#TIME FOR ME TO GO PLAY DRAGONS DOGMA 2 NOW | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

transgamerthoughts · 1 month

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Abandon All Delusions Of Control

this is another cross-post. which is funny because I've paid for a domain name redirect to my tumblr since like 2016.. i never know what site is gonna explode these days. less people follow me here than anywhere but this write ups been passed around so...

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma 2 and while I'd love to talk about gameplay or interesting moments, the game's found itself something of a cultural lightning rod. It is a game with many friction points arising in a cultural moment where gamers are, perhaps more than ever, convinced that "consumers" are kings.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is not readily "solvable" and you can't min-max it. You will make mistakes. You will be scraped and bruised and scarred. Pain is sometimes the only bridge that can take us wher ewe need to go. And gaming culture, fed the lie of mastery and player importance, does not understand that scars can be beautiful. I love this game. I think it's a miracle it came out at all.

I also think in spite of the success it's found… that 2024 might be the worst possible year for it to have released.

Let's ramble about it..

It's easy to feel like Hideaki Itsuno and his team miscalculated the amount of friction that players are willing to endure and while I don't think that's true (he didn't miscalculate moreso stick to his particular vision) it certainly appears that we've reached a point in gaming where players, glutted on convenience, don't really know what to do when robbed of it. I've heard folks complain that they can't sprint everywhere or else balk learning that ferrystones required for fast travel cost 10,000 gold as if these shatter DD2 into pieces. I'm vaguely sympathetic to these concerns but at the same time they seem to spring entirely from a lack of understanding of the game's design goals. Much like how folks demanding a traditionally structured RPG narrative from an Octopath game misunderstand what that team is trying to do, players asking to sprint through the world or teleport with ease fundamentally misunderstand what Dragon's Dogma wants. The world is not a wrapper for a story. It is the story. Dragon's Dogma is a story factory whose various textures create unprecedented triumphs and memorable failure.

It is crucial to the experience to allow both of those to occur and live with whatever follows.

I'm always cautious of talking like this because it can come off as smug or superior but I think ultimately that's the truth of the matter here. This was not a well-played franchise before now and even if it's a AAA title, there's a way in which this game is meant to elide most AAA open world trends. You are expected to traverse. If you want relatively cheap and faster travel, you're meant to find an oxcart and pay the (quite modest) fee to move between trade hubs much like you would pay for a silt strider in Morrowind. Even if you do this, you could be ambushed on the road and in the worst case the ox pulling the cart can be killed. Something being "possible" in a game doesn't always mean it is intentional but Dragon's Dogma continually undercuts the player's ability to avoid long treks. Portcrystals, which act as fast travel destinations, are limited and ferry stones (while not prohibitively expensive compared to weapons and armor) are juuust expensive enough that you need to consider if the expense is worthwhile. Once is happenstance. Multiple times is a pattern. And the pattern in Dragon's Dogma is to disincentivize easy travel. It screams of intent.

Something I could not have imagined playing games growing up is the ways in which even a decade (or two) could lead to radically different attitudes on what games should provide. That's an audience issue to an extent but it's also something games have brought upon themselves. The "language" of an open world game has been solidified through years climbable towers, mini-map marked caves, and options to zip around worlds. When a game deviates from that language, the change is more noticeable than ever.

Hell, even Elden Ring (perhaps the closest modern relative to Dragon's Dogma) allows you to warp between bonfires and gives you a steed to ride. But that's also a much larger game! DD2 is not a large game and the story is not long. Yes, you can spend untold hours wandering about into nooks and crannies but a trek from one end of the world to another is still significantly shorter than bounding through most open worlds and a run through the critical path reveals a speedy game. Not as speedy as the first but brisk by genre standards.

exploration is the glue that binds the combat and progression system in place. Upgrading armor and weapons requires seeking out specific materials and fighting certain monsters. Gathering the funds for big purchases in shops mostly comes from selling your excess monster parts. The entire game hinges on the idea of long expeditions where you accrue materials and supplies on the road and then invest that horde one way or another once you return to town. It's not simply a matter of mood and tone for you to trek throughout the world without ease. The gameplay loop is built around it.

There's another complicating factor that I'm less interested in diving into and it's the presence of certain microtransactions at launch. Principally I'm against MTX in single players games, particularly conveniences of which most of DD2's microtransactions are. But I also think there's been a fundamental misunderstanding of what many of these are. Among the biggest things I've heard (repeatedly!) is that you can pay real life money for fast travel but that's not true. You can buy a single portcrystal offering you one more potential location to warp to. It's a one-time purchase and the only travel convenience offered. This has transformed, partly because of people's lack of familiarity with Dragon's Dogma's mechanics, into a claim that you can pay over and over to teleport around. I think that assumption reveals more about the general audience than anything else.

I think it is worth entertaining a question: does the existence of this extra port crystal signify a compromising of the game's goals regarding travel? That's not a discussion that folks seem to be interested in having—instead opting for more emotional and reactionary panicking—but it is the most interesting question. On face the answer is yes and that raises the follow up question of whether or not the developers had knowledge this convenience (though one-off) would be offered to players. If so, did that knowledge affect how they designed the game? Even slightly? It seems rather clear to me that these purchases are a publisher decision; there's nothing in the game's design that suggest the dev team wants players to have access to an extra portcrystal. As we've established it's quite the opposite!

They want you to haul your fucking ass around and get jumped by goblins, buddy.

Which is many words to say that as much as I care about microtransactions from a consumer standpoint, the way in which they undermine Dragon's Dogma 2's goals is a fair reminder of the ways in which they hurt developers. Ultimately, I do think that these purchases are ignorable and in that sense (combined with the misinformation surrounding them) I'm a little burned by the consumer-minded discussion. Doubly so because of the way it feels, at least in part, tied into a certain kind of rhetoric that's been on the rise lately. Instead, I find myself drawn to the question of the damage they do the devs and if more onerous plans actually would force their hands into undercutting portions of their own designs. The shift of many series into live-service chasing suggest so but even as I entertain these thoughts I don't get the sense that Itsuno and his team were forced to reshape their game world to encourage these microtransactions. The world is as they want.

