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secrets-of-the-library · 3 years ago

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This is a fan-created personal home of Antonio Carriedo, the Hetalia personified nation of Spain. I did look up a few reference pictures but I mostly just took a few ideas I liked from them (A courtyard, a tower, certain design features, etc etc) but it is mostly ‘winged’ and ‘as I felt like it’. I’m not Spanish and I wasn’t aiming to do a 100% authentic or accurate build here. Just for fun. I like to imagine that he loves this huge mansion that he has built up over the years and there is TONS of plants and things to do to entertain not only himself but also guests, friends, and family. Like Arthur, he has his own personal office too. I can imagine Arthur complaining about his home being too big and spacious though lol.

Remember: This is fan/headcanon created. I build for fun and am not a professional. I do not build with the intention of having it livable/non-clashing. If something clashes it will be up to you to fix it because I build for the pure aesthetic and not functionality. I own a lot of packs so if you don’t own all the ones used in this there might be issues.

After the cut here I will provide a visual walk-through via screen captures. You’re more than welcome to download it and look at it for yourself. My username on Sims4 is Shinoshallbugyou.

This project in particular was HUGE, again, I like to do huge projects and mansions. Because of its size the ‘cut’ will be huge as well, keep that in mind. I’ll do my best to walk you guys through it but if you have the game and packs the easiest way would be to just download it yourself.

I chose Oasis Springs because of its desert surroundings. The only lot bigger than this one is park lots. I was tempted to do a ‘central courtyard’ and a house essentially wrapped around it but I chose this one instead. I like to pretend that his property actually extends down several paths on the cliff and to some stables, horses, and etc down below. I like to think the road leading to his house is more long and windy but the lot simply isn’t big enough for it so I compromised. I’ll be showing an occasional night-time photo of the building here and there but for the most part I’ll stay in ‘Afternoon’ because it’s the brightest to see in.

The overall look...

Now the overhead breakdown of each floor, overall...

Now for some shots around the outside in certain spots. I really liked the idea of a courtyard and I wanted to do that. I’m always a fan of driveways that go down to another level of the house. Please note, I am aware that the driveway would be too steep realistically but this lot is NOT big enough so I made do. While cars are not a thing in the Sims 4 (They were in 3) I still like to pretend and put them in there anyways even if the objects do not work. I wanted to try my hand at a lot more balconies and playing around with the outside of a house more as well as trying things I normally wouldn’t do like leaving a section on the roof uncovered or throwing in more gazebos (Or whatever). I especially liked the below photo of a wall that kind of comes out in increments? It looked neat!

The front door. We’ll explore the 1st floor now. I wanted a ‘rug’ that would descend down with the leveled steps/platform here. There wasn’t one like that so I created one. I often play around with things and use them in ways they wouldn’t have been normally used in the game: Such as upsizing that tiny toy horse into a ‘statue’ of a horse.

Next up: The Living room. I can imagine that he shoved in some things to entertain people with like Foosball and more. This area has a balcony too and a lot of areas on this floor open up directly outside to have airflow. Each area kind of has its own ‘major color’ to it. This area is more ‘orange’.

Downstairs here is where I decided to put a bar, storage for drinks (He’s a mass producer of wine, after all, and he likes to drink on top of it) as well as the garage for where the cars would go, etc. I usually improvise and take other objects to look like other objects. ‘Wine caskets’ don’t exist- Those are some weird metal object in the game that is a wall decoration.

Next up is the bottom of the tower connected to the living room. The tower is the tallest building on the map with it being four stories high. The bottom is connected to the living room and it contains a small changing/towel area (This could double up for the pool/hot tub) but mainly for the sauna I have installed in there (Because why not?). I also plugged in a bathroom with the remaining room there. Because it is such a small space it is hard to see.

The next room we’re going to is the opposing wing on the 1st floor, on the opposite side of the main entry room. There is a staircase that goes upstairs here but through the archways is a small reading nook. There are multiple ‘flowing corridors’ around this building, both internally and externally, that are very open for air and breezes.Often these will have a lot of seating and decor mainly on the way to other rooms. I went for more white/grey here.

Next up is the first guest bedroom. It is sandwiched between two of these flowing ‘corridors’ and it has its own personal bathroom. These spaces are big enough for people to stay in plus an additional seating area.

The next is that corridor on the other side that leads out onto an outside corridor as well as the courtyard. I tried often to get different decorations and objects going on in some of these rooms that would differ them from the other ones so it wouldn’t all just blend together into nothingness.

Next up is the courtyard. I had to have some kind of courtyard in here and I really liked how this one turned out with its nooks and crannies. It leads back towards the front door, back to where we came from, or to a wrap-around corridor that is only specifically on this side of the house.

Next up is that wrap-around outside corridor. The first one has a wall separating it from the front of the property. What follows it is what I filled that property with. I thought it would be neat to place what would’ve been an old ruin there that has long since faded away. I thought it would be a treat for the eye. I’ve never been able to use those weird rounded structures from the romantic garden pack before so I wanted to see how they would look here.

Now here is the other half of the wrap-around corridor but what makes this one so different is... Even though it is plain it doesn’t have a wall barricading you and thus you can walk outside with your sim more here. This corridor leads into the solarium.

The Solarium is two stories tall with the 2nd floor being hallowed out in the middle with a pathway surrounding it and a glass dome on top in a mock greenhouse effect. I wanted to play around with arches and I’ve always loved indoor gardens and such like these so I wanted to include it.

The Solarium branches out towards the ‘backyard’ where there is a pool, hot tub, karaoke, a fire pit, outdoor grilling area, and more. I really wanted to include this ‘gazebo’ effect not only for the look and aesthetic of it but also for potential ‘structural support’ for the 2nd floor balcony up there. Plus it ties in the same effect on the 3rd floor corridor up on top.

I forgot to get a picture of it but if you do an aerial view of the pool (Or perhaps basement level) I did add turtle decorations to the bottom of it. Tortugaaaa.

Here I’m going to show off the tower a bit. Please note: You can’t make rounded walls in the Sims 4. This is my closest attempt to being able to do that. I knew I wanted a tower and I’m happy with how it turned out. As I started it though it was trouble because I simply didn’t know what to do at first. I had no idea how to fill it and at first I was trying to put the staircase INSIDE rather than out. I finally got the idea for a wrap-around staircase which is also difficult given that they only make right angles. Putting them on the outside massively helped save on space inside. That and, actually, I had difficulty in general with stairs on this map. The awkward building spaces made it difficult to place them.

The overall look of the ‘backyard’ with roofs up.

The overall map layout of the 2nd floor with the stairs specifically outlined. I ended up giving up on trying to build another flight of stairs on the 2nd floor leading to the 3rd and settled for putting it, too, outside on the main back balcony. Out of everything on this map that was one of the most frustrating things that I struggled with. I don’t ever do outside stairs so this was interesting for me to try.

Next we’re going up the tower and coming into the pantry. It’s rather nice and big, he can grow stuff in there on hand to eat, a collection of fish, spices, oils, and etc is all in there.

The next up is the kitchen. This one was frustrating too but once it came together it was nice. I went out of my comfort zone here, too. I’ve never made a blue kitchen and while I loved the idea the Sims 4 pallet was NOT working with me. I even tried with yellow cabinets and it just wasn’t working. These cabinets were the best I could do which is rather unfortunate because I wanted older looking cabinets but... It’ll do. I accented it with white and it is very spacious for lots of company! This kitchen has its own balcony and small eating area out there too. While most would argue that the kitchen should go on the bottom floor I actually really liked it here specifically because of the panty, the additional balcony, and the large eating area on the back balcony too. That and the stairs into the main entryway are actually in here and near that front door so it isn’t as far as one would think.

If you look in the below photo, though you can barely see it... On the left countertop against the wall there is actually a ‘tea’ area. We ship spuk/engspa and so I like to think Antonio, while he does drink tea, doesn’t as much. He does have this little cute area for Arthur to make his tea at though. He himself has his own counter under a window where he stores all his coffee stuff. Also, while I’ve never done it before, I really like hiding the stairway with that china cabinet because it just changed the whole atmosphere of the room.

Below is a rather chunky corridor that I chose a ‘black and white’ tile scheme for. It really only serves as a point A to B type of thing. The kitchen is to the right, another corridor to the left, below is a balcony that overhangs the front entryway and the doors at the top of the image lead to a massive back balcony that serves as an outside dining area that I imagine Antonio actually prefers to eat in because of the views and especially when he hosts guests.

Next is the corridor to the left of that chunky middle section. This is a rather odd-shaped corridor that was one of the last things I put together because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with it. I ended up having it being a seating area, a bathroom, a piano area, a small library area, and another seating area. It leads to another guest bedroom as well as the solarium/wrap-around-corridor on that side of the building, to continue the pattern from below. I went with a ‘yellow’ kind of theme here which is completely out of my element. Also, I realize that the lighting on the piano area looks out of place compared to the rest of it but I wanted it that way so that the piano had a spotlight feature.

Alright- The last ‘room’ on this floor. The second guest bedroom. This one doesn’t have its own personal bathroom (Just down the hall) but it does have its own balcony and it is bigger. I actually like this one more, I think.

Alright. This is the last main wrap-around corridor. It opens up and is not separated from the 2nd floor of the solarium. I decided to differentiate this one big time by introducing colored carpets and furniture to give it a fun touch. Also it does have a ‘hookah’ area lmao. The solarium part is alittle more boring but it does have activities for your sim to do such as painting, woodworking, and more. I figured it was a good spot to put misc hobbies since it is more out of the way of the usual social areas but has a great view and airspace.

Now for the last section of the 2nd floor: The main back balcony. This thing is huge and has a LOT of seating. I really like that big main dining table, the record player, and decorations. There is a stairway here that I put in, cutting through the roof, to get to the 3rd floor because I could‘t figure out how else to do it. I actually picture Antonio preferring to eat out here.

This is that stairwell with the 3rd floor cut off.

And here it is with the 3rd floor activated. It was a pain to get that to work but once I got it it worked just fine. I couldn’t figure out how to really connect the two separate buildings but then realized I could do an open-air corridor with no roof. That was DEFINITELY new for me and interesting to do!

With the roof on.

Next we’ll go to the office. I imagine that because he often shows up late (If even at all) and so he really utilizes this personal office and library a lot. It has its own personal bathroom, small kitchen, small records area, and eve a TV and fireplace near his desk. I often picture him trying to turn his desk around on the rug so that people on camera or on his zoom call won’t see his kitchen but I often see him forgetting to do that and so they just see a big microwave behind him lmao. Also I imagine, while the TV is helpful a lot for news and etc he is often distracted by soap operas, sports, and etc on it. Get to work, Antonio!

So we’re going to go back across that open-air corridor to the other wing and that is Antonio’s personal master bedroom and master bathroom. He has his own personal balcony that is colorful and relaxing.

First we’ll go into the master bathroom. I wanted a nice tub, plenty of space, more yellow accents... And I couldn’t figure out the shower and had to improvise. I actually put up stand-alone showerheads and nozzles into each of those pillars so he could take a really cool shower, if he wanted. I just didn’t want the shower to take away from the overall look of it and that seemed like the best option. Again, improvise, adapt, overcome.

Now for the final room on the 3rd floor: Antonio’s master bedroom. I went with ‘green for this’. It’s really cozy and colorful. I like to pretend that Arthur stitched those designs above his door and he hung them up because he loves them. Antonio also has a large walk-in closet/wardrobe that has been fitted onto the 3rd floor of this tower. I couldn’t get any good brown furniture to work so I shifted it to black in here. He’s a really fashionable guy and loves to care for his looks so it felt natural to make this his closet and area to get ready in.

From Antonio’s wardrobe... You have to use the stairs outside leading upstairs to the last and final room at the top of the tower and the 4th floor. It’s actually an attic/storage area and I often love putting these in the homes I build. I like to make them messy, cluttered, full of memories, and personal things to the person that lives specifically here. I always have a fun time trying to cram them full of stuff.

And with these last few pictures I wanted to show some of the scenery around in the area. It was a massive build and I’m glad I finally finished it at long last! Thanks for checking it out, it was a lot of hard work and time but I love it!

#the sims 4 #sims 4 creator #sims 4 build #hetalia #axis powers hetalia #aph spain #aph antonio fernandez carriedo #fan build

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blazehedgehog · 4 years ago

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What was the honest reaction to Sonic 06 back in 2006?

It was a long time ago, so I can only really speak to my own perspective.

Sonic 2006 was the time that Sega’s marketing department really started cranking the hype train really, really hard. Sonic 2006 was announced as a fresh start. A soft reboot. Sonic Team said they were treating it like “the first Sonic game on the Sega Genesis.” You still had Tails, and Knuckles, and Shadow, but it was the start of a new era. A new type of Sonic the Hedgehog. More serious, more realistic, more “epic.”

At this point, there was no reason to necessarily distrust any of that. Yes, Sonic games had been slipping in quality, and yes, Sega was still more or less pretending that everything was “okay.” But that was always in the typical, “we’re trying to sell a video game and not go bankrupt” sense. This felt like a tacit acknowledgement that things weren’t so great and they were going to start over and refocus. Set things right.

Early gameplay footage looked rough. I distinctly remember a Gametrailers hands-on where they were demoing the Mach Speed Zone in Kingdom Valley, and the Sega representative was very clear and upfront that the game wasn’t done yet, and all of the empty space Sonic was running through would be filled in later. (It wasn’t.) There was also the typical debate over the TGS 2006 “Bringing it Home” playable demo, where people argued then, too, that the game wasn’t done yet, and not to judge things too harshly. The final version will be better.

The final version also wasn’t done yet. So, y’know.

I had effectively bought an Xbox 360 for this game. I was broke as per usual, but I’d gotten lucky and won a Gametrailers video competition, which landed me $1000 in Gamestop gift cards. I bought a PS2, a Nintendo DS, and an Xbox 360, plus more than a dozen games between the three platforms. I knew there would be more Xbox 360 games besides Sonic 2006, and I’d even originally wanted a 360 primarily for Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but the simple fact is that once the money was in my hands and I spent it, Sonic 2006 was the only actual Xbox 360 game I owned.

Or was going to own, anyway. I think I’d won the contest in September or October of 2006, when Sonic came out in November. So I bought the 360 a few weeks early with some original Xbox games, and spent the interim with Spider-man 2, Ninja Gaiden Black, and the copy of Halo 2 I borrowed from my cousin.

Sonic 2006 was the first game I’d ever pre-ordered. The second game, pre-ordered on the same day, was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube. I still have the tiny pre-order statue that came with Sonic. His gloves and socks, once white, have begun to yellow with age, and the skin tone on his face and body is turning an ashy gray.

Even 72 hours before launch, there was not a clear picture what Sonic 2006 actually was. Sega was deliberately obfuscating certain features; early in development they’d sworn up and down that there were only three playable characters in the game, something that blatantly wasn’t true. Perhaps it was miscommunication from Japan, but it meant they were now going out of their way to hide how many other playable characters were actually in the game. I naively distrusted most (if not all) professional reviewers back then, and the earliest scores for Sonic 2006 were all over the map.

As a Sonic fan, you kind of had to know how to read between the lines on the more negative reviews, because we were definitely in the era where it felt like critics were starting to dogpile on the Sonic franchise now that Sega was a third party developer. There weren’t a lot of professional reviews you could trust regarding Sonic games, or at least, that’s what it felt like. This was the rise of the podcast, and snarky hosts were taking whatever low hanging fruit they could get.

I remember waking up on launch day -- friends had gotten up early and picked theirs up in the morning, when I’d rolled out of bed somewhere closer to noon (or maybe even afternoon). I had plans to pick up my copy later that evening, after sunset. My friends did not sound happy, but again, there was always this vibe of “Wait and see.” They had only just started the game. First impressions were still too fresh to really call.

But I had this moment, this cold spot in the pit of my stomach, where I thought “Maybe I can cancel the pre-order and get Gears of War instead?” Reviews for Gears seemed pretty good. I’d probably be happy with it instead of Sonic.

