#highlight more why the npc is so attached to their role

[isekyaaa]

Speaking of faceless extras, it'd be fun to write a story from the perspective of essentially a faceless NPC. Like literally when they look in the mirror, they don't have any eyes or a nose. Only a mouth. They're only attracted to clothes that literally every other NPC wears. Their hair color is a muddy brown. Honestly they are not sure they even have a name.

That being said, they know they are in a story. They know who the main characters are. It's hard not to. The main characters have faces, bright clothes, and funky hair styles and colors. The NPC don't know what the story is, but from their place within it, they are able to watch everything unfold. They aren't upset though. They know their role is to fill up blank space and they're happy with it. It's safer that way.

Then on a very random day that something very small ends up interrupting their schedule. They realize at the end of the day that they forgot their umbrella. One of the kind protagonists notice and lends them her umbrella. The NPC doesn't give it much attention. That character is known for being kind and helpful, after all. But then everything slowly starts changing from there.

Soon seats are changed and the NPC finds themselves sitting beside the girl. They don't think much of it at first. The girl is still preoccupied by her main and side character friends. The only time she addresses them is when she greets them in the morning or when she picks up an eraser they accidentally drop. But then it becomes more. One day the girl is absent and she comes back a few days after and asks to borrow the NPC's notes. Then she starts making conversation with them when her friend group is busy during lunch.

The NPC tries not to think too much about it all. While the girl is starting to befriend them, she doesn't belong to the same class as the rest of the main characters. It wouldn't be like the NPC's interactions with her would be broadcast in the story.

But then a haircut gone wrong one day occurs, and the NPC begins to stand out a little bit more. Just a tad. The girl says it looks nice. The NPC tries not to think about it. Then on an errand to buy clothes, they almost find themselves purchasing a jacket that's slightly more saturated than they normally go for. They find their interest beginning to grow in accessories and piercings. The NPC tries to ignore it.

It all culminates one afternoon where the NPC is returning from their club to their classroom. They find themselves passing the clubroom of the protagonists, and from there floats the sweet voice of the girl. She's talking about someone rather cheerily. Then she mentions a name, one that the NPC has never heard before. And yet, they know this name. They know it horrifyingly well.

It's their name.

Panic overtakes them. Sweat drips down the back of their neck as they take a step back in fear. They run.

They're not seen at a school for the few days following. They know it'll only make them stand out more, but they're too afraid. They don't want to face her. Their purpose is being torn away from them and they're terrified to know what'll result because of it. They weren't supposed to be destined for more. And if that meant locking themselves in their home until the danger passed, then so be it.

But a knock at the front door interrupts their frenzied thoughts. Their mom calls for them to answer it. She is busy putting on makeup, but she mentions she is expecting a package. They trudge to the door, but the person that meets them isn't a deliveryman. It is one of their classmates, an NPC like themselves. He stands before them alone. The girl, their neighbor, one of the protagonists—she is nowhere to be seen. The classmate tells them they were missed at school. He brought the homework they missed, as well as notes from their various classes.

It's almost shocking how normal everything is. Were they freaking out over nothing? If they were changing, it would've been either a main or side character at their door, right? But instead, it was someone like themselves.

So, in relief, they thank their classmate for bringing them their homework and turn to leave. But before they can do so, they notice their classmate staring at them oddly. Before they can ask, the classmate speaks.

"Has anyone ever told you you have an interesting eye color?"

Their body acts before their brain does, and they turn to face their reflection in the glass door. They don't know why they find themselves staring so intently when it's the face they have seen their entire life. But at the very least, their classmate is right.

It is an interesting color.

#story ideas #egegegeggehegeg #idk what the genre of this story is dont ask #but it is a horror for the npc hahaha #this would be fun to expand into a short story #maybe put in slowly how the npc's behaviors and thought processes are changing #make it more subtle #highlight more why the npc is so attached to their role #i'll keep the ending tho bc that is a banger #probably will give the girl protagonist a name to juxtapose with the npc's lack of one #bring out her physical characteristics as well #hmm #all about parallels and juxtaposition #i really need to stop going so in depth with my story ideas on here aaughjjhhdhd #like let's just give away the whole story why don't ya

[elbdot]

just saw your opinions on the champs, So what's your opinions on the rivals you know?

I played all mainline games from Gen 6 to Gen 9 except for the Diamond/Pearl remakes, so we have the XY-Gang, Brendan, Hau, Gladion, the 3 Galar rivals and Nemona.

Obviously I am very biased and love Hau and Gladion the most out of the bunch, but when it comes to the ROLE of being an ACTUAL Rival, I'd say Nemona's the most competent out of the bunch. I like that she's already a Champion-class trainer when you start out and that she's just incredibly eager to watch you grow, sensing a worthy opponent in you. She's so obsessed with battles and your progress as a trainer that you can't tell if she's crushing on you or if she is just THAT obsessed with finally getting a rival on her skill-level.

Brendan I don't really have an opinion on, the XY-Gang I think we all agree on is the most forgettable set of rivals, but I don't hate them either. They're just there.

I know y'all gonna behead me for this but I'm not a huge fan of the Gen 8 rivals. Hop just makes me SAD. I wish they would've handled his story differently, because his decision to become a Professor in the end feels like a sad plan B rather than him actually discovering a PASSION for the profession, there was no build-up for it. He keeps losing battles and you feel sorry for him because YOU are the cause of him basically giving up his dream of becoming Champion. Him changing course to become a Professor doesn't feel like a happy conclusion and more like him having no other option but to give up his original goal.

Bede is a PIECE OF SHIT but in a GOOD WAY. But the most frustrating part about him is that he HAS an interesting story going on - but you're just not a part of that. SWSH constantly manages to make you feel like an NPC. You are not involved in the conflicts of the characters. Bede fucks up all on his own and pays the price and you're just kind of a bystander. His story keeps unfolding OFF-SCREEN and we just get to see tiny scraps of it and it made me SO FREAKING FRUSTRATED, you're not really a part of his story so you don't even feel like you're his rival at all! And lastly...Marnie. OOF...here we go...I'M SO SORRY YOU GUYS, BUT- Marnie is probably the most boring rival out of them all. There's just nothing to her. I CANNOT for the life of me understand why people love her so much. I've seen arguments of her having a "great storyline" but that's like saying "oh I REALLY enjoyed THIS particular crumb of salted cracker" that is the entire storyline of SWSH. It's paperthin. It holds NO substance. She wants to bring attention to her hometown, good for her. But her ambition didn't grab me, her popularity ingame surrounding Team Yell didn't really make sense to me and her highlight of her arc is...cheering for you. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW Not to mention her outfit is just as much of a clash of concepts as her character. It's like they couldn't make up their mind if she should be the next cute Lillie in a sweet pink dress or the next edgy Gladion in a leather jacket, so they did BOTH but WITHOUT IT ACTUALLY BEING REFLECTED IN HER PERSONALITY or it being INTERESTING SHE'S JUST CUTE-LOOKING AND THAT'S IT THERE I SAID IT

Oh my god everybody's gonna hate me SO MUCH for this opinion oH GOD - I've been holding these thoughts in for TOO LONG, I HAVE to let them out now Like NO OFFENSE to anyone liking her - SWSH definitely has some of the best character designs in terms of trainers and despite having almost NOTHING to offer story-wise, these designs still managed to carry the entire generation somehow, even with the majority of characters showing little to no personality due to the poor writing. I think people are just attached to an IDEA of what she COULD have been rather than what she actually is ingame.

