#(which is actually also a factor as to why i started watching this playthrough of jsr so that i can calm down a bit haha)

[willemdafinky]

I have completed Spider-Man 2 twice now and I have very conflicting feelings on the game’s story, mostly towards its Venom/Symbiote storyline. On my first playthrough my problem was how little screen time and characterization Venom had in the story despite all the build up and prioritizing him over anything else and while I still have a problem with that aspect of the story, upon my second playthrough I realized that my real biggest issue with the narrative is Peter’s time in the black suit and being corrupted by the Symbiote. I felt it was rushed and forced but I didn’t have any deeper and meaningful critiques of it…that is until I looked back on other adaptations of the Black Suit storyline and a review of Spider-Man 2 by Youtuber Dorito God which I recommend watching that made it click as to why Peter and the Black Suit doesn’t work.

Insomniac's Peter Parker is the nicest version of the character.

An aspect of Peter Parker that I feel has been downplayed in many adaptations is that he was, at many points, a jerk. He had an incredibly short temper, tends to be cocky for the worst, and outright selfish at points. This does not inherently mean he was unlikable, I actually believe this makes him more interesting and even sympathetic. His negative traits aren’t there just because but are present of numerous factors, most of them because of his double life as Spider-Man. The sheer responsibility that is required of being Spider-Man would naturally cause high level of stress which as we all know can easily lead into losing your cool: not to mention other elements such as J Jonah Jameson’s constant slander of his name which influenced his public perception amongst New York, the grief and guilt of losing loved ones such as Uncle Ben, his struggles of keeping good relationships due to wanting to keep his identity a secret out of fear of his loved ones getting hurt, and how this all started when he was 16 it is completely understandable that Peter can be frankly a jerk.

I don’t think Peter Parker’s defining characteristic is a jerkass who underneath is a good person but I feel that his jerkiness is an important factor of the character that doesn’t get much attention in adaptations outside of Peter B Parker in the Spider-Verse movies. That being said, I would be arguing in bad faith if I said this has been completely left out of Spider-Man adaptations: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man duology, and even the MCU have this aspect of Peter’s personality intact. In the Raimi Trilogy Peter is shown to be a very flawed boyfriend to Mary Jane with Spider-Man 3 being the most prominent example where he just doesn’t understand Mary Jane’s own struggles and subconsciously brushes them off not just because of his own struggles but also from the outright celebration he is getting from New York as Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man duology gave Peter a new motivation for becoming Spider-Man as originally purely being revenge only to later take up the role of hero, not to mention also breaking a dying man’s promise of staying away from Gwen. The MCU had Peter initially refuse to help Norman and the other inter dimensional visitors despite the fact that it was his fault they were brought to the MCU and it’s only because of Aunt May that he does try to help.

Now, I have to ask a question: can you honestly name a scene with Insomniac’s Peter where he has any of these traits? I genuinely can’t think of one. Spider-Man 2 tries with the boss fight against Scream where while under the Symbiote, Mary Jane tells Peter how much he made her feel like she was nothing more than emotional support for his struggles while not doing anything for her and I don’t think that lines up with how Peter was written in the game. Peter is very supportive of Mary Jane throughout the story for her job and does listen to her when she vents about it so this interaction where the story suggests otherwise in the Scream boss fight doesn’t work for me. Peter in these games is just a really nice guy, does this mean he doesn’t have moments where he crosses his limit? No of course not, the climax against Otto disproves but that’s more of an example of the “pissing off the good guy is a bad move” trope than Peter’s more abrasive side. I don’t think this inherently means that Insomniac Peter is a bad character, I very much liked him in the first game and Miles Morales after and one of my other favorite versions of the character is the one from the 90s cartoon who is also a kinder interpretation of Peter Parker. So what is my problem?

I don’t think this overly nice version of Peter Parker works with the Black Suit story. Ever since the 90s cartoon, every version of the Black Suit story has the Symbiote amplifies Peter’s more negatives traits (most notably his temper) and we’ve established that Peter doesn’t have of any these traits so seeing him lash out at other characters and being more aggressive feels extremely out of character and not in the way that I think the writers intended.

Okay so, the amplification of negative emotions doesn’t work but maybe they went through a different approach. Maybe in this version the Symbiote instead brings out the host’s intrusive thoughts and inner frustrations, like they did with Mary Jane. The story suggests this: first in the Spider-Men fight where Peter hints that he has a sense of insecurity in his role as Spider-Man because of how good Miles is in the role, that he might not be needed anymore and how the Symbiote is the only way he could keep and be greater. Second when Miles and Martin Li go into Peter’s subconscious it is outward stated that Peter supposedly may secretly want to kill his foes just so he could end the cycle, which the Symbiote feeds on. This all sounds great, what’s the problem?

Neither of these are even hinted at beforehand. Peter never shows any resentment towards Miles, not helped by how little screen presence Miles has in the story but that’s its own can of worms, and there is nothing to suggest that Peter even entertained the idea of defeating his rogues gallery permanently. So there is nothing in this story that gives any reason as to why Peter acts the way he does while under the Symbiote. Now this might sound weird for me to say since “isn’t that what the Symbiote does” but hear me out:

Harry does not act anywhere similar to Peter when he is using the Symbiote. His personality is the same which gives the idea that perhaps in this continuity the Symbiote might not have the same negative energy it does in most adaptations and is more like in the original comics where its only negative thing is that it takes control over the host while they’re asleep. But I don’t think that was ever the intention, it always felt like that the Symbiote is supposed to be what it usually is in most adaptations. So why was Peter affected by it but Harry wasn't?

There’s also the problem that Peter himself never has the big moment of realizing what the Symbiote is doing to him, he doesn’t have his own self reflection. Compare to other adaptations:

•The 90s cartoon: He almost kills Shocker after the latter had already given up and even after he stops, the Symbiote still tries to kill Shocker.

•Spider-Man 3: Him slapping Mary Jane is the moment where Peter finally sees that he had changed for the worst.

•The Spectacular Spider-Man: Getting called out by Flash Thompson for how he’s been treating his friend is what plants the doubts in Peter’s head that something might be wrong with the Symbiote which only gets confirmed when it tries to convince him that they don’t need anyone.

In Spider-Man 2, we don’t get that. I don’t consider Miles telling Peter that the Symbiote is changing him to be a moment of self realization, it doesn’t work for me. I never got the idea that in this game Peter did something so awful, an action that he wouldn’t act out doing, that would break him free from the hold the Symbiote hivemind has on him and to be better. I don’t get that.

Combine all that and you have what has ended up being one of my least favorite versions of the Black Suit storyline, even more than Spider-Man 3. Note that I hate Spider-Man 3, it’s my least favorite of the Spider-Man movies not counting the Sonyverse movies, but with that I can see how it could work with that version of Peter. Spider-Man 2’s version of the story doesn’t work fundamentally to me because of their Peter unless you change Peter’s characterization, the narrative or how the Symbiote works.

#spider-man #peter parker #venom symbiote #spider man 2 #spider man 2 ps5 #insomniac spider man #insomniac Spider-Man 2 #critique #rant #both are good

[gravityfalls-amirite]

Started watching a playthrough of jet set radio because boredom and wanted to understand why everyone keeps taking about the music. And while I was pleasantly surprised to unlock a memory that I actually played a bit of this game as a kid without realizing (played it at an older cousins house but found the game too hard at the time and never played it again haha) and that the music indeed slaps, I still don't understand the professor k/dj dude

Like, I have at least a half hour left of this vid so I'm well aware this guy is supposed to be a narrator for the players to guide the story and all but... I dunno, he doesn't make sense to me in the sense of why he's doing the broadcasts in the first place as well as why he's gotta be yelling 'JET SET RAAadiOOOOOO!!!!' at any given moment. Like I thought you were a guerrilla radio station and were supposed to be kinda on the hush-hush instead of letting your neighbours know you're doing a thing in your basement but then again, he also has those blaring speakers so.... idk XD

#oh but don't get me wrong i actually love the dude and his yelling but yeah... i'm having a bit of a hard time understanding him XD #also #other dude who doesn't make sense to me is officer onishima because oh my god??? #talk about excessive with for teens skating around and spraying graffiti lmao #then dude has just disappears from the game #which is cool #only to be replaced with other assassin dudes... #who are helping some other evil dude to summon some demon??? like wtf #man all the adults in the game need to chill haha #hopefully by the end of the game these things will make better sense to me by the end ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #but it is an early 2000s game so who knows what might come out of this based on other games from this era lmao~ #also in random other news #i accidentally started a slight hyperfixation on the p*rapp/ a/ games #(<-rip i had to censor because this post ended up in the main tags like i feared ahhhhh im sorryyyy) #(which is actually also a factor as to why i started watching this playthrough of jsr so that i can calm down a bit haha) #and im trying sooo hard not to bombard people with it here/make the hyperfixation worse by indulging in it too much #but yeah the games are fun and i wish thy were longer but also the puppy is so pure and cute and i hope for the absolute best for him #oh and of course all the music in that game is a bop #that will be all lol #(oh geeze i typed too much in the tags but i hope it's far enough that this doesn't show up in the tags and bother jsr & ptr peeps ^^;)

[sir-silly]

TWDG S2 First Playthrough

E1 - Omid’s death is always such a bitchslap. It’s so stupid. Literally, why did they send her in there on her own? Are you kidding me? It’s ridiculous. Omid didn’t have to die. 16 months later?? What??? It would have made way more sense to have made the DLC about those sixteen months and then start at Christa’s camp with no baby or Omid instead of what we got instead. Bull. AND WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO CHRISTA.

I think out of the entirety of season 2, Clementine and Luke’s relationship in the first three episodes is my favorite. He becomes an alien after episode two, but he becomes intolerable after three. He’s just such a big brother to her and knows that she can take care of herself. Their relationship is similar to what I think Clem and Ben’s would have been if they ended up alone together after season 1.

I stole Nick’s watch, I’m not sure if I’ll give it back yet just because I think it’s hilarious that you can take it and not give it to him. Speaking of Nick, he 110% sees you when you look through the kitchen door if you never back out and he doesn’t say anything. I decided to go with Pete at the end just because I’ve never seen it played out before.

E2 - Well, ironically enough I prefer going with Nick. The first few times I saw it, I hated it, but it’s really grown on me throughout the years. Pete’s just didn’t feel as emotional or like it had much of an affect on Clementine. I also prefer him telling her about his mom in that shed rather than later on.

Another thing I love about Luke and Clem’s relationship, even though he knows she can take care of herself, he still tries to protect her. He holds his arm out in front of her when Matthew is approaching them on the bridge and is the one that pulls her down to keep her from getting shot. The banter they have is just really sweet and I miss that dynamic between them, I wish it carried throughout the rest of the season.

I was thinking about a missed opportunity the writer’s had while I was playing. Instead of having Walter die no matter what and Nick either die in episode two or four, whether you tell him the truth and/or convince him to forgive Nick should have a different outcome. Only one of them makes it to Howe’s depending on what you decided. You couldn’t convince Walter to forgive him? Nick goes out of his way to save Walter and Carver kills him. You told him Nick was a good guy? Walter sacrifices himself for Nick and gets killed instead. It would give a bigger variety and it would be really interesting to see how Walter would deal with being at Howe’s.

E3 - Troy makes me so uncomfortable. I know they were planning to have him do a lot worse, but he’s still just so ugh, you know? I’m physically incapable of liking Bonnie the more I see season 2. I just know that literally everything is because of her. She finds the group at the ski lodge, she blames Clementine for Luke’s death if she shoots the walkers LIKE HE ASKED, and she’s fully prepared to fucking leave her with a couple maniacs and a baby. Just her presence pisses me off.

I know I’m talking a lot about Clem and Luke, but I don’t care because I just love their relationship before he becomes an alien. I had her hug him which was really cute but I also want to see his reaction if she hits him which I think I’ll do next time. I know he pushes her to do things like every adult in this season, but he still actually seems to worry about her because he is hesitant about sending her to turn on the PA and he stands up to Carver when he says that Clem has seen more things than they could imagine.

E4 - I had no clue what I was going to do with Sarita, but I did end up chopping off her arm. I will forever hate how the adults are like "Kenny's being so scary, he's yelling, I thought he was gonna shoot me" and then they force Clem to go over there even if she says she doesn't want to.

I didn't know this until I looked it up just now, but apparently Nick died from a bite on the neck? This whole time, I thought he somehow just bled out from the gunshot to his shoulder, and I honestly don't know which is worse. His death is such bullshit. You know what else is bullshit? Alien Luke. Literally Rebecca shows more emotion than he does, and it was for all of 2 damn seconds. You know what I would have preferred?

Have Luke start breaking down. Make him just as unable to move as Sarah. Let him lose his mind over the fact that he just lost his best friend of "damn near 20 years" and make us decide whether we convince Luke or Sarah to escape. It's not convince Sarah or leave her, it's you can only save one of them. Again, more variety for those who aren't a fan of Luke and actually make it a hard decision because I feel like I would have a WAY harder time with that than whether to leave Sarah (I didn't by the way).

