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overlord-diaries · 4 years

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Castlevania Season 3: One really specific fan review.

So now that we’re under shelter in place I’m back on this tumblr bruha again, wildin. [Missed all that good shit of tumblr crashing and burning on itself lmao] Anyway I threw this up a while back after I finished because I had to get it out so YEAH HERE WE GO.

OKAY SO CASTLEVANIA SEASON 3, IN MANY PARTS.

Trevor and Sypha, aka Belnades and Belmont Funtime Adventures: -The best paced of the "routes", but still little dragging. -St. Germain. [and he kept reminding me of FGO Shakespeare] -Kept waiting for the Judge to be Zead. Aka Death, in continuing the nods to Curse of Darkness, the next chronological order game. -NICE FIGHTS. NICE NICE NICE NICE. Animation got a little weird at the last fight but it was still good, looked good. Infinite Corridor, okay. Hell, blase, but whatever that wasn't the point. Satisfying magic blasts, whip GRANDO CROSSSSSSSS. -Excellent final boss music. -I added this part after I got to the end because it's clear this route was the best overall as I had the least to commentate on. -Just this part. 4 outta 5.

Isaac also Has an Adventure: -Netflix Animated Isaac, henceforth Animated!Isaac, has become a decent enough character, though I still think he needs work [from the season 2 which I'll just leave alone], and should've been a separate character if he wasn't going to be Curse of Darkness Isaac [henceforth CoD!Isaac]. -This kind of world-building solo Walking the Earth trope could work, but the pacing wasn't great. -LEGION HOLY SHIT. -In direct comparison to Belnades and Belmont funtimes, he somehow didn't have a good enough ending fight either. EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS LEGION, A CASTLEVANIA MAINSTAY BOSS. -He needs someone else to wax philosophical with but the odds aren't great of anyone else surviving. -Just this part: 2.5 outta 5.

Alucard Experiencing Time at a Troublesome Pace, aka He Should've Gone to Sleep: -Man he should've gone to sleep. As long as there is a Belmont, a Belnades, a Renard, a Morris, Shanoa, etc. around, he goes to sleep. -Fun fact, Taka and Sumi are not siblings. -Fun fact, the Japanese dub of the show, Okiayu Ryoutarou, the original voice of Alucard is in the cast. He voices Trevor though; Shinichiro Miki voices Alucard. I'm never gonna get over that because I'm a fucking seiyuu nerd. -Alucard's arc is a summary of the beautiful landscape and scenery the studios gave us this time, and details on his eyelashes. -Alucard's arc is also a summary of the really awful pacing that resulted from the diverging routes. Very little happened, and a very arbitrary leap of logic has now potentially made a drastic character shift for no real reason. -Better ending: Taka and Sumi, though humans, were actually very loyal to Cho [similar to Hector and Isaac's role to Dracula] and came to hunt down whomever brought about her demise. Or enslave them, upon learning that Alucard played a hand in that. And bring him back to their domain that is thrown in chaos with Cho's absence. Way better. Potential to continue because if they just wanted to capture him, the episode could've ended on that. AND THEN THE FUCKING CASTLE COULD DEMONSTRATE IT'S ELDRITCH ABOMINATION POWERS BY EATING THEM. Or something. -Just this part. 3.5 outta 5. Bonus not-there point because Alucard.

Hector Has a Bad Time, aka It Got Worse: -I cannot fucking believe they decided of anyone, to shaft Hector like this. -You like my stealth pun there? -CURSE OF DARKNESS HECTOR [henceforth CoD!Hector] COULD PUNCH DRACULA IN THE FACE AND HAD THE POWER OF CRISPIN FREEMAN TO VOICE HIM, THIS NETFLIX ANIMATION HECTOR [henceforth Animated!Hector] MAKES ME DEATH METAL GROWL INTO INFINITY. -Fun Fact, in the Japanese dub he is voiced by Takahiro Sakurai. So of course the only joy I got out of this was listening to him whimper. -I DIDN'T SAY THAT. [yesIdid *slurp*] -This entire route was a demonstration of gaslighting at work, but in the most low effort way that it's nearly comical that it still worked. -Design wise, I mentioned this in my live watching posts, Striga looks like she was lifted from Vampire Hunter D, and Morana gave me Natsume Ono [ACCA] vibes. Nice nice nice. -I'm so incensed by what happened with Hector that I can't even comment on the Council of Sisters aside from the fact that I want to stab Carmilla and Lenore. That perma-blush for moe points, get that shit outta here. -AAAAAAAAAAARAARRRRARARHARUAHRUHGHGH-- -Just this part: FUCKING, DAMNIT--1.5 OUTTA 5 AAAAHH

Other, aka The Complaints of a Castlevania Fan: -BOOOOOOO NO JOACHIM, 0 OUTTA 10. -I will write a separate "This is what I wanted out of a cameo from Joachim". -No ost tho? -What even was this pacing? -Was hoping also for more interactions of Castlevania itself with Alucard [the young master~], since he's there by himself. I was actually thinking that would come through because he had the dolls of Trevor and Sypha. -Where is Death? I'm a tad concerned [he also would be the one to call out to the young master~] -I've heard pray tell that the producer wants to make a Devil May Cry animated series as well, and join them into a shared universe [with other future works they do] and that has me apprehensive. When a) Devil May Cry already has an anime, and b) there's still improvements to be made for Castlevania. -Listen new characters and taking advantage of the expanse of lore and open-ended story that presents itself with the absence of Dracula is great. But it has to be good. Like anything else.

Overall, 8 outta 10.

Twas a horrible night to have a curse.

#overlord: if #rantble #review #castlevania #Castlevania Netflix #season 3 #[it was a thing]#[BOOOO NO JOACHIM]

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ghostflowerdreams · 5 years

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List of Free Horror Games (2019)

This is an updated list of free horror games. The other list is old because some of the links on it are broken or the games are no longer free. This time I’ve included a description with each one. Some of these games you can even play right in your browsers (just make sure you’ve updated your Abode Flash).

1916 - Der Unbekannte Krieg

Nestled deep inside the deluged trenches of the German frontline, you play as a soldier desperately looking for a way out. Hidden somewhere in the sunken maze of passageways is a ladder, and finding it almost certainly spells freedom. The only thing that stands between you and safety is a pack of dinosaurs.

3 AM

The city has been evacuated, something sinister haunts it at night, only a single path is safe, but to find it you have to lose your soul. A game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Specifically the dogs of Tindalos.

5 Days A Stranger

Trilby, a cat burglar, breaks into an supposedly vacated manor of the aristocratic DeFoe family. He quickly finds that things are not that simple. Together with a group of strangers, he finds himself imprisoned by some invisible intelligence. A force prepared to do anything to keep them all there forever.

7Days

It's a psychological horror game done in first person perspective. The game has very little plot or background. All you know is that you are a person who wakes up in a bed in a house. Your goal is to to get out of the house, but of course things aren't that simple.

Alice Mare

The game follows an amnesiac young boy named Allen who was placed under the care of a man called Teacher who looks after four other children. One night, Allen investigates the rumor of a mysterious voice on the second floor and when he returns to his room, he finds a strange black cat who leads him into his closet.

Animal Village

It’s a short survival horror game with light dating sim elements made for the Pixel Horror Jam 2016. The game is about exploring the pit in the middle of Animal Village, a quaint little settlement inhabited by talking animals. Don't talk to the bird-headed man, don't acknowledge him and don't trust him.

Ao Oni (青鬼, lit. 'Blue Demon')

The player assumes the role of Hiroshi, a young teenager who enters a haunted mansion with his friends, Takuro, Takeshi, and Mika (Along with Kazuya and Ryota in the original). Shortly after entering the mansion, the doors lock behind them. Hiroshi doubts that the mansion is haunted, but soon finds himself being pursued by an enigmatic blue Oni. Hiroshi must now find a way to save as many of his friends as possible and escape the mansion alive.

Ascension

It’s a psychological horror game in which you play as Atticus, a groundskeeper who has brought his sick daughter to work on the day of a horrible accident in his building. Separated from his daughter, Atty must survive the hordes of monsters stalking him and make it back to her before something else reaches her first.

Baby Blues

You play as Tommy, a toddler that wakes up to a strange noise in the middle of the night with a bright light shining in his eyes. Realizing his beloved teddies are missing; he climbs down out of bed and start to look for them.

Backstage

Tom Keller is lost. He has gone astray, and become trapped in a nightmare world that is a twisted mirror image of our own, tormented by horrific aberrations, haunted by shattered memories. He is alone behind the world, and to escape, he must come to terms with all of his sins.

Bad Dream: Series

It’s a series of short point-and-click games. It takes place in a creepy, dark and sad land of dream. Some of games will be a cruel and painful as nightmare, and some will be disturbing and illogical. Gameplay will always look the same, but the dreams will be different.

Project Entities: Blame (originally simply titled Blame)

This is a horror survival game. You have to dig into the game, however, to piece it together. You might also have to uncover a lot of the hidden and secret material. Epileptics, as well as those who are sensitive to light play at their own discretion.

Bunny Man - Lost Souls

It’s a game made in Slender-style where you go around and save people's souls from an urban legend creature called Bunny Man. Your goal is to save as many souls as you can before he catches you.

Candles

It’s a 3D game where you have to light up your house, which has been invaded by dangerous imps.

Corpse Party Zero

It’s a survival horror adventure fan-made game by Noraenu created using RPG Tkool XP. It’s a prequel which stars two sisters mentioned only in passing in Corpse Party, Kaori Hasegawa and Shiho Hasegawa, who try to escape from the cursed school.

Corpse Party -Rebuilt-

It’s the remake of the original survival horror adventure game in the Corpse Party series made by an anonymous member of a Japanese message board with permission from Team GrisGris. A group of friends unknowingly perform an occult ritual that traps them in an otherworldly elementary school. Here, the vengeful spirits of young children threaten their lives and their sanity, and the only hope of survival is to uncover the chilling details behind the murders of those trapped before them...

The Crooked Man

David Hoover decides to move into a new apartment during a rough time in his life. After some odd occurrences, he decides to ask about the room's former owner, but learns little. So he sets off in search of him, strangely compelled to know more about this man...

Cry of Fear

It’s a psychological single-player and co-op horror game set in a deserted town filled with horrific creatures and nightmarish delusions. You play as a young man desperately searching for answers in the cold Scandinavian night, finding his way through the city as he slowly descends into madness.

Daily Chthonicle

You take on the role of a Supernatural Newspaper Agency boss and editor. The world it takes place in is a dark and haunted one, with ghosts, zombies, monsters and even shapeshifting murderers, pretending to be human after they have stolen their victims' bodies or infiltrated the humanity. It was inspired heavily by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and it builds on the atmosphere of uncertainty and noir of the 1940s.

Dark Deception

It’s a story-driven first-person horror maze game. There's nowhere to hide and nowhere to catch your breath. Run or die -- it's your choice. Trapped in a realm of nightmarish mazes with a mysterious woman, your only hope of survival is to find a way to escape the darkness.

Dark Dread

A missing teenager. An abandoned hospital. You are a detective who has to find out what happened to Helena Greenwood.If you don't go insane while doing so...

Deep Sleep, Deeper Sleep & The Deepest Sleep

You are stuck inside a nightmare dream. Something lurks in the darkness... Something in the depths of your own mind wants to pull you even deeper. Someone will escape this dream for sure. The question is -- who is that going to be?

The Designer's Curse

The first chapter of an unforgettable survival horror experience. Solve puzzles and work your way through this terrifying place. You may be more familiar with it than you initially think.

The Devil Haunts Me

Survive, explore and discover the secrets of the woods. But be careful, there's something else in these woods...

Devil's Tuning Fork

It’s a first-person exploration/puzzle game in which the player must navigate an unknown world using visual sound waves. Inspired by M.C. Escher’s classic optical illusion and the echolocation of dolphins.

Dissolving

Her ex-boyfriend became a shut-in. The girl goes to visit him... then things start to go wrong. They always do, right? Experience two stories about digital gods and loss. And remember -- believe in the net.

Disturbed

Play as a farmer who struggles to manage a failing farm. You come to a point where there is no more hope, and you must do something.

Doorways: Old Prototype

It’s an immersive and twisted adventure created before the official development of the Doorways saga.

Doki Doki Literature Club

The Literature Club is full of cute girls! Will you write the way into their heart? This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.

Don't Escape

I woke up in a room... It is not locked and I remember everything. I'm a werewolf. Tonight I will turn and people will die... unless I find a way to prevent myself from escaping this place.

Don’t Look Now

Don’t look at them. They will drain you of your last sanity if they catch you. Direct your consciousness and reach your happy place.

Erie

Erie begins in October 1966, when the Fermi 1 Nuclear Power Generator suffers a partial meltdown, and locals begin disappearing from a sleepy Michigan town. Oliver Victor is a Red Cross Investigator sent to find missing locals, but quickly finds himself trapped underground and being hunted by a product of forced-mutation experiments.

Eyes

If you like Slender, you'll like this too. You’re to search an old, abandoned house and collect any valuables but be careful -- there are rumors of a ghost haunting the building.

Exmortis & Exmortis 2

You wake up in the woods with no memory of how you got there. Nightmares of blood and screams still echo through your mind. It's late and it's cold - unless you can find shelter fast, you won't last the night. You spot a house in a clearing up ahead and left with no choice - you decide to shelter there for the night. Soon after you begin to realize that death is a welcome choice compared to what lies waiting for you inside...

Fausts Alptraum

It’s an single player, puzzle game created by LabORat Studio, an indie game team from Taiwan. The story is based on Goethe's Faust. Players will play as a troubled girl wandering around in a crayon-drawn world.

Forget Me Not Annie

It’s a first person psychological horror game. You play as a 15 year old girl Annie who is trapped within her own mind and has to use her telekinetic powers with the help of Howard who you are able to summon at any moment to surpass puzzles.

From Next Door

It’s a short mystery-horror game developed for the 2016 Pixel Horror Jam. It draws inspiration from the works of Junji Ito and games like Silent Hill, with the story focused on the eerie and the bizarre. It tells the story of a young woman who moves into a new house, only to experience weird occurrences from the seemingly empty house next door. Depending on your choices the outcome will change and could even grant her safety or not.

The Groundskeeper

After a horrific accident, you find yourself trapped in an unfamiliar place where no one can hear you scream. There's a dark presence... A dark secret that this place holds. Is there any way out? Is HE watching?

Hello? Hell…o?

It’s a Japanese RPG horror game by Ryuuichi Tachibana created with RPG Maker VX Ace. You play as a boy named Kazuki that is going through strain in a relationship with his girlfriend, Akari. It takes place in a strange room where you have to accomplish certain things in order to complete all the endings.

Hide

Play hide and seek with someone who hides in the mist. All you have is your ears.

The House & The House 2

It’s a point-and-click flash horror game. Built in 1970, and deserted some time after that, no one has entered the house since the entire family committed suicide due to reasons unknown. Your goal is to search through the house to unfold the mystery of what really happened to that fateful fictitious family.

Human

It’s a short psychological horror game which examines inherent, earthly, and otherworldly evils, and the forces which drive them. As you make your way through an Alaskan auroral research facility in search of employees it quickly becomes very clear that something has become alerted to your presence.

I Can’t Escape

You have fallen into a vast underground maze. Can you find your way out, or will you end up trapped in darkness forever?

I See You

You play as an unnamed protagonist waking up in an empty hospital. However, it soon turns out the hospital is not quite so empty...

A young girl named Ib visits an art gallery with her parents. While observing the many exhibits, she suddenly realizes she is alone. And in her search for others, she finds things awry in the gallery...

Ildefonse

In 1935, Mr. Ildefonse was betrayed by his wife who then fled with their children, Mr. Ildefonse lost his head and unleashed a massacre at his home involving employees, then he committed suicide. The rest of the story is completed with letters from tenants who lived in the building, which was later converted into flats but haunted by the things that happened in the past.

In the game, the year 1977, the player is a lawyer hired to collect the testament papers in the house, requested by a family member.

Imscared: A Pixelated Nightmare

The player must find keys, open doors and search for the exit to this nightmare.

Lamia Nox

It’s an indie horror game made with RPG Maker VX Ace. Laura, an 14-year-old who is pretty much a normal young girl. But her life is changed for the worse when she wakes up one day to find that her home is completely different.

The Last Door: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 & Episode 4

Free episodic horror game, with original pixel-art visuals and a gorgeous orchestral music score. Surrounded by a thrilling sound atmosphere, player's will experience a really immersive environment thought the stimulation of their imagination, just like classic horror writers like Poe and Lovecraft used to.

Leave

The game begins with the protagonist waking up in her bedroom, but it's up to the player to search her house for the backstory.

Lucie

Lucie, a girl who, after waking up in a strange room realizes that she is stuck in a lucid dream. She encounters evil beings and traps while searching for her body.

Lurking

It’s a sound-based survival thriller gae, where sound is the only way you see, and they hear your fears.

Mad Father

Aya Drevis is a young girl living in an isolated mansion in northern Germany. Since her mother's passing, she's felt lonely living with just her father and his assistant Maria. What's more, she knows her father's secret...

