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usertonki · 2 years

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Victor vran gamefaqs

#Victor vran gamefaqs series

#Victor vran gamefaqs psp

Fighters get access to Special Attacks and you’re allowed two active ones per character (and these are tied to the shoulder buttons), while mages can cast any spell you have set the AI to cast, or you can also set two offensive spells to the shoulders which I think is a new feature to Second Evolution.

#Victor vran gamefaqs series

Star Ocean and Second Story were made by some of the people who made Tales of Phantasia, but my first encounter with the Tales series wouldn’t be until Symphonia on the Gamecube.Ĭharacters are separated into two classes, fighters and mages. When you build up enough speed, it’s actually possible to move out of the way of enemy attacks and then close to melee range again. Battles happen in real time–fight woosh and your team appears on one side while the enemy appears on the other, and your characters can run at the enemy and smack them with their weapons, use special attacks, cast spells if available, use items, and so on. Star Ocean 2 works about the same as any other JRPG, in that you have a general plotline and a bunch of towns and monsters to destroy between them. The game is still pretty slow starting out, but they have to dump exposition to fill in the backstory due to Claude not knowing the troubles Expel has been having these past few months, so tough it out for the first hour or so and it’ll start getting better. Hey, I think we passed the auditions for the next Metal Gear game! My very first time through, I only had six people total at the end because those were the only ones who the main plot introduced me to. There are eight total character slots and you’re only required to have Claude and Rena in your party, so the remaining six slots have to be split between eleven other people and some of them require work to recruit. And there are some mutally-exclusive characters who won’t join if the other’s present. You’re given your choice between Claude and Rena to start, but while the plot is the same for both, you of course see some events only that character sees, and there are some characters who will offer to join you only if you’re playing as one or the other. Star Ocean 2 is pretty neat in that there’s a lot of replay value just due to how the characters work. What is the secret behind this mysterious meteorite? There is a legend about a Hero of Light who wears alien raiment and carries a Sword of Light that will save the world from danger…and only a few months ago, this Sorcery Globe crashed onto the continent of Ell, causing monsters and natural disasters to sprout up everywhere. An accident with still-active machinery in an otherwise deserted area winds up transporting Claude to the underdeveloped planet Expel, where reckless usage of his phase gun saves Rena Lanford from danger, but sets the plot into motion. Levels ended up being high 70s and low 80s for the final team too.įar in the future, a Pangalatic Federation cadet goes on his first real mission with his father, Ronyx Kenni (from the first Star Ocean) taking the lead. I didn’t even enter the post-game dungeon Maze of Tribulations this time. I wanted to try characters who I haven’t used much for a change. I recruited Celine, Ashton, Bowman, Dias, Noel, and Chisato and my team ended up being Claude, Bowman, Chisato, and Noel. Uh, anyway, I decided to go through with Rena and it took me a little over 29 hours to get to the end without really trying to 100% the game. Unlike Star Ocean First Departure, it’s not a full-on remake but unlike Valkyrie Profile Lenneth, it’s not merely a slightly enhanced port.

#Victor vran gamefaqs psp

How long ago was that? Anyway, about a decade ago, Star Ocean and its sequel got remakes for the PSP and I wanted to see how much was changed and improved from the original. I rented this one day on a whim (and because the back of the box looked interesting) and I got hooked. Yeah, it wasn’t as popular as the Squaresoft juggernauts on the system but it was something refreshing since at the time, I only knew JRPGs as turn-based/ATB “stand in formation and trade blows with the enemy” ordeals. Star Ocean: The Second Story is probably my favorite PS1 game.

#Victor vran gamefaqs

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mmvalentine · 3 years

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The Bargain Pt 8 | Feysand

Modern AU. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 9

Feyre stared and stared.

Rhys went red and tried to yank his sleeve back down, but Feyre reached out and took a hold of his arm. Turned it over in her hand, inspecting the pop of colour amongst the sharp black lines that lived there. Although she had drawn the design a whole year ago, the swaths of red, orange and green were still intimately familiar.

And then she suddenly remembered signing her name. Flipped his wrist over thinking surely not- but there was her scrawled signature just under his palm.

Rhys pulled his hand back uncomfortably.

"Shit, Feyre," he said. "I'm so sorry." "You... you tattooed my drawings?" "I honestly didn't think I'd see you again. You must think I'm an absolute creep."

Feyre opened and closed her mouth, in shock.

"When?" she asked. "Uh, maybe four months ago?" Rhys guessed. "Not right away. You left, and the drawings faded but I liked them so much I kept tracing them back on. And then I had traced the so many times my hands learned them, so months later I could still remake them from memory.

"One day I had a cancellation and I was sitting there bored, and I just did them on a whim. I hadn't heard from you and I assumed you'd decided you didn't want to be friends after all. But I should have told you, should have asked you first. I'm so sorry." Rhys reached for her hands, and looked at her with pleading eyes.

Feyre's jaw snapped shut.

"That... is... awesome," she said finally. Rhys blinked at her.

"It is?" "That is so cool, I can't believe you did that!" Feyre grabbed his arm back and took another look. His golden-brown skin was satiny beneath her fingers. "You even tattooed my stupid signature!"

Rhys coloured again.

"Yeah well, it was sort of part of the design, and it doesn’t look like a word. I didn't mean to like, stamp your name on me, that's so weird.” "No," Feyre disagreed. "I mean yeah, a little, but also I'm so honoured. And it can't be that weird, because I have your art tattooed on me too." Rhys laughed. "Well I guess that's true."

Feyre held her arm next to his.

"We permanently marked each other," she said in wonder, and then looked up at him, and found him staring back at her. Closer than she realised.

"No wonder we found each other again," Rhys said softly.

A minute or so passed before Feyre noticed they had been kneeling on the concrete, just staring at each other. She pulled her arm back, and Rhys cleared his throat. They stood up, and then moved about collecting their paints.

Like any other day, they loaded everything back into Feyre's car, but after the revelation of Rhys' tattoo, and the completion of the mural, Feyre didn't quite know how to drive away. So instead, she said, "Rhys? Do you... do you want to hang out tonight?"

Rhys put his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to one side.

"You're not scared off by my stalker tattoos?"

Feyre shook her head.

"Then yeah. Yeah I do."

Feyre smiled. "Okay," she said nervously. "Should we meet up later?"

Rhys shrugged. "I have no plans. I don't know anyone else in this city, remember?" "Oh yeah," Feyre said. "Well. I don't have any plans either. Do you... want to come home with me?"

Rhys' eyes darkened, and suddenly he looked positively dangerous.

"Are you asking me back to your place?" he asked. Feyre rolled her eyes to hide the fact that her heart was speeding up.

"Okay now I think you're a creep," she said. "Come on." She tossed her head toward the front of the car, then got in the driver's side while Rhys laughed. A second later, Rhys slid into the passenger seat.

He shut the door and the outside world was cut off. The silence was suddenly quite loud. Feyre looked at him, his long frame squished into her tiny car that she could have sworn was bigger this morning. He seemed to fill the space with his legs, with his shoulders. After days of sharing a wide open space, he was suddenly everywhere in this crammed little capsule. She wondered if her breathing sounded as loud to him as it did to her right now.

She looked away, and started the engine. The noise cut into the quiet that had wrapped around them, and felt like it gave them a little more room. She tried not to look at him as she drove, tried to speak but suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say. Rhys started humming under his breath, and Feyre bit her cheek to hide her smile.

Feyre's apartment was not far. It was why she had turned down Tarquin's offer to stay in the hotel where Rhys had been put up. They pulled up at her block, parked, and then each picked up a box of paints to carry up to Feyre's place.

She walked ahead of Rhys, listening to the syncopated rhythm of his footsteps echoing on the stairs behind hers, and felt nervous. Felt silly for feeling nervous, and had to remind herself that they were just going to sit up in her apartment drinking tea, nothing scandalous or nervous-making about it.

Still, it was the first time she had been alone with a man in her house since she and Tamlin had split up.

And for all the times she had scrolled through Rhys’ Instagram, she never thought he’d be here.

"So, this is me," Feyre said, setting her box down on the kitchen counter. Rhys did the same, while Feyre took her coat off and draped it over a chair. "You can take a seat while I make tea, if you want. Sorry about the mess."

Rhys smiled at her and wandered toward the couch, looking around as he did and touching a few leaves on her many houseplants.

"Art supplies everywhere?" he said. "Feels like home, to me."

Once the kettle had boiled, Feyre brought their mugs over and sat next to Rhys. She set the tea on the coffee table, amongst a few scattered pads and palettes, and then, unable to drink it while it was so hot, was at a loss of what to do with her hands.

Rhys was not.

"Okay you've seen my new tattoo," he said. "Let's have a look how yours has healed up."

He picked up Feyre's arm, and ran his thumb over the black pattern. She shuffled closer to give him a better look, folding her legs under herself on the seat.

"Anything you'd change now?" Feyre asked him. Rhys shrugged. "Change? No, of course not. But if you were expanding it I'd have ideas." "Oh yeah?" Feyre picked up a ballpoint pen off the table, and handed it to him. "Go on, then." "Alright," Rhys said, "but don't be all obsessive and get my doodles tattooed or anything." He wagged the pen at her. "Just draw, you self-deprecating weirdo."

Rhys chuckled, then pulled the cap off with his teeth and put the pen tip to her skin. His knee knocked against her thigh.

Unlike the last time Rhys inked her, this time of course did not hurt. So Feyre was so much more conscious of his fingers brushing over her skin. Wasn't trying to distract herself from pain, which just left her to stare at Rhys' face while he focused. Slight frown on his brow. Pen lid still in his mouth. Hand holding hers, as he extended the pattern downward past her wrist. She leaned in to see what he was doing, and when he moved his hair tickled her chin.

"There you go," he said eventually. He stopped drawing, but he didn't let go of her fingers.

"I love it," Feyre said, looking at Rhys' lips instead of her arm. "You have to sign your name too, like I did." Rhys found a gap on the outside edge of her wrist, and obliged.

"Now we match," he murmured. He looked up, his face now just inches away. His violet eyes went on forever. His thumb stroked Feyre's palm, and his fingers felt rough and hot in hers. Their tea cooled on the table.