When Clem looks at the cannon and Jane says, "check the muzzle, napoleon" I really wish there was an option to be like, "Jane, I have a first grade education. I don't know my times tables, who the hell napoleon is, or what the fuck versatility means OR how to spell it. Keep yo damn nail file."

Another thing they could have done with Sarah, is if you saved her in the trailer park, she could have potentially saved herself. And this would be a really interesting one, because the determining factor would have been a thing that appeared as a dialogue option, not a choice choice. In episode two, you can teach her how to use a gun if you pick the right choice. Instead of having her die no matter what, if you showed her, let her actually show that she learned something and is capable of learning how to survive.

Rebecca’s whole situation is bullshit, too. You know, I’d be okay with it if it was changed. If you didn’t give her the pills, the coat and you left the observation deck early, I could buy her dying from hypothermia, exposure, blood loss, etc. But if you give her those things and you stay a few days, I would rather her have died in the firefight. It would have made way more sense. Like, I know a hell of a lot of things can go wrong during giving birth, especially without medical care, but after THREE damn days? I don’t know about that. Whatever you wanna say it was, a placental abruption, hemorrhaging, whatever - she would have died way quicker, not taken three days.

E5 - The writers had two good opportunities to get a chance to kill Kenny before the rest stop was ever a thing. They could have made Natasha go for him and you have the choice of shooting her or not. The could have been done later on when they’re walking through the woods and one comes up behind him. So, say you don’t let him get bitten the first time, but you’re seeing how unhinged he’s becoming, so you let it happen the second time. After that, you don’t get another opportunity.

Another thing about the pills, they’re so annoying. Like, you can only give them to one person. Rebecca, Luke or I think maybe Kenny. Because apparently there were only two damn pills in that bottle that shook like it was full. It’s so annoying. You should be able to give it to whoever you want, not just one of them.

I have so many problems with the ice scene. Yes, Luke, there are in fact TWO ways around. You see those trees? There’s these things called GAPS between them and the lake isn’t so damn big that you couldn’t walk around the damn lake. GRRRRR. When the ice started cracking, where were the choices to tell Luke to throw his gun away from him and to tell Bonnie to keep her fat ass put? “The small child is light, let them do it!” small child: no “Guess I’m just as light as her!” FUCK YOU BONNIE! THEN YOU HAVE THE FUCKING AUDACITY TO BLAME CLEMENTINE WHEN IT WAS CLEARLY YOUR FUCKING FAULT! YOU LITTLE WHORE ASS BITCH-

Sorry. I’m never going to get over Luke’s death or how fucking pissed I am at Bonnie and Mike. They can get fucked for all I care. Can I say, it’s also BULLSHIT that Bonnie makes it out of the ice but Luke doesn’t. Are you kidding me? She can find the hole, but he can’t (😳)?! GRRRR.

I was dreading that rest stop this whole damn game. I had no fucking clue what I was going to do when I finally got there, but I did end up deciding to shoot Kenny and leave Jane behind. I really struggled with deciding and I almost ended up not picking anything (which results in Jane’s death anyway). As much as I despise season 2 Kenny, I also despise Jane for what she did. I kinda wish I had looked away and then shot Kenny afterwards, but it is what it is.

#twdg #the walking dead #the walking dead game #telltale #telltale games #skybound #skybound entertainment #the walking dead telltale #the walking dead telltale games #twdg s2 #twdg season 2 #twdg season two #twdg 400 days #twdg clem #twdg clementine #twdg omid #twdg christa #twdg luke #twdg nick #twdg ben #twdg pete #all that remains #a house divided #in harm's way #amid the ruins #no going back #twdg all that remains #twdg a house divided #twdg in harm's way #twdg amid the ruins

[fragmentwitch]

Posting this because it's been sitting in my drafts and we're on Tatariakashi-hen so I wanna get ahead and just repost what I had up on reddit with more coherence.

spoilers for Gou and Saikoroshihen below.

In the post-Matsuribayashi world, the last time we see our kids is Rika and friends in a minivan going to Angel Mort where Shion is waiting. Satoko asks for them to go ahead without her; which seems odd because how else is she going to Okinomiya? I can presume that she either asks Irie for a ride or uses the Hinamizawa bus stop though.

But she wandered into the ritual tool storehouse and found a horn that fell out of the Oyashiro statue that presumably is Eua's vessel. And then things kick off with Satoko's descent into hell.

So this might just be me but while watching Sotsu, I have been getting HUGE Saikoroshi vibes from Satoko's Looper journey because we don't explicitly see her die on-screen when Eua uses her magic. And I want to approach this narrative divorced from Umineko since I'm still a fencesitter about how much is canonly tied to Umineko and not just "haha hidden easter egg go brrrr".

It's possible I read a mistranslated version because I watched a youtube playthrough that sometimes had errors in grammar, but Hanyuu put Rika in a similar situation in order to 'purge Rika of her sins', which presumably has to be the Frederica Bernkastel persona or Dark Rika. Hanyuu deliberately orchestrated every parameter of that dream (I know Rika says it definitely wasn't, but it ended up as nothing more than that due to her decision) and purposely excluded herself from that world so Rika would be forced to make a choice on her own; either return to 'her' miracle world that was stained by sins through committing a sin of her own, or make the best of an unfamiliar sinless world. If she chose the sinless world (which I believe was the choice she made before Hanyuu made her think she actually killed her mother to return... feel free to correct me) she would sin by allowing a world where everybody worked so hard to achieve dissolve into oblivion and become nothing more than a dream. Choosing her world would require an act of Matricide since she had failed to value her parents in the times she was able to go back that far. Regardless of her feelings, she didn't have much certainty because it would be the last loop. And she didn't really learn to value how precious life is until then; in the grand scheme of things, many people died in unfortunate accidents like that all the time and wouldn't have a goddess to put them in the next world in hopes of a better ending.

Technically she didn't ask to become a Looper but Satoko is given these choices but things are switched: either she makes the best of her sinless world (Matsuribayashi is really a world cleansed of sins) and accepts the painful parts of that reality, or she stains these new worlds with sins to create her certain perfect world. Without Hanyuu there is no real Hinamizawa Syndrome and each loop Satoko did always started off after Takano's defeat.

It's a choice she makes with almost complete self-awareness aside from her dismissing every world she destroys as simply a dream.

To get a miracle world, Rika was tasked with preventing any more sins from taking place while Satoko has to taint any number of sinless fragments for an indeterminate amount of loops (or until Rika gives up). I think it's deliberate that we haven't been given any on screen hints that Saikoroshi ever happened so far, because it comes right after Matsuribayashi.

And for what Eua has chosen to tell Satoko, she hasn't indicated at all so far if she also sent Rika back in time with the others. From the chandelier scene on, I have had a gut feeling that she's actually been chasing after the wrong Rika this whole time. Eua never said she also sent Matsuribayashi Rika back into the endless June (or rewinded back time... she most likely jumped fragments), and that would explain why Hanyuu is just a husk; the original one went to sleep in the prime world where the club are all on their way to angel mort with 'our' Rika. This Hanyuu could either be Eua's creation or a remnant from all the times Rika has transferred her consciousness into a new world and taken that Hanyuu's place.

Satoko might wake up from what was a terrible nightmare, and she comes clean to Rika about everything bottled up inside and they actually resolve things without anger or violence. Thus purging the sins she accrued (even if she doesnt do them in reality, they are a malevolent manifestation borne from her emotional turmoil levied at Rika).

Or she might not. Depends on whether you pick 'fantasy' or 'reality'. Suppose this isn't all a hellish nightmare Satoko is having.

In Tataridamashi, it really did seem for a second that both anime AND manga, Satoko contemplated staying in that fragment but only because she chose Keiichi. She calls him Nii-nii, blushing, even wearing an outfit just for him. She stopped clinging to Rika just like she stopped clinging to Satoshi and jumped for Keiichi. Her Prince on a White Horse.

Except I think she realized this alternative happiness far too late into the fragment. Satoko controls who gets the Syndrome but not how it affects them or who they kill specifically.

Judging from the sound of bells and Teppei's glowing red eyes, I'm pretty sure by now Ryukishi lied about Ooishi "naturally" going L5 and attacking the festivalgoers. I think Satoko injected Ooishi, perhaps another one of her experimentation ideas (TAKANO JUNIOR). Satoko was so focused on resetting loops to trap Rika that she never considered the possibility of any external factor changing her mind.

Keiichi's efforts to save her from Teppei (despite her faking it most likely) made her realize she had deceived her friends' trust due to seeing the previous fragments. Keiichi promises to never abandon his friends. Satoko, just this once, lets her heart open up to those words. Except... she can't have a truly perfect ending because things have progressed past the point of return. Satoko never bothered to protect anybody but this time, just like Mion, she decided to spare Keiichi.

The only way to do it is lock him inside the house, and keep the lights off so nobody thinks someone is in there. I don't think she intended to kill Keiichi, especially didn't expect Teppei to come out and nearly kill him. She looked genuinely shocked.

Which says to me that Eua did it. Satoko's seemingly abandoning her original goal that prefaced granting her Looper abilities. She promised all her friends that once Rika was convinced to stay in Hinamizawa, they'd all have a perfect world. So by choosing to spare only Keiichi and letting the rest die in collateral damage, she's betraying them and forsaken them and the original goal.

I doubt Eua has any morals, but if she's the ruler of these fragments and not Hanyuu, having her miko run around disobeying continuity is going to be troublesome to deal with. (Notice that Eua places great emphasis on Hinamizawa Syndrome being real and Rika being a Queen carrier) She might have a hand in driving Satoko's will to break down and culminate into the gutting scene.

#higurashi gou #higurashi sotsu

[cosmiciaria]

Assassin’s Creed Unity Review/honest thoughts/discussion - SPOILERS (long post)

So I decided to finally settle on a proper review – although this one is going to be more of what here in Argentina we call a "sincericidio": basically I will spit my guts out and cry in one corner, while being completely honest about my feelings. I will try to keep most spoilers at bay, like I always do, but there's just one thing I cannot not talk about which is THE spoiler so – I want you to be considered warned.

Before I start, I should state, since this is my review and reviews are quite personal actually, why this game is so important to me and why I wanted to play it so bad. There's a combination of factors, and obviously this game isn't going to strike the same chords with everyone, so bear in mind that this is strictly subjective and, right now, personal.

First factor and I think the most important one: I like writing. Wait, don't leave the review just yet. I like writing and creating characters. I have many. Lately I've been revisiting a character that had a very sad backstory and added quite long happy ending for him. I made him fall in love again. He's black haired, wears a short pony tail… his new love interest is a redhead with wavy hair… ok, you get me now, don't you? And what's worse, is that their story takes place in a fictional world that resembles quite much Europe of 1800's. So clothes and ballrooms and palaces and big, fluffy dresses are a thing in this story of mine. I think that, if you've ever created a character, to find another fictional, similar character in any medium is going to draw your attention to that product right away. It did happen to me with Cal Kestis from SW Jedi: Fallen Order, I have another redhead baby boy that needs to be protected at all costs. It's a way for us to 'see', let's say, or imagine our characters being brought to life.

Second factor: I love Paris. I visited Versailles and Paris back in late 2018, and I went there with zero expectations, only to fall in love with France. I love the Château de Versailles. I love palaces. I love the Seine. I love the Louvre. I love it. All of it. If I could, I'd live there. Sadly, I'm poor and speak little to no French at all.

Third Factor: I'm learning French! I dream with the day I can speak like five languages as well as I speak English (I studied it for ten years so… it kinda makes sense that I feel comfortable with it). I'm still struggling with French, but I will get there someday. I will. Because I love it. I love the language. Oui.

Fourth factor: I also really really, really like the French Revolution, and I've never, much to my surprise, watched or played any series, videogame, movie or anything that takes place in such a context (if you have recommendations, please drop them right away!). And I say "to my surprise" because I really like that part of History! So, to live in almost first person how the French Revolution unfolded – to hear the chansons and to see people gathered in crowds at every corner, listening to a liberty preacher wielding the French flag – that was glorious.

Fifth and yeah we're done: I love Les Misérables. I know it happens way later than the French Revolution, but since this musical (and the 2012 movie) became my 'home', I can't help but feel a stronger connection with everything I said above. I can watch that movie over and over and I will still sing Empty chairs and empty tables with tears in my eyes, despite its flaws.

I had like every reason to play this game. And it paid off.

Before plunging into it, I did read the novelization. Sadly, it was only to satisfy my soon-to-be-fulfilled obsession with the game, since I don't think the quality of the narration was, uhm, that good – it felt like you needed to have played the game before reading it. And I get it, it's a videogame adaptation, that's fine, but when you look at it as standalone book, it doesn't stand alone that good. What disappointed me, though, wasn't the narration, which was what I totally expected it to be, nor the dialogues or the ending – it was Élise. I was bit weary about this because she came across as completely different character than what I had in mind about her, and I didn't like her. At all. In the book, at least. I didn't like her because she had a few comments and took some decisions that made her look like she was stupid and/or selfish. I can understand the selfish part; I do not want to even believe that she's stupid. So that's why the book was a bit of a letdown for me. I recommend it, though, if you're a fan, because there's a book exclusive character that really gets the plot moving and he's endearing: Mr. Weatherall. Oh, what a man.

