#most of my friends growing up played it and lots of other mmos but i exclusively play single player rpgs

[anneapocalypse]

Thoughts Before Endwalker

As I'm about to start Endwalker, I thought it was high time I actually write up some closing thoughts on Shadowbringers, and since I really haven't done this for any of the other expansions, this has turned into a general "thoughts so far" kind of post! And also long. This is not any kind of an essay, just a big long thoughts dump. Spoilers for everything through the end of the Shadowbringers patches.

And I trust I don't have to say this to my own followers at least, but just for the record: please do not tell me anything about Endwalker here, even if you think it's minor, even if you want to hint at something I'll like. I know very little and I'm looking forward to watching it all unfold.

How it started!

It's been a year and change since I started playing this game in the fall of 2022. I didn't actually expect to play very far (I only picked it up in the first place because I was helping a friend set it up! I swore I would never play an MMO! I hated multiplayer games!) and I certainly didn't ever expect to get as deep into it as I have! ARR is very handholdy for new players, which was exactly what I needed to enjoy playing and keep playing. I love the story and the characters and the world and while I do enjoy the solo aspects of the game very much, I've also ended up really actively enjoying playing with other people! I enjoy dungeons. I enjoy raids. I run roulettes more or less every day. Free Company life hasn't always been smooth sailing (long story I won't get into here), but it's also brought me a lot of fun times and some new friends, as well as seeing me step into an active leadership role and not hate it. Who am I? 😂 I don't know! It's not that I've never tried to step out of my comfort zone before when it comes to games and hobbies, it's just that most of those experiences haven't been good and I've ultimately walked away from them. I don't know why this has been different, but it has. It's challenged me to tackle and let go of a lot of old insecurities, which I'm glad for (and grateful to friends who've been patient with me along the way). It's also just been a really good time, and continues to be.

How it's gone! (ARR through Stormblood)

So here I am, in 2024, about to start the last current expansion! Shadowbringers is easily my favorite expansion thus far, but I have really enjoyed the whole ride.

I enjoyed all of ARR, because while I don't think it has the strongest writing and certainly not the strongest characterization, it's really more a very long introduction to the world and its major players and conflicts, and while slow-moving, it does serve that function, and for someone brand-new to MMOs like me, slow was okay. It gave me time to get my bearings and learn the game.

I did really love Heavensward. It hits on several aspects of Fantasy Politics that I enjoy (generations-long war, class politics, structural reform), and postwar Ishgard, while maybe still a little rosy, still doesn't shy away from the growing pains of social change. Also the dragons were cool. I loved Haurchefant a lot, and was heartbroken by his death even as I knew it was coming; I also wouldn't change it. I think his death was meaningful and the natural culmination of his character. A Knight lives to serve. I think Haurchefant was always going to go out sacrificing himself for someone else. If it hadn't been the Vault, it would have been somewhere else. He was a delight and I miss him dearly, but it was a good narrative beat and one I wouldn't change.

Ysayle, on the other hand, I really don't think needed to die. She undergoes a fascinating character arc in Heavensward which I think the writing really drops the ball on at the end. Ideally, I think Ysayle coming to terms with her missteps while continuing to fight for what she believes in would be fantastic. She could have been a meaningful figure in Ishgard's reforms, and she would have made a great Scion. Her death also simply isn't treated with the same reverence as Haurchefant's, and I think that's sad. Heavensward has a bit of a Women Problem, in that it really doesn't give us a lot of female characters who are central to the plot, in contrast to a lot of great and memorable male characters. And the one who is most central dies with a lot less fanfare than WoL BFF Haurchefant. (And I'm not knocking Haurchefant, whom I love dearly, or Aymeric or Estinien! The imbalance is just very noticeable and I wish it wasn't so.)

Stormblood tends to get a bad rap among FFXIV's expansions. It's so common to hear people say it's their least favorite, it wasn't as good as Heavensward, etc. It came up recently in a server I'm in, where a newer player said they were having a bit of content fatigue after Heavensward, and having heard that Stormblood wasn't very good, they were considering buying a story skip. Other responses were, not outright negative, but mostly lukewarm, and I felt like I was the only one who really came out for Stormblood's story. First of all, I don't agree that it's not as good as Heavensward! I grant you that not everyone is as enamored of Fantasy Politics as I am, but as mentioned above, Heavensward is also very political, so I don't really think that's the big difference. Stormblood is maybe a bit grittier in its depiction of war, and that's something I like about it; it's really about the horrors of imperialism and the cost of resistance, and it doesn't pull its punches on that.

Ironically where it does pull its punches is with character deaths, heroes and villains alike. It does feel a little like someone thought they might have hit us too hard in Heavensward, given that we haven't had a lot of major character deaths stick since. I'm not complaining about Gosetsu's return, as I liked him very much and was very happy he lived. I will grumble a little about Zenos, though I'll go easy because I know a lot of people like him. 😛 He just doesn't do much for me. Yotsuyu was a great villain, and I was really dubious when they brought her back, but was pleasantly surprised with how her story ended, to the point that I'm willing to eat a lot of what I said about memory loss as a plot device. They did well with it, and her ultimate death did feel appropriate. Yotsuyu was never going to have a redemption arc, because she didn't want to be redeemed.

It was very refreshing in Stormblood to have more female characters taking essential roles in the plot. Colorism issues aside, I do really like Lyse as a character, and I also loved seeing Yugiri and Alisaie taking prominent roles, especially Alisaie who really hadn't gotten to be in the main plot much before. Rolling around with the three of them was a blast. Raubahn is also a favorite of mine, so seeing him play a major role in Ala Mhigo's liberation and get some character development was excellent. I'm happy that he's stayed involved with the Resistance in the time since.

I also just think Stormblood's new areas are absolutely beautiful. Kugane and the Azim Steppe are particular faves, but I just think they did a great job with the environments and I loved exploring them, including the underwater bits! Eorzea and Ishgard are so European-inspired, and I really enjoyed seeing Asian cultural influences in a fantasy setting. It is after all a Japanese game!

Just this week I finished the reconstruction of the Doman Enclave. As a player who's joined the game more recently, it's always bittersweet to learn about game elements that were temporal and are now lost to time, like the evolution of Mor Dhona during the ARR patches, or the Ishgardian Restoration in the Firmament. I can go hang out in the Firmament and craft and do fêtes and custom deliveries, but I'll never get to see the Firmament being built. It was done when I got there, which for me was after completing 3.3, very soon after completing the main story of Heavensward. The Doman Enclave goes in the other direction. It is a solo experience by necessity, but it's an experience that every new player can have: making their donations every week and watching the Enclave grow. Such things are always a trade-off for an MMO, but between the two, I would definitely choose the one that doesn't lock new players out of the experience.

And to give one last shout-out to Stormblood, I think it's pretty essential setup for what's happening when Shadowbringers begins. It's not just that the Scions are dropping like flies, it's that this is happening on the brink of a full-scale Garlean invasion. Said invasion is also critical to the bad future that G'raha is ultimately trying to prevent. The state and history of Garlemald is inextricably tied to the Ascians who are tied up in all of this. Stormblood is arguably more important to the events of Shadowbringers than Heavensward is, though Heavensward is also not unimportant, both with the continued presence of Estinien (reluctantly so if we believe him 😉), and with the involvement of Tiamat in the Shadowbringers patches. It's all connected!

How it's going! (Shadowbringers)

Urianger is, unsurprisingly, a big part of why I love Shadowbringers so much, as he gets some wonderful character development there and actually gets to be in the plot! But it's not only him—I like how character-driven Shadowbringers is overall, how much the major characters are driving the story and not merely reacting to events. ARR was largely driven by the world itself; the expansions are where the story starts to become character-driven. The driving forces of Heavensward's are much bigger than the main characters, but Haurchefant and Ysayle and Aymeric and Estinien bring a personal face to the conflict and a reason for us to be invested in it. Stormblood's emotional core is Lyse, Yugiri, Gosetsu, and their collective drive to liberate their homelands from Garlean occupation.

Shadowbringers, to me, really brought all of that home. It's not only character-driven but it brings a much more personal touch, I think, to the Scions themselves, with the major players being characters we've known since ARR but now get to know in a deeper way. I've always liked Y'shtola as a character but never felt I really connected with her, and Shadowbringers changed that, even as her story in Shadowbringers is in many ways about her isolation from the others, her (sometimes justified) mistrust and the way she closes herself off even to the people closest to her. Yet there is a deep caring beneath Y'shtola's prickliness as well, which we see in her leadership of the Night's Blessed, the new family she is willing to risk her life for. She's complex and difficult, sometimes angry and stubborn, and we all know I love that in a fictional woman. I really gained a deeper appreciation for her as a character here.

I've said my piece on Minfilia already, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I will say that Thancred is the main character I have the hardest time with in Shadowbringers. I appreciated the additional character development given to him at first, but as the story made Minfilia's death more and more all about him to the exclusion of everyone else, the more I started to kind of resent it. It really gets under my skin how he treats Ryne for like, the entire time until Minfilia Prime's final departure. The narrative kind of treats it like oh, he just has a hard time expressing how he really feels! and honestly I don't fully agree with that framing. I think Thancred's cold and harsh attitude toward Ryne does reflect how he really feels at that time—namely, he's angry and lonely and upset for valid reasons, but he's taking them out on a teenager who's fully dependent on him for her survival, to the point that she admits she thinks he hates her. His legitimate pain doesn't justify that to me, and it really kinda chaps my ass how everyone just agrees that he's the one with the most claim to call Ryne family, when Urianger was far kinder, gentler, and more comforting to Ryne than Thancred ever was. And Urianger was in pain too. He also regrets what happened to Minfilia, and his part in it. He was carrying a terrible secret that he couldn't tell his closest friends, which put one of those friends' life in danger. He just owned his feelings, instead of taking them out on a scared kid. I know my bias is obvious, and I swear I don't hate Thancred 😛 but I really didn't like his behavior here and I wasn't really satisfied with the way the narrative handled it.

Probably my least favorite part of Shadowbringers was Vauthry. I just do not like "fat" as shorthand for "evil" and I think there could have been better ways to design him that didn't fall back on that trope. Even Dulia-Chai, a very lovable character in the end whomst we stan, does fall into some fatphobic tropes, and it's unfortunate that in a game without much body diversity (not to single out FFXIV, that's a problem for games generally), we only got fat character models as signifiers for "rich person" (yeah, I get that "fat cat" is the joke, it's just not a good joke) and "repulsive, evil abomination." No love!

On a lighter note, the return of G'raha Tia as the Crystal Exarch was simply wonderful. G'raha was very cute and fun during the Crystal Tower story but his presence was quite short-lived, so we didn't fully get to know him then. I think it's pretty easy to guess that it's him under the hood; he has a distinctive voice and lip shape and also the tower is right there. So the question becomes why he is hiding his identity, what his true motives are, and that's all intriguing! The fact that his plan hinges on his pretending to be the villain at the end and he utterly fails at convincing anyone is… deeply charming. But one of the things I love most about him is the kindness he extends to the people of Norvrandt. Even though his primary mission is the salvation of the Source, he gets attached to these people, offers up the resources of the Crystal Tower freely to improve their lives, helps build a home and sanctuary, fights for the First and becomes deeply invested in their survival as well. He has a huge heart, and I love him. I'm delighted that he gets to return and join the Scions at the end, and it's already been a lot of fun to have him along on the patch quests.

And of course, Urianger my love. 💜 He really shines in this story and every scene with him was a delight, even when I was climbing the walls needing to know what he was hiding. He gets so much good character development in Shadowbringers I could go on for hours about it, but I did especially love the Echo scene where you see G'raha asking him to lie—and you see how much he doesn't want to do it. Urianger's really been on a long arc ever since Moenbryda's death, and I don't think that arc is over yet, but my biggest worry for him as the cracks started to form in his story was that we'd find he hadn't changed, and was lying here for the same reasons he did in the Heavensward patches, and as easily. And that's not the case at all. He hated doing it before, and he really doesn't want to do it again, but G'raha's reasoning is just too strong for him to refuse. I brought it up recently but I think Shadowbringers reveals an Urianger who despite his long isolation really doesn't want to be alone, and does want his friends' understanding and approval and their trust. The look he gives the Warrior of Light if they say they trust him, and then the way he submits himself to their judgment when things go wrong while begging to be allowed to help fix things… god. I love him. And I'll stop there for now, since I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about him in the future. ;)

Emet-Selch is a fascinating villain, certainly the most interesting Ascian we've seen so far, and the one who finally turns what have been fairly two-dimensional powerful bad guys into a truly motivated and complex faction. My favorite villains are always the ones who believe they're the hero, and there are a lot of parallels between Emet-Selch and Solas from Dragon Age: Inquisition which will be obvious to anyone who's played both games. FFXIV being a more linear story afford the player a lot less choice in how they respond to their villains true motives and history, but there's definitely still an expectation that we will sympathize somewhat with Emet-Selch, and recognize the tragedy of what happened to his people.

Ardbert's ghost, too, was a welcome addition to the story. Between his presence and the role quests (which were 100% worth doing in their entirety), I felt like we finally got to actually know the Warriors of Darkness against which we briefly clashed back in the Heavensward patches, and I really felt the pathos of their story, all they fought for and lost, but also their friendship and how they cared for one another.

Shadowbringers is beautiful in so many ways. The design of the Crystarium is gorgeous. Il Mheg is probably my favorite location in the game so far. Eulmore is a fascinating dark mirror of Limsa Lominsa. The way the game takes the idea of "a world being swallowed by light" and interprets that visually is so stunning. The sky over Lakeland arrests you immediately upon arrival, and the crystallization of the Flood of Light where it was halted at the edged of Amh Araeng is a chilling reminder of how much the First has already lost. The music has also been a highlight for me! I really adore the Shadowbringers music, and it has prompted me to go about collecting orchestrion rolls more deliberately than I had before.

The more I sit and write about how much I loved this expansion, the more I think of, so while I could definitely go on, I think I'll wrap it up there. 🙂

Onward to Endwalker. I'm not making any predictions this time, because I have done my absolute damnedest to stay unspoiled for this one and I know very little about what's coming other than what the locations are, what's been revealed in the Shadowbringers patches, and that it's the end of the big story arc we've been on since ARR. I'm extremely excited.

#afk by the aetheryte #arr spoilers #hw spoilers #sb spoilers #shb spoilers #there is some #ffxiv critical #in here #and some #thancred critical #in particular #i swear it's not hate #just some stuff that sticks in my craw #but mostly this is positive! #onward we go #anne plays ffxiv

[styrmwb]

Favorite Final Fantasy Music (FFXI - Base Game)

I'm retiring the part joke here now I think, and for good reason. You see the title, right? Base Game? I will explain in a moment.