I couldn’t let myself do that. I was a Sonic fan. This was the first big Sonic game of a new generation. A new start. I bought the console for this. First game I ever pre-ordered. The second Sonic game in the history of the franchise I’d bought on launch day. This was it. This was the event. No backing down. Besides, Sonic 2006 was a big 15th Anniversary celebration game. They wouldn’t make such a big deal about the anniversary without just cause, right? Sonic 2006 was going to be great. I just needed to calm down.

So we drove out to Gamestop -- and it was the sort of thing where I think we couldn’t do the pre-order at my local Gamestop for some reason, so this one was a town or two over. It was a journey. I was nervous the whole way there. Something told me I was making a mistake. But I had to do this.

I think it may have been starting to rain as we rolled up on the store. It was around 8pm, and people were starting to camp out on the sidewalk. Literally camp out, tents and all, because of the rain. Today was the launch date for Sonic 2006, but tomorrow was the launch of the Playstation 3. These guys were here for Gamestop’s “Midnight Madness” launch event. They were going to be some of the first to get a PS3. I was probably the last person to pick up a Sonic 2006 pre-order.

Sonic 2006 might have been the first Sonic game to ever make me angry. I’d had a lot of internet debates on how I felt about Sonic Adventure 2, but most of those amounted to splitting hairs about things that felt disappointing when compared to the original Sonic Adventure. I was not angry then, I was simply let down. I was similarly let down when I finally got a chance to play Sonic Heroes. But again, not angry. Baffled, maybe. A little sad. But not angry.

With Sonic 2006, I slammed head first in to all of my excitement and uncertainty at 200mph. This was a Sonic game unlike anything I’d ever played before, and in all of the worst possible ways. Enough has been said about the quality of the game that I don’t need to describe anything that’s wrong with it -- also because literally everything was wrong with it. Perhaps the first video game I’d ever played, ever, on any platform, that actually fought back against your efforts to play it. A disaster in every sense of the word. A broken nightmare. After finishing Sonic’s story, I was mad. How could they let this happen? What was wrong with them?

I was less angry after having finished Shadow’s story. Shadow had even buggier gameplay than Sonic, but it also felt more complex, more action-oriented. His story was better, too -- instead of the sappy Princess love story, Shadow’s story was about how the world was against him, and the crossroads that brought him to: rise above his past and strive to be a better person, or give in to the temptations of evil? It was still dumb as heck, but it was less dumb than Sonic’s story.

By the time the credits rolled, I had accepted the fact that this game was a mess. More of a mess than any Sonic game ever had been before. It was clearly a deeply unfinished game. Friends theorized maybe they could patch the game, because that was a thing games could get now. Sonic 2006 could still be saved. The PS3 version wouldn’t be out for another month, surely that means they’re working on a fix, right? Some were even theorizing over an achievement called “Nights of Kronos” -- it mentioned a “complete ending to the last hidden story.” Perhaps that meant there was going to be more? Maybe we got the bad ending, and a better, more finished ending was waiting for us on the disc somewhere?

There wasn’t. And no patch ever fixed the game. That was Sonic 2006 -- the kiss, the loading screens, the strange mannequin NPCs, the stiff controls, the glitchy physics, the empty overworlds, the bizarre dialog, the plotholes and time paradoxes, that’s just what the game was, and was always going to be, forever.

Before Sonic 2006, you could say that 3D Sonic games were bad, but there was always a place to defend them from. They had problems, but they were never irredeemable. Sonic Heroes may have had frustrating controls and repetitive level design, but it had great art direction, nice music, and fun concepts. They were always trying, dang it, and it was obvious to see that.

Sonic 2006 felt irredeemable. Offensively terrible. A failure on such a level that it was hard to comprehend. Beyond simply “a new low” for the franchise. This felt like rock bottom. It was the kind of bad that spread like a virus. Even good games, like Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis, felt notably tarnished by the existence of Sonic 2006. It threatened to ruin the entire franchise by proximity alone. For some, it probably did. I definitely had a moment where I wondered if I would ever enjoy a Sonic game in the same way ever again. They were all tainted now. Infected by memories of Sonic 2006, the game that was supposed to save the franchise, but condemned it to the lowest pits of hell.

In isolation, that might have been the end for me. I might have continued to drift away, bit by bit, until I found greener hills outside of the Sonic franchise.

I’ve said this before, but what saved me was getting hired to write for TSSZ News. Now, suddenly, I was paid to play and write about Sonic games. It was a duty. And it helped that the first Sonic game I reviewed for TSSZ ended up being Sonic Unleashed, a game I continue to openly gush about to this day, more than a decade after its release.

But never forget that Sonic 2006 was such a disaster that it nearly made me give up Sonic the Hedgehog. It really was that bad.

#questions #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic 2006 #tssz news #Anonymous

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helly-watermelonsmellinfellon · 4 years ago

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Is Ormond really that difficult? I get it a lot as both Killer and Survivor and I just don’t see why people hate it. Do I just face dumb people when I get that map?

Imagine telling someone they only Escaped because they got a good map. As if your ass did not Insidious camp the 2 ppl you hooked.

I wish more people mained Demogorgon. I like facing them. They’re adorable!

I swear the most common argument I see over Haddonfield being ‘unfairly Survivor-sided’ is because if someone uses Balanced Landing, then it’s just too easy to lose the Killer. Balanced Landing is one of the most unreliable Exhaustion Perks in the game because you have to fall from a height great enough for it to work. 90% of the players don’t even use it. Let’s not act like Haddonfield is a problem all because Survivors can use 1 Perk to make gameplay hard. Haddonfield is a problem because of those fucking fences and hedges. Hook spawns are fine, but you have to walk half a mile around all these fucking walls that the Survivor wiggles out before you get to the Hook in question half the time. No thanks, not interested. Fix that shit. THAT is the big issue here, not people potentially using 1 whole Perk.

A Michael tried to sneak up on me. I was in the shack. No Gen, no Totem. Just trying to see how well I could see through the slits in the walls after the shack design was updated on Autohaven. (btw, you can’t see very well through them.) I heard it. Like fucking Darth Vader breathing down my neck. Michael was at the window and I fucking booked it!

I got the shit scared out of me by a Nurse with 4 Blinks! I didn’t even know that was possible! She didn’t manage to Hook anyone so I understood why she wanted to have that many Blinks but that first time when she Blinked the 2nd time and I thought she was done! HO NO! I was like, ‘she’ll have to recover and I can break line of sight’ but then she Blinked a 3rd time in a row, to which I thought ‘oh now she’ll be fatigued’. Nope. When I finally lost her I specifically got to see her chain 4 Blinks together when trying to catch up to the Jeff. I just want to avoid Nurses even more. This kind of stress is not needed.

So yesterday I got a match against a Clown who deliberately put on a Red Forest map offering. I don't know anybody who willingly goes there but he decided to. Anyway he wasn't very good with this bottles so I was able to avoid all of this gas clouds and dude took it personal and tunneled me. After 4 Gens, finally downs me and decides to face-camp. The moment that I was saved he tunneled again. I got out because of Adrenaline and being able to run long enough to get to a door. Now, I have the memory of an elephant, unlike this Elephant Clown apparently, because I got that person in a match today, on Red Forest, but as a fellow survivor. Same name, same account description but they were Kate this time. I let their ass die on their first hook. I am spite personified.

I’ve been meaning to share this pic for a while. That fucking Totem spawn is the dumbest one in all of the realms. 9 times out of 10, it’s the Hex Totem and it’s gone within the first 30 seconds of the match. Like, come on.

This match was so confusing. All the boxes looked like that and I don’t know why.

IDK why this happens so much but I get a kick out of it. And my swf buddy is off to the side, all alone.

He face-camped everyone once he finally got someone downed. Meg managed to come and save me at the risk of herself. He hooked her, she died, and then he came after me. I didn’t bother searching for the Hatch and just ran to this far corner because all the nearest hooks were gone by Sacrifice. He had nowhere to go and watched me bleed out. Afterward he was really salty about it.

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Literally I’m starting this thing where all the Perks I use have to start with the same letter. So here are the Ds.

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This match was fun af. I lasted that long around shack with a Leatherface.

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I was just trying my best but the last like 30 seconds were the best part of the match.

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In my opinion, Midwich is the best map to do Impossible Skillchecks Doc on. In the courtyard you can hit the whole map with a Static Blast. Technically, ISD doesn’t require much skill which is why it’s the best way to point farm. Properly executed and you can get like 300K pts in 5 matches.

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I was just trying to play more of the other Survivors. Go out of my comfort zone specifically.

#dbd #dead by daylight

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jeremy-ken-anderson · 3 years ago

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Design Theory: FFXV

For a class I’m taking, I’ve been asked to perform a thought experiment. At first I did this with XIV, but once we got into the “make improvements” section I decided I’d have an easier and also more satisfying time pondering a game that isn’t quite so critically acclaimed.

And I decided I’d rather blog it out than write it on notepad paper.

So. FFXV. One Final Fantasy With the Lads.

The MDA Framework - Mechanics, Dynamics, Affect (Aesthetics is the original A here, but for a game dev class we’re broadening it to include more things that evoke emotional responses) - translates into Mechanics being the rules, Dynamics being the play experience itself, and hopefully the play experience then produces an Affect of “fun.”

An example I’ve touched on before, where Mechanics produce Affect by way of Dynamics: In FFXV they have a very clean sense of being Injured. If you get down to 0 hp, your recoverable hp starts bleeding out. Get first aid or a potion and you stop bleeding out and recover some. But your “current max hp” remains lower than your true max hp. If you’re down to 1 hp and not injured and you get out of combat, you’ll be back at full hp in 10 or 20 seconds. If your “current max hp” gets down to half, you’re in a bad spot and it’ll take multiple minutes (current max hp recovers by 1 every 3-4 seconds, orders of magnitude slower than your normal health regen outside of battle). This mechanic produces a dynamic where during gameplay the player is heavily pressured to fight only when strong and run when weak. After all, you only die if current max hp hits 0, and getting to the state where you’re bleeding out is the full length of your health bar if you’re uninjured but could be much lower if you’ve already just barely survived a few fights. Emotionally this makes situations where you really can feel how much smaller the four of you are than the enemy army, especially when you get in a nasty cycle of them dropping more enemies on you just as you’re finishing up the prior fight. It ramps up tension, and makes you seek out safe havens and places the army can’t reach.

The storytelling angle on the MDA Framework sees the Designer’s Story as the Mechanics, the Storytelling (or play experience) as Dynamics, and the Player’s Story (aka the stories they tell themselves about how the game session went) as Affect. This is where FFXV loses a lot of people. It’s broadly panned by critics for how the Designer’s Story snaps from a freeform open-world game to being 100% on rails until shortly before the final boss, at which point it attempts to sell you on its open world again.

From a gameplay perspective, I don’t think XV gains much from its open world. There are a few counterexamples - the experience I had of encountering an Iron Giant at night, just kind of driving around the middle of nowhere is a good emergent gameplay moment - but I think similar experiences could be replicated in instanced content and meanwhile a lot of bland tromping across open plains could be removed.

Meanwhile because it’s so firmly about brotherhood and the fraternal bond between four young men, a lot of the moments that resonate most strongly with its themes are scripted to match appropriate story beats.

Ironically I think the better way to improve FFXV would be to strengthen its rails, not to take it off the rails. FFX was extremely on rails! Until basically the final boss, there wasn’t any way of going back to prior zones at all! The rails, clearly, weren’t the problem. I think a lot of the problem was in the expectation of freedom owing to the first portion of the story being so wide-open and choice-oriented. Because of the existing themes of Noctis entering adulthood, I like the idea of the nature of his options changing somehow. Maybe add in factions he can befriend in the political landscape, each with a specific flair and style. This gives the adult message of his actions now having consequences on people outside his immediate social circle, but also continues to expand options for self-expression. The idea that options for self-expression being constrained is part of the fundamental nature of adulthood is...perhaps one with cultural resonance for a lot of Japanese people, but a lot of people - Japanese people included - just plain hate it as an idea. So I’d make sure whatever options were present early in the game, there might not be the same kinds of choices but there would be just as many that felt meaningful. Perhaps the early game includes exploration and poking aimlessly at sidequests, but once the physical location gets on rails you get into a Mass Effect style of branching narrative tree instead, or that’s when the characters suddenly get access to a job system that lets you customize your play style itself like crazy.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to do it and they can come at the problem from fundamentally different angles. I think the truth of XV is that the design problem was financial; They’d have made the whole game this freeform romp through the countryside if they’d had the scratch, but they ran out of money so they had to focus on getting the story told. Some of the lazier late-game assets (detailed in various reviews, such as this one from Super Eyepatch Wolf) indicate the same. I expect if I got into that situation I’d take the same approach. To my eye it beats the Lord of the Rings Cartoon approach, where they did production front-to-back and therefore released a movie that’s a really cool first 2/3 of a movie and then it literally just stops without the last 1/3 happening. I think I also prefer it to kicking the can down the road and trying to call it “Part 1 of 2,” because the odds of a satisfying Part 2 getting made are never good in that kind of situation. Once they were in that pickle, they did the best with what they had.

But if I could catch things just a little bit pre-pickle, those are the changes I’d make: I’d take the focus off of the open world - particularly I’d remove most of the real-time travel in favor of environments I could pack more densely with interactions. From a production standpoint I think I’d use a hex map “quadrant design” system, where design teams would make individual hexes of content for a world map and then we’d design the world map to fit the number of encounters we were able to get done, rather than making a world map and hoping we could fill it up with stuff. I’d ABSOLUTELY avoid constraining the player agency, especially in association with Noctis’ journey to adulthood. That just...seems to imply a really shitty theme, and I’m not here for it. To combat this directly, I’d probably add in another cool system associated somehow with adulthood in the second half of the game. There’d be a direct statement from the game that you might lose some choice about some things but you have SO MUCH more choice about others!

So yeah. Those are the Mechanics I’d add to FFXV and how I think they’d change Affect by way of the Dynamics of play.

#design #ffxv #review #class

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iamrealbuilder · 4 years ago

Text

Bill Buchalter interview

Bill Buchalter was a level designer for Sunstorm Interactive. He’s worked on 3 official add-on of Build Engine games: Cryptic Passage for Blood, Suckin’ Grits On Route 66 for Redneck Rampage, Caribbean Life for Duke Nukem 3D. Interview, November 2020: Corentin: Can you introduce yourself?

Bill Buchalter: My name is Bill Buchalter. I’m an avid gamer of all kinds – video games, board games, and especially tabletop RPGs. I’m currently a freelance writer for AAW Games (Adventure A Week Games) writing mini adventures for Dungeons & Dragons 5E. I live outside Indianapolis, IN with my wife Jane, our three kids, and our dog Roxi. When I’m not gaming, I also enjoy music, playing guitar, hiking, and camping.

C: With Sunstorm Interactive, you're credited for level design on Cryptic Passage, Caribbean Life and Route 66. How did you start working with Sunstorm and what do you remember from that time?

BB: In the mid 90’s, maybe around 1995 or 96, I was very into playing Duke Nukem 3D. Like most PC gamers at the time, I had played Castle Wolfenstein and Doom, and Duke Nukem just blew me away. Back in those days, when we played online, we would use a 3rd party program called KALI. You dialed up on your modem, logged onto the internet, and then used KALI as a portal to chat with other gamers and find someone to play with. The KALI software would then allow you to network together over the internet and play PVP matches. It was crude, and the lag could be horrible, but we didn’t know any better at the time and we loved it!

I remember I was in a B. Dalton bookstore in the mall one day (another relic of the 90’s that is long gone!) when I found a book called the “Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook”. I was intrigued, and as I flipped through the pages it talked about a program on the Duke Nukem CD called Build, which allowed you to create your own levels. I had no idea Build existed, let alone how to use it. I bought the book and spent the next couple weeks diving into learning how to use Build. I was hooked!

Making my own maps quickly became an obsession. I would share them with my friends on KALI and I quickly earned a reputation for making user maps. I remember there was a map building competition, but I don’t recall who sponsored it. A guy named Robert Travis won the competition. When I saw his maps, I was blown away! His designs were so much more advanced than mine. He was using tricks I had never thought of to get lighting effects and set moods. I had to reach out to him to pick his brain.