"Why is it," Feyre asked him softly, "that I like my body better once you've changed it?" Rhys hadn't moved, and she hadn’t meant to get so close to him. But here they were. So close she could see the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing. His fingers trailed up a dark line of her tattoo.

"I think you're always perfect," he whispered. Feyre‘s cheeks heated.

"But if I still want your marks on my skin?" she said. "Then I'm at your service." He leaned in even closer, as he followed the pattern up her elbow. "You'll still tattoo me?" Feyre reached out and traced his tattoos, too. "I'd mark you however you'd let me." "And how else would you mark me?" she asked, the words barely making it out. She stared at her name on his wrist. He brushed a thumb down her jaw, and when she looked up his eyes were lidded and on her mouth.

"Well for one," he said, and then tugged her gently toward him and kissed her with his teeth on her bottom lip.

****

MASTERLIST

TAGLIST: @ghostlyrose2 @highladysith @stardelia @feysand-loml @tillyrubes10 @ratabrasileira @live-the-fangirl-life @maybekindasortaace @annejulianneh111 @thebonecarver @rowaelinismyotp @loosingdreams @whythefuckdoiexist @inejsarrow @swankii-art-teacher @sjmships @courtofjurdan @teddytdr @positivewitch @thalia-2-rose @darling-archeron @rapunzel1523 @fairchildjace @philosophorumaurum02 @story-scribbler @allthecolorsneverseen

#feysand #feysand fic #acotar #mine #fluff

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dragonheart-swtor · 3 years

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Imperial Agent Storyline: Drunk History Version

Since people really seemed to like the last one! Y’all’s collective wish is my command. Spoilers for the Imperial Agent storyline, obviously. Enjoy!

- so you start out with your agent on Hutta, a little polluted slimeball of a world that literally everyone but the Hutts canonically hates. there's lore but we're going to ignore it. the important thing is that you're here to con a Hutt, always a dangerous gambit, into working with/for the Empire.

- you sneak into a corner to space facetime your boss, a guy we only ever know as Keeper because Intelligence is weird about names. sneaking into corners to facetime people is a repeating theme throughout the story.

- you are informed that you've already got a cover story set up, and you'll be posing as an infamous pirate called the Red Blade who'll be able to get in close to the Hutt in question, whose name I've forgotten. Nethro or Nefro or something.

- "wait, what about the actual Red Blade," you ask your boss, probably

- "he's halfway across the galaxy, you don't need to worry about him," your boss replies, in a textbook example of what we in the writing business call “foreshadowing”

- (spoiler alert: you need to worry about him)

- but we won't worry about that for now. bada bing bada boom, you stroll on into the Hutt's place. you are immediately confronted by a guy who, shock and horror, actually knows the real Red Blade and knows you ain't him. (one would think that all-seeing Intelligence would have known about him, but nuance.) this is a problem for a number of obvious reasons.

- your options are as follows: bribe him, kill him, or sleep with him. (this is also something of a recurring theme throughout the story.) whatever option you take, he's dealt with. (yes, this is the man eris fucked five minutes into her storyline.)

- (I didn’t want to pay him money, leave me alone.)

- anyway, the mission progresses smoothly. meet the Hutt, do some jobs for the Hutt, betray the Hutt's right hand and stab him in the back right after convincing him you were friends, invade the Hutt's rival's palace, McMurder the Hutt's rival, you know. your average day at the office

- most of the way through, the Hutt's other right hand starts to be suspicious about you. this is Kaliyo Djannis, and she will be Plot Relevant™.

- by which I mean she shortly thereafter walks in on you facetiming your boss and gets hired by Intelligence to help out for gods know what reason. welcome to your first companion

- (or possibly you walk in on her facetiming your boss in your room, I.. don't remember, honestly. something like that.)

- anyway one Hutt is dead the other is working with us bada bing bada boom this is going great and hey remember when I said you needed to worry about that guy you're impersonating this whole time? yeah, about that,

- so the real actual Red Blade comes sailing in to Hutta and Intelligence immediately calls you up like "hey, hate to bother you, but your cover's about to get blown in a big way and we need you to murder the guy whose identity you've stolen before he can expose you.”

- "so, just like that training mission last week. gotcha, boss, no problem."

- murder time™

- congration you done it! go home to Dromund Kaas.

- "You're on Imperial soil now, agent. Welcome home." [nonhuman Agent immediately experiences 27492738957 microaggressions] (this joke isn’t mine, for the record)

- first off, Intelligence HQ has a bomb aesthetic, as does the entire Empire in general

- second off, you do walk in on your boss talking to - by which I mean "being given a speech by" - a Dark Lord, which is less than optimal for a number of reasons, first and foremost that speeches by Dark Lords of the Sith quite often immediately precede someone getting killed

- said Dark Lord is one Darth Jadus, who will proceed to be a thorn in your side for approximately the next three hours of gameplay

- (don't worry, after that three hours you'll get a worse thorn)

- Darth Jadus decides he likes you and declares you "his" agent, which you immediately get the gist is about the worst thing that can happen to an Intelligence agent from the way everyone around you treats you like you've just had a ticking bomb strapped to your back for the rest of this meeting

- you're sent on a handful of missions, including one to the Dark Temple which, you know, Force-deaf people aren't supposed to be in, but Jadus Does Not Care

- Jadus calls you into his office at one point and tells you he's going to do some ritual to bind you to his service or something, it's not really clear, but it's clearly Not Optional and also terrifying in concept

- now, quick sidebar. there are basically two paths to take here: one where you suck up to the Sith and treat them with the utmost care and respect and fear like you're kind of supposed to, and one where you mouth off at every opportunity. Eris is mortally terrified of Sith, so she just kind of.. submitted knowing she was going to die if she didn't.

- my second run, however, was just a "hey how bad can I fuck this up" character because I already knew the story.

- I decided to mouth off to Jadus at every opportunity, including adamantly refusing this ritual.

- "What can he do to me?" I asked the person I was playing with. "I'm the protagonist! It's not like he can kill me!"

- Jadus: *kills me*

- me:

- (mechanically, anyway; story-wise I'm sure he just. put her on the brink of death. but mechanically speaking he literally actually did kill my toon)

- (this should be a warning for exactly how much this storyline is willing to put its usually-heavily-plot-armored protagonist through.)

- anyway.

- do some missions, blah blah blah, Sith possession in the Dark Temple, blah blah blah, you know the drill

- well, turns out Jadus is going on tour with several hundred Imperial civilians, military, and Sith, allegedly all hand chosen, to share his ~vision for the Empire~. that's all well and good, whatever I gue-

- sorry what do you mean his ship exploded

- what do you mean a member of the Dark Council just blew up in orbit

- cue Kill Bill sirens

- Panic! At The Intelligence HQ

- this throws everything into chaos; not only was Jadus more directly involved in Intelligence, but he was a Dark Councilor so now there's a massive power vacuum

- the Sith who ends up filling this power vacuum? Jadus's daughter, Darth Zhorrid.

- remember when I said you'd have a bigger thorn in your side after Jadus?

- so yeah. so Zhorrid is, for lack of a better word, fucking terrifying

- she's sadistic and completely careless of others' lives or wellbeing and oh yeah she also instantly latches onto you even harder than her father did and demands you find his killer

- a lot of your meetings with her aren't really plot-relevant so I'll sum them all up here:

- Zhorrid was horribly abused by Jadus, completely broken. She tells you a story about how she used to sing, and her father hired a tutor, then had her sing at a Kaas City performance until her throat was so damaged she could never sing again. He tore every scrap of joy out of her life, completely failed to teach her what she needed to know to survive the rigors of the Dark Council, and instilled every ounce of hatred, sadism, and complete lack of pity he could in her.

- She kills people for no reason other than a whim, because she was listening to a Sith opera and the aria was "very moving" (an actual literal thing that happens).

- She acts like a complete spoiled brat child. At one point the other Dark Councilors literally beat and torture her, presumably for this reason because she's insufferable and arrogant and way out of her depth, and she cries to you about it

- If you’re like me, your response to all this is basically “cool motive, still murder”

- I have sidetracked very hard. where was I

- so you spend a while trying to hunt down the people who blew up Jadus's ship. There's a bunch of rebels, you hunt them down, they've got biotech weapons called Eradicators set up to destroy cities on multiple planets, skippity skip to the big reveal

- Jadus is alive, and he organized the whole thing so he'd be able to remake the Empire into the image he wanted. He tortured and enslaved the survivors of the Dominator's destruction

- Jadus gives you a whole speech about how fear is a gift to be shared and "Through victory my chains are broken" but there must be chains to break and blah blah blah holy shit this man is genocidal

- you have three choices: join him for real, pretend to join him so you can sabotage his ship and then kill him (at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Imperial lives), or refuse outright and save those hundreds of thousands of lives but Jadus escapes (and you know he's allegedly likely to return and do even worse damage later).

- (Quick sidebar again, for those who haven’t played it: Eris chose the second option and has nightmares about it for the rest of her life. It's actually extremely haunting in-game - as you're running through Jadus's ship to sabotage it as fast as possible, you can hear the distress calls from various colonies and planets being attacked, the screams of the dying that you doomed. It's horrifying.)

- so yeah there’s really no winning that situation but hey! at least Chapter One’s over. surely in Chapter Two things can’t get worse.

- Chapter Two: Things Get Worse

- there's this guy, Ardun Kothe, an SIS agent. he's a huge threat for some reason I don't remember. you're supposed to infiltrate the SIS to get close to and eventually kill him. not an easy job, but okay, we can do this.

- Intelligence sets up the meeting; months ago they sent the first word to Kothe that there was an Intelligence agent ready to turn and they've been building up from there, sending him a steady stream of information

- enter Hunter, aka the worst bastard in this entire storyline and that is an achievement. He's the one you meet first on Nar Shaddaa.

- you do some missions for the SIS, whatever, it's not important. You finally get to meet the rest of the team - and Ardun Kothe.

- Kothe wants to speak alone, which is p typical tbh. He expresses some doubts, which you assuage as best you can; he gives you your code name: Legate. It's from a form of sabbac, he explains, you'll have to play with him sometime.

