care of recording while we game – so no more “ugh, I missed the clip” situations. Just make sure to Check for Updates in your client and you will see the option in Settings.

Game Recording is now out of beta and available for everyone! Learn more here: https://t.co/H5z6Reykmx pic.twitter.com/eytE9dOckQ

— Steam (@Steam) November 6, 2024

Never Miss a Moment with Steam Background Game Recording on Linux

Steam’s new Background Recording feature is like having a shadow that saves your gameplay on the go. You set how long you want it to record and it’ll automatically keep the last chunk of your game, so your drive doesn’t fill up, and you don’t have to stress about starting or stopping the recording manually. Just play, and when something epic happens, you know it’s saved! There’s also an On-Demand mode if you want to go old-school and control when it starts and stops.

Find the Good Stuff with the Steam Timeline and Event Markers

Ever wished you could jump right back to a key moment without hunting for it in a long recording? The Steam Game Recording Timeline lets you do just that on Linux! As you play, you’ll see event markers that highlight important in-game moments, achievements, or even screenshots. You can drop your own markers, too – so if you pull off an awesome move, just mark it, and it’s easy to find later. Plus, in games with special timeline support, the game itself can automatically add markers when key events happen. Think of it as a “smart timeline” that lets you get right to the action.

Replay Moments Anytime – Jump Back and See What Happened

Say you’re in the middle of a battle and want to check what went wrong when your hero took a hit, or maybe you missed a line from an NPC. With Steam’s replay feature, you can easily jump back and see the action on Linux with Steam Game Recording. It’s like a mini instant replay right in your game overlay, perfect for checking out those details you may have missed on the first go.

Clip It – Only Save the Best Bits Steam Game Recording for Linux

Not every second of gameplay is worth saving – and that’s where clips come in. With Steam’s new clipping tool, you can save only the parts you want. Trim out the downtime, keep only the epic moments, and create short clips that show off the highlights. Steam’s Recordings & Screenshots interface has been completely redesigned to make clipping super easy. So your favorite moments are just a few clicks away.

Share Your Clips with Ease

What’s the point of an epic moment if you can’t share it, right? Steam has made it very easy to send Linux game clips you record to friends or post them online. With just one click, you can share your clips through Steam chat, on social media. Or even send them from your Steam Deck to a Windows PC or mobile device. And if you’re on Steam Deck, there’s a new Save / Share menu you can pull up. During or after gameplay to quickly send clips wherever you want. Steam’s making it easier than ever to show off your gaming skills.

The New Timeline, Markers, and Highlight Viewer

Steam for Linux now has a Timeline view to help you navigate game recordings. As you play, markers pop up to capture achievements, events, or whatever you think is cool – and these markers make it a breeze to find key moments later. Timeline-enhanced games even create automatic markers, so you can see when important stuff happens as you play. You can also add your own personal markers, or let the game drop markers on the timeline when major events go down. For players who love reviewing their best moments, the new Highlight Viewer is your friend. With playback controls and a “Jump to Next Event” button. It’s easy to skip between highlights and replay the good stuff.

One Linux Manager for All Your Steam Game Recordings

The updated Steam Recordings & Screenshots Manager gives you one spot to keep track of everything you’ve captured from your Linux game. For timeline-supported games, this is where things get good – Steam adds game-specific tags and other details to your Linux recordings. Helping you organize and find your footage fast. So now all your moments – wins, fails, and everything in between – are easy to save, search, and replay.

Save, Share, and Export Your Clips Anywhere

Steam has made sure you can send your clips wherever you need them. You can save footage as an MP4 file or export it directly from your Steam Deck or PC. Send clips straight to your mobile device via QR code or even create a temporary link to share with Windows PC friends. Plus, with one-click export options, you can quickly get your footage ready for social media or save it for later. Steam’s recording setup is built to work smoothly, so you’re always a step away from sharing with the world.

Choose Your Recording Mode in Steam and Keep Gaming

Steam has options for every game recording style on Linux. There’s a manual push-button start and stop method if you prefer to control it yourself. Or, for those of us who just forget to press record, Background Recording has your back. It’s capturing your game in the background, so you never miss a moment. You can even set specific recording durations and quality for each game. Or go with an infinite recording mode if you’re in for a long session. And when that perfect moment happens, a quick hotkey makes it easy to capture. The Steam community has also developed open-source tools for Linux related to game recording and integration with the client. For instance, the steam-clip-exporter is a command-line tool designed to export your clips. So, whether you’re on Steam Deck or Linux, even a Windows PC, this new feature is here to make saving and sharing gameplay easier than ever. Now there’s no reason to let any epic moment slip by! Check out the Steam page.

#steam game recording #linux #gameplay #steam deck #steam #windows #pc #gaming news

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gameinfoxtbr · 18 days ago

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Soul Strike News

🎮 Soul Strike has just appeared in the gaming community relatively recently, so here we present the latest information regarding the release, news, and improvements of this exciting game. First-timers and old-timers have much to learn in the game which makes it quite interesting. The newest updates are to offer new content, new techniques, and especially a game experience as exciting as never before! 🎮⚔️

GameInfoX

Soul Strike Damage Multiplayer

If you are ready to be thrilled, try playing Soul Strike – a multiplayer action game right now! This dynamic RPG provides an opportunity to become allies and release massive amounts of damage to enemies. Your character can have his/her DPS globally increased by various builds, specific gears, and also by team play. To increase efficiency it is the best thing to coordinate with one's team or subordinates and to work with the abilities that are opposite to the other person's abilities. Except if you play a DPS carry or a support class, knowing about your class and the strengths that it boasts will help a lot. What better opportunity could there be for one to take a command position on the battlefield? Check it out here: Currently, the game called Soul Strike is available in Google Play, so get it and become part of the battles!

Soul Strike Discord

GameInfoX Welcome to the Soul Strike discord server! Get in touch with fans of the game and improve your gameplay experience! Enjoy and talk about the game, cooperate on multi-battle fields and exchange tips about character build. Indeed, it is one of the best places on earth to share experiences and to know the recent information About The Game Soul Strike. Don't miss out on the action! Check out a message from one of our members and prepare to bring your game up a notch. Ready to dive in? Check out the game here: Soul Strike on Google Play. Soul Strike com2us Of particular interest in the field of mobile games is Soul Strike developed by Com2uS projecting it as an action RPG that will cause audiences’ knees to tremble. Thanks to stunning visuals and intense flow this game encourages players to explore exciting journeys connected with battle and exciting story. Gameplay and Mechanics With its strategic turn-based system married to its real-time cinematic actions that control devastating individual attacks and combo strings, Soul Strike is at its heart. Even with this system in place, each character has special skills to aid in gameplay variety and to allow for the variation of team archetypes. Whether you are a fan of the damage per second or timing when to issue heals, you won’t feel bored with the game since there are many possible ways for elaborate strategies. Multiplayer Experience There also exists a feature of multiplayer mode, which is one of the most exciting about Soul Strike. You can play it with friends and other players as well creating cooperation to complete more complex missions and defeat powerful bosses. It helps to maintain such an active and tight-knit community as they brainstorm over strategic cooperation and even share online tips. Visuals and Design The game has appealing graphics where the characters themselves, as well as the environment shared in the game eye appealing enough to attract players to the fantasy world game. It adds a lot of depth, every fight is Grand, and I mean the scale of it is made much grander with such details. Community Engagement As for the personality, Com2uS aims to foster an active players’ society. A frequent update feed, events, and an active social media presence make the players active and well-informed. The developers base their game around the player’s preference, which means that the game is constantly changing according to the players’ wants. Conclusion Soul Strike is a perfect action RPG that will appeal to all lovers of exciting games with beautiful graphics and thought-through multiplayer. Are you an expert in gaming or just a beginner? We are expecting you to unleash your talents and follow the walk-through! Ready to join the battle? Get it now and try it yourself – it’s an incredibly exciting piece of software! 🚀 What is Soul Strike? Soul Strike is a rapidly developing action-oriented strategy game where the players construct their armies, improve their abilities, and fight with immortal heroes. This paying game is created under Com2uS Holdings which will let the players have some truly hardcore multiplayer modes that will be updated with content, events, and game modes regularly. 🔥

GameInfoX For more specifics on how to get deeper into the game and to obtain an easily understandable guide on how to play the game effectively and win, please go to this link Soul Strike Guide.” It offers all the essential and complex approaches you could use to have a better chance against your rivals. 🆕 Latest Updates in Soul Strike These changes include the recent update Soul Strike which added some large features that can overall improve the gameplay. Here’s a breakdown of what’s new: - New Heroes: Many new characters have been added to the heroes list with some of the skills and backgrounds. These heroes introduce new ideas to the fight and that’s why each fight feels more unique. ⚔️💣 - Improved Matchmaking: Finally, the players will be matched against other players of equal or similar skill, which means that opponents will be equal to fight with each other. The new matchmaking system incorporates the performance of the players maximally to make the game much more exhilarating. - New Game Modes: The update has introduced new game modes whereby a player can play through scenarios, which challenge his/her ability. ALWAYS some new experience to be comfortable with no matter if the task set is survival or constructing a new team to battle it out. - Limited-Time Events: There are current events ongoing that will give subscribers unique bonuses such as heroes and equipment. Always wanted that extra edge, well you now have no excuse for these limited-time-only promotions!

GameInfoX To get an edge on your rivals, be certain to do the new “Soul Strike” Codes for prizes in the game. These codes give lucky items like; gems, stamina, and very special heroes for free! ⚡ Why Players Are Loving Soul Strike In Soul Strike, you are in for the best because the game is for everyone, be it the small gamer or the great strategist. Here are some reasons why players can't get enough of it: - Stunning Visuals: The game is equipped with stunning graphics and skillfully drawn characters or effects and even sceneries. Even though every hero has his own designs, every fight looks epic. - Strategic Depth: This is quite different from most other mobile games because it needs one to learn how different heroes work, their abilities, and how to manage resources properly. The decisions we make are all primary, which makes the whole experience very fun. - Community and Collaboration: The game is very social, during, and after the battles players can be in alliance with other players, they can fight cooperatively and use speech to discuss the next strategy. The developers are also quite involved; they tend to be involved in their official Soul Strike Facebook page frequently. - Regular Updates: The developers have not left the game without updates and cool events that refresh the gameplay. As a result, the amount of new content is virtually endless, or at least players are never left wanting for content for too long.