If it wasn't, they wouldn't make it so failing to act quickly in a quest to find a missing kid stolen by wolves could end with you being too late. They wouldn't make it so buying goods from an Elven shop without an interpreter was a hassle. It's present in Every Damn Thing!

More interesting to consider is why this particular game became such a lightning rod of passion when I'm going to assume that most people caught up in the discussion have no particular fealty to the series. The answer is a combination of factors but there's something about the genre that ignites the panic we're seeing as much as the culture moment we're in. When people try to explain that these MTX purchases are not needed, it's confused for approval of their inclusion but that's not something we need to grant. I don't think anyone wants these things here and when they say "you don't need them" they are referring to the more complex thought that the game is better played without them. But this is not heard because the idea that you'd want to opt into friction and discomfort is not something that the general audience is likely to understand. They're wired against it. They crave ease.

not everyone, mind you. DD2's enjoyed a lot of excited reactions (there's tons of folks who like this game as it is and are happily playing it) but it has faced plenty of folks railing against "bad" design choices but the fact remains that those "bad" choices were intentional.

I'm writing about this stuff instead of, say, the wild journey I took solving one of the Sphinx's riddles because the immediately interesting thing about Dragon's Dogma 2 has been what it's become as a cultural object. It is a game suffering from success. Never designed for a general audience or modern standards but thrust into their hands due to Capcom's ongoing renaissance. Dragon's Dogma is a fine game whose cult status is well earned but the reason DD2 garnered this attention (and therefore becomes a hot-topic game) has as much to do with Capcom's ongoing success rate as anything else. In some ways, it actually IS a good time to release a game like Dragon's Dogma 2. There's certainly a curiousity in place. Partly borne of goodwill and also from folks' genuine desire to try something new.

and yet, we're in a odd moment in games. consumer rights lanaguge, having been fundamentally misunderstood and reconfigured by gamers as a rhetoric for justifying their purchase habits (I'm paying the money! why can't the game do exactly as I demand!?) has stifled many people's ability to have imaginative interpretations of gameplay mechanics. they don't ask "what is this thing doing as a storytelling device" (which mechanics are!) and rather default to "what is this thing doing to me and my FUN and my TIME". which are not bad questions but they also misunderstand the possibility space games have to offer. While we can attribute some of the objections that has arisen to players' thoughts about genre itself and the way in which Dragon's Dogma positions friction as a key gameplay pillar, the fact of the matter is that we would not be having such spirited discussion about these things in, say, 2017. not that things were great back then, but I think the audience is worse now in many, many ways. sarcastically? I blame Game Design YouTube.

Even if there were no microtransactions, we'd still be having a degree of Discourse thanks to a key game mechanic: Dragonplague. It is a disease that can afflict your Pawn companions which initially causes them to get mouthy and start to disobey orders. If you notice these signs (alongside ominous glowing eyes) then your Pawn has been infected and you're expected to dismiss them back to the Rift where that infection can spread to another player. The game gives a pop up to the player explaining this the first time they encounter the disease. However, some players have ignored that warning and found a dire consequence: an untreated Pawn can, when the player rests at an inn, go on an overnight rampage that kills the majority of NPCs in whatever settlement they are in. This includes plot-important characters. The reaction's been intense. Reddit always sucks but man… just look…

I understand some of the ire. It's a drastic shift from your pawn being a bit ornery to instantly killing an entire city. On the other hand, the game does warn of potentially dire consequences if a Pawn's sickness is ignored. Players have simply underestimated the scale of that consequence. Surely no major RPG would mass murder important characters and break questlines! We're in post Oblivion/Skyrim world. Important NPCs are essential and cannot be killed, right? Well, wrong and this is another way in which Dragon's Dogma chases after the legacy of a game like Morrowind more than than it adapts current open world trends. This is a world where things can break and the developers have decided that they are okay with it breaking in a very drastic way. It's hard to think of anything comparable in a contemporary game. We don't really do this kind of thing anymore.

The result has been panic and a spread of information both helpful and hopelessly speculative. Is your game ruined? Well, maybe. There is an item you can find which allows for mass resurrection but that's gonna require some questing. But some players also say that you can wait a while and the game will eventually reset back to the pre-murder status quo. What's true? Hard to know. Dragon's Dogma doesn't show all of its cards and won't always explain itself. We know entire cities can be killed. We know that individual characters can be revived in the city morgue or else the settlement restored (mostly) with a special item. Dragonplague is detectable and the worst case scenario is, to some extent or another, something that the player can ameliorate. Those are facts but they don't really matter.

That's because players issue (panick? hysteria?) with dragonplague is as much to do with what it represents as what it does. Players are used to the notion of game worlds being spaces where they get to determine every state of affair. They are, as I've suggested before, eager to play the tyrant. Eager to enact whatever violences or charities that might strike their fancy. They do this with the expectation that they will be rewarded for the latter but face no consequences for the former. Dragonplague argues otherwise. No, it says, this world is also one that belongs to the developers and they are more than fine with heaping dire consequences on players. Before the dragonplague's consequences were known, players were running around the world killing NPCs in cities because it would stabilize the framerate. They're fine with mass murder on their own terms. they love it!

This is made more clear when we look at how Dragon's Dogma handles saving the game. While there are autosaves between battles, players are expected to rest at inns to save their game. This costs some gold, which is a hassle, but the bigger "issue" is that they only have one save slot. Which means that save scumming is not entirely feasible though not impossible with a bit of planning. What it does mean, however, is that the game is saved when a dragonplague attack happens. you have to rest at an inn for this to trigger. which saves the game. They cannot roll back the clock. The tragedy becomes a fact. It's not the only time Dragon's Dogma does this. For instance, players can come into possession of a special arrow that can slay anything. When used, the game saves. Much like how players are given a warning about dragonplague, they're warned before using this arrow: don't miss.

If you do? that's a real shame. The depth of this consequence is uncommon in today's gaming landscape. Games are mostly frivolous and save data is the amber from which players suck crystallized potentialities. Don't like what happened? No worries. Slide into your files and find the frozen world which suits your proclivities. You are God. In Dragon's Dogma, you are not god. The threads of prophecy can be severed and you must persist in the doomed world that's been created. The mere suggestion is an affront. The fact that Dragon's Dogma has the stones to commit to the bit in 2024 is essentially a miracle.