- (It is difficult for me to make what happens next funny instead of horrifying, so forgive me if the tone changes a bit here.)

- Everything is going fine.

- "I'm sorry about this, Legate."

- What?

- "Keyword: onomatophobia. Engage Thesh protocols, phase one."

- Everything is not fine.

- You black out and have an extremely rude awakening.

- So it turns out whatever happened with Jadus, the Dark Council decided you were too dangerous (usually for doing your job too fuckin well) and that you needed to be leashed. So not you have mind control programming in your brain, and anyone who has your keyword can take complete and unequivocal control of your body. this is, in a word, not great.

- (This is, as I mentioned, actually extremely horrifying. You have dialogue options and they don’t change what you actually say. You have an opportunity to shoot Kothe and even if you try to select it nothing happens. But we’re not here for the horror take (not today, anyway) so let’s just This Is Fine that and move on)

- Tl;dr you can’t harm Kothe or any members of his team, you’re forced to obey anyone who has your keyword, and this wouldn’t be that much of a problem because we’ll just tell Watcher Two what’s happened and oh wait you can’t tell anyone about your programming either. well, shit.

- You go on to work double agent, like it was planned, with this new, uh. twist

- about a third of the way through the chapter, your mind kind of cracks and you start having hallucinations - seeing things you know can't be real during a holocall, passing out in the middle of your ship and waking up in medbay.

- After that, a new voice lives in your head! Watcher X, someone you either killed or let flee on Nar Shaddaa, has sort of joined the party. Is he an AI in the spinal implant the real Watcher X gave you? is he a figment of your broken mind trying to process its situation? Who knows! Not you! either way, this is not optimal but at least he seems to be being helpful this time

- so anyway we should probably try and figure out how to undo this programming bc Intelligence is being Wholly Unhelpful

- (ASAP, please, especially with how horrible Hunter acts toward you - let’s go with “uncomfortably leery,” which I promise is generous.)

- by the way, your companions still have no idea what’s going on during all this, although they try to be varying levels of supportive (thank you vector I love you bug husband)

- Good news! The Intelligence Archive almost definitely has information on what they did to you and how to fix it. Bad news! You’re definitely not authorized to look that up and crashing the power mainframe to make sure they don’t see you do it sends the security droids after you. whoops.

- Good news! There’s a way to fix you. Bad news! You have to make and inject yourself with a still-kinda-experimental cocktail of chemicals and it may or may not give you permanent brain damage. it’s fine. this is fine.

- also it takes a while to kick in which is Less Than Optimal and by the time it finally does you’ve just been left with a binding order to stay and guard the door on what is, for you, a suicide mission. there’s some incentive to “break your chains” for ya.

- You fight and kill Kothe. Who, shock and awe! is an ex-Jedi! this was in no way painfully obvious by how he kept talking about “sensing” things, I’m sure. definitely not.

- Hunter escapes, because of fuckin course he does. Hunter, who suddenly seems far more in control of everything than he had before. Hunter, who knows far more than he should. Hunter, who ends up leading you to a much, much larger conspiracy.

- End Chapter 2.

- Hate to disappoint, but Chapter 3 is honestly the least interesting to me personally, so this’ll be brief compared to the previous chapters

- You spend a lot of time hunting down this much larger conspiracy, including Hunter specifically. There's a lot of betrayal and secret reveals. (It's not tedious by any stretch of the imagination, but the story beats definitely don't stick in my head as well as the first two chapters, even after two playthroughs.)

- you go to Voss and, in order to get into a Voss-only archive, get married to a person you just met before almost immediately leaving the planet (and your new spouse) behind. this is never mentioned again.

- you get hold of a holorecording from the Star Cabal, the big conspiracy. problem: the holorecording contains a trap for the brain-enhanced Watchers, and now half of Intelligence is in a vegetative state. this is not optimal.

- partially as a result of this, Intelligence basically gets dissolved, which is Not Great because it puts you right under the thumb of yet another asshole Sith lord

- the Watchers are recovering, though, so that’s something. Watcher Two, now Keeper (the old Keeper got promoted), contacts you so you can keep working on this Star Cabal thing.

- you get intentionally captured so the Star Cabal can torture you and you can “break” and give them false information to lead them into a trap. you are immediately afterward expected to get back to work like nothing happened. this is never mentioned again.

- You track the Star Cabal to their base, way out in the Unknown Regions iirc, and infiltrate it during a meeting of the top agents.

- murder time 2: electric boogaloo (well, more like murder time 45, to be honest, but shh it’s fine)

- You fight the Star Cabal guys, chase Hunter through the whole place, and finally corner him.

- (Salt warning ahead on my part for the next story beat, if you can call it that.)

- Hunter, when beaten, reveals what I personally think is the most bullshit stupid reveal in the entire game: he is actually a she, and has been using a stealth field generator (or something similar) to change his/her appearance the entire time. There are multiple interpretations of this - "he's trans" is my least favorite, sorry-not-sorry, because a) it's pretty clear she still considers herself a woman and Hunter is just a convenient persona, and also b) a clearly predatory man is absolutely horrid representation as far as playing into harmful stereotypes about trans people, thanks. Personally, my rather cynical interpretation is that they wanted one more shock value reveal at the end of the storyline and I guess couldn't come up with anything better. It's my least favorite thing in the whole IA storyline.

- anyway, that's not really important. I just needed to be mad about it for a minute. ignore me. moving on

- The important part is this: what you gain from the Star Cabal's base is an item called the Black Codex, an ancient piece of technology with the power to erase all records of a person's existence.

- Unless you are very stubborn about it the Agent’s reaction to this is basically “oh thank fuck I’m freeeeeeeeee” and you fly off into the hyperspace sunset with your crew, giving middle fingers to the Sith whose grip you’re escaping all the way. which, really, who can blame you.

And that’s the Imperial Agent storyline, folks. Roll credits. I’ll probably do the Bounty Hunter storyline next while it’s still fresh in my mind, but I could also do the Sith Warrior storyline probably if y’all’re more interested, vote now on your phones.

#unfortunately I don’t remember jack shit from the Jedi Knight storyline #so until i finish replaying it y'all're just gonna have to hold your horses on that one #swtor #imperial agent #drunk history swtor #i have the original much more serious version of me summarizing that first scene with kothe in drafts btw #should anyone want to see it #it's the version where i actually tried to get across to someone who'd never played the game the absolute horror of that scene #and was; i think; fairly successful #the notes on the sith inquisitor post have finally slowed down so i think it's time to post this one

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Suicide Pact

I kind of really, really, want a Mass Effect trilogy remake on the next gen systems. After seeing the Lumen in the world of Nanites tech demo, my brain was a-tizzy with possibilities. We know that the next Sony Spider-Man game is going to run on the PS5. We know there is going to a next gen version of Cyberpunk and Ragnarok Creed. The power of these consoles is stupid and you can do so much with them going forward. Why not remake Mass Effect with the current tech? It’s been 13 years since the franchise was first released. Two console generations have passed since it’s start. Plus, a remake on this new hardware could rinse out the bad taste Andromeda left in people’s mouths.

It’d be dope to revisit a retooled Mass Effect. I have all the games and they’re some of my all-time favorites, but that first one was sh*t in the mechanics departed. I owned a PS3, which meant i didn’t get that game until after i beat the second and third, so imagine my f*cking surprise when the damn thing didn’t play at all like it’s sequels. That sh*t was infuriating. But, as i understand, the actual game mechanics took a backseat to the “revolutionary” dialogue tree, even though Jade Empire, Dragon age, and KOTOR, had already done something similar years before ME was even a thing. Still, the seeds were planted and an entire world was born. The narrative, world building, and character development, were definitely the strengths of that first game. I approach it like an errant pilot that’s not as good as the production show but dope enough to sell the franchise.

Mass Effect 2 is a goddamn masterpiece and legitimately one of the greatest games ever created. This sh*t saw Bioware in their final form, hitting that stride into legendary status. I loved everything about this game and that’s saying so much because i f*cking hate shooters. I bought ME2 on a whim and it sat in my pile of games for a long ass time. It wasn’t until ME3 was announced that i decided to actual play through it and, holy sh*t, my world was blown wide the f*ck open. The combat was completely different than the first, a fact i would find out much later, but the story gripped me almost immediately. That opening sequence? Yeah, i felt that and i had no knowledge of the characters outside of that little intro comic. All i knew beforehand about Shepard was through cultural osmosis and sh*t. ME2 was my first foray into that world and i was immediately impressed. I found the story, itself, to be an incredibly interesting narrative, but it was the characters that made this game. They make the franchise. I immediately fell in love with Tali the second she spoke for the first time. I wanted to wrestle Jack all over the Normandy just to see her laugh a few times as she thoroughly wiped the floor with my ass. I found endless joy watching Miranda grow from icy b*tch into a stunning, espionage, queen, who may or may not be a little morally dubious. I can sit here and gush all day about my adoration for Mass Effect 2. This sh*t is a classic and absolutely deserves a next gen upgrade.

Mass Effect 3 is an interesting case. I enjoyed the game for what it was but there’s a lot to be desired toward the end. It has some of the best storytelling and fan service in the entire franchise but, f*ck, did they whiff that landing. Look, i love ME3, don’t get me wrong. Tali is still best girl but i absolutely adored revisiting my other relationships to see how they matured over time. Just a note, Liara’s romance in 3 is f*cking dope. Tali all day but f*ck if Liara didn’t worm her way into my heart just a bit. The problem with ME3 is that it’s the first game to really get the EA sabotage. If you’re a gamer, you know what i mean. EA bought Bioware just as Mass Effect 2 was getting underway. They’re the reason the entire franchise was soft rebooted during the second game. For the most part, EA left ME2 alone but these motherf*ckers dug in immediately when the third title began production. The story didn’t suffer but a really, really, unnecessary multiplayer component was shoehorned in. They tried to tie it into overall narrative progress but that only lasted for a few months. An update which “fixed” the ending, (that EA mandated so you can thank them for the RED/Ble/Green Catastrophe), made the multiplayer mute. Hell, if you play like i do, you didn’t even need the f*cking thing to get the best ending, anyway. Rise and grind, man. Years of JRPGs forged me in that tedious fire, bro.