I love FFXI. I have very fond memories watching it being played growing up (some of the only fond memories I have at times hahaaaaa), and that love very much influences the feelings I have for it nowadays. It's absolutely an aged game. It is 100% a game of its time, and I'm ok with that! I play it when I want to chill out, mindlessly grind, and listen to some chill beats; It is such a vibe of a game. It also has a really cool world, story, and characters, and for that to all the people that make "every FF game" lists of all types and you exclude XI? I will find you. The main composers other than Uematsu in this game were Naoshi Mizuta and Kumi Tanioka, who later do Stranger of Paradise and Crystal Chronicles, respectively (those are at least my favorite bits they do)

As XI is an MMO, it is split up into several expansions, and some add-on content. It's a huge game, and I can't do it justice by only doing 5 songs from the whole thing, so I'm going to split this up into a few parts, one for every expansion (plus maybe a bonus one for the add-ons and things that don't quite fit) (this is also why I can't keep doing the part joke cause then XII is gonna be like part 17 and that's fucked). It's XI week! Let's start with the base game :)

5. Despair (Memoro de la Ŝtono) You might be wondering, What The Fuck is that title? Memoro de la Ŝtono is the vocal part of the opening, and its motifs are used in several different songs. This version specifically is one of my favorites. It plays in a few different cutscenes so when it appears it's like a nice treat. I absolutely love the synth in this whole track, the heavy backing, the cool harpsichord, and the part in the middle where it just goes ham on the keys. It does really fit well with the Despair name, but also like it's kind of a jam?

4. Battle Theme Something cool about XI is that it has different battle themes depending on where you are and if you're in a group or not. This is the general battle theme when you aren't in a party (so for that reason ironically you're probably not going to hear it much considering most of this game needs a party). I love the intro still giving you that classic FF build up, but in a unique way. The whole song sounds almost like a band marching you out for war, with the snare and the flute especially. Another really cool part is when it gets less upbeat, the flute is giving you a steady yet nervous backing while the trumpet plays its heart out.

3. Awakening Yooooooooo the first final boss theme of this game. When I actually played XI myself and not through the eyes of a child watching, it was in the modern day with trusts, basically soloing it. Catch me sitting awkwardly regenerating HP while the Actual Final Boss is killing all of my ghost friends who can't do shit: it was very funny. ANYWAYS, this song is so cool. Super heavy on percussion, and the toms have a really awesome bouncy feel to them. This whole song takes the Shadow Lord's main theme, keeps a lot of the same sounds and melodies, but transforms it into a battle theme expertly. This is also a really fun song to play in Theatrhythm with the melody hitting you with a lot of triplets.

2. The Republic of Bastok One of my favorite memories of this game is seeing Bastok being wandered around. When I finally decided to pick it back up as an adult, the moment I heard this song I got really emotional and happy. The percussion with the timpani and claves really gives you the feel of a bustling city, and the melody is an absolute joy to my ears; making you feel like everything is right and happy, walking through the city as people build and craft. I really don't have much else to say about this song, it never fails to bring a genuine smile to my face.

1. Vana'diel March Vana'diel March absolutely does that thing that music does where when a specific instrument plays some specific notes, it is like, scientifically calculated to pull on your heartstrings. One day I will figure out what this term is called cause I know it has to exist. This is the title screen music; every expansion has its own unique theme, but the basic one has always been my favorite. March is a perfect word for this song, cause the intro which becomes the backing gives you that feel; imagine the end of the opening cutscene where you see the huge army walking together? That's this song. The trumpet comes in with a beautiful solo, going into the prelude showing you that this is still Final Fantasy. Bring in the rest of the orchestra to create a grand feeling of adventure, saying to you: "Hey, this is a huge world that you're about to enter. Think of this as you walk through it." It's beautiful, and this song is almost like a musical summary of why I love this game, in a way.

Honorable Mentions go to: Battle Theme #2, Ronfaure, Gustaberg, Sarutabaruta, Voyager, Selbina, The Grand Duchy of Jeuno, Hopelessness, and Castle Zvahl.

#final fantasy #final fantasy xi #textpost #jared's final fantasy music opinions

[autumnslance]

Hi Aeryn! I have a question. I’ve been told I make very defined characters but I don’t have a real goal or growth in mind. What do I need to do to develop a goal or have my character have growth? I hope you are having a good evening!

I have no idea what Aeryn's up to on her private island (I think Thancred's visiting), but I, Lyn, had a nice evening watching a pal play the opening of Lost in Random which is so far quite a charming game with a Studio Laika films vibe and look, and a unique combat system involving dice and cards. 😉

Honestly my own RP characters' goals always, to me, seem pretty vague and character growth/change kind of happens as story does. Especially in an open ended long term setting like a RPG-MMO. I find it much easier in smaller, more structured games, like tabletop RP, to determine a RP character's goals in line with the rest of the party and/or the GM's themes and story.

Or at least, I have a hard time describing goals in concrete terms a lot of the time; I maybe have a nebulous idea or feeling, but it's not something I can articulate easily--which probably sounds funny coming from me, but it's true.

Trying to plan character growth in detail is a fool's game to my mind; you can have an idea of how/where you want a character to move towards, but a good story may very well upend those plans, either in RP or in standalone writing.

I have had some GMs tell me that some of my characters are too reactionary, and need more assertion and drive and goals of their own, but that's an aspect of me and how I play. I also like to be support, even to just letting others drive the story and bouncing off them, discovering my own character's goals along the way. When I do have characters with existing driving goals and plans, it tends to be for a specific type, or reason, and even then are often simple and/or short term. Sometimes cuz I am running a game so my antagonists have goals for the party to fight against, or allies have goals for them to join. Sometimes cuz I am being a plot device for a GM, such as various characters I played when staffing our old Vampire LARP; I had control of my chargen and goals, but within very loose parameters set by the GM, which I built off of.

Aeryn's goals and growth are determined a great deal by MSQ, since I don't really RP her and have her as a fanfic WoL, so many things are predicated on that. Like, she wants to help the research into finding stable ways to travel to other shards so the Scions can see the people they love on the First again (particularly reuniting Ryne and Thancred). That's a goal that formed due to her particular connection to the Scions and the course of plot...which has been sidetracked by helping Vrtra's quest, which as both his friend and a Thavnairian is also important to her.

A lot of her growth has come unexpectedly as I puzzle out her reactions to MSQ and side story events, and sometimes they tend to surprise me. It was during a previous years' FFXIV Write as I was doing tank role quests in ShB and pondering the day's word that I realized she'd utterly lost any faith in divinity she once had. It's shaped a few other things since then. Also the relationship...wasn't supposed to happen, a goal I had was no shipping in just telling a WoL's story, but I also didn't fight it (too much) when it fell into place. Sometimes a character chooses a goal the writer didn't consciously intend, and it's better that way.

Dark Autumn tries to keep her FC running and support her comrades while always improving upon herself in some way. That's honestly it; she has what she wants. But she's also a bit of a wish fulfillment character and more put together than most.

C'oretta doesn't know what her long term goals are yet; she's very young, very freewheeling, and not thinking too hard about the future. So her focus tends to be quite immediate; learn a new discipline and make sure everyone else stays cheered up are about the extent of her plans for now. Maybe she'll 'grow up' someday. Haven't decided.

Iyna, for all her backstory details, really has no goals or plans at this time. She's kind of stewing in the background still, sorting who she is and how, and will likely need to be drug toward growth and new goals for herself.

It really just depends on the kind of player/writer you are, and how you mesh (or don't) with the folks around you. For standalone stories the characters should want/need something, goals to drive the plot. Even if that goal is simply to escape whatever fate has thrown their way; neither Bilbo or Frodo Baggins wanted to go on adventures after all, but they did, with a goal of eventually getting home again, though their goals shifted and they changed and grew through those adventures with their companions.

Character growth/development isn't always positive, either. Sometimes people get worse or regress through their trials (Laurentius learned nothing and fell in with a worse crowd for it, contrasted against Wilred who strove to become heroic). Some folks don't really need to change drastically; they know who they are, and/or have had their major growths before they go on their adventures, and it's about how they deal with current situations, perhaps caused by the fallout of their previous lives/actions, or perhaps just who they are now and how they handle things differently compared to how they would have in their youth (A lot of author Roger Zelazny's characters fall into this, and I tend to see Y'shtola and Gaius as this way too).

In the end though, while others may have critiques of your characters, the more important thing is, are you, their player/writer, happy with the characters? Do you know they have goals/plans/growth opportunities, even if you have a hard time articulating them? More short term wants than long term? Are you just letting the chips fall where they may and see how the character comes out of it? Are you writing more plot-driven stories where the characters are pulled along by the whims of fate and have to struggle for any in-world agency? That's valid, and while it may not work for everyone, if it works for you, I wouldn't sweat too much what others think about that aspect of your character development.

#About Me #Blogging #Writing #Character Development #Character Goals #Character Growth

[poopeth]

I was tagged by @sebfreak thankssss for the tags  

TAG GAME: reveal that significance/meaning of your URL

so for me, basically i was like 13-14. I used to go by xIjuiceIx(COD NAME structure lmao) . cause juice used to be my nickname growing up. at the time me and my friends played a lot of free games online because we couldn't afford to purchase games. So we played a lot of MMO's. most mmo's are fantasy so knights and dragons and whatnot... at the time one my closest friends bri and I had an idiot conversation on skype (yikes skype im old).. where we literally just said the word "poop" to each other. over and over again this went on for 5 minutes. Then someone in our friend group finds out about league of legends. this is literally in '09/'10... invites the rest of us to play. so im creating an account thinking this will be like the other mmo's we've played some im trying to think of a username. and i remembered the poop conversation so then i thought, knights? ye olde english? poop in old english? Poopeth.... it didn't let me ... so i made PoopethDarkblade. cause im an idiot. my friends all laughed. and we were having fun with it. until one day an ally teammate we were playing with got pissed off at me sucking and typed out "POOPET YOU FUCKING SUCK". my friends all started laughing. and then any time i'd die they would say POOPET YOU FUCKING SUCK. we all found it hilarious and it just kind of stuck. removed the darkblade cause lol edgy/stupid

I tag : @crashingspace @kookietrbl @spachaa

#def don't have to lol #tag game #me #about me #asks

[lediz-watches]

Dragon Age: Additional Material

I’ve been playing Dragon Age again… multiple times… through DA:O and DA2, but not Inquisition because ugh. And it’s been making me think about marketing, and The Dragon Age Problem.

I would like to call it a Bioware Problem, but it’s not. Bioware does have many problems, but the one I’m dwelling on is pretty unique (within Bioware’s franchises) to Dragon Age – it’s about the multimedia marketing strategy. And don’t get me wrong, they are not alone in this strategy – a lot of producers think it’s a great idea. But I have yet to see it work with anything that is not aimed at selling children’s toys.

The general idea is this: you have one main form of media, which is your expensive driving force. It’s what you pour the money into, it’s what people spend the most money on. But then you use as many other (cheap) media forms as you can to add onto that, adding lore and story and depth, so that people will either seek out that other media, or pick up that media first and become drawn into the main driving force. The idea is that you hit as many things as possible to create a franchise. You’ll hit market share, you’ll have fans grow up with media, you’ll have die-hard fans buy everything regardless of quality, it expands, it grows, it generates income.

Think Hot Wheels, Barbie, Disney… Pokemon was the great success story in this strategy, because they have video games, the anime, multiple manga, trading cards, toys, books, playing cards, jewellery, clothing, homewares, food…

And people have grown up with pokemon, and they’ve given it to their kids, and it continues. So of course all producers think they should emulate Pokemon.

Dragon Age was always kind of intended to be a young adult take on this strategy. They weren’t shy about it. From the very beginning, Dragon Age was supposed to have comic books, novels, they were angling for TV deals, they desperately wanted an MMO to spawn… but they’re just not good at it. Partly because young adults don’t like buying anything, and Bioware’s main audience is young LGBT+ which uh… Pirate Audience, my friends. Partly because adults are not…

Kids are going to buy whatever has their favourite character’s face slapped on it. Quality isn’t as important, because chances are they’ll grow out of it before it breaks. So you can produce lots of cheap merchandise and mark it up and it will be gobbled up by the consumerist market because kids do that. Adults, on the other hand, have bills to pay and lives to live. You want us to buy merchandise, it better either be functional, really cool, or at least exceptional quality. So yeah, not great for consumerism.

So they focussed on additional media, and you see them pushing this agenda with Dreadwolf now, as they say ‘you have to read/watch/consume this extra stuff to understand the story!’

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn't not work. Some people will consume the additional media, but I’ve never heard of someone coming in to the franchise from these sources. And while I have seen people gush about the shipping (because Bioware knows their fanbase), outside that the most positive reaction I’ve seen to additional material is a kind of… begrudging acceptance. Like ‘yeah, well, I want to get as much lore as I can, so I guess I need this.’

And so I find it obnoxious, not just from a fan perspective, but also as someone on the edges of digital media production. Because in good marketing, additional material is advertising. You shouldn’t need to know everything to enjoy one aspect of the strategy, but everything should entice you to purchase the main product. That is good marketing.

In Pokemon, you can just watch the TV series. You do not need the games, but I cannot tell you how many adult fans I know who gave Pokemon Sun and/or Pokemon Moon a chance because XY&Z was a good show. But the two things were actually unrelated. And you don’t need to know anything about the franchise to enjoy the toys, but kids will watch the show or play the games to see their toys moving in real time.

Disney is dancing on a similar knife edge, actually. Because for decades, Star Wars was the proof of concept for what Pokemon perfected. You didn’t have to watch the movies. You didn’t have to watch the TV shows. You didn’t have to buy the toys, read the books, whatever, you could just enjoy a single piece of media for what it was, and chances were it would entice you back into watching those old movies. Whereas now… you can watch the first season of The Mandalorian without context. You might get a bit confused, but you can do it. In season two, there’s important characters who you’re clearly supposed know. I haven’t tried yet, but I’ve been told you can’t watch season three without watching The Book of Boba Fett, which relies on you having either watched The Mandalorian or read some of the books and arghhhh! I do not have time for this, Disney!

And marketers are so confused about why this strategy isn’t working. Clearly the pirates are to blame.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in academia, but this is one of those areas that if I had gone down that path, I’d want to study. Because that disconnect between marketing and consumer strategy is fascinating.

But anyway, Dragon Age. I loved Dragon Age Origins. It remains my favourite game of all time. I enjoy the gameplay, building my characters, forming my team and weaving their growth together. I loved reading the lore, I love thinking about the world, I adore my Wardens and the impact they have on the people around them. I have three Wardens that I consider fully fleshed out characters, and three more that I dabble in for funsies.

I enjoy Dragon Age II. Hawke’s story is a beautiful tragedy filled with love and hope and characters I want to get to know. The gameplay is okay, though you’re really just jumping between dialogues, and the voice acting is incredible. I have two Hawkes that are fleshed out, and a third I dabble in because he's the follow-on from my favourite Warden.

I very barely tolerate Dragon Age Inquisition, because I actively dislike the Inquisitor, and I don’t really like the gameplay. The voice acting is beautiful (Freddie Prince Junior, where were you hiding that talent?!), but they tell a story I am not comfortable with. And frankly when I play the game I find Solas even more eye-roll inducing than DA2 Anders, so the fact Dreadwolf is named after him…

And now this line from Bioware about required reading? When I’ve always found the additional material subpar at best and demeaning to my babies at worst?