It's easy to boil everything I'm saying down to "Dragon's Dogma is not afraid to be rude to the player" but that doesn't capture the spirit of the design. It invites players to go on a hike. It makes no attempt to hide that the hike is difficult. But that's the extent of it. It offers little guidance on the path, doesn't check if you're a skilled enough hiker. Your decision to go on the hike is taken as proof of your acceptance of the fact that you might fall down.

This is not unique to Dragon's Dogma. In fact, this is part of the appeal (philosophically) of a game like Elden Ring. The difference being that even FromSofts much-lauded gamer gauntlets (excepting perhaps Sekiro, conincidentally their best work) offer more ways to adjust and fix the world state to the player's liking. Even the darling of difficulty will offering you a hand when you fall. Dragon's Dogma is not so eager to do so. In a decade where convenience is king for video games, that represents both a keen understanding of its lineages and a shocking affront to accepted norms and expectations.

The core of Dragon's Dogma, the very defining characteristics that earned it cult status, are the same things that have caused these modern tensions. It is both a franchise utterly consistent in its design priorities and entirely out of touch with the modern audience. Dragon's Dogma 2 has come into prominence during a time where imaginative interpretation of mechanics is at an all time low and calls for "consumer" gratification are taken as truisms. It is a game entirely at odds with the YouTube ecosystem and the very things that give it allure are the tools that have turned it into a debated object.

This flashpoint of discussion is proof of Dragon Dogma 2's design potency. It's also a sign of the damage that modern design trends have done to games as whole and the ongoing fallout that's come from gamers learning design concepts without really understanding what designing a game entails. And, uh… I dunno respond to that or how to end this. That's both very cool but it also bums me out. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a remarkably confident game but games are long beyond the point of admiring a thing for being honest.

#dragon's dogma 2 #games criticism

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yuurivoice · 18 days

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how are you doing lately yuuri? (everyones been asking about content so i just wanted to ask something that wasnt related to it. obviously no ill will towards them ❤❤)

I'm pretty great actually!

My 2024 didn't really kick off until the middle of March tbh, but now that I'm really rolling I'm feeling good about things.

Creatively I'm charged up and full of ideas. Every time I go to the well, my cup is full. That's the best case scenario for any artist, so I'm very happy. The bigger projects will take time but I am actively chipping away at them rather than letting them stew in my brain.

Am still head over heels for Aerith after playing FFVII Rebirth, and put some solid hours into Dragon's Dogma 2, so I've been a real gamer boy so far in 2024 lol

Cats good. House good. Life good.

Nothing really new going on. Had an appointment to get my passport, that was cool and my picture turned out pretty decent so I'm not mad at that.

I'll be seeing Nothing More and Hozier in concert this month, and Motionless in White next month. Excited about that for sure.

Life is definitely very content-centric right now but it doesn't feel like work and things are going well in terms of numbers. It's an ebb and flow usually but when both of those align it feels particularly rewarding!

I've streamlined and refined some of my processes when it comes to scripts, planning, etc. and that feels good after years of just sorta vomiting on the page and hoping everyone involved can figure it out lol

Had some really wonderful portfolio submissions when I called for them on Patreon! I have many people I need to reach out to and I feel really optimistic about some of the writers that reached out. Having some wonderful scripts to use when I need to get ahead of schedule and focus my own writing on the narrative projects is really going to take some pressure off of me. Script submissions have been helpful sometimes, but now that I have a bit more brain capacity I can take extra steps to really get hands on and work with select writers 1:1. Script submissions will still be a thing, and if you haven't submitted your portfolio and think you've got the sauce...go hit my business email!

In terms of art I just need to expand options when it comes to merch, one off thumbnails, etc. to help with the flow of things. With multiple major series coming, I'd like to be able to keep Jackie on those and not have to interrupt the flow by throwing a new thing at her every other week and end up messing with the schedule because I can't stop having ideas lol

So! A lot of great stuff going on. I'm feeling great and am looking forward to smashing the rest of this year!

#damn im a yapper lmfao

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grimalkint00th · 16 days

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Please allow me to talk into the void for a brief moment. I’ve been wanting to touch on something about DD2 that has been bothering me a bit. My partner said it best, “Here's a question. Why do two side quests in Dragons Dogma 2 lead to you sleeping with two different women without the option of saying no? Additionally, why are there no male romance options that go that far?”

This grew to be one of my biggest gripes about the game so far. This obviously isn’t much of an issue in the grand scheme of the game but it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth. I want to briefly mention that I don’t play/seek out games solely based on whether or not they have romance aspects. However, I do enjoy when they do and I think it adds a great deal of depth to games if done properly. I am the type of person that mainly plays for the game’s story, lore, character creation, etc. I understand not everyone plays games this way but I enjoy creating little worlds to immerse myself in! So when something such as this is implemented into a game, it removes a large variety of players wants or expectations. It decides your character’s sexual orientation for you and for a lot of people (myself included), being given the freedom to develop that sort of thing on your own (if at all) is very important.

I’ve been seeing people making some pretty braindead arguments on this topic as well. One of them being, “Just don’t do those quests then.” Now, if you were to take more than 5 seconds to actually think about it, you would realize that 1) the player is given absolutely no warning that either of these scenes will take place beforehand. And 2) takes like this are severely missing the point of this conversation.

I guess all I’m really trying to say here is that I would’ve liked to see more variety. Give us some sexy time with male npcs too! Or give us an option to decline these advances at the VERY least.