Now, regarding the game itself – it shouldn't come as a surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I've stated in another post, this game is barely an Assassin's Creed, since you delve like zero into the AC lore, and it's just an excuse for your character – Arno – to know parkour. Which in fact he knows before becoming an assassin, so it begs the question, why is this game even in this franchise? I digress. It's an AC game at the end of the day and that won't change.

But do not jump into this game expecting it be your average AC story. I firmly believe that the creators wanted to convey a different story here. For starters, Arno is no hero. Arno doesn't want to save the world. Arno doesn't care about any artifact or magic or creed. Arno only wants to discover who's the man behind De La Serre's death. That's his main driving force. And behind that, there's this undeniable and yet quite destructive feeling that pulls him forward: Élise.

Élise and Arno's relationship goes deeper into this story than it's noticeable at first glance. When you look back upon the plot, you discover that without their love 'subplot', there's no plot at all. If I may be so bold, I would even argue that Arno's story is a tragic love story. All the assassin's lore, all the betrayals, the first few assassinations, it all falls back into the background when Élise returns to the stage almost halfway through the game. And even though they only share like one kiss or two during the 40 hours of gameplay, there's still this latent, persistent motivation behind each of Arno's actions, that he wouldn't be doing what he's doing if it wasn't for Élise.

And it all comes down to that one line: What I wanted was you.

I cannot stress enough how much I loved all of the drunkard memory of Versailles. I think it embodies Arno's perfect character development. The constant rain and the bluish filter on every framerate added to the overall depressing atmosphere. I felt miserable while playing those quests, and the moment he steps out into the entrance of the Château de Versailles and reflects on his past decisions – decisions that have been stolen from him, because he could never defend himself nor change the course of actions on his own accord – that exact moment that he sits down and cries, I cried too.

Because all the game, all the memories, all the dialogues go in a crescendo only to crumble into this abyss. And this, in turn, creates a fleshed-out character, with a believable development, believable feelings, believable motivations. I can feel for Arno, I can understand him, I pity him, and I want to hug him. The whole game reaches its peak in its main character's worst moment: when he realizes that he's screwed everything up.

And not always do we get a story where the main character doesn't win. He just doesn't. Underneath its revolutionary streets, this story reeks of inexorability and fatality. You know it, you know it in the back of your head, but you push that thought apart because you want to enjoy jumping over rooftops and finding the best strategy to kill that man. There's this underlying, looming melancholy in every memory that you play in, and that's why the end doesn't surprise us.

It makes us cry, of course, but it didn't come as a surprise at all. If you're shocked about the end, then you haven't been paying enough attention to Élise's dialogues, to the tone of the story, to her letters, to where this plot was going. Because, like I said, the story is about Arno and Élise's relationship, it isn't about defeating the bad guy. And there was only one way that story could end.

*cries in French*

*Je pleure beaucoup*

I know the game has been panned by players for its performance. And being the 2020 year of our lord, I cannot say I reject those allegations, since it's been 6 years since the game was released. I hope enough patches were implemented to salvage the bugs. I only came across one bug in my entire playthrough which bothered me a little: some NPC's would sometimes pop into cutscenes and phase through the characters like nothing. At first it was funny, but then towards the end it happened two more times, in important cutscenes with our lovely couple, which kinda destroyed all immersion, if you know what I mean. The rest was fine: it never crashed on me, I didn't encounter the infamous, horrendous bug that unleashed memes in internet, never a T-pose or something that rendered the game unplayable – nothing, only that funny bug I mentioned. I did see the drop in framerates, specially in very crowded areas – but to be honest I never saw a game with so many NPC's together in the same place, like, hundreds of them, each with unique animations and varied models. I only come from playing Syndicate, and even there the number of NPC's was lower. Here is jarringly unreal, I didn't know the French Revolution was THIS jam-packed with people!

On a graphical department, this 2014 game still holds up. Very well. I think it even looks better in some scenes than some of its successors. The cutscenes were sometimes very cinematographic, with close ups, zoom outs, certain angles, with quite real lighting and shadows. I know it's not Naughty Dog and it doesn't have the whole Sony battalion behind, but damn if some of the character's expressions were really good. It didn't happen often, so when one of them had this very specific face I was like *insert surprised pikachu meme*.

I also enjoyed the music a lot. I don't know why but the one from the main menu stuck with me for a while. All of the songs have this Versailles, aristocratic tone to it which put me in the mood.

I have only one minor complaint and its entirely optional, let's say – I want to platinum this game. But I don't own PS plus, because it's, uhhh, expensive in my country (do not want to indulge in dollar exchange rates right now). And there are like two trophies only obtainable through multiplayer, which renders my trophy hunt useless. But, alas, I knew this before buying the game. I think that games shouldn't come with multiplayer trophies for the platinum. If you have to pay extra for something, it must be completely optional. And so should be the trophies related to it. It's a bit disappointing, though, because after finishing this game I want so bad to return to it, but if I can't platinum, I don't see myself coming back to it soon. Either way, I could still earn the rest of the trophies, but that would only enrage me more when the last 3% is going to be locked forever *cries again*.

All in all, my major question at the end is: why does this game receive so much hate? I guess if I came from a hardcore fan standpoint I could understand it more. If I had played all its predecessors before this one, I would also feel that the gameplay and the objectives are repetitive. That the challenges are bs. But the stealth aspect has been improved, the parkour has been redesigned and adapted, and as of now, bugs aren't a problem anymore. I want to believe that when a remaster for the PS5 comes out or, I don't know, if someone by divine grace has an epiphany in the near future regarding this game, people will change their mind on this one and will appreciate more what it wanted to be, than what they made it to be. After all, this is Arno's story. Arno's tragic love story.

Also this game is beautiful JUST LOOK AT IT LOOK AT IT!!! 

Sorry couldn’t help myself

#assassins creed unity #assassins creed #ac unity #arno x elise #arno dorian #arno victor dorian #elise de la serre #assassins #templars #review #videogame review #ubisoft #assassins creed syndicate #germain #play station 4 #rant #long post #versailles

[jadagul]

I've taken an interlude from my Final Fantasy series playthrough to replay Skies of Arcadia. I played this on the Dreamcast when it came out, and haven't touched it since; playing it again now (especially chronologically in my FF playthrough—it came out between FFIX and FFX) has been interesting. Overall it's a fun game, but it has some real weaknesses.

A big one is that the random encounters are really annoying, in a way that they haven't been in most of the FF games. Rpgs are generally driven to a large extent by random battles, and it's easy for those to become boring timesucks (at which point we talk about the game being grindy). In the FF games they haven't felt that way, but in Skies of Arcadia they definitely o.

One possible answer is just the number of random battles, but I think I'm actually getting fewer of them here than in a lot of FF games, especially the Super Nintendo ones.

That leads to a second candidate: the individual battles just take a long time. (And this is all made worse by the fact that, for reasons, I am playing on the PAL version, which is usually 5/6 the speed of the NTSC version.)

This came up a little in FFVIII and FFIX, but a lot more here: as the graphics got better and they wanted to show them off more and more, battles started just taking a long time because each individual attack has a fancy animation. And these animations take forever. Long enough that I'm actually writing this post while waiting for the animations during random battles to resolve.

(I think I argued at some point that this is why ATB worked so much better for the SNES final fantasy games than for the PSX ones: with short animations, ATB creates a new strategic regime, but with long animations it's just a turn-based system with annoying time pressure to input commands.)

But there's a third factor that I think is most important: these battles have no stakes. In most of the FF games I've been plaing, there was something happening in the random battles that I felt like I needed to keep track of. With smart play I could conserve resources, or take less damage, or something. And in most dungeons the random encounters posed a legitimate threat. They obviously weren't as dangerous as bosses, but they could still fucking kill me.

In this game, everything is just very safe. With smart play you have enough resources that attrition isn't really a thing, and very few random encounters can threaten you in any way. And that means that it's not clear what I would pay attention to the random encounters for.

I mentioned earlier that I'm writing this while waiting for random battles to play out. That definitely tells you something about how long the animations take, but it also tells you something about how much attention I have to pay. I'm not watching to see which of my characters are in danger. I'm not watching to see which abilities I have to watch for. I'm not watching to see how the damage is distributed on the enemies. I'm just deploying my attacks and killing everything.

And fundamentally, I think this points to a lack of clarity about what the random encounters are for. In the early final fantasy games, random encounters are mostly supposed to be real threats that can kill you.

Starting in V or VI, they mostly didn't expect random encounters to kill you, but they still presented real threats that required real resources to counter; the goal was to engage in attrition over the course of the dungeon. (Until late in the game, where you have sufficient ways of recharging that "attrition" doesn't really work if you have time to set up and recharge, at which point random encounters escalate to being a real threat again. This generally happens around the time you get reliable MP recharge: getting to Osmose in FFVI really changes the way dungeons run.)

But in Skies of Arcadia, none of the random encounters can really kill you unless you enter at very low power. And healing is cheap and powerful enough that you should never do that except from sheer sloppiness. So the random encounters are largely just a time sink.

And that's why I'm using them to write essays on game design, instead of paying attention to them.

#final fantasy #skies of arcadia #video games #ff

[emblemxeno]

Xander Support Science Rebuttal/Review + How Mediocre Localization Could Change A Character (1/2)

A couple of days ago I said I would do this because I haven’t watched the videos in question in a long time, and I wanted to see if I would hold the same opinions that I do now. In short, yeah, I do. (Part 2 of this Post)

The videos in question by Ghast (going by Faerghast now) can be found here: Part 1 Part 2

You’ve all most likely seen my posts and short analyses about Fates’ writing, it’s localization, and Xander as a whole. I wanted to make this rebuttal/review, not just as a way to get my differing opinion out there, but to also provide context on how translation and localization can alter a character’s interpretation with even the slightest change, and a brief summary on how Xander was supposed to be written from the get go.

TL;DR (Though I highly recommend reading the whole thing to really understand the point I am trying to make with this series of posts):

Xander’s character was altered in the localization due to a number of changes made that either replace/remove the original context of his writing, or add things that weren’t even present in the first place. The reason why I’m doing a rebuttal against these videos in the first place is because the greater community cite these videos as the correct interpretation of Xander, with there being no acknowledgement of localization being a factor of why Xander seems so inconsistent and poorly written. Further worsening the issue is Ghast’s own reading of Xander’s character, by roping him into a few select traits, and ignoring others.

Before moving on with the meat of the review, I’d like to link some things that would be useful to read/watch when they’ll be referenced in these posts:

- Analysis of the relationship between Garon and the Nohrian siblings (aka the abusive royal household)

- Xander’s Japanese supports with Camilla and Corrin. Here is a link to the localized Fates supports in order to spot differences.

-English patched playthroughs of the JP version of the game done by Linkmstr (Pre-decision   Birthright    Conquest    Revelation) as well as a link to said patch done by a team on Serenes.

-A link to the chapters of Fates, each one has a link to the script of said chapter.

(I’ll also be using quotes from Ghast in the videos, usually marked by time stamps)

Xander Summary

Xander is an intimidating figure who is seen as a stoic and unemotional Crown Prince. In actuality, he’s merely an introverted dude riddled with trauma, and is unable to express his emotions in a “normal” way. The person who’s feared by tons of people in Hoshido is the same guy who gets anxiety during public speaking (dealing with this by imagining his audience as bunnies or carrots depending on the version) and who’s greatest fear as a child was his own father (as revealed in the Boo Camp DLC).

He’s also heavily suicidal, a result of each time having to kill his enemies weighing heavily on his heart and his psyche.

While he seems to be relatively put together, all of these aforementioned factors influence his character, and the dichotomy of appealing to his duty as Crown Prince and appealing to his emotions. Moreover, it has lead him into a deep seated denial of his father’s evil actions, trying to justify or excuse the things Garon had done, a fairly common symptom of an abused child. Not only that, but it has lead him to believe that betraying Garon is synonymous with betraying his family and all of Nohr, something he finds inexcusable and outrageous, and only breaks out of this way of thinking once he witnesses Garon become truly monstrous.

And while trying to do what’s best for his people and his family are major parts of his character, they are not the only ones, and as we see in the game, they lead to him doing things that some would see as OOC, but actually are pretty reasonable if you dig deep into what makes Xander, well, Xander.

The Beginning

Unfortunately, a lot of this is lost in localization, which preferred to make him less introverted and more... observational and witty? He’s more confrontational in the localization, but only sometimes when the story needs him to be, making him look inconsistent and badly written. He tends to preach a lot more, but ends up contradicting himself through his words and actions. Almost all of these are issues added by the localized script, and either were completely different or just plain absent in the original JP script.

And the reason why this rebuttal exists, is because the videos blame the game’s writing instead of this very faulty translation, made even worse by the fact that Ghast’s channel is popular because of story/character analyses, so not mentioning how translation can affect story telling is the first glaring issue with the support science.

The first video starts with the main issue, how Fates has character’s written well in supports, but not in the main campaign. That’s the main thing with this, so I’ll save an overview for it later.