Robert responded and we began talking and quickly figured out that we both lived in Indianapolis. He was working for Sunstorm at the time and invited me to come to their office to discuss level design. I met him there one evening, and he showed me some of the stuff he was working on. We ended up playing Duke all night on Sunstorm’s network with some of the other guys in the office. I was in heaven!

Robert introduced me to Anthony Campiti, the lead producer on Sunstorm’s next project – Cryptic Passage, an add-on for a Build engine game called Blood. They invited me to design some levels for the game and I jumped at the chance. Robert assigned me to design an opera house level and immediately I got pictures in my head of the theater scenes from Interview with a Vampire. I went home and worked furiously on designing the level. I was still rough, but with Robert’s help I tweaked things here and there and slowly learned his techniques. In the end I was really pleased with the level I’d designed. Robert and Anthony were happy too and asked me to design a second map specifically for deathmatch.

The next project Sunstorm was working on was Suckin’ Grits on Route 66, an add-on for another Build engine game called Redneck Rampage. Robert again asked if I’d like to be a part of that team and assigned me to build a truck stop level. Using a lot of the things I’d learned on Cryptic Passage, and the campy feel of the Redneck Rampage game, I had a lot of fun designing that level.

The last project I worked on for Sunstorm was Duke Nukem Caribbean Vacation. By this time Duke’s popularity was beginning to wane, and Quake was taking over. Robert was already starting to experiment and learn how to use the Quake engine. I was a new dad at the time (my first daughter had just been born) so unfortunately, I didn’t have the spare time to devote to learning a new engine. I barely had the time to design my level for Duke Caribbean, but I did manage to finish the casino level for that project. I do recall that Robert ended up going through in the end and changing a lot of the aspects of my level to fit the theme they had in mind. I remember being a bit disappointed and not really feeling like the level was “mine” because of so many of the changes. It was the last project I worked on for Sunstorm.

I kept in touch with Robert and Anthony for a while after that. They were branching out, working on other projects, and even trying to develop their own FPS game that I don’t think ever really got off the ground. Sunstorm was having the most success with their Deer Hunter line of games that at the time were selling well in Wal-Mart. Sadly, I eventually just lost touch with those guys.

I’m sure this is WAY more information than you were wanting (I’m a writer… I can’t help but go off the deep end!) but you dusted off some fond, old memories for me, so I apologize for walking so far down memory lane!

C: I see that you're still making maps, different kind of maps! This makes me wonder if maybe you were involved with W!Zone (a pack of maps for Warcraft 2 released by Sunstorm). Can you tell us a bit about that if possible?

BB: I didn’t have any hand in the W!Zone project for Sunstorm, but I loved the Warcraft series. As was common for many video gamers like me, who had roots in fantasy games like D&D, I played a lot of Warcraft and eventually got sucked into the world of MMOs with Ultima Online, Everquest, and World of Warcraft! If only I had back the time I sunk into those games!

These days I’m exclusively writing and designing for Dungeons and Dragons. I started about ten years ago writing for D&D Organized Play in a campaign called Living Forgotten Realms. I co-authored two adventures for that with my good friend, Michael Pearman, and authored a third adventure on my own. As you know from tracking me down via AAW Games, I’ve now authored six adventures for them, five of which are already published and one that is still in the works but should be released soon.

When I do manage to find time for video games, Diablo III is my game of choice these days. I’m looking forward to Season 22 starting here shortly, and like many others, I’m really hoping for something great with Diablo IV. I’ve been a huge fan of the series since the beginning, and even wrote an entire campaign for D&D 5E that translated the story of Diablo III into Dungeons and Dragons for the players in my home game! Thanks again for the opportunity to share some of this history. It was fun putting it all down and reliving those days!

C: There are two signatures in the Truck Stop level for Route 66. Do you remember anything about that ? There also several levels with no known credit : Fun Park, House of ill Repute, Mystery Dino Cave, Bigfoot Convention.

The signature on the truck stop is Route 66 was a joke! I was the only designer on that one. I just signed it "Billy Joe Jim Bob Buchalter" as a joke for bad redneck name. I wasn't the kind of guy that had to sign my maps the EXACT same way every time. :)

Other than the truck stop, I don't recall designing any other maps for Route 66. I pretty sure none of those you listed below were mine, but I don't recall whose they were.

Finally, here are some final comments Bill made after reading through some forum posts:

Wow, I am really quite humbled that you guys looked so deeply into my work! The fact that you could recognize my build style is pretty cool - I didn't even know I had a style! LOL. The truth be told, the reason you probably had so much trouble telling my levels from Robert's is because he was a big influence on me. I learned a lot from him and incorporated a lot of that into the stuff I built.

Its funny how reading through that thread you linked brought back memories... I remember now that my biggest disappointment from Duke Caribbean was that my only level in the game ended up being a secret level - that some people wouldn't even find it or ever play it. I was actually pretty excited about that level. I was the one that suggested a casino because my folks had retired to Vegas, so I'd been in a lot of the casinos there and had some great ideas for the map. I'd forgotten all about the restaurant I worked into it, and the big fish tanks.

There seems to be some debate about Robert. From what I remember, he was a really good guy. Maybe a bit tough to work for, but only because he really strived for our designs to be the best they could be, and he demanded that of both himself and the other designers. As I said before, I learned early on to accept criticism and critique and not take it personally. It was just Robert doing his job. I'll be the first to admit that I designed better levels thanks to the stuff I learned from Robert.

Someone on the message board made a very astute comment, basically to the effect that "Bill had to have other work out there. Sunstorm wouldn't hire an unproven guy off the street." But truth be told, that's exactly what they did! I hadn't done a single thing before working there. But I think a few things played in my favor. First, I lived in Indy, just 15 minutes from their office, so it was easy for me to go in and work directly with Robert. Second, while I didn't have anything officially published, I did have a disk full of the maps I'd designed on my own, and Robert thought I showed promise. I would design at home a lot, then go into the office a couple times a week and sit with Robert while he critiqued my work and offered advice on how to improve it.

I'll be honest - I'm blown away at the number of people STILL playing these old maps we made so many years ago. I watched a couple YouTube videos of a guy playing and reviewing Duke Caribbean and Blood Cryptic Passage. His high praise of both Full House and the Opera House really made my day. It's nice to know that people enjoyed my work.

_____________________________

Thanks a lot to Bill Buchalter for taking the time to answer these questions! Thanks also for sharing... “Big City” !

A Duke Nukem 3D map he created back in the day before joining with Sunstorm Interactive which was never released before! Screenshot:

Map download:

https://msdn.duke4.net/bigcity.zip

______

External link: Duke4 forum blog megathread: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11471-blog-interviews-of-build-engine-video-games-developers/page__pid__353013#entry353013 The forum posts Bill read, mentionned above, can be found here: https://forums.duke4.net/topic/9418-duke-caribbean-multiplayer-levels/

#build #build-engine #blood #duke nukem #redneck-rampage #duke #nukem #duke nukem 3D #video games #route 66 #caribbean life #cryptic passage

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synchlora · 4 years ago

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Fun ghoul with 1. Love and jet star with 28. Home

Love

Fun Ghoul is one of the most loving people out in the zones and it's pretty apparent. Xe isn't exactly subtle.

He is always tackling someone, climbing up onto unsuspecting 'joys (sometimes even ones they don't know), and flashing toothy grins at any passersby. Well, unsuspecting isn't the best word. They're always careful to make sure the person xe's jumping onto is fine with it, tapping their shoulder with the simple question before either backing off or (in the case of an affirmative nod) pouncing up onto their shoulders.

But overall, she's an aggressively loving and very physical person. You can almost always find him in a tangle of limbs with someone, no matter how unbearably hot it is outside. Because of this, one surefire way to know if xe's upset is if they're physically distancing herself.

But Ghoul does have other ways of showing love. They are constantly messing around with random bits and pieces of projects and are almost always working on a new bracelet or bomb or ungodly combination of the two. And he loves crafting these into unique charms or jewelry to gift to the Four and the Girl.

Xe will make bad luck beads strands out of metal scraps and paint very personal designs onto the beads for their family (the first time she did this for Party Poison they cried). He even made a little woven bracelet for the Girl with her favorite colors, even if it did take ages and lots of bickering with Tommy to get the right colored thread.

But he's always been an incredibly loving person, dialing up every emotion and expression of said emotions way past 10.

Home

Jet Star has been wandering most of his life, never really finding many places permanent enough to be considered "home." Though there are a few places he would consider to be important enough to be worth remembering as such.

Star grew up in a small community of random zonerunners, people that wanted to be out of the city and had nowhere else to go. People who wanted to get as far away from the city as possible. And his mothers were among those people.

He was raised out in Zone 7, long before the bombs went off. The skies out there were clearer than anywhere else, far from the smog and pollution of the city. You could see stars in just about every corner of the sky out there, pinpricks painting the night sky. He grew up mapping out the constellations in his mind, hearing his mothers talk about all the names of various stars and how they were all interconnected into a beautifully woven story.

But Zone 7 is gone now.

The remnants of that home fell onto his shoulders like snowflakes (if he knew what snowflakes were like). The place he once called home was now just smoke that made it increasingly harder to breathe.

And even the stars don't hardly shine anymore. The constellations that he used to trace in quiet whispers as he tried to memorize their shapes had all but vanished by now.

But he has a new home. A home filled with ruckus laughter and shouting, insults slung around playfully and scolds said through gritted teeth as someone pointed out the child still in the room. Filled with loud people that shine brighter than any stars ever could hope to achieve. People that make him feel like he's finally found the right place. A place where he can be himself, tell anyone who'll listen about the stars and constellations, and a place where he can just let go and smile until it aches. Sure, it's a home that is anything but peaceful, but should a home ever be so lackluster??

Jet Star wouldn't have it any other way.

#afsjsbgsjsnsb i am getting. slightly better at not immediately writing angst aghdvshsmbsnsbsjsn #wanted to give Jets one a rly happy ending bc the diner is just. such a happy place man #he finally feels at home like fuck #and god ghoul is just a fuckin sweetheart man #they just wanna violently cuddle at all times #and ty for the ask <3 hopefully this isnt too edgy achsbswj #kailynwolf #killjoys tag #ttlotfk #writing #killjoys headcanons

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nachohypno · 5 years ago

Text

Nate and Dave Ch. 6

I walked down the street with Dave.

The poor guy wanted to go home again, and I was happy to comply with that. This was definitely a weird thing to do.

Mostly because he was leashed, and he was a full wolf.

He looked like a brown and yellow German shepherd, but bigger than normally. I could pass him off as a big dog I was being paid to take for a walk, and wolf Dave seemed really educated and nice to be with.

…Because he was the same guy I was making out with like half an hour ago. I wondered if he retained his mind and his ability to think when in full wolf form. He couldn’t speak, that’s for sure, but he seemed to still have consciousness about his situation and his surroundings.

I assumed he wanted to go home because after a while of walking, he started doing those sad dog noises and licking my hand, so I decided to go back home and check what he needed, of course, after he transformed back into a human with the ability to speak.

“Hi, Mr. Henderson!” I greeted one of my neighbors as the man did the lawn on his front yard.

“Hello, Nathan! And… new dog…?” He asked, but I quickly shook my head.

“Not really, just doing a favor for a friend and taking him out for a walk. He can be quite temperamental if you don’t know how to handle him” I tried to give as an excuse, and luckily, Mr. Henderson seemed to buy it!

Dave helped too, growling at the man without showing off his teeth (That would probably rat us out of him being a wolf instead of a dog) before I pulled a bit from the leash to ‘calm him down’.

“Oh well, be careful. Big dogs can be dangerous, especially when they’re… so big, never seen one like that before” It was normal for him to be surprised, even I would be. I could sit on Dave’s back if I wanted and ask him to take me home, like some kind of mount.

Hmm… I wanted to try that out! But not now, it would be weird.

The leash was attached to his bowser collar, which gave him an even rougher appearance. But in reality, he was a really wholesome puppy boy.

“He seems to be a really expensive class of purebred German shepherd, or that’s what my friend said” I made up that quickly, trying to sound oblivious and shrug the subject off as Dave sneezed and looked around, playing dumb. “But don’t worry, I think he likes me!” I scratched Dave’s head and he gave me a friendly ‘Woof!’

“Huh… Glad to hear that. And he seems to be very cute when he’s not growling menacingly” The older man said, jokingly.

“Yeah, he’s a good boy. Anyway, gotta get going. Bye!” I waved to my neighbor with my free hand and he waved back.

Me and my werewolf kept walking until we arrived to my house. I opened the door and he entered first.

After closing the door, and confirming mom wasn’t here, I let go of the leash and Dave walked back to the center of the living room.

The wolf stood on his back legs, as his body started to morph again. I loved the werewolf form, but this was way more amazing to see.

His whole body started to grow, to match that of a normal human, and then his usual size. A big muscled jock.

His snout went back in as his head became human again, and his fur disappeared, with only very little body hair remaining on him.

He was in all his naked glory, cock full hard (I started to suspect that it had something to do with me near him, I can’t remember ever seeing him soft). We couldn’t play the ‘boy and his dog’ plan if the wolf was dressed like a normal human would be.

“Phew, what do you think, bro? Was I a good boy?” He asked, as soon as his transformation ended and he regained consciousness.

The black leather bowser collar around his neck, with the leash hanging from it. The hang was still in my hand, so I pulled him closer as he smirked at me, mischievously.

“You were great, puppy boy” I whispered to him, before giving him a nice, long kiss. He kissed me back, pulling my body closer to his.

Being honest? The whole dog thing was his idea.

He complained that –and I’ll repeat his own words- ‘I never go into full wolf form because there’s a chance I may get caught and scare someone off, triggering wild animal alarms at the town, bro!’

And that was a good reason. Last thing I wanted was a curfew because Dave decided to run on the middle of the street as a big wolf.

“Anything for you, my love” Dave whispered back after the kiss.

It’s been a week since we’ve met, and I felt somewhat comfortable around him already. I’ve never had romantic feelings for anyone, except the usual platonic love like y’know, Chris Evans. But this guy… It was something new I was willing to experience.

I’m not saying I love him… yet. But as I told him once (When he was zoned out and I think he couldn’t hear me) I do like him!

“Anything?” I asked him, tracing a finger around his abs.

He nodded blissfully, with eyes full of love. “Anything, whatever you tell me, bro!”

“Could you… put on some underwear then?” His expression changed, falling into realization. He looked down and noticed his cock on full display.

He blushed a bit, before resuming his smile. “Yeah, no problem bro” I was actually going to tell him to dress up again, since it was a bit cold outside. But the view of his built body was really enjoyable.

Dave and I walked together to my room, where his clothes were laying on my bed. He quickly put on some boxers, then looked back at me. “Anything else I can do for you, babe?”

‘A lot of things I dare not mention’ I thought. But I just shook my head “Would you like to play some videogames or just… cuddle together and watch some Streamflix?”

“Videogames! I’ll beat your ass this time on COD, bro!” He beamed up, before roughly sitting on my bed. The thing did a loud creak, probably because of Dave’s weight as he sat. If the big guy didn’t control himself, I was going to end up sleeping on the floor.

“Videogames it is” I mumbled, walking over to the PS4 and grabbed the two controllers on top of it. In the meantime, Dave turned on the TV with the remote near my bed and waited for me, clearly excited. I sat next to him and gave him his controller.

Honestly? I suck at gunplay games. I prefer, I don’t know, fantasy styled games? Like, I enjoy hunting a big monster or sword fighting my way around a medieval setting. Gunplay just… didn’t do it for me.

I bought this game because of Dave, I wanted to try something he would enjoy too, and he clearly loved it. I also noticed that he would play dumb and let me win a few times, to ensure I was having fun. But that’s on rare occasions, because he’s fucking competitive when it comes to this, and starts bragging pretty quickly.

Of course, he calms down as soon as he starts with it. Probably because he didn’t want to piss me off? Probably, yeah.

However, I also had some tricks up my sleeve.

I looked over at him. Game face on and fully focused on the screen. He started preparing a private match. A few bots here and there, his favorite map, then chose his designated weapon.

“I’ll go easy on you, bro. Don’t worry” He said, patting my shoulder.

The first match went down fast. I tried to run and kill his bots as he hunted me down. It was just like that, a cat and mouse game between us. I did enjoy it, reminded me of another horror game I usually played at night.