Look, I’m just saying that Outside Xbox is going to have to have some incredible sponsored content before I’m going to even consider picking up this game.

But—and this is my reason for writing this—Dragon Age lore does actually give itself to additional material that I would love to see. I want to know more about Maric’s story. I want an HBO or Paramount+ adaption of DA2. I wouldn’t mind an Amazon Prime animated series about the original Inquisitor.

Those are the stories I want. And I’m going to rant about them over on the main blog. Because there’s very little in the actual additional material that I enjoy consuming.

It could have been so good...!

#Dragon Age #DA:O #DA2 #dreadwolf #marketing analysis #critique #stop forcing me to engage with media #I have stuff to do #stop making me hate my favourite franchises!

[sanstropfremir]

hi ik this is sorta different from what you usually post about here but im wondering what you think of k/da's 'villain' mv!!

hi!! at first i was like "....wait when did i ever give any indication that i know anything about league....????" but then i remembered that k/da is technically kpop because it has (g)idle members in it and then everything made sense. you're actually very lucky because i literally phoned a friend for help with answering this, since one of my best friends of 15 years is an animator that works in the (semi) big leagues doing mostly 3d animation! i could have probably answered this without him but i wanted an excuse to talk to him (we did literally have a phone call) since i hadn't heard his voice in a while and i really like talking about art with him. we both have slightly differing opinions on the villain mv and on k/da in general, which isn't that surprising if you know us, but i also think it speaks to the success of the ideas behind k/da, i suppose.

first, an intro for anyone who doesn't know what k/da is (because there will definitely be some of you). k/da is a fictitious animated girl group made from four characters from league of legends, that are voiced by two kpop idols (miyeon and soyeon from (g)idle) and two american singers (madison beer and jaira burns). the project was conceived by riot games after having success with a similar project pentakill (basically the same thing but using metal instead of pop/kpop). k/da has handful of songs and three music videos: pop/stars, more, and villain, all of which are completely divorced from any of the lore of the game. honestly you don't even need to know anything about the characters either if you can get past the fact that they yanno, look like video game characters. pop/stars and more are the whole group (there's another champion feature in more) and villain is a concept video/solo song for one member, evelynn.

personally i don't have a lot of opinions on k/da as a whole; i remember when pop/stars dropped and all my friends when bananas (i don't play league and i don't play multiplayer games at all), but i don't really get the appeal of them because i don't think they're doing anything with k/da visually that's intrinsic to being animated (other than the concept itself, but i'm going to come back to this). my friend however, likes the concept a lot and thinks that the animation has more appeal on a broad approach than a traditional kpop mv. i will fault him for this logic because that last girl group he followed was snsd when we were 13, but he does kind of have a point. the animated nature does temper some of the more surrealistic elements of kpop mvs and makes it more 'palatable' to a non-kpop viewing audience, but personally i don't agree with this reasoning and people are just boring. we do both agree that pop/stars is the best of the three mvs, though. it's the most fun and has a few really interesting moments that do utilize the animated medium (mostly akali's parts with the blacklight), and the stylization of the animation itself is fun. more and villain lean more into realism and i don't find that as interesting even if it is more of a technical achievement. the thing about both more and pop/stars though is that despite the concept needing to be animated (because the characters aren't real), a lot of the shots and content within the frame is pretty similar to shots you would see in real life kpop mvs. there is absolutely an extra heightened nature to it because of the medium but honestly? they could be doing a lot crazier shit instead of trying to emulate something that already exists with some extra flair.

i like villain i think the most conceptually because it does make a fuller use of the medium (regardless of the fact that it's not a lot of actual animation and is mostly just really really good texture sims. this is a pendantic point that my friend decided he had to correct me on). a good chunk of the shots hinge on the fact that it is animated, and this kind of atmospheric mv is less common for kpop; they pointedly don't show evelynn's full face at all, which they can do because she has a very recognizable and totally designed silhouette, which is something that you can't achieve in quite the same way with an actual human being. villain's ability to capture the mood of the song is successful because of its lack of emphasis on the main character; something that i find kpop mvs sometimes struggle more with because of the industry emphasis on face (and subsequently the fact that a lot of idols can't act). riot does also get it mostly right with giants, which is from another fictional champion group, which is mostly 2d animated.

#everything ive ever learned about league has been against my will #most of my friends growing up played it and lots of other mmos but i exclusively play single player rpgs #actually idk if i can even say its exclusively single player rpgs because i dont like actual rpgs that much #its mostly single player exploration/narrative based games??? im weird and picky #im also a completionist and it causes problems for me (looks at my 300h logged in witcher 3) #half of my dissertation was actually about video games SURPRISE #i am a multifaceted nerd #akali's talking demon mask is extremely cool and easily the best thing k/da has done imo #k/da #general design questions #do i need a new tag for non-kpop related things? thats a later problem #text #answers #anon who are you what inspired this!! i did not think there would be a crossover!! #i feel like i probably could have had more to say about this but i dont have a lot of opinions on realistc animation #i vastly prefer things that are heavily stylized (surprise surprise) #although i suppose villain counts as being heavily stylized but still #its mostly there for mood and it succeeds at that!

[guerilla935]

My Favorite Fishing in Video Games Where Fishing is Not Core Game Play

A really awesome surprise for me is always to boot up a game that is full of action and suspense to be introduced to a fishing side activity. I have toiled away at fishing in games for hundreds of hours at least. It has gotten so bad in some instances that my friends have asked me why I haven’t just taken the plunge into real fishing. It’s definitely because that is a lot of work and in real life I don’t catch a fish every 30 seconds. They have also wondered why I don’t just play a fishing simulator like Planet Fishing (Shout out to Planet Fishing that’s a great game). And that’s where I have to think for a while. Fishing while you have better things to do like save the world is very special. You aren’t fishing because it’s the objective of the game or because that’s why you are there, you are fishing because it’s fun and maybe you need a break to swing a fishing rod instead of a sword. And then you can stop, and get back to fighting or whatever the rest of the game entails. Below are games that have fishing in them for mostly no reason at all. I have shamelessly spent way to long with my bait in these waters and absolutely loved every second of it and I hope that you (the reader) can find a lot of relaxation in these waters as well.

Pokemon Series

Since the very first Pokemon game there has been fishing. You get the old rod from some guy and then you are free to fish up as many goldfishes that you want hoping that one of them will grow up to be a 21 foot tall dragon. Pokemon has combined their fishing with their main game play and makes you at least start a battle with the fish you drag onto shore. Now fishing in Pokemon is pretty subpar mainly because a single Pokemon game hasn’t really been known to have more than a handful of Pokemon that you can fish for. Also if you are looking for a strong water type Pokemon you could do a lot better than fishing for it. Typically a Pokemon player will fish about 5-10 times total. And although fishing for Pokemon isn’t all that great it has been in every game for over 20 years and that is pretty impressive. It’s a small detail that makes the world of Pokemon feel like a real world of wild creatures.

Sonic Adventure DX

In Sonic Adventure DX you are given the choice to play as a lot of different characters, one of which is named Big the Cat. Most of the characters are combat characters that rely on speed and attacks to get through levels, some even wielding rocket launchers and extremely oversized hammers. However when you start the story of Big the Cat you are thrown in a completely opposite direction. Big the Cat is a giant purple cat who lives in the jungle with his best friend Froggy. Froggy accidentally swallows one of the most powerful objects in the Sonic universe and Big the Cat must chase him all over the world trying to fish him out of where he is hiding so that he can eject the Chaos Emerald out of him and they can return to their life in the jungle. The fishing mechanics in this game actually are really good and this is probably because Sega had just put out a series of mildly successful Bass fishing games before releasing this game. Either way its absolutely hilarious that Big the Cat gets to defeat Chaos 6 right before Super Sonic has his showdown with Chaos Perfect.

Final Fantasy XV

In Final Fantasy XV you play as Noctis and his favorite hobby is fishing. When I first played this game I sped through it and never fished once and reached the end of the game never indulging Noctis in his hobby. When I replayed Final Fantasy XV I fished for 50 hours and then ejected the disc from my console. The fishing in Final Fantasy XV is surprisingly deep with a lot of the vendors supporting what you could call a fishing road trip. In the game it is extremely dangerous to be out at night so I would plan day trips to lakes to maximize the amount of fishing I would get to do. I would prepare days in advance to make sure I could afford the trip and that I had enough supplies to both protect myself at the lake and have enough supplies to last the whole day. Final Fantasy XV really is a game about getting really distracted and fishing is probably its best distraction. My days on the lake were the perfect balance of peaceful and rewarding, this game offers an awesome reward of well planned trips and a good haul of fish.

Final Fantasy XIV Online

Final Fantasy XIV is the only game I have ever played where the fishing played exactly like its combat. When you are fighting enemies in a dungeon in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. When you are fishing in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. Note you are doing so at a much more leisurely and less life threatening pace but you are still doing it. I never maxed out the fisher class but I got it into the expansion content which was a really long and relaxing experience. Yet another Final Fantasy title where the real meat of the game is in getting distracted. When you fish you also sell on a player market that fluctuates based on market price just like real fish. You get the relaxing fishing side of the game and also an aggressive economic number crunching side as well. I spent way too long with a real pen and paper deciding how much I should sell for on any particular day and bossing around my two cat girl employees.The MMO aspect of the game adds so much to what you would expect to be a very solitary experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Have you ever gone fishing for hours to receive an empty bottle? That is exactly what kick started my addiction to fishing in Twilight Princess. An empty bottle in Twilight Princess means another way to heal yourself, another way to add oil to a lantern, another way to carry useless water around. The only way to get the 4th bottle in the game is to go to a dedicated fishing spot and fish until you pulled it out of the pond. The actual fishing is pretty weird, it involves motion controls which I still am not entirely sure what they do or how to properly use them but it is really fun to hold the pole in gyroscope and set the lure in the water waiting for fish to come get a nibble. Although the physics with the water make it difficult to see if you have actually gotten a bite or not it still is enjoyable the other 85% of the time it works.

Stardew Valley

So this one is at the top of every other “fishing in games” list and there is a big reason for that. It’s really good. I think in my first Stardew Valley farm I gave up farming entirely and fished all day every day and stopped to buy food to replenish my energy and go back at it. I really didn’t care about getting rich or making enough money to expand the farm or get to know everyone I actually spent about 50 hours just fishing. The fishing takes some skill and a pretty keen eye but the random jerks of the fish and the rhythm of the game play are so fun to try to master. It’s a part of Stardew Valley that I felt like I was continuously improving on as time went on and it was really fun. I mean I don’t recommend it because you’ll end up moderately poor but it was really fun.

Fantasy Life

Fantasy Life offers you 12 potential jobs, you could be a brilliant blacksmith or a devious potions maker, a lumberjack or a knight, a hunter or a seamstress. However your inner dad is calling and you decide you want to play through a fantasy RPG as a fisherman, hell yeah. the story is relatively short so you can quickly unlock a lot of locales to fish at and there is a manageable economy system that lets you deal in fish in advantageous ways. You can even pick up cooking on the side and make fancy dinners and sell the fish for higher you can do that as well. Fantasy Life is like a clever mix between Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy XIV and it kind of succeeds and falls short of it. The fishing also takes a good amount of skill and rhythmic approach to master so it doesn’t get boring almost at all until you have cleared the game.

Maple Story 2

Maple Story 2 is one of the most expressive and cutest games that I have ever played. And the fishing is no different, its all about style. The fishing in Maple Story 2 is monotonous and can get old but you do it for the chibi clout. Because much like the rest of the game you can look however you want and do whatever you want and sometimes you just feel like kicking back and throwing lure in the water at the beach. I never got super into the fishing in this game but it won me over with its adorable design and stylish atmosphere.

Animal Crossing Series

Of course I had to include the most popular game right now. Animal Crossing has become something of a connection between people when we can’t leave the house. A thing we all have in common on social media and with our friends. My first experience with Animal Crossing really starts with New Horizons and I was completely blown away. The fishing isn’t super complex or difficult but the range of what you can pull out of the water and what you can do with it is absolutely breathtaking. For a game about cartoon people living with humanoid cartoon animals the fish looking photo realistic. And the museum where they can be kept is stunning. The museum looks like it was designed to capture the feel of being in a museum and matches the design of all the great real life aquariums and observatories. Although it is a bit frustrating when your rod breaks it is easy enough to make one (or worst case buy one) to get your bait back in the water.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Tell me I’m wrong, you can’t. Isabelle getting added to Smash brought a very powerful fishing move that isn’t practical all the time but is really funny. Wouldn’t recommend this game if you are looking to relax and fish but I do recommend hooking your friend with a fish hook and send them flying off screen if you had to.

Minecraft

I have a very special role in Minecraft when I join a friends server. A role that I assign to myself. While everyone is off getting awesome swords, spelunking for diamonds, and exploring the infinite landscape, I build a small wooden shack and I set up a farm with an irrigation canal and start fishing. A steady supply of food is necessary and while I’m hanging out with my friends in a server I’m happy to be the one to provide it. The fishing in this game is probably the slowest of all the ones on this list but is the most useful. just throwing the fish in the oven creates food that can help keep you and your companions alive for a long time. I think I definitely have my limits with Minecraft fishing and I couldn’t do it for hours on end it is rewarding to set up shop and find a nice place to settle down for a few hours to fish.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

This is the only Tactical RPG in this post. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has sections between combat where you can go and talk to your students and do other activities. We aren’t here to discuss other activities though we are here for the fishing. The fishing allows you to catch fish for some reason that I’m sure is good but never intrigued me enough to learn. All I know about the fishing in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that it’s fun. I started to bust through combat just so that I could get back to fishing. The funniest part about this one is that the fish has a health bar. Pressing the A button at the exact moment finds a way to become easier and still find ways to mess you up. Either way, I’m not that interested in tactical RPGs but I heard there was fishing in this game so I had to play it and it was worth it.

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

In Jak & Daxter, Daxter gets turned into a small animal by dark eco while exploring a dangerous island off the shore of his home with his best friend Jak. To get back to the island to investigate, the pair have to borrow a boat owned by a fisherman who is troubled by an invasive species of poisonous eel that is ruining his haul. He asks Jak to catch fish for him without catching any eels. This fishing mini game can only be done once but it is going to either be something you think is very unique or a huge waste of time. All I’ll say is that the sound that the fish makes when it goes into the net is absolutely a reward in itself it is so satisfying. But anyways, more intense than some other options here but get it done so you can get back to absorbing eco powers and jumping on stuff.

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a 2D action platformer but you can also fish. And you fish for the best kind of fish, money. You can get some other stuff too like health pickups and magic replenishers but we know what you want. You see that little glint and you pop out the fishing rod and pull out those money bags. If you are devoted enough you can even get a surprise from the Troupple King (long live his highness) if you fish out the right stuff. I don’t even know if I fished all that much when I played Shovel Knight but it’s hilarious that you can.