And the same goes for me with Guzma tbh because I'm more attached to the version I made up rather than what is actually reflected in the game LMAO I took the crumbs I got and RAN WITH THEM

#CALLING MYSELF OUT TO WEAKEN THE BLOW #mod #reply #pokemon #pokemon swsh

[kogameh]

I didn't liveblog the epilogue like I did with Teal Mask since I moved my reactions to twt but my goooooood it was so GOOD 😭 I'm kinda obsessed with it actually. Everyone was so full of personality and there's a LOT you can dissect from their lines and interactions!! The writers really do a lot of care into them oh my god

Again there's a Lot to dissect even if the story is like. what. 1 hour long but fav highlights on top of my head are:

ARVEN BEING JEALOUS OF KIERAN LMAOOOO This is like THE popular headcanon when Kieran first existed and its REAL????

There's just a lot of lines where the gang def hang out a lot off screen like Penny going all "You want to meet Kieran because you want to BATTLE him, dont you?" at Nemona and Arven thinking Nemona is gonna jumpscare them when she went missing bc he predict her all too well augahaghah... I love when it shows that theyre close ya know...

Also some little details easily missable in dialogues like Penny (and Nemona?) having sweet tooth and Carmine's fav food being yakisoba, etc, I'm def scratching the surface here lol

AND THEN HOW ARVEN AND KIERAN BECAME BESTIES SO FAST DESPITE HOW THEY FIRST MET AAAAAAH i REALLY hope they get to play games and watch movies on that tv-

Actually the whole Paldea-gumi got along with Kieran fast like how Nemona is excited (but also scares Kieran) on finding another person to battle with...and Penny vibing with another introvert/shy friend... He deserves it sooooo muuuuuch

Uh. The whole zombie infection thing actually horrifies me (in a way it flinches me to see my favs being put in an embarrassing situation #&@%&@) BUT I will say I like how Kieran is the main tsukkomi here and some parts shows he still have his, uh, unwell side.

Also being a sgao enjoyer they DEF get a lot of moments and I'm so glad they teamed up 😭 It's funny how much people (including me) are expecting Kieran to be under the Momotaro's influence only for him to be the two survivors along with MC £^*@^@*@&

Speaking of, Pecharunt actually didn't get much role here outside of being the mastermind which def disappointed a lot of people wanting more lore on the Pokemon side so yeah....its kinda funny that THE main purpose of this distribution got put in the backburner like that. In fact both Indigo Disk and this event feels more character-focused over the Pokemons? ^#*@^@*^ Which is kinda a risky move considering most Pkmn fans can't rea-

In the end they did implied they hang out off screen but that left me wanting MORE... Can I get an iyashikei with just Paldea-gumi and Kitakami siblings PLEASEEEEEEE

The whole thing feels like a stupid B-movie plot and I LOVE it...a proof that some stories don't have to be a masterpiece if its already brimming with personalities and charm. Why am I seeing fuckers complaining over more buttons to mash just go back to previous gens if you want your bland ass mythical distributions via PokeCen NPCs or some shit!!!

I. would put my overall conclusion here but that means having to accept ScarVio has ended. I'm NOT doing that (inhaling copium). This is probably gonna remain the only mainline Pokemon I'll ever get attached to so...yeah...I'm gonna miss them a lot...

(Anyway I have to yell here because I have no one to talk about this event. Its lonely when you're just exploding by yourself hahhaah.)

#kogami's scrapbook #sv spoilers // ///// // #long post

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E43 (December 4, 2018)

Tonight’s episode features Marisha Ray and Travis Willingham!

Announcements for tonight: 

New Pumat shirt! Matt and Taliesin will also be playing some Fortnite with a Pumat voice pack. As you do.

#EverythingisContent stream tomorrow at 4PM Pacific: games on the all-new MAME cabinet!

Travis’ FPS stream will be happening next week!

Travis strongly recommends tuning in right at the start of the episode on Thursday. Right at the start. You and all your friends. Don’t miss it. There’s a sneak preview of some sort of animation!

Check out Gil Ramirez’s (an amazing smith, but also of “don’t fuck me Gil” fame) kickstarter!

Stats!

This episode had more spells cast than any previous episode: 76.

3rd time Beau has attempted to Extort Truth, and the 2nd time it’s succeeded.

Fjord has used four potions, all administered to other people. Brian: “For as much as you like swallowing... potions, not so much.”

Fjord has just passed Molly’s natural 20 count, reaching 26. Beau still sits at the top, with 49.

Travis and Marisha agree that this was one of their top five episodes of the show.

Fjord “totally dug” Caleb’s call to go with Wall of Flame to bring the situation with Avantika to a head. He points out that they’d had a conversation about keeping this whole situation in check if need be.

Brian: “You sound like McCree’s drunk uncle.”

The group planned (”we obsessed”) over the game for the entire two weeks, hundreds and hundreds of messages. It pretty much went according to plan. Marisha: “We had contingency plans. We had an ideal initiative, but we were like, if we fuck up, then Nott will take the journal. We had main roles and then understudies.”

Fjord thinks being able to summon demons is pretty much in line with all the weird shit that’s happened to him up to this point. He hasn’t even considered the consequences. Marisha: “I feel like that’s this entire mission. We’ll consider the consequences later.”

During the “I... wait” scene, Brian and Dani were yelling at their TVs, Travis was trying to telepathically communicate, and Marisha had complete tunnel-vision. She knew that if she’d fucked that up, they would have all died. She turned to Travis after Beau got up there and realized, “It’s just me and my words.”

Gif of the Week: the executive goth approves of Fjord’s demon-summoning! Henry models the prize:

Travis gets asked why Fjord slipped into his real voice when yelling that Caleb needed help. Travis pleads the Fifth: “My what?”

