#which like. what do you cutscene skipping? cuz you could already do that

[lecliss]

I barely kept up with the info about the ToGf remaster aside from the fact that it was happening so I only just now saw it came out like two weeks ago (buy it buy it buy it now you must) and I'm looking at the screenshots on the ps store page and like. Idk, maybe my memory is shit even tho I literally replayed the game just last year but like. It doesn't look different. The models don't look different or improved at all. Like what the fuck was changed??? What was enhanced? What was remastered???? And it's already a good looking game for what it is so I'm not saying it looks bad. I just. Can't see a difference. Incredibly based of bamco to only make it 40 dollars tho. They coulda said fuck you and made it 70 like all games nowadays.

[aisforinterval]

If you could change 1 thing about LAL, what would it be? I’d prolly make it so the characters can chat to each other more in the Final Chapter 🥺

GOD, little specific character dialogues in the DoH would be SO GOOD. like heart-to-heart events in xenoblade 1... (i already have i comic i want to do with the whole group regarding a hot spring...)

in all honesty though... i just want more Sundown. i was bummed that his chapter was so short (literally 10 minutes when you skip cutscenes... orz), but at the same time, i dunno what i'd add to it, cuz part of LAL's charm is that it's short and sweet.

it doesn't overstay its welcome, it's efficient in communicating its storytelling thru the mechanics and gameplay. i feel it's better to be left wanting more than to be burnt out on a thing, cuz you come away with a positive and can analyze the content you DO have with a microscope

all that being said... there is one thing i wasn't a huge fan of; Sundown's dialogue to Oerstead when you pick him as the MC in the DoH.

Sundown and Oerstead probably have more in common story-wise than any of the other protags, both being feared fugitives wanted dead by many in their respective stories. i kinda wish that Sundown's dialogue mirrored that similarity more than just "i wish i could settle down"

which is definitely NOT a premise i've been drawing a whole bloody comic about since august and it's taken forever because it's 12 pages long with backgrounds and buildings and shit, what on EARTH are you implying 😤😤😤

[mekatrio]

super long post of me complaining abt totk irt to my totk playthru bc I <3 Complaining ❤️❤️

maybe its cuz i played like a fuckton during the first week (tho i only have 65 hours total so idk how that compares to the average playerbase) or maybe its cuz ive been playing in an unconventional way, but totk is starting to feel boring to me... (or maybe the game design just sucks..?)

i play unconventionally in that i have disregarded the plot.. bc in botw it was so boring to me. and i watched all the totk cutscenes online anyways and it was as i suspected, i wouldve been disappointed and annoyed if i wasted time collecting all those memories just to get some half-baked story.

im on the fence for doing dungeons tho.. i see my sister doing one, and it does actually look kinda fun, but i worry how satisfying it will actually be, and if i finish the dungeon's boss, will this game's final boss(es) be too easy? (thats what happened in botw.. but maybe ill just do the dungeon and skip the boss? if i can do that?)

i did do the beginning of the gerudo main questline, and it was rly.. boring.... fighting the gibdos was rly boring.. i guess figuring out that mirror puzzle with little help was fun. but it was overall pretty (._.) have yet to enter the dungeon. again idk if i want to

but also another thing is that like its rly rly Really hard for me to gaf abt any npcs in this game LOL.. they just like. say a whole bunch of nothings..... bc like in older games, dialogue helps w worldbuilding since theyre so technologically limited. but in a game like this, you see the world that you get. theres not much that their dialogue adds on, and its only sometimes funny anyways. and i always find myself mashing thru it anyways, bc i just.. dont care.. and also, even if they are saying something supplemental to the world, a useful tip or whatever, its 1.) a teeny tiny tip that i probably could or wouldve learned online or 2.) a mini questline with the most eh reward ever.

i guess cuz in older games you Had to talk to people to figure out what to do next. theres no 'what to do next' in this game so i just.. yeah. im just often unmotivated to know what theyve got to say. of course theyve helped me here and there but its like.. in most games i play, i try to talk to as many npcs i can. but i never feel the need to do this in totk, from either how uninteresting they are, or bc the info they tell me tends to be something i already know.

and my apathy of npcs unfortunately extend to the main quest as well (gorons rito etc), and although i say i wish this game gave me more reasons to talk to npcs, i still end up disliking how totk/botw goes around w it in their main quests; cuz now theres like, a break in the gameplay, where i Must speak to NPCs to advance the 'plot'. my gameplay of exploration, engaging in combat whenever i please, and so on, has to be paused to do this quest. and arguably these quests do provide me the opportunity to explore and whatnot, but its no longer done by Myyyy pace. i have to follow whatever pace and order the game has set for me to do. which Sucks. it really sucks to have a game which im enjoying bc of the freedom, to restrict my freedom like that.