GameInfoX If you desire to read more about the brain behind this gem of a game, the reader can visit the official ‘Soul Strike Developer page and see the creator’s work and philosophy behind ‘Soul Strike’. 🏆 Soul Strike Tier List

GameInfoX Searching for the best characters to end up victorious on the battlefield? Here is our Soul Strike Tier List of all the heroes with clear power, skills, and all-around effectiveness in the battle for the latest “Soul Strike”. Here are the current top-tier heroes you should aim to recruit: - Hero A: A class that can very much keep its opponents down with a high amount of damage and control over the AoE. - Hero B: Famous for strong defense and buff abilities that are capable of changing the outcome of the fight. - Hero C: A global hero, notably versatile in a team fight, versed in both off-push and wave control. These heroes are a must-have if you want to jump to the next level and firmly establish yourself as the ruler of the game! 🛠️ Tips for New Players If you’re just starting out in Soul Strike, here are a few tips to help you get up to speed: - Master the Basics: The first step towards this is getting acquainted with the control mechanism and the workings of the interface. This is well covered in the mechanics of the game in the tutorial, but don’t be afraid to try out your approaches! - Focus on Resource Management: In the game gold skeleton, gems, and stamina are very essential factors in the game. They must be used wisely at the initial stage of your business more so when you are still establishing yourself. - Build Balanced Teams: I also think it correct to assume that a good team must have attack, defense, and support Heroes. For the effectiveness of any formation, it is necessary to pay attention to the abilities of heroes and form a composition with a bias. To gain further insight into the actual game, go to the About the “Soul Strike” page for more information. 🎯 Frequently Asked Questions Q1: Which markets can I download Soul Strike on?A: Soul Strike can be downloaded for playing on Android and on devices that use iOS. You can download it from the available store, Google Play store here.Q2: How to use the codes in Soul Strike?A: To redeem “Soul Strike Codes you can simply go to the settings menu of the game and enter the code at the “Redeem” option.Q3: Are there in-game purchases?A: Yes, for additional Tetra currency you can purchase hero packs, equipment/gear avatars/tokens, and other in-game items. However, due to the free-to-play business model, everyone can advance through the game without risking money.Q4: By what name is known Soul Strike’s developer?A: The game is made by the pioneer firm Com2uS Holdings which is a well-known company in the mobile gaming sector. , you can read more about them here.Q5: Kurtz asked the question, “What is the best tactic to win a battle?”A: The tell is to assemble a strong, balanced team and alternate managing of resources and the general strategy according to the competitors. Read more for tips on which heroes to pick in the “Soul Strike” Tier List.Q6: How often does Soul Strike get updated?A: Most of the time the developers offer new heroes, events, or game modes enhancing the game and offering something new. Ready to join the battle? Please visit the official Soul Strike Facebook page for more current news, event information, and community forums. Word Count: 1050 Read the full article

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zachsgamejournal · 2 years ago

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PLAYING: Kena: Bridge of Spirits

I love this game. It's so pretty! I'm not super engaged with the plot, but environmental art gives the game a strong personality.

Trying to think where we left off...I think I saved the older brother...Taro? Well..."saved" as in we helped him pass to the other side cause...he's dead.

So that opens up another section of the village. While the previous part of the village had a lot of tight alleyways, this area is much more open and includes some farm land. I think there's a market area (mostly closed off to me at the moment) and it leads to a large building...that I forgo what it was. Very pretty though!

Inside the building we meet a new lady that's concerned about a blacksmith friend, I guess. She introduces us to a sticky grenade that can be used offensively and also to solve interesting puzzles. I'm getting Soul Reaver vibes in this area. This then opens us to a huge field but we're having a hallucination of fires and disaster. Our new spirit friend, (checks google) Adira, is concerned about what the blacksmith has done.

The hallucination fades and we see the desolation of Smaug...er, I mean the black smith. Apparently she ravaged the area to accomplish something. Later, we learn that they were experimenting with magic stuff from the mountain and or trees to build new technologies. But it started to fade and cracked the mountain. That's when the plague set in and they couldn't grow crops. Adira set off to find food and never returned. The black smith lady went a bit obsessive and ravaged the land to build a giant lighthouse to guide Adira home. But everyone died.

This area made me feel like I was in World of Warcraft, as it was a very open hilly farm field with barns and such. It was interesting, cause you're free to move any and not trapped into pathways like in the earlier section. Maybe they were trying to train and guild the player early on and now created an open level? I think, maybe, I would have preferred this open design earlier on. I also grew up on Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, and Jak and Daxter--I'm used to the open level concept.

One thing it did was inspire me to explore more. In the earlier sections, when it was very narrow and strict, I would see stats of collectables I missed and I just shrugged it off. But in this open area, I combed every inch of it, finding chests and rots all over the place. I was less compelled to just move through the story. I think that's what open environments do, they invite exploration.

No real updates on the gameplay--it's a game that has you hit enemies and jump on stuff. But it's sooooo pretty. And the environments are well designed. Too well designed honestly, ha. In a real forest, there's a lot of sameness and blandness. That's why you get lost. Most trees look the same. Mose Squirrels look the same. Rocks are all unique but hardly iconic, on average. So when you walk through Kena and see that every area is majestically designed, it loses it's realism. This isn't a complaint, just an observation.

Like in the Elder Scrolls games, there's lots of boring forests, but then you occasionally come to a really unique and pretty section. That becomes a landmark for positioning, but also acts as a visual reward for exploring the "mundane". But everything is pretty in Kena, so everything is a landmark. Once again, not a complaint. I love hiking through the mundane forests. And if you stop to really observe the spot your in, you can find unique beauty that can make a plain spot exciting. I love nature, and I love the stylized representation of nature Kena.

So I looked up a guide, to track my progress, and it broke up sections into Taro's Love, Taro's Fear, and Heart--then did the same for the other major spirits I have to help (there's 3--the magic number). I thought that was interesting and is giving me more depth to the story. While the story probably would work as a feature length film, as a game the cinematics are a little too spread out. Kena isn't really developing bonds with the characters. They're just instantly friends and work together. I'm not even sure what Kena wants besides to visit the mountain. I think it's the lack of clear, emotional goals of Kena that make it hard to care about the obstacles. The cutscenes are beautiful, but I'm not feeling rewarded or enlightened like I do in other action adventures games. And there's often so much gameplay between story updates, that I've lost track of why I care about things.

I think the big story moments just aren't impactful enough for me. And there's little personality shared in between. Take Uncharted 1--we're getting Drake's commentary on the things he finds and the situations he gets into. So even without there being another character, we get a lot of Drake's personality--which is fun and wisecracking. I like Kena, but where's the commentary? Where's the personality? Drake will shout frustrations at the enemies as they battle. It's not exactly a conversation, but it builds his personality and makes it every present. It would be nice if Kena commented on things:

"Yes, more floaty rocks!"

"Ooo, treasure--just for me!"

"Great, more flying monsters...only if I had some bread crumbs to distract them with."

These are dumb examples, but it's ways that the game could keep me engaged with the Kena while I'm just exploring and fighting.

Alright--I'm nearing the end of the game. I do love it and I can't wait to play more.

#Zach's Game Journal #PLAYING #Kena: Bridge of Spirits #Video Games #Gaming #PC Gaming

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thepermanentrainpress · 2 years ago

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UNDER THE RADAR: DECEMBER 2022

Hope everyone got to ring in 2023 with their loved ones! 🎉 We’re throwing it back for December’s Under the Radar only, featuring releases from Eleanor, salt sword, Touray, Isobel, chengcheng, and Buddie.

1) Eleanor - “Make Sense”

“No, please don’t need your worries / Just looking for a place to voice my woes freely.”

Ontario’s Eleanor and her mother feel familiar in the sense of a generational gap, and how those differences are bridged. A conversation between the pair that reflects on “missed deadlines” and milestones not yet reached, it voices both fear and frustration. Carrying concern and urgency can work together to mend if communication exists, built on respect and a conscious effort to heal and understand. It becomes easy to overlook others’ feelings (namely a child, or a parent and grandparent) in set expectations, and Eleanor hones in on the disappointment and anxiety young people so often experience.

Her tone has a trying and fighting spirit, gripping in the speech-like delivery atop the R&B/soul soundscape. The way her upper register lingers is beautiful. “Make Sense” has heightened emotions that casts light on reconciliation and common ground.

Written by: Chloe Hoy

2) salt sword - “90′s game”

Cool and impassioned is experimental pop wonder “90′s game,” a personal recollection of artist Colin Ablitt’s ‘new kid on the block’ chapters early in his life. About “identities and faces” and the confusion it bestowed, the single’s video game focal point is largely appropriate. I felt the disassociation and urge to please and prove, while haunted by the characters of one’s past (“I’m bursting in flames but you don’t hear the sound”). Adaptability is the overarching theme, and is juxtaposed with harsher synths and drums that capture the essence of an outsider in an big new world. It opens with a poem constructed out of samples from a 1950′s instructional video and references familiar gameplay in labyrinths, save functions, and boundary breaks.

"90′s game” is painstakingly imaginative and sensitive, searching for belonging in all the entanglement.

Written by: Chloe Hoy

3) Touray - “Where I’m Going”

Touray’s “Where I’m Going” captures both the bright-eyed and disconcerting energy of young adulthood. It piles on the guitars – dazzling and chaotically paced – and is steeped in melancholic delivery. “Wake me up in June / when city grass is colder than my heart,” the London-based artist remarks in his urge to feel alive. Its blaring chorus really pulls out the emotions of the song: ecstasy, fear, peace of mind. Coloured from an early 2000s indie rock palette, "Where I’m Going” teases at dissonance before folding seamlessly into itself.

Written by: Natalie Hoy

4) Isobel - “Miles”

A self-described “sad girl winter ballad” couldn’t be more accurate for “Miles.” Feeling blue and romantic is an unfortunate pairing, but it can create the most sincere piece of art in how loss and love intertwine. While written about a first love and the shared memories, the sentiment holds the same weight for any relationship that has run its course (willingly or unwillingly). Isobel collaborated with Andrew Lo (keys and strings) and producer Benjamin Paul de Caiman; I love the levity in the layered arrangement.

It’s very validating towards the emotions felt for another and the situation (“didn’t wanna roll up my sleeves / didn’t wanna cover your heart”) – becoming self-assured is a journey. "Miles” shows us that time and distance form appreciation, and that falling prey to nostalgia is precious time to learn and grow.

Written by: Chloe Hoy

5) chengcheng - “Boundaries”

"Boundaries” is songwriter/pop producer chengcheng’s debut release. Despite a stylish dance pop beat, the track divulges raw feelings about a past relationship and goes so far as to include voice memos sent between him and his ex. It feels bright and provocative, with an accusatory tone nestled in its summertime bass line. Calling out the disposability of some modern day relationships, “Boundaries” is delivered with confidence; anything to make it hurt a little less.

Born and raised in Shanghai, Chengcheng Tang obtained a bachelor’s degree in music production and engineering from Berklee College of Music before relocating to Los Angeles. His debut EP is expected out early 2023.

Written by: Natalie Hoy

6) Buddie - “Sunday Morning”

They bring a new meaning to lazy Sundays—shaken and resilient in an unfamiliar environment we used to take for granted. Led by Daniel Forrest, the band originated in Philadelphia before being reassembled upon Forrest’s move to Vancouver in fall 2021. Lyrically, the song explores disruption and familiarity, but has a cozy indie rock meets power pop sound. Buddie evaluates their interactions and approach to life, bearing a rebirth at song’s end that is earned (“We have tools to dig the roots out / and replant with lilac”).