Marisha had no idea her mention of the Cobalt Soul would carry so much weight with the Plank King. It was a last-ditch effort after Fjord’s diplomacy fell flat with him. Travis desperately wants to know how much of what Beau said was true.

Brian: “Only Mercer could make Plank King cool again... Planking? Remember?” There is a brief threat of mutiny in the studio. It’s a Tuesday.

Matt mentioned to Marisha that, if Avantika had been allowed to speak, she would’ve called for a trial. Things could’ve gone very wrong for the Nein.

Out-of-context quote of the night: Dani: “Can you fit a puppy in your pocket?” Travis: “Yes, I’m enormous.”

Beau is surrounded by people who can do all sorts of absurd magic, “so of course she’s like, ‘Yeah, I can punch the shit out of you. I’ll start a fucking fight to do it!’”

Travis isn’t working with anything custom for his class, apart from the sword. Brian: “So your gag reflex is right out of the Handbook?” Travis: “That and personal experience.”

Travis on Fjord’s reaction to Avantika’s death: “All great stories are laced with truth. That fucked me up, because I hadn’t realized until that point that if she’s toast, I won’t get to ask her questions.” Not to mention the whole island having reactions to Vandren’s name. “I went back and watched it twice. The ritual, the tattoos, how she found her sphere, all of that shit, I’m feeling more like I knew less of the man than I thought I knew, and she knew more about him than I ever did. It’s fucking me up.”

Fanart of the Week: “I... wait.”

Marisha on Avantika’s very sudden death: “You know how things happen, and you go, wow, I should’ve seen that coming...” The outcome of the first plan was just to get her arrested, and then the fight happened, so she wasn’t thinking about immediate repercussions. She was expecting an arrest, and maybe she’d get executed after they left, but “I mean... that was brutal.” Travis: “It just kept escalating, and then she kept saying nothing after nothing. We’re going to be front row center for this.”

Travis: “Fjord is Lawful Good, clearly--” Brian: “You’re fooling no one with that Lawful Good bullshit, Travis.” Travis: “At least 40% of the audience. Lawful Good. Clearly feels a little distressed that she had to pay with her life.” But he points out that it wasn’t the first time Fjord wanted to see her dead. “If he could’ve seen to it himself, I think he would’ve.” It’s not something he’s very practiced with, but he’s emboldened by his new abilities.

Beau was definitely intimidated by the Plank King, but still had a bit of her contempt for authority figures. “I think it set in pretty hard that she was going to be terse, she was going to be blunt, but she wasn’t going to try anything that was going to get her throat slit immediately.”

Travis hadn’t intended to start picking up pieces of lost friends as part of his identity (Molly’s sword, Vandren’s accent), but it felt like the right fit, since he’s trying to establish his identity for the first time. He’s emulating what he admires about them.

Fjord’s in his early 30s. Beau’s in her early 20s. Playing Beau younger than Marisha lets her give Beau a little extra room for development; it also makes sense with her backstory. For Fjord, he was old enough to have mostly figured out what he was doing... and then everything changed.

Travis: “Fjord saw in Vandren a leadership that empowers people to rise in their station.” It’s about the team succeeding, not one person gaining more power. He’s constantly trying to put people in different situations for success.

Fjord is very attached to this group, but he’s also uncomfortable with how much attention is starting to be put on him. His whole survival mechanism is based on blending in, and being pushed to the front and being forced to make decisions is hard for him (Travis: “And me.”). Fjord is loving everything that’s been happening. The world’s never been richer or more exciting, and he wants to protect that if he can.

Brian: “Are you preparing for when things are as Beau-focused as they are... Fjord-focused right now?” No pun intended. Beau: “It’s a horror that you cannot prepare for. One day Matt will just introduce an NPC and he’s going to look at you and he’s going to be like, ‘Hello, Beau,’ and I’m going to be like ‘AHHH’.” Travis: “The tension is palpable. It’s real.” They compliment Taliesin on his handling of the first character-centric arc in the first campaign.

Brian jokes about everyone stumbling into Yasha’s story while Ashley’s still away, so Travis would have to play her through the whole thing. Travis gives a sneak-preview of how that would go, grabbing Beau’s hand and staring deeply into her eyes.

A gift for Travis from fans! He’s blown away.

Talks Machina: After Dog

Essential update on Henry: he likes wearing costumes because “it feels like being hugged”. There’s talk about him doing a Grog cosplay.

Pumat impressions all around. Travis’ is, according to Marisha, “Like Grog doing a Pumat impression.” Marisha has some practice because she was the one who wrote all the Pumat promos. Travis: “Wow, that puts your Swedish accent to shame.”

Fjord and Jester? “Fjord picks up on some subtle things and some not-so-subtle things, and then probably second-guesses those things.” He’s not too sure where they stand.

Everyone’s worried about their favorite artists’ tumblrs.

Travis reads the German on the back of his chocolate. Marisha: “There are way more syllables there than what you said.” Travis offers the last chocolate to Brian, and promptly eats it in front of him instead. “You gotta act fast on that shit.”

There were some ideas that didn’t work out: Travis was going to cast a spell so everyone could breathe underwater, and they were going to jump off the ship.

A question for Henry: Who’s a good boy?

Quote from the text thread: “Oh shoot. There is an a-hole with a crossbow. Dangit.”

Finally, in case you were losing sleep wondering, Brian is still dabbing every time he says the word “slash” in a URL. Further updates as warranted. 

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long text post

[aion-rsa]

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Fixes Problems You Didn’t Know Existed

https://ift.tt/39mYjY8

The Cyberpunk 2077 team has revealed the full patch notes for the game’s recently released 1.2 update and all we can say is “wow.”

There’s no use trying to breakdown the entirety of this patch since it contains over 500 updates, fixes, changes, and improvements. I highly recommend that you check out the (mostly) full rundown of the update if you’ve been waiting for that massive Cyberpunk 2077 patch that will finally make the game significantly more playable. This won’t be Cyberpunk 2077‘s last update, but it feels like the first of the game’s updates that are trying to do more than just put out the biggest fires.

If you’re looking for the highlights, though, then I’ve got you covered. Here are the best, biggest, and weirdest patch notes that I’ve found in the Cyberpunk 2077 1.2 update so far.

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Notes: The “WTF?” Fixes

“Player can no longer cancel fall damage by performing a slide action when about to fall from greater heights.”

If you’re like me, this is one of those things that you didn’t even realize was possible in Cyberpunk 2077 but now desperately want to try. Based on some videos that I’ve seen of this technique, it’s actually possible to survive some insane falls via this method but your survival is based on the specifics of the fall itself and your mastery of the technique. Honestly, they should just turn this technique into an official in-game modification ability.