Mermaid Swamp

Rin Yamazaki and her college friends have their car break down in the mountains on a trip. Fortunately, a kindly old man offers to let them stay at his house. But there's a legend about the swamp outside the mansion...

Misao

It's been three months since the mysterious disappearance of Misao. No one has any idea where she could have gone, but many believe she's dead by now. And when paranormal events crop up around the school, rumors spread that she's out for revenge...

Miserere

In Miserere you explore the dreams of a lonely space station occupant. The unnamed occupant have been on this station for years, all alone. Needless to say, this has taken its toll on our poor protagonists mind. This occasionally shows in the dreams. But there are still glimmers of hope.

Nightmare of the Snow

It’s a RPG Adventure Horror game developed in late 2013. The game centers on Yuuki Shinozaki, a shy middle schooler who is attending a farewell party, but before that, she is taken mysteriously to a lost dimension where a mansion that was supposed to had disappeared for many years exists.

Ningyo Heart

It’s about a man’s journey through a nightmare, in search for his beloved and finding his true self. The main theme in this horror game is friendship, romance and horror. Game play will focus on puzzle solving & survival horror (run and chase event).

Nyctophobia

You have a job. That job is to be a security guard during the night shift at a local office complex. You and Marley do it every night. Get decent pay for it too. Enough to keep you going. But Marley's just called in sick, so you gotta do the shift alone. Shouldn't be bad, right? Well, the power's just gone off, and I don't think you're alone anymore...

OFF

It’s an 2003 RPGmaker created game. You take control of a mysterious person called “The Batter”, who is described to be on an important mission. The Batter, and yourself as his controller, are dropped off in zone 0, the first of 4 zones in a perplexing, unknown world about which you slowly find out more and more in the process of the game.

One Late Night

It’s a short immersive horror-game experience, starring an unnamed graphic designer employee, working late one night at the office, until strange things start to happen.

Pact With a Demon - Episode 1 & Pack With a Demon - Episode 2

You must survive on an island after a car accident and find a way out, while several demonic creatures try to attack you.

Palette

One night, the psychiatrist Sianos B. Sian is requested to counsel a girl called B.D., who has lost her eyesight and memory in an accident. Through conversations with her over the phone, the past that hides in her memories comes to light...

Phantasmal: Survival Horror Roguelike

Experience Terror that is Never the Same Twice with Phantasmal, a Lovecraftian survival horror that evolves every time you play!

Pocket Mirror

It’s a horror game created in RPGMaker VX ACE. You play as a nameless girl in the journey to find her purpose and memories within a mysterious world.

Port of Call

Imagine waking up on a small dock with no recollection of who you are or how you got there. The first person you find is a grumpy, old man who enlists you to work on his ferry boat which seems to have materialized behind you.

[REC] Shutter

It’s a horror game that you must progress through levels while avoiding the paranormal and solving puzzles. You take the role of a reporter named Connor, who will be investigating Pennyhill, a dark hunted asylum.

Re:Kinder

Third-grader Shunsuke goes to stay over at his grandmother's house. Upon his return home, he finds not his familiar hometown, but a ruined town of death. He meets his surviving friends and some other children their age, but a crueler reality awaits them...

Schuld

It’s a surreal, psychological horror game. This is an translated version of the German game. Schuld (Guilty) is about a man who finds himself in a dying world, without knowing how he got there and why he is there.

SCP - Containment Breach

It’s a survival horror game based on the works of the SCP Foundation community.

September 1999

Its a free, VHS styled, first-person found footage horror game, which runs exactly for 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

Serena

It’s a point-and-click adventure horror game. How long has it been? A man sits in a distant getaway cabin waiting for his wife Serena. Where is she? Things in the cabin evoke memories, and the husband comes to a disturbing realization...

Shutter

You are woken up by a sudden loud noise in the middle of the night in your recently moved into apartment. Moving boxes are scattered all over the place, still things left to unpack. All the lights in the house are turned on, but you're sure you turned them off. You leave your room to investigate, your trusty camera in hand.

Silent Hill: Room 304

It’s a point-and-click horror game based on the popular video game series, Silent Hill by Konami Digital Entertainment.

Silent Santiago

It’s inspired by the popular Silent Hill survival horror series from Konami. This horror game is developed by students of a Chilean university. The streets in this game are inspired by the reality of the Santiago city, in Chile, going so far as to recreating the plazas and the narrow alleys. The atmosphere, however, is incredibly eerie and similar to the Silent Hill games, with a thick fog covering the entire city. The goal of the game is to navigate the maze-like streets of the city of Santiago and to reach the exit.

Slender: The Eight Pages

The game centers around an unknown character being chased by the Slender Man in the woods while seeking eight pages scattered about various landmarks.

Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion

Can you survive 1000 rooms of cute terror? Or will you break once the cuteness starts to fade off and you're running for your life from the unspeakable hideous beings that shake and writhe in bowels of this house? They wait for you, they wait and hunger for meeting you.

The Night That Speaks

You don't remember how you got to the graveyard, but you know you've been meaning to visit.

The Static Speaks My Name

A dark, sad, weird, and funny first-person exploration game. You play a man on his last night alive as he obsesses over a mysterious painting.

Try to Fall Asleep

John Herrin survived a horrible accident and as a result, he damaged his brain and lost his memory. Only Dr. Rick Norberg and the friendly robot "AB" can help John to recover from his brain damage and restore his broken memory.

By falling asleep and rediscovering the past in his dreams, John can restore his memory and remember what caused the unfortunate catastrophe in one of the most secretive laboratories of the "Revivel" company. But due to John's brain damage, falling asleep won't be as easy as it seems at first...

Vanish

Thrown into a Labyrinth for reasons unknown, you must roam through the darkness to find your escape. Do you have what it takes to get out alive? Or will you be another feast for the walls that seem to live?

Which

It’s a short game in which you look for a way to open the door out of the small house.

The White Chamber

It’s a point-and-click horror adventure game. You play as a trapped young woman from 3rd person perspective as she solves puzzles and overcomes the twisted obstacles in her path.

The Witch’s House

The young Viola visits a mysterious house in the woods. She soon discovers its dangerous nature and must find a way out. But the house is ever-changing, and death could be lurking anywhere...

Within Deep Sorrows

A demon haunts you throughout your nightmares, as it gradually makes its way into the real world. The only way to prevent this from happening is for you, Johnston Barker to destroy your diary, which is hidden within your third dream. Each descending dream makes it harder to avoid the demon, allowing it to become stronger, and more aggressive. The time period is set in the 1990's, though when dreaming, it is set back in the 1950's. You are not alone however, as your conscious speaks to you during the process, giving you guidance as you deeply wonder within your nightmares.

Yume Nikki (ゆめにっき, lit. Dream Diary)

It’s a 32-Bit game created by KIKIYAMA, a mysterious Japanese game designer. It was made using RPG Maker 2003. The players explore the dreams of a hikikomori named Madotsuki, where they encounter a number of surrealistic horror creatures and locations.

#free horror games #horror games #horror #free #gaming #video games

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avaantares · 4 years

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FFVII:REMAKE - A Review

So I beat the game two weeks ago and started writing down my thoughts while they were fresh in my mind, but I didn’t post anything then because my one IRL friend who is also playing it hadn’t finished it yet and I didn’t want to risk posting anything spoiler-y. But the extra time has allowed me to play through the game again on Hard difficulty, which has allowed me to reconsider and elaborate on some of my thoughts. And frankly at this point I just need to dump my Very Big Opinions somewhere, so... here ya go.

I discuss visuals, gameplay, character and story below. I’ve tried to keep spoilers minimal up front, though obviously if you want to go into the game totally cold, don’t read this. All major spoilers are clearly tagged. All of it is below a cut to spare your dash.

Also, there are pretty pictures, because why not?

First, my background with this franchise: I played through the original FFVII multiple times; I’ve watched and rewatched Advent Children and Last Order, played Crisis Core, gave up on Dirge of Cerberus despite my deep love for Vincent Valentine (sorry, VV, but your game was just a mess), and lamented that Before Crisis wasn’t available in my country. I even played (and own!) Ehrgeiz, the obscure fighting game that featured the main cast. (Still bitter that they didn’t keep Miki Shinichirou as the voice of Sephiroth. He’s one of my faves.)

^ Ehrgeiz, a mediocre fighting game that forever endeared itself to me by including Turks!Vincent Valentine as a playable character. 💖

In short, I’ve been waiting for this game for DECADES.

So. Here we go. My thoughts on Final Fantasy VII: REMAKE.

The good:

The character models are very pretty. With individual pores, threads and scuffs visible, they’re so detailed that it’s almost impossible to reconcile them with the mouthless sprites from the original game – even more so than Advent Children (and dear goodness, that was over a decade ago now, wasn’t it?). Still, they’ve kept the costume details and absurd proportions largely intact (Barret’s fists are literally larger than Tifa’s entire head, yet somehow it works visually), so it’s not too much of a departure from the familiar.

They’ve kept the aesthetic. I was afraid the game would try to update the iconic world of Midgar, but by and large, it’s full of visually-arresting designs that preserve the gritty-industrial look and feel of the original.

Japanese version is included. BLESS YOU, Square Enix, for including the Japanese voices and character animations. Not only is it impossible for me to hear Cloud in anything other than Sakurai Takahiro’s voice, but the Japanese script is a bit nicer to the characters. I’m not really keen on the English dub… but more on that below.

They fixed the spelling of Aerith’s name. This may seem like a minor point, but considering it’s been 20 years and I’m still bitter that Devil May Cry still hasn’t corrected “Nelo Angelo,” it’s a small victory.

Improved combat. Admittedly, I wasn’t sold on the new combat system at first, but after playing through the game twice, I’ve come to really like it. It has a few rough edges and can get chaotic in some battles, but it does a decent job of blending the feel of an action game with turn-based strategy. The fact that you can switch to a more traditional turn-based system if you prefer is also nice. (I haven’t tried Classic mode yet, though.)

Weapon customization. The Skill Points system allows you to upgrade your loadout instead of acquiring new gear. The tutorial was somewhat lacking (I didn’t quite figure out the multiple-core-unlock thing right away), but I appreciated the ability to add materia slots or stat buffs rather than just cycling through a dozen swords that Cloud apparently keeps in his back pocket.

Background dialogue management. On the whole, the conversations as you run through town enhance the story without slogging down the gameplay; you don’t have to stop and talk to every single resident, because snatches of their conversation reach you (and your on-screen chatlog) as you pass. You can stop and listen for more detail if you want, or you can just keep moving. The extra worldbuilding is really nice.

The music. The orchestrated versions of the original themes are excellent (and some of those music cues gave me goosebumps… Did I spend way too many hours immersed in the original game? Probably). I can take or leave some of the collectible jukebox tunes, but the background music in general is good. (But did I earn that Disc Jockey trophy? Yes, yes I did.)

Supporting character development. Jessie, Biggs and Wedge actually have characters! And personalities! Clichéd ones, admittedly, but it’s an improvement over the original game killing them all off within the first few minutes. The game also does justice to the Turks, and actually surprised me with how much depth of character it gave Reno and Rude in particular (perhaps setting them up for a mini redemption arc so players forgive them for dropping a plate on tens of thousands of slum residents?). Their moments of concern for each other and (brief) crises of conscience made them more than the stock villains they were in the original game, more in line with their temporarily good-aligned characters in Advent Children. Tseng, likewise, was on point. However, I do have to qualify all this with one irate question: Where the heck is Elena?! Seems like the female characters are always getting left out… /sigh/

Improved plot devices. REMAKE cleans up some of the more questionable and outdated content from the original. As you likely already know from the demo, the new game somewhat exonerates the protagonists by having Shinra blow up their own mako reactor to turn public opinion against AVALANCHE (possibly because someone finally realized that it’s hard to sympathize with characters who are willing to melt down an entire reactor and kill a bunch of innocent civilians). AVALANCHE are still eco-terrorists, but they’re… terrorists with a conscience? I dunno, at least they feel bad when people die now… Likewise, the weird and uncomfortable Honey Bee Inn segment of the original game has been reborn as an amazing dance extravaganza. Less voyeurism/prostitution, more Vegas floor show (complete with minigame choreography) and makeover. The whole Don Corneo scenario is still hella creepy, but frankly, there’s nothing that can fix that.

Series references. Fans of the original will appreciate all the inside jokes and direct references to the original game and other franchise entries: One-off comments about Chocobo racing; a broken console in Wall Market that shoots at you; a framed picture of the original 32-bit Seventh Heaven; ads for Banora apple juice; side mentions of characters and plot devices from spinoff games; PHS communication… The game definitely pays tribute to its history. They even recreate the original loading screen and several of Cloud’s iconic poses/animations throughout the game:

The neutral:

Recycled gags. Look, I know Advent Children was the ultimate evolution of FFVII for a while, and admittedly, it did some things very well. The running gag with Rude’s sunglasses and the victory fanfare being used as a ringtone are some of the best moments in the film, in part because they were so unexpected. But as much as I enjoyed the repeated nods to AC in this game, they felt a little desperate, like there were no new jokes to insert so they had to double down on the ones they’d used the last time this franchise had a renaissance. (See Rude’s broken sunglasses, below.) And fitting into the series as a whole, it feels a little weird. Why is Rude’s ringtone the same as the clones’ from Advent Children? Does Barret really need to sing the victory fanfare over and over when he defeats an enemy? Is there supposed to be some history behind that song that was left out of the worldbuilding? It just feels too meta.

Arbitrary localization of names. I don’t really grasp why it was necessary to rename so many items and characters for the English market. Some changes make sense for localization (e.g. Whack-a-Box certainly works better for an American audience than Crash Box), but others seem arbitrary, like changing Aniyan Kunyan to Andrea Rhodea or Mugi to Oates (a play on the meaning of his name in Japanese, but... does it matter?). And then… well, I don’t want to spoil A Major Plot Element, but there’s another thing that changes names from one English word (in the Japanese track) to a different English word. Why? No idea. It doesn’t affect gameplay, and it’s not really a problem, but listening to the Japanese track, I found it jarring to have the subtitles contradict what I was hearing.

Underutilized characters. While the whole gamut of original FFVII characters make appearances, several of them aren’t used to full effect, or aren’t used at all to advance the story. Rufus Shinra’s bossfight is a decent challenge, but while his character was vital to both the original FFVII and Advent Children, his presence in this game is little more than a cameo. His fight could be cut or swapped out with any other boss, and it would have zero effect on the plot. Similarly, while Hojo is a key player in the full story (which this game doesn’t cover, since it’s only a fraction of the original timeline), he’s largely wasted here, except as a means of extending play time by making you wander through corridors and fight a bunch of monsters for “research.” (I have no idea what his motivation is; you’d think he’d be more interested in recapturing Aerith or Cloud, but instead he just... opens an elevator and lets them leave? after they beat up some midbosses.) Reeve Tuesti actually has a solid presence in this game, but since he’s ONLY ever active as himself, there’s no explanation for the random Cait Sith cameo in one scene (players new to the franchise probably have no idea why a random cartoon cat showed up for a few seconds and was never mentioned again). Obviously the plot arcs have to change when the game is covering only a few days’ time in a much longer story, and the major players need to be introduced at some point if they’re going to feature in later games in the series, but from a narrative standpoint, there are an awful lot of superfluous characters doing things for no reason in this installment.

The bad:

THE PADDING. Dear goodness, there is so much padding to make this a standalone game instead of just the first chapter of a longer adventure. I got really, really sick of running literally from one end of the map to the other on side quests – and that’s me, an avowed trophy hunter who spends hours scouring dark corners for collectible items in other games, saying that. So much of this game felt like time fill that didn’t really advance the story. It’s also full of unnecessary new characters with improbable Squeenix hair, like Roche the super-annoying motorcycle SOLDIER (below), or Leslie, Don Corneo’s doorman who somehow merits his own backstory and side quest. (Though in fairness, every FFVII sequel has added superfluous characters, with Crisis Core possibly being the worst offender.) But it just felt really drawn-out and bloated for a game of this generation. If this game had been as compact and tightly-written as the other games I typically play, it probably only would have taken me 15 hours to beat instead of 50. (I don’t actually know how many hours I spent on it the first time through, as I didn’t check the play clock before restarting on Hard difficulty. I do know it took me over 110 hours total to complete the game on both modes, though much of the second run was spent dying repeatedly on a handful of nasty fights. Hard mode removes items and MP replenishment, and if you run out of MP at any point during a chapter, you’re going to die. A lot.)

The pacing. Related to the above... the Midgar portion of the original game was just the setup for a larger story. It wasn’t meant to have its own complete dramatic arc so much as to introduce you to the world and the major players. Consequently, there are some really odd beats in this story, as well as a total lack of urgency in your mission. There are no natural places to slot in the side quests and minigames, so they’re shoehorned awkwardly between plot sequences. “Quick, our friend is in mortal peril and needs our help!” "Okay, cool, we’ll go rescue her after we spend ten hours running around town doing random errands for townspeople and playing games with the local kids.” Uh... what?