They’re attentive to a balance between relaxed and exasperated, much like how society has moved forward. The primarily instrumental final third is harmonious. A style that is empathetic but can still debate, the act impresses with their new release. Transplant EP is out now.

Transplant by Buddie

Written by: Chloe Hoy

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mrwhozeet · 2 years ago

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Spyro: Season of Ice DX (A Spyro Advance ROM Hack)

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6544/

(Scroll down to learn more about ‘Spyro Advance’, what the translation improved, and instructions on how to install if you’re not familiar with how to do so.)

What the heck is it?

Earlier this year, with the help of RayCarrot (Link to Twitter Bio), I created a ROM hack for the Japanese release of Spyro: Season of Ice (simply known as Spyro Advance in Japan - none of the other Digital Eclipse developed Spyro titles were released in that territory). This is a re-translation of that release of the game, restoring the original English release’s text (and several graphics to fit the Western/in-game designs), but it also adds a few goodies! Check it out!

About ‘Spyro Advance’:

After being released in the West, Digital Eclipse began localizing Season of Ice in order to gear it up for a release in Japan. So, as you might expect, some changes were made to the game. The game’s script was localized into Japanese, the cutscenes were overhauled to fit the Japanese designs seen in promotional material, and several other graphics were edited for similar reasons. Here’s a lovely visual example from the opening cinematic when the player starts a new file:

In addition to all of that, the development staff used the additional development time they had with the localization to add some nice quality of life enhancements that made the game a lot more enjoyable to play casually. This includes:

A much needed map feature that could be brought up by pressing SELECT at any point during gameplay. This is probably the most noteworthy change, as Season of Ice’s isometric viewpoint and level design made it difficult for the player to figure out their own current location without such a feature. A similar feature would later be brought in for both sequels (Season of Flame and Attack of the Rhynocs/Adventure). Maps do not exist for Grendor’s Lair, the Speedways, or the Sparx levels due to the lack of need for them to be present.

The in-game Atlas was overhauled to display the combined totals for each HUB world. Presumably, this change might have been implemented to make it easier for the player to quickly access a particular HUB’s totals and figure out what they might have missed.

A new ‘Save Game’ functionality has been added to the pause menu, replacing the original game’s ‘Quit Game’ functionality. This now means the player can save their totals without having to enter an entirely new world.

The game now properly remembers what area the player exited out of when returning to a Fairy Home. Originally, exiting out of a world in the English releases would simply plop the player at the default starting coordinates. This makes returns to the Fairy Homes a lot less disorienting when returning from a level.

Multiple graphical bug-fixes were implemented. Most notably, the Market Mesa Llamas had a rather nasty oversight where their rotational sprites were not properly implemented, resulting in them not properly facing Spyro/’twitching’ at the end of their idle animation. Both of these issues are now fixed. Other notable fixes include the graphical bug at the end of Grendor’s Lair 1 no longer occurring, and the electrical attacks in Time Machine Lab now using the proper palette (a yellow versus a dark purple-ish black).

Some unused dialog has been restored. Several NPCs in the game provide tasks that involve Spyro collecting several items scattered throughout the map to be rewarded a Fairy (such as The Professor’s ‘Spork’ quest in Time Machine Lab, shown above). These NPCs have dialog written for for them that tell the player they don’t have all the items necessary. However, either due to an oversight or not being programmed in, these text strings are never used. The game instead always uses the first interaction dialog. There is also some dialog that was oddly shortened explaining Moneybags’ reasoning for handing back the Gems in Summer Fairy Home. All of these were properly re-implemented. The Gem layout in several levels was altered slightly. The best example of this is in Winter Fairy Home. Normally, Spyro collects a Green Gem as soon as he spawns in thanks to Sparx. This Gem was moved in the Japanese release so this event no longer occurs.

Spyro Advance’s English Translation

Quite a few changes were made that make Advance the definitive way to play the game, so it’s rather unfortunate that this revision never saw a release over here! After (very poorly) hacking together an English release of Nitro Kart’s GBA release, I wanted to see if it would be possible to do the same with Season of Ice as well.

While browsing The Cutting Room Floor to see what was known about the titles, I had found RayCarrot’s profile. I had asked RayCarrot if he understood how text was handled in any of the Digital Eclipse Spyro titles. He was able to provide information to me and ended up being kind enough to write a tool (Github link) to edit the text accordingly. The issue was that the text bible in the Japanese release was in a completely different order from that of the English release, so the English text bible couldn’t be re-inserted as-is into the Japanese ROM. The text had to be manually corrected by hand and reinserted back into the ROM.

I went ahead and played through Season of Ice on mGBA to manually make note of every single text string, swapped them around, and then re-inserted the text strings back into the ROM to make sure the text was fixed. It took me a couple of weeks, but it was a pretty fun project to accomplish!

RayCarrot was also nice enough to properly re-insert some of the graphics used in the English releases. This way, it felt more like a proper release and was consistent with the Western designs. Some mugshots that were edited for the Japanese release were left as-is, however. This is due to some of the mugshots better fitting the sprites seen in-game.

This version of the hack that remains loyal to the original design is available here:

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6421/

I did, however, speak with RayCarrot about modifying some additional things that was agreed to be released as a separate hack (Season of Ice DX). This is still a re-translation of Advance back into English based on the translation linked above, but it adds a couple of new things to make Season of Ice more accessible!

What Does Season of Ice DX Add?

The goal of the ROM hack initially was to retranslate the game back into English, but after some discussion with RayCarrot, he was able to help me add some additional tweaks that were released as it’s own separate ROM hack that ‘nerfs’ the difficulty of the game slightly:

All Fairies are no longer required in order to see the game’s ending. Season of Ice originally mandated that the player collect all 99 Fairies in the game in order to fight the final boss and collect the 100th Fairy. Now, the player only needs to collect 90, meaning 9 Fairies can be skipped if the player desires. Some of Blanca’s dialog hinted towards all 100 Fairies being needed (such as her line after the first Grendor fight), so these lines have been adjusted accordingly. The player is still rewarded for going for 100% completion with the inclusion of the Dragonfly X minigame, however.

The map has been updated to be slightly more handy! Now, the map showcases all Flammable Object locations with an ‘X’, and all Home HUB worlds display every available portal location (using graphics from Season of Flame). These changes make grabbing the Flammable Object Fairies a lot less tedious (as these objects would reset upon death), and the latter change makes it easier to find new levels to play.

Some very minor grammatical changes here and there. By this, I meant I changed some instances of ‘Fairies’ to use the appropriate capitalization.

Installation

To use the hack, you’ll need a couple of things:

A ROM file of the Japanese release of Season of Ice (Spyro Advance). Out of respect for the current copyright holders, I cannot provide such a thing here and you’ll have to provide the ROM file yourself. Season of Ice (USA) or Season of Ice (Europe) will NOT work! This is a ROM hack of Spyro Advance and will not convert your USA/European copy into that.

The patch itself. If you’d rather play the original Spyro Advance in English (all 100 Fairies are needed, less helpful maps), then grab the basic translation here.

A way of using the ROM file in order to actually play the game itself. I’d recommend using Vicki Pfau’s mGBA emulator. It’s very actively maintained, easy to use, has extremely high compatibility, and offers auto-patching as a potential way to play the hack!

(Optional) Lunar IPS (LIPS) to install the hack if you’re not using mGBA’s autopatching capabilities, or another system (such as a modded 3DS, or a GBA with a flashcart).

Installation Method 1 (using mGBA)

1. Navigate to the ‘Download’ button on the hack’s information page and click it. There’s a simple verification page you might have to go through. Complete it if necessary!

2. Once done, save the IPS patch anywhere you’d like. 3. Take your copy of ‘Spyro Advance (Japan)’ and place it in the same folder as your patch. Here’s an example:

4. Once that’s done, extract the patch zip by right clicking it.

5. Rename the patch so that it shares the same name as your ROM:

6. Go ahead and fire up mGBA by extracting the latest release and double-clicking mGBA.exe

7. Navigate to where you placed your ROM. You can either drag the ROM into mGBA’s window, or use ‘File -> Load ROM...’ in order to find it.

8. You’re done! mGBA’s handy-dandy auto-patching method will automatically apply the patch on startup, so no further work has to be done. Enjoy Spyro Advance in English!

(This method also means the ROM file is not permanently modified. If you’d like to, you can remove the ‘.ips’ file, then reload the ROM to revert back to the original Japanese version at any point.)

Installation Method 2 (using LIPS)

(This method modifies the ROM file directly and is a bit less convenient. If you’re new to patching ROMs, the above method (Installation Method 1) is the better option.) 0. If your Spyro Advance ROM is zipped, go ahead and extract it first. ROMs can only be patched if they’re not zipped.

1. Download LIPS using the link provided in the ‘Installation’ section. Just click the ‘Download File Now’ button once you’ve reached that page:

2. Save LIPS where ever you’d like! 3. Download the hack patch using the link provided in the ‘Installation’ section. Again, similarly, just click the ‘Download’ button on the Hack’s information page:

4. Now that you have both LIPS and the ROM hack patch itself, right click and extract both zips. 5. Fire up Lunar IPS.exe. You should see a screen like this:

6. Click the ‘Apply IPS Patch’ button, and a new window should pop up. Locate the IPS patch:

7. Now, find your extracted Spyro Advance ROM. Click that:

If all goes well, you should see a confirmation window confirming the file was patched successfully!

8. Go play the ROM using your method of choice. The game should boot just fine, and you’re finished! (Note that with this method, the ROM will be expanded to 16MB. This is done in order to ensure that the hack works on real hardware.)

Enjoy the Hack!

It cannot be understated enough that this entire hack would not have been possible without RayCarrot’s assistance. He’s responsible for writing the tool that made fixing the script possible, and is also responsible for reimporting the English graphics into the ROM. Please check out his various projects that he’s made for the Rayman community. He created an insanely impressive map viewer for the Spyro GBA titles that you might be interested in!

#Spyro #Spyro the Dragon #Game Boy Advance #GBA #rom hack #Season of Ice #Spyro Game Boy Advance #spyro advance #romhacking #Hack #Translation

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choco-pudding · 2 years ago

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Space Channel 5: Gyun Gyun Book p.54-p.58 and p.36 (Translations by @lavoszero and myself. Edit by myself)

And with this, all the pages of the Gyun Gyun Book have been translated! I may update the visuals on same pages in the future but otherwise it’s completely done. Special thanks to my friend that would look over these translations for spelling errors.

Imgur link to the complete Gyun Gyun Book scanlation.

Plain text below

p.54

System & Advice

The key to playing this game is, above all, a good sense of rhythm and memory. But if you learn the system and its features correctly, you'll enjoy the game even more to the last bit!

Basic Information

Basic Gameplay Controls

Visual Data: The Moro-mark is displayed when a turn starts, and the Ulala mark is displayed on the players turn.

Directional Pad: These buttons make Ulala dance. Up, down, left, right are "Up," "Down," "Left," and "Right," respectively.

Start Button: It takes you to the start screen. It also lets you exit the game from this screen.

A Button: A button uses "Chu" to take on the Morolians.