“It is no longer possible to perform Gorilla Arms finishers against civilians.”

Cyberpunk 2077‘s latest patch notes make it clear that civilians in Night City have it kind of rough. I’m not entirely sure what the basis of this particular change is, but I kind of hope that they put it in there just to give the poor people of Night City a break by not letting you beat them to death quite so easily with your mechanical fists.

“Extending the sliding ladder won’t result in player’s death if they are below it.”

I’ve never actually seen this happen in Cyberpunk 2077, but the fact that it could happen is downright hilarious. Super-powered characters being killed by tiny bumps in video games is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I love the idea of being killed simply because your character is too stubborn to move out of the way of a ladder.

“It is no longer possible to use guns near the arcades during the Raymond Chandler Evening fistfight. // You can no longer pull an Indiana Jones in El Coyote Cojo.”

Ok, I’m actually a little upset by this one. As pointed out in the patch notes, it’s actually kind of hilarious that this was possible as it plays into the player choice element of the game. You could argue that too many of these glitches add up to be more than an amusing annoyance, but I think this one might have been funny enough to leave in the game in some form.

“Fixed multiple issues during sex scenes”

CD Projekt Red doesn’t give any additional details about this patch note, but I really wish they would. Just how many issues were there in these sex scenes? I’ve heard some people say the animations used in these scenes were awkward (which is true), but I’ve also heard reports that players were falling through floors and clipping through objects during those sensual moments. I’m sure fans will waste no time telling us everything that’s different about them when this update hits.

“Kerry’s bathrobe is no longer incorrectly attached to his lower part of the body.”

I had to look this one up, and I’m glad I did. It seems that Kerry’s bathrobe suffered from this strange glitch that made the bottom of it operate independently from the rest. I have no idea what causes it, but it kind of looks like it’s accounting for the proportions of a gentleman with much wider hips. Check it out for yourself:

“Fixed incorrect censorship when playing a copy of the game from a region other than Japan while the console region is set to Japan or language to Japanese.”

This isn’t the strangest patch note, but it’s one I didn’t know about. Apparently, the Japanese version of Cyberpunk 2077 censors some of the sex scenes and a few of the more violent moments. I’m genuinely curious how many people were accidentally playing the censored version of the game due to this issue and didn’t even realize it.

“Fixed an issue where pedestrians could get teleported after being hit by a vehicle.”

I still just want to know where those civilians went from both a design and lore perspective. I’m imagining that there’s a pile of civilian bodies lying around somewhere like at the end of The Prestige.

“In The Pickup, it’s no longer possible to trigger both scenarios at the same time: a peaceful deal with Maelstrom and fighting them.”

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Notes: The Oddly Specific Fixes

“Fixed an issue where dumping a body in the trunk started the vehicle’s engine.”

Ok, I ran into this one several times during my Cyberpunk 2077 journey and just convinced myself that it was a feature. At the very least, I feel like Elon Musk may make a car that automatically starts when it detects a body in the trunk for the convenience of the evil billionaire with goons on the go.

“The TV in Tom’s Diner can no longer be destroyed. If a player destroyed it before this update it will now be fixed and the news will be displayed correctly to progress Playing for Time.”

I also didn’t know this was possible, but it’s hilarious to imagine a player going around and destroying every TV in town only to find that they can no longer progress through the game as a result of their actions. Honestly, who discovered this one?

“Fixed an issue that caused NPCs to trip over other NPCs too often.”

It’s the “too often” part of this one that gets me. Who determined that the amount of NPC tripping going on was well beyond the acceptable parameters for such a thing?

“Fixed a rare scenario where the painting wouldn’t appear in the drop pod in Space Oddity/Space Oddity no longer spawns multiple paintings blocking the quest’s progress.”

I love the idea of largely useless paintings causing so many problems during one of Cyberpunk 2077‘s biggest missions. You just get the feeling that this is the little problem that made the team realize what a mess Cyberpunk 2077 was at launch.

“Fixed an issue where A Like Supreme could get blocked if player rushed to the toilet to take a pill before finishing a conversation with Nancy.”

This one just brings to mind a million instances in open-world games where you realize that QA testers should consist of trolls and video game speedrunners who are able to find absolutely every little thing you can do to ruin a game.

“Car lights will no longer stay on after the car battery dies in Ghost Town.”

How far down the list was this particular problem? Either this is a sign that the team is ready to move on to more minor fixes or this problem was a particular sticking point with someone on the team.

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Notes: The Cat-Related Fixes

“Cat food needed to adopt Nibbles can now be bought at several food shops around Night City”

While I actually like the idea of specific items only being available in specific shops in Night City, the fact of the matter is that Nibbles doesn’t have time for such role-playing concepts. Nibbles needs food, Nibbles needs love, and Nibbles needs it on their time, not yours.

“Fixed an issue in Nocturne Op55N1 where petting the cat would play without dialogue. // V will now properly address the cat, even without Misty’s answer.”

You WILL properly address Nibbles, V. Thank you to the Cyberpunk team for fixing such a glaring omission. Clearly, this is the reason why the game was delisted from the PlayStation Store.

Read more

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By John Saavedra

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Notes: The Welcome Fixes to Strange Problems

“Fixed an issue where V could get stuck in empty buildings when exiting a vehicle parked close to a wall.”

This one happened way more often than it ever should have. This scenario is also common enough to really make you wonder how this problem escaped the testing process.

“Jackie no longer shouts ‘Nice shot!’ when V kills enemies while in stealth mode.”

Truth be told, I actually kind of love that Jackie couldn’t hide his enthusiasm during these instances, but it’s hard to deny that his piercing shouts did kind of ruin the immersion of these moments.

“Collisions will no longer fail to stream in randomly during driving, which could lead to V driving into buildings and falling out of the world.”

I get that Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t supposed to be GTA, but it sure will be nice to be able to collide with something without having to worry about disappearing into the void where those civilian bodies go.

“NPCs will no longer stay blocked on traffic lanes while in fear.”

Cyberpunk‘s poor NPCs will finally be able to move out of the middle of traffic which is good for you, good for them, and good for the city’s cleanup crew who have seen too many horrors.

“NPC hit by a car will now immediately run in panic/Added different animation variations for pedestrians running away from a vehicle.”

Some saw this problem as a sign that Night City’s NPCs just don’t care, but I think these patch notes make it clear that they wanted to run away and just didn’t have the ability to. It’s a real “have no mouth and must scream” scenario.