NieR: Automata

I did not play a lot of NieR and that’s because I was fishing. I don’t know why all I did was fish but you throw your little robot in the pond and you lean on a magical stool so honestly it was good enough for me.

Club Penguin

If you know then you know. In hind sight there really wasn’t a whole lot to do in Club Penguin but this mini game really messed me up. You basically get to move up and down, catching fish and avoiding trash and other hazards. Basically trying to do this and catch as much fish as possible to avoid having to ask your parents for real money to pay for snacks to feed a virtual ball of fluff with eyeballs. I don’t really remember how challenging it really was but I remember getting decently high scores to about like 100 fish per round so I guess it was pretty easy if I could do that at age 10.

Rune Factory 4

I’m gonna be very honest about this one and say that the fishing in Rune Factory 4 is basically just Animal Crossing fishing but more anime. The fish react to the pole the same, the fish almost look the same, and the buttons to respond are the same. What makes this one special is where you can take it. You can fish in the little moat in town, in the lake, in a dungeon full of monsters, in a lake that is eternally the season fall, anywhere. You are constricted by the boundaries of Stardew Valley and that is how much energy you have and how much time you have in the day. It’s still fun to fish but I wish that they had used their fun fantasy setting to give the ability to fish up some cool made up fish instead of strictly things that exist in real life.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Ok, diving, fishing, same thing. Diving in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is just fishing with your whole body. It works a lot in the same way as Pokemon where you fish up monsters to fight and get the rewards from them. It is a completely optional activity however if you decide to undertake the grind of scavenging in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 then you will never hurt for money ever again. It makes my wonder why Rex stopped being a salvager to do odd jobs because this was PROFITABLE. The main incentive is that there are spots that spawn a certain enemy that drop cores. Cores are like gacha or loot boxes that contain new anime girl partners that deal huge damage in fights. They even have their own side quests and story lines. I spent maybe 30 hours grinding before giving up on this game and while it does become tiresome I really enjoyed the random rewards of possibly getting a new companion or a really cool weapon.

It’s been tossed around that every great RPG has fishing in it. I won’t argue that point but a lot of great RPGs certainly do have fishing in them. Everyone needs a break sometimes and fishing is the perfect activity to remind us to stop and take that break. Even games can get long and without these distractions it might be so much harder to complete these harrowing tasks. Don’t forget to take breaks and just enjoy the sound of the water every once in a while because there’s no rush playing video games.

Honorable Mentions:

Kingdom Hearts: Sora fishing with his bare hands on Destiny Island

Persona 4: Weird aqueduct fishing

Persona 5: Marina fishing life

Sea of Thieves: A pirates life for me

#fishing #fishing video games #fish #kingdom hearts #persona 4 #persona 5 #sea of thieves #xenoblade chronicles 2 #rune factory 4 #club penguin #nier automata #shovel knight #jak and daxter #fire emblem three houses #smashbrosultimate #animal crossing #minecraft #maple story 2 #fantasy life #stardew valley #twilight princess #ffxiv #final fantasy 14 #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #sonic adventure #sonic adventure dx #pokemon

[tanakavox]

A look into the multiverse chapter 5

Soooo. Due to post limit im gonna have to reblog this post with the rest. Just tell y'all when you wonder where the rest is lol. Anyways intro for Winter is done by ExiledDarkness. Everything else is all meeee! On with the post.

A flash of light blinds everyone in the room. As it dies down, Winter Schnee is shown to be standing in the middle of the room.

"Winter?!" Weiss exclaims in shock. The rest of the cast, except for Qrow who groans in annoyance, keeps silent as Weiss explains to Winter about the situation they're in.

Winter nods. "I see. How interesting. I usually wouldn't do something like this but it appears that I have been given no other choice."

"Yeah, that seems to be the case with everything going on in my life." Jaune says while scratching his head.

The screen's light flickers on again and shows a boy setting up his computer and putting a helmet on his head. The sound of the computer starting up is heard.

"Link start!" With those words a flash of light appears with lines of color streaking across the screen.

"That voice sounded familiar …" Winter muttered to herself

"What was that Winter? Weiss asked, turning to her sister.

"Ah. It's nothing"

"Ah. Sword art online." The boy thinks to himself, sighing wistfully. "It's been a while since the beta. Wonder if they change anything?

A man in his early 20s with white hair looks and sees that ads plague the area around him.

"Oh c'mon guys, really? That's just disgusting." The man said to no one, his disgust at the ads was apparent.

"Yeah, seriously. That's just annoying. Qrow said with a grimace.

"Active Adblocker" A screen appeared in front of the young saying it was 29.99 for the Adblocker DLC. The man chuckled darkly. "I'm gonna burn this F***r to the ground.

"Please do!" Nora said a manic grin on her face.

The scene cuts to Blond man with long hair being tackled by a pig, the man blonde groaning in pain.

"That's Sun." Blake said almost immediately.

"How can you tell? Yang asked.

"I just know."

"Well he just got his ass kicked by a pig." Jaune said, laughing a bit

"Wow, Congrats. You were defeated by a pig." The white hair man was there looking down at Blonde unimpressed.

"F**k you man, that's like a pig from hell! The blonde cried, looking at the boar in terror.

"Really?" The white hair man smirked, and picked up a rock and threw it at the boar's ass killing it. It exploded into shards and a screen showed the exp he had got from killing it.

"Wow. This either that blonde guy sucks that bad or the other guy just that good." Mercury said with a grin.

"My god." He gasped with a shit eating grin on his face. "I've stumbled across the most powerful weapon in the game"

"Stop" The blonde whimper.

"The Mithril Pebble of pig smithing!"

"Please stop."

The white hair man takes a deep breath of air as the Blonde groans.

"My god, this sounds like something Whitely would do." Weiss said with an annoyed look.

"For you see, long ago, this pebble was forged in the fiery pits of tartarus,by the grand blacksmith of Lucifer himself. In a time before the world began…

The blonde facepalm as his party member continued. The sun had started to fall when the white haired man was finishing up.

"And thus, Mardoza, Guardian of the pebble, fell to his knees, and passed from this world, leaving behind the mighty weapon. For he knew... that one day, it's power would be required once more.

"Are you done?" The blonde asked.

"Yes." But then he whispered: The legacy of the pebble lives on.

"I have a feeling you get beat up a lot in real life." The blonde snarked.

"And he's using it as some kinda power fantasy cause he can't be that cool in real life." Yang added.

"Shut up! Here I have power!"

"Right, anyways, I've got a pizza coming, and I'm gonna meet up with some friends later.

So thanks for the quick tutorial on pig slaying and the not so quick tutorials on…. rocks…Shirou Yuki?" The blonde slowly wording out the other's username.

"Hey,no problem. I had fun taunting you." Shirou said with a grin. "Ballsdeep69"

"Yeah that's Sun." Blake said, shaking her head. "Only he would come up with such a dumb name."

Meanwhile Winter had a good idea who Shirou Yuuki was, but didn't want to say anything until she was 100% sure.

Ballsdeep69 laughs a bit. "Yeah it's uh, it's just a joke name. Just a character to dick around with while I get a hang of the game. I'm gonna make my real character later."

"Yeah yeah. No, I get it."

Shirou and balls look at each other awkwardly for a while when Shirou breaks the silence. "So uh...your pizza?"

"Right,right logging out." Balls swipes the air with his right hand and goes to log out but notices something odd.

"Hey,Shirou?" Balls called out. "Um, Totally noob question, but how do I log out?

"Are you serious, man?" Shirou asked exasperated.

"Yeah, Really dude? How hard is it to logout?" Jaune asked just as exasperated.

"Hey this Nervegear man. I can't Alt-F4 this sh*t.

Shirou sighs. "Alright fine. It's right…" He looked at his menu screen in confusion. "Here?"

"Oh thanks, player's guide." Balls deadpan.

"No it's here. But it's just blank."

Balls turns back to his menu and something catches his eye. "Oh wait, something scrolling Across mine. HahahahahahahaHAHAha"

"I get it." Shirou said with a frown.

"Wait, Wait, there's more. Ha."

"Riveting."

"Wait so they can't log out? What happened?" Ruby asked the rest of the confused viewers

"Eh no worries I'll just take the nervegear off like SO!" Balls reaches around his head and tries to take it off to no effect.

"Hey, dumbass, It doesn't work like that." Shirou sheerned. "The Nervegear disables your motor function so you don't move around in the game. Don't you remember all those videos of the beta testers?

The clip on Dustube plays, A man walking around in nerve gear is marlouving at the tech is shown. Someone, a friend of his walks up and offers a greeting to the man and he mistakes his friend for a troll and goes to pummel his friend into the ground.

It goes back to Shirou and Balls.

"So many lawsuits." Shirou muttered.

A few of the viewers had a good laugh at that.

"Uh, Do you feel tingly?" Balls asked before the two were transferred from mellow they were in a city square.

"No. Why?" Shirou asked casually. The two looked around and it seemed that other players were being teleported into the city square.

"What the hell is that?" Balls asked, looking at the sky going red.

"Well, I believe some people call it a Hexagon? Ain't 100% on that, gonna have to check my sources." Shirou snarked.

"Man f*ck off."

"I like this guy." Mercury said with a grin

The sky started to seem like it was starting to bleed.

"And The sky's bleeding" Shirou observed, not seeming to really care."

"Yeah, they are really pushing for that M rating." Balls repsoned on caring as much as Shirou.

"Wow the sky bleeds and they don't even care." Winter said.

"Probably because they know it's a video game, Ice Queen." Qrow reposned

A hooded figure appears flooding in the air. A wave of dangers fills most of the players in the area.

"Oh it's a person." Expect for one player.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Jaune Arc, Head programmer!"The figure greeted."

"Jaune made this game?" Ruby asked, looking towards the blond.

"Nice Vomit boy." Yang said slapping Jaune on the back. Jaune grunted a bit but smiled towards Yang.

"Welcome to the unparalleled online Sword art onli-" Jaune was interrupted by the player being to talk frantically among themselves. Jaune tried to get them to focus their attention on him by muting them, but ended up muting himself.

"He knows he muted himself right?" Balls asked.

"Give him a minute." Shirou mutters. Jaune unmuted himself.

A few laugh at Jaune's mistake as the Blonde himself facepalms at his mistake.

"Alright. Just realized what happened there. It's very funny. But right now, serious time. How many of you have seen Tron?" He was met with complete and utter silence. Jaune looked over the crowd and was met with blank stares, not counting Shirou. "W-what seriously?! None of you have seen Tron?! " Jaune asked, completely baffled. "I was really banking on that."

"Seriously?! No one had seen Tron?" Jaune all but screamed.

A few viewers didn't want to admit to not seeing Tron either.

Jaune cleared his throat, and proceeded to wing the entire thing. "Much like the world of warcraft, none of you are here by choice anymore. Unlike WoW, however, your being held here by me, not by a need to escape your empty f*cking lives. There is no longer any way to log out of Sword art online. If someone on the outside attempts to log you by removing your Nerve gear, well… Has anyone seen scanners?

Jaune once again looked and was once again met with silence.

"Uh Scanners. It's a movie…. Seriously?! He grumbles to himself about how the people here had no class and pulled up a clip of a man's head exploding. "Okay. That was from Scanners… and basically that.

"First Tron, now Scanners?!" Jaune facepalm.

"You just trapped god knows how many people in a video game, and you're worried about what movie they haven't seen?! Weiss retorted. Jaune flinched and wisely kept quiet.

The crowd gasped in shock.

"Finally seeing some gears turning, making progress."

"Why would you do such a thing?!" One player cried out.

"Stephen? Stephen is that you?" Jaune asked happily "How are you enjoying that advance copy?"

"I'm playing it with my family!" Stephen repiled.

"Oh, that's right!" The hooded figure laughed. "Happy birthday Timmy!"

Little Timmy began to cry.

"Aw, They grow up so fast." He said, sighing. " Cherish these moments Stephen. Cherish these moments. So as I was saying, the only way to keep the nervegear from going Gallager on your grey matter, is to make your way through castle Aincrad and beat Sword Art Online!"

"So you want us to beat a MMO?" A random player asked.

"Essentially."

"F*CK YOU!"

"That is the correct response when someone says to beat a MMO" Ren said.

"Is it really that bad?" Oscar asked and he receive a loud

"YES!"

"WOAH! Getting a lot of hostility here. Do not appreciate it."

"Well honestly!" The same player began,"When was the last time you heard of someone beating Everquest?"

"When was the last time you heard of someone playing Everquest?" Jaune fired back. There was a slight pause.

"That's fair."

"Everquest…. That's a deep cut." Qrow said, sighing thinking back.

"Anywho, for all you guys that wanted to play as girls, and you know who you are," Despite not seeing his face they could tell Jaune had a huge grin. "I've got a surprise for you!"

A mirror appeared in everyone's hands and a light filled the city.

A young boy, no older than 14 was where Shirou was. He still had the white hair and was wearing the same clothes but was more lankey and shorter than the man who was once there.

"Shirou Yuuki?" The boy turned and a familiar face was shown.

"Whitely?!" Weiss cried out at the sight of her brother.

"I knew it was him." Winter said. The username gave him away, Not only is it the username for when he goes on forums, Shirou Yuuki has the same meaning as his real name.

"How do you know what username he uses when he's online? Weiss asked her sister, a question that went unanswered.

"You're not a girl!" A fat player cried out.

"And you're not 17!" Another skinner one also cried out."

"I'm okay with this!"

"Me too!"

"LOVE KNOWS NO GENDER!" Someone shouted out.

"A wise seminent. Ozpin said sipping his coffee."

#rwby #look into the multiverse #jaune arc #ruby rose #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #whitely schnee #rwby weiss schnee #rwby winter schnee #headmaster ozpin #emerald sustrai #rwby mercury black #rwby nora valkyrie #lie ren #rwby salem #rwby mercury #sao abridged

[griffinblogsgw2]

The Narrative Challenge of MMOs

So I saw a post recently in the GW2 tag about how the narrative of Guild Wars is more communal vs individualistic compared to other fantasy games and, while I did like a lot of what the post said, I think it gave GW too much credit. A lot of what GW2 does is a direct result of it being an MMO and this got me thinking about the narrative challenges inherit to that.

I didn’t want to hijack their post to write about it, so here we are.

First off, hi my name is Griffin North. If you know me at all, you probably are familiar with my GW2 fan comic, Tora Steals Things (over at ToraStealsThings.com) or you know me as that random person who wrote an essay several months back about the dying tumblr fandom of GW2 that ironically blew up.

What a lot of you probably don’t know about me is that I studied Game Design for two years and have a Diploma in it. Part of what I studied was in fact narrative in games so this is where most of my knowledge on the subject comes from, consider this my disclaimer and take it for what it is.

Narrative in MMOs

Narrative in videogames is a huge topic but today I really want to talk about MMOs in general. One of the problems I saw with the post that inspired this was a comparison between Guild Wars and several fantasy games that are single player.