The graphics just aren’t as good as they should be. While the character models are gorgeous, there are a lot of low-res background textures and weird polygons that don’t quite match up with other components. Most egregious are the Shinra logos, which frequently get close-ups as part of the fixed camera work and, frankly, look like lossy JPEGs. (See image below, screencapped from a PS4 Pro. Those jagged edges on the logo are present throughout the entire game.) There are weird clipping errors and artifacted images and reflective surfaces that don’t reflect, making the game look more like something from the PS3 era than a 4K late-gen PS4 game. (And it’s not that we don’t have the technology: Uncharted 4 was released back in 2016, and the rendering of its vast world was twice as pretty. Devil May Cry 5, released in early 2019, has far more realistic textures and object interaction. Granted, those are different types of games with fewer NPCs to render, but I feel like there’s no excuse for a game this big to look this mediocre.)

The HUD could be better. The lower-corners concept is okay, though it took me a while to train my eyes to travel between both sides of the screen and track the fight action. But for a long time, I didn’t even notice the commands in the upper left corner of the screen, and after playing through the game twice I still have no idea what they say because I couldn’t focus on the tiny text long enough to read them while trying not to die in combat. (I just looked it up; apparently they’re combat control shortcuts? Huh, that would have been useful to know.) It wasn’t until my second time through that I realized there even WERE separate controls on screen during the motorcycle minigames; I had resorted to panicked button mashing to figure it out the first time through because there was no tutorial (you’re just dropped into the action) and, having ignored the small text for the previous hundred combats, I had no reason to look for on-screen instructions there. Not that it would have helped, since on many backgrounds the text in the upper left is really difficult to read (see below). It’s worth noting that I have better than 20/20 vision and played this game on a large TV screen and still had trouble reading some things; on a smaller TV, or for someone with less acute vision (like my sister, who is blind in one eye), I think even the basic menu controls would be difficult to see. While you can resize the font for subtitles, my cursory glance through the menu did not uncover an option to increase the size of the HUD.

Inter-fight menu mechanics. Specifically, the inability to save (or save loadout settings) between fights in a multi-part sequence. There are several back-to-back fights in which it is necessary to switch characters or change gear between bosses. The game treats them as one continuous fight, though it does allows you to access the equipment menu by holding square during key cutscenes. Which is good, if you only have one of a particular materia or accessory that you need to switch between characters, and in most cases when you die the game lets you restart just before your current fight instead of restarting the whole sequence -- also good, since some multi-stage bosses can easily take 20-30 minutes to beat, and if several of those are strung together in sequence, you’re in for a long play session to get past them. But since it’s treated as one fight, you can’t save between bosses (more than once, I had to leave my PS4 running in Rest Mode overnight and just hoped we didn’t have a power glitch), and if you happen to get killed and need to restart the fight, your loadouts reset. Which means if you’re, say, fighting the end boss on Hard difficulty and get killed in the first two minutes -- which happened to me a lot -- by the time you restart the fight, sit through the unskippable cutscene, access the menu and rearrange all the materia and accessories you need, you’re spending five or six minutes gearing up for two minutes of play, and then doing that over and over again every time you die. It gets really old.

The English dub script. *deep breath* Okay, look, I know I can be a bit elitist about translations, but I really do not like the English adaptation of this game. It makes Cloud come across as less socially-awkward and far more of a deliberate jerk, Aerith is mouthy and even swears (which is not accurate to her original character), and it downplays some of the symbolism that’s more obvious in the Japanese script. One quick example: When Aerith gives Cloud a flower, she says (in Japanese), “In the language of flowers, this means ‘reunion.’” It’s subbed/dubbed in English, “Lovers used to give these when they were reunited.” That’s a subtle difference, but since the concept of “reunion” is a freakin’ huge part of the FFVII plot, and since Sephiroth was on screen literally seconds before that line is delivered, my brain automatically went, “OMG REUNION!!!” while I’m guessing people listening in English only picked up on the romantic subtext. It’s a pretty minor thing, and of course translation is always a complex balancing act between literal meaning and local market understanding, but the English version just seemed to me to have a different vibe overall. (Unfortunately, the English subtitles are the same as the dub, so unless you can understand the Japanese audio you’re kind of stuck with that dialogue.)

[WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT]

- …And my #1 complaint about Final Fantasy VII: REMAKE is…

…it’s not actually a remake.

Sure, the game starts out the same way and covers a lot of the same events, but fundamentally, it’s a sequel, not a retelling. It’s evident from Cloud’s future-oriented visions throughout the game that something else is going on, and the ending MAKES NO SENSE if you don’t already know the story. Heck, even the rest of the game doesn’t really make sense if you don’t know the story -- Sephiroth’s presence is never explained; Zack isn’t even introduced, just shows up randomly at the end; Cloud’s flashbacks of Tifa and her dead father in Nibelheim are left as a complete mystery (and since she evidently remembers the burning of her town, judging by her dialogue outside Aerith’s house, why doesn’t she even react when Sephiroth shows up?).

The core elements of the plot – the Feelers (Whispers) preserving a specific fate; the three entities from the future (whose weapon types just happen to correspond to certain named characters) defending their timeline; the return of post-Advent Children Sephiroth (the only time we’ve seen him in human form with one black wing), who has inhabited the Lifestream since his death and promised that he would never truly disappear, who in the end appeals to Cloud directly for an alliance rather than attempting to control him, because he knows now that Cloud is strong enough to defy the Reunion instinct; the change in the outcome of story events in which Biggs (and, unconfirmed as to which timeline he’s actually in, but quite possibly Zack) now survives his intended death -- all point toward Sephiroth trying to manipulate destiny into an alternate outcome in which he is victorious, and using this naive version of Cloud to facilitate it. That means this game is taking place in an alternate or splinter universe, created at some point after the events of the original Final Fantasy VII, and possibly even after the events of Advent Children.

All of that is fine from an overall continuing-story perspective – it opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, like the fact that Aerith might survive now that Cloud has seen prescient flashes of her death (among other events), and there are opportunities for more story twists and changes from what players might expect. But touting this as a remake of the original game has the potential to confuse players who are new to the franchise. FFVII was groundbreaking back in 1997, and it defined JRPGs for an entire generation of Western gamers. But that was more than two decades ago, and a lot of current gamers weren’t even born then, so while they’ve probably heard of the classic game, they aren’t necessarily steeped in its lore. FFVII:R relies heavily on prior knowledge of the series to carry its twist ending, so it largely fails as a standalone game.

Also, speaking as a longtime fan of the franchise… I honestly found the ending rather lackluster. It was a twist, of sorts, but not the sort of shocking, mind-bending revelation that made the first game so iconic. Granted, it’s hard to follow an act like revealing that your protagonist’s entire identity is a lie, not to mention killing off one of your main characters a third of the way into the story! But when the surprise ending is just, Surprise! We’re going to change things up a bit this time around so you aren’t entirely sure what’s coming! Also, here’s a gratuitous Sephiroth fight because everyone expects that, even though it doesn’t serve the main story at all nor resolve any conflicts previously established within this game! it smacks of Different for the sake of Being Different, not for the sake of a really amazing storyline they’re hiding up their sleeve. It’s a bit of a let-down, and I find that I... just... don’t really care that much. Which, for someone who’s been a fan of the series for nearly a quarter of a century, means there’s a Big Freaking Problem somewhere. If you’re not keeping the attention of your die-hard fans, how do you hope to build a fanbase of players new to the franchise?

Given the pacing and story issues inherent in this game, I’m not convinced that the following game(s) in the franchise are going to be structured any better. Considering the amount of pure side-quest padding they did in Midgar, I have no idea how they’ll maintain that same tone on something the scale of the World Map portion of the original game, unless they just completely eliminate things like Fort Condor and the submarine and the spaceship side quests. I have a feeling the Gold Saucer is going to be reduced to a Jessie flashback, a Chocobo race (probably to win a key item), and a battle arena run like the coliseum in Wall Market in this game. If they include all the story elements and side characters from the original, this series is going to be a dozen games long.

Still, on the whole this game was enjoyable, and I’m glad I played it. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but they haven’t completely killed off my interest, so I’ll probably continue with the series whenever the next game comes out. Though I’m not really sure if the higher-priced edition I pre-ordered was worth the extra money, so I may wait and see how the next game is shaping up before deciding which version to get...

But if they don’t give me a really pretty (playable) Vincent Valentine in the next installment, I may riot. I do have priorities.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii: remake #ff7:r #final fantasy 7: remake #ff7 remake #video games #long post #review

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Listed: Lou Turner

Lou Turner (aka Lauren Turner) grew up in Texas, playing music in school and at church. She remembers hearing her mother harmonizing along with everything—from commercials, to songs on the radio, to religious hymns. Her listening quickly expanded in high school and college from singer-songwriters like Dylan and Van Zandt to folk and jazz traditions from around the world . Her latest album, Songs for John Venn, puts an unconventional twist on the folk songwriter art. “Turner…is hard to box in, one minute direct and plain spoken and countrified, the next urbane and entangled in arch word play. She takes none of it overseriously, however. There’s a breezy lilt and devil may care insouciance in these tracks,” says Jennifer Kelly in her review for Dusted.

I tried to make this list within the confines of things that had a hand in inspiration or thinking behind my recent album “Songs for John Venn,” but I ended up including a couple that I’ve found especially pertinent to my quarantined existence and thought someone else might, too.

Dory Previn – “Listen”

youtube

I first came across this poem while reading one of Dory’s autobiographies. It floored me, then, but this video made me cry the first time I watched it. Dory’s songs and writing are so radically vulnerable yet playful—she’s got absolute gumption and guts. I love the spirit of her work and am really thankful she let us in on everything going on inside of her beautiful, curly head. See also: “Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister?”

Captain Beefheart – “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains”

youtube

I have an eternal itch for a marimba embedded in an unlikely sonic landscape. This song will scratch every nuance of that itch while tucking it into a tight, pining love song with maybe one of his best lyrics, to boot. Such a poignant, piercing longing embodied in that yowl.

Pauline Oliveros – “Ear Piece”

https://activities-index.github.io/1971/11/01/EarPiece.html

I’ve been spending time with my copy of Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice by Oliveros since the pandemic began and has provided so much time to listen. “Ear Piece” is this series of questions that are almost smart-ass in their repetition and yet I’m always surprised at where I end up when I sit with them. I’ve started using them as a prompt for poetry.

Annie Dillard – “Living Like Weasels”

https://public.wsu.edu/~hughesc/dillard_weasel.htm

My friend Hilary introduced me to this stunning essay and I’ve since read through a collection (“The Abundance”). All of her work has this urgency to it—it’s pragmatic, but also poetic, speaking to a deeper, innate nature we share with animals. This essay was subliminally responsible for my song “But the Bees,” or at least shares a perspective with it. It’s examining weasels for how they do what weasels do, without analyzing, and how we might live in such a way. I would love to go to Annie Dillard’s church with her sometime.

The Raincoats – “Dance of Hopping Mad”

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I have few words to express how much I love this song! I saw The Raincoats in London for their 40th anniversary of The Raincoats last year for my birthday, and interviewed them afterward via email. Onstage and off, they are comfortable with themselves and one another in a very palpable way. This song embodies that kind of openness—experimental and passionate without being self-serious. Oh, and there’s a vibraphone on here which connects to that marimba itch I mentioned before.

Michael Hurley – “Letter in Neon”

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During quarantine, my bandmates in Styrofoam Winos and I have been sending one another Michael Hurley covers and overdubbing on one another’s tracks. I think we’re looking at a double album of Hurley covers here pretty soon, hah! I can’t think of any songs better than his for a together-apart kind of community—someone who’s undeniably individual and also wildly open and collaborative. This song was one I hadn’t heard until a couple weeks ago—the lyrics are absolutely magical and about feeling connected through time and space. It’s got a bit of a Crazy Horse vibe, too, which is really wonderful.

High Risk – “The Common Woman”

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My friend Chris kindly gave me this 7 inch for my radio show and I immediately went and bought the LP. High Risk was a group of women in California in the 70’s who played with a fierce freedom, featuring Cyndy Mason Fitzpatrick on tenor and flute. This track is astounding—centered around Judy Grahn’s sprawling poem, “The Common Woman.” Improvising on a theme around a spoken poem is such a specific and spiritual task that I really respect and wanted to include on my record—this song was a big inspiration for how I approached that.

Tropicália documentary film

youtube

That trip to London last year where I saw The Raincoats also included a trip to the Tate Modern where my partner and I saw “Tropicália” by Hélio Oiticica (an exhibition that originally opened in Rio de Janeiro in 1967). That was my introduction to Tropicalia as a broader movement--apparently Veloso liked Oiticica’s artwork so much that he titled his song that, and the rest followed. This film came out in 2012, but we watched it for the first time last week (and already want to re-watch). There’s some incredible footage in the film as well as a series of interviews that provide context for this movement that I’d loved the music of but not spent much time digging into the history of. The final sequence of Veloso playing solo knocks me out!

Bob Dylan – “Precious Angel”

Stream on Spotify

This song is foundational to me in a way I’m not sure how to talk about. I grew up in a devoted religious home and Dylan’s evangelical albums speak to me in a unique way because of that. This song has a lot of intense, damning biblical imagery and language (some of which borders on comical) and yet the refrain is so hopeful: “Shine your light / Shine your light on me / You know I just can’t make it by myself / I’m a little too blind to see”—It’s that classic moment of reaching the end of yourself and reaching toward—in this case, maybe God, and maybe this “precious angel” character who might be a lover. I love that the wires are all crossed in this song. I have the 7 inch and play it at 33rpm so that it lasts even longer and his voice thunders out an even deeper shade of desire.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland – “Song From Beads”

youtube

I didn’t mean to make this a list about how great of a trip I had last year to London, but I saw this magical musician perform during that trip, too! He’s making beautiful music now (don’t miss his ecstatic live show) but nothing recorded hits me as hard as this 1969 self-titled album. “Song From Beads” has the most ideal swirl of free-and-loose playing within a tight confine of a well-crafted song. His lyrics are consistently spiritual without being cloying and the guitar playing on this song blows me away. Honored to leave whoever is reading on this note!

#dusted magazine #listed #lou turner #dory previn #captain beefheart #pauline oliveros #annie dillard #the raincoats #michael hurley #high risk #tropicalia #bob dylan #beverly glenn-copeland

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manygalaxiesinone · 5 years

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Disgaea Characters in a nutshell:

Laharl: “I’m the first, so I’m considered to be the best by default!”

Etna: “I threaten to kill everyone, even the person I promised to help look after.”

Flonne: “I’m so sweet and innocent, even Etna refuses to kill me.”

Sicily: “Ever since the anime, everyone wanted Laharl to have a little sister so...here I am.”

Gordon: “I’m Americanized Captain Falcon!”

Jennifer: “There’s much less hentai about me right now than I expected.”

Thursday: “I AM EXTREMELY HILARIOUS AND YOU WILL QUOTE EVERYTHING I SAY!!!”

Kurtis: “I’m the one prinny everyone actually WANTS to have in their party.”

Barbara: “I’m so submissive I scare people.”

Xenolith: “I have a sister complex. That’s it.”

Krichevskoy: “I’m this series’s version of Sparda from Devil May Cry.”

Gwendolyn: “I only had enough screen time to make you cry.”

Lamington: “You have to do A LOT to make actually yell.”

Vulcanus: “I’m the first true villain of the series, but I’m not the final boss in the main story.”

Carter: “I’m just using my daughter so I can do whatever I want.”

Laharl-chan: “I was doing the “Bowsette” thing before it was cool. And I’m technically canon.”

Adell: “I’m basically Goku if he cared more about his family than training.”

Rozalin: “I’m secretly very lonely.”

Tink: “I will be your cowardly French side-kick for the evening.”

Taro: “I’m a bull demon so where does my milk come from?”

Hanako: “I’m basically that girl in anime that might love her oni-chan a bit too much.”

Demon Lord Hanako: “How come I’m not in more games?”

Mom: “Surprisingly I’m everyone’s favorite MILF in this series.”

Dad: “I’m afraid of getting slapped one day because of my pimple.”

Yukimaru: “I swore loyalty to Adell, but I don’t appear in more games for some reason.”

Fubuki: “I’m basically Bi-han from Mortal Kombat if he wasn’t evil.”

Axel: “I’m the definition of comic relief in the series, which might be why I’m in more games than most others.”

Director: “Why aren’t I around more?! I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on Axel!”

Evil Ranger Pink: “I may or may not want Axel’s “D”, so I became his sidekick!”

Actress: “I secretly wish I was Evil Ranger Pink.”

Main Hero B: “So am I a boy or...?”

Fake Zenon: “I’m basically this series’s version of Shao Kahn.”

Shura: “I’m Darth Vader except I died with my wife.”

Selion: “I don’t make you cry as much as Gwendolyn, but I do enough.”

Real Zenon: “I’m the most misunderstood character in this series.”

Mao: “I’m Sheldon Cooper if he was an evil mad scientist!”

Raspberyl: “I do so much volunteer work, it’s illegal.”

Asuka: “I’m literally a graceful woman dedicated to the person who saved my life.”

Kyoko: “I’m surprised no one caught on that I’m voiced by Kari from Digimon.”

Almaz: “I’m Majic from Orphen, only with swords instead of spells.”

Sapphire: “I secretly want a three way with Almaz and Raspberyl.”

Mr. Champloo: “I’m the closest thing to Gordon Ramsey that you’re going to get in this series.”