B Button: Press it to use "Chu" and save Earthlings.

Turn It Up, Blast Those Speakers Listen carefully to the Morolian's voice and the BGM to avoid mistakes. Turn up the volume to enjoy playing as Ulala.

There are some sections where you can barely hear the amount of voices of the Morolians or the people. You might not realize it unless you turn up the volume.

Breaking News: Take a Hint The news bulletin that occasionally appears at the top of the screen may give hints for the next round. Don't miss out!

The director will tell you what the news bulletin says, so you don't need to read the text!

Take a Close Look at the Turn Icons The Morolian icon appears on the lower left corner of the screen. When this changes to the Ulala icon, start pressing buttons!

Ulala's icon doesn't always appear in sync. Watch carefully!

Recommended Way to Play! Hold the controller in your lap and press the direction and A/B buttons with your left and right index and middle fingers, as seen in the picture. When you press the buttons, press them with a loud and enthusiastic click!

p.55

Note About Different Types of Battles

Dance In this mode, you must memorize the Morolian’s dance and rhythm, and then copy it back perfectly to make Ulala dance. Morolians will say, "Up, Down, Chu" while dancing, so it's important to memorize with both your eyes and ears. The number of mistakes you can make is set for each act., and if you run out of hearts you will not be able to help the people being forced to dance by the Morolians.

When only the A button "Chu" is used, it's possible to play without looking at the screen. Wanna give it a try?

When You Run Outta Hearts… If you run out of hearts, the game will keep on proceeding, even if you just quit. If you run out of hearts during a boss battle, the game will give you a "game over."

If you run out of hearts or fail to rescue everyone… the BGM and Ulala's lines during dancing will reflect that disappointment.

Shooting In this mode, you shoot down Morolians that appear one after another. Press the button in the direction of the Morolians, then press the A button for each Morolian that appears. For the occasional Earthling press the B button to rescue them.

There are only three directions where the Morolians appear: up, left, and right. Of course you still have to press the buttons to the beat!

The number of buttons needed to be pressed is the same as the amount of Morolians and Earthlings, so it’s easy to memorize and understand.

Morolians and Earthlings: What's the Diff? The Morolians have ray guns, so their hands are glowing. Earthlings, on the other hand, have a glowing ring above their heads. That makes it easy to distinguish between pressing the A and B buttons.

p.56

The Secret Behind the Ratings

All About Increasing the Ratings Ratings, shown on the lower right corner of the screen, are like an evaluation point system for how you play. It goes up when you copy a set perfectly, and down when you make a mistake. Coincidentally, the higher percent of correct inputs during an Earthling rescue round, increases the Overall View Rating, when the report is cleared. Additionally, the Expected View Rating, will also be higher.

Minimum View Rating:The rating amount required for a stage clear. If that amount isn't reached by the end of the stage, the game will be over.

Overall View Rating: Displayed after a report is cleared. This is the final rating for the whole report.

Maximum View Rating:The maximum audience rating possible for that report.

Expected View Rating: This is displayed after a report is cleared. The following report will start at this rating.

The Ratings Can Change the Game too

Where You Go Changes! When you start a second playthrough (Extra Mode) after clearing all the stages, the rating will now impact the report’s route, and you'll be able to advance to new stages. In these new routes, you might meet some characters who did not appear in the first playthrough.

On Report 1’s Lobby 1F, the ratings you receive near the end of Act. 3 affects where you go, for example…

If it’s at 90% or more, you'll go directly to the Lobby 2F.

At 80% ~ 89%, you'll be sent to the Luggage Room.

If it's at 79% or below, you'll go through the same area as the first playthrough.

Who Dances Changes! In Report 1’s Lobby 2F and Report 4’s Hallway, the Earthlings that appear depend on the ratings. These rating requirements are detailed in the reports’ respected sections of the guide book.

Space Michael will still appear in Extra Mode if the ratings are 90% or higher.

If the ratings are less than 89%, the Space Channel 5 Security Robots will appear in the same area instead.

Ulala Shines Bright! When the ratings reach 95% or more, Ulala will have a pink aura around her. This is the sign of a Super Space Reporter! If you copy all the inputs correctly starting from Report 1, Ulala will start to glow around the end of Report 3.

With her groovy dance moves and desire for truth, has Ulala's soul sky rocketed to an even higher level!?

p.57

Rescue Pointers

Pinpoint Rescue In Shooting Mode, as long as you hit the Earthlings with the B button,you'll rescue them, it doesn’t matter if you miss all the other commands for that set. In other words, you can fail a set while still saving everyone. In this book, this is referred to as a "pinpoint rescue". It’s a necessary technique for efficiently rescuing all the characters, so be sure to keep it in mind.

In this scenario, to fail while keeping your rhythm, you can press "←A" and then "→B" to rescue the character in that direction. It doesn't matter if you fail the set because…The characters rescued will join you, and follow closely behind Ulala.

Dancing While on the Move If you rescue those being forced to dance by the Morolians, they’ll become Ulala's backup dancers; it makes moving from one Act. to another way more colorful and exciting.

If you help special characters in Dance Mode, you'll be able to see their sick dance moves!

Character Profiles Rescued characters are registered in the character profile like an illustrated book. Here, hidden facts about each character are revealed!

Rotate the characters with the directional buttons and zoom in and out with the LR buttons, enjoy looking at them at your leisure.

Some Characters Will Only Appear if You Make a Mistake! Even if you beat the game while playing perfectly from beginning to end, you wouldn’t have rescued everyone. There are some characters that will appear only when you make a mistake, so you have to mess up sometimes in order to save them all.

X: If you mess up, you can rescue the Spaceship Crew (Female) in the next set.

O: If you play perfectly, the Spaceship Crew (Male) will appear. If you get every input correct, it'll be the same as before.

p.58

Command Tables and Rhythm

Getting the Rhythm Down For starters, let's learn the basic eight beats. Counting aloud "1,2,3..." makes it easier to get into the rhythm. If there are several beats between commands, it's easy to make a mistake, so it’s recommended to count each beat with "un" to get even more in rhythm. For example, in the 3rd set shown on the left, if you press "↑" on the first beat, count "Un-un-un-u,” then on the second beat, press "A" at the next "n." Then you can copy the three and a half beats precisely, which means that the "u" is half a beat.

Let's look at the Command Table Almost all rhythm are composed of eight beats. The all the commands will be issued by the 7th beat, and at the 8th beat, it changes to the player and Ulala's turn (hence the "change" on the 8th beat). In some sets, commands are given on the half-beat; that means that there are 14 times to the potentiometer (7 beats x 2). Because of this, this guide divides a beat into two halves, with the 1st half-beat at the start, and the 2nd half-beat near the end, as well as showing the commands in the form of explanations. For sets that have more than eight beats, two lines will be used, as shown on the 3rd set. In other words, the 1st beat at the start of the second line will be 9th beat.

Sets Change When You Make a Mistake! If you mess up a set, the next set usually changes. That means if a mistake is made, the next set tends to either be identical to the previous set, or easier. The patterns shown on the strategy pages are based on a perfectly played report.

When you're able play perfectly, try making mistakes on purpose to groove to a different rhythm!

Reading Those Pages Space Channel 5: A Kinda Rough Guide is a guide on how to enjoy the game in a relaxing way, by introducing all the Earthlings that appear in each stage so that they can be rescued successfully. It also helpfully includes the Morolians’ commands on these strategy pages.

The Overall Map Page This introduces the game's story and the flow of each report. The stages that Ulala goes through in the game are illustrated on a flow chart along with the stage’s rating requirements.

Guide to the Area Page The stages are divided into dance and shooting modes, and the people who can be rescued there are listed (as per the command chart) for each section. Hearts represent the number of mistakes that can be made in dance mode.

p.36

When Ulala first encountered a Morolian at Spaceport 9 she said, “I’ve encountered aliens on the main floor and they’ve taken hostages!” You can tell at this point she still didn't have a good grasp on what was going on with this incident. By the way, the "da" in "Let's Dance" was pronounced still with the "dah" effect. When arriving at the Luggage Room, Ulala exclaimed, "We’ve just received word that the staff has been taken hostage," with a bang. When getting to the Launch Pad from the 2F Lobby, you would’ve heard a voice saying, "Here goes nothin’!" When she proceeded to the Control Tower, Pudding from Channel 42 reared her head, and we had the first confrontation with our rival. Ulala was fired up and said, "I’ll take you out!" and was ready for the showdown. The final stage for Report 1 was on the Launch Pad. And that’s when the scene finally exploded in the confrontation against Coco☆Tapioca! “What’s this? Something’s up. I’m feeling kinda… funky!” This is where the funky dance pattern started, and where we really saw Ulala's style being focused on.

The next report was on the Luxury Spacecraft G. As per usual, Ulala greeted the audience, saying, "Hello, cosmic kitties, this is Ulala’s Report Show. Tonight, I’m reporting from the Luxury Spacecraft G. The aliens seem to be stirring up a dance crisis,” and dealt with the Morolians causing trouble there. Getting to the Dining Hall, she said, "delish," and then fired a second round of funky shots! Ulala probably uses phrases like "delish” and “funky" on a daily basis. The midway boss was Morolina. “Look, they’re sending something over. Is that a marshmallow?” “The marshmallow appears to be crying. But I don’t think it’s over yet! I knew it, it’s moving again!” This reminds you that the situation was being reported live. When the angry Morolina's tongue started rolling back into her throat, Ulala shouted, “What the? Is that her tongue?! Ahhhhh!” which sounds pretty sensual… She also said, "It's slimy, incredibly slimy!" It's kinda weird when you only listen to her voice.

Report 3 takes place in the Asteroid Belt. Here, Ulala was facing some high stakes since she was in a race to the scoop with Jaguar and Pudding. There’s some funktastic vocab from her here with “There’s a TV in here. It’s got a huge screen. What’s up, I’m feelin’ kinda funky.” What came right out of the monitor was the boss Morlin! Monroe! “Look, it’s coming out of the monitor! It’s… bouncy?” “It’s splitting up! Oh, this can’t be good.” They looked like jelly or gummy bears, but either way they were defeated by Ulala's team.

Next, the last report. Why was the broadcast signal the same as Channel 5? In this stage we were met with fierce battles, as to be expected when infiltrating the HQ, reflecting the seriousness of the situation! “Chief Blank, Channel 5 CEO, you’ve been controlling these poor Morolians! With my new savvy and my funky moves, I’ll get to the bottom of this! Groove evening, viewers. Tonight, I’ll be giving you the real scoop behind this crazy alien invasion! The man in that chair appears to behind this dance fiasco!” The true manipulator was Blank, "You’ve been under Blank’s spell! Wake up fellas!” (The brainwashed Morolians in the Recording Studio were also able to be saved, “Alien Up-Down Quiz!") The battle started to heat up even more. Ulala, seeing Evila who looked just like her, shouted, “I can beat her, I feel it!” And of course, she was able to win. “I didn’t think a puppet could report.” Woooah~ so cool…

Finally, after defeating Blank, Ulala shouted this last line, “Now everyone, let’s march to the end of the galaxy!” and then she led the way like the Pied Piper of Hamelin!