#please let me be critical about a game I love #this isn’t the end of the world but I do think there is a conversation to be had here #these are just my thoughts #and I feel a lot more comfortable sharing them here than I do over on twitter so #fran.rambles #dd2 #dragon's dogma ii #dragons dogma 2

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rosenfey · 2 months

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⊱.𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑢𝑝,-

— 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑑 by @yrlietlanaevyss, @pinkfey and @druidgroves to do this, thank you kindly! ♡

⊱ 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑔: cum on feel the noize by oasis. i said what i said ⊱ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔: the completely made-up adventures of dick turpin. waiting for the next episode this friday! ⊱ 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝𝑠: gale x faerene (my main oc and a self-insert) are literally everything i think about. honorary mentions: odetta x minthara (evil wives) and faerene x the wizard from stardew valley (so just faerene x gale but pixelated) ⊱ 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑟: pink! ⊱ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔: playing my favourite game bladder gate the third (for the 4576th time) so i can see the new kisses and the epilogue! other than that i am eagerly awaiting the 1.6 stardew update and the release of dragons dogma 2 right after because the first dragons dogma is incredibly special to me and i will go feral when this launches (that's a promise and a threat) ⊱ 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝: would you believe me if I said I don't rightfully remember ⊱ 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑖��𝑡ℎ: slovakia ⊱ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛: switching between slovakia and faroe islands. if you know where both of these are i will give you a kiss ⊱ 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠: i've been pretty much dating a real-life version of gale for 2+ years now. it's uncanny and we joke about how i literally played the game and went "oh, this guy looks and behaves like my real boyfriend. that's the one". i have a type and it's evident ⊱ 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑒: ready or not. it was a blast (pun intended) ⊱ 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛: my carrd / website for my oc profiles! and making edits for my favourite game, bladder gate the third

— 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑛𝑜 𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠: @fantasmagoriam﹒@tekehu﹒@theviridianbunny﹒@katsigian﹒@armorofhexes﹒@gortash﹒@haarleps﹒@obliviongate﹒@nocticulas﹒@shadowglens﹒@euryalex﹒@lutebard﹒@spookyorcas﹒@leviiackrman﹒@florbelles﹒@mercymaker﹒@wizardskissing﹒@kelemvorr﹒@bethesdas﹒@seluned﹒@feykiller﹒@utopianoverlord﹒@dravanias﹒@elluvians﹒@lavampira﹒@hungryblackbird﹒@thedeadthree﹒@swanfey﹒@dameaylin﹒@riikugan﹒@rindemption﹒@sephiratales﹒@thenightsong﹒@dilfbuck﹒@doomblight﹒@heinrix + you! ♡

#ambie got tagged #c'est moi #i tried to tag as many people as i can im sorry if i forgor u!! my memory is that of a goldfish.#feel free to do it anyway and tag me i love seeing what people are up to uwu

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datcloudboi · 1 year

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List of video games turning 10 years old in 2023:

Aliens: Colonial Marines (the godawful FPS from Gearbox)

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (do people still like New Horizons? I genuinely don't know...)

Antichamber

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (the one where you play as a pirate)

Batman: Arkham Origins (IMO, not bad at all)

Call of Duty: Ghosts

Company of Heroes 2

Disney Infinity

DmC: Devil May Cry (the reboot. PS, c'mon, guys, this game wasn't bad at all)

Don't Starve

Dragon's Crown (developed by Vanillaware, who would go on to make 13 Sentinels, which is one of the best games I've ever played.)

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (the director's cut version of Dragon's Dogma and pretty much the best way to play the game)

Dynasty Warriors 8

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (the relaunch of what is now one of the most successful MMOs of all time)

Fire Emblem: Awakening (in the West)

Fuse

Gears of War: Judgment

God of War: Ascension (the last game in the series before Dad of Boi)

Grand Theft Auto V (old_man.gif)

Killer Instinct (the reboot)

Killer is Dead (a decent hack & slash from Grasshopper Manufacture, the devs behind No More Heroes)

Killzone: Shadow Fall (a launch title for the PlayStation 4)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (as part of the Year of Luigi™️)

Marvel Puzzle Quest

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (don't fuck with THIS senator!)

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (an excellent JRPG from Level-5 that was also animated by Studio Ghibli)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Pandora's Tower (one of the last big name games to release on the Wii)

Papers, Please

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

The PlayStation 4

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (the first Pokémon game on 3DS)

Pokémon X and Y (the first 3D mainline Pokémon games)

Project × Zone (a crossover between Capcom, Sega, and Bandai Namco properties)

Remember Me (the first game developed by Dontnod, who would go on to create Life is Strange)

Rune Factory 4

Ryse: Son of Rome (a launch title for the Xbox One)

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers

Shin Megami Tensei IV

SimCity (the one that was always online for some godforsaken reason)

Slender: The Arrival

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (the only Sly game not made by the original devs)

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (so far, the last Splinter Cell game to release)

The Stanley Parable

Super Mario 3D World

Tales of Xillia (is this one of the good Tales games or no? I thought it was decent.)

Tomb Raider (the reboot)

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (an absolutely terrible spin-off of the TV show centered on Daryl)

The Walking Dead: Season Two (or, at least, the first episode of the series)

The Wolf Among Us (or at least, the first episode of the series)

The Xbox One

Ys: Memories of Celceta

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mirilen · 16 days

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Going back to Dark Arisen after DD2 is a wild time. I played the original back when I was but a wee lass and didn't really understand how the game was meant to be played and thought it was mid.

Now I'm replaying it and having so much fun! After pretty much dogwalking every enemy in 2 it's so delightful to get my ass handed to me by a bunch of Saurians because I wasn't careful. And having multiple, situational spells! I'm not just a Palladium/Anodyne bot anymore!

The Pawn AI is definitely a downgrade though, I can't rely on them as much as I could in 2. And while graphics aren't as important to me as gameplay, Vermund and Battahl were just so *pretty* and Gran Soren feels somewhat small and flat by comparison.

But those are nitpicks. This game is special. The monsters feel like monsters. The world feels full of secrets and just wandering around feels rewarding. Having the pawns with you makes combat feel much more expensive as each fight becomes a multi-target brawl. Magic is possibly the best feeling system I've played in a game. Making you feel like you have to earn every spell cast by positioning and timing but then rewarding you with power befitting a wielder of the arcane.

To say nothing of climbing up the back of a monster and driving it to its knees so your allies can pull it down and have a boot party on its head.

Itsuno may well be Japanese Peter Molyneux with how much they both overpromise and overreach with their games but fable was still an incredible and unique game for its time, and same with Dragons Dogma. The series may never be "perfect" but there's nothing else like it.

If you've never played Dragons Dogma, Dark Arisen (the updated rerelease) is like.. 10 bucks on Steam and I would highly, highly recommend you give it a go. If you even vaguely enjoy monster hunter, Skyrim, final fantasy, dragon age, anything like that you will enjoy this game I promise.

What I'm trying to say is that the Dragons Dogma series are Masterworks all, you can't go wrong.