Master Bigstar: “Maybe I’m gay, or maybe stereotypes are foolish.”

Salvatore: “I’m so dominant I adore people.”

Rutile: “I’m even more pure than Flonne.”

Stella: “I’m the one bitch girl at school everyone hates except for that innocent friend I manipulated and soon became actual friends with.”

Mao’s Dad: “I am not Tyrant Baal!”

Aurum: “I literally lived long enough to see myself become the villain.”

Valvatorez: “I’m this series’s version of Alucard from Castlevania...kind of...maybe.”

Fenrich: “I’m the only serious character in this franchise. That’s the joke.”

Artina: “I’M NOT A MAN!!!”

Dr. Kazamatsuri: “My daughter’s dead!”

Fuka: “No I’m not!”

Desco: “I’m like Hanako toward Fuka.”

Emizel: “I’m basically Ken Amada from Persona 3. So much so that I even have his voice.”

Death King Hugo: “I’m not the villain.”

Nemo: “I’m literally a nobody from Kingdom Hearts!”

Nagi: “My family’s dead! War is bad!”

Killia: “I’m Cloud Strife if he kept his character development.”

Seraphina: “I want Killia’s “D” so bad, but I’ll never say it flat out.”

Red Magnus: “Brawn over brains!”

Christo: “Brains over brawn!”

Usalia: “Admit it. You want to cuddle me, don’t you?”

Zeroken: “You’re too slow!”

Majorita: “I’ve followed Void Dark’s orders to have a demon utopia...even to the point of destroying Toto Bunny...which is a demon utopia...oops.”

Goldion: “I’m basically what Shura should have been like in Disgaea 2.”

Leizerota: “I’ll be your Aerith for this evening.”

Void: “If you think Xenolith’s sister complex is bad, wait ‘til you see me.”

Pleinair: “...Hi.” *cue crowd cheering*

#disgaea #disgaea 2 #disgaea 3 #disgaea 4 #disgaea 5

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vergilsangel · 5 years

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The Heart of the Statue

A/N: So this is actually based on a dream I had about an Alternate Universe Vergil. I’m going to only make it a one-shot because I suck at making a series. I changed the look of the statue from my dream. In my dream it was more of a totem. I hope you all like it!

Rating: Teen and Up Warnings: Some mentions of blood

Tagging: @sakkajagga @catsorfries @final-fantasy-xv-nut @drusoona @blindedstarlight @minteyeddemon

If you wish to be tagged just send me an ask with your username or send me an IM! ^.^

Requests are open! If you want a head canon for FFXV or Devil May Cry (not the reboot) send me an ask!!

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Eons ago, a great and terrible demon ravaged village after village. He slaughtered countless people and his name sent terror through the hearts of any that heard it. Many tried to stand up against the demon, but they all perished in the face of his great power. Finally, a mage of great power sealed the demon within a stone statue. Word spread of this mage’s heroic deed spread through the land and the people rejoiced as they relished in their newfound peace.

As time passed, the demon’s statue was forgotten to time. His name and vicious deeds faded as those who lost family and friends to his blade passed away. No one dared speak of him out of fear he would break free and return. The area around the statue became a forest. Nature tried hard to reclaim the statue into the Earth, but the mage’s spell on it prevented anything from breaking it. Three thousand years passed and the only ones who came across the statue were animals and insects.

At least, until you stumbled upon it by accident. You had been a part of a scavenger hunt, but somehow had lost the path. You weren’t even sure where in the forest you were. When you found the statue, you thought it was part of the hunt. But as you approached it, the many vines wrapping around it told a different story.

The statue was tall and you could easily hide behind it if you wished to. It had a square base and on top was a serpent. Its jaws open as though it were striking prey. As you studied it, you felt as though the statue was watching you.

“This has to be someone’s idea of a joke. What the hell would a statue be doing all the way in the middle of nowhere?” You muttered to yourself. Trying to find some sort of plaque or description carved into the monument, you circled it. As you brushed off moss and dirt, you noticed that the statue felt warm.

“That’s so weird.” You muttered, reaching the front of it again.

“A human?” Came a disembodied voice. You froze, trying to figure out where the voice had come from. Slowly, you looked around, trying to see if someone had followed you.

“Nero? Is that you? If you’re trying to freak me out, I swear I will kick your ass.” You asked, turning your back to the statue. Nero was the one who had arranged the scavenger hunt and was also the biggest ass you knew.

“Who are you, human? What are you doing here? How did you find this place?” Came the voice once more. It was with a terrible realization that the voice was coming from the statue. You turned to look at it. Were you going insane? Statues couldn’t talk!

“Nero?” You asked, wanting the ruse to be over with, but you knew deep in your gut that this wasn’t Nero’s work.

“My name is Vergil. Not Nero. I will ask again, what are you doing here and how did you find this place?” The voice asked. You had to be dreaming. Statues didn’t talk unless there was some sort of sound system wired into it. When you had circled it, you didn’t see any wires or anything indicating a sound system. If this was a prank, it was a very good one.

“I got lost during a scavenger hunt. I just happened to find this place. How are you talking inside a statue?” You asked. Your mind ran through several possibilities, all of them were more outrageous than the last. Several you dismissed with simple logic, the rest were anything to do with magic. But magic wasn’t real. It only existed in fairy tales.

“I was imprisoned many years ago by a mage. Tell me, what is the year?” Vergil answered. Okay, this HAD to be a prank. So, you decided to play along. Maybe you could beat Nero at his own game.

“It’s 2019. So tell me, Vergil, how did you get locked away in a statue? You said a mage did it? Why did they do it?” You asked. If he could ask several questions at once, so could you. Vergil was quiet for several moments making you wonder if the game was over with already. You even began looking around for Nero or someone, but then Vergil spoke again.

“Yes, a mage imprisoned me. I was dangerous to humans so I was imprisoned in this statue. I’ve been alone here for over 3,000 years.” Vergil answered. His answer made your heart ache for him. If he was real, he had been alone with no one to talk to.

“Did you get lonely?” You asked before you could stop yourself.

“I wasn’t lonely when I was killing your kind, I am not lonely now.” Came his cold reply.

“Fine then. I’ll just leave you in peace.” You turned to leave. After five paces, Vergil spoke again.

“Wait.” At his request, you turned to look at the statue again.

“What?”

“Tell me about the world. What is it like now?” He asked. You knew this was a ploy to make you stay and you realized he truly was lonely. Deciding to indulge him, you went back and sat down. You told him about technology and everything the world had to offer now. He asked about magic, but you told him it didn’t exist. The two of you talked for what felt like hours.

Finally, you knew you were losing daylight and if you couldn’t find your way in the daytime, it would be impossible during the night. You said goodbye to Vergil with a promise to return if you found your way. Turning around, you walked back the way you came. It didn’t take you long to find the path again. As soon as you did, you dug out your pocketknife and carved a heart into the bark of a tree. That way you could easily find Vergil once again.

You continued to see him over the course of the next two weeks. Going out and spending time with him then returning home when it started to get dark out. As much as you tried to deny it, you were falling in love with him. And if this did turn out to be some elaborate prank by Nero, you weren’t sure you would recover from it.

One snowy day, you were heading out to see him. You were about to turn down the path, when someone grabbed you from behind. Instantly, your adrenaline kicked in and you began fighting your captor. Your foot managed to kick his knee and he dropped you. As you scrambled to get away, your hands and feet slipped on the wet snow. A glint caught your eye and the next second pain burned its way from your side as the snow slowly began turning red. You kicked behind you, connecting with your attacker’s face. It was the moment you needed and you took it. Dashing through the trees towards the statue.

In your frenzied state, you weren’t sure what Vergil could do to protect you, but your instincts drove you on towards him. Your left hand covered your right side, feeling warm blood trickle between your fingers from the cut.

“I’M GONNA GET YOU!!” Your attacker shouted from behind you. Finally, the statue was within sight.

“Vergil!” You cried.

“(Y/N)? What’s going on?”

“WHERE ARE YOU?! I’M GONNA GUT YOU LIKE A FISH!!!” Your attacker shouted as you reached the statue. Vergil, for the first time in his life, felt fear. He knew he was going to watch you die and there would be nothing he could do to stop it. You were feeling tired and dizzy from blood loss. Gently, your bloodied hand touched the statue as you used it to support yourself. Your attacker smirked as he saw you, his knife gripped tightly in your hand.

“Nowhere to run to now.” He growled. You collapsed against the statue, shaking with fear, too weak to escape. Just as he raised the knife, there was a blue light from the statue and the next moment, your attacker was lying dead in the snow as a blue demon stood before you. His tail resting gently in the snow and his wings folding. The demon turned to you and you saw two horns on his head with flames coming out of them as well as a row of sharp teeth. His eyes, chest, and arms glowed blue with power. Then, the form scattered away like petals in the wind and a man in a blue trench coat stood there, carrying a samurai sword. He had white hair and silver eyes.

Before you could say anything to him, you lost consciousness. When you awoke, you were in a warm bed and could hear a fire crackling from nearby. Slowly, you opened your eyes and saw an unfamiliar ceiling. You tried to sit up, but pain shot up from your side, making you let out a soft cry and rest back on the pillows.

“You’re awake? Don’t try to move just yet, your wound hasn’t had time to close.” Came a familiar voice. You turned your head and saw the white-haired man from before.

“Vergil?” You asked and he nodded.

“This is my human form. The demon you saw, that is my real form. You freed me.” Vergil explained and your eyes widened.

“So…you really were inside the statue.” You breathed and Vergil nodded again.

“I was. You didn’t believe it?”

“Do you blame me? I’ve never seen magic in my life that wasn’t just sleight of hand.” You answered. Vergil chuckled and shut his book. Wait. That wasn’t his book, that was yours!

“You went through my things?” You asked and Vergil sighed.

“I wanted to find an address for you, but couldn’t find one. I found the book instead. You have been asleep for two days.” Vergil explained. It made you feel a little better, but you still felt weird about him going through your things. Both of you fell silent for a time before you spoke again.

“Where are we?”

“A cabin in the mountains. It used to be mine when I was free. I put a spell on it so it would last forever, apparently despite my imprisonment, the spell did not wear off.” You nodded and it brought up another question. One you were hesitant to ask.

“Why did you rescue me? You told me that you used to hate humans. What changed your mind?” Vergil’s fingers gently traced the title of the book, his silver eyes glazed over in thought.

“For 3,000 years I was alone. For a time, that didn’t bother me. I preferred the solitude. But I began missing things. The feel of wind on my face. The warmth of the sun. Most of all, I missed any form of contact. It never dawned on me when I was free what would happen if I killed all the humans. There would be no one left to talk to except myself. I only realized that loneliness while I was imprisoned. Then you came and saved me from that loneliness. And you are the reason I’m free again.” Vergil explained. He set the book on the floor beside him, uncrossed his legs, and sat forward, gently taking your hand in his own.

“You gave me a reason to live a better life. I promise you, I will not hurt anymore humans unless they try to harm you, but let me stay at your side. Let me learn from you and…and let me love you.” Vergil finished and your eyes widened. He loved you? Had you heard him right? Before he said another word, you sat up and kissed him, ignoring the pain from your side. His lips were soft and warm, even as he returned the kiss and stroked your cheek gently.

“Will you let me love you in return?” You asked and Vergil nodded, kissing you tenderly once again. After you both broke the kiss, you lay back on the couch, squeezing his hand, breathing through the pain.

“So, that is a ‘yes’?” Vergil asked and you nodded. He took your hand between both of his own and they glowed blue.

“So it is promised between myself and you.” Vergil said as the light faded. Around your wrist was now a light blue tattoo in the shape of his tail.

“What does this mean?” You asked and looked up at him.

“It means that I am bound to you and you to me. If I break my promise, I will die.”

“And what happens if I break my promise?” Vergil studied the new tattoo on your wrist, his fingers gently tracing over the mark.

“The bond will be broken and I will be free to do as I wish. I will not ever harm you. Even if you break your promise, I will never harm you.” Vergil looked up into your eyes and you knew he was sincere. He wanted to change and you wanted to help him in any way you could. You squeezed his hand and smiled, silently letting him know that you were happy he was there. As you thought about it, another question came to mind.

“How was I able to free you?”

“I was just as surprised as you. When the mage put me in that statue, he told me only he or anyone of his bloodline could free me. Apparently you are his descendant.” Vergil answered and your eyes widened.

“Shut up.” You replied in shock making Vergil chuckle. Seeing his smile warmed your heart. You had heard him laugh when the two of you talked, but seeing how his eyes sparkled with joy filled you with more joy than you could ever dream of.

“So, I’m the descendant of a powerful mage? Does that mean I can do magic?” You asked.

“Possibly. I know of some I could teach you, but first you must heal.” Vergil gently kissed your forehead.

“Get some rest. The sooner you recover, the sooner I can teach you magic.” He promised. After a few days, you healed and you took Vergil to your home. It took some doing, but Vergil was true to his word.

And you were true to yours.

#Vergil #vergil x reader #dmc vergil #vergil x oc #vergil fanfiction #devil may cry #devil may cry fanfiction #devil may cry au #Vergil is a blueberry

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coolgreatwebsite · 4 years

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Cool Games I Finished In 2019 (In No Real Order)

We’re here. The end of the decade. 2019 was a weird, turbulent year for me. Despite my cross-country move already being a year behind me somehow, nothing’s really settled yet. Living situation is still weird, still separated from most of my belongings, I left my full-time QA job for a contractor position at a mobile game advertising company that may or may not convert into a full-time position... everything about what’s going on with me still just feels like I’m completely winging it, and while that’s not a position I’m really comfortable being in for such an extended amount of time, everything seems to be working out okay enough despite it. All this is probably why I spent most of my time playing the shit out of a handful of games rather than playing a bunch of different games this year! Needed some sort of stability. Also when I did manage to pull myself away from the timesink games and play something else, a lot of them ranged from “okay” to “real bad”. But I still managed to play just enough stuff that I liked to where I can put out yet another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2019.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC, 2005)

I haven’t bothered to do two thirds of the story quests yet and have barely touched any Episode 4 content so this game technically doesn’t count for this list, but if I left it off I would be neglecting to mention an extremely large portion of my video game playing time this year. I fell back into PSO preeeettty hard this year after the surprise announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 finally coming to the US. Guess what: game still rules. It feels stiff to play and it’s obviously far less expansive than it seemed back in 2000, but the core of Phantasy Star Online is still as fun as it ever was and the aesthetics are still entirely my shit. I love everything about the way this game looks and sounds, I love stumbling on a weird new weapon, I love participating in the custom seasonal events the server I’m on runs, and I love how oddly relaxing the experience of playing this game and taking it all in is. I will probably continue to play Phantasy Star Online into 2020. I will probably still dip back into it after PSO2 US servers finally launch. If I know you and you want to join my Discord server for PSO get at me. PSO forever.

Cookie’s Bustle (PC, 1999)

You ever play a game that just speaks to you? Even through a language barrier? A game so incredibly out there and bizarre in the exact way you love that you can’t help but adore it despite barely understanding it? Holy moly did I ever find that game. I learned about Cookie’s Bustle through a news story last year about some rare games leaking from a Japanese collector’s stash. Didn’t manage to get it to run back then, but my off and on attempts to get it working finally paid off in March of this year and I’m so glad I kept trying. I knew nothing of this game other than it had a weird name and was about a bear doing sports, and it turned out to be a fully voice-acted and mostly unsubtitled adventure game starring Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who sees herself as a teddy bear and has traveled to Bombo World, an island nation once visited by aliens and currently in the middle of a civil war, to participate in the Bombo Sports Tournament. Dead level, I probably shouldn’t have been able to genuinely love Cookie’s Bustle as much as I did. The only context I had for what was happening and what I was supposed to do was provided by a 20-year-old Google translated walkthrough with broken images, the game’s slightly higher than usual reliance on English loan words, and 30-ish years of video games and anime allowing me to halfway pick up on a handful of Japanese words. However, Cookie’s Bustle is dripping with an undeniable and off-beat charm that genuinely transcends language. Even if you can’t understand the words and specifics, you can understand the basic plot, characterizations, and emotions they’re going for. Cookie’s Bustle manages to both be completely off-the-wall bizarre and feel totally genuine and heartfelt at the same time, a balance very few games manage to successfully hit but many of my favorites do. One could say that’s why it seems to have resonated with a decent amount of other people this year, too. Games rarely make me feel sad that they’re over. but when they do that’s how I know they’re one of the good ones. Seriously, go look up a longplay or stream of Cookie’s Bustle if you (understandably) don’t want to go through the hassle of setting it up and figuring out how to play it, it’s impossible not to love.