And then there was Andromeda. F*ck, dude. Look, i like Andromeda. I like Andromeda in principal. There are a lot of great ideas here. I was interested in the new galaxy and where the narrative was going. That said, literally everything about Mass Effect: Andromeda is less than the original trilogy. Sh*t’s not even bad, it’s just less. Sure, there were bugs all over the place and the facial animations were outright bunk, but all of these issues can be traced back to EA and their meddling. See, unlike ME2 and ME3, EA was straight f*cking over Bioware from before the start of production on Andromeda. They moved all of the A-team over to work on the absolute bust, Anthem, instead of making the best ME game they could. That left the B-team, the motherf*ckers who made the absolutely lackluster ME3 multiplayer add-on, to make an entire Mass Effect game. Big Yikes. Okay, benefit of the doubt. Bioware Montreal is still Bioware. Okay. This thing was in production for five years. EA forced an engine on them that wasn’t optimized for the type of game Mass Effect is so, literally, Bioware spent the bulk of that production time tweaking the engine just to get the motherf*cker to work. The game, itself, was rushed to completion in just two years. That is NOT enough time to create a proper Bioware game, let alone a Mass Effect entry. EA literally crippled a mainline Mass Effect title before it even had a chance, which sucks ass because i was mildly infatuated with Cora.

The next gen allots Bioware the opportunity to give the original trilogy, the FFVIIR or REmake2 treatment. I’m not saying remake the titles exactly as they were, i’m saying make the game you wanted to make back in ‘07. Build the worlds you wanted. Make them as dynamic as you pitched all those years ago. Create a uniform gameplay style through the entire franchise. Incorporate what you learned from Andromeda while tossing out the more problematic additions. The Unreal Engine 5 is more than powerful enough to render the world that was originally envisioned and the systems, themselves, can definitely power through the content like champs. Hell, revisit the narrative and give us that Dark Matter plot whichgot shelved in favor of that weirdly unattached Reaper climax from ME3. The world has caught on to EA’s bullsh*t. The combination of Battlefront 2′s complete, worldwide, loot box, throttling, and the rampant success of the micro-transaction deficient, single player, story driven, Jedi: Fallen Order, has shown that the market for dope, narrative focused, games is thriving. Sony has known for years as that’s their bread-and-butter, but this turn in culture has positioned Bioware to recapture the glory they once had, by revisiting the franchise which really gave them their shine. And, oh, how shiny a next gen ME trilogy remake could be.

#Mass Effect #Mass Effect 2 #Mass Effect 3 #Bioware #EA #Electronic Arts

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retphienix · 4 years

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FF12~

I dread my current inability to capture gameplay as I once could all because I’m lacking basic computer parts right now -.-

ANYWAY.

Started playing FF12 and here’s some stuff!

I’M LOVIN’ IT!

I know I’m in a minority, but I’ve gone on at length in the past about my love for the passive combat of DWM and DWM2, I’ve even started and (sadly) subsequently decided not to post extensive analysis of the combat system and how it emphasizes planning and build comprehension over traditional reactionary gameplay in RPGs.

Short of it? DWM combat is preplanning, building your team, building your spellbook properly, and setting each member up for success visa vie personality and “PLAN” orders (charge/cautious, etc).

You set yourself up for success and test your theory time and again until you find an encounter that counters that plan, then you adjust on the fly to counter THAT.

I know I’ve heard complaints on combat in that vein in the past, plenty of times even; Namely that it’s too passive or “Plays itself” and honestly, kinda, yeah? Yeah, it kinda does. But I find it so intriguing and entertaining to partake in.

ANYWAY. FF12 is that.

You can play it like a traditional RPG sure, but with Gambits existing (preplanning pretty much, or programming their actions) it really feels like an extension of that gameplay idea and I am living for it since so few games have any interest in doing that anymore.

Heck FF7 remake goes out of its way to play in a manner that would benefit heavily from gambits, but ignores them completely on some (my opinion) misguided design decision that forces needless micromanaging in a game that DESPERATELY wants to be fast paced and action-y.

So where FF7 remake arguably fails, FF12 succeeds, in my opinion. But clearly they have their strengths and weaknesses. FF7 is MUCH faster and more action oriented, and FF12 might just give TOO much power to gambits- though it is an opt in system so I suppose that’s not TOO bad, could just not gambit your main guy and tada! You’re playing what FF7 remake could have been lol (Being harsh).

But yeah, combat is fun for my tastes! Story has me hooked enough for a final fantasy plot! I love how, just like you’d expect from Ivalice, it immediately starts with backstabbing and political unrest! I genuinely love that- though I suspect this game will focus more on backstabbing for the war effort than say, FFT’s amazing rich elitist and corrupt religious systems plot which I adore, which I wish would be here but I doubt it.

ALSO THIS GAME HONEST TO GOD FIXES (well, rewrites, reinterprets?) SOME OF THE DUMBEST PARTS OF FFTA IN A MANNER I LIKE!!!

Namely, so far at least, Judges. Instead of being an arbitrary and extremely stupid and out of place game mechanic given physical form they are a sort of elite templar group, I dig! Also Clans are back! But unfortunately it doesn’t appear I get to run my own like in FFTA which would have been nice in a game that doesn’t suck eggs, instead the clans are a sort of overarching hunting/bounty system you partake in BUT said hunting is fun where you accept quests that spawn mini-bosses/bosses around the world to hunt. I really like that too.

Cutting away from the game itself and instead offering a touch of praise to the version I’ve decided to play- I’m playing the FF12 remaster and I just wanted to praise the inclusion of a turbo function. Yeah, I really like fast forward added to games with grind- I MIGHT (haven’t thought too hard on it) appreciate that more than adjusting in-game values to accommodate new school grind etiquette. Again, I haven’t thought on it too long, but I THINK I like having the option to go 4x speed to grind over the option to have every enemy in the game drop 4x xp/loot/AP/whatever.

Something about being able to kill the same amount of enemies I would have in the old version, but faster, is (currently) more preferable to my mindset than killing 4x less enemies than the original but getting extremely bloated rewards for doing it.

But yeah. Playing FF12 right now, genuinely having a blast. This is hitting so many notes I’ve been craving lately and I started it on a whim! I was just thinking “Well, FF7 is done, the trainwreck of an ending and all, and I TRIED FF15 but it honestly wasn’t doing it for me. Let’s try 12? I love Ivalice and any excuse to say a game isn’t as good as FFT, that’ll be fun.” and I ended up playing a game that catches my fancy :)

#RetPlays #FF12 #Final Fantasy 12 #Final Fantasy #I've taken a much more laid back narrative style since I can't capture footage and I have no idea who cares or likes or dislikes that

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takaraphoenix · 5 years

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So, @kimmycup tagged me in this game. Let’s do this. Alternately titled:

Let me rant about the difference in receiving feedback on FFN vs AO3

Because I am really getting lost in the math behind “most popular” fic. And it’s most definitely more than just “reaching a different audience” when the feedback for one and the same fic differs between over 1k comments on one site vs not even reaching 100 comments on another site.

Author Name: Takara_Phoenix

Fandoms You Write For: Okay so let‘s only involve the ones I am still actively involved with, not the ones that are like... eight years old and I haven’t thought of them once, yeah? That’d be: Percy Jackson, Shadowhunters, Marvel, Rise of the Guardians/How to Train Your Dragon, Detective Conan/Magic Kaito, Vampire Academy, Jungle Book, DC Comics/the Arrowverse, Descendants

Where You Post: AO3 and FFN, but occasionally also on tumblr - when it’s prompts or drabbles

Most Popular One-Shot: Depends on where you ask. And what you define as popular. Personally, the only value I see are in comments - kudos are literally just the press of one button, they mean nothing, and hits aren’t an indicator of much either considering it counts as a hit even when you opt out after a paragraph.

I’ve only had my AO3 for five years now, meaning that the fics on FFN still had four more years to simmer on there and gather attention, I suppose. Meaning, a fic posted for the first time obviously gets more attention than a four years later mass repost on another site.

On AO3, the oneshit with most comment threads would be How to Court the Prettiest Omega Ever in Five Years or Less, my first PJO ABOverse fic, featuring Nicercy. Which, you know, is only 37 comments on there. Seriously I genuinely blame the existence of the kudo function for the overall lackluster comment-response on AO3 because “press one button vs actually writing words”... but that’s a different conversation to be had. (I mean, seriously, in comparison, this fic has 51 comments on FFN... and it is by far not the one with most comments I have over there).

The clear winner if you look at FFN is Something Went Wrong, my first Minotaur/Percy smut fest with a whooping 116 comments. And yes. Positive. Genuinely did not expect that when after weeks of debating, I decided to post this story. *chuckles* (Again, for comparison, this fic got a total of 8 comments on AO3... eight... the difference there is staggering... Which, I’d like to tag on that, on top of the kudo-nonsense, the fact that AO3 displays total amount of comments to the readers and not comment threads is also misleading and I don’t think it helps, because I think you’re more inclined if you see it’s only 8 comment-threads in total on a fic you like vs it showing you 16 comments as the total comment-count.)

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: THIS IS TOO HARD TO ANSWER. I’d have to consult my chart, but that hasn’t been updated in ages. Because overall amount of comments means little if you don’t also take into account the amount of chapters - 50 comments on a oneshot are a lot, 50 comments on a 5 chapter fic, not so much, and 50 comments on a 50 chapter is frustrating to receive.

Okay, let me go full nerd on this one. Y’all know I love charts. There was a time where I was interested enough in finding this out that I had a chart going of all my multiple chapter fics. With a collumn on how many chapters the story had at that point in time, how many total comments on AO3, how many total comments on FFN and what, by combining those two numbers and dividing them through the chapter-count, was the average amount of comments per chapter.

However, that chart had last been updated on December 31st 2016. There’s been a lot of influx, lot of new stories and other stories gaining/losing popularity, so when I now say Meet the di Angelos with a 2016 average of 57,25 comments/chapter, that is completely exclusing ten fics I wrote since then.

Damn now I really wanna update the charts...