The demands between a single player game vs an MMO for narrative are different!

If you want to make an earnest study of Guild Wars compared to other games, it’s best to stay in the same ballpark: look at what WoW or what FFXIV are doing! That’s how you find differences! Unfortunately, I haven’t played WoW since 2007 and I haven’t even touched FFXIV so I can’t personally dive into those differences myself.

For the purpose of this essay, you can consider this as a case study of how Guild Wars 2 specifically deals with the narrative challenge of MMOs here (and why this leads to it feeling more communal as a story), but if anyone reading has anything to contribute on how other MMOs handle this I’d love to hear it!

Let’s talk about the main challenge of writing a story for an MMO

Say some new story content drops in game: you get a letter saying to go talk to a certain NPC on the map to progress the story. So you go do that only to find that said NPC is talking to a whole crowd of other players doing the exact same thing. Even as you talk to the NPC and he delivers his lines like he’s only talking to you, you know that isn’t the case -you’re not stupid after all.

Like it or not, this moment breaks the immersion of the story for a player, and this is the heart of the main issue MMOs contend with:

How do you make a player feel like the main character amongst a sea of main characters?

Game Designers want you as a player to feel special but this is immensely easier to do in a single player game than a multiplayer game. In an MMORPG, they have to deliver story that makes your character special while contending with the fact that as soon as you’re released into the world you’ll meet several other special characters played by other people. It’s really hard to feel like the magic hero with the master sword if everyone you see is also a magic hero with the master sword - get it?

How does Guild Wars handle this?

Heavy Use of Instancing

I don’t know how common this is now but when I first played Guild Wars 2, one of the things I really noticed was their heavy use of instancing when delivering story beats compared to other MMOs I’d played at the time. It’s not an elegant solution, you literally get torn out of the normal game world to play your own instance of it and that’s jarring, but it’s effective in that it allows you to be the main character of that instance. Even if you bring along friends, so long as you own the instance, your character is the one that speaks and is shown in cutscenes. Fairly simple solution, that.

The narrative immersion only really starts to break once you’re back out in the normal PvE maps with other players, and honestly there’s only so much the game can do about that.

To deal with that they contextualize the other players to justify them being there.

Guild Wars 2 narrative contextually allows space for other important player characters to exist because so much of it is organized as a war effort, and this does make a huge difference. Because you’re at war, those other players do not have to be you, the commander, to be significant. They can be various other members of the pact for example -very shiny, glittery disasters with special weapons pact members, but pact members all the same.

Guild Wars is definitely not unique in this approach though, and I think that’s obvious. World of Warcraft has you as a member of one of two different alliances at war as the game’s basic premise. I wouldn’t be surprised if FFXIV has some sort of war in it as well. It’s the easiest way to justify why these other heroes are running around in your adventure: you’re the special one, and they’re all a bunch of soldiers.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t fully solve the whole breaking immersion of having a crowd of people talking to a story NPC, but this is one of the ways games like this combat the “everyone is the hero” problem.

If you’re following so far, this is why, by design, MMOs can’t be too individualistic

A war effort is a common backdrop to these kind of games because it easily justifies the multitude of players in it, but this also inevitably means that the story is going to be more communal in nature. You don’t/can’t fight a war alone.

There’s one other thing that Guild Wars does though, that makes it feel less individualistic as a narrative...

The Main Character is Special Adjacent

What I mean by this is that the main character is rarely the one the story is actually about. They’re still special, yes, but they’re special adjacent as in they’re always beside the actual special character for the story. Think about player rage about Trahearne or Kormir taking player credit and you’ll know what I’m talking about here.

The reason they do this is because it’s really hard to tell a good story about a character who’s basically a blank slate - we can’t know how the player characterizes them personally or what they’re even named. Characterize the commander too much and you risk alienating parts of your audience who view their character differently. Giving them too much of a character arc leads to the same problem. The solution then, is to allow the player to be special in SOME way but have the focus be on a different character that they CAN characterize and have grow.

Usually you’re special in how you relate to that character: you’re Trahearne’s Commander, you’re Aurene’s Champion, you’re the Boss of the various characters in Dragon’s Watch, etc. This is why the player character, the commander, doesn’t have as much growth or characterization compared to the rest of the cast.

The main character is special adjacent so that you can have your fully customized mmo character and still be the main character basically. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true of other MMOs as well.

And this is why games like this feel less individualistic

It’s by design of how MMOs work -that’s really my point here. I love the world of Guild Wars 2 and how much of it feels like we’re fighting to save the world from ourselves or fighting nature (I see some parallels to real world shit like climate change here), but I do think it’s communal nature has more to do with it being an MMO than any real strength of its narrative.

Anyway, that’s all I got.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#gw2 #Guild Wars 2 #guild wars story #I could honestly say more on this topic but damn if this ain't long already #I hope this was an interesting read at least

[auncyen]

Ok ok so I'd been idly thinking about updating "Chats with Joker in Mementos" for Royal for a while, except as far as I know there aren't any transcriptions for the Royal Mementos chats like there is for Vanilla...

So...after some questionable use of my time, I now have a list of a good chunk of the starters in Royal. Only starters, not responses, since the point of the fic is having Joker be the one to respond, and I didn't transcribe ones I didn't think would be interesting for him to respond to, but still, if anyone does ever look to do a complete transcription, this might be helpful as a start? Or just interesting if you want to see what some characters talk about. Spoilers for third semester below cut.

Ryuji: Man, we really bust our asses to get stronger in here. I wish it meant we got stronger in the real world too.

Ryuji: Man, I had this horrible dream last night… Can’t remember a thing about it, though.

Ryuji: Ya know what? I guess Mona does have a mask, technically.

Ryuji: Yo, the way he jumps behind Shadows is so sick!

Ryuji: Yo, is it just me, or is fallin’ asleep getting tougher every night? At this point, I’m outta ideas of what to do.

Ryuji: Kinda fiendin’ for some ramen right about now… Maybe I’ll hit up Ogikubo when we get back.

RyujI: So lately, I’ve been tryin’ to work some training into my nightly routine before bed.

Ryuji: Hey, is it just me, or is Morgana’s sword basically the same size as Joker’s knife?

Ryuji: My mom made gyudon last night! My fave! Now I’ve got, like, fifty times more energy than usual!

Ryuji: This phantom thief stuff feels real as hell whenever he’s flyin’ around with that grappling hook.

Ryuji: Dude, that grappling hook is awesome! He looks like a freakin’ superhero with that thing!

Ryuji: Aww man, I just can’t get enough of those Akihabara maids…

Ryuji: Aren’t knives kinda hard to use ‘cause of their shortness? I definitely prefer my own shit.

Ryuji: I always thought darts looked easy—just aim for the board, y’know? But, it’s waaay harder than that.

Ryuji: Every try the monja in Tsukishima? That stuff is LEGIT.

Ryuji: Yo, does this outfit really make me look like I’m part of some biker gang?

-

Morgana: Listen, it’s not that I look like a cat. Cats just happen to look like me.

Morgana: I repeat: I am not a cat. To prove it, I took an actual bath yesterday.

Morgana: So, cats love to chase mice, right? I don’t get it—where’s the fun in that?

Morgana: I’m always so entranced by Panther’s whip technique!

Morgana: Panther, we have matching tails!

Morgana: You know, I’ve never actually been in a car before. Is it anything like I am now?

Morgana: I definitely made the right decision giving him the code name “Joker.”

Morgana: I’m willing to bet Joker’s skilled enough to use throwing knives.

Morgana: Anime, books, movies… Phantom thieves sure are popular.

Morgana: Last night I dreamt that Phantom Thieves were kicking some serious butt—let’s bring that dream to life!

Morgana: I can teach you everything you need to know about being a phantom thief. Relax—you’re in good hands!

Morgana: *yawn* I didn’t get enough sleep…

Morgana: I couldn’t fall asleep at all last night. I just laid there with my eyes open…

Morgana: I like Yongen-Jaya; it’s a great place for a stroll.

Morgana: Is Shujin Academy the only thing in Aoyama?

Morgana: I was vegetating in front of the TV last night, and I have to say, there are some pretty decent shows on now.

-

Ann: The bakery had a sale yesterday and I ended up buying everything they had!

Ann: The Ferris wheel is a must for me at theme parks, every time. I love being able to just relax.

Ann: I have an upcoming shoot at a theme park, but what sucks is how I can’t go on any of the rides.

Ann: Last night I dreamt I was eating a chocolate bar, then all of a sudden, it got mad and started chasing me!

Ann: Every once in a while I have a dream where I get chased by a Shadow…

Ann: I’ve been sleeping really well since I started getting all this exercise.

Ann: I was up late watching TV last night, so I might be a little sleep deprived…

Ann: I tend to do my clothes shopping in Kichijoji—it’s fun looking through all the resale shops.

Ann: I hate when people ask me to say stuff in English just ‘cause I lived overseas.

Ann: It always bothers me when foreign movie subtitles leave stuff out or take too many liberties.

Ann: I was talking to my overseas friend the other day—her straightforward attitude was really refreshing!

Ann: I was talking to Shiho on the phone and before I knew it, three whole hours had passed!

Ann: Joker seems like he’d make a good cook, doesn’t he? I mean, he’s great with his knife and all…

Ann: It’s actually quite exhilarating to attack with a whip. I wonder why that is…

Ann: Whenever my foreign relatives come to Japan, they always rave about how much they love Japanese food!

Ann: Do you think there’s anything I can do about my outfit? I feel like I stand out too much in this…

Ann: Is there a difference between a whip and a grappling hook?

Ann: Ya know, Skull’s always been into skull designs and stuff.

Ann: Wouldn’t a grappling hook be awfully handy in the real world?

-

Yusuke: I wish to paint the world as only I see it. The best way to succeed at this is through practice.

Yusuke: It’s fun to walk around and inspect different temples and shrines. The architecture is always impressive.

Yusuke: If Shadows are sentient, do you think their being moved by a painting would invoke a change of heart?

Yusuke: There have been times where I was compelled to create three-dimensional art.

Yusuke: I’m quite curious about Mona’s Western-style sword…

Yusuke: I hear whips are quite difficult to use. Where did you learn how to wield one?

Yusuke: Joker using a grappling hook…. That would make for a picture-perfect composition.

Yusuke: Mona, what exactly do you have in those pouches?

Yusuke: Creating a piece of art is pointless unless I can convey the full essence of the subject.

Yusuke: Art museums stimulate my creativity like no other place—I wish I could live inside one.

Yusuke: Skull and I both use long melee weapons, but they’re total opposites of one another.

Yusuke: Why does my outfit have a tail? I don’t understand…

Yusuke: I considered growing my own bean sprouts, but it seems to be more expensive than buying them grown.

Yusuke: I once had a dream that I washed up on a deserted island. I painted as much as I pleased… So wonderful.

Yusuke: I may specialize in Japanese-style painting, but I’d like to learn some Western techniques as well.

Yusuke: That grappling hook is very useful. I should find a way to utilize one in my daily life.

Yusuke: The other day, I went into the mountains to gather vegetables so I could cut back on food expenses.

Yusuke: I tried to paint a landscape of the starry sky once, but it’s quite difficult to do so from within the city.

Yusuke: India ink isn’t my specialty, but I’ve been experimenting with it in some recent work, just for fun.

-

Makoto: I may have stopped being a doormat for adults, but people are still calling me a “teacher’s pet.”

Makoto: A phantom thief’s body is their most vital asset. We need to make sure we eat balanced, nutritious meals.

Makoto: Do you enjoy visiting theme parks? I’ve rarely been to one myself.

Makoto: Fox looks cooler using his katana than I had originally imagined.

Makoto: I had the weirdest dream… I was at school, but I was wearing my phantom thief outfit.

Makoto: Would anyone care to learn how to drive, while we’re here? This place seems as good as any for practice.

Makoto: I know it’s not very healthy, but I do enjoy eating ramen from time to time.

Makoto: Once I’ve graduated, I’m going to buy a motorcycle and go on a road trip.

Makoto: I’ve been working on my grades because I still want to attend college, despite being a phantom thief.

Makoto: I want to read a certain book, but it’s out of print. Where do you suppose I could find a copy?

Makoto: Maybe I’m just burned out, but waking up has grown awfully difficult lately.

Makoto: The grappling hook’s cable seems pretty strong, but it’s scary to think what could happen if it snapped.

Makoto: Once my sister brought home some sushi for me. It was indescribably good…

-

Futaba: I heard rhythm’s an important part of fighting, sooo… I started playing a rhythm game!

Futaba: There’s going to be an event tonight in the MMO I play. I can’t wait!

Futaba: This MMO I’m hooked on is really cool. Do you wanna play with me? Oh—it’s in English, though.

Futaba: I’m about to beat the game I’ve been playing. Wonder what I should play next?

Futaba: I’ve been going outside a lot more, so now I’m sleeping way better than I did when I was a shut-in.

Futaba: Guess what? I’m making a game called “Hungry Hungry Mona”!

Futaba: You know who’s a really good driver, is Sojiro. He can parallel park with his eyes closed!

Futaba: If you could shoot grappling hooks from your hands, you’d probably be able to get around just using those!

Futaba: Ya know, I’ve thought about workin’ out and fighting alongside you guys.

Futaba: You guys should try playing shooters! It could help you improve your gun skills.

Futaba: Last night I had a dream my hard drive failed… That was scary.

Futaba: Wouldn’t it be cool if you could mod the grappling hook so it was electrified?

Futaba: Sure, the internet’s convenient, but it’s not like it can do everything. Don’t overestimate its capabilities.

Futaba: I wonder if I’d be okay going to some place by myself if it wasn’t crowded. Inokashira Park seems nice.

Futaba: Yesterday Sojiro bought me my favorite instant yakisoba!

Futaba: Maybe I should get a gun too, just for self-defense… Nah, my hands need to be empty.

-

Haru: I found this cafe in Kichioji with phenomenal tea—would you care to try it sometime?

Haru: I ordered kusaya but they refused to make it—they said they couldn’t get the smell out of the kitchen.

Haru: I feel like I need to learn more about the world, but I’m not sure how to best go about it.

Haru: Recently, I’ve been finding rare delicacies rather enticing…

Haru: Even lately, I sometimes dream about doing phantom thief things with Mona.

Haru: If you’re having trouble getting yourself to relax, I recommend herbal tea.

Haru: Asakusa is a wonderful area—I love how it’s this blend of the old and the new.

Haru: Ever since I started high school I’ve been taking the train in the morning, but I’m still not used to it…

Haru: Queen, your mask looks like it’s made of iron. Doesn’t it get heavy?

Haru: Joker’s so acrobatic! He’s really got the hang of that grappling hook.

Haru: I don’t think I’ve gotten this much exercise since I was in ballet.

Haru: Let me know if you ever get a tear in your clothing—I’m good at sewing, so I could most likely fix it.

Haru: I dreamt that the vegetables I’d been growing all died… I was so sad.

Haru: Your weapon seems fun, Skull. Do you want to swap sometime?