He gave me a few shots when I went around a corner and we bumped into each other. “Hey bro!” Dave said mockingly, as he filled my avatar’s body with lead.

I tapped X as fast as I could to respawn, as Dave continued wandering around the map and killing the bots of my team. This was going to be a hard game.

“Hey Dave?” I asked, as I respawned.

“Yuh?” He mumbled, still focused on the game. I must say, his game face makes him even more handsome.

“Forget about what I’m about to say; but confuse the left stick with the right stick” I said. This was my tactic. I had full control over his mind and body, right? Then, fuck, I wanted to win at least once.

He stopped moving his fingers for a few seconds, but I didn’t have time to check if his eyes were unfocused or not, I had a match to win!

Then, I noticed he tried to play again. “What the…” He mumbled, as I pressed the left stick to run and looked for him. In the meantime, he struggled to move his character.

The confused jock frantically moved the right stick and his character looked around a lot, and gave little steps with the left stick, like he tried to move the camera with it.

I finally found him and didn’t hesitate. R2 and a few seconds later, Dave’s character was lying on the floor like a ragdoll.

“Fuck!” The werewolf said, as I threw a punch to the air. “What the hell is happening to me?” He whispered, looking to his hands. He tried to move his respawned character, but moved the right stick instead. Then he tried to move the camera, but his left thumb moved the wrong stick too.

Dave looked at me “Anythin’ I should know, bro?” He asked, with a suspecting voice.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about” I answered, as I continued to look out for him with a nice smile on my face. The game just got twenty times funnier.

He tried to look out for me in game, to no avail. Until a bulb seemed to light up on his brain and he turned the controller upside down. ‘Fuck, he got me’ I thought.

Dave was back in the game, but I could notice he was uncomfortable playing like that.

I found him running into a wall and killed his character again.

“Aww, bro…” He mumbled, getting frustrated.

“Alright, alright. You can stop getting confused now.” But Dave left his controller on the night table. Did I piss him off? Oh geez, I didn’t want that!

But it was the opposite. He grabbed me and pulled me in with him to lay down on the bed. I loved this, we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately and this was my favorite part.

I think I’ve said this before, but Dave was an amazing kisser. He was gentle, and the taste of his mouth was amazing (Which was kind of surprising since he was a full wolf not so long ago, I expected him to have dog breath) and he was very skilled too.

“I don’t want to play if you’re not having fun” He whispered, before smooching me. “I prefer to see ya happy, my love”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Why, thanks puppy boy” I said, moving my hand through his torso, and into his underwear. “You’ve been a really good puppy boy today, haven’t you?”

I slowly caressed his cock. I was okay with this; we were on the blowjob level of things by now.

I mean, he only gave me one, but it was an advance, right? I still had to give a blowjob to him…

“Yeah, bruh. I’m a good puppy boy!” He sounded proud of himself. Probably because he was obeying me, not gonna complain though.

I wrapped my hand on his cock and started stroking slowly. Dave just stared at me with his deep blue eyes, smiling like an idiot. “You’re so… beautiful, Nate. The most beautiful person I’ve ever seen… fuck, that feels amazing to say”

I blushed, and stopped stroking for a bit. Dave placed his big hand on my cheek and leaned in to kiss me again. My nervousness fading away temporarily with each kiss, I felt safe. Like this was where I belonged.

In bed, with a hunk werewolf infatuated with me, and…

I shook my head “You’re trying to distract me so I forget to send you home, right?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

He gave me the pleading puppy eyes. “Please bro, I don’t want to go, I just want to be with you and make you feel good and loved” He tried to convince me, and I was falling for it. I would be okay with having him stay the night, but… Dave seemed willing to drop all his other responsibilities in order to spend time with me.

“Dave… You know how it is, we can hang out from time to time if you want. But I’d prefer if you still live your life like you would normally, and that includes sleeping in your house too-“

“Let’s go together, bro. Mom and pops will love having you around, and my bed has enough space for the both of us. Please, babe…” He lightly kissed my lips. “…I love you”

‘Why do you have to be so cute?’ I thought.

“I’ll let you stay, but just a little while more, alright? And then you go back home, no more excuses, understood?”

He seemed defeated, but agreed with me. “Understood, bro. Whatever you want” He mumbled, hugging me. “I’ll enjoy every second we spend together, bruh”

I rolled my eyes, so cheesy.

…And yet, I still liked him so much.

----

As I said, I kept him around for a little longer, then sent him off to his house again.

According to Dave, his parents didn’t have a problem with letting him spend a few nights with me. But I preferred if he didn’t change his… human behavior that much.

I do like being around Dave, maybe not as much as how he likes to be around me, but still. But as I could see, Dave is willing to forget about his responsibilities just to be with me and make me happy, and that’s not something I’d like to do to him.

I have to remind him of returning to his house, studying, working out, hanging out with his friends, etc., because if it was for him, he would rather just hang out with me.

It was okay though; it wasn’t really a problem. Everything was still the same, and even better. Dave started doing his own essays! He’s… he tries, at least. But I appreciate the effort and help him in any way I can.

It’s only been a week since we’ve started hanging out, so not many changes I could do to his persona.

Next day, we had school again. School became a much more bearable place, I just focused on my studies and that was enough for me, with Dave appearing from time to time to spend some time together.

I sat down in my usual place at the science lab, put on my protective plastic glasses and looked over at Sam besides me.

It wasn’t usual for us to sit together, but it was a nice way to catch up from time to time.

“How’s our president?” I asked him when he nodded at me with a calm smile. We liked to joke about that, with him being the student council’s president.

He deserved that role, in my opinion, he worked so hard during his campaign even when he made some deals with the factions. Jocks included, but they were very clear with what they wanted.

And that was more funds for the sports division, with the cheerleaders backing them up. When you get the biggest fishes of the tank, it’s only a matter of time until the rest of the school would vote for Sam too.

“I officially hate prom night. I mean, it was fun last year, when I didn’t have to plan it from scratch!” He said, grabbing the protective glasses from the table and putting them on. He did it too quick and roughly, though. His teeth greeted a few moments as the pain seemed to fade. “I’ve received more than two hundred messages about ‘suggestions’ for it, and that was at 2 am, I had to turn off my phone now”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Can’t you just… say that the theme will be ‘Wintery forest’ or something like that and just hang a lot of paper snowflakes from the ceiling? Prom night is just dancing around a decorated basketball court Sam, not much you can do with that”

But he seemed personally attacked by my comment. He frowned and took a bag of chocolate cookies from his bag, left it on the middle of the table and started eating.

“I mean, yeah but” He pushed the bag near me, like trying to tell me to eat something. I shook my head, I wasn’t hungry. “I’d like to do something different, you know? It’s our last year here, and my last chance to be a good president!”

I nodded, understanding what he meant. “If I have a good idea, I’ll let you know, alright?”

“Do you even plan on going to prom? You haven’t even gone last year as a junior, this may be your last chance, Nate” Ouch, low blow.

I looked behind us, noticing a lot of noise on the back of the lab. Dave was struggling to put on some of the protective gloves, before he noticed me staring and gave me a warm smirk, along with a wink. Half of his protective glove was hanging from his hand, before he tried to correctly put it in place.

I chuckled a bit, and Sam noticed it. “Or…” He gave me little nudges while motioning his head to Dave’s direction. “You and the big guy there?”

“Uh? What are you talking about-” But he lifted his hand to stop me, passed me his phone with the frontal camera on. I was blushing. “Am I that obvious?”

“He just winked at you, and you still have two arms so I like to think you two are up to something together” He finished, before grabbing the bag of cookies again and putting it back on his bag. “Besides, I heard rumors that he broke up with-“

The professor had entered the room and chatting time was over. I could still hear a bit of laughter on the back, but decided to keep my eyes on the front.

Damn, I was going to blow our cover if I kept acting like a little girl. But there was probably no cover at all by this point. It’s impossible for the school to not have noticed one of the hottest guys around breaking up with his girlfriend, just a few days after he started to spend time around me.

“I won’t deny, nor accept anything” I wondered if Dave could hear us, I knew he had heightened smelling abilities, that’s how he found out I was his soulmate, but I wondered if heightened hearing was also a thing.

I’d ask him for a detailed list of his powers later, but I always forget to do that in the heat of the moment. “Now, let’s pay attention before we blow up” I finished, looking at the professor as he started explaining today’s assignment.

Sam whispered near me “We’ll talk about this lateeer♫”, in a mocking melody tone.

“Mr. Howard, take that cap off! This is a laboratory, not the baseball field!” I looked beside me and saw Dick taking off his backwards cap, while mumbling something under his breath. Probably a curse, my friend isn’t fond of people who order him around, less if they are dumb professors, according to him.

The jocks on the back laughed, but we ignored them like the professor did, resuming the lesson and preparing for playing with chemicals.

---

I felt social today, and remained with Sam for the rest of the day. Which means that I’m not alone during lunch today. He wanted to interrogate me and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I was bad at making up excuses.

We went to get our plates of food and sat in a rather empty table.

“Soooo… Are you going to tell me or not?” Sam asked, still trying to make me spill the beans about Dave, probably.

“What are you talking about?” I played dumb. I wasn’t good at making excuses, but I was pretty good at keeping secrets.

“You know about you and Dave…” But he froze in place before finishing that sentence. An unexpected guest sat beside me, so I was now surrounded by Sam and the big guy.

“I couldn’t help but hear my name, what are you two talkin’ about?” Dave said, in a pretty friendly voice. “Man, I love school’s chicken. This school is so awesome with the lunch menu. What’s up, Sammy? Cat got your tongue?”

I rolled my eyes, Sam hated being called ‘Sammy’, but I assumed they did it on purpose to bother him. Not like he can do anything about it but… I think I can. Not now, though. That would sell me out.

“W-We… We were just talking about…” Sam gulped, looking at me for help. Two weeks spent with Dave, and I almost forgot he has an awful reputation.

We’ve tried to change it, but I can only do so much with him at a time. So, I decided to focus on small things first, like his studies, then the social things afterwards.

“The upcoming… football game, yeah. That’s it, go Rottweilers!” I finished, wanting to sink my face in my plate of smashed potatoes. That was an awful excuse.

“Fuck yeah, go Rottweilers!” Dave yelled while quickly standing up on his seat, placing one of his foots on the table, and some sudden loud barks followed him. I moved my plate, because THIS is why I prefer eating alone at the school yard.

Besides being crowded, the cafeteria always had weird things like this happening from time to time. Maybe someone gets their head smashed in their plate, or a food war starts. The yard is way more chill than this place.

Dave sat down again after that, and I left my plate back in its place. I was going to ask him if that was necessary, but decided to shut my mouth as soon as the rest of the football players sat around us.

I was safe, I knew that but… It was still unsettling. Sam and I knew the football players were shady, as I mentioned once. I knew Dave was strong, he’s a werewolf after all. But could he take them all at once, or would they be able to overpower him if they actually tried to?

I couldn’t tell if Dave noticed I was nervous, I just stared down at my plate and tried to listen to the chatter around me. Sam did the same thing, leaving the jocks speaking about the upcoming game.

“Didn’t know you liked football, bruh” Dave told me, probably trying to make me participate in the conversation. I just nodded, trying to think of a valid answer to him, probably something boring to make the jocks want to leave the table ASAP.

“I-I’m not a fan of it but… our team is so good that I can’t miss any of their games” Smart Nate, just feed their ego to make them happy!

“Really? Never saw you on the bleachers during our games” One of the guys pointed out. I noticed that Lucas and Butch weren’t participating at all in the chat. They just ate and looked at us, almost in complete silence.

“I blend in easily with the crowd, you know, being small and stuff like that” It was weird. Why am I trying to prove anything to these guys? ‘I just want you to leave, take the hint!’ I thought.

Dave finally spoke “I did see him, and yeah, the lil’ dude gets lost amongst the crowd” He patted my back quite harshly, making me cough, but I was glad he backed up my lie.

Sam gave me a puzzled look and I whispered ‘Just relax and try not to piss them off’

This time, Dave did notice it, and looked down at me with a worried look on his face. He might have realized that he fucked up.

Luckily, the rest of the lunch went on normally. The jocks made a few… ‘jokes’ here and there, but I laughed off with them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like them, but I wouldn’t like Dave to go on a rant beating them all up because he wants to protect me.

Of course, they brought up my ‘faggot-ness’, but I just went on with it, countering it with a not-suggesting joke.

They seemed friendly so far, better not ruin that. But I wondered if they were here willingly, or Dave was the one who summoned them here. Not saying he threatened them but… maybe he called a football team emergency, like Butch did once.

Sam and I couldn’t wait until it was over, so we ate fast and tried to get out of there ASAP, excusing ourselves saying that we had to pick up a few books before the next class. Dave followed me with his sad puppy eyes as we left, before getting up and going after me.

“Bro!” Dave said after leaving the cafeteria, and I stopped on the middle of the corridor. It wasn’t crowded, but there were a few students around on their way to the yard, to make the most of the little free time they had.

Sam raised an eyebrow, but decided to leave us alone. I could tell he had enough of the jocks for the day, and I was worried they may be mad for leaving them having lunch alone, after they ‘rewarded us with their presence’ or something like that. I didn’t like those guys.

I looked at Dave, as he stopped in front of me and smiled. But then, he looked around and noticed a few persons in the corridor. “Uh…” He mumbled.

“C’mon” I grabbed his hand and walked to the nearby boys’ bathroom. “There,” I said after closed the door behind us. “Private moment, what happened back there? At the cafeteria, I mean”

Dave’s eyes darted around the room, as little drops of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I-I… I wanted to try and… y’know, present you with my bros?” He gulped “I know you don’t like them, but… they are my friends, and I thought everything would be much easier if they saw how awesome you are”

I was a bit confused, but not mad. I didn’t end up hurt, nor did Sam, and that was enough for me. If the jocks actually tried to sit down with us and talk, then I was willing to give them a chance.

“I sorta still don’t get why we have to keep our thing in secret, bruh. You don’t have to be afraid of anyone trying to hurt us, because I’m David fucking Walker. I own this place, I’m an alpha!”

He sounded so excited while he said that, and motivated. It was nice to see that side of him; a side I would have never imagined Dave the big bully jock could have.

“I know, you’re really great and everyone… respects you,” I started, carefully thinking my words to avoid hurting his feeling, as he looked down at me, still with a big smile. “But it’s just for some time, as we take this slowly. It would be really weird for the others if you came someday to school and randomly yell ‘I’m gay!’. Give me some time, yeah? We can sort this out together, but let’s do it slowly”

His smile slowly faded from his face. I think I hurt his feelings anyway, and it was probably an inevitable thing to do. I kind of ran out of the cafeteria with Sam as soon as we finished eating, ruining his plan of having his bros get to know me.

“I understand if you’re mad with me, bro. But I think they actually liked you! You were so smart back there, mentioning football as an excuse…” He came closer to me, and kissed me lightly on the lips, placing his big hands on my cheeks, and looked at me with really sad eyes. “But I get if you’re mad and don’t want to see me for a while, I deserve it from putting you in danger with my bros”

“Just… stop, alright?” And he did. He closed his mouth and just looked at me, waiting for me to speak. “You didn’t do anything wrong, it was a nice idea. Just try to tell me about it before doing something like that again, and I may gather some nerve to tackle it properly, alright Davey?”

He nodded slowly, giving a sigh of relief. “Y-Yeah, I will, bro. Thanks for not being mad, I would hate myself if I made you mad” I was a bit scared of someone walking in the bathroom, but at the same time I think… I didn’t care at all.

It was going to be a slow thing, yeah. But, sooner or later, it was going to be discovered. So…

Dave was looking down to his shoes, like some misbehaved kid, when I stepped forward and pulled him in for a kiss.

I was hoping for someone to enter the bathroom. Some random guy, who would apologize and leave in fear after watching the big jock angry for interrupting our kiss.

But that never happened. Damn it.

Dave recovered his sweet smile as I looked up at him. “What was that for?”

“To reassure you that you didn’t do anything wrong” I whispered to him. “We probably shouldn’t play with our luck though, but we have a few more minutes before our next class”

The werewolf jock gave me one last smooch, before saying “I love you so much, bro…”

I couldn’t help but blush, I really liked my good puppy boy.