Mistranslated Support Lines

-At 2:25, Ghast talks about Support Xander, starting off with the Camilla-Xander support. The line in question that’s referenced is how Xander deliberately cultivated the image of him being stoic and seemingly uncaring. However, this isn’t true, Xander didn’t cultivate the image in the original JP support, he just ended up realizing that was how people saw him and thought it would be too much of a hassle to change it. This fits in line with how he acts later in the story, as an introverted character, he’s ultimately non-confrontational unless pushed to the limit.

-At 7:55, the Corrin support is brought up. This is the support that is the key reason why Xander is seen as two different characters between story and supports. The line where Xander said he’s now strong enough to stand up against Garon whenever he felt like it wasn’t present at all in the original JP support. Hence, continuing on with the idea that Xander is not as confrontational as he seems, and preferred to swing his sword to let out his emotions instead.

-Ghast then goes on to discuss why there’s this discrepancy between Xander in supports and story, where Xander supposedly acts out of character by fighting Corrin in chapter 2 on Garon’s orders (at 14:31):

“For this segment of the video, bear in mind what has been established about Support Xander so far. The feats that Support xander has disclosed from his past, particularly his courageousness to engage Garon in yelling fights and pre-established love for Corrin is entirely contradicted from the offset of the game...Given their (Xander and Garon’s) relationship before the game even starts, the game provides absolutely no reason why Xander would behave in such a sheepish way to his father. Where is the bravery he was talking about before? Wht did Xander hope to accomplish by striking at Corrin? Did he want to disable her? Did he intentionally want to harm her for Garon’s sake?” 

Except that’s not true. Applying what we know with Xander being non confrontational, scared to death of his father, being all too familiar with family dying around him, etc, and this scene really isn’t too out of character. But it seems so because of the lines added in the English script.

Adherence To Select Traits

-At 16:10-18:20, he goes on to claim that Xander’s reaction to Corrin choosing to fight for Hoshido is uncharacteristic and ‘stupid’ because of the former’s pre-established observational skills, doubts of Garon, and tendency to stand against his father when he disagrees with him (all of which are more exaggerated/added in the English script).

Besides the fact that Xander wasn’t written to be someone who regularly stands up to his father in the first place, the insistence that Xander remains strictly observational and pragmatic in these scenarios is the first big issue I have with these videos.

Ghast picks certain traits and latches them onto Xander without considering others that might influence the his actions; it’s true that Xander’s awareness of Corrin’s situation might have let him come to terms with the Hoshido family wanting them back, and yes they were kidnapped, BUT they were also raised as if actual siblings for over a decade, and feelings/attachment towards one's family is hard to let go of. Wanting Xander to be more accepting of Corrin’s choice of going back to Hoshido and, to him, abandon their family and everything they’ve had, just to have him continue to have his hidden awareness/familial observation be more forward completely betrays the fact that they’re still family, and Xander as a person should be allowed to have feelings and still love his sibling. 

The point that’s apparently tried to be made is for consistency’s sake, but what good is this supposed consistency when it doesn’t make sense for a family member to just accept their sibling siding with their enemy. Ghast goes on to say that he’d rather Xander say ‘I’m sorry for keeping secrets from you and I’ll follow up on those claims about Garon, but please come back’, and that’s basically what he says, but instead of trying to understand why Xander would react the way he would he instead reduces Xander’s reaction to a childish ‘Get Bent, Traitor’. 

Xander’s dedication to his family and his country aren’t mutually exclusive, at least to him. So when Corrin decides to break ties with Nohr, Xander sees it as them throwing away their family, friends, and every good memory they’ve had. Aside from the fact that Xander’s vehement defense of Garon is a result of having an abusive/destructive childhood, the shock of and surge of emotion from Corrin choosing to, from Xander’s perspective, betray everything they’ve had together is in my opinion, a perfectly fine reason for why Xander acts like he does. Ghast says this type of read of the situation is stupid, which isn’t a valid criticism and he doesn’t even go into why he believes so, and says it’s uncharacteristic, even though it really isn’t but the localization and his own insistence on having Xander adhere to a select few traits makes it seem that way.

Misplaced Criticism

-At 18:01 ”It’s alright for Xander to continue to try and persuade Corrin to rejoin Nohr, but he ought to be able to understand Corrin’s wavering loyalty. It’s hypocritical for Xander to flagrantly and ignorantly criticize Corrin for their decision and distance himself the most despite being made out to be the closest to them” 

Why? Again this ignores Xander’s own character having thoughts and feelings of his own, but also wouldn’t it make sense for the one to be closest to Corrin to be the most affected by it, and ergo the have the most negative reaction?

-Talks about the Xander line at chapter 12 at 18:28, “Xander doesn’t make connections around the circumstances regarding Corrin’s betrayal after 5 chapters” He says this makes Xander out to be someone who has no observational skills, but in regards to what? Making connections to the reasons behind Corrin’s betrayal, leading him to question and go against his father? Well, that reasoning hinges on the fact that Xander is the person who would stand up to his father in situations like these in the first place, but he isn’t. Any lines indicating such are a result of the localization adding them in.

The criticism of Xander’s observation skills doesn’t make sense. In the context of the situation, where Xander is engaging a loved family member after they betrayed the Kingdom (which to Xander is synonymous with betraying the family), why are his observational skills being brought up? The reason why he’s engaging could just be summarized as “he’s angry and hurt that Corrin would fight their family”. A completely justified reaction to what Xander has been experiencing. But instead this is ignored in favor of criticizing Xander for not having the awareness of why Corrin betrayed Nohr, and the awareness of Garon being evil. Ghast says “Story Xander is unable to catch on that his dad is going bonkers” Simply put, it’s most likely that Xander IS aware, but keeps it locked deep down due to deep seeded denial. In chapter 27, (taken from English patch of JP version) he says as much:

Garon: Just what do you know about me...?

Xander: I should be saying that to you... Just what do you know about Father…?! ...All this time, I acted like I didn’t notice. No matter what the order, I obeyed. And that, in the end, you would return to your normal self. That’s what I believed. But, now, Father is… already…

Said denial had run so far, that it took Xander seeing Garon as a literal grotesque monster for him to finally break free. 

Xander’s Way of Thinking

-At 20:05, “While it’s true that Garon is family and Corrin is seemingly betraying that family, Xander’s supports suggest that he would at least consider Corrin’s motivations before putting a sword through her'' 1) it’s not seemingly, Corrin is pretty much betraying her family by choosing one nation over the other, made worse by the fact that Nohr is synonymous with family to Xander, making this worse 2) it’s completely possible that Xander does understand Corrin’s motivations by this point, but is simply too angry and hurt by his sibling’s betrayal to care or acknowledge. “It makes it seem like Story Xander has no critical thinking skills or has lost every ounce of empathy he has that’s established in his supports” or that this is just his reaction to these events, as I previously said? It’s not Xander lacking critical thought that’s the driving point here, he believes that Corrin going against Nohr, means that they’re going against him, their family, all of the innocent people in Nohr, everything they’ve had together. 

This includes Garon, because as a result of his upbringing, he justifies any shitty action Garon does because he’s clinging to any good thing his father has done, and desperately denies that he could be evil, because ‘how could the person that raised and cared for me be as bad as my brother/sister, who threw everything our family had together in our face, says he is. I love my sibling dearly, but asking to betray my father is asking to betray my family, my country, and my people, I can’t do that’; that’s essentially Xander’s way of thinking. Extreme, yes, but people don’t always do what’s considered the right thing just because it’s the right thing. There’s a whole slew of factors I’ve already explained as to why Xander would be hard pressed to betray Garon.

---

Anyway, this is what I have for today. There will be 2 (maybe 3?) more posts in regards to the rest of my notes. I hope you enjoyed the start of this, please leave any replies and asks and reblogs on any things you liked about this and anything you think I could improve on!

#fire emblem #fire emblem fates #fire emblem if #fire emblem 14 #fe14 #xander fire emblem #marx fire emblem #fire emblem opinions

[commentaryvorg]

I think most people don't do Kaito's free time events maybe because, you already spent quite some time with him during the main game, so either people think that they don't need to know more about him or want to use the events to get to know more about other characters who don't get as much time on the spotlight. Which really fucking blows, but I can kinda understand.

I could kind of buy that reason, if it wasn't for the fact that nearly all of the LPs I've ever watched max out Maki's FTEs, or at least get pretty damn close. I'm happy that this at least is a thing - Maki is also very deserving of attention and the other character besides Kaito whose FTEs ought to be considered basically canon, because of course Shuichi would choose both of them if left to his own devices. But this means that apparently, a character already getting a large amount of attention and development in canon isn't inherently a reason for people to not consider their FTEs worthwhile. It should be abundantly apparent once Maki joins training that there's going to be plenty more of her in future training sessions, just like there has been and will be of Kaito - but in Maki's case, that doesn't stop people wanting to see even more of her in FTEs anyway.

I do, however, agree that there are some unfortunate yet kind of understandable reasons for people missing Kaito's FTEs, but I think they're a little different to what you propose.

I think part of it just comes down to Kaito's availability. For someone who's alive for every FTE chapter, Kaito has surprisingly few available slots - only twelve. (And one of those is while he's ill in chapter 3, which might possibly make people worry they won't get an event even though that's not how this game works, while another one of his in chapter 4 has him not show up on the map due to a programming oversight. Not that I've ever seen either of those things be the deciding factor to prevent someone from maxing him.) Admittedly Maki only has one more slot than that - but all of hers come after she's come into narrative focus and shown herself to be an interesting and important character, and nearly half of them happen to be when there's very few other options available. Meanwhile, a third of Kaito's possible slots are before the training session that should (SHOULD) cement him as one of the most important and likeable characters, and also happen to be when there's the maximum number of other characters alive that people might also be interested in.

So, maybe it's reasonable that it's so rare for people to focus on Kaito in chapter 2 when that'd mostly be out of personal taste in character types and not narrative importance yet (though there really should still be more people interested in Kaito just for that reason and I'm definitely not at all biased to think this). And then, by the time they get a proper chance to be able to focus on him after realising how important he is (which is totally a thing everyone does, right, cough cough I wish), it's chapter 4 and they're also probably wanting to focus on Maki, too. I remember one LPer who was at the start of chapter 4's free time, about equally interested in both Maki and Kaito with one FTE done so far for each, so he decided to pick one of them to focus on for chapter 4 in order to definitely at least finish that one... and he picked Maki. If he'd picked Kaito first, he'd have had time to finish Maki as well, if only he'd known!

I think this might have to do with the fact that the knowledge of Kaito's illness probably makes it seem like his potential death is going to be related to that, and therefore he's most likely safe as far as chapter 4 goes. And if anyone assumes that Kaito will still be around in chapter 5, they're never going to predict that he won't be available to hang out in it anyway. I've seen a lot of LPers reach chapter 5 with Maki maxed and lament that they would want to hang out with Kaito next out of everyone remaining, if only they could. Which is frustrating, but I get it. I absolutely wouldn't want the game's writers to have forced Kaito to be available in chapter 5 just for the sake of making him easier to max out, because that'd completely go against the place his character arc is in at that point, and that's way more important than his FTEs.

But another big contributing factor to people choosing Maki over Kaito in chapter 4 if they were considering both might just be that people will be inclined to think that Kaito is a less interesting character than Maki, even though this isn't actually remotely true. Maki after all has a big obvious Tragic Backstory that people would want to learn more about, whereas Kaito... never talks about his issues at all, making it far too easy for people to overlook the fact that he has them. Still, it should be perfectly possible to notice that Kaito has at least some kind of issues by chapter 4, what with the whole lying about dying thing! Which... is admittedly not something one would expect to get expanded on by his FTEs in particular (even though they definitely do help explore that more than a first time player would likely notice), so, I guess I kind of get it. I hope that's the reason people pick Maki over Kaito in that situation if they do, rather than just thinking Kaito isn't interesting at all. (Though I'm still not remotely convinced it is as much as it should be.)

It's still sad, though! It still shouldn't be so ridiculously unheard of for people to hang out with him more than maybe once or twice. Even if you're not necessarily expecting any deep issues from Kaito's FTEs, he's such a likeable person who's fun to be around and just watch be Kaito, and that alone should be more than enough reason for at least a reasonable fraction of players to want to spend more time with him and learn some more about what makes him so very Kaito. Like I mentioned in my response to the previous ask, even without his issues, Kaito is still a really interesting person on the surface anyway, in such a way that people should want to find out more about it - and his FTEs do expand on some of that!

It's like... I've also not seen even a single LP that ever maxed Gonta's FTEs (I think I've only seen one even hang out with him at all?) despite the fact that basically everyone generally loves Gonta and agrees that he is pure and precious and good and is heartbroken by trial 4. That should make at least some people want to spend more time watching Gonta make a friend and be his usual lovely gentleman self and maybe talk about why the gentleman thing is so important to him, even if they're not necessarily expecting any particularly groundbreaking new insights into his character, no? But they don’t and I am sad about it. Gonta is good and deserves an actually healthy friendship. (And, Gonta's character aside, I'd also be really interested to see what an LPer who is familiar with Chrono Trigger and/or Street Fighter makes of Gonta's second FTE, during a blind playthrough and not in the postgame, before they know the twist.)