(and this is also why i disliked shrines in the first game.... my regular gameplay gets broken up in order for me to enter shrines (which all look the absolute same as every other one btw, so theres no motivator of 'ohhh i wonder what this shrine looks like?'). and i have to solve the shrine in whatever way its making me to. and obvs some shrines have multiple solutions but more often than not it tends to be limiting.... anyways this is why i deeply prefer shrine quests in the overworld over basic shrines. i much prefer solving puzzles as im exploring as opposed to having to essentially pause my gameplay just to earn hearts and stamina.

in terms of exploration + combat (bc the two go hand in hand).. after getting all the towers, i feel that theres little left for me to do. now that i have a decent amount of hearts and stamina (8 hearts + 1.75 stamina wheels), theres nothing tht really motivates me to do more shrines. the shrines in this game are a lot better than botw's (most of the time), but once ive lost the desire to do shrines as well its a bit.. (._.)

and ive explored most of the west side of the depths, i think roughly 30% overall, but that has gotten a bit boring as well. which is a shame, bc i think its a lot of fun to explore in pitch-black terrain. but as ive said before, it visually stays the same throughout the entire terrain which ends up making it feel very monotonous. same ol grey and purples forever and ever... i wish there was a variety of biomes and landscapes or something (itd be nice if the east looks drastically different but i sincerely doubt it). so far its just grey stretches of land and monster mine camps and maybe the occasional flux construct boss like :/

and combat... ergh... EH.... well just like botw its a blast in the beginning when everything is still hard. but like... all my weapons are pushing 40 atk power now. im like. Ripped. the monsters.. do not reflect this. like firstly u still get those annoying one hit monsters like chuchus, keese, and bokoblins. which is whatever i guess.. annoying but theyre there to spice it up. so whateves. but its when the monster camps still have red monsters like.. what?! even having blue monsters is pushing it honestly. the red ones dies in one hit, and the blues dies in 2-3 hits. black ones are starting to catch up in this regard, but are still a challenge. but there just isnt enough silver ones which ideally should be spawning at this point...

its come to a point where i just end up ignoring most monster camps, bc the reward drops just aren't very good either. like i do not explore in a conventional order, so im already stacked with royal gear. i do not need traveller sword #5. and the game has not adapted with that. i wish it did, bc man the game is getting boring 😮‍💨

there is more to say. maybe ill be more coherent after i get off my bed LOL. but yeah totk still has the same issues as totk which is... erm. not great

[an-obligatory-blog]

I’ve known this for quite some time, but I’m just going to post this now since even now, it’s still a very confusing part of P5.

Regarding to the ending split...

... it has plot holes, but it isn’t as major as I initially thought it was.

It was a complex plan, no doubt, and certainly, there had to have been a better way to explain it (ATLUUUUUS). After all, for a good amount of time, I thought the thing is riddled with nonsense, but after being explained by a certain someone on discord and some more thought, some questions has been answered. Oh, and reading Futaba’s dialogue before you go to sleep-- I don’t see many videos of that on it’s own so I suppose that’s part of the reason why it’s confusing.

These a few plot holes that I thought (or others) existed, but didn’t:

- How Akechi got out of the Metaverse (do you remember how you leave the Metaverse?) - How Akechi contacted Shido (u thought he was was underground/in the metaverse? apparently he wasn’t necessarily) - The Metaverse app being activated without alerting Goro (you can use the app without audio input via the search history function (see: the second time Akira and Ryuji entered Kamoshida’s Palace)) - Goro not getting into his rebel outfit after entering the Metaverse (When asked, you can sell out your teammates and/or you confidants, but NOT Akechi. At that moment, Sae didn’t know that Akechi intends to shoot Akira until Akechi had already left the Metaverse. During the duration of the attempted hit, there was no reason for Sae to see Akechi as a threat, either a hitman or a thief)  - How tf Futaba can get a signal from Akechi’s phone (since it had a GPS) and Akira’s phone (GPS and voice messaging) when both Akechi and Sae were supposedly 8 floors underground (They weren’t necessarily. Sae met Akechi w/ the phone right after leaving an elevator. The voice messaging was pre-programmed into Akira’s phone so that it could work in the Metaverse; Futaba OP, pls nerf) 

What wasn’t explained regardless:

- The mess that is Justice Rank 8 (someone told me that it might be a developer’s joke since Morgana commented how it didn’t make sense nor would it make sense for either Morgana or Akira to , which would be shitty cuz that is literally the definition of lazy writing: “Idk what to put here so let him rank up cuz lul”) - How exactly did Sae convince the police that there was a body in the first place? I get forging the death certificate (which should be enough to fool Shido since his ass isn’t getting out of his office chair), but what about everyone else? That doesn’t sound like a feat that could be done by one person. Maybe the grunts anticipated Akira’s death too quickly and assumed that it happened when Sae reported? Eh, even for P5, that relies way too much on incompetence. How Sae managed to 1) drag Akira out without being caught 2) fool the police in regard of a dead body and 3) get away with it all for so long is the worst plot hole you could pull out of this whole plot segment. - SEE EDIT BELOW

Asterisks (*) are used to mark questionable parts that I realized after what Atlus was really trying to do. 