Also if you can’t tell by now how much actual feedback and comments mean to me, I genuinely don’t know how else to convey it... xD”

If you go by total comment-count - which, again, is misleading because you gotta keep the chapter-count in mind - it’d be Chasing Fireflies on FFN with 1749 comments (on 102 chapters. And, again, for comparison, 88 comment-threads on AO3. 88 vs 1749 is insane) and Percy and the Ghost King of Summers High on AO3 with 749 comments (on 50 chapters. On FFN that’s actually on 990 comments. Far smaller difference here compared to other stories).

Though I dunno, if you measure popular by fanart received, Summers High comes in with five, while my Chasingverse is in with 6... and multiple fanfictions written for it.

Favorite Story You Wrote: Favorite to write, or favorite to reread? There’s a difference there. I’m insanely proud of Chasing Fireflies and the plot and world I created there, the character development. I... don’t really reread it it’s over 500k long I don’t have that time.

Currently, I am really loving The Primal Instinct, it is sooo much fun to write, I get to put basically all my favorite headcanons in there, I’ll get to write Aline and Helen more and Jace’s interactions with others, it features both my favorite OT3s at once. (And it is faaar from my most popular one. Just, feel like mentioning this because my numbers-obsession may read as only writing for comments, which I don’t, I mainly write for myself. The comments are just... very, very nice treats to receive. Also, I love numbers and charts and were curious to see if there is a kind of trend there in what does receive most attention sooo...)

Story You Were Nervous to Post: Uuuh every new thing. Every time I step outta my comfort zone. Trying out a new pairing for the first time. Venturing into a new fandom for the first time. Experimenting with a new kink and wondering if this would be too much. Literally every single time, still.

How Do You Choose Your Titles: On a whim. I suck at titles. Mostly I try to force alliterations because I am a sucker for alliterations, but otherwise I do try to go with “as it says on the tin”, or I try a pun/being clever. Aside from my Triton/Percy fics. Every single fic I’ve written for them is named after a song from Disney’s The Little Mermaid franchise and I have yet to run out of songtitles to use for fics and hey, by then they’ll probably have included a new song in the live-action remake so there’s that! :D

Do You Outline: Depends. Oneshots? No. I just write those. Multiple-chapter fics? ...Depends. xD

If I have a clear vision for where it’s going to go, I do tend to divide into chapters and make myself small notes on what goes into said chapters. Mostly, it’s just a rambled “and x happens and then y” at the end though and then I see how I can make it fit into chapters.

Complete: 795 stories on AO3! Damn, I’ve been busy.

In-Progress: As of right now, 4. Because this week features my Ace Awareness 7-parter, though technically we’re right now down to 3 multi-chapter fics because the next one is only due to be released and join the rotation!

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: Well, that is two entirely different things now.

Coming Soon:

Shadowhunters, Asmodeus/Jace, “The Royal Consort of Edom” oneshot on the 23rd

Shadowhunters, Magnus/Alec/Jace, “Nesting 101″ oneshot on my birthday this Saturday

Percy Jackson, Nico/Percy, “Something Borrowed, Something Green” oneshot on the 30th

Shadowhunters, Magnus/Jace, “Dancing with the Monsters in the Night” an out-side-of-schedule oneshot for Halloween

And I do think that that is what constitutes “soon”.

Not Yet Started:

HTTYD/RotG, Hiccup/Jack, “The Origin of the Blue Hoodie”, planned for November 27th

Shadowhunters, Magnus/Jace, “Set-Up by the Guard-Cats”, planned for December 4th

Descendants/PJO, Nico/Percy, Ben/Carlos, Uma/Audrey, “Demigod Defenders of Auradon”, planned for December 11th

A-and that is as far as I have planned my schedule ahead. Those three are the only fics on my personal schedule that I haven’t started working on yet. I don’t like to plan ahead too much, because then you just completely lose interest in the story by the time you get around to actually writing it.

Do You Accept Prompts: Prompts, not so much. Requests, yeah. For one, prompts always seem so demanding, while requests are more polite - and also more structured. Prompts are always like “here have one quick trope thrown at your head” and like... I do have a well-enough planned-out schedule with more than enough fics of my own set, I don’t need to try and turn one random prompt into an actual story. But if someone has a specific request, a pairing and an actual plot, that they really wanna see, I do always hear them out, I may not always like the pitch and thus not accept them all, but on the overall I do accept requests.

More inclined to accept birthday requests than random requests, because random requests would be put into the rotation of my schedule and, well come on that shouldn’t be a surprise, they tend to be pushed off then in favor of fic ideas I came up with myself because there’s nearly always more enthusiasm about writing an idea that you came up with yourself than the idea of someone else. Whereas birthday requests have a set date that doesn’t disturb my schedule and I am a big softie who has a weakness for getting gifts myself so I do like to do something nice for someone so they get something special for their birthday.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: Most excited to write? Well, that’d be the Descendant/PJO crossover atm, because that is something very new and shiny and I do love shiny, new things to experiment on. But also The Prince of Pluto, my next multiple-chapter fic that I have already started writing.

Tagging: Whoever wants to do it! <3

#Fanfiction #Comments #Tumblr Tag Game #this turned out long #xDDD #About Me

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fly-pow-bye · 5 years

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DuckTales 2017 - “Raiders of the Doomsday Vault!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzaga, Vaughn Tada, Brandon Warren

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

Della's first big adventure!

They didn't want to wait a single episode, we're already starting off with Della on the wheels of the Sunchaser, er, Cloud Slayer going into an adventure. Della gets to join in with Scrooge, Dewey...and that's it. Dewey does imply that Huey and Louie have decided against going on this adventure. No mention is made of Launchpad at all outside of his chosen name for the plane.

They're going to the Ludwig Von Drake Doomsday Vault, which contains every seed known and unknown to man. Scrooge wants to get a contract to get his security company a stake in renovating that vault and keeping it secure. As he leaves the perfectly landed plane, though the process was a little rocky, he finds that he's not the only one.

This is another episode with Flintheart Glomgold, in his continuing quest to win his bet. Even if I wasn't a big fan of the last episode he had a major part in, he is almost always the highlight of any episode he appears in. I wouldn't consider this episode an exception; I wouldn't say it's him at his best, but he's not at his worst, either. Don't expect a lot of Zan Owlson, as I'll explain later, but he gets a different "straight man".

This is our cold open, a little more literal one than usual, and I wanted to say something about the opening here: it's the same one as the one that started this season. Donald is still on the moon and Della is here, but Donald is still running along in that incomplete V formation and Della is nowhere in sight. I do understand that re-animating the intro would probably take a lot of time that may not be worth it depending on when they're going to conclude that plot, but it does lessen the weight of Della being here.

But enough about the opening, let's get to a meeting! One of the key points in his speech is the Fabled Money Tree of Aurum Oros, with branches of gold and leaves that perfectly resemble dollar bills. He wants to lock up this seed in particular, so no soul can even look at it until the end of the world. See, just taking the seed would be a Glomgold move, as proven immediately by Glomgold suddenly waking up when he hears about this.

It's apparently also a Della and Dewey move, too, as when they hear this, they immediately venture off to go get it before Scrooge locks it up. They even jinx themselves by saying their plan at the same time, right down to them saying "jinx, double jinx" after they say it. Scrooge leaves...only to find the plane missing, and he knows immediately who could be responsible for that. It's not Glomgold, he's still in the building trying to get that contract with a speech that consists of "give it to me and I'll use that money tree to become richer than Scrooge." It doesn't work too well, even if he was apparently the only other one who had an interest in this vault.

We suddenly cut to Della and Dewey listening, singing, and dancing along to "Stand Out" by Powerline, as made famous by A Goofy Movie. The real focus of the plot is Dewey trying to get Mom to see him as this great adventurer, which shouldn't be too hard as they're practically the same wavelength here.

Della: Nailed it!

See, she's even saying his catchphrase! She loves him so much, she'll let him pilot the Cloud Slayer! Sure, he's about 6 years too young to drive a car, but as long as he closes his eyes and feels the sky, he'll get it right! At first, it seems like a glurge moment as this appears to be working...

...for the first few seconds anyway, before the obvious conclusion happens. While Dewey apologizes for this, Della tells him that he shouldn't, because this was a great first try! It's quite clear that Della is nothing like her brother Donald or her uncle Scrooge, as they would probably never encourage his kid to take the "fun route" over the safe route. Della does that pretty much immediately when she reaches that fork in the road.

Back where the plane used to be, Scrooge is talking to Mrs. Beakley about what just happened. Suddenly, he finds his hand hand-cuffed by Glomgold, who intends to drag him along to help get into that Doomsday Vault for that precious money tree seed. He also wanted to steal his plane. Why couldn't he just use his own? Because his usual scheming antics caused Zan Owlson to take that plane back home. I mean, I wouldn't blame her for finally giving up and just attempting to leave him, but leaving him to die in the cold seems a bit much. Hidden sinister depths, perhaps?

This hand-cuff plot does lead to a B-plot with some funny moments. Again, not as funny as Glomgold at his best, but still good in its own right. Scrooge tells him he's on thin ice, and Glomgold assumes he was talking figuratively. Scrooge at least knows how to use the word "literally" correctly.

After going through the "fun way", they end up at the Doomsday Vault, as they get the first of many, many greetings from Ludwig Von Drake in prerecorded form. They never outright confirm if he's dead or alive; it wouldn't be too out there if he was still alive, but it also wouldn't be too out there if this is actually his ghost. I mean, if Duckworth can do it, so can he.

One thing against the ghost theory is that this video congratulates these survivors from getting away from various monsters, including those mythical hairless apes. Thankfully, these survivors have made it to this vault that is protected from every possible disaster he could think of.

Della: Yeah, everything except climate change.

(Della and Dewey hi-five)

Even if she isn't wrong, one can tell that hi-five was a laugh track substitute, just like the fist-bumps in the other show. One joke I definitely can say was worth some sort of hi-five is the joke involving his first obstacle for any would-be werewolves: a color-coded keypad. I knew what song was going to come up, and I'm so glad it did. Since these buttons are frozen solid, Della helps Dewey into a vent that leads to the other side, and Dewey can't help but start singing a song while he crawls through it.

Dewey: Gotta earn the love I want so Dew-sperately!

Della: What was that?

Dewey: Nothing, Mom!