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #reply #thanks for the thoughts and for relating to my frustration over this! #Anonymous

[mdhwrites]

Jumbled Thoughts: The performance art of violence and why streamers seem to tend towards renegade playthroughs.

So, I am not an expert in this. Just want to get that out of the way. These are just my thoughts as I see them both from a viewer standpoint, performer standpoint and, weirdly enough, a story telling standpoint.

So first, the viewer standpoint. I am admittedly not one who likes to see the full renegade. The one to murder everyone. I also SUPER hate playing as them too. As far as I can tell and from statistics apparently, most gamers do. They will play at least their first playthrough being the good guy. This makes it so that when you watch someone play a game you already have, a viewer will often have one of two hopes. The first is to see how the entertainer reacts to the story they've been through, or hoping to see the consequences of actions they didn't take without needing to play the game all over again.

For this section, I want to remind people that I LOVE watching people like Team Four Star and a streamer named Dan Jones, and both who can often fall into some level of this category. Entertainers who do this are not bad, or wrong, it is more about the ubiquity of this version of entertainer.

So, now we have the dilemma an entertainer has to face. On the one hand, they themselves may not want to play the bad guy. On the other hand, while they may get yelled at by pacifist players, there will be a contingent of players overjoyed to see the renegade options. This gets worse when compounded by a couple key factors.

First, there's the element of bringing more people in because your playthrough is 'unique'. It will be an experience that you did not have yourself by people who often give over the top performances doing it, from the mustache twirling villain to the bloody psychopath.

The second is the art of click bait and spreading the word about your work. It's a hell of a lot easier to get someone to make a clip of some awful thing you did. It's abrasive, shocking, and usually leads to more material to bounce off of than what the good guy route would allow. So, if you want to keep people engaged, doing evil things can often help with that.

Finally, the story telling element, which plays a part into both of the parts above. An often quoted phrase about stories is that there is no story without conflict. I would say many slice of life shows can prove that to be wrong, but 90+% of stories and media are about these conflicts in one way or another. This is for good reason admittedly, as conflict presents obstacles and tests to the characters that they must either overcome or waffle under.

In a game, especially a role playing game like most Bethesda RPGs, this conflict can be extremely difficult to touch upon. After all, you're often just experiencing the world and it's questlines to have fun and be given new experiences, and that is wonderful! But there's only so much of that that viewers may want to see before it feels routine.

For most good guy characters in this sort of setting, the answer to every last question is to acquiesce and do the right thing. It is very clear how you're going to behave very early on. But then you add a bit of derangement to the character. A bloodlust or villainous side that could come out at any time. For any reason. You just never know what will trigger it.

This escalates though as you give into those urges. The more you do these awful acts, and the more reactions you get out of an audience for these actions, the more your character leans into the madness. Even worse if you can get mechanical benefits that you wouldn't as a good guy, such as healing by performing cannibalism.

This isn't me trying to say the audience or entertainer are at fault here. After all, the audience wants to be entertained the most they can, and the entertainer wants to be as enjoyable as possible. Feedback on that is useful and so the change happens.

But, violence doesn't need to be the answer to the need to change a character.

This is where I talk about experiences I've had to give context for some of these thoughts. A lot of them has to do with ways I can see a good guy being as entertaining over the long run.

First, get REAL DEEP into the roleplaying. If you're playing a scientist with a consciousness, make sure that science side comes out more. You'll get more real moral conflict out of that as you try not to hurt people for that which you desire. In fact, if you have to make an actually hard choice for the character, make it stay. If he meets too many science characters, he could become someone who often rebels against knowledge or scientists. A dark paladin of sorts possibly for the sake of proper scientific theory. These are the characters I often play.

Then there's the element of rebelling against chat. I once started up a New Vegas playthrough and someone stopped by my chat who fairly quickly said, "Hey, 1000 bits to kill the entire town." I said that wasn't how I play, even if I might like it.

I can have that reflect on the character by making it so that the character now never looks for more caps and is as generous as possible because he has no desire for money.

And finally, there's the way of breaking a good man. Not making him a card carrying villain, but making him end up feeling justified in the evils he may commit. My first playthrough of New Vegas had this where I hated Caesar's Legion, for obvious reasons, and liked the NCR. Except... they kept doing worse and worse things. Things that felt like they would be no better than the Legion.

And then Mr. House desired to be a despot. The man who had made so many miserable for his dream. But... that dream could also be the salvation of the wasteland. All it needed was the right hand.

So, in the final act of the game, I betrayed EVERYONE to make the wasteland safe and it is one of the most vivid, fun times I've ever had in gaming. Not because I was evil, but because I played the character as properly as I could.

But, in case you didn't notice, a lot of that is SUPER HARD to do and stay consistent. Instead of making it so that a character pointing a gun at you dies, or disrespect deserves decapitation, it takes real moral questions and a stance on those morals beyond "Do the right thing." And they will likely lead to violence too, but for a lot deeper reasons than just wanting to hurt people.

Or so I believe and I'd love to hear back from all of you!

#Fallout #Skyrim #Mass Effect #analysis

[agoddamn]

I am curious since i am very on fence about this game, but what do you think caused the general antipathy? Switch accessibility problems? bad marketing campaign that basically ignored the game for months and then seemed to focus more on the western side? Spoiler embargo not allowing people to get information to get invested? For all Fates faults, one cutscene was enough to make me hooked and looking foward the game, while i have been watching a playthrough of 3h and i cant muster much

Yeah, Fates grabbed me by the hair from square one. The Gunther reveal made me import a Japanese 3DS so I could play the game because it was so wild and I still don’t regret that. Fun as hell, great music, characters I came to love, wild ride, actual kanji practice. Was great.

See, it’s interesting that you’re the second person I’ve seen say that they focused more on Western marketing, which is totally the opposite of what I saw. It was fans translating the character profiles on Twitter, no official support. Even in the days after launch, the sections on Deer and Lions were “coming soon” in English. The greatest extent of English advertising I’ve seen is, like, a poll on what house you’re picking from the official Twitter. And maybe the leak if my crazy tinfoil conspiracy theory is right. I can’t speak as to how much advertising the Japanese version got because I wasn’t following that, but it was definitely more than English. English marketing was a joke.

As for where the Japanese antipathy comes from…

All my general bitchiness aside, I do think the game commits a major sin in holding back the timeskip designs until the final, what, third of the game? There’s no universe in which that’s a good idea. You should lead with the designs that are your strongest. You should lead with the designs you most want to be iconic. Look at Steam cheevo statistics; so many people start playing games and then drop them far before the halfway point. IIRC even the artbook only gives school phase designs for everyone but the lords? No matter how you slice it, it’s a Bad Fucking Move to put your best looks and most salient characterization way at the end of the game. This isn’t to say you can’t have twists–but you probably shouldn’t have major twists with someone you’re trying to sell as a main character more than halfway through the game. Edelgard doesn’t build up to making a horrible decision, she decided to fucking murder her classmates before you even get there. You just don’t find out about it til halfway(+?) through the game. That’s not a great structure decision when you take into account how people actually play games.

Structure in general. I’ve seen a few people who’ve completed more than one run wondering if the timeskip was a mistake. What does it do, ultimately? The game takes a sharp left turn, but what have you gained in terms of actually playing it as a game? The characters hardly acknowledge that five years have passed in supports. It’s an excuse for new designs–but ones you hardly see, see above. It’s almost like the timeskip is there just to age the characters by five years so Americans don’t feel weird about fucking students.

Related to the above. If the lion’s share of your game is the school phase…and the school phase is gonna be what most players experience, being that it’s the beginning of the game…why the hell would you add a different phase that’s such a big mood/gameplay shift for a significant part of the game? People who came here for school shenanigans are going to be put off and depressed by the war phase and people who came here for the war phase will find the school phase interminably tedious.

Needing to play all 4 routes to fully grasp the story (a lot of fucking hours) also isn’t a plus. People playing one route–which are the most common type of people, see above–often seem like they’re dissatisfied with the plot cutting off and leaving dangling ends. I wouldn’t say this is a horrible thing in a vacuum–replayability is nice in these days of ‘games as a service’–but “you won’t understand what’s going on until you’ve played the same map at least three times!” is just a shitty situation to put the player in. And it’s surely gonna put off reviewers.

Switch accessibility is a medium factor. It’s definitely true that more people have 3DSes than Switches (it would have been really clever of Nintendo if they’d worked to release the Switch Lite and 3H concurrently, ah well), but I also don’t consider it a huge factor. Something to consider, not a critical issue.

This is undoubtedly going to be the subject of conspiracy theory shitposting to the point where I’m wary of saying it, but I really feel like functions that are standard in JRPGs got chopped back solely to appeal to the Western audience. And…naturally the Japanese audience is less interested in that, because it’s a whole bunch of extra busywork solely so Americans can ‘feel better’ about pressing buttons on a controller. I fully expect the Western sales numbers for 3H to wreck face, but I have a feeling the Japanese numbers will be lukewarm. Most likely comparable to Echoes, where it sells through most of its stock but didn’t have a huge stock in the first place so all that really says is that it isn’t a loss.

Relatedly–some of the things western fans are praising as ‘huge improvements’ were never an issue to Japanese fans. Jfen don’t nickname canons by continent, they do so by game title. 3H already has the nickname of Kazahana. That’s it and that’s all it needs. Jfen were not wildly elated and praising the game out the door when they saw the continent was named ‘Fodlan’. It’s not that Jfen didn’t criticize Fates’s storytelling–of course they did–but they didn’t criticize the same things Americans did. So to a lot of Jfen, 3H is actually not a huge improvement in the areas they were most worried about.

At least as far as America goes–spoiler embargo doesn’t help, though again it’s hard to say that it was a massive issue. There’s FE fans I’ve talked to recently still going ‘oh, what? There’s a timeskip? I passed on it because it looked like dull Personashit’ [paraphrased]. It’s like it made the opposite mistake Fates’s marketing did; Fates’s marketing promised too much, 3H’s promised too little.

Again, limited to America–a lot of casual players honestly found the child units pretty fun and were genuinely disappointed to see them go. Their plot relevance didn’t matter; they were fun little living homages to your ships and your way of creating custom units in the game by manipulating circumstances. They were just this silly little thing people enjoyed. Fun things are fun. These people weren’t really looking to replace the custom unit part of their enjoyment with spending a literal hour in menus per chapter tutoring every individual motherfucker in dicksucking and underwater basket-weaving. They liked having a hand in the creation of a semi-custom unit without having to dive into the nitty-gritty of stat maxing and efficiency; so, this audience isn’t terribly interested in 3H’s form of customization because they’re not interested in the statistical nitty-gritty.

I can’t tell you whether or not to buy the game. I can tell you that I know a lot of people having a lot of fun playing the game. I can also tell you that the game really hasn’t scalped me like Fates did. Maybe you’re like me, maybe you’re not. It’s up to you, my man. You’re the one who knows what your finances are.

#3h blogging #done my best to be unbiased here #or at least less biased #Anonymous

[genderfreezone]

Do you like the Evil Within 2?

Yeah! Certainly not as much as the first one (i was not immune to being sad they left out fan favorites Jojo and Ruvik's Cube)

The rest of this post is me rambling about things i didnt like about the game, and then things i did like (most of my issues are how they treat the female characters tbh)

Its missing kind of the action-noir-gone-horrifically-wrong feel of the first game. The scare factor also suffers bc our player character has been through this before, hes a veteran at dealing with this crazy shit, it doesnt phase him anymore and by extension it doesnt phase the player. They really like tripled down on the Evil Corporation thing and both the intrigue and horror suffer for it.

This game did not drink its respect women juice (the first one didnt really either, case in point: Everything About Kidman) Sebastian is surrounded by 5+ female characters and only 2 of them survive (and one of them is his 7 year old daughter hes spent the whole game trying to rescue... and yet they never bothered to give her any kind of characterization or agency. A highly empathetic and supernaturally powerful little girl in a monster-infested hellscape?? HELLO???? Lily really had the potential to be the most interesting, sympathetic, and complex character--especially as she slowly lost her innocence--in the WHOLE GAME, but she was just sort of relegated to Plot Device McGuffin) The rest of the female supporting cast are killed off for Sebastian's Man Pain. In fact, THIS ENTIRE GAME IS CENTERED AROUND SEBASTIAN'S MAN PAIN. Torrez is a walking stereotype, shes literally just Vasquez from Aliens. Hoffman was the most likeable and believeable, except when it Turns Out She Was In Love With Liam Or Whatever (psst, guess what, i dont care. Also O'neal was kind of a dick anyway? I dont care x2)

And you know who i SUPER dont care about? Bland-White-Bread-And-Mayo-Sandwich Myra. Where's the no-nonsense firecracker of a police lieutenant Sebastian married? Not here, thats for sure. Her entire personality is "mother" and "worries about stressed-out husband". We got more characterization of Myra in seb's jornals from the first game, where she never even made a physical appearance! Horror media does this SO MUCH, women are either A. Sexy Lamp B. Hurts Men (Sexily) C. Mother or D. Innocent Virgin. It sucks. Do better.