#dragons dogma #dragons dogma 2 #dark arisen #dragons dogma dark arisen

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orinthered · 1 month

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Dragon's Dogma having only one save file may be a design choice (I know of at least one major thing you're referring to), but in actual practice, it just means that some people are objectively going to lose progress or have very negative experiences with the game

To that point, I started a new DD1 file before DD2's release and I ran into an issue where I just kept freezing on random load screen, right as it was autosaving, so my save file kept getting corrupted. Lost like 5 hours of progress from the start of the game, had to do it all over again, then it happened again in a different spot. The only reason I was able to make any meaningful progress until I figured out the issue was by making manual backups

I'm honestly terrified of the same thing happening with Dragon's Dogma 2 and have actually been stopping my play sessions periodically just to make a manual backup, then loading back in. Not even including the in-game event(s) that can royally screw your playthrough, that is a completely unnecessary fear that the devs have chosen to create, which is particularly egregious considering the mountain of performance and crashing issues people have been experiencing due to poor optimization

People who want to save scum or simply want the security of backups are always going to find the means to do so regardless of what the devs intend. I mean, DD1 had a mod that automatically backed up your save file and it was already retooled for DD2 literally on release day. To inconvenience all players purely for the sake of encouraging a specific play style is, quite frankly, insulting to peoples' time. Plenty of games manage to create compelling exploration experiences and interesting points of consequence and tension without tying any of it to some random, severely limiting mechanic or design choice

I say all of this as someone who's currently 40 hours in and is loving the exploration (which evokes that first time experience of playing Breath of the Wild), but who absolutely abhors the notion of having to repeat a 20+ minute long trek because I got to a quest area to save an NPC from some monster and the NPC ends up falling in the water literally as soon as I arrive, causing the game to auto-save because the quest is now "complete" (failed). Or, suddenly all of my pawns have swan dived into a river due to pathfinding issues or climbing movement quirks, causing me to waste time, rift crystals, or ferrystones to recuperate. Or, being forced to automatically talk to a passing NPC/pawn during a fight, causing my escort NPC to draw aggro and die while I'm trying to mash out of the dialogue menu

Defend the vision of players needing to pay attention and sit with their consequences all you'd like, but small, dumb shit like that is honestly infuriating and it happens way more often than it should

i get that this is annoying but i also think that if the ability to savescum existed in the game, everyone would do it. would i necessarily complain about multiple saves in a game like dragon's dogma? probably *not*, but i would miss the experience of being forced to engage with the game in a way i would not if i had access to multiple saves. i found myself missing this in baldur's gate 3 — because i had the ability to savescum things like rolls, i never played with the consequences of failing rolls.

is that a failure of those game systems? yeah. larian wants you to engage with failed rolls, but how many players do you know actually do that? who don't just press f9 when they get a shit roll?

you can dislike these systems, that's fair. but dragon's dogma fills a lot of niches that other games do not. one of these niches is a one-save system that forces you to engage with the game by making you play the game with your consequences, or suffer some really annoying backtracking with the inn save system. i do not think that every game has to appeal completely to every person. if you think dragon's dogma is insulting to your time, that's fine. if you think the execution is bad (which i could argue for, even though i really like what dd2 does) that is also fine. not every aspect of the game is gonna be a hit, god knows there's a particular section of dd2 that i think was a real miss (those who've beaten the game know exactly what i'm talking about) but i mean... there are reasons for it, infuriating or not. that is also part of the experience.

#i also did not experience these things the way that you did but i don't think that my experience of the game necessarily negates yours #asks #.txt

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blbf-fanfic · 10 hours

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Reviving in Progress

Sorry gang but I dropped off the face of the Earth - no streaming, practically no gaming (besides Dragon Dogma and Dead Island 2, LETS GOOOO) and CERTAINLY no writing. Each time I wanted to do writing I wasn't able to focus and I wasn't able to get excited. It's always when I'm away from my computer that I have the urge to write and the moment you sit down you would rather do 5 other things. BUT! I did get a lofi game that plays at the bottom of the screen to keep my ADHD brain a little more on track. Yes, there are going to be chapters again. No, I cannot promise WHICH chapters. I know that everything needs a update real bad.

For now, to get back into it, I've already updated Chapter 2 of FW AGAIN because I finally settled on a direction I wanted to go for. That and pieces didn't fit right with me. I will not guarantee when I will get the next chapter out to you all and I regret that- I do like writing, I just can never find the headspace these days. So to all you folks who are still waiting on these updates? Thank you so much, you're a far better community then I deserve at this point.

#bloodpix #ao3 #blbf-fanfic #fanfic #ao3fic #undertale fanfic #ao3 fanfic #fanfiction #underfell fanfiction #undertale #archive of our own #ao3fanficition #ao3undertale #ao3feed #ao3 writer #forbidden whispers

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dany36 · 27 days

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ok, after spending like, my entire week of vacations playing dragon's dogma 2 (56 hours thus far and still plenty more to go--wanna explore the whole map before heading to the final boss!), as a new fan i gotta say i fucking love it.

the initial reviews and receptions were wildly exaggerated, at least in my opinion. i've never even seen the microtransactions nor have i seen the need to do them. yes it’s shitty that these even exist in the first place and yes capcom should be criticized for apparently making them mandatory but…idk the way people were talking about it made it seem like you’d be forced to use them because getting those items would be harder to get in-game. also i'm playing the ps5 version so i never saw any performance issues. my only gripe is that the fast travel kind of sucks in this game, i've been careful with my ferrystones and i just finally got my fourth portcrystal lol so traveling to the volcanic island or whatever should be much easier now that i can place another portcrystal there. but yeah i do wish there was a way to instantly transport back to a town and not have to like, constantly run back and forth between places. but whatever, it hasn't been THAT big of a deal except in like just a handful of quests. but yeah, if people stopped playing it or didn't pick it up just because of the microtransactions, then that's really a shame because they're missing out on an awesome game.