We left the bathroom together, and headed out for the yard. As I said, we still had a few minutes before classes started, and I wanted to make the most of them with my big guy.

-----

Chapter 7 is already available in my Patreon! And by pledging you also get access to other stories before they go public!

#nate and dave #mind control #straight to gay #brainwashing #brainwashed #gay hypnosis

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snowdice · 5 years ago

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The Horror of Stereotypes (Part 3)[Dice Roll 6]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Remus/Logan/Patton with Remus/Logan focus (more pre-romantic considering the situation), Remus & Roman, Logan/Patton (established, but not at the forefront for most of it)

Characters:

Main: Remus, Logan

Appear: Roman, Patton, Deceit (but blink and you’ll miss it)

Summary: There had always been a certain stereotype about people like him for as long as anyone could remember. After the Heart War of 1963, those stereotypes had been legalized and places like this had been created to enforce the universal truth: everyone had a soulmate. One soulmate. No more and no less.

At least they were supposed to.

When Remus’s brother gets arrested because of his two soulmarks, Remus risks everything by infiltrating the facility he legally should be in as well due to his own two soulmates to save him. There he meets Logan and it turns out they have a lot in common: they both got hired this week, they both have two soulmates, and they’re both here for the same reason.

Oh. And as it turns out, they’re each other’s soulmates too.

Universe: Soulmate AU

Genre: Horror (Yeah, it’s a fun combo. The horror vibe is mostly contained to chapter 3 though. It’s all still horrifying, but that specific tone is pretty much only there.)

Notes: Torture, Torture of a main character, Dystopian, Blood, Guns, Gunshot wounds, Leg wounds, Mentions of Desecrating an Animal Corpse by a Main Character, Imprisonment, Mentions of Cannibalism, Genocide Suggested, Sexual Innuendo, Fear, A tasteless but not serious incest joke, Medical procedures.

This is part of my Roll the Dice Event which is where I do random ships, universe, and genres for the Sanders Sides fandom. For more details see this post. I posted a few days ago my results from this dice roll here.

Look I have no idea how to write horror, but I’m pretty proud of the vibe I managed to get going there for this chapter even if it isn’t the most spectacular horror piece ever. It was fun to step outside my comfort zone with it.

Part 1 Part 2

Remus was smarter about the second night. Gavin was clearly a control freak and didn’t want to leave more than one teammate in the office without him there, likely believing they’d conspire against him. Which… in this case… was true, but it was still annoying as hell. So, Remus slipped Logan his phone number during lunch with a note and at a bit past 5, Remus told everyone he was going home and hid in the bathroom again.

He got a text from an unknown number an hour latter that Gavin had left, and Logan was alone in the office. Perfect. When Remus returned to the office, Logan had shut off all the lights in the front, but there was a light coming from the door to the design room. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.

“We’re alone,” Remus said. Logan nodded and grabbed a bag from under his desk.

“I brought food,” Logan said, pulling a smaller bag out and opening it. He took out a couple of sandwiches, apples, and bottles of water. “We should eat now.” He sat one of each object together in front of the chair next to him and took a bite of his own sandwich.

Remus obeyed the silent instructions and took a seat next to him, turning the chair so they were facing each other, their knees almost knocking together.

“I hope it suffices,” Logan said when Remus took a bit.

“Well I would have preferred lobster,” Remus said. Logan frowned at him. “It’s a joke, dork,” Remus said rolling his eyes.

Logan gave him a cool look. “I see.”

Well now it was awkward. Remus took another bite of his sandwich.

Logan ate neatly and quickly, taking a drink of water before he spoke. “What is your plan?” he asked.

“My plan for what?” Remus asked through a mouthful of food.

Logan gave him a droll look. “To find your brother and get him out of this place.”

“Oh, that plan,” Remus said. Logan watched him expectantly. “It’s a bit of a work in progress.”

“You don’t…” Logan said taking a breath and pinching his brow. “You don’t have a plan?!”

“I was sort of winging it.”

“Well we are not doing that.”

“Oh yeah,” Remus pouted, “then what’s your plan, Brainiac?”

Logan turned to the console and clicked a few buttons. The screen on the wall next to them lit up, and a blueprint of what looked like the entire facility appeared. “There are four levels of this building,” Logan explained. “Each requiring a different security level to get into. This floor includes offices like ours as well as the general containment pens. The two floors below us are the ‘interrogation’ rooms and housing for those in those systems, the lower level being for more high-profile cases. Below those levels is what most people working here think is just for maintenance, which, it does in fact have things like plumbing and electrical wiring as well as storage for the janitorial staff.”

“But?”

Logan pushed a few more buttons to bring up a map of the bottom floor. Remus scanned the floorplan, committing as much of it to memory as he could. “But it has a few more things down there as well. Specifically, the room where they store records for this place.”

“What kind of records?”

“The kind that, among other things, tell us the exact location of every prisoner in this place.”

“Including Roman and Patton.”

“Yes. Including Roman and Patton.” He paused and reached into the larger bag again, pulling some things out. “I managed to get a key card that should work to get us down there, and I’ll be able to unload the information onto this.” He held up the flash drive. “From there it’ll just be extracting them and getting into the getaway car I have prepared in the woods.”

“Oh,” Remus said. “That’s a good plan.”

“I am aware. Are you prepared to go?”

“Uh,” Remus blinked at him. “Now?”

“This is happening as quickly as I can possibly make it happen,” his eyes bore into Remus with the intensity of hellfire. “I will go by myself if you don’t come.”

“No, no,” Remus said putting his hands up. “I’m coming.”

Logan nodded and pressed a button before he got to his feet. “Good.” He tossed him a mask from the bag. “Wear that. I’ll flip the cameras off on the first floor for 10 minutes. No one should notice them looping at this time of day and that way, no one will know where we came from. Let’s go.”

Remus shoved the mask over his face and hopped to his feet, having to hurry after Logan as he left the office. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, walking with a purposeful stride. They got to the elevator and Logan swiped a card over the sensor in front of it.

“We take the elevator down two floors, but then we have to use a staircase to get to the bottom floor,” he said once they stepped inside.

“Okay,” Remus agreed.

He didn’t think either of them had realized exactly what that meant.

The second the elevator doors opened, they could hear screaming. Logan inhaled sharply next to him but made no other sound. Neither of them moved until the elevator doors started to close. Remus shot his arm out to stop them. Logan moved then, stepping out of the elevator and into the hallway. Remus followed behind him.

Logan took the time to take a shaky breath and then started walking, his steps far less sure than they had been upstairs. The screaming didn’t let up, the voices blended together, and shrieks and begging echoed down the corridor. Remus had wondered the day before how going up to the pens upstairs could be a reward. He understood now.

His ears caught something through the sounds of pain and misery right as they were about to turn a corner. He reached out and snagged Logan by the back of the shirt. He flinched at the sudden touch, on edge from where they were, but managed to not make any sound other than a soft gasp. Remus pressed them into a darker corner, turned Logan to face him, and put a finger over his own lips.

The footsteps Remus had heard grew closer as well as the sound of two voices. One of the voices mumbled something and the other one barked out a laugh: a high-pitched sound that made it feel like bugs were crawling up Remus’s spine. He and Logan locked eyes. The footsteps passed. Remus nodded and Logan nodded back. Then they were moving again.

They made it to a door and Logan stopped, fingers fumbling for the keycard and almost dropping it. He pressed it against the sensor, but he was shaking so hard that it didn’t take. Remus wrapped his hand around his wrist to steady it, and the door beeped softly as it unlocked. The door closed behind them, shutting out the noise, but not the knowledge of it.

“There’ll be a guard down here,” Logan breathed. Remus nodded his understanding and they proceeded with caution.

The silence of this level, broken only by the sound of their breathing and their footsteps, was all the more spine-chilling with the echo of the last level still in their ears. There were giant pipes along the side of this main hall that Remus didn’t know the use for. The hall twisted and turned. They passed a few doors, but Logan didn’t even glance at them in this maze. He knew where they were going.

Remus heard a sharp sound in the distance and narrowed his eyes. He tapped Logan on the shoulder who looked back at him. He jerked his head toward a cart filled with what looked like spare parts and, without a word, they hid behind it together. They waited. After a few long moments, a man strolled by, whistling happily and walked into one of the rooms they’d just passed. The sound of his tune slowly faded away.

They got back to their feet and continued on their way even more cautiously if that were possible. Finally, they made it to the correct door, and Logan swiped the key card once again to get in. Remus followed him inside and watched as he hurried up to the computer and stuck the flash drive in before starting to type faster than Remus had ever seen anyone type. After a few moments, he stopped typing and Remus watched as the flash drive started to flash blue. They watched it in silence for almost a whole minute before it stopped flashing and went a solid blue. Logan ripped it from the computer and typed something else before turning to him.

Remus shot him a thumbs up and poked his head out into the hallway. He didn’t hear or see anything, so he slowly crept out of the room and held the door open for Logan. The door snapped shut and they both flinched as it echoed down the long hall, but nothing happened. They both took a breath before turning to walk back the way they came.

Remus froze when he heard whistling start up, nowhere near close, but the direction it was in wasn’t good for them. It was far away, but down a very long hallway. He grabbed Logan to try to pull him out of view of where the man was sure to be in a second, but it was too late.

“Hey, who are you?!” a man’s voice yelled from the doorway at the end of the hall.

Remus met Logan’s eyes. “Run.”

They ran, and they ran fast, but they could hear the man running after them. They tore down the main hallway and Remus knew there was absolutely no way they’d be able to get out of the door without being caught and even if they did, someone on the floor above would likely notice the commotion.

His eyes lit on something and he suddenly remembered the plans of this place he’d seen. He grabbed Logan’s arm and pulled roughly. The man stumbled after him as they changed course, down what looked like a dead end, but Remus ducked under the large pipe and jumped up onto a ledge behind it, finding one of the service doors that was hidden there. Upon seeing it, Logan was immediately with him completely. Remus tore open the door and it luckily didn’t squeak. He jumped up inside it and Logan smashed himself in behind him and closed the door carefully, plunging them into absolute darkness.

If they got caught in here, it was over. There wasn’t anywhere to go, and they were smashed in against each other tightly, but that was only if their pursuer knew about and remembered these little nooks existed. They panted, their breath mingling.

“Is that a flash drive in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” Remus asked under his breath.

“Is now really the time?” Logan hissed.

“Sorry,” Remus whispered back. “It’s how I cope.” Logan just puffed out a shaky breath against Remus’s cheek.

A cheery sharp whistle cut through the air from somewhere close to their hiding place. Logan jumped, but luckily didn’t make a sound. Remus wrapped his arms around his back and pulled him tight against his chest. The footsteps moved on a bit. “He’s trying to freak us out,” Remus breathed into his ear. “Don’t fall for it.” Remus felt his face rub against his chest as he nodded sharply, and hands tightly gripped the front of his shirt.

“You know,” the man’s voice called. It was an aimless call, getting a bit louder and softer, likely as he turned in a circle to address the room as a hole. Good. He didn’t know their location. “I was actually hired as an interrogator here, but I was too good at it.” He whistled again, sharp and high. Logan flinched against him. “I kinda broke everyone but, you know, not just in the way they wanted.”

Logan was not made for all of this, Remus thought as he shook just a bit against his chest. He hadn’t known the man long, but Remus imagined he was probably made more for coffee shops and chalkboards and using fabric bookmarks instead of whatever paper like thing he could find around like Remus did. He wondered briefly what it would have been like to meet him in a library or college classroom. How could it have been different if their first touch had not been riddled with anxiety and fear? Who was Logan when he could just be Logan and not whoever he was in this place? Remus did not know. Yet, Remus couldn’t help but admire how well he was holding up, silent and composed despite his shaking.

His fingers started tapping a pattern against Remus’s arm. One-two-three-four, pause. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven, pause. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, pause. A breathing exercise, Remus realized as he inhaled and exhaled to the beat, to keep himself calm.

“See I get mad really easy,” the man said outside the door. He was walking toward their hiding place now, and Remus hoped it was luck and not that he had an idea of where they could be. Logan’s fingers stuttered, unable to keep up the pattern. Remus began tapping his fingers against Logan’s back for him.

“I’m not too mad now. I’d probably just incapacitate you and then turn you over. You wouldn’t get interrogated by me then. Like I said, there’s a reason why I’m a security guard now. So, you’d probably be much better off. Here’s the thing. You hiding? That’s making me very angry and no one’s going to be around till morning if I don’t call ‘em. We’d have a lot of time to play.” He was very close now and Remus could feel Logan’s fingernails dig into his skin. “So, what do you say?” he asked. “Wanna come out now?” Remus felt Logan shake his head. Remus tapped him a bit more insistently on the back.

“Come on,” the voice entreated and finally, finally muffled a bit as the man turned in a different direction. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” the voice started to fade as he walked away. Remus let out a harsh breath and rubbed Logan’s arms a bit as though trying to warm him up.

They stayed there for hours, long after the man stopped speaking to them and seemingly gave up. They stayed until an hour before they had to be back in the office, pressed up against each other and barely whispering a word. It wouldn’t do to go missing though and it was best to leave when the morning and night shifts were likely switching, so they exited their hiding place a quietly as they could. Remus’s muscles were aching, and he was exhausted. He was sure the same held for Logan. Remus looked at him when they were finally in the light again. His clothing was soaked through with sweat from the stress and from being in the warm little space all night. Remus could feel that he was in a similar state.

“We need a change of clothes,” Remus breathed, still not willing to put noise into the world. Logan nodded tightly. They snuck back upstairs as carefully as they could and managed not to get caught. Logan had the foresight to bring himself a change of clothes and he had some sweats and a sweater in case the office was cold stored away in his desk that Remus was able to fit into. It wasn’t exactly his style, but it was less conspicuous than wearing the sweat soaked outfit he wore yesterday. They washed up in the bathroom sink side-by-side.

Logan met his eyes in the mirror, looking exhausted and strung out. They needed to report to the office in 10 minutes. “It’s going to be a long day.” It was the first thing either of them had said above a whisper in hours.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

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level2janitor · 4 years ago

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D&D - How to run a sandbox campaign

Since the pandemic started, I’ve been running a D&D campaign for a 3-player group that pretty quickly became a 5-player group. This is the second campaign I’ve run (that lasted) and I’ve learned a ton from doing it, so here’s the advice I have for anyone wanting to run a very open-ended campaign.

Disclaimer: This advice is for a specific type of campaign, and is not the only way to play. Don’t think you or anyone else is automatically a bad DM for having a different DMing style.

When the campaign started, I had no idea how I would respond if players did something outside the lines, and this scared me. I’d heard a lot of stories of players derailing a campaign and the DM having to run with it, and the idea of just improvising a whole session after the players found a way to bypass everything I had planned sounded terrifying. And this actually did happen a few times, and it was terrifying, but I managed to get through it and as the campaign progressed I eventually got much better at avoiding those situations. Here’s how.

Never have your campaign hinge on the players acting the way you expect. As a DM, you’ll never be able to predict every single possible action your players might take, and eventually a player will do something you didn’t expect them to. The best way around this, I’ve found, is simply to not have your designs dependent on the players acting a specific way.

With this design philosophy, your plans should never include “and then the players do X” because at some point, the players will not do X, and your plans are ruined. Instead, approach DMing prep with a different mindset.

When you create situations for the players to encounter, you shouldn’t think “The players will do X in response to this”, but instead “I can’t wait to see what the players do with this”. Your campaign shouldn’t be a story you write, but a canvas for the players to write their own with (see disclaimer if you disagree).

The situations you come up with shouldn’t have an intended right answer - the right answer is whatever the players end up doing.

Don’t ask for a roll for an option that isn’t on the table. Always keep in mind that a player only rolls to accomplish a task when you ask for a roll (though this doesn’t apply to the players’ actual abilities and such). If a player wants to seduce an arch-lich that wants to take over the world, or persuade a king to give you his title, you do not have to ask for a roll. Asking for a roll implies a chance of success, and if a player rolls a nat 20, they’re going to expect you to concede that. When a player asks to roll for something that isn’t actually possible, you don’t have to say yes.