The story lacked the "digging up old buried memories" and "theres more to this than meets the eye" of the first game. It felt too...... Straightforward. Everyone told Sebastian the truth. EVERYTHING WAS EXACTLY WHAT IT SEEMED. It all felt too simple, too easy, like there SHOULDVE been something else beneath the surface. And yet there wasnt. (I watched markipliers playthrough and i loved his theory that Kidman was actually Lily. It had such potential. Kidman's entire resume for the police station was fabricated, who's to say the rest of her past wasnt fabricated as well? It would retcon a lot of stuff and like 80% of her backstory from the DLC, but you know games like this arent above retconning important shit, and at least it wouldve been sacrificed for something with actual intrigue. Maybe it wouldnt even retcon anything! Consider: tiny Lily is taken by Evil Corporation and dropped off in a non-nurturing environment that would lead her to become the kind of person who would willingly join & work for an organization like Mobius. At least wouldve been a nice excuse for why Kidman and Lilys face models looked so similar... other than... yknow.... "WomEN ARe hArD tO DRaWwwwwee")

Okay okay ive been ranting for long enough. It probably makes it sound like i kinda hate this game, but i dont! It certainly doesnt hold the same place in my heart as the first one (which i still have very glaring issues with lmao Kidman deserved WAAAAAAY better), but i do like it! It brings back salty, grizzled, tsundere Sebastian Castinellos. It brings back spooky monsters that kill you dead. It brings back having a fun theatrical over-the-top villain who takes himself a litte too seriously.

I love Stefano. Probably not in the way some other fans do, but i love him as a ridiculous theatrical over-the-top villain. He sucks! And i love that he sucks! I love him BECAUSE he sucks! Hes terrible and exaggerated and completely up his own ass and ITS GREAT. He isnt as ACTUALLY THREATENING as Ruvik was (even in his bad assassin's creed cosplay. I could go on and on and on about why Ruvik is simultaneously a ridiculous AND frightening antagonist and how much i love it but uh..... maybe later) but hes such a FUN villain! Hes the kind of pretentious art snob shitheel i cannot STAND irl, but in this game i LOVE to HATE him. Hes just SO over-the-top you kinda wonder if he actually subscribes to the pretentiousness he spouts, or if hes just being Exceptionally Extra.

The other villains? Theodore was.... forgettable. His monsters were forgettable. (Its like how i completely forgot that Frank Manera was a character in Whistleblower for like... 5 years lmao i guess this game also kinda followed that "having multiple named/characterized antagonists in one game" thing that Outlast did) Myra, i just didnt care. Her final design was kinda cool, i liked the red clusters of insect eyes. Her monsters werent really gross enough to be memorable. The only reson theyre gross at all is bc they kinda look like theyre made of semen. (I checked the wiki and apparently Myra's white goo is "psychoplasm" and her monsters lost 99% of their gross factor. I just dont care.) The Administrator literally just looked like a 3D human model of Maxwell from dont starve, and i have to laugh every time i see him. Hes not terribly threatening, all he does is threaten characters to work faster and doesnt actually follow through on those threats. He doesnt even make fun threats like HABIT or anything. He thinks hes so powerful and ominous that his mere presence will frighten the player but hes just kinda all bark and no bite. Hes The Big Bad Company Man so you know hes gonna get whats coming to him, and you know Kidmans gonna be the one to do it to him, so hes not even that much of a threat. Hes whatever.

Stefano definitely got all of the coolest monsters. Many Arms Buzzsaw Lady was terrifying and i love her. And OBSCURA was just *Chef's Kiss* Anima was cool, she kinda looked like a mix of Laura and Samara. The Harbingers were neat, but really only bc ive got a thing for gas masks. The rest of the monsters werent really unique or weighty/threatening enough to be memorable. Now the first game is a fucking TREASURE TROVE of unique monsters *muah* you got Sadist, Sentinel, Keeper, Amalgam, Heresy, Laura, Shigyo, the Twins, Alter Egos, and im probably forgetting some!! But holy FUCK!!!!! And if we're includong the DLC?? MOTHER FUCKING SHADE. SPOTLIGHT LADY. LIGHT WOMAN.  SEXY LEGS.  Whatever you call her, i fucking love her. Her design is so simple. Helmet. Sheet. Legs. Her voice? Unnerving as hell. Love it. (Also i just personally love the diving helmet. Also like you know how a lot of games have a spotlight mechanic where you have to avoid the light and if it lands on you, you're fucked? LET'S MAKE AN ENTIRE MONSTER OUT OF THAT. She's PERFECT.) Oh and also those weird crawling exploding dudes. They made gross sounds and it was great. (Tbh Keepers still probably my favorite, if only for horny reasons)

TATIANA HOW HAVE I NOT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT TATIANA. Shes like the ONE female character that i fucking LOVE in the sequel. I love how they finally gave her a personality, and that personality is literally just "fuck you, Sebastian" Oh GOD its great shes SO FUNNY. I just.... god i love Tatiana lmao. I love how she makes you kinda uncomfortable too, like she knows something, but she wont tell you bc youre stupid. I didn't like the kind of "all-knowing guide" thing they did to try and make her creepy (like she's a "guide" but then also turns around and is like "no i wont tell you what you need to know bc you """have to discover it on your own""" or whatever") it serves no purpose since she never gave you any actual information, and it didn't succeed in making her creepier, all it did was frustrate me. She was at her creepiest when she IMPLIED she was doing something behind the scenes or knew something you didn't know and then didn't elaborate (not REFUSING to elaborate, just... stopping talking and leaving the statement to hang in the air, like the "getting her nails done" and "its been a long time, detective" and the "now what makes you say that" from the first game) and she was at her funniest when she was interacting with Sebastian from the sidelines, her snide little comments and sarcastic clapping cracked me the fuck up. Tatiana not treating Sebastian seriously was a fantastic touch for a game that otherwise would probably take itself so seriously it would double back around to being silly. Without Tatiana, it would've been just another male-centric gun-toting "survival horror" game, and for the most part, it was just that. She was definitely a much-needed source of slightly derisive comedy and a definite high-point for me, even if they didn't so a great job of making her creepy or fulfilling her "purpose."

Oh I also really love the COLORS in TEW2. The first game fell into the trap of having the colors be totally washed out that a lot of horror stuff does, but it also kind of worked for it. Especially with the color pallette of our main villain and how the whole thing was His World. The saturation of the colors in the second game is a breath of fresh air and gorgeous to look at, and you can even see the color motifs of the game change with each new villain: the game starts out with Stephano has lots of blues and purples and dark reds, when Theodore takes over we get bright orange and yellow contrasted with black and brown, and in the climax with Myra the game goes back to having washed out colors and white (and with her villain design? Let's face it: they were kinda just trying to do Ruvik again) We did get portions that were still kind of wahed out whites and greens and greys, but it wasnt the ENTIRE game, even the big blood-and-brains splatterhouse sections of the first game kinda had their colors weirdly muted for that "Horror Aethetic."

In conclusion, i do like the evil within 2, but i also had a lot of problems with it. And i complain about these problems because i like the game and know it couldve done better, tried harder, and been a LOT more than it was (the wasted character potential is my real overarching pet peeve, probably becuase i loved the characters in the first game, and character development is kind of my whole jam) . But all in all, it was still a fun monster-zombie romp with at least one entertaining villain and fun-to-look-at designs and environments. It wasn't character or horror or even REALLY story driven in the way I know it COULDVE been, but i still had a fun time and enjoyed myself.

#long post #875asks #anonymous #the evil within 2 #i couldnt put a readmore on a mobile post so you all have to suffer with me #my paragraph about stefano got cut out so i put it back in lol

[moistwithgender]

Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

#curry plays games

[eb-the-gamer]

BEFORE YOU READ, KNOW THIS REVIEW POST HAS SPOILERS FOR BENDY AND THE INK MACHINE!!!!

@bendysstudio @themeatly--official

I have played Bendy and the Ink Machine in full now. What do I think?

Well...

The game was good, for sure, you can tell they put a ton of love, especially now with the polish added by updates, the incorporation of fan music, and the attempts at keeping everything engaging throughout the chapters. 

However, It could be really improved upon...

STORY - By far the strongest of Bendy’s points is its narrative, old cartoons are Organically creepy in a lot of ways because of a few factors, among these are the contrasting aspects of the imperfections of movement and the oftentimes unnoticed details in things like wrinkles and textures (as examples, Pete chewing Tobacco from Steamboat Willie, and the infamous cab colloway dancing ghost from Betty Boop.), so it makes a ton of sense to utilize that as a horror concept. The game throws us a steady stream of questions from almost the start of the first chapter, but while a lot is answered, there is a lot unanswered or not followed through on and it can be hard to ignore when you think about it ESPECIALLY by the end. Were the employees really all corrupted by the ink, what is Henry’s purpose, why did henry not know about his own messages if he’s written them while looping everything over and over, and how could he see or write them without the glass tool (and what with?), what is up with the animatronics and cages you set up. the game kind of shrugs at a lot; its by no means a dealbreaker because of what the story does explore about the studio, but it is noticeable.

9/10 - Amazing - The game’s big draw, though some questions are not all answered in a meaningful way, what the story does cover is still really interesting and worth playing through.

 DESIGN - Bringing actual life to something like a cartoon but failing so hard is a really great idea, and a lot of the time the game shows us the hubris in the want vs. the reality of the consequence; the monsters and places the game creates reflect it well. Everything looks like its made from the sunbleached, aged paper artists used and everything is a wonderfully messed up reflection of life at the studio and the cartoons within, particularly with the projectionist, butcher gang and the unnamed giant hand (I’ll call him Lil’ Handful). the world of Joey Drew productions is a really cool, realized one. simple but slightly barren and “off” work offices giving way for the bigger, detailed and mysterious places in the lower levels. I will however knock some of the update decisions, particularly with Sammy and Bendy himself. they originally looked blobby, as the updates came, they both got more defined in shape - respectively looking more muscular and emaciated looking, which took away from the toonish aspect of the it. Where once were feet that looked like strange melted stubs going into the floor, are just...solid feet and where once was something that looked like a melting candle trying to retain a shape is what is more or less a thin ink zombie (complete with limp). Bendy’s final form is also lackluster for me, I love the Muggshot (Sly Cooper series) tiny dangle-legs and walking around on hands thing; but its threatening, not as scary or horrifying as something that's stopped trying to be likable could’ve been taken. Everyone else is pretty good though especially the butcher gang and boris, who stayed pretty much the same and kept design elements in all forms through the production. Text for audio logs could have been bigger at times too. all in all, design is solid, but something was definitely lost as more polygons and detail were added for certain characters.

9/10 - amazing!- a great use of elements from animations of the past used in a 3d space, just the right amount of cartoon goofiness and uncanny details, though some designs were fixed when they weren’t broken.

CHARACTERS - Not much to say, I like em all, (Henry is delightfully levelheaded to the extreme, Boris is a cutie, Bendy is a threatening silent presence...) except maybe that one obnoxious guy in recordings, Wally Franks, and even then, he’s not AWFUL (I’d compare him to Fleem from Smallfoot, intentionally made to get on a nerve at least a little), the most interesting character for me Bertrum, the architect who calls Joey out on his bullcrap, and Alice Angel, both versions of her - but the manic first variant you meet first is interesting to listen to and learn about in particular. Boris is kind of lackluster, while he is nice and the reveal of him and other toons being made en masse is awesome, it also means we don’t get much time with them. Sammy sort of just comes and goes twice, and Tom!Boris and Allison I felt got the shaft and should have been established earlier for a connection. Joey is a jerk who suddenly becomes somewhat good in the last acts, which confuses me - since there was no in between those two points that's explained...

7/10 -  Good - characters are great to listen to and watch, and if the game had had more time to focus on a lot of them, that might have made them feel more complete.

SOUND - sound, music and voiceacting is well done, lots to appreciate from the creepy gurgles, to the odd stuttery sound of a projector. though there are occasionally some bad bits of soundmixing and audio. some recordings that you can find in the game stand out, there’s one that's really hard to listen to in chapter 5 because the character speaks in a really gravelly voice, in addition to the fuzzy audio effect and the ambient noise surrounding it.

8/10 - Great! - I only wish there was more! aside from one or two recordings, everything and one sounded nice, and the unease of silence is used equally well.

CONTROLS AN’ GAMEPLAY - They’re standard first person fair, responsive for sure, though sometimes the sensitivity of the controls can raise by themselves (I don’t know if that's by design, since it was at the same point as markiplier, right before a section involving being stealthy is taken on, which might actually be really clever if its true. Combat can also be wonky, but Its passable since its not a main focus, except for one REALLY obnoxious enemy gauntlet in the last chapter, if there were defined checkpoints between each wave, I’d be more inclined to let it go. Puzzles are pretty standard as well, lots of fetching, but other stuff such as playing minigames and stealth crop up to shake it up. Stuff is unlocked after everything is said and done in the story, and while it is cool narratively (messages written by henry on previous loops) and as a view of the progress the game (though, the Archives are missing a lot of info on characters like Alice and Bertrum), it just feels like its not enough for a repeat playthrough, difficulty settings and maybe achievements for unconventional but creative actions in-game, working towards something big at the end might’ve helped in that regard (here’s hoping that's the case for the console releases next month)

7/10 - Good! - its standard stuff with an occasional misshap, but there is variety to it and its simply fun for me to play.