i had spent like 90% of my playthrough playing as a fighter because i'm not much of a mage/sorcerer person, and i tried the mystic spear but i couldn't get the hang of it so i just switched back lol. i then tried the archer one but immediately ran into a drake before i actually got the hang of fighting with the bow and got my ass promptly handed to me, so i got intimidated and switched back to warrior again :'v and i'm kind of sad i did because i recently switched once again to archer and man, i've been having a lot of fun! taking down large monsters has been way easier/faster while i let my thief and warrior go at it up close, i was even handling a drake much better before it ran away (it went into vernworth so fighting there was kind of awkward)... but yeah, been enjoying the archer class a lot more now, so idk maybe once i master it i'll try the magick archer one too :)

anyway!! i'm sure i'll have more thoughts once i'm done with the game, but i never expected to absolutely love this game and have it absorb my free time so much. i never played eldin ring because it sort of intimidated me and i thought this game would too, but man i'm so glad i picked it up and chose to spend most of my vacation playing it. exploring every inch of the map has been such a blast and i'm going to be sad once i finally do beat the final boss, ALTHOUGH i've heard that there's like, postgame quests??? so those should be fun! and honestly i won't be opposed to doing a new game+ run lol if the ending doesn't suck then dare i say that this game will sneak into being on the list of my favorite games ever. what a fantastic game, i didn't think i was going to enjoy yet another open world game, but here we are.

#dragon's dogma 2 #dd2 #junk #i do have my criticisms but i'll leave those for once i beat the game

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astralartefact · 23 days

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Placeholder Name for Atarase's Media Diary

Entry 002 - Dragon's Dogma 2 <<Prev: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Synopsis

A prolonged camping adventure with the loyalest boys and a mage prodigy who gives me sass only often enough to make me paranoid she has the evil guy disease that kills everybody (might just be puberty)

Special Shoutout to whoever I stole Zoe the Beastren Healer Girl from (Your character name is/was Melina), she was a regular fixture of my party and is mine now.

How much did I know before playing?

I didn't play the first one, but I kept up with the marketing somewhat, and I was hyped to finally play it.

Did I like it more than I expected?

I fully expected to like it and I did. From what I've seen from the game before I bought it I knew its approach to an Open World would be my kind of game - and it was.

But seeing the discourse (and we will get to the discourse) this feels like a daring statement to make lol

Since I liked it, here's what I hated about it

Okay, this is the weirdest criticism to have about a game I completed in 113 hours, but it wasn't big enough. When I unknowingly made my way to Battahl and realized it wasn't as big as the other biome my reaction was a sad o: face and that feeling stuck around until the end, everything was just "I wouldn't mind if this was bigger :/" and it did impact my enjoyment of Battahl as a whole (Agamen not as much).

The game as a whole is really cool - I really loved it, I'm having to stop myself from starting a NG+ right now, and I think given an endless stream of new content I could literally play this game forever - and to some degree I feel like its size was calculated pretty well by the devs and shouldn't be bigger (if it was a lot of other minor details would suddenly become much bigger problems) but I guess it feels unexhausted.

I disagree when people say the open world is empty and one note - I personally had a great time exploring the entire map and I think the variety inside of the biomes is realistic and nuanced, I think if they just rethemed what's there into more different, but smaller biomes that wouldn't have done it for me either. The world might not be "new and exciting" everywhere you go, but every space in a given biome has some nuance in its topology and context that makes it stand out from the rest and it really feels like this world could be a real place exactly the way it is.

And since being grounded and 'realistic' is kind of this game's entire deal, having beef with that is to me kind of pointless, that just means you should have researched better what you're buying into (and we'll get to that!)

But I guess it feels like they could have done more, that all of these systems slotting in with each other would have benefitted from more stuff. Take the pawn specializations and classes for example, I think all of them are pretty neat but there aren't that many so running into 'one of that type' doesn't really change anything, especially since situational ones like the Elvish Speakers are coded to appear where you need them and you only "need" them in one specific place so you don't ever really have to think who you take with you. Same with environmental hazards like those water dams.

I guess that's the good thing of being able to expect Capcom to overdo it on DLC - I think adding more stuff like that in for example an expansion would really benefit this game, even though I will say that I think for the game that we have right now, the stuff that is there is enough.

Because in a fit of madness I don't even mean stuff like the enemy variety with that? I thought for the size of the game world the enemy variety was fine, not great but fine, even if it was on the smaller side at least the variety of their placement was really well thought through so I didn't really fight two of the same enemy groups in a row (the only problem i had with the enemies was that the enemy groups spawn way too densely and too frequently, you can't move an inch without aggroing another hassle of a fight and it also happens with paths you just cleared half an hour ago so map movement starts to become a chore at some point)

Finally: Men. But we'll talk about that.

What did this game make me think about?

We can only change the world by wanting to change it :) I love that as a theme, I'm really glad this is becoming a contemporary staple

Specific Impressions that will stick with me

THE TITLE SCREEN BEING DRAGONS DOGMA (NOT 2!) UNTIL THE THING HAPPENS i noticed that and it made me fall in love with the game so much more, it being a stealth remake and how it plays with that is so fcking cool i love that (again, I haven't even played the first one)

The coastal path to Bakbattahl. As I was randomly exploring I was wondering what the red waymarkers along this cave path were, so of course I followed them until at the end of this seemingly endless pilgrimage I finally realised what they were leading to. The entire experience of travelling along the cliffs and having to watch out for the harpies and the griffon was just really beautifully crafted. That whole journey will defo stick with me for a long time.

CHARACTER CREATOR OPEN WORLD RPGS ARE THE BEST Character Creators are my VisualNovel where the general audience seems to think they're cheesy but no, you don't get it, it's just that devs don't use them right because barely anyone has thought about their artistic merit yet. i can add so much visceral character development to my journey by changing hairstyles, adding scars, making my pc more muscular after training a new class, etc.

the day one of these games shaves a pc's head when they're imprisoned or adds scars when losing to a monster instead of a Game Over (all optional ofc people would scream if they forced that on their waifu) without me having to do that on my own is the day i will die happy

Outstanding Audio

The boss themes were cool? I did like the music and didn't just feel ambivalent about it but I couldn't tell you any specific piece :(

Favorite Character

Well, my character and my sweet pawns of course.

Aside from that I really liked Nadinia, even if she didn't get to do all that much, I just really love characters like her.