Yeah, that's pretty much the whole A-plot. After a few seconds. After a few seconds on the other side, Della tells him that there may be a panel outside. Yeah, attack while itʼs tailʼs up, Cloud!

It'll fire by crushing your mom! I find it interesting how this series is not afraid to say that Della is going to get killed by this. Wow, Ludwig even had a failsafe if someone accidentally activated the second longest death trap and needed to de-activate it!

We get the cliched “which wire should I pull” scene, With the threatening and yet fitting for him countdown of Ludwig Von Drake giving it a needed twist. Della praises him again for saving her in a way that made it really dramatic. Dewey goes along with it, but the way he looks shows that's he's only doing this because heʼs desperate. She wonders what other monsters could lie beyond this door.

Well, they don't really get to that, because they're already at the seed room. Another Von Drake video appears, where he explains that even mythological seeds are here. Hopefully, he left out that one that eats people and takes their form. This is pretty high-tech stuff: it has a computer that can search and highlight which of these containers contains a certain seed, and it even has an easy-to-use crane!

Still needs a bit of maintenance, though, as the crane starts to spark and smoke, eventually crashing into one of the vats full of Van Drake's patent pending super growth formula.

Della Duck: Aw, phooey.

It's not that I dislike Della as a character, far from it, but I have to ask: does she have a catchphrase that is actually her own? Yeah, there's "nothing can stop Della Duck", but she learned not to use it. As Della ponders what she could possibly do next, Dewey is walking on the crane, attempting to jump right to the money tree seeds. It's here that Della finally gets a bit of reserve about letting her child go through this reckless endangerment, and asks Dewey if this is too crazy.

She still cheers him on, because it's better than being an overprotective mother for the sake of being an overprotective mother, but it's clear by her tone of voice that she wishes Dewey would just let her save him from this. How would she do this?

We never find out, as Dewey does manage to get to the money tree seeds. However, he ends up dropping them right into the ground, which had a bunch of super growth formula poured into it. It's easy to guess what would happen next.

We occasionally cut back to the cuff-buddy plot, where Scrooge and Glomgold are glad to know that they're reaching the same destination, one far more than the other. They end up suffering through the aftermath of Della and Dewey going through this Vault and essentially breaking everything. Granted, most of this suffering is caused by Flintheart Glomgold finding ways to unintentionally cause fires.

Despite said fires, Scrooge's main focus of his anger is at Della's actions. Scrooge says it’s been over a decade, and she still acts like a child who doesn't think things through. This anger allows him to lift a steel door just by himself! No comment is made of that; it can just be assumed that he lifted it because he's Scrooge McDuck.

Back to the quest for the money tree, we see that growth formula still works just as well as Von Drake hoped, as the room is now filled with an ever growing tree made of gold and dollar bills. Della is still trying to cheer Dewey on and telling him to do even more crazy things, but this is where Dewey finally breaks.

Dewey: No, I can't do it!

This is the big emotional moment of the episode, which seems to be a requirement for every episode.

They basically repeat the same scene from the last episode, but this time with Dewey. It doesn't have as much weight when it's the Mama's boy.

Scrooge and Glomgold make it into this room, and Glomgold is already picking at the money tree.

After a series of events causes the crane to land right between the two handcuffs, freeing Scrooge from the B-plot, Scrooge finally confronts Della on her childish quest. His main question: did she even think about how she was going to get out of this?

It turns out, she did think of it. They all slide down the tree to a bottom floor with an emergency exit. She did explain that she knew about the hidden exit because an offscreen Ludwig video had a map of the entire place. She pays attention to everything, she says.

In the end, Della uses the gold and the goldwelding skills she learned on the moon to fix up the vault, Dewey learns that he doesn't have to prove anything to his Mom, and Flintheart Glomgold learns absolutely nothing. As it should be.

How does it stack up?

This is the first episode in a while where I didn't really get any major reaction out of it. Sure, it's supposed to be this filler episode, but it's also supposed to be Della's first real adventure beyond escaping the moon or meeting her kids for the first time. In the end, it just feels like a lesser version of the last episode.

This is not to say I felt this episode was bad in any way. It has its funny moments, especially with Glomgold and Ludwig Von Drake, but, compared to most of the show, it's merely adequate.

Next, they finally bring up that one shadow in the room from the Season 1 finale.

← Nothing Can Stop Della Duck! 🦆 Friendship Hates Magic! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales 2017 #ducktales #fpb reviews #disney

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princecharmingtobe · 6 years

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Mighty Nein Future Scifi Au cause why not

I heard this song and that somehow lead to me making a whole friggin au. It be like that sometimes.

youtube

It’s way in the future of earth, we’ve done global warming and are sort of on the tail end of an ice age. Humanity has survived in various ways. Genetic modification is a big component in that. However a large chunk of the remaining population has been wiped out within the last decade or so by a “robot uprising” which was actually orchestrated by a human organization but that’s a secret. The main plot point is this thing. Nobody knows exactly what it is or what it does. It’s sort of a myth at this point more than anything, like the holy grail. Some say it can revert the earth to how it was before humanity fucked things up, some say it can shape the world to your whims, some say it can grant wishes. Whatever it is, it’s very powerful, and it turns out it might be real, and it’s what brings the group together.

Molly: His ancestors were genetically modified near the peak of global warming to be better suited for extreme heat, and he has inherited this trait, as well as others(sometimes people just modify themselves to look cool ya know?). He was born like that. He was actually part of the organization that orchestrated the robot “uprising”, but something went wrong on his end of things, he almost died and lost his memory, no idea wtf is going on.

Jester: Similar to Molly, she inherited a genetic modification to survive the extreme cold of the ice age. And others. Pretty similar to canon Jester, she’s looking for dear old dad, and hopes that this thing can grant her wish to find him.

Fjord: Works for a mysterious person who has supplied him with modifications that make him suited for working in the water, for reasons he’s keeping secret/doesn’t know all the details of yet. They have him looking for the thing for them.

Nott: Fell on hard times and became a payed volunteer for experiments that left her with some neat abilities like darkvision and enhanced learning ability, but also made her look pretty weird. And it’s not like everyone else looks “normal” by any means, but this is humanity, there’s gonna be prejudice, probably against the less “pretty” ones. She secretly hopes the thing can make her “normal” again.

Yasha: idk man she’s just... like that??? I have no idea what to do with her.

Beau: Descended from a long line of “purists” who think modification is morally wrong and they’re somehow better for remaining “pure”. Beau does not necessarily share their beliefs. Her reasons for doing anything are currently unclear.

Caleb: An android. (Before anyone jumps down my throat, I am autistic, and I am well aware of the issue of autistic/ND folk being compared to robots. But I really like exploring the line between human and robot and at what point is a robot human enough to no longer be consider non-human? And Caleb’s character lends itself to this for story reasons. And let me have my fun). He was supposedly built by this couple as an experiment to push the boundaries between human and machine. They treated him like their son, and were very good to him, and were his family. During the “uprising” a very common component used in pretty much all robots was used to take control of them and turn them against humanity. Bloodbath ensues. It lasts for less than a day, but the death toll is great. They are eventually shut down remotely, and the now non-functioning robots begin to be gathered up and destroyed out of reasonable fear. However due to his unique qualities that he’s not even aware of yet, Caleb does not remain shut down. He wakes up again, back to normal, realizing he’s killed his family. He’s on the run now, trying to avoid being found out as an android as he would likely be destroyed, and living in fear of losing his autonomy again. He and Nott find each other and both being in the “please don’t hurt me I’m a person” boat they accept each other and become a pair. With her enhanced learning she’s able to quickly learn the ins and outs of robotics and helps fix Caleb when he breaks. He easily passes for human, his biggest giveaway bring his eyes, which if looked at closely are def not human eyes. He tries to avoid eye contact for this reason. When he left home he took the family cat with him, which had survived by hiding.

You can tell by the text block, Caleb is the main character of this story. It is revealed near the end of their adventure that he is sort of the key to the device they’re looking for. I haven’t figured out the exact nature of it yet, but basically Caleb was made as a blank slate with all the mental and emotional capacities of a human being, and when united with the device he will use it based on his experiences among humanity. Perhaps he will remake the world. Who knows. The whole story explores how he is both different from and the same as other humans. At one point there’s a human squish brain vs robot computer brain conversation that ends with the conclusion that the only difference between his brain and theirs is he can absorb information more quickly and recall it more accurately/with less loss of information, though it still gets colored by his emotions so it’s still not 100% unbiased accurate info. There’s also probably many conversations about how he feels things physically. The only thing I’ve decided so far is he does feel something akin to pain, but not the way humans do. Mostly it’s not debilitating to him like it can be to us. Also had a two-part thought process. Small Brain: As a robot, Caleb is now The Strong One Universe Brain: Robot Caleb is fragile as fuck and breaks constantly. Party: Hey Caleb, you’re a robot, you can rip this big metal door right out, yeah? Caleb: I am not strong. Party: Naaah you’re made of metal you can totally do it! Caleb: -rips own arms off on the door then gives them all an “I told you so” look- Nott: Caleb that’s not an easy fix, you could have proven your point in a less destructive way...

#critical role #critical role au #caleb widogast #I don't know anything about that Detroit whatever game except it has androids and is apparently popular please do not ask

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atopfourthwall · 6 years

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Settle in for a bit of a post, kids – time for Linkara to talk about some pokeymanz.

So as I’ve stated on numerous occasions, when I first started playing Pokémon, it was on an emulator. I was young, I didn’t have money, and it was rare for my parents to spend any money on video games or video game consoles (we had PCs, if we wanted to game, plenty of good games out for PC). I would eventually get a Gameboy Pocket and a proper copy of Pokémon Blue, but when I started? Emulation was the way in.

Now of course being young and stupid and not being able to foresee problems in the future, I did not think to KEEP the save files in those ROMs, never figuring that I’d still want to have those Pokémon or even know how to transfer them over to a proper cartridge like I do now. As such, they have many, many times been saved over, deleted, and lost. Still, my computer has been built on top of itself a few times over, to the point where I do still find files from 2001 or the like if I dig deep enough. So occasionally, on a whim, I will go through the old emulator files I have to see if I can find an old save file of one of my original playthroughs. It’s a hopeless endeavor and I’ve done it multiple times now and it never yields results.