OVERALL - The gameplay is serviceable, and aside from the main story there’s not too much reason to play the game again, but its still a solid experience the whole way through, and the time and effort of the people who made the game really shines and makes it worth playing. maybe wait for the console release, in case they add anything to that, but theres not one excuse not to play it.

#bendy and the ink machine #bendy #batim bendy #review #themeatly #the #meatly #video game #horror

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Final Fantasy X-2

It’s no secret that Final Fantasy X is my all-time favorite game. I really enjoyed the gameplay loop and element of strategy the Conditional Battle System created. I loved the sphere grid system which always made me feel that I was controlling how my characters grew as fighters and when the HD Remaster came out with your choice of a Normal Sphere Grid or an Expert Sphere Grid, which allowed you to have more control on how customized your character’s abilities and stats, I was really pleased with how playing the game using a different grid, changed so many things.

However, I’m not talking about Final Fantasy X. No, instead this is about the sequel, Final Fantasy X-2. This game is historical in its own right. It was the first Final Fantasy to actually be a real sequel to a Final Fantasy entry and it had an all female main cast which was also a first for the Final Fantasy series.

For this review I’m going to unapologetically spoil this game and Final Fantasy X. You’ve been warned.

I’ve always had a weird relationship with this game. Everytime I would pick up this game, I would always quit right when I got to Chapter 3 because the end of Chapter 2 had this sudden difficulty spike and everything else in Chapter 3 just annihilates you until you do some good ole fashioned grinding. But at that point, I would just be done with it, put it down and not look it again until I would get that feeling of “Hey, you should play Final Fantasy X-2, you’ll beat it this time.” Rinse and repeat.

Until now that is, I sat down and finally got to the end.

Final Fantasy X-2 was the first Final Fantasy that I know of that made a huge divide with the fanbase. I remember seeing forum posts and comments saying that this was the Final Fantasy that caused fans to be worried for the future. I’ll admit, I was on that train for awhile. Even when Final Fantasy XIII enraged a good majority of the fanbase, I was one of the few that would always say “Final Fantasy started going downhill at X-2!” However, recently I’ve also seen the fanbase opinion start to shift on Final Fantasy XIII. There’s still a majority of people that dislike, but with it’s slowly growing shift towards being a good game, it has made me want to replay the game at some point.

So what is it about Final Fantasy X-2 that made me not like it? As I mentioned before, the difficulty spike didn’t help. I wasn’t using the dresspheres and Garment Grids right, I wasn’t allowing proper grinding, and I was actually missing out on major plot points that are only discoverable doing side quests.

When I’m not really into a game, or I just want to get through one quickly, I’ll just do the bare minimum to move it along until either the game starts dunking on me and I just quit, or the story gets interesting and I need to quickly backtrack a bit to learn the mechanics so I can perform well to get the story moving. For X-2, I had none of that, I wasn’t invested enough in the story, I didn’t bother learning how to properly use the mechanics so I could keep in pace with the story, and I was getting creamed.  It was also the first time I was exposed to the Job system. Not really an excuse, but it kinda weirded me out for a bit until I learned this was a staple in the older Final Fantasy titles a few years after playing X-2 for the first time in 2003.

However, sometimes I’ll get the opposite problem, like I did with Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, where I’ll love the combat, but hate the story. With that game, my characters got optimized greatly in terms of skills, equipment, and magic, that I eventually had them powerful enough to just blaze through the remainder of the story when I finally got bored of the combat loop. Although it did take out the challenge factor with some of the bosses, I didn’t care.

For X-2, I’ve always known that the ending depended on your completion meter. Even though I know what the true ending is, that still hasn’t stopped me from wanting to know how the events that lead up to that ending happened. To that your thinking, “Just look it up on the internet and read a synopsis of the entire plot then.” I’ll admit, I did do this after quitting on another one of my “play it and drop it” runs. For this playthrough, I purposely went for the sad ending which I’ll go more into detail later.

In the game, you have main missions marked as Hotspots and “some” side quests marked on your map. Now when I said “some” side quests, I really meant “some”, not all of them are marked. Those unmarked side quests you just have to visit places to make sure there is none. Granted the game does give you a clue that there probably is a quest there even if the selected area said “No Missions.” This could prompt players to revisit these areas in Spira, but for those that want that sweet 100% completion, it could be frustrating to play a guessing game with some areas.

Sometimes, these unmarked areas would contain details about the main story. If for any reason you missed these, you can find yourself lost in the narrative. It’s something that I’ve personally hated in games and RPGs in general, is making their players go find details or an explanation of why something in the plot happened. Keep it in your main plot, use exploration and side quests to enhance your world and the lore. This is why I found the story in X-2 weird, because I had to dig for some of it, whereas in X, everything you needed to know was told in its story and all supplemental information to enhance that story, was done in side NPC conversations or side quests. It’s just weird how X-2 completely fumbled what made its predecessor great in the first place.

Now, I realize that for the majority of this personal recollection, I’ve mostly been talking about my negative experiences with this game and not really any of the positives. I had games that I was disappointed with before, but X-2 was a game that really let me down a long time ago. However, I will have to say with this recent playthrough, I actually have more appreciation for this game than I did in the past and have found some likeable aspects to it.

First is how Square took to the approach to an already familiar world. Having the people of Spira wanting to discover the lost secrets, now that the threat of Sin coming back is no more. This allowed new areas to be uncovered to give Spira a new feeling despite having already explored it once before. The gameplay even rewards this by granting you additional dresspheres, Garment Grids, and accessories that can further expand your characters abilities, with some having effects to where you can break the game in ridiculous ways.

Next is how Yuna herself traverses the environment. Where Tidus had the ability to swim, Yuna has the ability to jump over ledges and climb giving the environments a level of verticality they didn’t have before.

The Active Time Battle system also makes a return. Between this and the introduction of dresspheres it did offer an excellent explanation as to why Yuna is at a low level again, despite everything she accomplished in the previous title.

There’s also the story of X-2, Yuna, Rikku, and their new ally Paine travel the world to hunt for spheres and each has their own goal. Yuna wants to find Tidus after watching a sphere that has a person that looked like Tidus. After watching this sphere, she believes that there might be a way to bring him back. Rikku, simply wants to help Yuna on her journey, as well as uncover more of Spira’s history. Paine, wants to learn why she was betrayed two years ago by a former ally of hers. These three stories are interwoven and you will get answers to everything, however some do require more digging than others which I’ll go into further detail later.

Finally, you have Shuyin, who is a rather intriguing villain who not only unveils more about Spira’s past, the Dream of the Fayth, but also adds more elements of the Unsent. How does he add more to a phenomenon of Spira already well established? Easy, Shuyin has been Unsent for over 1,000 years due to his strong feelings during a war between Zanarkand and Beville, as well as his anger of the death of his lover, Lenne. This makes his ability to possess people something that felt like a natural evolution considering the nature of Unsent. His striking similarity to Tidus also shows the Fayth preserving his image in Dream Zanarkand as we can surmise the Fayth were unaware of Shuyin’s true fate. By adding how long he’s been festering in his pain, with also seeing that Spira hasn’t changed at all in terms of violence with the citizens of Spira fighting amongst themselves to determine the future, drives Shuyin to want to destroy Spira as it seems to him that the people will never learn.

Now, although I do see this game in a new light with the positives, there are also a few elements that I’ve discovered that could have been handled much better. There are three elements in particular that come in mind that I feel were not handled the best and they are Paine, Shuyin, and the ending of X-2.

I felt Paine’s story was simply forgotten most of the time to focus on Yuna’s journey. I get it, Yuna is the main character, but Paine is a new character that is being introduced to the player. I felt more time could have been spent with her and often times both in story and gameplay, she felt like a third wheel. Gameplay wise, Paine is the only one whose Ultimate Dressphere is optional to acquire and is easy to miss. It feels odd that for one of the three characters to have their true potential, you have to go out way to get Paine’s when Yuna and Rikku are handed theirs in the main story. As for Paine’s story, although you do learn that Shuyin is the reason of the betrayal, why and how the betrayal happened is something you have to search for on your own and like the Dressphere, finding all of the details are easily missable. Which brings me to my next area of elements not handled well and that is Shuyin.

Yes, I did say Shuyin was a good villain, but he felt half baked. Why is that? Because the missing parts that you can learn about him are tied to Paine’s backstory, which you learn by collecting Crimson Spheres throughout Spira. Not only does it show how Shuyin became Spira’s next great threat, but it also gives our previously mentioned Paine, a reason that she is on the journey with Yuna and why Paine is a main character to the story. The Crimson Spheres also unlock an optional dungeon known as the Den of Woe, where Yuna, Rikku and Paine can learn more about Shuyin. During their adventure in the dungeon, Shuyin actually possesses Rikku and Paine to where the trio fight each other and even try to kill one another. This optional dungeon also presents them another reason why Shuyin needs to be stopped and could have further emboldened our trio. Granted the reasons you learn in the story are fine, but having that extra push could have really added more to their motivation.

Last is the ending of X-2. I want to state that I’m not saying the True Ending for X-2 is bad. It’s nice, it’s fine, and it hits you in feels. However, I want to bring attention to the Sad Ending. I feel that should have been the canonical ending. Around Chapter 4 Yuna starts to wonder if she needs to move on and accept that there might not be a way to bring Tidus back. As the story progresses from there, Yuna starts to show those signs that she needs to move forward. Even during her fight with Shuyin, she tries to have Shuyin let go and move on. She tries to show him Spira is a better place, Spira no longer suffers from constant war and death, and to let go of his anger and join his lover, Lenne, in the Farplane. After the fight, Shuyin finally agrees and is finally at peace with himself. Shuyin’s acceptance then translates to Yuna’s acceptance, that as long as Tidus remains in her heart, she will retain his memory and move forward. This ending could have proven to be more powerful and would have better reflected Yuna’s mindset in the moment.

My previous gripes regarding the dresspheres and Garment Grids are moot because I’m kind of a fan now how it rewards you for using these to better optimize your characters in battle.

It’s kind of funny how as you grow as not only as a person and as a gamer, that things you might have previously hated in the past, might end up being something you love now. That’s what X-2 is to me, something I hated in the past, but now appreciate with a new understanding. I do wish the story was tied a lot better and not spread out as X-2 could have been a really stellar sequel.

Final Fantasy X-2 receives a 4 out of 5

#Final Fantasy X-2 #Gullwings #YRP #Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy X #video games #gaming #game review #video game review #Biscuit reviews #gaming review #PS4 #Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster #Square Enix #Yuna #Rikku #Paine #Tidus

[parttimestorier]

Interview with d Marie Licea

Recently, I had a chance to talk with d Marie Licea, developer of Us Lovely Corpses, about the creative process behind this fascinating “surreal-horror-romance” visual novel. Us Lovely Corpses is a VN I considered reviewing for this blog when I read it, but I struggled to write a review that would be interesting and accessible—explaining the parts that most impressed and resonated with me would mean spoiling it completely. But I encourage anyone who can handle some disturbing content in service of a great story and heartfelt message to try it out. This interview will start with some more general questions, and it includes a warning farther down before any spoilers for Us Lovely Corpses appear.

Question: Did you always plan for the story of Us Lovely Corpses to be a visual novel, or did you consider other mediums as well?

Answer: In its earliest stages, Us Lovely Corpses was actually planned as a comic! I came up with the original idea somewhere around 2014-2015—it was going to be about 10 pages, and would just cover the scene that ended up being the game's finale. Alex and Marisol (who weren't named yet) were very different—they were much younger, Alex wasn't really "a witch," and Marisol was originally a boy!

I sat on the idea a while, and the longer I did so the more I wanted to explore the history of these characters, which made for a longer and more unwieldy comic. Then in 2015, when I started learning about visual novels, it hit me that the concept could work really well in that format, especially when the "exploration" element came in.

Q: Were there any particular visual novels that influenced you?

A: Yes! The reason why I started getting into visual novels specifically in 2015 was that because that was the year We Know The Devil came out!

We Know The Devil totally shifted my viewpoint as to what a visual novel could be—no diss to dating sims, but before WKTD, I, like most people, just saw VNs as dating sims and occasionally something like the When They Cry series.

WKTD totally changed that for me—a short, incredibly contained story that also managed to be about so, so much, in a surreal, horror-inspired atmosphere . . . it really blew me away! Not only was it the game that got me into visual novels, but you can definitely see a lot of its influence on Us Lovely Corpses.

Besides WKTD, there was also Her Tears Were My Light, a fairly minimalist love story that used the "rewind" function in Ren’Py as part of the story. Utilizing mechanics as part of the narrative was a really cool idea to me that also ended up in ULC. (side note: I met and hired Alex Huang to do the music for Us Lovely Corpses because I loved the soundtrack for HTWML so much!)