Haru: Sometimes it’s impossible for me to fall asleep on days that we’ve been to Palaces, no matter how tired I am.

Haru: You know, before this, I’d never considered using an axe for anything other than chopping firewood…

Haru: My hands have gotten all calloused… I supposed it comes with the territory in gardening.

-

Akechi: I have no intention of changing my stance on matters, no matter what anyone may say.

Akechi: Pancakes... I don’t want to hear that word again for a long, long time.

Akechi: We don’t have much time left. Please do what you can to avoid getting sick.

Akechi: The enemies are stronger than ever. Don’t let your guard down.

Akechi: A world that panders to your every whim is so mundane. Where’s the thrill if there’s no competition?

Akechi: Do you prefer my previous outfit or this one? Moving around’s become much easier for me.

Akechi: This place is immense. If there weren’t train tracks everywhere, I’d bring my bike here.

Akechi: We’re working under the constraints of a time limit, so I’d appreciate it if you could be more efficient.

Akechi: If you’re looking for a way to train both your mind and your body, I highly recommend bouldering.

Akechi: You think I’m frightening when I fight? Well, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to accept it.

Akechi: I meant to tell you, regarding Shido… Thank you for keeping your promise.

Akechi: You may not like working with me, but I’m counting on your assistance until our goal is achieved.

Akechi: When we’re riding in the car like this, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually inside Mona.

Akechi: The Shadows here behave differently from the ones in the Palaces, don’t they?

Akechi: I’m getting a bit hungry. I should’ve eaten beforehand.

Akechi: I enjoy spending time in Kichijoji. It’s not very big, but there are plenty of trendy shops.

Akechi: Riding in the car may beat walking, but it doesn’t stop my legs from growing stiff and sore…

-

Sumire: I have a few different superstitions for good luck in my routines… They get sort of hard to drop.

Sumire: It was already hard for me to believe Palaces existed, but to think there’s such a massive one under Shibuya…

Sumire: It’s a bit cramped in here with this many people…

Sumire: I get stiff all over from just sitting in the car.

Sumire: Why is the one desert you get to eat during the week so delicious?

Sumire: A phantom thief outfit represents a person’s image of their rebellion, right?

Sumire: I wonder if I should try incorporating another sport into my gymnastics training.

Sumire: I wonder what I could use as inspiration for my performances…

Sumire: Swords are actually pretty hard to wield.

Sumire: Whenever I travel, I always end up buying some sort of good luck charm.

Sumire: Your outfits are all so unique. I can see coordinating them wasn’t a priority.

Sumire: This time of year, a heating pad’s an absolute must for keeping warm.

Sumire: Sometimes people will just walk up to me and ask me to show them a standing split.

Sumire: I’m in top shape today! Let’s keep going.

Sumire: Do you all stretch beforehand? You could pull a muscle if you don’t.

Sumire: It’s too bad gymnastics competitions aren’t on TV more often.

Sumire: Fighting makes for a pretty good workout, doesn’t it?

-

while I didn't transcribe responses, I did notice something a bit disappointing: neither Sumire nor Akechi seemed to have responses for anyone else. It's possible I missed one?? But not being able to remember any, they must not have many if they do have some. A bit odd.

#persona 5 #p5r #p5r spoilers #to pick from later

[sirloozelite]

A Review of SWTOR

So, not too long ago, a pair of friends (frenemies more like) of mine were playing SWTOR... and suffice to say they would not shut up about it.  I’d always been aware of the game in the back of my mind, but it had never really appealed to me. MMO’s don’t really, as I would always be worried about random players sticking their nose in whilst I was trying to keep to myself. 

Still, my friends would not shut up about it, and they kept recommending it to me, despite my internal aversion to it.  Now, considering that they had both foolishly taken my advice on games to play in the past, I decided to return the favour and give SWTOR a chance. 

And boy was I glad I did.  Is SWTOR a good game? Yes... and no... and yes. It’s not perfect, it’s got problems, but it’s still a lot of fun, and I’m glad I’ve done at least one playthrough of the game. 

Upon loading up I of course had to choose what storyline I wanted to follow. Since both of my buddies had gone Jedi Knight, (though I’d argue that a certain someone made their Jedi about as deplorable as Anakin) I decided to be the awkward one and went Sith Inquisitor instead, and honestly... I think I chose perfectly!

Oh and... for those interested... here is my Inquisitor:

His name is the Sixteenth Brother! What’s his backstory? Well... that depends on who you ask! Some say he’s the 16th sibling of a Zabrak family... others say he chose the name to hide his true one. Some even say he’s a time traveller from a distant future sent back in time after accidentally finding a Sith relic in his time. Whatever the truth is matters little. All that matters is that he was great fun to play as. 

Oh and for the record, this review is based on a Free To Play experience and completion of the class storyline only. I’ve not touched the expansions yet, but intend to at some point. Any criticisms I have that are solved by subscribing are a moot point. Furthermore, it goes without saying but all of the below is my own opinions of the game. Doesn’t make them right or wrong.

The Good

There are many good things about SWTOR, almost too many to name. That said, there are some things I’d like to highlight.

The Story 

The first and foremost best thing about the game is of course, the story. Being a Bioware written game created at the same time as the Mass Effect trilogy, I expected a good story... and I was not disappointed by the tale of the Sith Inquisitor. It was the standard tale of a protagonist coming from lowly origins, in this case a slave, and advancing up the ladder of society. Nothing too revolutionary, but add in the Sith and the Empire and it was made all the more better. Frequently, poor 16th Bro would get hounded for being an alien, and each and every time he’d beat the odds, and then usually show mercy to those who had insulted him. (I played him mostly light side... though there were a few times I surrendered to the dark and zapped people)

The world building within the story was also top notch. Plenty of detail is hidden away in the codex, much like Mass Effect, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t stuff in the actual gameplay and story as well. I’d never really been a legends fan, and whilst I’m still not, I do see why a lot of people love these sorts of stories. I was invested, and that’s what mattered. 

Outside of the Sith Inquisitor, the very fact that there are seven other unique storylines and classes to play, as well as heavy character customization and role play more than make the game worthy of revisiting. There is a little bit of something for everyone it seems. 

The Characters

Another great strength of Bioware games is usually it’s characters, especially the protagonists companions. I can happily report that, at least for the Sith Inquisitor, the vast majority of the characters in the story were great. 

The three standout characters outside of the Inquisitor to me were Khem Val, Ashara Zavros and Talos Drellik. 

That’s not to say that Andronikos, Xalek, Zash and Thanaton weren’t good characters either, I just didn’t enjoy them as much as Khem, Ashara and Talos. 

Each character felt like they had their own arc. Khem Val growing to accept you as a Master and true successor to Tulak Hord was great, even if he and 16th Bro were constantly disagreeing about 16th’s methods. Despite his dislike of the decisions, I still sided with him when the time came to choose who got to control his body for good. 

Ashara going from “I’m a Jedi and I won’t go against my teachings!” to “Peace is a lie!” was good development as well. I understand that some people don’t like this character much, but she was my go to companion most of the time. She’s not quite a Sith, but not quite a Jedi either, and that made for a perfect companion for the 16th Brother, as he was hardly a model Sith either. 

As for Talos... well... he’s an archaeologist and a historian... and I’ve got a degree in history... so of course I was going to love him! Plus he was eccentric as all hell and added a nice voice of humour to the crew. His personal story about him trying to find his old mentor and carry on his legacy was heartfelt too.

As for everyone else, I was invested in their characters, don’t get me wrong, just not as much as the others. Both Zash and Thanaton were good villains that I took pleasure in ending, and Andronikos and Xalek got their fair amount of use on the field and in the ship. Everyone was friends at the end after all. 

The Voice Acting

The other good point I’d like to highlight is the voice acting, particularly that of the male Sith Inquisitor. I’ve heard people say the female voice is better, but for my experience the male Inquisitor was the perfect match of sass and sarcasm. It made every scene with him in enjoyable to watch. RPG games were a single protagonist can get a bit boring sometimes. Commander Shepard suffers from this in Mass Effect at times. I never got that feeling with the Inquisitor though. He was hilarious from the second he stepped off the shuttle on Korriban and sassed Overseer Harkun (who I totally zapped to death) to the moment he took his seat on the dark council with a surprised Pikachu look on his face. 

So yeah... super credit to Euan Morton for making the Inquisitor the dark master of sass and sarcasm! 

Outside of the Inquisitor, I can say that all the other VA’s did a great job too. I can’t think of any character that had particularly bad voice acting off the top of my head. 

Other Good Stuff

Outside of the three things I mentioned, SWTOR also has plenty of content to offer for everyone. If you want to do main missions, sure! Side quests? Sure! Space combat missions? Yep! Whatever you fancy, it’s there. There is no shortage of content to enjoy for hours on end, even as a Free To Play player like I was. 

The Bad

And now to most likely upset some people... sorry about that, but no game is perfect, and SWTOR has some flaws that could put people off playing it. This stuff is by no means a game breaking deal for me, but it did annoy me and I felt like it needed addressing. 

The Game is Tedious

My biggest complaint is that at times, usually after an hour of playing, the game can become tedious and boring to play! There were times it felt like a chore honestly, and I hate saying that because SWTOR is a good game. 

The main reason for it feeling so tedious though comes down to how you move around the maps. When you can, fast travel is your best friend and can save a lot of time, however, not everywhere has a fast travel point near it. 

This is where speeders come into play. You can buy one for a reasonable amount of credits, and they are faster than walking for sure, but not by much. 

The problem with the speeders is that it is so easy to get shot off of one by one of the random enemies you are trying to drive past (and believe me there are hundreds of them!) that is becomes aggravating to move around the map from objective to objective. Avoiding enemies isn’t hard for sure, but sometimes you have to go right past them, and after hours of fighting enemies it can get a bit tedious being shot off your speeder in one shot just because you didn’t want to waste time fighting an enemy. Once you hit your level cap, fighting random enemies is pointless after all. 

Maybe that’s just me though. I’d personally make the speeders a bit more durable. One tiny shot shouldn’t disable your speeder. Heavy fire... sure!  Doesn’t help that sometimes you can tank a bunch of shots on your speeder and escape without being knocked off, but then on another occasion you’ll be knocked off by a sneeze. 

Either way, movement around the maps can get annoying as all hell, but at least the scenery is pretty. 

The Planets

Now don’t get me wrong, I like all the planets I went to... mostly... and my issue isn’t with the planets in general. 

It’s with how bloody long it takes to complete them all.

The Story Arc quest lines for each planet can take forever sometimes and they end up going on a bit too long if you ask me. Alderaan and Hoth are the two that come to my mind the most. It felt like I spent weeks on those planets driving back and forth between areas to do simple tasks for little reward. Plus the sheer number of side quests didn’t help. I stopped doing everything that wasn’t a story or Arc quest once I hit Hoth!

Don’t get me wrong, I like side quests for sure... I just don’t like them to drag on forever! In a lot of ways, SWTOR reminds me of Mass Effect Andromeda. That game too also had side quests that went on forever. 

My one piece of advice to nay new players for SWTOR would be to ignore the side quests and focus solely on your class story quests and planet Arc quests instead. If you try and do everything, you’ll burn yourself out quickly. Unless you are a completionist of course. In that case go nuts! XD

Other Bad Stuff

Aside from my two big gripes above, which are honestly minor in reality, the only other issues I really have with the game are the boring side objectives in some missions. Nine times out of ten they equate to ‘kill a bunch of dudes’. They are easy enough to complete, as you’ll be killing things anyways, so you don’t really need to put any real thought into completing most of them. They just feel tacked on and rather pointless honestly. 

The Ugly

And now the ugly stuff. This is stuff that is between good and bad. Bad as in they annoyed me, but good as in I understand why others like them or they improved over time. 

The User Interface

Oh god the UI! When I first started the game it was so overwhelming! Pop-ups everywhere! Hundreds of tabs and side bars and tutorial boxes being spammed my way. It was not friendly to a new player who had literally just jumped in. If I hadn’t played games like Civ or XCOM in the past I might not have been able to cope with how much stuff was going on at once. 

Luckily, after a few hours of play, I began to understand the UI a bit more and became comfortable with it. I knew what was where and what did what, as well as what I didn’t need. (any PvP stuff for example) Plus the ability to edit the interface to your own liking helped a lot as well, so it wasn’t a complete lost cause, just overwhelming at first. 

Flashpoints and Heroic Missions

So, these missions are designed to be played with other players online, clearly. They can be done solo, but they take forever to do so. Endless hordes of high HP enemies, including even higher HP boss fights is not that entertaining to me, and thus very quickly became boring to me. Artificial difficulty in a way. Plus if you do die, it ain’t half a pain in the ass to get back to where you were, only to find that boss that had 5% health left when it killed you is now back to 100%. 

I gave up doing these sorts of missions and have no intention of returning to them unfortunately, which is a shame as some of the flashpoints have actual important story content in them. 

Still, if unlike me you actually have friends to help you with these, then I get why you like them, and more power to you. I just don’t enjoy them much. 

The Soundtrack

And now to really upset some people. Look... I like John Williams music scores as much as the rest of the fandom does. That said, there were places in SWTOR where it showed up and really really did not work! It almost felt like the game was just spamming random iconic tracks that sort of fit the scene, but really didn’t. 

The biggest one for me that didn’t work was the final duel against Darth Thanaton in the Dark Council Chambers. During the cutscene between the two fighting, the music started on ‘The Final Duel’ from ROTJ when they were fighting, and they suddenly it shifted to the theme from Padmés funeral when Thanaton was overpowered! I mean, I get what they were going for with the music, but the sudden shift between tracks was unceremonious and didn’t work. If they were going to use licensed movie music then they should have just chosen one track and stuck with it rather than jumping between two!

Furthermore, to me those themes were written for specific scenes in their respective movies, and thus were created to fit those scenes, not random SWTOR scenes. If anything, the entire scene should have had it’s own score written for it rather than just reuse movie tracks instead!

That said, whenever the game does use original music that isn’t from the movies, it’s fine! The ambient background for the planets is great, Alderaan’s especially, and I hated that planet! They clearly had the talent of music directors to write Star Wars sounding music, so I don’t fully get why they didn’t just go with original music all the way rather than just reuse John Williams music instead. I don’t know if they didn’t have enough money or something. If that was the case then I’d understand. 

So yeah, the music is a 50/50 for me. The original music is great. The movie music is still great, it’s just not used right. 

Other Ugly Stuff

WASD controls. They aren’t game breaking, but I’m not a great fan of them. They make my wrist hurt. I adapted, like I did with the UI, so it’s not really a big issue, but I know it could put one or two people off playing it. 

Another minor gripe is a consequence of the game being an RPG within an MMO. Other players are running around, often doing the same objectives as you. They can steal your objectives before you, forcing you to wait around for them to respawn so you can do them yourselves. Luckily there is usually other stuff to do in the meantime, and the re-spawn timer is smallish, so it’s not a huge problem. Just an unfortunate consequence. 