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4, 2019)

Here’s something crazy to think about: Devil May Cry 4 came out 11 years ago. Aside from being a potent reminder that time is moving too fast and we’re all going to die soon, that means that there hasn’t been a DMC for over a decade. Devil May Cry 5 does not bare this fact even a little bit. Not only did they pick up right where they left off and manage to make another Devil May Cry game without missing a beat, they made arguably the best Devil May Cry game. I mean I still like the story and single-character focus of DMC3 the best, but DMC5 is the best playing game in the series without a doubt. Nero finally feels like he has a complete and complex toolset, Dante is the most mechanically dense and fun to play he’s ever been, and they even added a new guy that’s... neat to play as, until you start trying to S-rank the harder difficulties. Then he’s kind of annoying to play as. But it’s still cool that they tried something totally different and mostly got it to work! They also did something very stupid that I love and used this game as an excuse to make literally every single piece of Devil May Cry media canon. Like, characters exclusively from the anime and the books show up and act like they’re someone you already know and love? And they go out of their way to explain the most esoteric lore shit possible?? And despite it all they still intentionally give DMC2 as short a shrift as they can??? It’s so dumb, it rules. It’s just one of the many things about the game that show that even with so long of a gap between entries, no love for the series was lost by the people that make it. I don’t think the suits at Capcom expected this game to hit as hard as it did though, because despite there being clear areas where the game could be expanded on with DLC there still hasn’t been anything announced. I hope they’re maybe saving it for some sort of DMC3-esque special edition, or maybe just already working on DMC6, because even after getting all S-ranks I still wanted to play more. The game’s just that damn good.

Hypnospace Outlaw (PC, 2019)

I expected very little from Hypnospace Outlaw. I backed the game on Kickstarter solely because it looked cool and I thought a game about fake GeoCities was neat, and then I immediately forgot about it until it released. Admittedly my lack of expectations stemmed mostly from the fact that it’s kind of hard to set expectations for a game you never really thought too hard about, but even in the brief period of time where I considered it enough to give it money, I never expected it to be much more than a pretty-looking 101 Great GeoCities Jokez delivery vehicle. Boy was I wrong. I mean, it is incredibly good at that, but Hypnospace Outlaw is so much more than a funny period piece. The basic premise is that you’re in alternate universe 1999 and have just become a community moderator for an Internet service provider that allows people to connect to the Internet while they sleep. You’re tasked with browsing the game’s weird fake Internet and issuing demerits to users who violate the five basic Hypnospace rules, but it quickly evolves into something way bigger. Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength is its exceptional ability at weaving together subtle world building, small and engaging character arcs, esoteric microjokes, and a genuine sense of mystery and discovery into an incredibly cohesive and engaging package. It’s as much a game about the people that use and run its weird fake Internet as it is about that weird fake Internet itself. And a lot of the problems both face echo the problems we face with our real world Internet today. When I was mapping out writing this article like a month or two ago I was prepared to go on about how at its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is an incredibly poignant story about how uncaring tech corporations actively harm their users and always have, but then a couple of days ago I read Colin Spacetwinks’ game of the year list and his #1 entry put most everything I would have said about that topic down in a way more eloquent and well-written way than I ever could have. And then I remembered that Friend Of The Site Heidi Kemps covered some of the same angle but from the perspective of the early Internet in an article earlier this year, again way better than I could have. So I highly recommend you read those when you’re done here. What I wanna bring up instead is just how effortlessly surprising and interconnected a lot of stuff in Hypnospace feels, using a mildly spoiler-ish late game example. Two of the first “zones” you’re allowed to moderate when you start Hypnospace Outlaw are Teentopia and Goodtime Valley, which are essentially alternate universe Yahooligans and a little slice of Hypnospace just for Boomers respectively. On Teentopia you’ll see a bunch of kids that are wild for Squisherz, Hypnospace’s alternate universe version of Pokémon, and over in Goodtime Valley you’ll see (much like there was back in real world 1999) a few pages made by religious fundamentalists convinced that everything the kids like these days is the work of Satan. This of course includes Squisherz, and you can find a page by one organization full of crackpot conspiracy theories with flimsy evidence that TOTALLY DEFINITELY backs up their claim. Squisherz contains a wolf, which the Bible warns about many times! This giraffe monster CLEARLY has a pentagram in its design!! And the eye of this snake-like Squisherz is the eye of Horus, an Egyptian occult symbol and NEED I REMIND YOU that Lucifer took the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden!!! It is very clear what this page is goofing on and throughout the course of the game it doesn’t get updated at all, so it’s very easy to laugh at it and forget about it. Very late into the game, you get an optional sidequest. Adrian Merchant, one of the CEOs of Merchantsoft, the company that created Hypnospace, was found out to have logged traffic indicating he was a frequent visitor of a website called Children of HORUS, and a call is put out to investigate what that even is. You can easily find the website, but it asks you for a password if you click the Enter button. Adrian Merchant is consistently portrayed throughout the game as a complete idiot, and the solution to this puzzle has you capitalize on that. Another early game objective ended up with you finding a list of cracked passwords, and one of those passwords happens to be for the instant messenger account of Adrian Merchant. If you can remember that he was even in that text file from forever ago, and then put two and two together that of COURSE that dumbass would use the same password for everything, you just punch in his messenger password and you’re granted access to the Children of HORUS page. It turns out that HORUS is an acronym that stands for Hiding Occult References in Utmost Secrecy, and the page itself is a basic leaderboard with a list of names and two numbered columns reading “Hidden” and “Found”. In that list of names you’ll find A. Merchant, along with the names of various other CEOs and celebrities you might have read about elsewhere in Hypnospace. One of the other names on this list is F. Kazuma, the CEO of Monarch, creators of Squisherz. The funny conspiracy theory website from the beginning of the game that you most likely forgot about was, about this one specific thing, correct. There was an eye of Horus hidden on the snake from Squisherz. Not as any sort of Satanic plot, mind you, but only as part of some weird millionaire dickwaving contest. This dumb tiny revelation is not called out by the game at all and nothing comes of it, it’s just there for you to notice if you’ve been paying enough attention. Hypnospace Outlaw is LITTERED with stuff like this. Weird small interconnected things you wouldn’t expect to be interconnected. Little dumb things you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of payoff but somehow do. And it’s also just as chock full of big things. Having all the pieces fall into place at once to where I was able to access Hypnospace’s equivalent of the dark web was the best sequence in a game this year for me, even beating out the outlandish shit in DMC5. Getting and solving the final case was a rush. Hypnospace Outlaw is full of incredible moments big and small. It’s genuinely engaging and affecting, which is so much more than I was expecting from a game that was pitched to me as “Funny GeoCities Cop”. It almost has no right being so good. But it is. Hell, even the music rules! I didnt even get into that! I don't have enough time or space to get into that now! The music is so goddamn good! I know I started these lists because I had no interest in ranking games, but every year I sort of jokingly-but-not-jokingly say “haha this game sure would be my number one if I did that!” for at least one game. It’s time to fully lean into it. I don’t gotta rank ‘em all, but I can pick a favorite. Hypnospace Outlaw is my favorite game of 2019 with a goddamn bullet.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Etrian Odyssey (Nintendo DS, 2007): Man, this series just started out good, huh? I dabbled with the first two games in college when I got a DS flashcart but never really dug in until EO4, and the first game is enjoyable in just about every way the modern ones are. Definitely more barebones and punishing though. Kero Blaster (PlayStation 4, 2017): This is a game by the creator of Cave Story that does not aim to be Cave Story, and that’s fine! A fun little shooter in its own right, though I do think the shooting in Cave Story felt a little better than it does here. Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008): I played the shit out of this game in college thanks to that flashcart I mentioned before, but I never finished a playthrough in full until this year for some reason. Still way stylish and way fun! I need to get a copy of the second one... CROSSNIQ+ (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Incredibly chill puzzle game that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. Almost uncanny in how well it emulates the style of late PS1/Dreamcast games. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Mario Maker 2 is kind of weird for me. It’s a solid improvement in a lot of aspects, but a clear regression in a lot of others. Also the online multiplayer is the second least amount of fun I’ve had with a video game this year (Secret of Mana swooped in and stole the number one slot near the end). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I’ll probably end up going back to it eventually. Katamari Damacy Reroll (Nintendo Switch, 2018): The original Katamari Damacy is still every bit as fun and charming as it was upon its original release. This port is weirdly based on the Japanese version with the English text inserted, which means no English voice acting and Wanda Wanda only plays in the multiplayer mode. The Joycon sticks also aren’t the greatest for doing charge rolls. But none of these faults detract too much from the game. Bring on We Love Katamari Reroll! Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4, 2018): Sandlot somehow keeps finding ways to make each new EDF bigger and explodier, and EDF5 is the biggest and explodiest yet. I think the mission design in 4.1 was more solid overall, but 5 feels the best to play and has the most fun tools. Also the dialogue is the most absurd its ever been, and the final boss goes for it way harder than the series ever has. Pokémon Shield (Nintendo Switch, 2019): This game is honestly just okay, but leaving it off would again be neglecting a game I put a ton of time into this year. Pokémon Sword is fun in the way most Pokémon games usually are, and extremely half-baked in basically every other aspect. I’m still having a good time putting together teams and finding shinies and doing The Pokémon Thing regardless.

And that’s 2019 (and this decade) in the bag! I don’t know where anything’s going from here, but I’m going to ride it out as best as I can! I hope you do too! As always, thank you so much for getting to the bottom of all these words. I’m hoping to be in a more stable place mid-2020, and then I want to get back to all the things I haven’t had time to do. I want to get back to streaming, I want to write more dumb articles like The Best Babies, I want to do it all! I hope I will be able to do it all. Until then!

#article #year wrapup

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authenticaussie · 5 years

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What do you think the difference would be in a TMNT/OP fic with different collections of turtles?

oooooooo okay so I should be getting ready for class tomorrow but you have 100% captured me I’m so invested in this

mainly I know 2003, 2012, and Rise - well, at least, they’re my favourites and have the most distinct characterisation tbh bc they’re long-running series - SO I’ll do those guys :DD

THIS GOT LONG (because of course it did, I’ve never made a short post in my LIFE) SO FIRST:

the main difference in fic would be tone!!!!!!!! The turtles are all really affected by the shows they come from so there’d be big differences in how they react to the new situation. Combining OP and 2018, they’re both such loud and bright shows that writing them sad would be kinda….disatisfactory to a reader. 2012 is the one where you could get kinda dark, and go down the genetic experiment and “oh wow these kids need a therapist” and Luffy being >:T wtf why are your lives so Fucked Up route, and 2003 would be hilariously awkward because they’re technically all in the same age range but they act so different wheezes

Second!!! Fun character analysis and Shenanigans under the readmore.

2003

Probably the most responsible on this list, they’re like??? tbh, barely teenagers?? Or at the very least, 18 or 19, and they can be air-heads but 2003 goes feet-first into the whole plot and character and Everything Happens. I mean, literally in season one there’s this whole subplot about how you define monsters and genetic testing and Wild shit like that so they feel Way more adult than the Strawhats get at times. Even though One Piece covers some dark topics it….the characters - the strawhats, in particular, is what I mean - don’t feel like adults the same way the 2003 turtles do. 2003 also doesn’t feel as dark as 2012 gets sometimes, but I feel 2012 is also because they seem really young, and in 2003 at least they get to process their trauma. 2012…..kinda beats them up a lot akhsdg pft.

Sticking them with the Strawhats would be !! Honestly really funny? I feel Mikey would get along with them really well - in every iteration he’s very good at going with the flow, and hey, pirates? and they’re nice? and cool powers? - he’d have the time of his life. Donnie would try and figure out What Was Going On (as the resident “please fix this in case it’s dangerous” guy, that’s probably what his role would Often be) but I can see him being easily distracted by Franky and the whole devil fruits thing. GOD him and Franky is a thought and a half omfg. The level of tech in One Piece is so different when compared to the modern world, and it operates on rules but like, rules that are just ever so slightly different.

Raph would be in debt Immediately. Mainly bc Nami’s manipulative like that but also because he’s just………..Like That. He’d be rude and insulting and if the strawhats were helping them out he’d be the team’s voice of reason. Or, distrust, I suppose. The one who hangs back, who’s prickly, who’s the last to offer his trust because his family needs him to be uncompromised, just in case. I think he and Zoro would clash for a bit, not like, in words but just in gestures, until the crew + turtles had been through their adventures, and gotten to the end of Whatever fic was being written, and then they’d be friends. Not best buds but like, healthy respect for each other.

Leo……….absolutely does Not understand why Luffy is leader. It’s like making Mikey the boss; it doesn’t make sense to him, because Luffy is too trusting and he’s strong but strength doesn’t make a good leader, and in 2003 Leo’s kind of a pushover so he’d stay on the sidelines and watch with Raph. But, as everyone knows, Luffy’s magnetism is Pretty Hard To Deny, and the crew’s respect for him does a lot to show to Leo that he may be missing something but that he doesn’t have to understand.

2012

I always……..feel so bad for TMNT2012 //weeps They’re just kids and they get put through so much like wow I’m only at season two but from spoilers there’s like?? their dad keeps DYING and being bought back to life???/ THAT’S GOTTA FUCK YOU UP!!! Plus all of them have all these different insecurities and they’re kinda mean to each other (Raph….has only given a proper apology for being a dick once so far, and I’m like. mid-way through season two. I’m sorry if this makes me mikey kin @@zali but pLEASE I cannot stand this LET THEM BE NICE TO EACH OTHER ;A; Like they’re still obviously a family but gosh they’re– so prickly)

Honestly depending on how the Strawhats meet them, like holy shit :o they might be Enemies. In 2003 I feel like they’ve been through enough to try and de-escalate a situation first, but 2012 are so Paranoid that unless they had April with them they’d be like WELP this is another mind-control alternate dimension thing, time to ninja vanish. And sure, after they ended up on whatever quest they needed to go on, Luffy would be fascinated by them (2012 definitely pushes the limits of what you can Actually do, in terms of hiding and shit, but I think that makes it fun !!) but I feel the turtles would be pretty paranoid at first. Mikey & Donnie would be the first two to be dragged out of their shells (snickers) because Donnie would be super curious (and also…probably kinda aggravated and confused) about how the one piece world rules work, and Mikey because…friends!! They already have a reindeer mutant on the crew, they’re obviously cool with mutants :D

akhsdg okay I mention that 2003 would hang back and assess Luffy’s leadership still but like 2012 would be such a dick. He never seems to learn the lesson that people have different strengths and different ways of doing things >:T and watching Luffy lead would drive him crazy. I bet he’d try and make plans and be all structured and in control and Luffy would wreck things and/or the strawhats would be like “lol no lmao, you’re not the captain”. Even if he did have a good plan, like….the Strawhats rarely follow plans if Luffy says they’re doing something different snickers. I feel a major part of this could just a nice subplot line of Leo learning to Chill and also like………give the 2012 a fun adventure I’m begging you sobs. Do a Long Long Island filler arc or smth, where it’s dumb and silly and barely dangerous because they’re all competent af.

Also: Mikey constantly trying to find a devil fruit because “dudes, it’s probably not gonna apply when we go back home and think about how SICK superpowers would be!!!!!!!!”

He does not get one, to his disappointment.

2018

These guys are IDIOTS and would fit in with Luffy’s brand of chaos p e r f e c t l y

Okay so yeeeeah I’m probably biased because I think Rise may be my favourite (the family dynamics!! the character designs!! the animation!!! the stupid jokes!!! the sudden flashes of deeper plot!!!!!!!!) BUT. No-one can argue with me that Rise turtles are chaotic as fuck and they’d have the time of their LIVES with Luffy’s crew. Raph would fall in love with Chopper (Chopper would be terrified of him, continuing the terribly sad trend of Raph being Bad With Animals), Donnie would go wild glitter-eyed over the devil fruits and technology and immediately try and do a million mad scientist experiments (and look. SMILES are fucked up. But this boii would totally try and make one/figure out how they worked). He’s….a mad genius and maybe a little bit evil.

Leo would either drive Sanji crazy or be INSTANTLY adopted and taught how to be “cool”, but I can also see Sanji and Zoro lowkey fighting over him SNICKERS. Because Leo has a sword so he’s obviously Zoro’s, but he’s suave and likes fashion so he MUST be Sanji’s, and it’s not an argument persay, until Leo says he thinks both of them are cool and then it’s a battle to the death.

(The end of leo’s sentence was “not as cool as me tho ;P” only they didn’t notice that bit.)

April would absolutely fall in love with Robin. And also Nami?? But I feel mainly Robin like Oh Man Robin is so cool and both of them are hypercompetent??? April’s like teach me how to be a badass assassin and Robin smiles and laughs and absolutely does.

Mikey’s so loud that he almost terrifies Usopp, and terrifying Usopp is kinda a no-no in Luffy’s book, but he likes these guys and Mikey’s just excited to have an artist friend and so both of them bounce around the ship like ping pong balls.

There is………yeah. A lot of paint covering the Sunny after they’re through. I can’t decide if Franky would cry or laugh but I know one (1) single drop of paint got on Nami’s tangerines and she Banished them. Rise turtles probably have a really good time and the crew figures out they’re basically children really quick and make sure nothing bad happens to them. Leo promises to try and get better at portal-making so they can come visit New York sometime, and everyone is like “what the fuck is new york??” at the same time as Donnie says HEY WAIT, I THINK WE’RE ON AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION and they get teleported home :DD

THANKS FOR LETTING ME SPILL ALL MY TURTLE FEELINGS EVERYWHERE

#tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt 2003 #tmnt 2012 #one piece #missjenca #ask aussie #bip bop nari drops #wow I love combining my special interest s aljshdg //BLUSHES #so anyway HERE'S MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS OF POTENTIAL FIC THEMES lajkhsdf sweats pft #I'm..........so weak pft

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medea10 · 4 years

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My Review of 22/7

How did I get into this anime? Fuck it! I picked a random anime to watch for the winter line-up. Let’s hit it!