Also I guess the Smith Girl in Battahl, I liked her :)

Favorite Arc/Story Line

I liked Sven and Ser Menella's quests, but more than anything I loved seeing how doing quests impacted evacuating the cities after being baffled that the quests just ended without a conclusion. So I guess the entire final arc? (btw get good guys, i did the colossus quick kill without the arrow and seeing that pay off afterwards was amazing)

Favorite Set Piece

Travelling to Battahl along the coast

Watching my Pawn fight as the colossus

Everything that had to do with the capital-D Dragon

also having a healer with a child-like voice around and being paranoid about the dragon plague any time she gave me sass (she has like two or three lines out of nowhere that felt very pointed and i was so scared)

Favorite Scene

The ending scene with your pawn turning into the plague dragon. something about that did it for me.

Best Performance (I played with JP voices)

Kakuma Ai of Edelgard fame gave Nadinia such an edge that I really appreciate, she really made that character for me. For some reason I thought she was going to be a well-meaning but helpless pacifist priestess type character and thankfully she was not just that, she knew full well what she was doing while still also kind of being that pacifist priestess.

German Localization Notes

I thought the Localization was great! It fit the setting (I think Vasall is a better term than Pawn, fight me) and there were barely any blatant mistakes (I remember one spelling error and one time I was referred to as female, but that might be a programming error instead)

From what I did understand from the JP Pawn Dialogue I think they changed a bunch from the "original Japanese" though (might be an EN issue though, we don't have our own DE Voice Over so it would make more sense to keep with the 'default' language's text instead of JP) but also I don't really care since 90% of the dialogue is just Pawn Chatter where the phrasing of the content isn't particularly narratively important

--- ENTERING THE PRETENTIOUS SECTION OF THIS ENTRY ---

What about this game gives me Hope for the future of gaming?

This game is so fucking cool. I love this game for how weird it is. The stuff people complain about? Glorious. I love every single thing.

I loved having to have a physical fist fight with the save feature every time I was scared of making the wrong narrative choice. Yeah, it's kind of dumb and annoying, but from the devs' perspective, from the game they wanted to make and the overall vibe they were clearly going for it just makes sense. You're suppossed to roll with your wins and your failings - and if you can just always win then what's the point. You're not supposed to save scum as "un-quality of life" that may be and this is one way to kind of limit it to preserve the vibe they were going for.

Only having one save state and limiting character makeovers (they already fixed this one) makes sense because you're not supposed to play this game 'in parallel', you're supposed to play this game in succession - in a cycle, even. Your character isn't supposed to suddenly be an entirely different character, you're supposed to connect with the story through this character that is yours and to that goal, continually letting you change them completely would hinder that.

And since clearly this is actually a stealth remake of the first one I also really respect them not changing the shitty Beloved system? For some reason it's much more interesting to me that they kept it exactly the way it was, despite being stupid.

I guess I love stuff like this because it forces you to interact with the game as a piece of software engineering to make your own goals in this game come true. And yes, to me that's a good thing, because Video Games are pieces of software engineering - They're pretty much the only type of media that can do this.

Let me, the person who needs to make Self-Inserts for Maximum Escapism, be the one to tell you that I'm with Brecht when I say that in all sincerity, Immersion is a skill issue. Fuck Immersion as an aspirational trait of a piece of art. Especially capital-G Gamers have no clue what they're talking about when they use the word Immersion - and I get to say that, because I know that Presence exists beside the two popular buzzwords Immersion and Suspension of Disbelief - and this shit gives me so much Presence, I can't even begin to tell you.

I had to read the phrase "This game not maintaining 30FPS is breaking my immersion" about a game that made me pick up a child that had developed a crush on me, run in circles until my stamina ran out in order to drop it in a way that makes it crash into the stone floor, spraying blood everywhere because it was the only way I could make the child like me less - and I had to do that multiple times all so I could ensure I wouldn't end up kissing a child in the ending.

And while doing that, I did think "It's stupid the game works like this", I did feel fucking bad for the child I was abusing all so I could romance... well I romanced a random guy off the street because the men in this game were kind of boring - and yet in hindsight I was completely immersed into what I was doing because I was unironically engaging, grasping for agency in the systems put in place by the game's developers. I am rummaging through the rules of this universe all to spite god by making a child hate me a little bit more - and if that's not in the spirit of Dragon's Dogma II then I don't know what is. (this is only like 20% sarcasm btw)

To say it like this: Video Games aren't just to immerse you into a story better. Arguments about Immersion also always make me wonder what people think books are doing. But Dragon's Dogma 2 certainly is first and foremost a video game.

It feels like the people working on this game thought about what they were doing and during my journey through this world I got the feeling of understanding what exactly the devs went for in all aspects of this piece of software engineering - It's not trying to be a movie, it's not trying to be a book. It's trying and succeeding to be what it is and I really appreciate that.

I just wish there was EVEN MORE of it!!!

What about this game makes me scared for the future of gaming?

It grinds my gears that this keeps coming up so here it is, another round of idiot Gamers making me defend capitalism for something it didn't cause:

It's great that you all have awakened to corporations squeezing you out of your money, that's very anti-capitalist of you and I applaud that communist thinking (i'm not a communist but a lot of angry Gamers aren't either so let's make them mad by calling them that)

And yet I'm so sorry to inform you that even in Utopia people would still try to scam you.

It's not a Video Game Company's fault that you believed what they told you. I'm empathetic that it's hard, annoying and most of all stupid that we have to interact with a media landscape that is constantly trying to scam us for our money and attention, but even a genuine and well-intended artist is going to sugarcoat their product - so why would you ever believe what CAPCOM of all people is telling you without seeing physical proof first?

And even if they're point blank lying - which, straight up, for the most part Itsuno wasn't - if someone tells you they will sell you a green mug and the mug they hand you is red and you ask "but this is red" and they say "no it's green" and then you still buy it and at home you're upset that it is indeed red then you're the idiot!!! Yes, why did that person tell you that? Did they think you`re stupid? Why is Capitalism uniquely rewarding scamming people like this? All valid questions to seek answers for! But you can fall to the ground crying capitalism all you want, it's still your own foolishness that caused this!!! Don't buy shit if you're not adequately sure that you will enjoy the product!!