Ulala Dictionary Even people who are fans of Ulala's groovy wordsmithing may not remember her lines correctly or accurately. Here's the gist of Ulala's actual lines along with the reports. Let's go, Ulala! “Roger!”

[Translator’s notes: In Japanese Ulala uses a lot of onomatopoeia-structured phrases. Some of them are pretty highly contextual. Like "gyun gyun” both means “feeling weird/funky” and “delish” among so many other things.]

#space channel 5 #gyun gyun book #Ulala #translations

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tlbodine · 3 years ago

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The Horror Genius of Five Nights At Freddy’s

I’ve been playing FNAF: Help Wanted VR on my Oculus Quest lately (a birthday present to myself -- I know I’m late to that party!) and it’s reignited in me my old love of this series. I know Scott Cawthon’s politics aren’t great, but I don’t think there’s any malice in his heart beyond usual Christian conservative nonsense -- and I think he stepped down as graciously and magnanimously as possible when confronted about it. Time will judge Scott Cawthon’s politics, and that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about what makes these games so damn special, from a horror, design, and marketing perspective. I think there’s really SO MUCH to be learned from studying these games and the wider influence they’ve had as intellectual property.

What Is FNAF?

In case you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the last seven years, Five Nights At Freddy’s (hereafter, FNAF) is a horror franchise spanning 17 games (10 main games + some spinoffs and troll games, we’ll get to that), 27 books, a movie deal, and a couple live-action attractions.

But before it exploded into that kind of tremendous IP, it started out as a single indie pont-and-click game created entirely by one dude, Scott Cawthon. Cawthon had developed other games in the past without much fame or success, including some Christian children’s entertainment. He was working as a cashier at Dollar General and making games in his spare time -- and most of those games got panned.

So he tried making something different.

After being criticized that the characters in one of his children’s games looked like soulless, creepy animatronics, Cawthon had his lightbulb moment and created a horror game centered on....creepy animatronics!

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Genius of FNAF’s Horror Elements

In the first FNAF game, you play as a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a sort of ersatz Chuck-E-Cheese establishment. The animatronics are on free-roaming mode at night, but you don’t want to let them find you in your security room so you have to watch them move through the building on security camera monitors. If they get too close, you can slam your security room doors closed. But be careful, because this restaurant operates on a shoestring budget, and the power will go off if you keep the doors closed too long or flicker the lights too often. And once the lights go out, you’re helpless against the animatronics in the dark.

Guiding you through your gameplay is a fellow employee, Phone Guy, who calls you each night with some helpful advice. Phone Guy is voiced by Cawthon himself, and listening to his tapes gives you some hints of the game’s underlying story as well as telling you how to play. A few newspaper clippings and other bits of scrap material help to fill in more details of the story.

Over the next set of games, the story would be further developed, with each new game introducing new mechanics and variations on the theme -- in one, you don a mask to slip past the notice of animatronics; in another, you have to play sound cues to lure an animatronic away from you. By the fourth game, the setup was changed completely, now featuring a child with a flashlight hiding from the monsters outside his door -- nightmarish versions of the beloved child-friendly mascots. The mechanics change just enough between variations to keep things fresh while maintaining a consistent brand.

There are so many things these games do well from a storytelling and horror perspective:

Jump Scares: It’s easy to shrug these games off for relying heavily on jump scares, and they absolutely do have a lot of them. But they’re used strategically. In most games, the jump scares are a punishment (a controlled shock, if you will) -- if you play the game perfectly, you’ll never be jump-scared. This is an important design choice that a lot of other horror games don’t follow.

Atmospheric Dread: These games absolutely deliver horror and tension through every element of design -- some more than others, admittedly. But a combination of sound cues, the overall texture and aesthetic of the world, the “things move when you’re not looking at them” mechanic, all of it works together to create a feeling of unease and paranoia.

Paranoia: As in most survival horror games, you’re at a disadvantage. You can’t move or defend yourself, really -- all you can do is watch. And so watch you do. Except it’s a false sense of security, because flicking lights and checking cameras uses up precious resources, putting you at greater risk. So you have to balance your compulsive need to check, double-check, and make sure...with methodical resource conservation. The best way to survive these games is to remain calm and focused. It’s a brilliant design choice.

Visceral Horror: The monster design of the animatronics is absolutely delightful, and there’s a whole range of them to choose from. The sheer size and weight of the creatures, the way they move and position themselves, their grunginess, the deadness of their eyes, the quantity and prominence of their teeth. They are simultaneously adorable and horrifying.

Implicit Horror: One of the greatest strengths to FNAF as a franchise is that it never wears its story on its sleeve. Instead of outright telling you what’s going on, the story is delivered in bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself -- creating a puzzle for an engaged player to think about and theorize over and consider long after the game is done. But more than that, the nature of the horror itself is such that it becomes increasingly upsetting the more you think on it. The implications of what’s going on in the game world -- that there are decaying bodies tucked away inside mascots that continue to perform for children, that a man dressed in a costume is luring kids away into a private room to kill them, and so forth -- are the epitome of fridge horror.

The FNAF lore does admittedly start to become fairly ridiculous and convoluted as the franchise wears on. But even ret-conned material manages to be pretty interesting in its own right (and there is nothing in the world keeping you from playing the first four games, or even the first six, and pretending none of the rest exist).

Another thing I really appreciate about the FNAF franchise is that it’s quite funny, in a way that complements and underscores the horror rather than detracting from it. It’s something a lot of other properties utterly fail to do.

The Genius of Scott Cawthon’s Marketing

OK, so FNAF utilizes a multi-prong attack for creating horror and implements it well -- big deal. Why did it explode into a massive IP sensation when other indie horror games that are just as well-made barely made a blip on the radar?

Well! That’s where the real genius comes in. This game was built and marketed in a way to maximize its franchisability.

First, the story utilizes instantly identifiable, simple but effective character designs, and then generates more and more instantly identifiable unique characters with each iteration. Having a wealth of characters and clever, unique designs basically paves the way for merchandise and fan-works. (That they’re anthropomorphic animal designs also probably helped -- because that taps into the furry fandom as well without completely alienating non-furries).

Speaking of fan-work, Scott Cawthon has always been very supportive of fandom, only taking action when people would try to profit off knock-off games and that sort of thing -- basically bad-faith copies. But as far as I know he’s always been super chill with fan-created content, even going so far as to engage directly with the fandom. Which brings me to....

These games were practically designed for streaming, and he took care to deliver them into the hands of influential streamers. Because the games are heavy on jump-scares and scale in difficulty (even including extra-challenging modes after the core game is beaten) they are extremely fun to watch people play. They’re short enough to be easily finished over the duration of a long stream, and they’re episodic -- lending themselves perfectly to a YouTube Lets Play format. One Night = One Video, and now the streamer has weeks of content from your game (but viewers can jump in at any time without really missing much).

The games are kid-friendly but also genuinely frightening. Because the most disturbing parts of the game’s lore are hinted at rather than made explicit, younger players can easily engage with the game on a more basic surface level, and others can go as deep into the lore as they feel comfortable. There is no blood and gore and violence or even any explicitly stated death in the main game; all of the murder and death is portrayed obliquely by way of 8-bit mini games and tangential references. Making this game terrifying but accessible to youngsters, and then marketing it directly to younger viewers through popular streamers (and later, merchandising deals) is genius -- because it creates a very broad potential audience, and kids tend to spend 100% of their money (birthdays, allowances, etc.) and are most likely to tell their friends about this super scary game, etc. etc.

By creating a puzzle box of lore, and then interacting directly with the fandom -- dropping hints, trolling, essentially creating an ARG of his own lore through his website, in-game easter eggs, and tie-in materials -- Cawthon created a mystery for fandom to solve. And fans LOVE endlessly speculating over convoluted theories.

Cawthon released these games FAST. He dropped FNAF 2 within months of the first game’s release, and kept up a pace of 1-2 games a year ever since. This steady output ensured the games never dropped out of public consciousness -- and introducing new puzzle pieces for the lore-hungry fans to pore over helped keep the discussion going.

I think MatPat and The Game Theorists owe a tremendous amount of their own huge success to this game. I think Markiplier does, too, and other big streamers and YouTubers. It’s been fascinating watching the symbiotic relationship between these games and the people who make content about these games. Obviously that’s true for a lot of fandom -- but FNAF feels so special because it really did start so small. It’s a true rags-to-riches sleeper hit and luck absolutely played a role in its growth, but skill is a big part too.

Take-Aways For Creatives

I want to be very clear here: I do not think that every piece of media needs to be “IP,” franchisable, an extended universe, or a multimedia sensation. I think there is plenty to be said for creating art of all types, and sometimes that means a standalone story with a small audience.

But if you do want a chance at real break-out, run-away success and forging a media empire of your own, I think there are some take-aways to be learned from the success of FNAF:

Persistence. Scott Cawthon studied animation and game-design in the 1990s and released his first game in 2002. He released a bunch of stuff afterward. None of it stuck. It took 12 years to hit on the winning formula, and then another several years of incredibly hard work to push out more titles and stoke the fires before it really became a sensation. Wherever you’re at on your creative journey, don’t give up. You never know when your next thing will be The Thing that breaks you out.

If you want to sell a lot of something, you have to make it widely appealing to a bunch of people. This means keeping your concept simple to understand (”security guard wards off creepy killer animatronics at a pizza parlor”) and appealing to as wide a segment of the market as you can (ie, a horror story that appeals to both kids and adults). The more hyper-specific your audience, the harder it’s gonna be to find them and the fewer copies of your thing you’ll be selling.

Know your shit and put your best work out there. I think there’s an impulse to feel like “well, nobody reads this anyway, so why does it matter if it’s no good” (I certainly have fallen into that on multiple occasions) but that’s the wrong way to think about it. You never know when and where your break will come. Put your best work out there and keep on polishing your craft with better and better stuff because eventually one of those things you chuck out there is going to be The Thing.

Figure out where your target audience hangs out, and who influences them, and then get your thing in the hands of those influencers. Streaming and YouTube were the secret to FNAF’s success. Maybe yours will be BookTube, or Instagram, or a secret cabal of free librarians. I don’t know. But you should try your best to figure out who would like the thing that you’re making, and then figure out how to reach those people, and put all of your energy into that instead of shotgun-blasting your marketing all willy nilly.

You don’t have to put the whole story on the page. Audiences love puzzles. Fans love mysteries. You can actually leave a lot more unanswered than you think. There’s some value in keeping secrets and leaving things for others to fill in. Remember -- your art is only partly yours. The sandbox belongs to others to play in, too, and you have to let them do that.

If in doubt, appealing to furries never hurts.

Do I take all of this advice myself? Not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a lot to think about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat The Curse of Dreadbear.