Conclusion

So... would I recommend playing SWTOR to people? Yes! I would. It’s a good game, even with it’s flaws. I had a lot of fun running through the Sith Inquisitor’s storyline, and I learnt a lot about the game for any future playthroughs I do. I know what to expect now and what to stay away from, so hopefully whatever class I choose to do next will be full of less annoying little things. 

That said, considering how long it took me to do the Inquisitor’s story, I feel like I’m gonna need a serious break before I can play another class. I was almost burnt out when I finished the Inquisitor, and I’ve still got the two free expansions to go!

So yeah... all in all, SWTOR is a good game,. I’d recommend it, and I’m glad I gave it a fair chance. It’s not in my top 10, but it’s one to return to. :)

So, if you’ve ever thought about trying out SWTOR before but were apprehensive about it, then I’d encourage you to give it a shot. It is free after all! Unless you subscribe. But you can at least try it for free! Bonus I say! XD

#swtor

[ddaengyoonmin]

Faerie Realm 13.5

Pairing: Ot7xReader; currently mainly Jungkook x reader with past Jimin x reader and future other members. ;)

Genre: fluff, angst, smut(In previous and later chapters)

Theme: Based kinda on sword art online a lot of similar ideas and themes kinda combining the idea of them trapped in the game, but the world is closer to ALFheim online

Warnings; Drunken bar argument with threats and mentions of killing. 

Word count: 1.2k

Taglist: (I definitely think I missed some of you and some usernames were changed from my last list😭  so im sorry if this is all wrong lol.  I am doing away with taglists for the most part but ill keep on for faerie realm if anyone wanted to be tagged let me know) : @taekookandyoongi @life-anime-food @i-like-puppy-mg @seesawsmin-flower @karissassirak @btsvisuals @vynia

A/N: Okay it's been months but Faerie Realm is back y'all! So let me explain myself.  Faerie Realm is my baby, and this series is FAR from done.  But, I got stumped, really bad lol  The way I ended the last chapter I honestly didn’t have a plan on where to go to transition to what I wanted to happen next, and I didn’t totally know what to do for the boss fight scene.  So, I hope we aren’t mad about this but there is a time jump happening.  

This chapter is called 13.5 because I wanted to have an explanation of what went on in our characters lives during the months that pass between chapter 13 and 14. 

Thank you to those who still send asks about Faerie Realm, and to the new readers who I see binging through the series in my notifications.  I love you all and appreciate you patiently waiting for this update of my ridiculous fic I love so much. 

The boss battle had gone smoothly, without a hitch.  Yoongi and Namjoon’s fire attacks were extra effective against the type of creature that was in the cave, and many other groups had joined in to take it down. 

You and Hoseok were thanked and rewarded by quite a few of the other groups for your healing you’d done for their team during the attack.  Though you insisted you didn’t need to be compensated you both wound up with quite a lot more gold in your inventory than you’d started with. 

You didn’t feel like you needed to be rewarded though.  You did heal quite a few people from other teams,but there were quite a few times where you knew you could’ve been healing another team’s member, yet, you were too scared to take both your hands away from Jungkook.  Memories of the attack in the woods where you’d almost lost him running through your mind. 

After defeating the boss, a giant glowing blue portal with white flecks swirling around in circles like dye dropped into water appeared.  It sat in the back of the cave where the boss had spawned.  

The first team to go through wasn’t your own.  Jungkook had held your team back, skeptical of the newly spawned portal, saying it wouldn’t hurt to let someone else test it out first. 

Almost instantly the guinea pig team as you’d all called them, a group of all Fire Fairies, returned back the way they came.  They gave it the all clear, and upon realizing this really was the portal to level 2 the surviving players of Faerie Realm started to pour in to the next floor. 

There were those players who chose to stay back in the starting village, not many but a few.  It was mostly those who had been too scared to leave it in the first place.  

A lot of people made fun of them and many whispers and harsh words were passed around by the other players. 

“Why should we be out here risking our lives for players that aren’t going to even help.”

“You know this game has limited resources right? Certain things don’t respawn and yet here we are sending food back to the main town.” 

That sentiment tied in to an even darker one floating around the groups. 

“We should just kill the players not helping out.  All they are doing is being lazy, and taking resources we need to live.” 

Upon hearing that spoken in a bar on floor two Jungkook had stood up on his table, well drunk, but speaking clearly. 

“Say that again.” He growled, now looking down at the group of Sylphs that had been drunkenly muttering those words far too loud. 

The tallest of the men turned around to Jungkook, staring up at him unphased. 

“I said, we should get rid of all the leeches in Main Town, who sit around on their ass all day while *we* get our ass’s kicked down into the red to get us all out of here.” 

Jungkook paused for a moment. 

“You think that they wouldn’t help if they could?” He asked, “You don’t think that they wish they were out here helping.  Some of those people back there have never played an MMO in their life let alone even picked up a video game, and you expect them to be out here doing what you’re doing?” Jungkook hissed. 

“Ah bullshit, we all know your girl started out as a first time player, word gets around.  I don’t see any excuses for them not just putting in the effort like she did.” The green haired man rolled his eyes. 

Jungkook now jumped down from the table, you had gasped for a second thinking in his drunkenness he’d fall but he landed smoothly in front of the man, their chests now almost touching. 

“You think just cuz one exception happens that means anyone can just do it huh? That everyone has the resources and opportunities and people to coach them through the game? 90% of those people back in Main would die the instant they stepped foot out of the safe zone.  Those are people’s families.  People’s moms who decided to pick up the game to try out before giving it to their kid for their birthday.  So fuck you.  I’ll fight to get them out of this game.  I’ll fight to get us all out of this game.  If you’re just doing this for yourself you might as well just fly into a dragon's mouth and get fucked…” 

“Ohhhh kay.” Taehyung was now pulling Jungkook away from the fuming sylph who was now turning beet red and pursing his lips together so tightly you thought he’d pull a muscle. 

You were proud of Jungkook though, his attitude had greatly changed from when this all had first gone down.  He’d gotten less selfish, more caring, he was a hero in this game. 

You on the other hand found yourself turning opposite.  The longer you stayed in this game, the more you cared just about you and your team getting out of this alive than anything else. 

It wasn’t easy knowing how to feel.  You certainly wouldn’t go around talking about killing the townspeople of main though.  Some people in this game were just vile, not far off from the real world. 

--------------------------

In the months after the boss battle that led your team to floor two, you’d grown close with all of the boys.  Your newest additions Yoongi and Hoseok had stuck around the whole time and there was no doubt this was your permanent group. 

You and Hoseok had especially grown close, being that the two of you shared the rare trait of being a water fairy you’d often get grouped together when doing raids so that you could use a series of double team healing spell moves that you’d come up with together. 

He was honestly becoming your best friend. 

Things with Jungkook had stayed the same, you loved him, and he loved you. 

Jimin and you still kept each other at an awkward distance, but the months spent every day together had certainly healed much of the strain between the two of you.  

Though Jungkook never quite fully got on board with being fond of Jimin, he was kinder to him and things had been civil. 

Namjoon and Yoongi became quick friends over similar reasons to you and Hoseok, a shared set of skills made for some great bonding moments. 

Jin you’d gotten to know better, realizing there was an extremely funny and entertaining man under the fear that he’d had for so long was one of the highlights of your time here.  

Growing closer to all of them was such an odd gift you’d gotten through this life or death game.  

----------

--(Snippet from chapter 14 :D) 

“Y/n?” Taehyung called out from behind the almost unreal blue veil of water separating the two of you. 

“I’m still here…” You spoke quietly.  Not quite sure how to respond to his confession. “I just don't know what to say.  Jungkook is…” 

“I know.” He cut you off.  

You couldn’t see him well, you wanted to just push through the water and run over to him, shake him, ask him why the hell he thought it was okay to say this to you now. 

“I just thought you should know.”

#jungkook x reader #ot7 x reader #jungkook smut #ot7 smut #bts x reader #bts fanfics #btswriterscollective #hoseok x reader #namjoon x reader #seokjin x reader #taehyung x reader #jimin x reader #yoongi x reader #jimin smut #bts x you #bts imagines #ot7 fanfic #bts smut

[fimflamfilosophy]

“Is DnD Still Popular?”

To some of you giant nerds, the question, “Is DnD still popular,” is probably one of the stranger things you’ll read today, but within a specific context it makes a lot of sense. Speaking of, the show “Stranger Things” presented a popular, physical look at what DnD beasties might feel like, even if it didn’t present an honest view of what DnD games really play like. Along with more online media referencing the game and sites like Roll20 making it easier to join a group, it makes sense. Is this a temporary boom or has the roleplaying community seen a lot of permanent additions to its nerdy hobby?

I wouldn’t have numbers to say, myself, but for what it’s worth, roleplaying is always a very personal experience. And for a few of us, the question isn’t, “Are people still playing DnD?” Of course they are - it’s all anyone plays! The question is, “Can you get anyone to play anything else?”

What Is DnD?

For some people, Dungeons & Dragons has become so intertwined with the concept of roleplaying that people think DnD and roleplaying are synonymous. If you roleplay, you play DnD. Originally, this had a kernel of truth. There are articles about the history of the system, and during its inception the game had a hard time taking off. Fundamentally it was asking people to play make-believe, but with a system of mathematical rules and designs. We know now that this type of thing is like catnip to massive dork-faced neckbeards, but at the time it wasn’t expected to have much appeal.

Eventually it did get off the ground, and it became the standard for the entire concept of a roleplaying game. And as with all “firsts to the market”, there have been many competitors and copycats, but it’s difficult to pry the audience away when you need everyone to use the same system. In economics they call this “network utility value” - that is, a fax machine is useless if only one person owns one. You can only send faxes to other people with fax machines, so if another company tries to invent their own offshoot of the fax machine, they’ll never get anyone to adopt it because everyone is already using the existing fax machine network. Everybody knows DnD, which means that if you go to a convention or look for games online, you know you’re going to find more players for that system than any other.

Why Does DnD Continue to Work?

In early editions of DnD, there were a lot more rules, and as a result more freedom to design your characters. When I first started roleplaying, it was during the 3rd edition of the system, where you could still allocate skill points to become better or worse at specific skills like lying, climbing, forgery, or crafting. This meant that with good planning, you could play a sub-optimal wizard and make up for it somewhat by investing a lot in your “persuasion” skills to rely on talk more than magic.

But being the system that everyone has to learn isn’t enough to stay on top forever. Other systems like GURPS have taken hold by now, and some types of popular nerd media have introduced their own completely unique systems designed to simulate their specific media universes. The owners of DnD had two choices: either make the game more open and try to eat the lunch of other companies, or make all of DnD easier to play in general to capture a broader audience.

So they released 4th edition! We don’t talk about 4th edition. And then they quickly released 5th edition (and a few mumbled apologies), which streamlined a lot of things about the game to the extent I’m not sure why they even let you control your character stats at all now. Skills became baked in with your level, and most of the game is about choosing abilities when you level up. It’s become very similar to playing an MMO, and I believe that’s the point.

One of the big things you always see in a complicated roleplaying system is players spending hours putting together a character. For your experienced player, this is a labor of love. You really care about the small details and want to make sure you get it right, or you’re a Win-At-All-Costs type who wants to make sure you’re rolling the biggest numbers. Either way you’re familiar and know what you’re doing, but it presents a hurdle to new players, and that hurdle has been largely done away with in 5th edition.

No matter how old you are, how experienced you are, how creative you are (or aren’t), or how much you know about any aspect of the game, you can play 5e DnD. I think you could play as young as seven years old and have minimal problems, because all you have to do is choose a job and virtually everything else is filled in for you, as if by a program, as if a video game. An experienced player can help a new one whip up a character within fifteen minutes, and that new guy will be rolling dice at the dragon about as well as everyone else.

DnD is the Worst System

But DnD’s accessibility is also its greatest downfall. Because everything is sort of programmed out, you find a lot of players eventually growing bored with the same-old, and they try to find ways to inject new life into the system. They invent new races, new classes, new abilities, and so on - they call this “homebrew”. yet many people are bad at creating balance and fairness for something they personally intend to play, and DnD recognizes this problem. It has a lot of supplemental books telling you all you need to know about other races and classes you might want to play, and in theory they are as fair and powerful as anything in the base system.

Yet no amount of homebrew or supplementary material will solve DnD’s core problem: it’s rigid. If you want to play, you need a battle mat, because every spell, every action, can travel or act within a certain number of squares and you always need to know exactly where you’re standing. Players are expected to be able to take a certain number of actions per turn based on their level, and do an expected amount of damage. Monster encounters are built loosely around the concept of “Challenge Rating”, which is meant to imply a group of four players will find a CR of 5 suitably challenging if they are all level five. Basically it plays like “X-Com”.

And as you lock people in these mechanical, video game-styled designs, you find people champing at the bit. Not everyone wants to choose their abilities at level up or have their skill proficiencies dictated by what level they are. Some people want to express truly outlandish concepts, or play something that isn’t specifically designed around the idea of walking room to room blasting monsters. You’ll see people in roleplaying communities often asking, “Does anyone have any good ideas to homebrew [this idea] and make it work?”

Fans of DnD argue the homebrew approach works. Yes, it’s complicated and frustrating to invent entirely new classes and races for a single game where you don’t know how long you’ll play or what level you’ll reach, but DnD’s strict rules and design philosophy is a perk to those people, not a drawback.

Yet a fact of note is that a quote from a game I run got into a popular “Out of Context DnD” blog. The quote was, “ Mecha-Jesus unleashes a barrage of flames from his palms, but the train-snake martially dodges out of the way!”

It received 337 notes, and I was a little surprised by that. The game is a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior setting where the team boss decided to kill God as revenge for one of the gang members dying. Also featured in that day’s session was a battle between two men operating bucket cranes in a duel to the death above a giant grain silo, among eight other equally implausible events based loosely on Dante’s Inferno. For me, Mecha-Jesus is not a 300 notes event - it’s literally every other Friday.

What Do You Want to Play?

In my view, DnD often poses the question, “Are you even roleplaying?” I mean really. A lot of players feel like they are because they do an accent and come up with a backstory, but if you set yourself next to another player who has the same character stats and you’re playing together in the same game, has the system really given you the tools to solve problems all that differently? And the answer is is broadly, no.

I understand the counter-argument. Every player is unique. But in their way each Paladin in “World of Warcraft” is unique too. They have different gear, different competencies of player, and may take different abilities, but fundamentally they’re expected to crash dungeons and use what they’re given to kill monsters. The only advantage DnD has is that the GM can allow his players to interact with scenery items or talk to things, and you’ll see debate on exactly how much leniency a GM should give his players to act outside DnD’s base mechanics.

That’s a mentality. Some people like the safety of the system. They like to know what all the monsters are, what the risks are, what the rewards are, and have it all neatly lined up where you can see it. They want to join an Adventuring Guild that will bureaucratically assign a dungeon for them to attack so they always have something to do and a sure reward for doing it. The GM went through the trouble of drawing that dungeon out, after all. DnD is extremely safe.