There’s something of an attitude in parts of the community that you’re being a bad DM for doing this, usually citing “Rule of cool”, but I’m not saying to step on your players’ fun, only to not let them do something impossible that would break your campaign. It’s important to give your players freedom, but that freedom feels more grounded when it’s kept within the boundaries of what the characters are actually able to do.

Be mindful of the tools your players have, and the tools you give them. When a player completely subverts an encounter, it’s often because they had an ability or a magic item that you forgot about that negates the challenge of whatever you threw at them. Lots of the game’s spells are basically an instant solution for a certain type of problem - your survival game about the players lost in the wilderness is instantly solved by a goodberry spell, or your murder mystery falls apart because someone has detect thoughts or zone of truth, or any number of cases like these.

While almost no DM can remember every ability their players have, remember what the player characters are capable of - and, importantly, let them do it! Players should get to use their cool abilities! Just be careful not to rely on situations to last the whole session if the players might have something that solves it right away.

This extends to magic items, too; it is entirely up to you what treasure the players get, and while it’s a ton of fun to let them find powerful magic items, be careful not to give them something that will bite you in the ass later when it completely stomps something that could’ve been an interesting encounter.

The freedom to go wherever you want is most impactful when the players have goals to achieve. This point is more of a stylistic choice for my campaigns than it is general advice, but I’ve found it really really helps the players feel like the campaign is their adventure when they come up with their own goals to pursue. If the players can pick anywhere on the map to go to, that’s only really meaningful if they have a reason to go somewhere.

If a character is searching for their missing sibling or the man who killed their parents, give them leads to those goals that take them to new places. A character is seeking a specific type of knowledge, make a city in your setting famous for a library housing that knowledge. Any goal a character has, let them achieve it - not only is that more fun for the player, but they are giving you content for you to use in your campaign, content that they’re much more likely to be invested in than something their character isn’t tied to.

Creating a world can be incredibly fun, and it’s really nice when players engage with it, but as much as a player will like your world, most of the time they’re there to play their character more than they’re there to experience your world. This sounds really harsh, but I want to clarify that I’m not saying it’s pointless to make an interesting world. It isn’t! Putting effort and creativity into a world, and having interesting things for the player to discover, are all hugely important parts of a campaign, but the story is about the characters, not about your world.

There are groups that are an exception to this, and you can definitely have a ton of fun in those groups, where you’re there to follow the DM’s carefully crafted story. And this method isn’t better - it’s just, in my experience, the best way to run a sandbox campaign.

I probably have more advice than this but this is what I could think to write off the top of my head, and I hope it helps someone. Happy DMing!

#d&d #d&d advice

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jmsebastian · 4 years ago

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Metroid Prime 2 Really Enjoys Wasting Your Time

If I’m being completely honest, I’ve always thought the praise that the Metroid Prime series got was overblown. Don’t get me wrong, Metroid Prime, in particular, is a good game, but the series seemed to suffer in ways that the 2D games never did. Most of these issues come down to asking players to scour every inch of every level in order to find a critical item or hidden path forward. That is in the spirit of the classic 2D Metroid games, Super Metroid in particular, but 2D presentation allows for those sensibilities to shine because it doesn’t take all that much effort to examine what’s on screen in a 2D game. Even the map, as intricate as it is, only allows for four directions of exploration. After playing the game for a while, it’s pretty easy to look at a room you’re currently in, compare it to the map, and check out areas that may contain secrets.

When you move that into 3D space yet try to maintain the amount of detail that’s present in the 2D games, you’re going to have a mess on your hands. To solve this problem, Metroid Prime took a very minor component of Super Metroid, the scanning visor, and basically made a whole game out of it, all while trying to remain an action game. Scanning objects is easily the worst part of Metroid Prime. It essentially forces you to crawl your way through an area the first time, stopping every few feet to look around with the scan visor. Scannable items are highlighted in red if you haven’t scanned them before, which is supposed to help you quickly determine what you need to focus on, but so many rooms have numerous items to scan, which destroys the pacing.

Granted, not every item is important, so you can get by without scanning a great deal of the available items, but seeing as progress is often locked behind items you need to scan, or knowledge you gain from a scanned item, you are heavily encouraged to scan anything and everything. When you realize just how much of your time is spent scanning items, you realize how little of it is spent actually exploring, fighting bosses, and having fun.

Yes, many of these chairs have to be scanned in small groups or individually for...some reason.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has all of the same problems as Metroid Prime and then really doubles down wasting the player’s time. The biggest change from Prime to Echoes is the introduction of the Dark World. The Dark World concept is pretty much lifted directly out of A Link to the Past, meaning that in order to make progress, you have to hop back and forth between the Light and Dark World in order to discover new areas, obtain new abilities, and change things in one world to impact the other. Conceptually, this is a great idea and it’s actually amazing it took until 2004 for this idea to be brought into the Metroid universe. Unfortunately, the execution is hampered by one extremely important detail: the Dark World actively hurts Samus just by being there.

I know there’s a story reason for all this, but it completely ruins the game. Initially, being in the Dark World at all takes a huge toll on your health very quickly, so you can’t spend very long in it. The only protection you get are these little beacons of light that project domes of safety. This, naturally, sets you up for the expectation that you’ll eventually get a suit upgrade that lets you withstand this constant HP drain. This is true, but it doesn’t happen until maybe the last (and most boring) 10% of the game that just has you backtracking through a bunch of areas to get some keys. Before that, you do get one suit upgrade that reduces the damage done, but you still take damage in the Dark World for the vast majority of the game, making exploring far more dangerous than it’s generally worth.

If you know what you’re doing, are good at the game, and don’t face too many issues with combat, you can get through the Dark World areas without losing too much health over time. Unfortunately, I’m not especially great at these games and tend to take a lot of punishment in enemy encounters. Since the game is extremely stingy with regard to its health and ammo pickups, I dread every time I have to go into the Dark World, fearful that I might get stuck out between safety zones or trapped fighting enemies for too long.

Thankfully, you can recover your health in the Dark World by hanging around those safety beacons. Unfortunately, the health restoration is so slow (about 1 HP every second), that you will spend a lot of time standing around doing nothing, waiting for your health to reach a point where you feel confident about going out and fighting or exploring more. I can’t think of a more blatant way to waste the player’s time. First, the suit that reduces the HP penalty in the Dark World should just eliminate the effect altogether. There is no really good reason you couldn’t take damage early on in the Dark World, find the suit upgrade, and then be free to traverse without penalty. I’d prefer that the Dark World not damage you at all, but I get that there is a narrative purpose to this, initially.

You’ll spend a lot of time just standing around in these safe pods, waiting.

What I can’t reconcile is just how slowly your HP regenerates when you’re in a safe zone. The reason it’s so slow is because there are enemies that engage you in rooms that contain these beacons and obviously they didn’t want players to be able to camp out under the beacon and just mindlessly shoot until the enemies died while they faced no serious danger. It seems that a better solution would have been to simply reduce the number of safety beacons a bit, or make sure enemy encounters were in areas that didn’t contain them. That way the threat of exploring would still exist, but if you did get in trouble, you could just backtrack to a beacon, stand around for a few second, then go back out and try again.

Instead, you still have to stand around beacons if you go exploring for too long or take too many hits, and the time spent doing it is drastically extended. Maybe having faster health regeneration would still make the game too easy, but I’d take a game that’s too easy over one that literally stops my progress so I can stand around for an arbitrarily long amount of time, actively making me not want to continue exploring.

Going back to the issue with detail, Prime 2’s map system does little to alleviate the inherent issues with exploring complicated level designs from the first-person perspective. One of the reasons I tend to have gripes with first-person perspective games is because they do a very poor job of mimicking what it’s like to actually see a space with your eyes. Most of this is related to peripheral vision what you can see in your peripheral vision in real life, as well as the fact that you can move your eyes around in your head, shifting your focus, without actually turning your head. You really can’t do that in games because you’re detached from the space by a screen. To look around, you have to physically move your character’s head (the camera) in the direction you want to look. It’s extremely disorienting to me and as a result I often get lost in games, even ones that don’t have levels as intricate as those found in the Prime series.

Naturally, there is a map in the game, and it is absolutely vital to navigating the game. However, reading the map is, in itself, a challenge because it, too, is in 3D. Honestly, it pretty much had to be. The levels in Echoes are extremely complicated (needlessly so, I’d say). Of course, it’s the same map that was used in the original Prime, but due to the levels not being as distinct in Echoes as they were in the first game, as well as the fact that you have a complementary map of the same areas to accommodate the Dark World, we’re looking at another area where you end up spending a great deal of time. I can’t tell you how many times I’d walk into a room, even one I’d been before, check the map, go into an adjacent room, then immediately go back to check the map. When you combine the time spent sitting around waiting to regain health and the time spent simply trying to orient yourself in the map (and often fighting with it since you can easily highlight rooms in floors above or below you by accident), it’s easy to see why the game can take around 20 hours to beat, even when really the game should take about half as long.

As I get older, I get a lot more irritated with games that do things simply to waste your time and pad out the play time. You really get the feeling that the changes made to Prime 2 were done specifically to make sure players spent more time with it, even if the quality of that time was drastically diminished compared to the first game. As such, Echoes is a vastly inferior game to its predecessor, and one that isn’t really worth revisiting. And if all the time wasting isn’t bad enough, it also introduced Dark Samus, which I consider the worst thing to ever happen to the Metroid franchise.

#Metroid Prime #gamecube #metroid prime 2 #nintendo #samus aran

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

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Dark Crystal Age of Resistance Tactics pt 17 THE END

Endgame lets gooooooooooooooo

Mission: Call of the Glaive - Stonewood Ruins

"The heroes search for the second half of the Dual Glaive. It has been hidden somewhere in Stone-in-the-Wood."

Good god. Lvl 40. My party ranges from 38 to 34. Do I have to level grind some more more more?

Well, lets find out.

I don't remember the forest around Stone-in-the-Wood having so many misty chasms. Damn, global darkening.

SO I see a lot of Darkened beasts. I see a glowy exit square next to the the Crucible. Hmmmmm I wonder WHERE the 1/2 Dual Glaive could possibly be hidden.

Okay so the party this time has to be Rian, Brea, Deet, and Gurjin. If only I could have a few more to get the rest of the mains in here. But this is endgame time and its time for Rian to get the Good Sword.

Rian: "Stone-in-the-Wood. Since its fall, the place has been overrun with darkened creatures."

I mean, that makes a lot of sense, actually. I'd like some more emotion about it, though. This was your home, Rian.

Deet: "We need to find the Dual Glaive. It's here... somewhere."

Rian: "There, the forge! After a battle, the Stonewood place all their weapons in the forge. The Dual Glaive has to be there."

Holy crap I've never seen Nurlocs get the first turn what the heck.

But all I have to do is get to the glowy square. Preferably with Rian, for plot reasons.

There's two paths around from where you start. One side path. One low path thats only one square wide and blocked by a boulder. Some of the enemies are going down that path anyway so I'm just going to be shooting Firemoss Bundles at them like fish in a barrel.

After three bundles, they ded.

Also Gurjin is being my front line on the other path and I finally got to use Rian's Even the Odds! Between Pursuit, Hold Position, Retribution and best friends like Rian, Gurjin is amazing at standing in one place and absorbing damage!

Anyway I killed all of the enemies. I wonder if more will spawn in or what.

welp. None spawn ins. Just me moving my units closer to the glowy square turn by turn.

That was a design decision that was made.

Rian: "This is it, the Dual Glaive!"

Deet: "Something is happening. Look at the Forge! The flames... They're turning blue!"

VICTORY!

Arrrre we going to do the fire skype thing? I already united all of the clans.

LEVELS UP! Rian leveled and learned Aim for the Gaps (100% critical chance on a marked enemy)! Brea leveled and learned Convalesce 2! Deet leveled twice and learned nothing. Gurjin leveled and learned Heroic Leap!

Brea maxed out on Mendering. But since we're in the endgame and I like her loadout, I'll leave her where she is.

I got the Glaive of a Fallen Hero! Wooooooooooo! Weird that its not just called Dual Glaive but I don't mind this name either.

Glaive of a Fallen Hero is the Sword of the Stonewood Clan. Gots some good attack and critical chance. This is going right on Rian, for plot reasons.

---

Yeah. We're doing the Fire Skype.

Rian: "Gelfling, the Skeksis have deceived you; turned clan against clan."

I FEEL like we've gone over this pretty thoroughly in the various clan specific mission chains!

I guess giving the clans a place to rally around is a good reason to still do the Fire Skype. I'm just a bit perplexed at what gets brought over from the show 1 to 1 and what gets added.

The Emperor: "Enough! Your rebellion will end in ruin!"

Rian: "Bring your weapons. Bring your Skeksis, and meet your destiny!"

'Come on if you're hard enough'

Huh! Two more missions opened up. One at the castle and another one at the Stonewood Ruins. I feeeel like the one at the castle happens first, most likely? It says requires Seladon and Tavra, people I don't have in my party. Buuuuut might as well see if I can do it?

---

Mission: Broken Bargains - Castle Hallways

"Seladon and Tavra must now escape the Castle of the Crystal after freeing the Stonewood Gelfling."

Sweet, its Seladon and Spider-Tavra! I finally get that closure I've been wanting!

Party: Brea, obviously. This is the big sisters moment! Naia, because I've been reading Shadows of the Dark Crystal and she and Tavra have a funny dynamic. And Rek'yr. How is he here? Brea called in a favor? Look, we can't question the location of people in this game. It started in the flashback zone and had people wildly out of time!

Okay so we have a bunch of Darkened beasties and a couple of Nurloc experiments which are even beefier. We have a locked door and a lever to open it. We have the General.

Time to kick his ass again.

Spider-Tavra: "We had a deal. You were supposed to let us go free!"

The General: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.'

Where's SkekLach, tho?

The General: "And what's this, Arathim working with Gelfling?"

Spider-Tavra: "Our deal has changed as well."

The Arathim Ascendency: "If you need help, use the etchings. Arathim will come to your aid."

YO WHAT?? I get to summon spiders??

Amazing. This game never stops giving.

Also, we're in the crystal chamber, I think? There's the symbol on the floor. No crystal though.

Okay, the mission objective is to get Seladon and Tavra both to the glowy exit square. Hypothetically feasible.

There's three glowy runes which increase evasion and apparently summon spiders. Lets gooo.

Seladon has Even the Odds, Firemoss, Landslide 2, Shockwave, and Flow of Battle.

Spider-Tavra still has Double Strike, Shove, Adrenaline, Retribution, and Spot Weakness.

HAH SUMMONED SOME SPIDERS ON THE GENERAL

Also, I've almost taken out all of his darkened minions although its taken its toll. Damn Thrash. Damn Wound status.

The spiders are allied but they're not controlled by me. So its fine for them to just do their own thing. I need to heal. Everyone.

Well, poor Rek'yr gave his life but I successfully surrounded SkekVar and slowly beat him to death. And that took me right to the in-engine cutscene which is probably what should have happened in the last level.

Brea: "What are you doing, Tavra? I won't leave without you."

The General: "No, stop! I beg of you!"

Spider-Tavra: "This is for the Arathim, for the All-Maudra!"

-Chamberlain comes out of basically nowhere and kills Tavra, threader spawns onto the field and runs off-

In-engine cutscenes are amazing.

Chamberlain: "Leave friend alone!"

Brea: "Tavra! Sister, no!"

-upbeat victory music-

But I already made fun of that when Ordon died so.

Brea leveled. Naia leveled twice! Rek'yr did not!

I got Heartseeker (the dagger of the Stonewood clan)! I got the General's Cuirass! Stealing clothes from knocked out Skeksis never gets old.

The Cuirass is going right on Gurjin. Its going to slow him down even further but it gives him a matched set of Skeksis gear. The General's Hand Axe and the General's Cuirass.

"Heavy metal plates seated on tough leather and trimmed with fur... How inelegant!" -skekEkt

---

Two more levels, I reckon. Just the final battle left, in two parts.

Mission: Seven Clans United - Stonewood Ruins

"With the clans united, the heroes stand against the Skeksis. The General approaches to challenge them."

Yeah, sure. I don't mind kicking his butt again. He's got more clothes I can steal, probably.

Geez, this is an excessively cozy map. Its not very big and one of the starting squares is right up in the General's face.