#horror analysis #writing advice #fnaf

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wildfangz · 2 years ago

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I initially made a whole long bulleted post on my thoughts on the pack so far w/ the livestream but it was way too long and I'd like to keep it simple. This post is also a bit lengthy but not nearly as. ANYWAY:

ADORE the build/buy, especially since Art Deco is one of my favorite styles! Curved walls were also a really nice surprise, and I love all the clutter and posters & what not. Really happy the trellis changes w/ the seasons too :) CAS was a bit more hit and miss for me. like most of the items are cute, but while some of designs by Depop sellers were nice, some of them are also ugly as hell and things i think only rich influencers w/ bad fashion sense wear sorry LOL

As for gameplay, let's get the negativity out of the way first: I... actually feel like they might have got too ambitious with this pack, and that some of the most important gameplay features may have suffered for it. Like what was up w/ the single goals throughout the school day? I was exhausted during the stream, but it seemed like they might have stayed the same too. At very least, they're repetitive, which is fine in GTW bc like... you have multiple tasks to choose from. But because of it going to school just felt sooo bland and boring and this is coming from someone that likes some slower gameplay and likes get to work and was looking forward to active school.

It's cool that sims can learn skills during class and make decisions about their assignments, but other than that there's like. Nothing. You should be able to try talking to people! Pass them notes or text them! You should be able to slack off or sleep in class etc. I'm also still hoping we haven't seen everything and that we get some more homework assignments and things like University has, like it would have been fun to have to give presentations sometimes. Otherwise like, high school feels really lacking for such a core feature. The Prom actually looked fine and even fun, but the school experience itself managed to give some MWS vibes. Also where did the trays go

Anyway other than that. The amount of effort put into thrifting was actually a pleasant surprise, though now I'm reeeally hoping for a GTW refresh that enables buying clothes in general. I'm REALLY glad Social Bunny ended up being more than just something for the trailer bc I always thought online dating in ts3 was cute, and I was surprised by how intricate it was. Also the phone makeover is cute and so are the new selfies :)

Finally, I'm honestly most excited about everything we'll be getting in base game. Wants & Fears was an insane surprise, and I'm glad we're getting not only orientation in the game finally, but that it's so intricate. I was disappointed to see only binary options, I hope they can fix that in the future, but I was really glad to see that they were inclusive both of those that are aromantic/asexual and those who experience split attraction!

#babble

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autumnslance · 4 years ago

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What was it like going from World of Warcraft to FFXIV? As someone who has never played an online RPG before FFXIV I am often :0 ?! when I hear that some people found getting into FFXIV hard because of the mandatory main quest when they just want to go to endgame content as soon as possible. Is going endgame ASAP a regular thing in most online RPGs?

Have a header image of a FFXIV version of my original WoW Main, Discipline Priest Lirriel F’sharri.

Me, a concise answer? Hahaha! Sorry. This got long, so behind a cut it goes and hopefully I answer to Nonny’s satisfaction, taking the questions and breaking them down:

Is going endgame ASAP a regular thing in most online RPGs?

In a lot of games it can be, yes. WoW doesn’t really have a linear overall storyline; each zone has its own story, and each expansion has its own story arc. Nowadays, with how long it’s been running and how big it’s gotten, WoW has revamped their questing so that you decide if you want to go through 1-50 in a specific expac (Burning Crusade, Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King, etc), and then catch up to the newest expac for the newest levels, since they also recently did a “level squish” as well as a stats squish, as they had gotten well over 100+ levels in the last couple expansions. Numbers are a problem for long running games (which is why experienced MMO players nodded and some even sighed in relief when the stat squish for Endwalker was announced).

I don’t think FFXIV will be able to do anything similar since their overarching story is so linear; it’s more like playing a single player traditional JRPG with some MMO features attached. I can see them perhaps scaling experience point gain with quests the way they have with the side quests in Shadowbringers, or with Beast Tribe dailies; that would work going forward I think. Unless we get the option to start with the new storyarc starting in 6.1; that could be interesting!

The only other time I had a linear story to go through similarly to FFXIV was early days of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which I played briefly at launch. Even then, each planet had its own storyline, the overall storyline was the individual class questlines. There was, I think, an overarching plot, but it didn’t really come into play until level cap? I don’t even remember and never got to cap because the grind in that game at launch was awful.

And that’s a thing about many MMOs; the leveling experience is learning about the world, introducing characters and setting, but it’s mostly filler until you get to the endgame where the raiding is--and in WoW, the story is only completed via seeing it in raids (thank goodness for Looking for Raid) and was the main focus mechanically as well. WoW didn’t really have an overarching story in Classic, it was a lot of disparate elements setting up and holdovers from the original RTS games and led to random raid content. Burning Crusade gave us an overarching plot with going to Outland to face Illidan--which honestly wasn’t all that well done storywise. BC is remembered fondly for the quality of life changes and allowing smaller groups to raid, rather than requiring wrangling 40 people. And the raids were challenging and fun--or frustrating, but mileage varies there. But the impetus for “the Dark Portal opened and Illidan’s in Outland being bad” was...pretty much it? Later expacs like Wrath had much better story setup and throughlines as they went, and my one friend described Shadowlands as having something like an MSQ. There are, however, a lot of retcons and putting necessary plot information in supplemental material, which was always frustrating. I’ve likened it before to “imagine going from defeating Tsukuyomi at the end of 4.3 and all the separations and set up there...and then the next patch picking up with getting warped to the First because everything that happened in 4.4 and 4.5 occurs in a novel.” That’s too often been WoW’s method of connecting expansion stories while players languish for a year or more in the last raid content.

I wish I was kidding. FFXIV having a set, quick release schedule, that they keep to so consistently with such good quality--and cosmetic and RP stuff added too!--is astounding to me. I worry for the devs’ health at times--then I hear things like Yoshida turning down requests for crunchy overtime to keep said devs from burning out, hence why the next Ultimate is pushed to 6.1. I appreciate that greatly. Getting anything not pertaining to endgame raid and PvP content in WoW was often impossible, coming with complaints from the raiding community that frivolous additions for sheer fun cost them whole tiers, and seriously 18 months between patches was not unheard of.

What was it like going from World of Warcraft to FFXIV?

I started FFXIV at the beginning of Heavensward...but I was still playing WoW. FFXIV was my side game, as I was still invested in roleplay and raiding with my WoW friends. So I mostly enjoyed playing through the story at a leisurely pace, but I didn’t finish ARR for like 2 years. When Stormblood came out I was hitting burnout in WoW despite mostly enjoying Legion, and the quality of life changes for StB really invigorated my interest and ability to play. The longer GCD for FFXIV was actually one of the biggest challenges for me, especially since I had primarily tanked and healed in WoW. I am not an aggressive or competitive player, nor very manually coordinated, so DPS has always been a challenge for me. I find DPS easier in FFXIV thanks to the longer GCD--I’m still not great, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by trying to hit my rotation buttons instantly. It’s taken me a while to get used to tanking, and I still don’t do it in 8man content, except once or twice with my friends. Mostly cuz I’m just enjoying my DPS jobs, really, so haven’t invested in learning.

...And some of my old fear of random roulettes as a lone tank/healer; WoW’s LFG was a toxic pit for various reasons FFXIV has mostly avoided and even my worst day in FFXIV’s roulette is better than a good day in WoW’s, which gave me anxiety and I stopped doing without friends. FFXIV has no Public Test Realm that people expect you to get on pre-patch to not only spoil story moments, but also learn all the fight mechanics ahead of time and if you don’t know them Hour 1 Day 1 of a new patch release you’re deserving of abuse.

I won’t say never, but I just haven’t found myself interested in going back to WoW or feeling invested in that story, though I do sometimes miss my RP characters (and may write more stories for them sometime). I do keep track of certain beloved NPCs and events--a friend streamed a beautiful moment in Ardenweald for me because I did play through what happened to that character in Legion, sobbing the whole time. I’m tracking what’s happening to Anduin Wrynn closely; we’ve literally watched that character grow up in real time over the years from boy prince to king of Stormwind and I’m still a bit heartbroken about his father. But I play for story and characters, and Blizzard’s way of telling those stories and handling those characters lost me, and with how the Acti-Blizz execs and higher level devs act lately (Hazzikostas keeps striking me as out of touch), they don’t give me much incentive to go back. I may not even pick up Diablo 4 at this rate.

So FFXIV’s story hits the right narrative and character focus for me, especially when I buckled in and replayed...and then replayed again...and now have NG+...Anyway, I like how they build the lore and characters and while it’s far from perfect and they have their own flaws, coming from WoW, it’s a lovely change of pace. Not to mention just how Yoshida and his team interact and communicate with the player base, and see the players’ trust as paramount post-1.x.

...I hear that some people found getting into FFXIV hard because of the mandatory main quest when they just want to go to endgame content as soon as possible.

Some people play only to raid; they like mechanics, and challenges, and feeling powerful at max level with the best gear. They don’t care about the overall story--in some cases because they don’t realize it’s so in depth and linear and sensible after/compared to the constant retcons and revamps in games like WoW!--and are just here to play with friends. Cool for them, if that’s what makes them happy! If that’s how they relax and have fun, power to ‘em so long as they aren’t being nasty to others less advanced/able/willing to put in the time and effort for gameplay. But for me, story and characters are far more important, and I raided quite a lot in WoW at various levels of difficulty and raid size. I am old and tired and want to relax and have fun with friends and write stories that get away with me when my characters get a mind of their own. So I rarely do more than Normals, avoiding Savage and Extreme cuz that grind doesn’t interest me. I’ll do stuff I can do on my own to get my progress fix for my brain (like leveling jobs).

The trouble we’re running into now is FFXIV’s linear story is well over 100 hours long. Even with the ARR revamp cutting a lot of chafe, there’s a LOT to get through to reach HW, and then a lot to get to StB, and then to ShB. And there will be a bunch to get through to EW. That’s JUST MSQ, not counting all the side content a new player may also want to catch up on, like the Alliance and Normal raids, PvP, Relics, Hildibrand, side quest stories like Mail Moogle, Beast Tribes, Crafting...the list goes on and on!

Content in a successful MMO must be varied for multiple styles and preferences for the long term health of the game. Roleplayers and story-focused folks tend to be the ones who stick between patches, farming content at a slower pace to get rewards they want for RP or to see story info, as opposed to raid-focused folks who push new content at release for the challenge and glory. Some of those folks also RP or like story though, so go back to farm between blowing up new content. There’s room for all kinds, and there has to be, and while I am sometimes annoyed by people who skip story (or outright dislike it!) while demanding to know how X works or why a character did A thing, they play their way and pay their sub to keep things running same as me and my obsessive need to know the lore and see it for myself. I can certainly understand those players who story skip that much content to get to where their friends are, if that’s the primary reason they play is to raid with pals, and with New Game+ it’s easier than ever for someone to go back and catch up the story later anyway.

#Lyn Prompts #About Me #Blogging #World of Warcraft #Final Fantasy XIV #Anonymous

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phoenix-downer · 4 years ago

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Melody of Memory Thoughts

I finished the game yesterday and have a lot of thoughts on it, so I thought I’d stick them all in one megapost. Contains spoilers, for obvious reasons.