And then there’s the alternative. I actually learned to roleplay among theater nerds who were already big into the concept of improv and narrative. One of them used to joke, “If you think DnD is the best system for the game, you know it’s not character-driven,” because any time you’re fine with trying to build an actual human around a set of level-up choices, you’re probably not designing the strongest possible personality.

Going back to media making DnD more popular, the first televised introduction to DnD I can personally recall is an episode of “Dexter’s Lab” where they address exactly this conflict. In it, Dexter runs a game where he forces his friends to play by his rules, where he wins. When Dexter rolls poorly, he turns the dice over to a better number and declares his evil wizard “fried” the team of adventurers. Then his sister, Dee Dee, takes over, and with no knowledge of the game’s rules at all, embarks on an improvised session of pure roleplaying where the guys tell her what they do and she tells them what happens. The sheets are just guidelines for them, and if they say they can do something Dee Dee accepts it.

Dee Dee’s roleplaying is open. It’s a void, and for some people, when you look into the void it looks back. How do you control everyone when they can do anything? It requires a certain level of trust that some players have a difficult time not abusing, yet weirdly everyone I’ve ever known who would lie and cheat during a roleplaying game actually preferred DnD, and I think I know why.

Rules Can Be Broken, but the Suspension of Disbelief is Immutable

The grognards that break the rules in DnD do so because the rules are so strict that they ironically can be easily broken. If the system says people take a certain amount of damage when they fall, and you find a way to throw to them that elevation consistently, by gum they’ll damn well take that damage. It’s in the rules! A friend I know combats this by saying if his players exploit the rules, then the monsters will start exploiting them too, to discourage arms races of bullshit.

What I’m describing is often called “rules lawyering”. So named because it involves finding a rules passage, interpreting the rule so the wording sounds like it favors an exploit, and then leveraging that into a powerful ability players were not meant to have. Because DnD requires you to know absolutely everything about your relative locations and words like “Attack” can have important diverging meanings depending on context, it’s a system extremely vulnerable to lawyering.

But with a more open system based on narrative and characters, it becomes harder to lawyer something you shouldn’t. In an open system, you build what the game calls for without consulting a bunch of charts and level guides. If you’re super heroes, you build super heroes. Cyborgs are cyborgs, Orcs are orcs - it’s whatever, and if you try to do anything outside the believability of the game, the GM tells you no. He has more authority in a more narrative game because the GM leads the narrative.

I’m personally fond of the Hero System, which ascribes massive ranges to all forms of weapons (a gun or eye laser can reach you down a long hallway) so the only general questions that need to be asked are, “Are you close enough to punch a guy?” and “Are you bunched up close enough to all be hit by this grenade?” You don’t need battle mats and the games play a lot more intuitively. There are two books of rules in Hero and they can be specific, but most of the rules revolve around character design rather than how to play, and fiddly things like physics or bursting through walls are meant to be decided depending on the type of game, at the GM’s discretion. There are guidelines, but they’re only that.

So if someone tells you they can punch through a wall in your noir investigator game, you tell them no, because the rules are just guidelines and in this game you can’t just drive your fist through a concrete brick even if you can find figures in the book that say maybe you can, because the book also says maybe you can’t - you’re expected to play the narrative, not the game. You can punch through walls in the super hero game where that’s typical, but not in this one.

From DnD to Anything Else

Of course, the open systems also present an opportunity for players to be very different in skill sets and abilities. You could imagine DnD is like “Power Rangers”, where everyone’s a different color and has different weapons but they’re basically all pretty much on the same level. An open system will wind up more like “Avatar the Last Airbender”, where one player is going to be Toph and someone else is going to be playing Sokka. 

It’s important in DnD that everyone be the same, because a lot of the game is spent in a 20ft x 20ft room full of skeletons (or Putties) - Toph would single-handedly dominate every challenge. Whereas in a narrative-driven game the ability to crush everything with a rock doesn’t actually solve half your problems and whoever’s playing Sokka probably winds up more active than the person playing Toph.

At the end of it all, that’s why the question for me is whether you can take the players out of DnD and take DnD out of the players. Everyone plays DnD, but can you get people to play Sokka and have a good time if Toph is in the party? Personally I think it helps to start people on systems other than DnD, and then they can go into DnD if they like being in small rooms full of skeletons.

Of course, trying to start people on anything but DnD is usually defeated by the network utility! Everyone knows DnD! It’s THE system synonymous with the hobby! A few too many times I’ve seen people play a DnD game and say roleplaying just isn’t for them because it’s boring. All you do is wait for your turn and then roll dice at goblins.

But all I can say to that is, you never roleplayed, man. You joined a pen-and-paper video game. I agree, throwing dice at goblins sucks. I used to have a friend who would compulsively roll dice when he got bored waiting for turns in games like that, and when asked what he was rolling for, he’d joke, “I’m killing the dragon! I’m killing the dragon!” Him, enjoying the experience of DnD combat in between other people’s turns.

In many groups that’s all DnD is, silly accents and go-nowhere backstories aside. Acting is hard. But if you’re very lucky, and you know just the right people, it’s possible to land in a game that is pure story and character, and those things are a rare treasure and a real blast.

[wolfandwild]

My Shadowlands Wish List

Now that we’re getting closer and closer to pre-patch and the inevitable launch of the expansion, I thought I’d rattle off a wish list of things I hope we get to see in Shadowlands, largely from a lore/story perspective. (Or rather, my stupid foot was hurting so badly I couldn’t concentrate on writing my fic properly, so I decided to ramble off some not-so-hot takes, honestly they’re pretty mild in the grand scheme of things). I was in the first alpha wave, so I’ve had a pretty good opportunity to play the game as it is thus far, and I did want to make it clear up front that I’m fully aboard the hype train. Shadowlands is looking like a great expansion for a number of different reasons, and while I do have a few areas of concern, on the whole I am currently feeling very positive. Please also note these are just my random, late-night personal musings - your mileage may vary, and that’s a-okay.  Mild Shadowlands spoilers below the cut.

You Get A Customisation! You Get A Customisation! Everybody Gets A Customisation! This one is pretty much a no-brainer. I don’t necessarily think Blizzard need to have absolutely every possible character customisation ready to go before launch, but I’d like them to continue adding further options over time. I move in a couple of different circles in Warcraft - I’m obviously involved in the writing/lore/character aspect of the game, but I’m also GM of a raiding guild and closely follow the gameplay/competitive side of things too - and customisation is one of those few things that gets everyone excited, regardless of their reason for playing the game. I’m looking forward to seeing a much more vibrant, unique and diverse Azeroth come Shadowlands pre-patch. (Mostly irrelevant side story - when Wrathion returned in the Patch 8.3 cinematics, my Twitter and lore Discords were basically going berserk with excitement, meanwhile there’s a hundred very confused dudes in my raiding guild who don’t read quest text being all, “What the hell is a ‘Wrathion’?”. I live in two different worlds, honestly). Another reason I’m excited about customisation (and I’m probably in a very small minority on this one) is because I actually really dislike allied races, and I think it gives Blizzard an option to add more flavour to character creation in the game without always having to cobble together a new race. I honestly think they should have simply gone for sub-race customisation from the beginning, to avoid having to ass-pull allied races out of nowhere. Using customisation over allied races also makes it far simpler to give something to both factions (e.g. high elves), or to add something for one faction without necessarily having to always add something to the other faction to keep things in balance. Giving an extra hairstyle to humans but not orcs generally isn’t going to cause that much of a fuss, but if one faction were given an allied race and the other wasn’t because there wasn’t a logical racial option, there would be a shitstorm of epic proportions. So you end up in a situation where one faction* gets saddled with a really random, sucky allied race just to be ‘fair’. *The Alliance. It’s the Alliance. Leave Britney Arthas Alone Arthas has never been a personal favourite of mine, but I respect that he has a fantastic story, and that he’s a cornerstone of Warcraft lore. His story is both satisfying and complete, and that’s exactly why they should leave him the hell alone. I don’t mind if he’s visited in flashbacks (like the Bastion cinematic), or if we explore how he affected still living characters (e.g. Jaina, Sylvanas, Bolvar), but I think it would be a mistake to try to make him a central character in the expansion. In contrast, someone like Kael’thas is an excellent choice for an additional arc, because his original story was a bit all over the place and there is still plenty of room for his character development. Arthas doesn’t need it, and I don’t think the minute potential gain is worth the risk of retroactively making the rest of his story worse. On a similar note... Warcraft III Was Released Nearly 20 Years Ago, It’s Time to Move On The Warcraft RTS was a landmark series of games, and was obviously without them we wouldn’t have the World of Warcraft. However, I think the future health of Warcraft’s lore depends on the ability of the writers to grow the story outwards and upwards, not to always default back to the same handful of characters for nostalgia’s sake. While characters like Jaina, and Thrall, and Sylvanas are great, they can’t carry the narrative forever. Shadowlands represents a unique opportunity to build up the next generation of characters and to blow the cosmology of the universe wide open. From what I’ve seen on the alpha/beta, Blizzard are definitely taking a step in this direction, and I’m hoping that’s what we get instead of Patch 9.2 - Oh Look, It’s Thrall Again. On an additionally similar note... Sylvanas Is Crazy, And She Needs To Go Down (I don’t actually think she’s crazy, but one should never miss the opportunity for an Avatar reference). One of my complaints about the recent lore developments in Warcraft its that it’s starting to feel a lot less like the World of Warcraft, and more like the Sylvanas of Warcraft. She’s playing 469D chess; she’s behind everything; she’s the sole driving force of the narrative. I don’t think that works in an MMO that’s meant to tell the story of an entire expanded universe. It makes things feel small. And before I get eaten alive, I want to be clear that I don’t dislike Sylvanas as a character - in fact, I think she’s very compelling and on a night when my foot wasn’t killing me so much I’d be happy to get into an argument as to why she’s actually one of the most consistent and well-written characters in the World of Warcraft. I don’t necessarily think she needs to die, either, but I think it’s time for her narrative to come to a close to make room for other characters in the story, and I don’t think Blizzard are going to get a much better opportunity to give her a satisfying ending than in a death-themed expansion. Justice for Tyrande (Or Vengeance, Whatever Uther Wants to Call It) Tyrande got done dirty in Battle for Azeroth, probably more than any other character. I’m not a massive night elf fangirl by any means, but their entire race was basically used as grist for the mill in Sad Orc Dad’s story, with no next to no narrative follow-up besides a cool cinematic that went absolutely nowhere in game. Outside the game, her character then got subjected to the cacophonous misogynistic crowing of the fanbase that occurs whenever a female character dares to be angry in the World of Warcraft. Much like Jaina, she’s decried for being ‘crazy’ or ‘irrational’ for, you know, being pissed that her people and her homeland were wiped out in an act of wildly disproportional aggression. I don’t know about you guys, but that would tend to make me a wee bit testy, but maybe I’m crazy and irrational too. In any case, I want to see her go off in Shadowlands. Fuck ‘em up, girlfriend. You Get One Villain. If You Drop It, I’m Not Buying You Another One I think most people will agree with me that the two weakest expansions (at least from a narrative perspective) were Warlords of Draenor and Battle for Azeroth. There are a few reasons for this, but for me one of the biggest issues was that they were chop-and-change expansions. Both were advertised and started off with narratives and themes that were wildly different from where they finished up. Warlords was part Iron Horde expansion, part Legion expansion; BFA was part faction war expansion, part Old God expansion... and that’s exactly the problem. Both times, I felt like we got two half-done expansions, instead of one single, cohesive narrative experience.  If you look at expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and Legion, both of which were very well received, a lot of their success hinges on their presentation of a consistent narrative with a clear goal for players within the story. The Lich King, for example, was a consistent and very present villain. He menaced you throughout your entire journey, and so his eventual defeat on top of Icecrown Citadel was meaningful and impactful. Defeating N’Zoth, by contrast, felt pretty hollow, as we hadn’t had enough narrative build up to really care about taking him down. Part of the reason I’m excited for Shadowlands is it looks like we’re getting a nice, focused story development that builds up to a logical and satisfying villain in the Jailer. Why Can’t We Be Friends? Look, I bleed blue. I love the Alliance... but the faction war should not continue to be a driving narrative element in the World of Warcraft. I don’t want the factions to be removed, I think they’re a core part of the Warcraft experience and I’d be pretty sad to have to let them go entirely, but the cycle of hating one another then teaming up in an uneasy alliance in order to defeat a bigger bad, only to go back to being at one another’s throats the next day is... tiresome.

Ideally, the war would have ended after Legion - it was the most logical place to do so, and I think it was a big missed opportunity that they ran with Battle for Azeroth immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I think this means the Alliance is going to just have to forgive and forget, which doesn’t really make a lot sense at this point given everything that happened in BFA, but for the sake of the overall story, it might be a necessary sacrifice. That said... I Am Once Again Asking for Alliance Narrative Agency I know there are a lot of (valid) complaints to be had about the Horde storyline, but the one thing the Horde has always had over the Alliance is that they actually get to drive the narrative forward. The Alliance are pretty much exclusively reactionary, and in a lot of ways are side characters to the main Horde storyline. I’ve made this argument elsewhere, but it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to remove Anduin’s part in Saurfang’s storyline in Battle for Azeroth and have it turn out more or less exactly the same way... which says a lot about the importance of the Alliance in the overall storyline. In short, the Alliance are secondary players at best, and downright irrelevant at worst. One of my biggest hopes for Shadowlands is that we’ll actually get to see some Alliance narrative agency. To be clear, however, this does not mean a simple rehashing of Horde conflicts with a blue coat of paint. Alliance stories are not Horde stories, and nor should they be. Having an Alliance leader turn into a genocidal despot is not the only way to create conflict or agency in the story - there are plenty of opportunities for character growth, development and conflict on the Alliance side without having to have one of our leaders do a heel turn (e.g. Tyrande as the Night Warrior, Anduin dealing with his experience in the Maw, Jaina confronting the fates of people like Kael’thas and Arthas, Taelia meeting her father, etc.), and I really hope we get to see some of those narrative threads come to fruition. I Want to Mount Everything Add a hundred new mounts. Two hundred. A pot plant with googly eyes, the four hundredth Alliance horse, your mum. I’ll ride anything; I don’t even care. (Please note this is the most important opinion I have).

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #shadowlands spoilers #battle for azeroth #lore #turns out i had a few more opinions than i originally realised #anyway shadowlands looks cool guys y'all should check it out #but i would always rather have some warcraft than no warcraft #so take that how you will

[hempgaming712]

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[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

#In This Essay I Will but for real this time #but hell if that's stopped me before #ff7 remake #blatant speculation #ff7 remake spoilers #ff7 spoilers #ff13 spoilers #ff15 spoilers #I dip into spoiler territory on more but these ones get a deeper dive #also if any of y'all know how to get images screen-read-able please lemme know #the screenshots are to point out that the game itself does do these things #but I don't wanna content-lock anybody out of my bad garbage #also also if the wordcount didn't clue you in: #long post #posting this right now immediately listening