22/7 is an idol group for real in Japan with one hell of a fanbase. LET’S GIVE THEM THEIR OWN ANIME!

Okay!

So, eight total strangers are picked by random to become part of an idol group. That’s essentially it! Eight girls who don’t know each other are told to meet some gorilla producer at a zoo and told to drop everything in their lives to become idols. What the literal and actual fuck?!

First of all, the concept of having all of these young girls being eyed and taken to some underground penthouse has Jeffery Epstein AND R. Kelly vibes ALL OVER THIS MESS! Although, I will give this anime some credit that these girls are at least high school age or older (but not by much)!

We’ve got a shy, introvert named Miu. Then there’s the blonde, cutie from America, Sakura. Nicole, the only one with an interest of becoming an idol. Junko, the spunky girl with butt-loads of energy. The no-nonsense and let’s get down to business, Akane. Miyako, the girl with sisterly love. The practical one, Reika. And Ayaka...she’s also in the group! These eight girls make up the group, 22/7 (a group name to this day I’m not sure why it’s called that).

They are then told to obey a wall…

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE! A wall? Seriously?! A God-damned wall?! These girls and the people promoting 22/7 are to obey plates that are shit out by a wall! I know idol animes are notorious for fucked up storylines, but…I can’t even here! Becoming idols because it’s been your life-long dream like in Idolm@ster, that is fine! Becoming idols in order to save your school from being shut down like in Love Live, that is fine! Becoming idols because an eccentric necromancer brings you back from the dead like in Zombieland Saga, fucking awesome! A wall that must be obeyed when giving decisions on an idol group…what the literal and actual fuck!

Here’s what most episodes are set up like.

1. The Wall gives out an order. 2. One of the girls doesn’t want to do *insert activity here*. 3. Flashbacks play off and on for girl of the day. 4. You must do what The Wall says. 5. I don’t want to. 6. BITCH, DON’T GO AGAINST THE WALL. THE WALL IS GOD!!! 7. Pout, contemplate, and more flashbacks play. 8. Fine, I’ll do it. 9. Play the ending theme!

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: This anime is licensed by the good folks at Aniplex (and possibly FUNimation). Crunchyroll added this one month after the initial release. If you’re all wondering why that’s happening to a lot of Crunchyroll-picked animes, yeah keep wondering. Sony has control over Aniplex and FUNimation and as a result Crunchyroll has a delay on several animes (including this one). It’s an inconvenience and just raises the rates of people downloading the episodes illegally. Once again, thanks for nothing, Sony! Give Crunchyroll some credit as they do give people in other countries streaming benefits. FUNimation is primarily U.S.

With that rant off my chest, on with the cast! Now this might just be first episode jitters and all, but a lot of the voices here seemed very bland. And you know it’s gotta be that bad if even I am riffing on the voices…FROM JAPAN! Well, much like many other idol shows like Idolm@ster and Love Live, the voices for the girls are only going to be known for their Idol group work. With the exception of two girls, this is everyone’s first official anime role. Here’s everyone!

*Miu is played by Nagomi Saijou

*Sakura is played by Sally Amaki (known for Betsy on Kaguya-sama)

*Jun is played by Ruri Umino

*Reika is played by Chiharu Hokaze (known for Silvia on Fate/Grand Order)

*Akane is played by Kanae Shirosawa

*Ayaka is played by Reina Miyase

*Miyako is played by Mizuha Kuraoka

*Nicole is played by Mei Hanakawa

FAVORITE CHARACTER: Miu.

Prior to episode 11, it was more of a me connecting with this particular character due to having many introvert connections. But after Nicole’s flashback where Miu beats the crap out of a bully, Miu is best girl.

IDOL TROPES: So let’s see if 22/7 has the usual tropes normally seen in many other idol animes.

* A shy, introvert character (right from second one) * A bitch who thinks she knows all about the idol world (not as bad as Dia, but heavy on the bitch part, yes) * Shotty CGI for the dance scenes (right in the fucking opening) * Bikini episode (check) * One of the girls has a fuck-ton of siblings and is one of the most eccentric of the bunch (oh yeah) *A robotic character or IS A ROBOT (Akane is not a robot, but she’s monotone for like 96% of the series excluding flashbacks)

ENDING: It’s been close to one year since all eight of these girls were chosen for this “project” We’ve already seen back-stories/flashbacks of almost all of the girls (except for Nicole and Miu) and now 22/7 is about to prepare for their one year anniversary as a group. But then the wall gave out an order! And the plate simply read, “Disband”.

Could you be any more cliché?

Maybe it wasn’t obvious for you, but for me I knew that was coming. And no, this wasn’t a joke! There wasn’t smudge on the wall’s platelet. These girls are to disband, lie their way through a press conference explaining the disbandment, all the people a part of this experiment are out of a job, and the girls are to go back to their regular lives before any of this happened.

Can they though?

These girls just spent a whole year being thrust into a position they never expected to be in and leaving their families and future plans behind. These girls are late-teens; they’re trying to prepare for work or college! A lot of them even had to work through a lot of baggage weighing them down (particularly Jun, Akane, and Reika)! Then all of a sudden, the wall shits out an order and says to disband. There was nothing wrong with the higher-ups or the group. Everyone was now enthusiastic about doing everything possible to make 22/7 a household name. But because a fucking wall gave the command to disband, everyone’s gotta drop their shit, lose their income (which some people like Reika, Ayaka, and Miyako could use), and just pull-out of already planned events.

THEN, you make the girls lie their way through a press conference by giving vague answers to the media about the disbandment! In my opinion, the girls could have lied and said there was fall-out at the top and it was out of their hands. I know the girls can’t simply say, “the magical wall told us to disband and we can’t go against the almighty wall”.

Well, we’re about two episodes away from the finale and it’s about time to see the backstories of Miu and Nicole. Believe it or not, these two have a history that goes back a ways (though it seems like Miu doesn’t remember Nicole). Would you believe that Nicole was once a shy introvert with a stuttering complex? Yeah, it’s true. The character who was seen as a bitch from episode one was once a shy, introvert.

It wasn’t until Nicole was pushed to do something against her will and a little help from Miu that she was able to come out of her shell. But enough of the flashback!

It’s now one month since the girls were told to disband. And for one reason or another, all eight of the girls made their way to the old production building. I guess they were all feeling nostalgic for the one year they spent as idols. They have a good cry. And all of a sudden…

The wall spoke?!

The wall pretty much said that this was merely an experiment and when the girls asked to reunite, the wall denied them. So then Miu goes savage on the wall…

Okay, Miu is best girl of this series!

The other girls follow suit and break the wall, making an opening.

Once inside, the girls stumbled upon something quite disturbing. These girls have been tracked, not only throughout their idol careers, but before then too! There were shots of the girls when they were children! What kind of freakshow, One Hour Photo, Truman Show, fucked up shit is this?! This is all sorts of WRONG! How is this fucker not in jail? WHO IS THIS FUCKER?! No, I will not be quiet about this! Everything about this is so fucka wrong I can’t even! Who follows little girls secretly for most of their lives taking pictures of them? Let’s think about that…

*Perverts *Fucking perverts *R. Kelly *Oingo Boingo levels of perversion *State of Florida levels of perversion *Jefferey Epstein

New theory that goes along with old theory! Jefferey Epstein was killed in prison when his neck was snapped because AG Bill Barr sat on it. And before the devil sentences him to a lifetime of misery and woe, he gives him one last chance to atone for his actions. Instead, he stalks little girls in Japan. HOLY SHIT, THIS IS STARTING TO MAKE SENSE!

Medea…the review?!

Oh right!

The girls leave the disturbing room (never to be seen or talked about again) and I guess we’re never gonna get a clue on the identity of our pervert that hides behind a wall. They walk away and end up on a stage. And in the audience, were all their loyal and devoted fans. You see, they happened to gather on what was supposed to be their one year anniversary and their fans held out hope that they would still perform on their anniversary like they promised before the disbandment notice hit.

They performed. I guess 22/7 is back together. I guess we can disobey the wall just this once.

The wall shits out a new platelet saying add 3 more members.

We end seeing those three new girls that we may or may not see again. It depends on whether 22/7 was good enough to warrant a season two.

If the Jeffery Epstein rants weren’t an indicator, I was not fond of this series. Maybe I was just turned off at the concept of eight total strangers being told all of a sudden they’re idols because a fucking wall commanded it. I’m pretty sure it’s because of the storyline involving a wall and having to obey it. The songs were just okay, whenever we got to hear them. Unlike a lot of other idol animes, we really didn’t see a lot of performances from 22/7 outside of the opening and ending themes.

The one thing I was really invested in were surprisingly the flashbacks from all of the girls. A lot of these stories do lay on the drama really thick. But you really wish that everything’s gonna work out in the end. Like you really wish Miyako could see her biological father again or want a happy ending for Akane and her family. But then you get a back-story like Jun’s. Oof, that one was a gut-punch! I’m no fan of this show, but episode 7 is the go-to episode.

Now, I’ll watch 22/7 if it gets a season two. I try not to give up on an anime, no matter how much it annoys me. I like to see things through to the bitter end. But as for recommendations, there are far better idol shows to choose from.

Yes, I see that it’s a stretch to say there are GOOD idol shows. I know the stigma and hate that they get. But I am not one of those people. I thought Idolm@ster was okay. I liked Love Live just fine. UtaPri amuses me (and yes I count it as an idol show). Zombieland Saga, fuck yeah! This, not so much!

But if you want to watch, FUNimation has all 12 episodes available for streaming. And Crunchyroll has…a few as of this date and time. Again I point out that Crunchyroll couldn’t even get streaming rights to this until a full month after it began airing. Thanks again, Sony!

#anime review #22/7 #nanabun no nijyuuni #miu takigawa #sakura fujima #nicole saito #jun toda #reika satou #miyako kouno #akane maruyama #ayaka tachikawa

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hi-i-love-u-bitch · 5 years

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Excuse me! But where is my Sanders Sides Gamer AU???

Voices in my head: Gee Bunny, it seems you have no problem writing a lot of other fics and stuff yet you still haven’t even finished the next chapter of your Spiderverse fic???

Me: SHUT THE FUCK UP DISEMBODIED VOICES IN MY HEAD!!! IF YOU WANT THAT FIC DONE SO BADLY TELL MY LOGIC AND CREATIVITY TO GET THEIR ASSES IN GEAR AND GIVE ME SOME GOD DAMN INSPIRATION!!!!

Voices in my head:.....

Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought! Anyways, idk if I just missed a memo or something but I haven’t seen any Gamer AU of my boys and that is a crime in and of itself! Like, how dare! But fret not, I am here to provide content (Read: headcannons) that you did not ask for! Let us begin! Or should I say start!

(please note that I am not a gaming expert so feel free to add or correct stuff)

NOW WITH A PART 2!!!!

MAIN SQUAD

Roman Rosewood

Obviously loves RPGs! Anything with a good story line really! Or has medieval fantasy aesthetic!

Skyrim, Diablo, Undertale, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Undertales, Dragon Age, God of War Dark Souls, Assassins Creed, Earthbound, etc.

Played West of Loathing just so he could rip on it but actually ended up loving it and spending way to many hours playing. Then he found out there was a game called Kingdom of Loathing by the same creators and went down that rabbit hole as well.

He was iffy about getting into JRPGs but then Virgil convinced him to play Persona 5 and he absolutely fell in love with the music!

All the music in his phone is either from musicals or Video games!

Also really likes choose your own adventure games like Detroit: Become Human, Life is Strange, and Telltale Games

So much video game merch! Usually figurines because he likes to make little shelves and display cases for them.

He also really likes multiplayer games because he’s a social butterfly and likes to play with his squad.

Sucks at first person shooter games but still willingly plays Fortnight or Call of Duty or Left for Dead with his friends because he doesn’t want to be a drag and complain. But also they sometimes die in game in the most hilarious ways and it just leaves everybody wheezing.

Virgil Dante

Horror games, obvs!

All about that dark aesthetic!

Devil May Cry, Silent Hill, Fran Bow, Sally Face, Resident Evil, The Witch’s House, Amnesia, Little Nightmares, Bendy and The Ink Machine, Alice: Madness Returns, SCP-Containment, Pony Island, etc.

Yes, he’s played all the Five Nights At Freddy’s games. It’s a good series and it isn’t his fault the fandom is bat shit crazy and full of ten year olds! Fuck you Roman!

Every time the Walking Dead comes out he knows he’ll end up crying by the end of it. He and the squad make and event out of it.

Japanese horror games are usually his favorite because they deal more with the psychological aspects of horror instead of the jump scares

So, yes, he’s also a fan of Corps Party and Fatal Frame

Also really good at first person shooters because he has a really steady hand (you usually have to when playing horror games least you want to restart the level) and it pisses Roman off to no end every time Virgil randomly headshots him.

Usually likes to by merch in the form of posters, t-shirts, or beanies. He only buys figurines if it’s a game he really, really likes.

At first didn’t know why people kept bugging him to play Doki Doki Literature Club but then he finally caved and...oh...that’s why.

Logan Mill

My boy loves puzzle and strategy games yo!

Legend of Zelda, Portal, Tetris, Unravel, World of Goo, Inside, Limbo, Pokemon, Shadow of the Colossus, StarCraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empire, Heart of Iron, World of Warcraft, etc.

He likes Overwatch but doesn’t like playing with people online so he usual solos or asks the others to play. But that too usually ends in chaos.

Hates rage games because he gets frustrated easily and has broken at least four keyboards and two controllers

He still plays them anyways because he can beat it damn it! Just give him a minute!

Enjoys the God of War series despite all the mythological inaccuracies

He plays a lot of Minecraft to relax or destress and has build beautiful works of architecture and sometimes entire cities.

He thought it was stupid and childish and was embarrassed about it for a long time until the squad came over to his house one day uninvited and caught him playing. He was getting ready for them to make fun of him but they instead gushed about how AMAZING everything looked and how TALENTED he was for building all himself.

Logan ends up showing them how to play afterwards and they work together to make weird sculptures and complex tunnels underground.

He likes practical merch like backpacks, coffee mugs, pencil holders, notebooks, ect. as well as a few t-shirts and novelty ties.

Yes, he does collect Pokemon cards!

Patton Adley

Silly dating sims, farming games, and any cute game really! Plus a few side scroller games!

Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Slime Rancher, The Sims, Dream Daddy, Animal Crossing, Kirby, Monster Prom, Hatoful Boyfriend, Scribblenauts, Night In The Woods, Ni Nu Kuni, etc.

Big Nintendo fan!

He made the mistake of playing Doki Doki Literature Club without reading the warning tags and regrets it immensely...still a good game though.

He did the same thing with Huni Pop but that one made him laugh more then anything and he kind of got addicted to it. Then he found out there was a sequel called HuniCam so he went down that rabbit hole too.

He likes a lot of phone app games too like Cut the Rope, Neko Atsume, and Candy Crush.

Loves trashy dating app games, he thinks they’re so funny and cheesy

He was addicted to Mystic Messenger for a long while

Just because he has his preference doesn’t mean he won’t try other games too, Logan got him hooked on World of Warcraft (though really he did that to everyone), Virgil showed him Hollow Knight, and Roman suggested he play Undertales.

Prefers merch in the form of plushies and key chains!

He likes to bake and decorate cookies, cakes and pastries in the form of his favorite video game characters.

RED SQUAD

Duncan [Deceit] Adley (Patton’s twin)

A lot of first person shooter and combat games!

Doom Series, Super Smash Bros, Mortal Combat, Halo, Fortnight, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Destiny, Wolfenstein, Bio Shock, Splatoon, PUBg etc.

Patton was the one that introduced him to Splatoon and he won’t admit that it’s actually super fun.

Doesn’t mind story driven games and RPGs but he really just wants something he can zone out to and relax

He likes to troll people online, mainly assholes picking on little kids who just want to play.

He once teamed up with a group of kids on Call of Duty solely for the purpose of collectively kicking the asses of this groups of so called “real gamers” that were being jerks.

Has memorized all the combos! He doesn’t have time to sit and look up a cool finishing move, he needs it now!

Always mains the weakest/most useless character in fighting games and still manages to kick everyone’s ass.

Doesn’t have a preference in merch and usually grabs whatever he likes be it figurines, t-shirts, posters, plushies, or whatever, so long as he likes the game it comes from.

Has several tattoos from his favorite games

Emile Picani

Classic retro games, cartoonish games, and Nintendo are his jam broham!

Mario, Classic Sonic, Paper Boy, Transylvania, Spyro, Pac Man, All the Saga Disney games, Duck Hunt, Mario Kart, Galaga, Mega Man, Donkey Kong, Secret of Mana, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, etc.

Absolutely fell in love with Shovel Knight when it came out!

Remy got him into all the indie pixel games: Towerfall, Terraria, Owlboy, Hotline Miami, Papers Please, Celeste, One Shot, etc.

Duncan was the one that introduced him to Cuphead and the usually play it together and see how far each of them can go without dying.

The game is difficult but the art is still so breathtaking!