“V’s hands are now correctly displayed on a steering wheel while driving”

V gets a few animation fixes in this upcoming patch, but this is one of my favorites. I don’t know why it was so difficult to properly animate V using a steering wheel, but I’m glad we’re moving past the days when you’ve got to wonder what the character’s hands are supposed to be doing.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.2 Fixes Problems You Didn’t Know Existed appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2O50Hv9

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[recentanimenews]

Jason Rohrer on the Emergent Game Storytelling of One Hour One Life

One Hour One Life is one of the most fascinating video games I’ve played in years. It’s a multiplayer online game in a persistent world full of resources that players can harvest and craft into tools, not unlike Minecraft and similar games. But the twist is that every player (with rare exceptions) is born into the world as the child of another player and lives for only 60 minutes from birth to death. Together, players have collaborated across generations to build thriving civilizations, making use of a massive tech tree created (and updated weekly!) by the game’s solo developer: Jason Rohrer.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Rohrer (virtually of course) last week for an in-depth interview covering One Hour One Life and the philosophy that underpins his ambitious creation. Rohrer is fascinating in his own right. Since he made waves with his short 2007 game Passage, he has consistently pushed the boundaries of interactive storytelling and social video games. I first came across him through Sleep Is Death (2010), a collaborative story-making game played between anonymous online players. The Castle Doctrine (2014) explores Rohrer’s anxiety about home invasion by forcing players to turn their homes into death traps before setting out to rob the homes of other players. His work often feels paradoxical; at once inspired by Rohrer’s personal experiences and driven by a precise, highly analytical approach to game mechanics and player behavior. He’s also a somewhat polarizing figure, staking out positions on politics and the game industry itself that can be unpopular among his peers.

This article contains a transcript of roughly half of the full interview, since we ended up having quite a lot to talk about! In the transcribed portion we cover the connection between the COVID-19 crisis and One Hour One Life, the importance of true “social” gaming, the thought experiment that inspired the game, and the lack of player-driven commerce in the game world. In the full interview, available in podcast form for $5 subscribers on the Ani-Gamers Patreon, we go even deeper on all of these subjects, and even delve into a fundamental political disagreement between Rohrer and many of his players (myself included).

That’s more than enough preamble, I think. Enjoy!

Ani-Gamers: Considering world events right now, I wanted to start with how COVID-19 has influenced your thinking around One Hour One Life.

Jason Rohrer: I thought a lot about diseases in the game long before this. And of course now everyone is like “why aren’t there diseases in the game?”

Ani-Gamers: There’s yellow fever, which you can get from mosquitoes.

Rohrer: Yeah but it’s not communicable. It’s been a long time since I added that disease to the game and I did study it at the time and I don’t remember all the details, but I got the impression at the time that it’s a mosquito-borne disease and that it wasn't contagious from person to person so much. Although maybe I’m completely wrong about that.

But anyway, communicable diseases are interesting from a simulationist point of view. It’d be an amazing experiment to introduce communicable diseases into the game and see how people react, but I don't think on the ground it would be that interesting to the players because it would swamp all other aspects of the game.

Ani-Gamers: It would become a disease control game.

Rohrer: Yeah. If you go to this village and you see people with the visible signs of the disease — whatever it is — and then you interact with them and you come back to your own village and then people don’t let you in. It would just swamp everything. And then also does disease become eradicated over time and if so where does the new one come from? Do I as the god of the world periodically introduce diseases and watch as they run their course? Maybe it would be an interesting event for players, but it also feels like that’s not what the game is about.

Ani-Gamers: In terms of the response to COVID-19, one of the things I've noticed is that the lockdowns highlight how much of our lifestyles and production are social. I think the game does a very good job of showing that.

Rohrer: Right, right. A lot of what I’m trying to do in One Hour One Life is, ironically, especially with all the design changes I’ve made over the past couple of years, sort of force people to be social. Well, not social, because when we say “social games,” we imagine you have a game with a chat box attached to it, or you play the game on Facebook and your Facebook friends somehow play in parallel with you or you’re competing on a leaderboard with them.

Ani-Gamers: It’s latching onto an existing social network.

Rohrer: Yeah. It means “we’re going to be chatting in these games.” That's not what I mean by social. What I mean by social is that what other players are doing in the game matters to you in terms of what you're doing and that somehow they become actually important characters in the game that you're playing. Not just as chat partners, to get in there and talk about what's going on in the election or whatever in real life.

Think about it, the role of NPCs, non-player characters in most single-player games. Think even about a simple example that everyone is familiar with like Zelda. Not the original Zelda, but Ocarina of Time where there are a lot of NPCs around and a lot of quests and things that go on in the game that involve these NPCs. I don't remember the details of a particular quest because I haven’t played the game in so long but I’ll just make one up. Something about a guy who’s got a milk farm or something and there's some kind of horse racing thing. There’s something about having to bring someone some fresh milk. So you've got to go to some other NPC somewhere in the world and convince them. They’re sick and they won't come out or whatever and you have to bring them this medicine. Then they give you the fresh milk and this guy won't let you race unless you bring him the fresh milk and so that is a social interaction. That's social gameplay. Not that there's a real intelligent social entity at the end of it but it’s simulating the experience of “I need to interact with these people in the world in order to accomplish this thing that I'm trying to accomplish and sometimes they're angry or grumpy and I need to figure that out.” It’s very rudimentary, the emotional gameplay that's present there. This guy’s sick or he’s angry and I need to make him happy. It’s almost a key and a lock that's dressed up as some kind of social interaction.

So One Hour One Life has the potential to have that kind of thing happen, but for real. You’re not just looking for a key and a lock because the character you’re interacting with is a complex, fully intelligent entity who is another player. The problem is that it’s very easy for the game to degenerate into situations where those kinds of interactions aren’t even necessary. That’s sort of the default grain of this “multiple people in a world where you're crafting and building things” game. Players put blinders on and figure out how to build what they want to build and then build it.

Ani-Gamers: You mentioned in other interviews that playing Rust felt super individualistic.

Rohrer: Yeah there are all these other people around but they’re either trying to get you or ignoring you or whatever. There’s no social structure that built up. There's no sense of a neighborhood that built up. Every once in a while you would interact with one of your neighbors in some way, either a negative or positive interaction — every once in a while it was positive. But there wasn't a sense that we were banding together in any kind of way to cooperate or to trade or to build any kind of legal system or de facto way of doing things. We were all on our own little beeline quests passing like ships in the night, occasionally firing one across the bow at the other guy.

One Hour One Life has the potential for that, or that's what I was always imagining. You’re in these situations in part because you don’t just keep playing and playing and playing forever and ever and ever working on your personal project. Because you die after an hour you at least have to interact with somebody in the game, which is the next generation, to raise them. Because if you let all the babies die — that's the fundamental premise of the game — if you let all the babies die then everything you’re building in your lifetime is lost.