So during one of these efforts, I stumble upon my Pokémon Sapphire ROM. As a reminder there, much like with the Gameboy games, I didn’t have a Gameboy Advance until muuuuch later (and an SP at that) and my fandom in Pokémon had fallen off the map by the early 2000s, so when Ruby and Sapphire came out, I didn’t even really pay attention to it. Then, on a whim, I decided to get the ROM for Sapphire and play it. For the record, I was not a fan. It wasn’t that it was terrible, just that the Pokémon for Gen 3 didn’t really do anything for me. I played through it as best as I could, eventually beating the Elite 4 MOSTLY because I didn’t know much about the game and assumed that, like Gold/Silver, I’d be able to travel back to Johto after I beat the Elite 4 and play through a second region like in those games. Hell, there even seemed to be two ports that served no other purpose in the game (whooo, you can sail between them… when you could also just Fly…), but of course to my disappointment that was not the case. I was grumbly about it, did some Gameshark codes in the emulator to get a team of legendaries, then a team of Pokémon from Gens 1 and 2 that I liked, but in the end just gave up on it and moved on.

So on a whim, I load up the Sapphire ROM and look through some of the save states. I find the legendary one, I find the one with Gen 1/2 Pokémon… aaaand then I find a playthrough of my original team. This was Pre-Elite 4, but after I had reached Evergrande City, so I was clearly just training for the Elite 4 at that point. So here they are – the six Pokémon that I had trained to be my team in a game I didn’t really like all that much. This was the earliest team of Pokémon that I had ever raised that were still available. The save file was from 2003. They were almost fifteen years old. They had just been sitting here, waiting. Their future had been erased. Their only fate was to sit and wait to finish the game when that was never going to happen, never going to continue, hoping that their trainer would finish the job that he had started.

That was unacceptable.

I may not have liked Gen 3 that much, but dang it, these were my first ones from it, and I’ll be damned if I was going to let them spend another day there instead of fulfilling their destiny. I fired up a bunch of the equipment that I had gotten for the Gen 1/2 trade-up video (some of it was in disrepair, like the GBA Flash cart, so I used the DS emulator trading option I described in the video to get them) and got these bad boys up to Alpha Sapphire.

Hell yeah. Not only are these six going to beat the Elite 4, they’re going to beat a TOUGHER Elite 4 – the one for the remake games, since obviously I had already beaten Alpha Sapphire (I liked Alpha Sapphire more, but that team was 5/6 made of Pokémon from other generations – my starter was a Zubat – just wanted a team of Pokémon I had always wanted to try). Let me introduce you to these dudes.

Back in the day, I didn’t nickname my Pokémon – thought it was dumb. I’m older now and I LOVE nicknaming them. Gives them more character and uniqueness. First up – Sceptimus. I’m not particularly fond of any of Gen 3’s starters, which is a shame since they’re all good, so at the time I went with the one I disliked least, which was Treecko. Nowadays while I hold no particular attachment to them, I do still appreciate Sceptile’s badass tail and leaf blade arms. And of course now in Alpha Sapphire, he’s a friggin’ DRAGON, too.

Next – Sniperbird. A lot of times the token bird of the generation ends up on the team, usually as a well-balanced Flying-type and this Swellow is no exception. The name comes from a bit in Birdemic where twice a random bird just straight up swoops on and kills people with one shot. I affectionately referred to it both times as Sniperbird. Now look at this Swellow – tell me you can’t see this thing flying in and killing you in one hit.

Third – MAKIT. This one, as you can tell by the original trainer name is an in-game trade for a Slakoth. Most would probably keep the Slakoth to get a Slaking, but at the time, knowing nothing about the game, I didn’t know what a Makuhita was and Slakoth didn’t impress me. While Hariyama has never really done much for me, Makuhita is an adorable little boxer with a permanent grin and I love it. While Hariyama’s design might not impress, it’s my first Fighting Type I ever had as a party member and he will beat your ass like a drum.

Fourth is Positra. Plusle and Minun are Gen 3’s Pikachu variant and of course at the time I didn’t realize it would never evolve, but look at this thing – it’s adorable and its cheeks are shaped like plus symbols. Positra might not be the strongest, but damn if it ain’t cute and it can still zap you if given the chance. Electrike and Manectric always looked weird to me, but Plusle is fast and it can hit hard if given the chance.

Then we have Geist. Sableye, until Fairy type came along, used to be a Pokémon without any weaknesses. I don’t even remember catching this guy back in the day or having him on my team, yet here he is. I likely just enjoyed him because of the weird ghost design and wanted a Ghost type for my team, but of course he has so much more to offer, especially nowadays since his only weakness is Fairy. His stats are not the best, but like Sceptimus his Mega Evolution can compensate for that.

And finally, Oceanus. I wasn’t fond of ANY of the water types for Gen 3 back in the day. These days I like a lot more, but for a place with so much water, I’m fairly certain I used some other Pokémon for surfing for the longest time simply because I didn’t have anything else I liked, but I was quite fond of this Legendary. Not my favorite, obviously, but it’s a big-ass whale and it can flood the entire damn planet, so you don’t mess with it.

So yeah, used the Blisseys Secret Bases to power-level them up and I’ve now beaten the Alpha Sapphire Elite Four. Hello, old friends – it’s been too long.

#pokemon #pokemon sapphire #pokemon alpha sapphire #plusle #Makuhita #Sceptile #Sableye #swellow

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firebirdsdaughter · 4 years

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Okay…

… No one wants my opinion on the Izu situation, but I’m tired as all hell and looking to ramble, and I want to get this off my chest.

I’ve seen a number of takes on what happened floating around. Some people see it as the same as at the start, when they’d just ‘reset’ the HumaGear who had been hacked (Nigiro and Mamoru spring to mind), some people are furious and think this new Izu is a whole new being Aruto is trying to force old Izu onto and think it’s out of character for him, there’s a lot of ‘she’s not the same’…

For me? Well… I said I had salt, but I also said it’s not what most people are thinking/might expect.

My reaction can be broken down into two things, and both, I admit, are pretty harsh:

This isn’t out of character for Aruto at all.

I don’t see anything different between ‘this’ Izu and the ‘old’ Izu.

Now, I haven’t been quiet about my opinions about Aruto, but, like other things in the series, he started well, he had potential, there was def something in there, Fumiya did the best he could, bless him. But as the show went on, it became harder and harder for me to like Aruto. Oh, he had a few good moments, the potential he’d started w/ was still there, in many ways, but… Eventually, I just stopped waiting.

From what I saw, Aruto was never into HumaGear establishing their own identities, he just wanted them to be how he wanted them to be. That line from the Frozen song—‘it’ll be just like it was, except for we’ll be best friends.’ He never really seemed to want ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’ for them, just wanted them to be ‘happy’ where they were. I’ve never been comfortable w/ that ‘dream’ ever since he blows up Jin for being a confused, frightened child soldier and then he and Izu stand around all pleased about pre-singularity HumaGear ‘smiling’ together w/ humans… Aka, dutifully serving humans w/ smiles painted on their faces. For the entire show, his sympathies and his definition of ‘good’ HumaGear where ones that lived to work, lived to serve humans w/out complaints or wanting anything for themselves. As long as their dreams were convenient for humans, they were a-okay. He also ended up veering into implying he knew exactly what HumaGear dreams were. He thought Izu was the pinnacle of good HumaGear bc she was adoring and devoted, revolved around him. His alleged urging her to choose for herself fell flat bc there was never anything for her to choose between (that scene was weird from all angles bc since when did Jin care about Izu and we never did bring up that time she rubbed his father’s defeat in his face and he stabbed her). He says they have to ask G-Pen what he wants, but then won’t let Jin talk to him bc he’s ‘a human’s partner!’ He seems relieved when G-Pen wants to draw. And like I said, eventually, he seems to have just decided he knows that HumaGear dreams will be to have warm fuzzies doing their jobs to serve humans. He yells at Horobi about how he was made to serve humans, only later bringing up the fact that he can have an identity outside the Ark. He can’t seem to fathom the fact that HumaGear could be upset at humans outside of ‘evil hacking.’ (I was groaning so loud when he was like ‘there’s no reason for us to fight anymore’ at the rebelling HumaGear, bc I’m sorry, isn’t that their decision? Seems like they think there is still a reason). He never seems bothered or concerned about the fact that HumaGear have no rights, can’t be in control of their own fates. He’s a-okay that they can’t be in positions of power and live completely at the whims of humans. Apparently, never even tried to give Izu a back up and taught her to be fine w/ not having one bc it ‘benefitted’ humans. To him, HumaGear existed to happily do their jobs, to serve humans, that was all they should live for… Even though a fully self aware being could never truly live the life HumaGear are made to live. He waxed about seeing HumaGear as people, but would only revive them when there was a request for them, didn’t tell Delmo she didn’t need to ‘prove’ anything to be allowed to live. He assumes Horobi will instantly magically see things his way despite everything Horobi has been through, when things get complicated, he spends more time running around and trying to make the other HumaGear go back to being the ‘good little servers’ he thinks they should be, devaluing their feelings by claiming there’s no reason to fight (again, that’s their decision), rather than actually going and trying to talk to Horobi. Then the show spends ages painting him like a tragic victim and making excuses for him, when Horobi is literally a traumatised and abused AI and Aruto immediately jumped at the chance to grab the fucking Ark Key. I know grief was involved, by why the fuck did Izu still not have a backup, why did he let her go in there along in the first place, why is he more tragic than the brainwashed and mentally conditioned child soldier AI who literally had never learned how to handle emotions and had been conditioned his whole life to resist them and to respond violently. But no, Aruto’s the only tragic one, not the mind rape and abuse victim that everyone pointed guns at instead of recognising what happened to him and trying to rehabilitate him (and then literally doing that to a ‘good’ HumaGear the next fucking day, wtf). Admittedly, I more blame Gai, the Ark, and Yua and Fuwa, the first two for being responsible for everything in the first place, and the second two for being the ones to escalate the situation and triggering Horobi in the first place. And then he just… Lets Horobi blame himself for everything at the end. This after originally specifically saying that Gai was responsible. Like… All that would have need was something like ‘it’s more complicated than that.’ Bc yeah, Horobi’s done some stuff, but he’s mentally unwell and they were all manipulated. This isn’t cut and dry. Recognise that.