I found Futaba’s extra dialogue during NicoB’s Let’s Play of Persona 5. It’s around the last 10 min of the episode linked below. Couldn’t find a better video, but this is where I found out, so it’ll work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi6wLyeuqws&list=PL5bkYBlFL9xcNUVU5-EcBxdaVVAZM2zX1&index=62

Look at the moment when Akechi and Sae meet. When Sae showed him the phone, Futaba explained later that she bugged the phone (the one belonging to Akira) similarly like with Akechi’s phone. Through that, she remotely activated the Metaverse app to transport the two into the Metaverse. (remember the search history function that was used for Akira’s and Ryuji’s second visit to Kamoshida’s palace? That’s the function that Futaba remotely activated. She didn’t tamper with the magical app itself.)*

So Sae and Akechi are in and they went in opposite directions. Akechi goes in, kills the cognitive guard and cognitive Akira.** Now, here’s where one of the so-called ‘major plothole’ existed. How did Akechi get out? First, let me ask you this, how do leave the Metaverse in the first place? I thought that you just press the app to leave, but apparently, that’s wrong. You have to physically go back the way you came, and that’s why you always have to return to the Palace’s entrance to leave the Palace. This is what Atlus failed to do-- what leaving the Metaverse actually looks like. We saw Akechi’s pictures of the PT appearing/disappearing out of thin air back at Okumura’s palace, but we didn’t see how it really looks like without the red/black circles washing over the screen every time we do it. Apparently, leaving the Metaverse doesn’t involve pressing the app at all-- just going back the way they came. Remember where Sae showed Akechi the phone? That is where they entered, and hence, where they exit. When Akechi was done with his assassination attempt, he goes down the hall, up the elevator (yeah, the guard couldn’t have seen Sae and Akechi conversing, they were on a different floor), and back to where the app was first activated. Once Akechi crossed that point, that’s when he left the Metaverse.

This is when Akechi calls Shido. You see how he calls Shido right in front of an elevator? Yeah, he probably wasn’t 8 floors underground at that point. 

Now, I’m assume you know the general story with Sae, but I’m going to clear this up anyways. Sae received the pre-programmed messages from Akira’s phone, and she followed their instructions to go back to the interrogation room. Once again, she crossed the same point where the app was first activated, thus causing her to exit the Metaverse. She goes down the elevator and towards the room. The GPS installed in Akechi’s phone helped Futaba to time Sae’s entrance because it would be awkward if Sae encountered Akechi mid-assassination. (Futaba would know when Akechi is out of the Metaverse and out of the police station; nothing contradictory of getting a signal by then)

*The problem with this is... even if you use the search history function, the phone still plays it’s voice protocols like normal (”...Beginning navigation” You know the drill.). I don’t recall this ever being mentioned by any of the characters, but you can easily explain this away with “the phone was on silent”. **The cognitions should’ve disappeared similarly like Shadows when they were killed. You can pull any number of BS by using “well maybe Sae’s cognition is different because hurr durr”, but it was never mentioned by the PT to even consider the rate in which cognition disintegrate into nothing nor was there any measures to accommodate for that. This instance is plot convenience at it’s finest.

Now for the sake of clarification, this doesn’t mean that Atlus is suddenly flawless in regards of how they handled this aspect of the story. Aside from what I’ve already stated above, this stuff could’ve been handled better. The search history function was only mentioned offhandedly in the the very, very beginning of Kamoshida’s Palace (before even Shiho attempted suicide) by Ryuji so there is almost no way anyone would remember without looking back. The anime cutscene where Ryuji was smirking “we got ‘em” when he heard about the supposed suicide of the PT leader made no sense. (How would he know that the plan even succeeded???? I know he was being like, “well I toOOOTALLY knew that we were going to succeed” but goddamn, but that sounds like he was acting tough more than anything. That kind of blind confidence shouldn’t be present, even for a character like Ryuji.)

You know what would really help? Seeing a few frames of the inside of the elevator as it goes up and down. Despite hanging out in the background, I barely even noticed it before someone else pointed it out.

A good part of the fandom was impressed by the plan and yes, I do think it’s a clever trick for Atlus to pull on us. However, the more complicated the plan is, the more effort one should put in explaining said plan because, you know, it would be harder for the player to understand. I don’t mean treating the audience like idiots and I understand the concern of dragging the explanation scene out, but man, Atlus was totally off their game when it came to hinting/foreshadowing. Instead of doing off-hand comments about seemingly arbitrary, but relevant aspects of the plan (ex. Futaba’s bug on Akira’s phone, the search history function, etc.) that you can probably catch by your second or third run of the game, Atlus favored getting hung up on whether or not they wanted the traitor to be obvious or not because they seemed to be pretty damn bipolar regarding to that.