Ani-Gamers: Plus you have to interact with your own mother.

Rohrer: Right or you can’t get to the point where you can work on your own personal project. That little fundamental wedge in the game at least ensures some social interaction. But beyond that what I was seeing was literally you get to age three where you can feed yourself and the common thing — it’s almost risen to the level of a meme — was for your mom to say “glhf” or “good luck, have fun.” Slap a hat on you, make sure you're all set, maybe hand you a pie or something and say “good luck, honey.” And never see your kid again necessarily. You don’t really care what happens to them after that point, so much, as long as some of your babies survive. If every single one died then everything would be lost. Then players go off on their own beeline quests and don't really interact.

So a lot of the stuff I've been doing recently has been — it's a dangerous tightrope to be walking on where you’re like “the players aren’t doing what I want them to be doing. So how do I force them to do it?” (laughs)

A simple example more recently is the idea that you can’t learn every single tool in the game. There are 25 or 30 different things that are marked as tools that require some kind of expert skill to use. And you can only master so many skills in your life before you start to run out of mastery slots. So you have to pick and choose what kinds of things you focus on and if you’re building something more complicated, you're going to need more mastery than you yourself possess. And at that point you literally have to walk across your village and find the guy who knows how to use the tool you don’t know how to use to finish the thing you’re working on and say “hey buddy can you come and use this blowtorch.”

Ani-Gamers: How much of the game is an experiment where you see yourself as setting things up and seeing what happens, and how much are you trying to teach the players something? Are you trying to get the players to walk away having learned something about humanity or society or the way that production works?

Rohrer: It’s funny, I guess I’d say it’s neither of those things. I’m not interested in teaching anyone anything. Even going back through my career, it’s not really “hey I want to make you have this realization about your real life” as much as i want to provide you with this interesting, compelling, emotionally evocative experience. And some people apparently do have realizations about real life when they have that kind of experience, but if that’s your goal as a designer ... It’s sort of a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. You want to have this valuable experience that has a take-home message. (laughs) To me that feels less like art and more like a lecture or something. So I’m not intentionally trying to do that.

On the other hand I’m not intentionally trying to set up some sort of experiment and like a mad scientist, just see what happens. I’m more, as a designer, trying to almost predict or fashion this thing that will hopefully work in the way I want it to work to create the most interesting, rich kind of experience and situations that I can imagine a video game producing. So it’s more like me predicting, “ooh, if I add this kind of wrinkle into this situation it’s going to trigger these kinds of interactions.”

It's never as cut and dry as “walk over to this guy, tell him you need a sheep slaughtered and he just instantly goes over and does it.” Maybe he's busy, maybe he doesn't like you, maybe he’s got something else on his mind, or maybe this person just had a baby, or whatever. They’re too busy with something else. And so it's not as simple as just a key and a lock. If we describe the system in words and say “you only have a limited number of tool slots and if you need something else done you gotta get someone else to do it for you” that sounds kind of like you just need to go through this motion, walk over there and get this other person to do this thing for you, but it’s never quite as simple as that.

Ani-Gamers: Because they’re all real people.

Rohrer: Right.

Ani-Gamers: How does the goal of creating these emergent emotional player stories interact with or even conflict with goal of realism, of recreating how actual human development worked?

Rohrer: A lot of people think this is a civilization simulation game where it’s like “let's start with cavemen and get up to present day.” As far as I’ve conceptualized the game, that’s never been what it’s about. It’s more about this thought experiment of starting over from scratch. And what the reason is for why we had to start over from scratch is unknown. It’s unspecified that this is after a nuclear war or after some kind of cataclysmic climate event or pandemic or something. It's just “hey, what if we had to” and what if we were in the woods, essentially.

Ani-Gamers: Not “what if we didn't know that society was possible?” but that we already experienced it and had to restart.

Rohrer: That was a thought experiment I had been asking people for a number of years before I decided to make a game about this. It took us two to three thousand years, or maybe four thousand years depending on what part of the world you’re in, to get from caveman-level technology to where we are in the present day. From arrowheads to iPhones. And we kind of feel like that was primarily a knowledge acquisition problem. The reason it took so long is that we didn't know how to make iPhones 4000 years ago and slowly over time we figured all this stuff out and now we have the knowledge of how to do this. And then I say “well, what if we were instantly teleported back into the wilderness? How long would it take to have an iPhone back in our hands if we started from scratch from rocks and sticks?

So that’s the fundamental thought experiment. And a number of people had the kneejerk reaction that we’d do it within 10 years. (laughs) And I’m like, you realize you don’t even have a screwdriver. If you want a screwdriver you’ve gotta go find some iron ore, figure out how to make steel using no equipment, and then I don’t know about the plastic handle. Good luck with that.

Ani-Gamers: This sounds kind of like teaching, even though you said you’re not trying to teach. You’re trying to get people to think through that thought experiment.

Rohrer: Well yeah. That was a fundamental premise of the game. And I think, as a provocation when I have this discussion with people, I say “I think it might actually take 2000 years again.” It wasn't actually a knowledge acquisition problem, it was a capital problem, a foundational problem. When we go to do something today, we’re standing on the shoulders of all the stuff that’s come before and we have all these resources available to us like going down to the store and buying a screwdriver. I think we’re at the point where things have gotten so complicated that no individual living person knows how it all works. Especially for a CPU or something like that. There’s the fact that every time you click something on the Web 30 million lines of code are in between you and the data that’s coming back. Nobody understands 30 million lines of code.

Ani-Gamers: I’ve played on and off for the past two years and seen how the civilization developed, and one of the things I thought I would see was commerce. But I have yet to witness any real commerce in the game.

Rohrer: Yeah and that’s been a huge thing that I’ve been trying to get working forever.

Ani-Gamers: Why do you think it hasn’t happened? I definitely expected it, like “oh yeah, soon we’ll see people start trading.”

Rohrer: That’s been a goal of mine for the game and always been something that has never actually happened no matter what I do. What’s the fundamental reason for it? It’s an excellent question. I think it’s still a bit of a mystery even to people who have been playing the game for a long time. Everyone has their ideas. “If you just made the biomes bigger there’d be trade.”

Ani-Gamers: It’s ironic it’s the people playing the game who aren’t trading and then they’re saying “hey you need to change something so that we’ll start trading.”

Rohrer: I don’t ever want people doing things just for the sake of doing it.

Ani-Gamers: Right, just to roleplay.