Likes the occasional psychological thriller game

Bet Virgil showed him Alice: Madness Returns and Doki Doki Literature Club (after he’s played it of course)

Likes plushies and figurine merch with the occasional poster and coffee mug.

Likes to doodle a lot of his fav video game characters and cartoons and is actually really good at it. He helped design most of Duncan’s tattoos.

Remy Knightly

Likes a lot of indie games and old online flash games!

The Stanley Parables, Oxenfree, Inside, Firewatch, Super MeatBoy, The Binding of Issac, Donut County, Henry Stickman series, Impossible Quiz, Crush the Castle series, Hyper Light Drifter, etc.

He always gets everybody hooked on one game or another

He convinced everyone to play Undertales so for like a month they all went through a HUGE Undertales faze.

Was the actual, ACTUAL one that showed Duncan Cuphead because he knew the dork would be reminded of Emile because of the animation and would want to show it to him and play multiplayer (*cough* subtle matchmaker *cough*)

(Do not be fooled, he is a pinning boy himself)

Is up to date in all the gossip of the latest games and consuls, indie or mainstream! He’s in the know, know and if you need to know something chances are Remy probably knows it.

Weeds out through all the indie horror games for Virgil and recommends what he thinks are the best ones.

Same thing with Logan and his puzzle games, he’s usually is able to find very strange ones and Logan seems to likes those best.

Obviously has a lot of merch in coffee mug and thermal form as well as a few key chains.

Occasionally streams on Twitch with Duncan and Emile (sometimes inviting the main squad too), they’re commentary is usual hilarious.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #roman sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #remy sanders #sleep sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #emile picani #red #prinxeity #logicality #(kind of mainly in my head)#video games #gamer au

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jmsebastian · 5 years

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Great Adaptation Expectations - Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Some things just demand to be adapted into video games, and Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy manga series Berserk stands pretty much atop that list. Released in 1999 and developed by Yuke’s in cooperation with Miura, Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage is a third-person action game for the Sega Dreamcast that attempted to scratch that initial gamification itch, and ride the success following the first anime adaptation of the series, which premiered two years prior.

Before discussing the details, it’s important to note that Sword of the Berserk suffers the same fate that so many licensed games do. It isn’t very good. Some of that comes down to the era in which it was made. There are a few frustrations that plague it that are typical of an era in which 3D action games were relatively new. That isn’t to say there aren’t things to enjoy about the game. If nothing else, it did help solidify why the approach to how action games played needed to be adjusted. Unfortunately, that means Sword of the Berserk itself, is something of a missed opportunity. On the plus side, it’s not a very long game, so its shortcomings don’t have enough time to grossly overstay their welcome, and any suffering along the way is mercifully brief.

The first obvious issue is the lack of camera control. Going back to play any 3rd person action game without a controllable camera can feel extremely limiting. It’s become such a staple that it feels more unnatural not to have it than it probably did to have it when it was first introduced. Of course, there are certainly examples of very good games that lack it. You can’t control the camera in Onimusha or Devil May Cry, but you don’t tend to notice that limitation as much since the camera is placed in thought ways that reveal the relevant visual information to the player.

Sword of the Berserk’s camera lacks that thoughtfulness. It tries to be dynamic, moving along with your character, but the concern seems to be more on framing Guts in a particular way rather than assisting the player. Given that this is an adaptation of a beautifully drawn manga series, it’s hard to fault the developers for trying to capture some of that magic in their game (which they largely accomplish in the cutscenes), however, it ends up compromising its playability to a fairly extreme degree at times.

You also have the issue of moving toward the camera a lot, meaning you’ll often find yourself running headfirst into danger you can’t see until it’s too late. There’s even an escape sequence near the end of the game reminiscent of Sonic Adventure 2’s opening sequence. You have to run around and jump over obstacles with little warning before you’re right up against them. Without rings to help you cling to life, this is extremely frustrating. One mistake means you die, and in a game with limited checkpoints and continues, it can quickly become the hardest and most frustrating part of the entire experience.

Rollin' around at the speed of sound/Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow/Can't stick around, have to keep movin' on/Guess what lies ahead, only one way to find out!

Another part of what makes the camera so difficult is that it doesn’t have a lot of room to maneuver, even if the developers might have wanted to. You spend most of your time inside a castle, fighting through narrow corridors and cramped courtyards. In those confined spaces, the camera can’t really move wherever it wants because chances are, level geometry would get in the way. There are few examples of where this does actually happen, such as when you travel below the castle’s cemetery, and an obelisk sitting in the middle of the room complete obscures any figures that move behind it.

Aside from restricting the camera, the level design has the consequence of hampering what the game’s mechanics are centered around entirely, the combat. The whole point of a Berserk game is to play as Guts and swing the laughably huge Dragon Slayer sword around. There are several levels in this game where that is literally impossible. One level in particular, where you run through the castle town has several passageways where you’ll clank your sword against stone trying to land a hit on guards that hinder your progress. The developers seemed to realize this would be a problem, so they put in the option to sheath the Dragon Slayer and fight with your fists. I can say that this is not the most adequate solution. Even playing on the easy difficulty, punching guards out is a dubious proposition. Your damage output is drastically reduced and since the guards can snipe you with arrows from some distance with crossbows, you may well die before even getting the chance.

Let me just, uh, erm, hmm.

On some level, you have to respect the commitment to realism, as you obviously could not swing a sword the size of the Dragon Slayer in most places that human being typically occupy. However, the ability to swing said hunk of iron in the first place is fantastical, and thus, I think it would have been more than a fair compromise to let the sword simply clip through level geometry in an effort to make the combat more fluid and satisfying. Thankfully, the boss fights, which are the main draw of the game’s combat, are usually placed in much more open areas to avoid this issue.

Ultimately, I get the feeling that the game’s design took something of a back seat to the story that Kentaro Miura wanted to tell, and as such, there’s relatively little actual game to be played at all. Of the roughly four hours it takes to get through, most of that time is spent in cutscenes, making Sword of the Berserk more of an animated film than a game. Honestly, this does not really bother me. If you got the game because you were already a fan of Berserk, then what you’re getting is Berserk. What’s especially great about it is that the story told is unique to the game. It’s a side-quest, as it were, to the Millennium Falcon arc, where Guts has decided to keep the traumatized Casca close to him as he continues his quest to defeat Griffith. In this side story, Guts meets some traveling performers and decides to go watch their performance in a nearby town. He ends up walking into the middle of a conflict between the regions lord and people afflicted with a curse, called the Mandragora.

What’s more, is that the story is told quite well. For its time, the Dreamcast was a very capable platform for 3D graphics. Even twenty years later, the cutscenes are enjoyable to watch on their own if you’re willing to overlook a few flaws. Sure, the characters models are a bit blocky and they move a bit like action figures, but robotic movement is a problem that still plagues 3D animation if the 2016 Berserk or 2019 Ultraman anime is anything to go by. There’s still incredible attention to detail. The faces, in particular, have a lot of expression to them and help bring moments to life in a way that seems hard to believe at times.

You can really see the despair on his face.

It helps, too, that the voice acting is of very high quality. With well-known talents like Cam Clarke and Earl Boen, there was a clear emphasis on treating the game’s story seriously. This is extremely important since the story makes up pretty much the whole reason you’d be playing this game in the first place. There are some issues with the localization here and there (the name Guts is treated as a nickname rather than a given name in a few scenes), but the line delivery and interaction between characters really sell the scenes, even if the lines themselves are a bit clunky or cliched. When you compare the cutscenes in Sword of the Berserk to those in say, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, released just a year earlier, you can’t help but appreciate the skill in direction and experience of the actors when stellar voice-acting in games was not a given.

You could argue that this story could have been served better through manga or traditional animation, but it’s hard to fault Yuke’s for wanting to make a Berserk game, or Miura for wanting to branch out and test the waters on new methods of conveying his story. Berserk’s popularity in Japan meant that a game based on the series was going to be made at some point, and creating a self-contained side story that can be begun and ended within that game makes perfect sense. It also helps make the game approachable by those who aren’t familiar with the series at all. In 1999, Berserk certainly wasn’t considered such a pinnacle of dark fantasy in the West as it is today, so someone picking the game off the shelf in the US would very likely have no frame of reference for the story at all. Thanks to the introduction of new characters like Rita, the player can learn what they need to know through the lens of those characters, making the reliance on that prior knowledge a lot less necessary.

Now that Berserk’s influence has become so far reaching, it seems unlikely that anyone would come to the Dreamcast game without some working knowledge of the series. While it’s hard to consider it a can’t miss part of the Berserk experience (save for the wonderful musical contributions of Susumu Hirasawa), there’s enough there for anyone willing to put up with some clunky design. At the very least, it’s worth watching a playthrough online for the story alone if the act of playing the game itself doesn’t manage to replicate the feeling of becoming the Black Swordsman himself.

#berserk #kentaro miura #tenchu #sonic adventure 2 #dreamcast

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shan282-ao3 · 5 years

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The Devil Has Come Ch9

Originally posted on Archive of Our Own [x]

Chapters: 12/? Fandom: Far Cry 5 Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Female Deputy | Judge/John Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Jacob Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed Characters: Original Female Character(s), John Seed, Jacob Seed, Joseph Seed, Faith Seed, Staci Pratt, Nick Rye, Sharky Boshaw, Female Deputy | Judge (Far Cry), Original Male Character(s), Kim Rye, Boomer (Far Cry), Joey Hudson, Earl Whitehorse Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Torture, Fluff, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Eventual Smut, Character Death, Slow Burn Series: Part 1 of Bottom of The River

Summary: They should never have been there. Whitehorse and Pratt were right when they spoke against going to Eden’s Gate. They should have left The Project alone. They’d started something and there was no going back now. The lamb had broken the first seal and the deputy had been helpless to stop her.

Read below:

Inside the VA Center, the world outside and seemed to stop moving, it was just the training course and cruel words of encouragement. It wasn’t until she was gone that she was hit full force with the fact that the world had indeed kept spinning.

She’d hiked through the forest for nearly three hours when she finally found a car. It had started, miraculously, but one look at the gas tank meter told her that it wouldn’t run for long. Still, she would take what she could get, if she could get to the ranger station she could get a better car and call for Rook.

She’d broken the radio Staci gave her when she tripped nearly an hour back on an exposed tree root she didn’t see. She’d landed awkwardly on one knee and scratched up her hands forcing her to walk the rest of the way with a slight limp.

The drive to the ranger station was thankfully uneventful, she listened to Peggie radio, humming along as she drove. She pulled into the gas station across from the outpost and climbed out, staying low when she saw the cultists walking around outside of it.

A dead man dressed in camo was slumped against the wall of the gas station, Sarah scrunched up her nose at the smell and searched his body. She had no weapons or ammo, if she was going to get into the ranger station she’d need to take out the Peggies surrounding it. She found a box of pistol ammo and a pair of binoculars but no gun, disappointing but at least it was something.

Around the back of the small cement building, Sarah found a ladder to the roof. She climbed to the roof with the thought that maybe she could use the binoculars to figure out where everyone was and hoped she could find a way to slip in and out without getting caught.

Instead, she found another corpse in camo clutching a sniper rifle against its chest. She grabbed the rifle yanked, cringing at the pop and crack the dead man’s fingers snapped and released the weapon. She found a box of rifle ammo on the ground beside him along with some bandages and a pistol not too far away. There was an arrow sticking out of his chest, she pulled that out as well, she may not have a bow but she could still stab someone with it.

“Thank you.” She whispered to the deadman, aiming the scope of the rifle towards the station. There was a silencer on the end of the barrel, she silently thanked the heavens for that.

She followed a single guard as he wandered out of sight of his companions and fired, watching him drop gracelessly to the ground. The next she sniped as he came around the building to check on his missing friend, he didn’t get a chance to see the body before was dead as well. The third and last one in her line of sight proved not to be as easy, he was doing jumping jacks of all things and the first shot went right past him, the bullet lodging itself in the van in front of him. He startled and as ran to see what had hit the van she fired again and he crumpled to the floor.

The remaining Peggies had heard the noise of the bullet hitting the car and witnessed their fellow cultist drop and jumped into full alert. Sarah shot out the alarms before they could be triggered before sprinting back to the ladder and quickly sliding down it. She had to be smart about this, the rifle would be no use in combat and she only had a clip full of ammo for the pistol. She couldn’t just fire blinding and hope she hit one.

She did her best to stay out of sight lines as she ran across the street, she wished Rook or Grace were here, it would be a lot easier to clear the station with extra guns. She slid into cover and took a few breaths to steady herself before aiming her gun over the crates she was hiding behind.

She fired at the first cultist to come into view, hitting him in the shoulder and sending him yowling for help and she dropped back into her cover. Almost instantly bullets started to fly in her direction, she crouched lower and prayed the crates would stay intact long enough for her to find sturdier cover. She waited for a pause when they would have to reload before running to a new cover spot, firing once more when she’d gotten there, she hit the one she’d wounded in the chest and he dropped to the ground.

The few minutes were tense as she switched between ducking and firing, she’d nearly emptied her clip by the time she dropped the last one. It was then, just when she let herself relax a bit, that snarling behind her sent her scrambling for safety. A Judge, its face painted red and body deformed from whatever sick process and turned it into the monster that it now was, stalked in her direction. Its lips curled and it snapped its teeth, she was close enough to see the blood staining the fur around its mouth.

Sarah fired her pistol, two bullets lodging themselves in the wolf’s shoulder before the clip was emptied. It barely flinched. All she had left was the arrow from earlier, frantically, she pulled it from her belt as the monster lunged. She drove it into the beast’s neck and rolled away, it yowled in pain and stumbled a bit but still turned to finish her off, renewed rage in its eyes.

She closed her eyes as it lunged with snapping teeth and waited for her inevitable death to come but instead she heard a high pitched whining. She cracked her eyes open to see another arrow lodged in the animal’s skull.

Her savior walked up without casting a second glance at the thing and pulled her to her feet. “What are you doing out here alone?” He asked, genuine concern in his voice.

Sarah stared at the boy in shock because that’s what he was, a boy who barely looked 17. “It was trying to call someone.” She answered blankly, looking at the Judge wolf and then him, she was still shocked to be alive. “Thank you.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. I’m Wheaty.” He grinned and stuck out his hand, Sarah couldn’t help but smile slightly and shook it.

“Deputy Lamb, but you can call me Sarah.”

“Deputy? So you must know Rook then?” He was practically beaming at the knowledge.

“Yes, have you seen her? Is she okay?” Sarah’s voice was frantic, she clutched at Wheaty’s hand hopefully.

“Yeah no she’s fine. She’d been really helpful fighting back against Jacob and his guys.” He reassured her before stepping away and surveying the area. “So you took this back? Yourself?”

“I guess, I just needed to get a working radio but I figured I couldn’t do that with them all here.”

“You’re sniper,” He pointed at it slung over her back, “Where’d you get it.”

“A dead guy at the gas station. Why?”

“It’s one of ours, it’s got the Whitetail Militia logo, see?” Sarah pulled it off and looked at the unique patterning on the side and the definite logo.

“You’re with the Whitetails?” He nodded and Sarah suddenly felt a little pissed off at whoever was running it for letting a teenager join. “Do you want it back?”

“Nah, you just cleared a cult outpost all by yourself I think you’ll use it better than any of us.” He was grinning in slight awe and his radio sputtered to life with a loud click. It had to be some sort of code, he clicked the talk button quickly in response before looking back at her. “I’ve gotta go, thanks for clearing this, I’ll let everyone know it’s safe to come here.” With that he walked back to the ATV sitting on the side of the road and drove off, waving as he passed.

Sarah watched him ride off and hoped he’d be okay before turning back to the mess she’d made. She picked her way across the property, looting bodies as she went. She stuffed the cash into her pocket and the bullets into a backpack she found. There was a discarded radio on the floor that thankfully hadn’t been destroyed. She walked into one of the building and sat down on the floor, her back against the wall as she started flipping through channels trying to find Rook’s.

“Rook? You there?” Dutch’s voice blared over the radio indicating she’d found the right channel.

“I’m here.” Rook answered back and Sarah couldn’t help but grin, beyond grateful that she was really still alive.

“Eli just radioed me to tell me the Park Ranger Station got taken back from the cult. Good job, kid.” He congratulated Rook and Sarah felt her smile fall, the familiar feelings of inadequacy filling her stomach.

“Uh, that wasn’t me, I’m with Jess on a rescue mission.”

“You’re an inspiration kid. You’re responsible whether you know it or not.”

“Oh, uh thanks then I guess.” Rook didn’t sound convinced at all, but Sarah still felt a little bubble of rage at the fact that she’d accept the gratitude.

She knew she shouldn’t be upset about this, she was helping people to help them, not to get thanks. But still, she had done this, not Rook, not anyone else. She had risked life and limb to clear out the outpost and no one even had the decency to acknowledge that it had been her, not Rook.

She caught herself thinking that maybe Staci was right, maybe she should stop helping them. It was a dangerous thought and she wanted to curse Staci for putting it in her head. Only it’d been there for a while, waiting at the edges of her mind for the right time to overwhelm her with potentially traitorous thoughts.

Sarah looked down at the radio in her hand, suddenly aware of its weight. She was tempted to throw it at the building across from her, but rationally she knew that was idiotic and reckless. If she needed help this was her lifeline. Instead, she clipped it to her belt and grabbed an abandoned pistol across from her, throwing it as hard as she could through the glass windowpane in the door instead.