So, going into the game, I knew the plot choices would be questionable/disappointing because a few friends warned me, but I didn’t know the exact details. I was actually relieved things weren’t as bad as I feared they might be—I was worried Kairi would be going back to sleep or going back to Destiny Islands to patiently wait, so at least we did not get that. I think knowing what I was getting into beforehand helped prepare me for the plot points we did get.

Gameplay

I’ll talk about the gameplay first because that’s easier to summarize. I had a lot of fun with it, and the trip down memory lane with all the familiar music was wonderful. I played with Sora, Donald, Goofy, and then Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, and it was really satisfying in particular to play as the latter three because I always wanted to see them fighting as a team more often. I need to try out the other teams; perhaps I will soon.

I loved the attention to detail with the character animations and the little loading screens. The main menu scenes were adorable too, and it was nice seeing the characters chatting to each other. Riku’s scene with the Dream Eaters was precious.

I played the songs on various difficulties, depending on the extra challenges. One thing I did notice is that the difficulty was variable even for the same level. Some Proud mode songs I was able to complete, others I really struggled with and gave up on for the time being. I can imagine it was difficult to create a consistent standard of difficulty when the music itself varies so much. I noticed that battle songs, songs with strong downbeats, and songs with syncopation translated better into rhythm games. The slower songs did not, and for a couple of songs I noticed that the buttons were not matching up with the rhythm, which threw me through a loop. Overall though, most of the music matches the timing of the buttons much better than in previous KH games, so I appreciated the improvement there.

The Memory Dive and Boss Battle system is different from the Field Battle system, so there was a learning curve for me there. KH3 features more Memory Dive segments though, probably to show off the nicer graphics and to prepare you for the final battle. By the time I got the hang of the Memory Dive system, I was enjoying myself a lot. I still wish KH3 songs had featured more, but perhaps they’re planning on a Melody of Memory Volume 2 or some DLC or something.

Pretty much all of the character themes have to be unlocked. I’ve done Kairi’s, Naminé’s, and Sora’s so far, and the videos accompanying them are really nice. I honestly wish I could watch someone play so I can pay attention to the videos because the glimpses I catch are lovely.

Maybe it’s because I marathoned the game, but it does start to feel grind-y after several hours of playing. It’s the kind of grinding I enjoy doing, but by the time I unlocked BBS and DDD, I stopped trying to complete the extra challenges because I wanted to get to the plot. Speaking of the plot, by the way, all of the new stuff is at the end of the game. Everything up till then is just a summary of what’s come before. I do understand why Nomura went with that, but it does make it a little tiring to get to the new plot because of the sheer number of songs you have to get through first.

Now that we’re discussing story, though...

Story

I. The Good

1. Kairi is playable (well, this is more gameplay, but it also ties into story).

I know a lot of people watched videos that cut out the gameplay, but she does get a couple of segments of her own where she is playable and you get to do a Memory Dive-esque segment. The first instance is set to “Stranded Beyond,” the music that plays in the Final World. The second instance is set to the music box version of her theme I believe it was as she gathers pieces of her heart. She did get a render for the game, so I was expecting her to be playable at some point, and I was happy she was.

2. Kairi puts up a darn good fight against Xehanort. I wish we could have played through this part, but she kept attacking and didn't let him grabbing her Keyblade deter her. She's clearly improved even since the Keyblade Graveyard.

3. Sora showing up to help her is really sweet, as was her thanking him.

It would've been nice if we got to do that fight as the two of them or as Kairi herself (and more on that later), but the romance of it all was nice. The boy's not even in the real world anymore, and he still shows up to help when Kairi’s is in danger. At first I thought she'd managed to summon his Keyblade, which is awesome and shows how connected they are, and then he appeared and I was like woah okay guess their hearts really are connected thanks to the paopu fruit.

4. Kairi’s going to train with Aqua! Yes!

The fans have been clamoring for this for years and it's finally happening! And she chose it for herself. Leave it to her to try to make the best of the short end of the stick.

5. Letting Riku go alone takes a lot of trust on her end. Yeah, it would've been nice if she got to go, but she's also realistic about her own abilities, and that is in line with how she's been in previous games. I think especially after her failures led to Sora disappearing, she'd be hesitant to rush into danger if she's worried she'd be a liability.

6. It was a pleasant surprise that the Nameless Star was the third key (with Kairi and Riku being the other two) and not Yozora. I thought for sure he would be, so I’m glad Nameless Star gets to be instead. She seems like a kind soul and I like her a lot already.

7. It was nice hearing Kairi's thoughts on Sora's sacrifice for her in KH1. I also love the implication that everyone’s told Kairi their stories, hence why she’s able to tell them to us. The BBS segments especially sound as if she spoke to Aqua in particular about what happened, which ties in nicely to how Aqua’s going to train her at the end.

8. Alyson upped her voice acting game in this, props to her. Her lines when Kairi was facing off against Xehanort were great, and her voice was very soothing to listen to for the narration.

III. The Bad

1. Kairi should've been playable in that last battle. I can see why Nomura had Sora show up though; he's the hero and people want to see him, etc. The same issue happened with Riku getting sidelined in KH3, so it's hardly unique to Kairi; it just seems worse because of Kairi’s past treatment. Sora showing up was a cool moment and looked neat visually, but it would’ve been better if he and Kairi had fought together or if he’d encouraged her and then she’d done the fighting herself. Sadly, Sora winds up shining more in this game than Kairi does as a result, and the advertising feels like a huge bait-and-switch. Again.

I'm honestly beginning to wonder if part of the story for ReMind was written after Melody of Memory, because Melody of Memory seems to follow more directly from KH3 whereas ReMind almost feels like it was written... in reaction to the fanbase being upset about how Kairi was treated? I think Nomura must’ve had his heart set on certain plot points for the story post-KH3, and instead of letting his characters guide him, he’s forcing his decisions on the characters. Which leads me to the next point:

2. Kairi staying behind does feel like a character regression. It made sense in KH1 and during Blank Points I suppose, but it's disappointing she didn't go with Riku this time. I guess it's realistic though, and so the whole plot point is a mixed bag. It's hard for me to make a final judgment call on this until we see more of the story. Is she training with Aqua so she can be shunted aside, or is she going to be in a game with Terra, Aqua, and Ven that delves into Ven's past or something? Until we know more, I’m not sure how to feel.

3. If I had to guess, the next game(s) will have Riku, Yozora, and Mickey be playable. Possibly Sora too because Nomura can't help himself lol. This is... about what I expected. I figured Riku would be the one in Yozora's world just based on the secret ending of KH3. I wonder how all of this is going to go down (I know Square has several KH teams now, so multiple games are probably in development right now).

4. I don’t know how I feel about us possibly getting DDD the Redux + Yozora for the 20th anniversary in 2022. Having another DDD-esque game would not be treading any new ground, and it feels like Nomura wants to do Versus XIII at all costs, the main plot of KH be hanged (hi Foretellers and Luxu, we miss you, you were disappointingly absent in this game). But I do think the Yozora game is next in the cards, and then maybe there will be another game focused on Mickey going to Scala ad Caelum. I really hope it's not just Mickey by himself in that game... And I’d really like a game about the Wayfinder Trio + Kairi...

5. Riku's character is getting worse and worse. His entire character has become about saving Sora, and saving Sora isn't any different than his role in DDD. Feels like a rehash of past plot points, much like Kairi having to train feels like a rehash of past plot points. And at this point it just feels like he’s taking away screentime and agency from other characters, Kairi in particular. David also kind of phoned in the voice acting again on this game. To be fair, he only had a handful of lines, but some of his lines in KH3 also sounded tired and bored.

6. There’s only a passing mention to Roxas, Naminé, Xion, Axel, etc., and not even by name (they’re just lumped together as the others in Twilight Town or something along those lines). It would've been nice to know what they've been up to; they feel strangely uninvolved in the plot. At least we know Kairi will be training with Aqua, so there's that.

7. I really wish Kairi had argued with Riku more about going. She did briefly, but it's sad that she gives up so easily and that Riku doesn't really trust her. It's such a huge contrast to how Sora treats her; whereas he believes in her and raises her up, Riku is like, "Nah, you should stay behind, you're not good enough yet, let me handle this." Riku still coddles her too much and treats her like she’s a doll on a shelf whereas Sora invites her to fight alongside him in ReMind and comes to her aid when she needs it. Riku comes out of this looking like a jerk, which I doubt was intended by Nomura, but it is what it is. Especially because Mickey is really worried about him going alone later on.

8. Kairi's backstory being used only to forward the plot instead of delving into her feelings more is a missed opportunity. Also features retcons galore with Xehanort apparently sending her away to save Radiant Garden all along? That part confused me. And the meta implication that Riku is getting to go on the journey she was originally meant to go on... It makes me wonder if Nomura thinks the implications of his writing through. Riku is literally stealing her role and her plotline now, and neither of them react like two people in such a situation would. I hope Nomura’s going somewhere with this and that it's not just completely unintended bad implications, or worse, fully intended bad implications...

III. Miscellaneous Thoughts

1. It's hard to know how to feel about this game without knowing the next chapters of the story. It does feel like it leads directly from KH3, but it feels like a regression character-wise from ReMind.

2. I hope Kairi going to train with Aqua isn't just an excuse to sideline her from the plot... again. I have some serious caveats about her role going forward, but I'm relieved she didn't go to sleep again or go back home to Destiny Islands. That was my worst fear, and thank goodness she is taking her fate into her own hands in the small ways she can. I wonder if this is Nomura trying to continue a plot point from BBS Volume 2 that had to be scrapped or something. Let's hope Aqua can actually teach her competently, unlike Merlin...

3. Mickey getting a Melody of Memory render confuses me. He wasn't playable, was he? I didn't 100% the game so I have no idea. Maybe he is playable somewhere in the game and I haven’t gotten to it yet. Or maybe he really will be playable in a future game as a main character.

4. No one will ever be able to claim Kairi is a Mary Sue lol. She's had an (almost disappointingly realistic) learning curve when it comes to fighting, especially in comparison to the other characters. I hope that by the time KH4 rolls around, Nomura will let her be fully competent/fully trained. It's frustrating that pretty much all of the other characters get to learn as they go, but she is relegated to more training.

5. This game almost makes me more impatient for the next chapter of the story when I was feeling pretty content after ReMind. I guess the game has done its job in that case, but while I feel better than I did after KH3, I feel slightly worse than I did after ReMind. I wish Nomura wasn't so fixated on maintaining the status quo and would stop rehashing past plot points. But again, it'll be hard to judge all this until we get more material, which probably won't be till 2022 at the earliest if I had to guess.

6. The Yozora stuff wasn't as hackneyed as I feared it would be, but I still can't shake the feeling that that whole plot point is sucking up precious screentime from other characters. I think Nomura's going to spread himself too thin again and have trouble wrapping all of this up in KH4. Because now we have the Riku-going-to-Yozora's-world plotline, the Mickey-going-to-Scala-ad-Caelum plotline, the Kairi-training-with-Aqua plotline, the overall-rescuing-Sora plotline, the Luxu-Foretellers-MoM plotline, the Subject X plotline... how on earth are all these plotlines supposed to be connected to each other and resolved in a satisfying fashion?