Rohrer: Which is just this pretend version of it. If you chase after your child saying “be careful honey, watch out for the wolves,” and you're just doing it because you’re pretending to be a mother and that’s what a mother would do in real life, and there's not really any good reason to give those warnings. If there weren’t any wolves in the game but you went and told every child “be careful of the wolves in the forest honey.” That’s the worst case of it, where you’re literally pretending something that doesn't even exist in the game, but if you have enough babies where each one stays safe but you still act like an overprotective mother anyway, just to fill your role.

That’s not that interesting to me. I’m much more interested in players behaving a certain way due to the mechanics, and the way that they end up behaving, which is the optimal way to behave, being thematically congruous. I feel like that's the best we can do in video games, because none of it’s real, and because it’s all repeatable and you can go back through and try different ways of doing it. Even within a game like One Hour One Life where everything only happens once, there’s still the sense that you can keep experimenting in a relatively safe sandbox with different ways of doing these things. Whereas in real life you only get one shot at it.

Ani-Gamers: The stakes are higher.

Rohrer: A lot of people try to shoehorn these emotional situations into their games, mostly through cutscenes or barely interactive narrative elements. That doesn’t seem to work because players hit rewind or go back to a saved game and try the other branch. And even if there is no branching it’s even worse because as you play the game a second time you see the same canned emotion over and over again and it instantly loses its [impact].

Where I’m at as a designer right now is that the best way to achieve that kind of result is by having what I call “real play.” That is, players are trying to find the optimal way of playing the game in this situation and, in doing so, behave in a way that makes sense from an outside observer’s point of view, or thematically, or emotionally. They’re behaving the same way they would if they had that emotion. They’re kind of going through the motions for gameplay reasons but hey, what’s the difference between acting desperate and actually being desperate or acting afraid and actually being afraid?

It’s always going to be pretend afraid. There’s never a monster that’s actually going to chew you up. But if you’re playing a game where you’re supposed to be afraid of the monsters and you just brazenly walk right up to them and don’t even care, that feels like it undercuts [the emotion]. It’s these fake rubber fangs, right? You know they’re not going to hurt you. But if you dive out of the way and actually scream in real life for gameplay reasons, then I guess I feel like that’s as close as we can get to the real deal.

Ani-Gamers: Back on the subject of commerce...

Rohrer: Oh yeah so getting back to commerce, I don’t want people pretending to be engaging in trade just for fun. Some people have set up little shops and this and that. It’s like playing house. They’ll put up a little sign saying “the pie shop,” and they’ll run around the village saying “anyone want to come and taste my wares?” (laughs) But that’s just like playing house.

In terms of why people don’t: well, trade has costs associated with it. Opportunity costs and time investment and all the other kinds of things that go into it. So players need to feel like there’s a good reason, like the payoff to engaging in trade is higher than the cost to engaging in it. Even in real life, if you go all the way down to the market the benefit minus the cost for getting the tomatoes from the market has to exceed [the value of] just growing the tomatoes yourself at home.

Ani-Gamers: Maybe going down to the market isn’t even the best comparison because really there is no market at all. The question is “should we make a market or should we just share all the tomatoes?”

Rohrer: There’s a number of things. First of all there’s a big difference between your children and my children from my point of view in real life. And if we’re in a situation where there’s only one tomato, if I have my preference I’d rather have my children get it. If the situation gets tense enough and everyone’s starving to death, then people actually will engage in violence to ensure that their own children get it. In a game like One Hour One Life I don’t think that people currently have that kind of feeling, aside from [making sure they themselves can eat].

There’s also a sense that maybe there are too many resources around so there’s not enough scarcity, and there’s not a real sense of my children vs. your children. People aren’t really paying attention to whose children are whose, because there’s not really a gameplay reason to do that. I do have this “genetic score” system in there but a lot of players just ignore that. It hasn’t really had the sweeping impact where everyone is suddenly caring about their babies and so on. So people don't really care about their own children vs. somebody else’s children, because the fundamental gameplay motivation for the next generation is just to have somebody here in the village who's going to carry things on. It doesn’t really matter whose they are.

There’s also the fundamental problem that even if you wanted to keep some food just for your own children, there was no convenient way to prevent other people from taking it. There’s these property fences that were added a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago that are available and very easy for people to make, and very easy to control ownership and so on. But people don't use them, because there’s still some cost to building them and people don’t feel like the cost is worth it.

Ani-Gamers: How often do you play the game yourself? How much of it is for testing? Do you ever just play it for fun to see how stuff is going?

Rohrer: There are times when I need to test a specific bug that someone's pointed out on the live server and in those situations I usually force spawn myself in as the Jason character from the trailer and pop in with my little boonie hat and outfit and everything, and I pop in at age 42 and I can control the coordinate I pop in at, so I’ll often try to pop into some village that I’m aware of and people see me appear and “oh my god, Jason’s here!” It’s like a sighting, you know? And then they’ll talk to me or whatever. But I’m also sometimes in there testing. And I’ll say hi to people and make funny eyebrows at people or something, and then put a hat on a little baby before leaving. Or they’ll try to kill me.

Ani-Gamers: That’s funny. They’re trying to kill God.

Rohrer: Because they want the hat, right? Somebody will start targeting me and then other people jump in the posse and before I know it I’ve got three people chasing after me and I try to run away. But I also have the ability to summon any object in the game, so every once in a while if people really make me angry I’ll summon a bear.

Ani-Gamers: In the times when you've played a life as a regular player, are there any stories that have stuck with you?

Rohrer: I have one that I still remember from months ago. I was trying to experiment with property fences because people hadn’t been using them very much. And I was like “I’m going to create a property fence in this village for myself and my children to see how it impacts my genetic score and so on.

It doesn't take very much to build a property fence. There's already a village there and I went a little bit outside the village where there was some open land and started building a property fence. And when I started having babies I said “this is going to be our property. We're going to make our own farm here.” I think we were trying to make a milkweed farm. The village was short on milkweed. I borrowed I think a hoe or something and took it in there and I think I left the gate open while using it. But someone came up and was angry that I was using the hoe in the private property. So they came and took it away and scolded me for taking it away from the town center. I said I was just borrowing it but I don't think they believed me.

Then I took a child with me and we went out looking and exploring. We went exploring way far to the south, and we found this abandoned village that was just filled with resources. But I don't think the people in our town knew about it. And then I started having a couple of babies down there. I explained to them, “we’re from a village to the north. It's full of people. We found this huge treasure trove of great stuff: tools, cards, all this stuff. We should bring it back and we'll use it to make our farm.” All my kids agreed and I nursed them and we were eating the food in this abandoned village until they got old enough to carry stuff and help.