Finally, I was really into the original Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) trilogy when I was younger, and the evidence gathering segments were a big part of those games. I originally envisioned the "rose clipping" segments of ULC like those parts, where you'd have to select each rose before cutting it, but sadly that was a little too complex for me at the time, and I eventually decided to go for something more simple in order to complete the game. But that initial idea was a big part of what made me try Us Lovely Corpses as a game, so it ended up still being a big influence in the end!

Q: Besides technical things like those mechanics and the exploration element, do you find that you have a different style of writing in visual novels as opposed to the stories you've done in other formats, like twine and comics?

A: I'm not sure if this is always the case for visual novels, but I find I have to format my writing differently when writing for VNs—specifically, in length of sentences and paragraphs. I've found my writing worked a lot better in Us Lovely Corpses the more I broke everything up into smaller fragments—larger ones or paragraphs didn't work as well, which can be a problem for me because my writing can tend to get a bit wordy!

This has to do a lot with the pacing of visual novels and how the player/reader is a big part of that. Control over pacing is a big part of why visual novels appeal to me, but you also have to think differently to get the best result.

Technical stuff aside, I found that, at least for ULC, my actual writing style remained pretty much the same. I think this has the benefit of making the writing in Us Lovely Corpses seem unique, but has the disadvantage of posing a problem for a certain something I didn't see coming at all: Let’s Players!

A few people have made videos of their playthroughs of Us Lovely Corpses, which is incredibly exciting, but when I watch them, I can't help but feel bad for them because they always read everything out loud . . . which means, with my somewhat wordy style, they have to do a LOT of talking!

I haven't actually gotten complaints about this or anything, but I still hope people who make videos of their playthroughs of ULC keep some water nearby!

Note: the next part of the interview contains spoilers for Us Lovely Corpses, as well as discussion of mental illness.

Q: As the story progresses, it becomes explicitly clear that the “monster” is Marisol’s bipolar disorder. Did you ever think about leaving the metaphor more ambiguous, and if so, what made you decide to be so direct instead?

A: I'd say if the "monster" was one specific thing, it would her Ocular Rosaceae, as it's the one specific thing that gives a physical form to Marisol's thoughts and unhealthy behaviors. But even that, in a way, is not taking into account her bipolar disorder and depression, her jealousy towards Alex, her self-loathing and introversion . . . "the monster" is all of those things, because at its core, the monster is mental illness. And mental illness is never just one thing, but many things and factors interacting at once to create something much bigger than a single diagnosis.

All that said, it's not incorrect to say that Marisol's bipolar disorder is the monster; it's just more accurate to say it’s part of Marisol's monster. Back when ULC was still a comic, I wasn't going to talk about specific diagnoses, but as the story grew I realized I wanted to talk more explicitly about mental illness. I don't exactly remember where the idea came about, but early on in the writing process I got that idea in my head of Alex finding that fake corpse and finding that doctor's diagnosis. In retrospect, it was a really, really weird scene, especially as it comes right off the heels of realizing what you thought was a dead body was just a weird joke, but I do like what it represents—in the middle of this surreal trip into a house filled with talking flowers, the story suddenly halts as you soak in this very blunt reminder that, magic aside, this is a world that is representative of the real world. Marisol may have a magical disease and be best friends with a witch, but she's a very real girl, so to speak.

So that harsh reminder is part of why I wanted to be so direct. I guess the other part would be that I just wanted to make no bones about it. Some things you want to leave up to interpretation, and some things you don't. From the very, very beginning the story was always about mental illness, so it just felt right to me to be upfront about it.

Q: One thing I noticed that I thought showed a lot of attention to detail in ULC was that in one of the rooms you explore there are two famous paintings that both have connections to suicide (Millais’s Ophelia and van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows). Are there any other little symbolic details like that you added to the story that some readers might have missed?

A: Ah, I'm glad you caught that! If I had stuck with the more Ace Attorney style of gameplay I would have liked to put more small details like that in. As it stands, the big example is probably pretty obvious—Alex's notes about each rose are fairly close to the standard "flower language" of different rose colors in real life. The fact that yellow roses can mean "jealousy" or "friendship" depending on what source you use actually ended up working very well with the story.

The last names of Alex and Marisol are probably pretty obvious: de Rosa ("of the Rose") and Flores ("Flowers"). Something that's probably less apparent is Marisol, a name that originally comes from a contraction of "Maria de La Soledad" ("Our Lady Of Solitude"), one of the titles given to the Virgin Mary.

Q: Was the flower language the reason you used roses rather than any other flower, or were there other inspirations for that as well?

A: There were a number of reasons! One being that Revolutionary Girl Utena was a big influence on my style and particularly on several parts of the game. There's also the whole dichotomy with roses/thorns. And there's also the simple fact that I have fun drawing roses!

Q: For my last question, are you working on any other visual novels right now?

A: I am as a matter of fact! I'm working on a visual novel set in Japan about some high school kids who explore a strange house. It's still in fairly early stages, but I think if I give it my all I will actually have a demo ready in time for Halloween, which would be great!

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing that demo—even more so after learning about all of the serious thought d Marie Licea puts into the details and themes of her work. If you’re as excited as I am about updates on her upcoming projects, you can follow her on itch.io or twitter, and considering supporting her patreon. Thanks for reading!

#visual novel #visual novels #d marie licea #us lovely corpses #interview

[pikapeppa]

Dragon Age Question Meme

Tagged by @galadrieljones - thanks lethallan!  This is a long one - I’ll continue it under a cut. 

Tagging forward to @schoute @viktuuri-fluff-saved-my-life @thevikingwoman @buttsonthebeach @charlatron @mrscullensrutherford @oops-gingermoment @iarollane @aban-asaara @irlaimsaaralath @wardsarefunctioning and anyone else who wants to play!

01) Favourite game of the series?

I haven’t played Origins yet, but between DA2 and DA:I, Inquisition is my jam! I’ve played it 3 times already and I’m not yet tired of it! So many places to explore, and I still haven’t heard all the banter yet, and the lore is just so rich, so many codex entries, yes yes.

02) How did you discover Dragon Age?

Basically all my Horizon Zero Dawn friends insisted - INSISTED - that I play Inquisition. For some reason I thought I wouldn’t like it, like “ahh everyone says it’s so great, how great can it be.” WELP LOL. I have no regrets, but my HZD friends might, given how HORRIBLY OBSESSED I have become LOL. 

03) How many times you’ve played the games?

- Origins: 0 times, but looking to rectify that this year! - DA2: 1.5 times. Ughhh Act 2... - DA:I: 3.5 times and still loving it!

04) Favourite race to play as?

Elf. Hands down. I played a Trevelyan once and was like MEH BORING.

05) Favourite class?

MAGE. MAGE MAGE MAGE. Although I’ve been playing as Fenris a lot in DA2 and it’s surprisingly fun!! Good thing too since I’ll have to be a two-handed warrior during my Fenquisition playthrough

06) Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time?

I’ll answer for Inquisition. There are some things I always do the same (e.g. Bull saving the Chargers, allying with Abelas, making Solas APPROVE OF ME LMAO), but other things I alternate. I’ve gone with the mages and the Templars twice, respectively; I prefer picking the mages, it just makes more sense and is more “ethical” to me, but I ADORE COLE and I think the whole envy demon storyline is very interesting, so I quite enjoy siding with the Templars too. I have done something different each time at the Winter Palace, and this time I plan to do something different yet again. I strongly prefer Cole as a spirit, but I’ve had him as a spirit and as human twice each. 

My Fenris-as-Inquisitor playthrough will be interesting. I’ll be playing in character as him, so it’s going to be quite different than what I canonically do, and I’m quite interested to see what happens. Solas is going to hate me oh god

07) Go-to adventuring group?

- DA2: FENRIS and Anders, and then I alternate my rogues. I love both Varric and Isabela, but depending on how far into my Fenris romance I am, I often have to leave Isabela behind because I HATE WATCHING HER FLIRT WITH MY MAN <sobbing> - Inquisition: SOLAS, Cole and Blackwall is my favourite group, but I also love bringing Cass instead of Blackwall - I love Cass and Cole’s banter. But Solas and Cole are my FAVOURITE PAIRING. I could listen to their incomprehensible chatter forever.

08) Which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

Damn. Umm... I put equal amounts of thought into Elia Lavellan (romanced with Solas), Athera Lavellan (romanced Abelas) and Rynne Hawke (romanced with Fenris). Before I started writing those ships, the question I had to answer was this: Why would Solas/Fenris/Abelas love her? I know why Elia loves Solas, and I know why Rynne loves Hawke and why Athera admires and eventually loves Abelas. But what is it about those OCs that those men fall in love with? I build my OCs around the men in their lives, not the other way around. 

09) Favourite romance?

URGH WHY MUST YOU ASK ME THIS. GOD FINE. Fenris rivalmance, ok?? But I also love the Solasmance and the Blackwall romance to the point of swooning so just FUCK RIGHT OFF WITH THIS QUESTION THXBAI~

10) have you read any of the comics/books?.

Yes! Masked Empire and Asunder.

11) if you read them, which was your favorite book?

Masked Empire. I really liked getting more background on Celene/Briala and Gaspard (i.e. WHY THE FUCK I SHOULD GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE WINTER PALACE MISSION AT ALL). I loved Felassan and Briala’s dalen/hahren relationship. And it was just better written than Asunder.

12) Favorite DLCs?

Must agree with Gala here; Trespasser is bae, and Jaws of Hakkon is just beautiful (and also AMERIDAN <sob>). But I also liked Mark of the Assassin quite a bit! So amusing!

13) Things that annoy you.

The fact that it takes a MILLION YEARS to get banter in DA:I, and also that you can’t just click on your companions in DA:I whenever you like if you just want to hear their voice. I KNOW I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO CLICKED ON FENRIS CONSTANTLY TO HEAR HIM SAY “I enjoy following you”, OKAY? LIKE ALL I WANT IS FOR SOLAS  TO SAY “vhenan” TO ME WHILE WE’RE WANDERING THROUGH THE BLOODY WESTERN APPROACH

14) Orlais or Ferelden?

Ferelden? We seem to spend more time there. But I’m kind of neutral I guess.

15) Templars or mages?

Mages. Hands down. Sorry Templars.

16) if you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

All parallel universes. None of them coexist. Rynne Hawke doesn’t even coexist with any of my Lavellans because Fenris becomes the Inquisitor in my headcanon

17) What did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc)

I have only one pet, Hawke’s mabari, and his name is Toby. 

18) have you installed any mods?

Console only <sob>

19) Did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden?

n/a - haven’t played Origins yet!

20) Hawke’s personality?

PURPLE HAWKE, with a healthy dash of Isabela-level flirtiness. But Rynne (over?)uses humour to deflect pain and agitation and anger.

21) did you make matching armour for your companions in Inquisition?

...Maybe. 

HAHAH so I made matching colour armour for Elia and Solas, yes. And I generally like to dress both Cole and myself in black and red!

22) if your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change?  

Ohhhh.... fuck. This is tough. - Elia Lavellan (romanced Solas): ...surprisingly, nothing really. She’s got a pretty zen kind of ‘what will be, will be’ attitude. In her darkest moments she might regret falling for Solas, but overall, she doesn’t really regret anything. - Arya Lavellan (romanced Blackwall): nothing. She is very confident.  - Athera Lavellan (romanced Abelas): honestly, she questions half of her decisions half the time. After Trespasser, she regrets not dissolving the Inquisition. (I haven’t decided yet if she eventually does dissolve it after all; perhaps we’ll see what DA4 brings us).  - Rynne Hawke (romanced Fenris): a LOT of things. She regrets letting Bethany attack that ogre. She regrets not bringing Carver to the Deep Roads, because maybe then he wouldn’t have joined the Templars to spite her. She regrets not following up more closely on Emeric’s murder investigation because otherwise maybe her mother wouldn’t have died. She basically blames herself anytime anything bad happens with her family (including the Merry Band of Misfits). 

23) Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

I actually quite enjoy sticking to canon for the most part, and expanding on facts that we already know. The one canon-ish(?) thing I don’t love is the idea of Dalish Inquisitors understanding or speaking a dialect of Elvhen that’s mutually intelligible with the dialect that Solas and Abelas speak. I let it slide in my Solavellan fics, but I mean, it’s been THOUSANDS OF YEARS between Arlathan and the Dragon Age. Dalish Elvhen (even if they have many many dialects, which is most certainly the case) is very unlikely to be mutually intelligible with ancient Elvhen. I’ve been meaning to write a full post about this for like a year oops

24) Are any of your character(s) based on someone?

They all contain some elements of self-insert, so... me, I guess? XD

25) Who did you leave in the Fade?

The first time I played Inquisition, I had not played DA2 yet, so I left Hawke in the Fade for LOGIC REASONS OK - Stroud was like the only senior Warden left, I thought they needed him! I’ve left Stroud there every time thereafter. 

26) Favourite mount?

Well, it WOULD be any and all the harts, except for that FUCKING HORRENDOUS SOUND THEY MAKE. I thus prefer to ride dracolisks for the Coolness Factor™. 

#tag meme #ask me anything #tumblr game #dragon age #fun times!