You have to - and will always have to - make your own informed decisions about what you invest both your money and your time into. 95% of problems that not only this but pretty much any video game discourse these days is critizising could be solved by simply researching what kind of game you would be buying into before buying it. And in this case, you have luck, this game existed before and you can try that game out for literally 5€! You know how I knew that? Because I fucking googled it.

And you can too! Thanks to YouTube, Twitch, some shitty wikis and some good ones it has never been easier to identify if a game is up to your standards before buying it - you just can't do that before the game is even out, which is why Pre-Orders are such a big problem to some people (I personally don't care, because I have to think about what I'm doing with my money anyways)

So just. Think about what you're spending money on before spending money on it! Maybe try being poor and having just enough money to buy one game every three months - that taught me to do that!

But with that out of my system let me get to the other problem this game has, one I think is really fucking annoying and stupid and really the core of my grievances with the game and not just the audience....

The Ramble Section where I get to actually talk about what I thought about

To introduce the second? third? Ramble topic of the day, here are a few moments from my playthrough that we will use to illustrate my main "problem" with this game:

I, a gay man, was forced to kiss the Sexy BrothelLady for literally no reason.

When daring to have a full male party, my main pawn mentioned that he hoped I wouldn't make not having women in the party a habit. (paraphrased)

You can buy a very revealling Mage Armor in Battahl. Naturally, after reaching Battahl around 75% of Pawns I encountered were barely dressed women.

I guess to add to that, the only black skinned Pawn I ever saw was one that Capcom made. Isn't that heart-warming.

I don't even know if there are romanceable men on the level of BrothelLady (I'm too lazy to look her name up, that's what she gets for sexual assault) or Ulrika

The Yeti Monkey Ogre gets horny for female pawns which felt very weird. I don't think there's an equivalent mechanic for male characters.

The Beloved Animations are all expressedly feminine. And I love me femininity, but it says a lot about who the devs thought would more likely be beloved and who would do the loving.

There's a summoning stone that only shows you petite women (which isn't necesarily bad, but it did raise my eyebrows)

imagine FPS being the only thing between you and that oh so hallowed immersion.

I guess to put it this way: For most of its runtime, the game gets away with pretending to be Gender Agnostic. Your Beloved can be Everyone even children! There's almost no mechanical difference between genders! You could argue that there is no intended demographic in mind for this game - that everybody can play it and therefore it's made for everyone.

Until, of course, one of those things I mentioned above pops up and serves as a harsh reminder that No! At some point in development, the devs came down hard on "This game was made for heterosexual men and everyone else can just also play it."

And with some of this shit I felt gross about having to witness it and that's really the gist of it.

I remember vividly when my main pawn no homo-ed me about my All Male Party and how just utterly ugly that felt. And I know it was phrased weirdly (at least in german) so maybe it's just me, but it was vague enough that I could interpret it as him saying he needs women in the party so he had something to look at and that's an extremely wild and frankly inappropriate thing to have your blank canvas NPC Follower say out of fucking nowhere. Like, Imagine being a woman liking men and hearing that.

It's in moments like Wilhelmina's forced kiss (i remembered her name are you proud) where the only reason it happened was that the presumed player would find that shit hot. It's in Ulrika being clearly just romance option Nr.1 and I couldn't just tell her no and continue to do her quests, I had to throw her into a wall every time I saw her to the point I completely avoided her instead of talking to her. I'm pretty sure I missed quests because of that. Like, Imagine being a woman liking men trying to do these quests.

Related, there's also something in them trying to circumvent Depicting Real Racism by transposing it onto the Beastren - which I guess didn't not work, I don't have any big feelings either way, especially since the devs at least tried to keep the cast somewhat diverse; I certainly didn't find it as appalling as whatever FF16 did. But it also makes stuff like Nadinia not being an equivalent Romance option despite being on the cover of the game questionable, because now it's like... Yeah, that was a decision you made for a reason. You didn't think your presumed audience would find the cat lady hot, right? (I certainly did and I'm gay)

I also mentioned before having strong feelings about Character Creators - because I do feel they are a very, very strong tool to make your own story telling part of the game in a tangible way. And sure, I use them mainly for self-inserts, sue me, but what I'm trying to say is:

It feels crazy to have 75% of Pawns I run into be someone's waifu and they all look one certain way. Other than that people either make some joke pawn or a bad version of a popular character - but from what I've seen the waifu they can presumably goon over was certainly the biggest pawn demographic by far.

And I know that gets into "Let people have fun!" territory, but it definitely lessened mine and I'm not even one of the people this is about. It was less fun for me not just meeting somebody's unique pawn, but - well. An Army of Women Objects. Not even objectified women - these are Women born as Objects. (and yes while these women aren't real, the treatment of fictional women is still indicative of and impactful on real women - so yeah, you can objectify women even if they're fictional) A world supposed to be filled with myriad unique pawns is uniquely filled with Women Objects - and given what the Pawns are in universe, that's kind of massively fucked up and every time the Game acknowledges that - by including very revealing armor, making it easier to filter certain types of women and by telling me to recruit more women because why would you ever have an all male party??? - it just feels gross.

Again. Try imagining being a woman that dares to like men. I keep repeating it because it feels like nobody thought about this niche group of people that's just about 50% of the entire population on earth.

And I guess I can't fault the devs too much about it, for the most part I actually really like the female characters in this game (nadiniaaaaaa) and the Pawns they themselves made are pretty diverse so clearly they cared at least a little about it; I certainly didn't find what they did as appalling as whatever FF16 did. I can only side eye them for knowing that all of this would happen and kind of enabling their players to do that.

It's just sad. It's sad and it's gross and an active reminder that despite it all a majority of people still treats women, 50% of humanity, like property, deliberately or not. It stains a really enjoyable video game with interesting mechanics to think about that I really connected with - and all because capital-G Gamers and "standard" masculinity is fucking gross and yet the devs either didn't think that far or think that's fine and good and dandy.

#atarasegamediary #dragons dogma 2 #for your interest and i know you care very much #cyan is actually possessed by a dullahan (bc i lost against them so many times it's _character development_)#giving him a weird blue eye to signify possession stuff like that is what i'm talking about #also a great excuse to give him the lance job bc the magic looks similar #that's the kind of shit character creators let you pretend is a real part of the story #it's more than just a one off tool to make a character that looks like x or y #it's a tool to insert your own creativity onto the entire game

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