7. My guess is that the switch to Kairi being narrator instead of Chirithy happened late into development of the game, perhaps because Nomura saw how much the fanbase does appreciate Kairi and wanted to throw us a bone. Unfortunately, what resulted is a bait-and-switch that made us hope we'd get a Kairi-focused game, only for it to... end the way it does. Ironically, I think it might've been less disappointing if Chirithy had remained the narrator. I'm glad Kairi got to be the narrator, don't get me wrong, but I think the way Nomura handled things set us up for disappointment again. I just hope whatever comes next makes this game feel better in hindsight.

8. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the whole “unreality”/fictional worlds thing. I guess I’m having an easier time accepting it than I thought I might, but it still feels like the whole plotline was introduced just to shove Versus XIII into the KH universe. I sympathize with Nomura for having his baby taken away from him in the first place, but I worry both it and KH will suffer as a result of combining the two.

IV. Future Speculation

1. If I had to guess, Kairi is probably not going to be very involved in the Yozora game(s). It'll be focused on Riku, Yozora, and possibly Mickey and Sora too. Yozora and Nameless Star will probably be instrumental in bringing Sora back "to the real world,” and then Sora will come home just in time to have to face off against the Foretellers and the Master of Masters in KH4 (which, I'm gonna make a wild guess and assume we'll get in 2025 or 2026 at the earliest).

2. I do hope Kairi plays some role in bringing Sora back, and honestly, I think it's possible she will. Nomura, I would imagine, is setting up her reunion with Sora to be Big and Important™️, so it wouldn't surprise me if he wants to save it for KH4. I think a part of Sora’s heart might be inside Kairi or linked to Kairi, and that will be the final key to bringing him back. The whole scene where Sora appeared reminded me of when Ven briefly manifested when Sora was facing off against Vanitas, and Ven was inside Sora’s heart at the time.

3. We know from past covers that the current cover actually foreshadows future events in the story. KH3's cover depicts parts of Tokyo and then Sora wakes up there (oh excuse me "Quadratum" lol nice one SQUARE), the KH2 Final Mix cover depicted The Final World, so maybe MoM's cover is meant to depict future events as well.

4. Sora being unable to speak in Kairi’s dream when he faces off against Xehanort has me intrigued. Why can’t he speak? Is it because his heart is in the unreality? All I can think about is The Little Mermaid when Ariel lost her voice because of Ursula’s curse “deal” with her.

5. I don’t think the person Kairi and Sora actually fought was Xehanort. Why would a dead Xehanort care about where Sora is? It would make more sense to me if it was the Master of Masters (hinted at by the acronym for the title, MoM), and that he was using Xehanort’s image (and then Xemnas’s, and then Ansem SOD’s, and then Apprentice Xehanort...) to manipulate Kairi. It would fit his whole “puppetmaster behind the scenes” vibe I get from him and his previous manipulation of Xehanort. I think he was trying to locate Sora’s heart in this game, and Sora stepping in to help Kairi allowed him to pinpoint Sora’s location. Now he seems to know where Sora’s heart is, so mission accomplished, I guess? Ooooph, Sora walked right into that trap if that’s the case.

V. Final Thoughts

Fun if uneven gameplay and some questionable story choices dragging down the good stuff. I’ll hold my full judgment till we see what happens next though.

Congrats if you made it all the way to the end of this, haha. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts!

#kingdom hearts #melody of memory #kingdom hearts melody of memory #kh mom #melody of memory spoilers #kh mom spoilers #kingdom hearts melody of memory spoilers #kh analysis #kh meta #long post

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transcendentcacophony · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on Worldbuilding: Storytelling with Geography: Lunar Lakes

So I've been thinking about worldbuilding for awhile, and one of the things that I like about certain worlds is that they tell a story with their geography. I think Lunar Lakes is one of these worlds.

Image: An overview of Lunar Lakes from Sims 3

All Lunar Lake images will be from here

This is going to draw from James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed and the concept of Zomia

So one of the central concepts behind Zomia and The Art is the idea that not everybody wants to be a part of centralized governments or nation-states.

Traditionally, most academic fields have held that as societies centralize around agricultural centers that evolve into urban centers, they draw everybody to them through some kind of unexplained magnetism as they gradually expand. It's usually held that this is because the centralizing power of agriculture allows for population booms not supported by hunting-and-gathering. At least one philosopher <cough> Daniel Quinn <cough>1 this is a result of these populations controlling access to food. Not just surpluses of food, but access to food at all, forcing those within their borders to join the system or die.

This idea that agricultural societies are somehow fundamentally better. We see this reflected in different cultural evolution models (all of which are horribly racist but still manage to hang on in weird places, particularly developmental models). As such, the shift from hunting-and-gathering to sedentary agriculture tends to be heralded as a good thing in most history text books and is pretty much always seen as a step towards "modernization.2" But what if you don't want that? What if you have zero interest in joining the agricultural community and implied state control?3 What options do you have then?

You, then, may be interested in Zomia or one of the other extra-territorial spaces that function similarly.

Image: A village in the mountains

So what is Zomia? Zomia encompasses a large territory that ranges across Southeast Asia up into Tibet. Its primary defining feature is its rugged terrain and various populations that have no interest in different state-sponsored "civilizing" projects. While different agricultural centers expand outward to fill the lowland regions seeking to bully those they encounter along the way into joining, various people along the way say "f*ck it" and go up into the mountains. Why? Because the rugged terrain makes it harder for their valley-based neighbors to control them while providing plenty of hiding places push back against their expansion.

Image: A map of the Zomia area highlighting the Southeast Asian and Himalayan Massifs, areas encompassing the geography of Zomia itself.

Agriculture tends to lock people into place and makes them easier to control, therefore nation-states interested in keeping track of large populations have a vested interest in convincing people to farm. Buggering off into the mountains offsets this. Agriculture isn't necessarily harder in these mountainous areas4, but you do have different crops as a result of altitudinal zonation and a fair amount of people choose to engage in animal husbandry instead because the high altitudes impact calorie consumption as your body spends more energy keeping you warm.

This impacts cultures in these regions as well. People may choose to define themselves in opposition to the lowland culture they are avoiding. They may hybridize with cultures already in the mountains, create new languages, or define themselves by the fact they are there for political or semi-political reasons and expressly avoiding the control of an outside party, even if that outside party is the nation-state they are legally considered a part of. There is also a tendency of these cultures to discard literacy for orality, in part because orality is easier to carry around and in part because it marks them as Other compared to their lowland counterparts. It also gives you a since of control over your culture itself, as orality can't be shared unless you want it to whereas almost anyone can learn a writing system and open a book.

So what's this got to do with Lunar Lakes? Let's look at LL more closely, shall we?

Image: The downtown region from Lunar Lakes

The most densely developed part of Lunar Lakes is easily this "downtown" district in the lowlands region. This area contains most of the community lots for the world, and, most tellingly, City Hall and the Perigee, which we're told in the original blurb brought the (human) sims to Lunar Lakes to begin with.

Image: The Rim

There is a little bleed over of rabbitholes from the city center onto the Rim, a slightly elevated area just above it, but these are no where near as "mountainous" as the craters we'll get to in a minute.

Image: The Canals

Another defining feature of the lowland central area are these canals. As these canals do not extend to a beach or other waterway, they can't be for trade, thereby lending themselves to the idea that they are intended for agricultural uses. They could, of course, predate the colony, but that doesn't change the intent.

Image: The Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot

On the backside of the craters, we have the Crystal Mine, the Outpost, and the Depot. We're told in the original backstory blurb for the world on the Store page that the residents had to harness the crystals to to make their colony sustainable, but it feels abandoned now. Given the importance of the mine in the early days of the colony, it makes sense they'd have a transport depot here for the workers and an outpost, possibly for the military, to protect it, especially if the world was inhabited and the indigenous people wanted nothing to do with them or actively apposed them.

Image: The Craters from Lunar Lakes

Which brings us finally to the craters themselves. Here's where Zomia comes in. If Lunar Lakes was inhabited and if the native population had no interest in joining the colonists or being exploited by them, where would they go? The craters, of course! This would also hold true for anyone who didn't want to fall in line with the colonial leadership among the human sims themselves. We know the Louie family, for example, had to move to the craters after they were exiled by Patricia Cross, the current colonial leader. It therefore stands to reason that, even if the people who live here are colonists, this is where they are expected to go if they are exiled or want to get away from the political milieu of the central powers in the downtown district.

Image: Suburban Subspace lot from Lunar Lakes

And, of course, architecturally, this is where we got those distinctive mushroom houses, which again, suggests an alternative development of this region compared to the lowlands even if the people here are exiled colonists, deviants, etc.

Regardless, we end up with a setting that is rife for internal worldbuilding and storytelling based on its geography. If you add an alien population seeking to escape SimEarth colonization by fleeing to the craters, it establishes a political backdrop for stories, making the world feel more lived in and providing a ready-made backstory. This is one of the things I think is drastically missing in the Sims 4 with their itty-bitty neighborhoods and lack of connecting spaces.

Anyways, these are the things I think about when worldbuilding myself. What story does my world tell geographically? Does it have a built in backstory represented by its geography? Are the different regions/neighborhoods connected in a way that makes cohesive sense? Are their other worlds you think do a good job of storytelling with their designs?

If you build worlds, do you take into account the storytelling potential of your geography? Why or why not? If you play in worlds like Lunar Lakes, does the geography inform your storytelling? Does it help build a metadiscourse around your game? Are there other worlds that inspire your gameplay with their layouts?

Edited in response to @nornities excellent feedback.

1) This is not meant as an endorsement of all of Quinn's arguments; he's got a weird overpopulation theory built into his writing that's a little too close to Malthusian for my liking, but I'm not one to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.

2) Ever notice how "modernization" and "development" are always fundamentally anchored in how Europe moved from feudalism to imperialism to democracy etc.? Yeah, that's the remnants of that "cultural evolution" model I'm talking about. "You're not successful until you look like us!" "Take these developmental loans from the World Bank or the IMF! We promise the strings attached are for your benefit too!" "What do you mean you want to skip industrialization and natural resource extraction and invest in your environment, happiness, and long-term sustainability? You'll never be like us that way! You're a failed state! Ignore the coup in the background we swear we had nothing to do with!"

3) This is the section that was edited after @nornities pointed out that it could be read to imply that non-agricultural societies don't have taxes, class warfare, epidemics, subjugation, slavery, conscription, etc. That was not the intention, although it is clearly stated in Scott's original work that he considers these and other negative societal effects to be the direct result of such "civilizing projects." It was not my intent to perpetuate that idea as these things do happen in non-agricultural societies, so I have changed the original wording. Thank you, @nornities

4) I also forgot to mention the clear exception to this: the Incan Empire. Unlike most empire models, the Inca engaged in a top-down society (literally) that was based in the mountains and expanded downward and outward over time. They were predated by two earlier Andean civilizations.

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