Ultimately, I am incredibly frustrated by Aruto bc there was stuff that could have interested me about the character, but it ended up being outweighed by the negative stuff. Of course he’d just try to ‘remake’ Izu, HumaGear aren’t people to him, they exist to benefit humans. Izu exists to be his adoring cheerleader.

And… Well, that brings me to the second thing. When I heard the ‘he’ll try to make her the real Izu’… My immediate reaction was ‘how’s that hard?’ Literally, Izu’s character ultimately ended up being worshiping Aruto. All he’d have to do is program her to serve and support him again, and tada. Which is exactly what happened. Horobi has been dumped w/ all this mental trauma and guilt, and… Aruto doesn’t seem to have suffered at all. She gazes adoringly at him, she’s all cutesy, she interrupts his jokes… Sure, maybe she lost some memory, but… Ultimately, none of those memories changed her at all, so it’s not a big loss. I don’t see what’s so ‘different’ about her that’s making everyone so upset. It doesn’t feel like anything was lost. I really think they should have just had her data be in the 02 or some shit bc her not having a backup was bull in the first place, her ‘death’ was also bull bc she could easily have dodged even after Horobi fired, and pretending that Aruto ‘lost’ something that he should blame Horobi for is also bull. Izu didn’t have a personality outside of ‘adores Aruto’ (I see you, sexy leg lamp anon, I’ll get there eventually, I promise). W/ the added fact that she chose to not get out of the way and to be hit, and that she was apparently a-okay w/ no backup bc it allegedly benefited humans… It’s all just very frustrating. Also bc, like Aruto, there were a lot of places they could have gone w/ her, she could have been a great set up for ‘HumaGear can choose to work w/ humans.’ But Izu never had anything to choose from, she remained blindly adoring of Aruto and humanity. Her conversation w/ Horobi could have been good, if not for an underlying tone of ‘she’s right, he’s wrong.’ Izu should have to recognise that there is negative aspects of humanity and the good things don’t make it all okay. Horobi shouldn’t have to come all the way around to agree w/ her, it should be recognised that humanity have capacity for both, HumaGear should be allowed the capacity for both and have it not be treated like they’re going ‘berserk’ or have it be assumed there’s an ‘evil AI’ hacking them. Anger and even hatred are natural feelings—benevolence should be respected, appreciated, recognised, but not constantly expected.

Basically, Izu didn’t feel like a person. She had no identity or character outside of adoring Aruto, or any strong relationships outside of him (for ex, she really could have benefited from a relationship w/ Fuwa (slight favouritism at work, sure), where he does something like teach her to punch or something), and revolved completely around him, just like she was programmed to be. Funny how Will was depicted as ‘evil’ for wanting to know how humans would benefit HumaGear, but Izu and Wazu are ‘good’ bc they’re a-okay not having any of the safety measures available to their kind bc it will allegedly ‘benefit’ humans, and bc all they live for is pleasing their owners. Wazu didn’t even save Izu just bc he cared about her and didn’t want his younger sister to die, it was ‘you can support Aruto.’ I’m sorry, what? I just… Don’t see what was lost here.

So… To try and wrap this up bc I’ve been complaining for too long: Aruto never cared about HumaGear having their own identities or them being their own people, he just wanted them to be exactly the same as before, expected the only thing they needed in life to be making humans happy, and I cannot find the difference between these two Izus.

And I am so fucking frustrated.

#Firebird Salt #Firebird Negativity #Firebird Opinions #Aruto Negativity #Izu Negativity #there's so much more that I can't articulate at the moment #I just…#it's so frustrating that at most the 'way humans benefit HumaGear' turned out to be #'they made us/HumaGear are just happy to make humans happy'#like… I think we needed to see a dream from a HumaGear that didn't necessarily fall in w/ Aruto's expectations/assumptions #a HumaGear who wants to make their own decisions #own a company or something like that #and address that see how Aruto handles it #'humans taught us to have dreams' is bull as long as all those dreams are 'to serve humans'#basically #I'm so frustrated bc the potential was there and it just…#down the drain

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smokeybrand · 4 years

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Suicide Pact

I kind of really, really, want a Mass Effect trilogy remake on the next gen systems. After seeing the Lumen in the world of Nanites tech demo, my brain was a-tizzy with possibilities. We know that the next Sony Spider-Man game is going to run on the PS5. We know there is going to a next gen version of Cyberpunk and Ragnarok Creed. The power of these consoles is stupid and you can do so much with them going forward. Why not remake Mass Effect with the current tech? It’s been 13 years since the franchise was first released. Two console generations have passed since it’s started. Plus, a remake on this new hardware could rinse the bad taste Andromeda left in people’s mouths.

I’s be dope to revisit a retooled Mass Effect. I have all of the games and they’re some of my favorites in all of games, but that first title was sh*t in the mechanics departed. I owned a PS3 so i didn’t get the first game until after i beat the second and third, so imagine my f*cking surprise when the damn thing didn’t play at all like it’s sequels. That sh8t was infuriating. But, as i understand, the actual game mechanics took a backseat to the “revolutionary” dialogue tree, even though Jade Empire, Dragon age, and KOTOR had already done something similar, years before ME was even a thing. Still, the seeds were planted and an entire world was born. The narrative, world building, and character development were definitely the strengths of that first game and i approach it like an errant pilot that’s not as good as the production show but dope enough to sell the franchise.

Mass Effect 2 is a goddamn masterpiece and legitimately one of the greatest games ever created. This sh*t saw Bioware in their final form, hitting that stride into legendary status. I loved everything about this game and that’s saying so much because i f*cking hate shooters. I bought ME2 on a whim and it sat in my pile of games fro a long ass time. It wasn’t until ME3 was announced that i decided to actual play through it and, holy sh*t, my world was blown wide the f*ck open. The combat was completely different than the first, a fact i would find out much later, but the story gripped me almost immediately. That opening sequence? yeah, i felt that and i hadn’t even played the first game. all o knew about Shepard was through culture osmosis and sh*t. ME2 was my first foray into that world and i was immediately impressed. I found the story, itself, to be an incredibly interesting narrative but it was the characters that made this game. They make the franchise. I immediately fell in love with Tali the second she spoke for the first time. I wanted to wrestle Jack all over the Normandy just to see her laugh a few times as she thoroughly wiped the floor with my ass. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Miranda grow from icy b*tch into a stunning, espionage, queen who may or may not be a little morally dubious. I can sit here and gush all day about my adoration for Mass Effect 2. This sh*t is a classic and absolutely deserves a next gen treatment.

Mass Effect 3 is an interesting case. I enjoyed the game for what it was but there’s a lot to be desired toward the end. It has some of the best storytelling and fan service in the entire franchise but, f*ck, did they whiff that landing. Look, i love ME3, don’t get me wrong. Tali is still best girl but i absolutely adored revisiting my other relationships to see how they matured over time. Just a note, Liara’s romance in 3 is f*cking dope. Tali all day but f*ck if Liara didn’t worm her way into my heart just a bit. The problem with ME3 is that it’s the first game to really get the EA sabotage. If you;re a gamer, you know what i mean. EA bought Bioware just as Mass Effect 2 was getting underway. They’re the reason the entire franchise was soft rebooted during the second game. For the most part. EA left ME2 alone but these motherf*ckers dug in immediate;y when the third title began production. The story didn’t suffer but a really, really, unnecessary multiplayer component was shoehorned in. They tried to tie it to overall narrative progress but that only lasted for a few months. An update that “fixed” the ending that ES mandated, too, made the multiplayer mute. Hell, if you play like i do, you didn’t even need the f*cking thing to get the best ending. Rise and grind, man. Years of JRPGs forged me for that fire, bro.

And then there was Andromeda. F*ck, dude. Look, i like Andromeda. I like Andromeda in principal. There are a lot of great ideas here. I was interested in the new galaxy and where the narrative was going. That said, literally everything about Mass Effect: Andromeda is less than the original trilogy. Sh*t’s not even bad, it’s just less. Sure, there were bugs all over the place and the facial animations were outright bunk, but all of these issues can be traced back to EA and their meddling. See, unlike ME2 and ME3, EA was straight f*cking over Bioware from before the start. They moved all of the A-team over to work on the absolute bust, Anthem, instead of making the best ME game they could. That left the b-team, the motherf*ckers who made the absolutely lackluster ME3 multiplayer add-on, to make an entire Mass Effect game. Big Yikes. Okay, benefit of the doubt. Bioware Montreal is still Bioware. Okay. This thing was in production for five years. EA forced an engine on them that wasn’t optimized for the type of game Mass Effect is so, literally, Bioware spent the bulk of that production time tweaking the engine just to get the motherf*cker to work. The game, itself, was rushed to completion in just two years. That is NOT enough time to create a proper Bioware game, let alone a mass effect. EA literally crippled a mainline mass Effect title before it even had a chance, which sucks ass because i was mildly infatuated with Cora.

The next gen allots Bioware the opportunity to give the original trilogy, the FFVIIR or REmake2 treatment. I’m not saying remake the titles exactly as they were, i’m saying make the game you wanted to make back in 07. Build the worlds you wanted. Make them as dynamic as you pitched all those years ago. Create a uniform gameplay style through the entire franchise. Incorporate what you learned from Andromeda while tossing out more problematic additions. The Unreal Engine 5 is more than powerful enough to render the world that was originally envisioned and the systems, themselves, can definitely power through the content like champs. Hell, revisit the narrative and give us that Dark Matter plot that got shelved in favor of that weirdly unattached Reaper climax from ME3. The world has caught on to EA’s bullsh*t. The combination of Battlefront 2′s complete, worldwide, loot box, throttling and the rampant success of the micro-transaction deficient, single player, story driven, Jedi: Fallen Order has shown that the market for dope, narrative focused, games is thriving. This sis some sh*t Sony has known for years as that’s their bread-and-butter but this turn in culture has positioned Bioware to recapture that glory they once had, by revisiting the franchise the really gave them their shine. And, oh, how shiny a next gen ME trilogy remake would be.

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