We loaded up carts and baskets and carried them all back, and put it in our private property when we got back. But then this woman in the village came up and saw that we had all that stuff in there, this cart and all this, and she took it and stole it, and brought it back to the village center! I was like “hey wait a minute, that's our cart!” And she was like “no, everything is shared by all.” The classic scolding me about private property thing. I was like “no you don't understand, we didn't take it from the village, we found it ourselves. It's ours legitimately. We didn't steal it.” And she said “it doesn't matter, it belongs to the village.”

I tried to take it back in there and someone had cut a hole in my fence while I was away too, so I had to repair that. And then she got mad enough that she took out a knife and tried to chase me down and kill me. So I ran away, but I made some mistake when I was running and clicked the wrong thing and she ended up stabbing me way outside the village bounds. At that point I lost my temper and opened up the god interface and put a bear down and killed her. Which I shouldn't have done! (laughs) Anyway, that's the only time I've ever slipped up in that regard and abused my power.

Ani-Gamers: The great part about the game is that she has her own version of that story too.

Rohrer: I think if we look at that example story, it’s pretty interesting. Not that interesting to tell as a story, but as a thing to experience in a game it’s a pretty interesting story. It's also kind of unprecedented in the realm of video games.

Most people, when they think about video games and video game storytelling, they’re thinking about these single-player experiences that are crafted by the author and maybe have some kind of branching to them or something. This was rich and complex and nuanced, and I could have maybe convinced her or been a better diplomat than I was and I learned things from it too that I could apply in future situations. Like oh, build your property a little further from town so not everyone can see it every time they walk by so people don't feel like it’s such an affront to their village. But also in terms of the way I interacted with her or how I explained the situation. It’s like I had a bunch of different options there and it wasn’t just picking from a list. All the potential for nuance and the way things turned out and the way they spiraled out of control does feel more like something from real life or from a really well crafted movie that we could never pull off in a single-player video game just because of the fundamental nature of interactivity fighting with the non-interactive parts. In terms of potential and ways forward for video games to solve these kinds of problems in a satisfying way, I think that in a multiplayer context there's a lot of potential there.

For the full interview audio, check out the podcast episode on the Ani-Gamers Patreon!

Jason Rohrer on the Emergent Game Storytelling of One Hour One Life originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on March 27, 2020 at 5:34 PM.

By: Evan Minto

#Anime #News #Ani-Gamers

[clusterassets]

New world news from Time: ‘More Opposition in Mao’s Time.’ Why China’s Xi Jinping May Have to Rule for Life

In the end, dissent was negligible, just as Xi Jinping likes it. Sunday’s vote to remove term limits from the Chinese presidency, thus allowing the incumbent Xi to rule beyond his erstwhile 2023 retirement date — and possibly for life — was passed by 2,958 votes in favor, with just two against and three abstentions.

The final tally at China’s National People’s Congress annual parliament at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People was hardly surprising. Xi has spent his first term purging the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of any faction that challenged his omnipotence, while dialing up censorship, amassing more than a dozen separate leadership roles and assembling a budding cult of personality.

“The great dream of national rejuvenation encourages us to keep striving,” NPC Chairman Zhang Dejiang told delegates after the vote, urging them to “thoroughly study and apply Xi Jinping Thought … and realize the Chinese Dream.”

But China’s return to strongman politics dredges up dark memories of the nation’s tribulations under Mao Zedong, whose ill-fated Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution cost tens of millions of lives. With reverence for Xi a necessary condition for career advancement, there’s very little incentive to voice differing opinions, with the lack of vigorous policy debate a real worry for continued good governance. Today, this has possibly calamitous consequences far from China’s borders given the world’s number two economy remains the single largest contributor to global GDP growth.

Read More: China’s Lurch Toward One-Man Rule Under Xi Jinping Should Worry Us All

“There was more opposition in Mao’s time than today,” says Professor Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, and author of CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping. “It’s kind of bizarre because the consequences of opposing then were so high but people still did it. And now you’ve got almost complete silence.”

Not least because since Xi’s eponymous political thought was added to the constitution, challenging him could be construed as treasonous. But the question remains why the 64-year-old princeling believes centralizing power is now necessary, despite the very real risk of rekindling secession crises and sycophancy that reformer Deng Xiaoping guarded against by diffusing power in the 1982 constitution.

One likely reason is that as Xi’s immediate predecessors — Jiang Zemin and then Hu Jintao — increased the space for policy debate, this also led to factional politics and venal cliques that presented an existential challenge for the party. Xi’s targeted anti-corruption campaign has both restored public faith in the CCP and united it behind the totem of his leadership.

“It’s committing political and career suicide and risking financial ruin for anybody to actually oppose Xi,” says Professor Steve Tsang, director of SOAS China Institute at the University of London.

Although this risks making the party more brittle, Xi can call on plenty of evidence to justify centralizing power. The fall of the Soviet Union has long troubled the CCP hierarchy, but the more recent bedlam that followed the ousting of autocratic regimes during the Arab Spring, as well as the 2008 financial crisis and liberal democracy’s recent floundering everywhere, have no doubt catalyzed China’s ideological tightening.

“Donald Trump in particular has made people think: ‘Wow, this is a really unstable and unpredictable world where there might well be a trade war, and we need stable, predictable leadership in China to be able to deal with this,’” says Brown.

Jason Lee—ReutersChinese President Xi Jinping drops his ballot, during a vote on a constitutional amendment lifting presidential term limits, at the National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 11, 2018.

Dissent among the Chinese populace has been more prevalent that the NPC vote indicates, though, highlighted by a flurry of censorship for even vague references to the constitutional amendment, including cartoon memes of Winnie the Pooh (a longtime allegory for the portly Xi.) Although only a handful of public figures have voiced discontent openly, Li Datong, a prominent retired state newspaper editor, caused a stir by posting an open letter that pointedly warned: “This could destroy China and the Chinese people.”

It may ultimately bode ill for Xi also. For while Mao’s authority owed much to reverence for his revolutionary exploits, and Deng’s leadership was rooted in fatherly admiration, Xi “is much more, if you like, feared,” says Tsang.

But if cadres only obey Xi because they have no other choice, nobody knows how he will be treated once out of office. Until Xi’s anti-graft campaign, officials who’d served on nation’s apex Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) were assured a safe retirement. But then Xi purged former PSC member Zhou Yongkang, the former head of China’s security services, who was convicted of bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets in 2015. By ripping up that orthodoxy and countless others, Xi might be forced to rule for life even if he has no desire to.

“Xi has already created a lot of enemies,” adds Tsang. “Can he be sure that after he has retired — after three, four terms of office — that he and his family will be left alone?”

March 12, 2018 at 01:21PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

#Time #world #news #ClusterAssets #ClusterAsset #Cluster Asset Inc. #ClusterAssets Inc.