He's got two hollerbats called General's Pet which grant him buffs. Gotta kill those guys.

Party: Rian, Brea, Deet, Gurjin, Rek'yr.

The main squad, plus Rek'yr. I need someone to be applying marks for the other people to hit.

Rian: "The reign of the Skeksis is over. All Gelfling rise against you!"

General: "Fools! You will all die, here and now! If it's a fight you want, I'll give you one! Haaaa! Let's have some fun!"

AHHH HE GOES FIRST! AAAAAH HES RIGHT IN RANGE OF BREA! HE SILENCED HER!

This map is too small...

Killed his pets tho.

General: "This fight isn't over yet! I'm just getting started!"

Geez, if he stuns someone on his next turn he can do Killing Blow which does a ludicrous amount of damage. Very ludicrous. RIP Rek'yr.

HE SUMMONED MORE BATS

uncool

I killed his bats. HE SUMMONED MORE BATS. I think maybe its not worth killing the bats...

Also he stuns people for like three turns. I think I'm gonna have to spend some of my money on stun-proof trinkets.

Whats also uncool is that the summon more bats thing the first time? Erased Rek'yr's body from the map. I had Awaken on Brea. I could have brought him back. Boo. Boo on this game mechanic.

Ok this battle is going downhill.

The General has 4000 HPees which is a lot. And he can lock people down with stun for a while. So I'm going to have to spend some cash. I might even have to.... level =(

Yup everyone died.

Lets try that again.

So soiled Podling socks all around. The best way to prevent stun, donchaknow.

And lets spend some more money.

Upgrading Deet and Brea to Ceremonial Vestments. Upgrading Rian to Paladin's Full Plate. Upgrading Rek'yr to Etched Lorica and giving him the Heartseeker.

Gurjin didn't do a lot of damage so I'm guessing that the General is resistant to axes? Is that a thing in this game? But I'll hit him with Naia instead. And I kind of want to use Kylan who can mark and heal but I don't know who I'd replace. Hm. Maybe next time.

TAKE 2

Party: Rian, Deet, Brea, Naia, Rek'yr!

Hm. I forgot that the Intimidate move also lowers attack. My guys are hitting for shit with these debuffs. Maybe I should bring a party member who can remove debuffs. Well, live and learn. And attempt to chip away at his health bar anyway.

So its not very entertaining but I'm just slowly ganging up on him and slowly beating the crap out of him. Annoyingly his bat can heal him. And I can't kill it or he'll summon more bat.

Chipping away chipping away I guess I got it low~

Because: dialogue.

Rian: "You are bested, General. It's over."

General: "Well, what are you waiting for? Finish me!"

Rian: "No, I am no killer! Begone!"

I still don't know how the hell Rian thought this would shake out favorably.

How did he see the war ending in his head? The Skeksis would just agree to stop drinking Gelfling? Would they vacate the castle and let Aughra take over the crystal again? As long as he never tried to kill any of them in a war situation?

Or is it just he won’t kill an unarmed opponent?

I dunno.

And my party just. Runs off screen. So Chamberlain can run on-screen. And kill SkekVar. Despite their rivalry not really being established. In the game plot.

Chamberlain: "Emperor will listen to ME now."

Then again, fair enough. This is in character for him.

VICTORY.

Rian leveled twice and learned Shockwave (stun enemies in a line)! Rek'yr leveled twice! Naia leveled and learned Aimed Strike 2! Deet leveled and learned Awaken 2! Brea leveled and didn't learn anything because she's max on her job.

Naia maxed out on Soldier! Don't want to start her on a new job on the last level so I'm going to flip her back to Paladin for the good, good stats.

I found the General's War Flag! Starts battle with five turns of Attack Up, Haste, and Beserk! Uh. Not sure how that's helpful. I like deciding what my guy is going to do. Stupid Var and his stupid flag.

---

Mission: Seven Clans United: Part 2 - Stonewood Ruins

"The Hunter has returned once more, to the surprise of the hereos. But help comes from an unexpected place."

... How are they going to represent Aughra exploding out of him though?

I think I want to bring Kylan. Didn't the Hunter kill his parents? So I'm going to upgrade him to Ceremonial Vestments.

And I'm buying Armalig Scales for everyone since I think Wounding was the Hunter's thing and I don't want to deal with that biz.

Geez, this dongus starts the level on a big hill ready to jump down and squish people. The rudeity of people.

Party: Rian, he's the hero guy. Kylan, he's here for the revenge. Rek'yr, he's here to say goodbye to an old friend. Brea, she's mad that he kidnapped her between levels or something, I'm not sure when it happened. Gurjin, he's here to be a supportive best friend. And plus, offer hugs.

Rian: "The Hunter! But... how?"

The Hunter: "Quiet, puny Gelfling! I have conquered death! I am more powerful than ever... more powerful than Thra itself!"

Oh, this hubris is going to end really well for him.

Ok. So this dingus has 4000 HPees. He's got Carve which hurts and inflicts Wound. He's got Carve 2 which hurts and inflicts Wound and shoves. He's got Stab, which stabs. He's got Cleave. We know that one. Gotta keep my guys not adjacent. He's got Pelt. I think that means he's gonna throw stuff. And he's got Target Wound. Which I just bet does massive damage. But joke's on him. He's got Savage Counter which means he 100% of the time counters. And he's got Surefooted which means he's a hoppy boy.

-one turn later where he hits Gurjin not very hard, gets critted by Rek'yr and counters-

Brea: "He's too strong!"

Mmmm. I could take him.

Rian: "We have to try! We must keep fighting!"

urVa, the Archer, somewhere: "No more. The hunt must end."

The Hunter, back in the Stonewood Ruins, somehow hearing that: "No! Nothing can stop the hunt!"

-I beat the shit out of the Hunter some more-

-flash over to the Archer taking one step-

Hunter: "Archer! What are you doing!"

These interludes are killing the pacing. Just to say. Maybe they should have been saved for the end. Or something.

-more violence-

Archer: "Now, we shall see what lies at the dream's end." -another baby step-

Hunter: "No, stop!"

Archer: -jumps-

This isn't conveyed well in in-game cutscene, I have to say.

Then the Hunter dies.

VICTORY.

Uh. That was. Something. I think that's a time where the plot butted too much into the gameplay. I only got him down to half life before he died and it didn't take much time at all. Ah well.

Gurjin levels twice! Rek'yr leveled and learned Opening Act 2! Since I still don't get how Opening Act 1 works, I'm probably never going to use this! Kylan leveled three times and learned Grand Concert and Motivating Chord 2! Wow! Brea levels! Rian levels and learns Unfailing Blow 2!

I also find the Hunter's Helmet in the gross ash pile that used to be him!

"A trophy from some avian beast? Or the skull of another Skeksis...?"

It gives you reduced recovery time, increased crit chance but reduced magic and normal defense. Dammit, Mal!

Kylan did get the last blow in the fight. That's something.

---

Anyway, I was wrong. There's at least one more mission.

Mission: Seven Clans United: Part 3 - Stonewood Ruins

"The heroes have bested the Skeksis' mightiest warriors. Only one challenge remains: The Emperor"

oof, I bet this is going to be hard.

Ooooof this is going to go badly. Three Skeksis. The Scientist, the Emperor, the Chamberlain... WAIT THE SCIENTIST WASN'T ALLOWED TO COME BECAUSE HE WAS TOO BIG A NERD! Dammit, game!

Anyway, the Emperor has Darkening Decay - attack and inflict random status effects. Focus Darkness - mark random tiles for the next move. Unleash Darkness - deal damage to anyone on a Darkened tile.

The Scientist and the Chamberlain have their usual abilities. So I think I should have kept the anti-poison gear and anti-stun gear on my guys.

Ah well. At least the non-Emperors only have 2000 HP.

Party: Rian, Brea, Deet, Naia, Rek'yr.

The Chamberlain: "Emperor, Skeksis should retreat. There are too many!"

Emperawr: "I will not lose, no matter the cost! Gelfling, you now face the true power of the Darkening!"

Oof that focus darkness does some damage. But hah, the Scientist only has 1500hp. He really is the nerd of the group.

Oops. Rian died. He was on a darkened tile and he didn't get a turn in time to move. Thank goondess I put Guardian's Blessing on him and he got to revive instantly.

Ok Rian died again, for real.

I just noticed that the Unleash Darkness hurts the non-Emperor Skeksis too if they're standing in it. Hahah

Between getting bombed a few time by his own boss, the Scientist was low enough health for Rek'yr to wander over and bop him.

One down.

Chamberlain is at low health but he's hiding in a corner casting stun and confuse on anyone that tries to bop him in the head. Which I'd very much like to do.

Crap, Brea and Rek'yr died in the same focus/unleash darkness.

Crap, Deet died.

Crap, Naia died.

Crap, Rian died.

The Emperor can just whip out the Focus Darkness too fast and it deals too much damage. And I think I needed to focus more on knocking Chamberlain senseless before he can split my party too much.

So anti-stun for everyone.

Or, actually, I'm going to try the Glowmoss Poultice which gives everyone ten turns of HP regen.

And even though Rian was there, I think I'm swapping out Gurjin. Having another person available that's immune to poison and can kick some serious butt. Well... Strategist hasn't really paid out much yet.

Okay on take 2, Scientist is down. Halfway through kicking Chamberlain's ass. Focus Darkness is getting really alarming.

Oops, Deet died. Haha Chamberlain died.

Now I just have the Emperawr and his full health.

I've got him down to half health but he killed AND THEN STEPPED ON Rek'yr.

Deet died in some darkening explosion but I got Brea to raise her. Just got to keep her alive now. Because plot. I mean, its not a level requirement. I just want to.

God, I'm glad I put so much Stone Warden into Gurjin. He's damn beefy.

Now he's down to less than a thousand.

AND HE TOOK TWO TURNS IN A ROW.

This man is corrupt to his core.

I have him under 100 hp and he uses focus darkness. And its covering a pretty generous area so I don't know if I can move everyone out of the way. Especially because he gets to go before half of my party.

But I have Brea up and she has a pocket full of fire moss with this guy's name on it.

It says SkekSo.

-blam, plop-

Emperor: "Impossible... I cannot be defeated."

Chamberlain: "Retreat! To the castle!"

Deet: "They're running away!"

VICTORY!

Never before has the fanfare been so sweet.

Naia leveled twice! Reky're leveled! Gurjin leveled THREE TIMES and learned Double Strike 2! Brea leveled twice! Deet leveled twice and learned Healing Touch 2!

Also I found some Crystal Fragment! Weird that random crystals just fell out of this boss birdlizarddragon as I was hitting him.

It lets you steal MP when you attack. Pretty cool.

---

Oh a cutscene.

Its the lost crystal shard, maybe.

Oh and Deet wanders off into the wilderness, all Darkened. Despite that not being very well established in the game.

Is sad.

But she wanders back to pose in a group shot.

Yup. The main characters. Aughra, Rian, Brea, and Deet.

When will Gurjin get respect?

Oh and Aughra tells me that there are more missions or I can do a new game plus which is harder.

I don't see any new missions on the map. Just some encounters to test my mettle.

And I'm not going to do the new game + just now. Not when I'm still riding high on winning while slightly under leveled.

---

But that was the game!

I loved the gameplay when it wasn't frustrating me. The moves are mostly all cool. I wish you could use more of them than three from primary job and two from secondary but you can still get a cool load out. The environments and characters look great.

Its the storytelling that lets it down, a little. Its trying to be a supplement to the show and that really hampers it at various points. The weird setup where we start in the flashback zone. Plot beats from the show being introduced because they're in the show but weren't properly set up in the game.

It either needed a bit more rewriting to tell the story of the show in a satisfying way or it needed to use the show as a jumping off point while it did its own thing.

The stuff that they invented to fill the gaps work pretty decently. The writing isn't particularly deep but its decent enough. The forbidden archeology quest with the Sifa. Discovering the fate of the guards. That stuff.

And this is hindsight, of course, but with the show being cancelled, there's so much ground left uncovered! If they were more willing to diverge from the show, they could have done some battles set afterwards and used the Garthim. I'm pretty curious how they would have been represented!

I also wish we could have gotten one or two more Skeksis. Chamberlain, Hunter, General, Scientist, and Emperor is decent but you know what could have been decenter? The Collector.

But overall. A good time was had by all, wherein all was me.

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #dark crystal age of resistance #dark crystal age of resistance tactics #THE GAME #liveblog #THE END #i beat up every skeksis basically in a row #plot stubbornly happens #i stubbornly refuse to level grind

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davidmann95 · 5 years ago

Text

All-Star Superman #2

A scant year to the day since part 1!

All evidence to the contrary I actually have always wanted to go back to this, especially since I keep getting asked if I’ll do so and it stirs my omnipresent sense of guilt over my lack of productivity, and also the last year has not resulted in a mass turnaround of people realizing it’s a for-real good book and not just comfort food so this remains necessary. This isn’t going to be quite as in-depth as the first go-around - both that as the introductory issue and that as the introductory recap had a lot of groundwork to lay - but still plenty to cover, as this issue sets up Lois and Superman’s arcs for the series, which is rooted (amazingly, especially right off the bat, given the book’s reputation of being about how amazing Superman is) in how badly Superman’s let his fears and shortsightedness poison the most important relationship in his life.

If the first issue is the big classic Superman material - Superman saving the day from the monster! Lois and Clark and the rest of the Daily Planet crew! Lex Luthor’s sinister schemes! A ticking clock to doom! - this scales all the way down to the uncomfortably, stiflingly intimate. Classic archetypal Superman stuff gives way to the most Silver Age issue: casual huge ideas, relationship drama, misunderstandings, last-minute reveals that recontextualize the entire issue, and baaaarely latent psychodrama bubbling up at the edges. In service of that the visual framing here is not unlike a stage play, a limited set of physically connected locales as a pair of figures bounce off one another. Quitely and Grant’s work is therefore comparatively subdued next to issue #1, keeping to traditional panel layouts and wide or medium shots with a background color palate of mostly blacks and whites and grays with a handful of other colors popping out...until Lois starts to lose her shit at the end of the issue and we get close-ups and full black and white panels and eerie glowing and dutch angles and that unsettling abstract image of her clenched teeth, as the story starts to squeeze us like Lois’s gut.

She’s right to be unsettled for that matter; she’s alone on Superman’s turf (the one issue where that’s the case other than #6, and that one’s about how Smallville stopped being his home), the weird antiseptic alien lair of the ultimate super-hobbyist, and all the baggage of their relationship is spilling out into the open as she has less and less reason to think the best of this odd man who’s been lying to her for years. Unlike the Silver Age tales this is referencing, she’s absolutely on the money with her complaints about him: he’s been dicking around with her forever and thinks it can all be okay now (His little “What?” on the second page when she bursts his bubble says it all), and he’s awkwardly overcompensating trying to fix it.

While the Fortress tour serves to peacefully acclimate us to how utterly bizarre Superman’s world really gets past the traditional rescues (the little cubic starfield we don’t know the meaning of yet, trophies are floating rather than physically suspended, the glowing flowers in Lois’s room, “The Phantom Zone map room’s pretty dull unless you can see radio-negative anti-waves”), Superman himself is...humblebragging isn’t the right way of putting it, but it feels like he’s working way, way harder than he ever will again in this book to be cool and impressive and assuring. He’s a dope in love, but he can tell something’s up and that super-brain of his isn’t putting the obvious pieces together, or noticing that this is just putting her off further and further until, like Bluebeard’s wife before her, she stumbles through the threshold of the door she was never meant to, even of course in the end he’s still Superman and there’s a perfectly good reason. Not a good enough reason, however, for her accusations at dinner to not hit home - his mind may be expanding, but he’s still way up his own ass here in a genuinely unpleasant way that’ll be elaborated on momentarily. For now he’s left stammering that she should trust him and it’s limp and phony, especially compared to his big entreaty for someone to trust him in #10 (which’ll be right after he finally comes clean with her); while Superman may not be considered a savior figure by his friends in here the way he often is in the mainline comics Lois seems to be the only one who doesn’t look up to him at least a little bit, but that clarity means she’ll call him out where no one else will.