I do give them credit for making some information optional (discoverable by talking to Futaba). It makes the scene less draggy and allows people who don’t give two shits to skip the parts they don’t care. I don’t watch many let’s players on the same game, so I can’t conclude if many people actually went out of their way to talk to Futaba and process her words.

And one last note, I don’t think Persona 5 is a bad games by any standard, but I do believe that the writing is the weakest aspect of the game. Style and gameplay seems more polished than the actual story aspects.

I hope this helped for any of you guys out there. Feel free to let me know if you.see any mistakes/seek clarification. It’s 9:30 PM for me, so I hope I didn’t mess up too badly explaining this.

EDIT: It came to me that if the method of leaving the Metaverse is truly just by going back where they came, it raises issues in Shido’s Palace, where the place they started was on the front deck, which, as you guys know, was sinking into the depths by the end. Basically, there’s no winning with P5 plotholes-- no matter how you look at it, there’s an issue.

[kairiofknives]

Thoughts on Voltron Season 4:

Pros:

-Pidge had an absolutely fantastic arc this season. We learned a lot about her past and relationship with Matt. The scene where she thought she lost him was so real and heartfelt. And I personally love that so much of those episodes were just Matt and Hunk complimenting her and praising her intelligence. So what if it made her feel kinda Mary Sue like? We already knew her flaws before, let the girl get some loving. I also love that Pidge was a nickname given to her by Matt.

-There were a lot of relationship building moments (or shipping moments, whichever) but I specifically find the development of Sheith and Allurance to be interesting in this season compared to last season. On the Sheith front I have mixed feelings mostly due to my strong belief that this Shiro is the clone. That aside, our boys were able to have a decently large scale disagreement and work through it to support each other unconditionally. That's some love right there friends. And don't get me started on Shiro and Keith in the Kerberos launch cutscene. I need flashbacks....pleaaase.

Allurance also interested me a lot because I honestly didn't expect them to stick to their guns about Lance's crush on Allura this way. Season 1 made it feel so fleeting and shallow. Then by season 3 they had a nice kinship going on and a finally nice stable ground to be called friends on. Now, with Lance's jealous reaction toward Matt and his inspiration pep talk to Allura, I'm pretty sure we could see real romantic feelings build there. Can anyone tell my kink is unwavering support and love? Cuz it is.

-Lotor's arc has me feeling all kinds of things. I'm so fucking excited for him working with the Paladins next season. I wonder if his generals will do the same.

-I am very pleased with the BOM!Keith arc we got. I do have a lot of issues with its place in the story and how it manifested, but I think Keith learned a lot from it and found a niche he felt comfortable filling, which was not at all true of his being the Black paladin.

-There were parts of this season that made me genuinely scared or sad, so even tho I have my issues with the pacing, the story telling is still legit. Almost cried when Pidge cried. Also, man oh man, I was so terrified that Haggar's spell was gonna turn Shiro against them in that moment or something. The fear was real. And when Keith almost died for our sins? Kill me. Yeah there were emotions. As long as there continue to be I will keep watching.

Cons:

-Ok, so the biggest one: why the fuck would you go through the trouble of building up support from the paladins and building Keith's confidence in his abilities as leader if you were gonna let him pass it on anyway?? It just seems like they took a huge step backwards. I can accept that this is necessary for "Shiro's" plot. If he is the clone, it will hurt the team so so so much more if everyone is content with and believes in him as leader. But for the whole team it seems senseless.

-Lotor's generals are dicks man. I enjoyed the fandom wide headcanon that they were fiercely loyal to him. Yet they just give him up when his plan fails? Now I don't care about them anymore. Is sad.

-6 episodes is not enough time for build my affection for any members of the coalition. Especially the freedom fighters who are almost all new. The pacing was way too fast to care about them excluding Matt. And since one of the pressure moments of the story was not knowing if they'd live through taking out that laser battle cruiser thing, it was kinda important that we care about them. On top of that, Shiro seems very bland and almost out of character this season, though that may honestly be because he's a clone. Idfk man.

-I skipped episode 4. Completely. It was embarrassing to watch. I mean, I love Coran and the silly moments of Voltron, but they had as many not fledged out characters and plot elements but felt it was necessary to include that episode? Yeah, no. There were definitely better uses of that time.

-Lance is back to being a comedic relief with one or two good moments. Sigh. Maybe if he becomes Allura's actually love interest he'll get more character development??? Maybe???

-Not enough Keith.