Across the next two pages it’s all laid out, and we get to the roots of where things have gone wrong between the two of them. Lois is paranoid, certainly, the panels are literally squeezing in on her, but with Superman seeming so out-there and alien like never before she would have every right to be even sans alien chemicals. But notably there remains throughout a part of her assuming the best of him wondering if maybe this is just another big misunderstanding or that he’s simply been mutated by the solar overexposure. And in her heart of hearts, she admits that maybe she wants this to be another big damn trick with a completely sensible justification, because the alternative is that this is the new normal and she has to accept that he’s a flawed mortal man. It’s ugly and it’s mean - especially since she likes Clark - and it’s human as hell in the worst, most understandable way. It’s not going to be until said mortality is staring her in the face that she’ll be able to accept it.

Superman, meanwhile...someone could write a thesis on these panels as an articulation of the Superman/Clark dynamic. The Mirror of Truth is actually preexisting, centerpiece of a Jerry Siegel/Curt Swan joint in Action Comics #269 that was later adapted into the Superman newspaper strip where Lois uses it to figure out Superman is Clark Kent until he tricks her into believing the mirror can lie, after which he tosses it in a volcano; here it’s survived, and curiously shows him as Superman rather than Clark, when in the original tale it displayed Kent even though that was fully the era of Clark as a disguise. In here too it’s Superman who’s the ‘true’ identity of the two and which this time is reflected in the mirror, yet as in #1 it’s Clark who says what he’s truly feeling. In that light, the final panel of the abandoned glasses reads like nothing so much as Superman using the mirror as affirmation that the truth of the solemn, steadfast Superman identity gives him licence to deny the uncomfortable emotions his squishy human farmboy side is dredging up, ‘lying’ to him in a way he had to fake in the source material. Those emotions however knock right on the door of what he can’t grasp here: Clark’s so wrapped up in his own head trying to do the ‘right’ thing that he’s overlooking how his attempts at self-sacrificing selflessness are hurting the people around him. Throughout the series he’ll come to rely on others, first at his lowest points with Jimmy and the Bizarros, until at last he comes to invest true trust in Lois, and the Kandorians, and Leo Quintum, and even Lex.

For now though Lois is deep in a hole, a brief but memorable meeting with the Unknown Superman of 4500AD - everything Superman seems to be becoming to her even before she wonders if it’s literally him, cryptic and masked and with a big ‘ol question mark right on his chest instead of the familiar comforting logo, even his gutbuster of a question reinforcing his distance from a recognizable human experience - leading her all the way to reimagining her Silver Age ideal happy ending of marriage and family with Superman as a Cronenbergian horror. It’s still a Superman story, it turns out he had the very best reason possible for wanting to keep her in the dark, but right through to the end he remains just a little condescending in his reassurance, and his gift of essentially bringing her up to his ‘level’ isn’t going to solve the problem. While the next issue lets us see the two of them properly in love, it won’t be until the elephant in the room comes out that they can come to terms.

Additional notes

* God Quitely is so good. Look at the way the seatbelt curves in the first panel! Lois’s bemused little disbelieving smirk!

* Pages 2-3: Aurora Borealis?!

* Lois is the only character other than Superman who gets to have actual narration (in both cases as looks at their in-text writing), the only one whose viewpoint is thus privileged in the same way as his.

* The key is the realization of this series’ aesthetic in a nutshell: the old-school idea in a sleek, shiny, clever new way that doesn’t take away from the fantastical toyeticness of it all. For that matter, the key is the centerpiece of a later bit with Superman that could be fairly described as the long-term goal of the book book as Morrison’s hoped-for perennial: “One day some future man or woman will open that door, with that key. When they do, I want them to know how it felt to live at the dawn of the age of superheroes.”

* This is A. The first note of a larger DC universe existing offscreen, something that I’ll go into more when discussing #8, B. A brilliant, concise, fun little summation of his place in Superman’s world, and C. Absolutely hilarious given Morrison suggested in his exit interview that this could be seen as much later on in the same universe as All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder, which entirely rewrites the tone of that moment.

* Already discussed the key but the muscles in Superman’s hand tensing a bit at picking it up is another great detail.

* The glimpse of the Fortress here is excellent: the statues of his friends and enemies instead of pictures because he does things bigger with the yellow electric something crackling at the end of it, the off-model but curious-looking robot appearing to glance at Kandor (are it and the bigger robot with the seats on top of it trophies, or Superman Robots with different designs tasked for specific purposes?), the classic Bad Penny Good For One Crime, the Legion time bubble that establishes his time-traveling credentials for later, the Titanic where he and Lois will dine when their relationship hits a proverbial iceberg, and most strikingly the space shuttle Columbia, his apparent rescue of which I have to imagine is a reference to Astro City’s Superman analogue Samaritan debuting by averting the Challenger disaster.

* It’s next issue that has my actual favorite Superman/Lois moment of all time, but “When we’re married fifteen years, when I’m sagging and he looks just the same, will he still meet me and say things like...” “These are for you. I picked them on Alpha Centauri 4.” is right up there.

* The technological aesthetic of the Fortress is so different than P.R.O.J.E.C.T., sleek and solid and cleanly-lit and antiseptic, beautiful and advanced but a little cold in its own way. As stuffed with wonder as this place may be, there’s something hauntingly empty about it, suiting both the tone of the issue and as a physical embodiment of Superman’s emotional state. The one part that goes against it is the forbidden room, it even has beakers and test tubes to sell the mad scientist vibe...though if you were to stretch it, it much more close resembles the human technology seen at P.R.O.J.E.C.T., and this is meant as a gift for one.

* The cosmic anvil made it along with the key into the CWverse, Lois used it in Elseworlds! I may not be expecting All-Star quality from the upcoming Superman and Lois, but it’s good to know the powers that be are using it as a reference point (beyond how it inspired Supergirl’s take on Cat Grant, a connection I discussed in a post that seems to have vanished into thin air). The whole page is perfect, Superman at his most joyfully benign and beautiful and godlike; it’s the one bit where Lois’s skepticism cracks a touch watching him feed his adorable little Lovecraftian abomination from beyond the stars.

* While he never appears physically aside from a statue Brainiac hovers over this series from beginning to end in name and deed, the ominous ultimate enemy of Superman’s past, the great trial overcome even as the scars forever remain. Morrison mentioned in the exit interview that he didn’t appear in here because he and Quitely already used him as the villain of JLA: Earth 2, but that if he had it would have borrowed Superman: The Animated Series’ take on him as a Kryptonian AI gone rogue. Personally I like his place in here as-is, a little totem parallel to the Justice League references indicating the breadth of Superman’s history between putting on the cape and Luthor’s final scheme.

* A pair of minor notes: Lois points at Superman with the pointy fork when asking him pointed questions, and while it’s not immediately clear on first read she does in fact ask the Unknown Superman exactly 3 questions (“Kal Kent?” “Will Superman and I ever marry and have children?” “What do you mean?”) before he replies with his own, as promised.

* “Oww.” and “Tickles.” literally could not be more perfect Superman moments.

* Worth taking a moment to marvel at just how many future plot elements are seeded here. There’s the obvious bit of Superman thinking about having a partner setting up the next issue, but we also for issue #6 have our first look at Kal Kent and Lois wondering “What if (the Unknown Superman) was really (Superman)?” when Clark will indeed pose as him, for #10 we get our first look at Qwewq, and for #11 not only is the Sun-Eater introduced but so is Robot 7′s malfunction as a result of Luthor’s tampering.

* The structure of the series according to Morrison is a solar cycle, beginning and ending at midday with nightfall in the center. If last issue was the sun at its brightest we begin the descent here, with Superman remaining larger-than-life and ultimately trustworthy but with his classic persona and habits held to an additional, unflattering degree of scrutiny.

#All Star Superman #Superman #Lois Lane #Grant Morrison #Frank Quitely #Jamie Grant #Phil Balsman #Art #Silver Age #Clark Kent #Batman #All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #Fortress of Solitude #Astro City #DCTV #Brainiac #Opinion #Analysis

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blazehedgehog · 4 years ago

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Given the recent turnover in Sonic Robo Blast 2's staff (and your own experiences), what are your feelings towards Mystic? It appears a lot of people are voicing their discontent for him right now.

It’s important to note that I have a generally poor memory. Only the really, really important things tend to stick out, especially over long term. If it was more than ten years ago, there’s a good chance I may not remember it, again, outside of something life-altering. Though sometimes, weird random memories also tend to stick out.

In that context, I haven’t spoken to Mystic in a very long time. I think he abandoned our #srb2 IRC channel years before I did, and he did so because our #srb2 had stopped being about Sonic Robo-Blast 2 and was more a general catch-all for our friends. We did not talk about SRB2 very much, and other, more dedicated channels that focused more on the community had opened up on other IRC servers, I believe. So he went there, or to somewhere else.

I have a few standout memories of talking with Mystic.

One, was arguing with him a lot about difficulty balancing. Mystic was one of those people who loved Kaizo-type hacks. He took great pleasure in grinding through something that was meant to be impossible. I never understood it, and he even made his own Sonic 2 hack in that style -- Sonic 2Z, I believe. He sent it to me to playtest as a joke, I think.

We also yelled at him, multiple times, that his SRB2 level pack, The Mystic Realm, was much too difficult. Particularly Aerial Garden Zone. He had filled it full of Jetty-syn bombers, back when those were basically the only other enemies you could put in maps besides Crawlas, jumping fish, and Detons. We also yelled at him not long after he was accepted as a map designer on SRB2 officially, because he made all the special stages way too hard. (And then, directly following, he made them way too easy.)

I made the logo for The Mystic Realm. I don’t think he ever changed it.

Mystic was one of the playtesters for Super Mario Blue Twilight DX. I remember him telling me that parts of the game were too difficult. It was surprising to me; here’s this guy who loves Kaizo-type difficulty, and he’s telling me to tone it down. I fought with him about that, too, because I didn’t think it was too difficult. After all, I wasn’t designing my game to be difficult on purpose, I was just trying to make it fun.

Specifically, he complained about The Pumpkin King and the game’s true Final Boss. I think I did end up making them a little easier in some regards, but he kept pushing me to make them even easier. I refused. They didn’t feel very difficult to me, and I was worried about making them too easy. Challenge is part of the fun. No challenge is no fun. Back and forth we went.

When MarioWeen got featured on TV, and I saw Kevin Peirera complain to his co-host live on TV that he got “his ass handed to him” by The Pumpkin King boss, I felt more than a little regret for not listening to Mystic and retooling the boss not just to be quote "easier" but maybe clearer and more understandable. It was not always obvious when or why bosses are vulnerable, something I only realized in retrospect.

It was that event, actually, that really made me take a good long look at what exactly “difficulty” meant in games overall. It resulted in me changing the way I play games, and changing the way I perceive game difficulty. When I criticize fan projects (or even official games) on how accessible their difficulty is, I think of the lesson I learned with MarioWeen. Difficulty is a matter of perspective, and you need to put players in the right kind.

The only other strong memories I have about Mystic was that he hated the more modern (back then) Sonic Adventure games. He hated the homing attack, he hated everything those games did. He was annoyed when SSNTails added the unlockable homing attack in to SRB2, and it did not surprise me that the homing attack was removed when SSNTails handed the project leadership over to Mystic.

But that’s it. We had lots of day to day casual conversations that faded in to dust in my brain. I guess he liked anime? He’s always had an anime avatar on forums for as long as I can remember.

I heard about everything that went down in the SRB2 Discord like three weeks ago and honestly it was shocking to me. I never really had him pegged as a particularly rude person (or, uh, anything else). Maybe a little hard headed, with some rough edges, but seeing him be so blatantly disrespectful and... for lack of a better term, “weird”, it was like seeing a completely different person. I don’t know who that Mystic is.

Sounds like it was probably a good thing that he got thrown out. Bummer.

#questions #sonic robo-blast 2 #srb2 #mystic #community drama #memories #difficulty #Anonymous

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mentalmars · 4 years ago

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Borderlands 3 New Game Mode 'Arms Race' Review

Arms Race Included in Designer’s Cut Arms Race is the new stand-alone game mode that is part of the Designer’s Cut. This 5th DLC package is part of season pass 2 but can also be purchased individually. It contains Arms Race and an additional skill tree for each of the Vault Hunters. The Designer’s Cut is going to be released on November 10th, 2020. What is Arms Race? Arms Race will bring you to the blisteringly cold region of Pandora. At the Stormblind Complex, you can participate in a game show hosted by no other than Axton and Salvador. These are 2 fan-favorite Vault Hunters from Borderlands 2. Axton and Salvador have been mentioned occasionally throughout the game and its DLCs but It’s great to “see” these 2 back in the game. Well, you won’t be meeting them in person as they are the commentators for this game show. Arms Race is a stand-alone game mode and where you get to show off your skills. You could see it as a Battle Royale-like game mode without the PvP elements of such a game mode. So you won’t be fighting against other players, on the contrary, you can actually team up with your friends. You will be stripped from your gear and action skill and will be dropped fresh into an arena. There you quickly need to gather your gear and survive the horrors Arm Race throws at you. Luckily, the game will always drop you near a starting chest. That way you always have some gear at your disposal. Your goal is to fight your way through the map and loot the red chests marked on the map. However, these locations are well protected and your time is limited. Because like any Battle Royale-like game the area in which you can move around will shrink. This forces you to the center of the map. There you must enter the bunker and face-off against the boss. Loot Matters Ahead of the reveal, Gearbox Developers mentioned that they wanted loot to matter in this game mode. In Arms Race, you do need all the loot you can find. Because you won’t have access to all your gear from the main game. So Bye Bye; Face-Puncher, Hellwalker, or OPQ System. This way you will be looking for the best weapons in order to defeat the boss at the end but you also need these weapons to sell at one of the vending machines. Because selling weapons is your main source for money in this game mode. As you won’t have any other means to acquire enough money in order to purchase powerful items from the vending machines. You can carry a lot of items in Arms Race so be sure to pick up everything. New Legendary Loot Arms Race also adds new legendary items to the game. However, in order to keep those, you will need to extract them. Since Arms Race is like a 1-life challenge run with a fresh start each time, you need to deposit the items that you like to keep in a special beacon. Only this way you can keep the items you like. You can find a few of these beacons throughout the map but also one after defeating the final boss. If you die and didn’t send the item to your bank, it will be lost forever. While you can find new legendary items during Arms Race, you can only use them outside of the game mode as they will be locked. If you are lucky you can stumble upon a ‘World Drop’ legendary during this game mode. They have really helped me out throughout my games. While Legendaries can drop like crazy in the main game, from my experience this isn’t the case in Arms Race. Legendary items can still drop from any loot source. I have gotten some from trash piles and basic lockers. Arms Race TLDR Randomly drop in a map without any gear and try to survive Hunt for Red Chests throughout the map as the play zone shrinks Collect all the gear so you can sell them to buy better gear at vending machines Defeat the Boss at the center of the map Send a limited number of badass weapons to your bank in the main game Arms Race Conclusion Personally, I had a lot of fun with Arms Race. I did have to adjust my playstyle as I tend to take my time and compare stats of all the weapons. As I have exclusively been using legendary weapons, I needed to rediscover the other weapon rarities again. However, since your time is limited I had to speed up my decision making and just run with it. Which in itself let me rediscover the weapons in the game. You really want to go for those points of interest as taking on that Spiderant Queen isn’t always worth your time. The chance that you get a powerful item isn’t significant and therefore you can better keep moving. Because as mentioned before, you don’t have all the time in the world, as the storm will consume the map and you can’t survive in it. I kinda missed my action skill as this is a character- and game-defining feature in the Borderlands franchise. But the Devs mentioned they wanted guns to be meaningful. Since I mostly play Zane with a lot of speed boosts, Arms Race felt a bit slow as you won’t have access to those skills. Getting a snowdrift artifact during your run is awesome as it allows you to quickly travel through the map. Arms Race is an exciting game mode because you only have 1-life and you can lose your gear when you die. This really raises the lava, I mean the ‘stakes’ as you don’t want to lose that new legendary item. Planning your route is important because you might just want to send home an item before taking on the final boss. While I managed to defeat the boss each time, there were some really closes calls.

Continue reading on https://mentalmars.com/game-news/borderlands-3-new-game-mode-arms-race-review/

#Borderlands 3 News

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