The sound of glass shattering set something alight in her soul. Soon she was on her feet, blind with anger and fear, screaming insults at the world and throwing anything she could get her hands on. She grabbed a discarded baseball bat and smashed in the windows of a truck nearby. There were angry tears streaming down her face but she barely cared as she hit on of the doors of the ranger station into it cracked and broke from its hinges.

The windows smashed, doors missing and cars wrecked, Sarah collapsed to the ground. Her rage was replaced with a hollow void as she sat there, numb. She rubbed at the tears that had streaked her face, sniffling and on the brink of crying again.

She felt like an idiot, she shouldn’t be this upset. It shouldn’t matter whether the people of this God-forsaken county thanked her for helping them or not. And yet here she was on the verge of crying over it.

She tried to focus instead on the pain in her hands, it gave her something outside of her thoughts to think of. Her knuckles were bruised from punching something during her rage, her palms scraped up from her earlier fall. There was blood dripping down her left hand from a cut above her wrist, most likely from a piece of glass. She pulled the medkit she’d found from her bag and pressed a strip of gauze to the wound until the bleeding stopped. She’d need to find a river or something where she could clean it out, she didn’t need tetanus or blood poisoning or something just as bad.

She didn’t want to find Rook anymore, she decided and shouldered her sniper rifle again. She wasn’t sure where she was going but she wanted to get the hell away from here.

The drive out of the Whitetail Mountains was thankfully uneventful. Sarah drove numbly, the sounds of Peggie radio filling the car and drowning out her thoughts of fear and anger. She eventually found herself crossing the border into the Henbane and pulling into the 8-Bit Pizza Bar parking lot.

The parking lot was empty and she was honestly glad for it. She really didn’t think she was in the mood to talk to anyone right now, she just needed a drink.

Inside was quiet, Sarah turned on the radio sitting on the corner and walked around the bar to get herself a drink. She blew the dust out of the glass and filled it with whiskey before she dropped down into one of the stools, her glass in one hand and bottle in the other.

She was on her second glass when the sounds of a car pulling up outside interrupted the silence of the evening. She sighed and threw back what was left of her drink, filling it before whoever it was came inside.

The door was thrown open haphazardly, smacking back against the wall beside it. Her new drinking companion strode forward, dropping something on a table as they went. Sarah didn’t look up, hopeful that whoever they were they would get the memo that she wasn’t in the mood for company and leave her the hell alone.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the newcomer walk past her, no words were shared as they grabbed a few beers from behind the counter. There was heavy silence when they finally stopped moving, their staring obvious even if Sarah couldn’t see them.

“Hey, Dep.” Sharky greeted, his voice laced with concern. Sarah took a sharp intake and looked up at him, she tried her best to off a smile but it fell short.

“Hi, Sharky.” She felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. She was glad it was Sharky as opposed to anyone else.

“No one’s heard from you in weeks. Where’d you do?” He came around the counter and sat down next to her, chugging half his beer before looking at her for an answer.

Sarah didn’t answer immediately, instead, she ran her finger around the rim of her glass milling over how she wanted to answer the question. Did she tell the truth about where she’d been, who she’d been with, or did she lie about just as she lied about her run-ins with John? One look at Sharky’s honest expression made up her mind, she didn’t have to lie to him, he wouldn’t going to judge her like everyone else.

“I was with Jacob. He got me and Rook a while ago. The Whitetails rescued her but I got left behind.”

“What? Why the fuck did they leave you?” There was indignation in his voice and Sarah couldn’t help but smile, a part of her cheering for the fact that someone genuinely cared about her.

“They found Rook alive and assumed she was the only survivor I guess. It’s fine, Jacob found me a couple days later.”

“A couple days? How are you still alive?”

“It was just a couple days, that’s not long enough to starve or dehydrate. Anyways I was barely conscious for most of it, I ended up sleeping for three days straight after Jacob got me.” Sharky nodded, finishing off his beer and opening another. Sarah took another gulp of the liquid in her glass, cringing at the taste.

“So have you been with him this whole time?”

“Pretty much yeah. He had me running trails for a week or so, then when he brought me back to the VA Center he had me running training courses. I don’t know why he didn’t just kill me or continue running me through the trails. He called me strong when he found me, I don’t know why. I was barely alive.” She shrugged, looking at the contents of her glass in mock contemplation while the memories of her time at the center replayed. “John showed up two nights ago, he’s gonna kill me when he gets his hands on me.”

“What’d you do to piss off ol’ Johnson?”

“I kinda cut his throat a bit last time we were in the same room as each other.” Sarah answered somewhat sheepishly and finished the rest of her drink before retelling the events at John’s bunker and her other run-ins with him to a very amused Sharky.

“Look, I’m gonna be honest, sounds like Johnson wants to bang you.”

If Sarah had a drink in her mouth she would spit it out. “Where did you get that from my story.”

“The dude made you a fancy dinner after baptizing you, no one else around here has ever gotten that kind of treatment. He sent someone to pick up your drunk ass because he was worried you were gonna kill yourself driving home. He let you just walk off his ranch without even an escort. And he said he wasn’t going to force you to atone, he doesn’t give people that choice.” Sharky explained acting like the all-seeing relationship counselor of the county.

“Yeah okay.” Sarah dismissed him, waving his words away with her hand. Sharky grabbed it and frowned before dragging her off her chair to sit on the table where he’d dropped his stuff.

“How’d you fuck up your hands?” He asked as he poured some of her whiskey over the cuts then set to work bandaging them.

“I smashed in the windows at the park ranger station in the Whitetails.” Sharky let out an amused snort and shot her a look that told he didn’t believe her. Sarah just stared back until his eyes widened a little when he realized she wasn’t lying.

“Alright go, Dep. Smashing private property like a badass.” He laughed and Sarah couldn’t help but join him.

“I’m an awful deputy Jesus.” She proclaimed with a grin on her face. “I vandalize property, I’m always at least 15 miles over the speed limit. Hell, I even let you go free and you’re technically a wanted fugitive. Who thought it was a good idea to give me a badge.”

“Thanks for letting me go, by the way, jail sucks.” Sharky grinned, switching to bandaging her other hand.

“I’ll take your word for it for now. Though if we all survive this and the government shows up I’ll probably end up in jail too. Maybe we’ll end up in a unisex prison and we can talk to each other through the fences in the yard.”

Sharky let out a hearty laugh at that and let go of Sarah’s now wrapped hand. “Fucking hope so.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, Sharky finished off his beer and Sarah pulled at a loose thread on her shirt. She needed to change, these were the same things she’d been given at the VA Center.

“I miss it.” She broke the silence, not daring to look at Sharky as she continued to talk. “The VA Center I mean. I miss the routine. Jacob didn’t give me time to breathe let alone think, it was nice. No one asked me to find their errands or find their friends. I didn’t have to think about anything besides the next obstacle. I didn’t have time to think about how insignificant I apparently am.”

“I think you’re pretty significant.” Sharky offered, pushing her shoulder with him.

“You might be the only one.”

“What about Nick and Kim?”

“Fine, you’re one of three.”

Sharky glared at her words before pushing himself up. “You tired?”

“Sarah was a little caught off guard by the sudden change of subject and shrugged helplessly. “I guess so yeah.”

“Then let’s go, I’ll take you to Boshaw Manor, my couch is relatively comfortable.”

“What, you’re not gonna offer your guest the bed?” Sarah teased as she followed him out to his car. Sharky laughed and gave her an incredulous look.

“Fuck no.” He responded playfully and got into the driver's seat, Sarah snorted out a laugh and got into the passenger’s. She turned on the radio, immediately flipping it to the cult radio and earning a groan from Sharky. “Please Sarah, anything but that Peggie shit.” Sarah snickered and switched it to another station.

#the devil has come #tdhc #deputy sarah lamb #sarah lamb #far cry 5 #ao3 #ao3 feed

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ghostflowerdreams · 5 years

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What Is The Time Period In The Devil May Cry Series?

From what I’ve gathered the Devil May Cry series takes place in a Retro Universe -- basically where retro, vintage or antiquated technology, styles and aesthetics are still used, but which otherwise is or at least resembles The Present Day. Often cultural styles from different time periods are mixed and matched, usually with those that date no later than The '60s or so.

This makes sense as the technology in the series varies. For example, in Dante’s office he has a rotary phone, a boombox, a jukebox and a old color TV (in the anime). Later on in the series Nero shows up with some modernized-looking cordless headphones. This makes it hard to pin point the time period with just the few pieces of technology we’ve seen in the series. There’s also the possibility that Dante is just too poor to upgrade (or he doesn’t bother with it because his stuff keep getting broken every time). But that doesn’t explain why the rest of the DMC world isn’t up-to-date with modern inventions either.

In Devil May Cry 5 each of the characters used telephone booths to make their calls. But when Nero was at the fancy-looking hotel, he made his call with a rotary phone. However, with Nico in order to receive those calls from him, she used what looked like one of those first ever mobile phone (which probably took hours to charge, lasted 35 minutes or so, and cost a lot too). Or it could have been a satellite phone? At that point, it was clear that the DMC world isn’t modeled after a particular time period and it’s not going for realism either.

After all, modern cell phones would have been a thing for them by now and even computers. Instead, it borrow things from different time periods to create a retro and aesthetic pleasing game for us to enjoy. With a bit of digging around I also found out that Hiroyuki Kobayashi (the producer of DMC1, DMC4 and the DMC:TAS) once stated in an interview that the DMC world is very much like ours and it has phones -- just not cellphones. I can’t find the original article, but there was another old article that had a similar discussion with him about it...

Hiroyuki Kobayashi: In Devil May Cry [series character Dante's] office, they do have a phone, but it's a black analog kind of phone. That feeling of what the world is like is something that we really want to protect, so even though it does have phones, we don't want it to be a world where there is a cell phone and you can immediately talk to anyone in the world.

Having said that, it is a world where they do have motorbikes, so creating this mix between high-tech and analog technology -- a world where some things have advanced and some things haven't advanced -- is pretty difficult.

For example, there's a jukebox in Dante's office, but it plays old vinyl records. Some parts of technology have advanced, and some haven't advanced. Keeping that true throughout the series and the game is difficult, and we need to have all the core members on the same page. That is certainly one of the challenges in making the game. Having said that, it is a lot of fun to be able to create this kind of unique world of our own design.

After a little more digging I found more information on this subject and it’s actually a lot more recent too. On the Polygon website, Editor Matt Leone was at Capcom’s San Francisco office during this year’s Game Developers Conference. He met with Devil May Cry 5 director Hideaki Itsuno, senior producer Michiteru Okabe, and producer Matt Walker to discuss DMC5. Source: Devil May Cry 5: The post-mortem interview

Matt Leone [Interviewer]: To a certain degree, the game — and Devil May Cry in general — feels like a kitchen sink of different ideas; a lot of things could fit in the Devil May Cry world. Can you think of any things that have come up that felt too out of bounds for that universe?

Hideaki Itsuno: It’s interesting. I know this isn’t quite the direction you’re going for with that question, but there are things that technically don’t fit in a Devil May Cry, and it generally falls around the sense of style that we have. For instance, it’s not as cool for someone to take out a cell phone and say, “Devil May Cry” [with a normal voice]. But when you have a big landline phone on a desk, you can pick it up and say “Devil May Cry” [with a deep voice]. And that really comes down to the fact that we grew up in a certain era. We grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, before there was technology like this. That sense of style is something that’s been ingrained into us from having grown up in that period. There’s a lot of stuff in the game where they don’t use the latest technology, because from our point of view, this is what’s cool.

Eventually, if we ever have a director on a new Devil May Cry game who is in their 20s or something, they’ll have grown up with completely different stuff. So then the sense of style might change, and you might have stuff where in the game they’re watching YouTube or whatever.

But there’s also kind of that element of, what’s stylish? What we know to be cool is really based on our experiences in the ’70s and ’80s, but then also we have the cool dark hero element. Like with Dante, sure, he doesn’t really do terrible things — he doesn’t kill humans, that kind of thing — but there are dark aspects to him, or to the heroes in these games. Yet really, they’re pure, proper heroes that are very all about justice and protecting.

What got me thinking about all this was because when I was going over my old fanfiction I noticed something, well, more like the lack of something. I was wondering why I was making my original character go to the library to research books for information on the occult when she could’ve just google’d it (or use an equivalent of the search engine).

But then I realized that it felt out of place if I did that because not once had I ever seen or heard any mention of computers in DMC series (especially in DMC3 as that was the game my fanfiction was focused on). Maybe they do exist, but it was still in the early stages of creation? Or that it wasn’t available for the public and only scientist, military, government or whatnot were the ones using it? I do not know, but books are a valuable source of information and will always be around. So I figured I couldn’t go wrong with having my character do some old-fashion research.

It also makes sense that when Devil May Cry was first released it was in 2001, so of course that had some influence. At the time of writing this post it’s been 18 years since then and technology has made many advancements and will keep on advancing. But even before that in 1998, after the completion of Resident Evil 3, DMC originally started off as a part of the Resident Evil franchise, under the name "Team Little Devil". Early research and development work included a trip to Spain to examine various castles as a basis for the game's environments. So, of course, that also helped to shape DMC into what it is today.

I get the feeling that DMC4 to DMC5 is kinda like when the 90s meet 2000s. In which those who live in the era know what it was like to see cassettes and VHS tapes turn into CD-ROMs. Floppy disk to USB flash drives, Walkman/Discman to mp3 or ipods and so on.

Now, what about cameras? Hm, I do wonder which version of it is fitting for the DMC series. There’s a painted portrait of the whole family in Dante’s childhood home, but on his desk there is a photo of his mother. It might be one of those hand-coloring photograph? I figured because of the clothing they’re wearing looks old-fashion, it may suggest that photography might not have been that common during that time. Paintings were probably popular, but Eva’s photo on Dante’s desk is in color. Maybe it is an actual photo from a camera (the kind that’s not black & white -- film camera possibly)? Unless it’s a small hand-painted portrait of her?

I’ll research this later. Anyway, these were just my musings that spawn from my old DMC fanfiction. Obviously, I don’t have to be canonically correct but I personally like to do my best in sticking with the source material. That usually means I have to do a bit of research to properly understand whatever peaks my interest and then figured how what I want to do with that information. Sometimes it helps me to better build up the DMC universe in my stories from. I also find that it even helps to make it feel very immersive for my readers.

#Devil May Cry #DMC #writing fanfiction #writing fanfic #DMC5 #Devil May Cry 5 #Devil May Cry V #DMCV #thoughts #Dante Sparda #gaming #video game #video games #writing Devil May Cry fanfiction #writing DMC fanfiction #DMC fanfiction #Devil May Cry fanfiction #DMC5 fanfiction #writing Devil May Cry 5 fanfiction

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thecartoonarchivist · 6 years

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Weekly Spotlight #6

Welcome, Welcome, one and all~!

To the Weekly Spotlight

In honor of this sppppooooooppppyyy season, this week’s spotlight is....

*drumroll* *very pathetic trumpet*

Over The Garden Wall

So, this series isn’t very old. The pilot aired in 2013 and the full mini-series aired in 2014; thus it’s very easy to say that this show is very fresh in my mind.

When this show was first airing, I remember watching part of an episode of it and becoming very intrigued. Initially, I felt no desire to watch it as when they were advertising the special, this originally gave me the vibe of The Misadventures of Flapjack, Chowder, and other rather strange and, at times, grotesque cartoons that never really tickled my fancy. So, I was more than willing to let this series slide off my radar and into some obscure corner of my knowledge never to be heard of or talked about ever again.

But one day, a episode happened to be playing and, for whatever reason, I found myself watching. I knew I was about to leave the house soon so watching some TV show I never really cared all that much about didn’t seem like a bad option at the time. The episode I was watching, I’ve come to learn, was Mad Love. I didn’t actually start from the beginning of the episode, if I remember correctly, but I started near the beginning. Here they were talking about how Quincy Endicott had somehow managed to fall in love with a painting in his labyrinth of a mansion and I ended the episode with the revelation about Beatrice and the heart-to-heart that Wirt and Beatrice had.

It was then that I knew I had to sit down and watch this show from the beginning. I could feel it in my bones that this show had potential and that it would continue on for a long time.

It ended four days later and I felt like I had missed out on something very special. I never realized it was only a mini-series and as a result, I felt that I saw something very beautiful be snuffed out very quickly. I’d have this curiosity and regret linger in the back spaces of my mind for several years. During this time, I’d see videos pop up on YouTube now and again, talking about Over The Garden Wall: analyses on the writing and why the series was so good, cosplay, various musicians playing music from its soundtrack. Over all, I got the impression that the series was something to celebrate and so I added it to my list of series that one day I’d sit down and watch.

But every fall season, Over The Garden Wall would pop up on my radar now and again and I knew that this time I had to sit down and watch it. Luckily, Over The Garden Wall was on Hulu so I snuggled up in my pajamas and fuzzy blanket and spent a little over 2 hours watching this series.

So, why don’t we take a look at its history?

This mini-series was a created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network in 2014. Originally, the series was pitched under the title, Tome of the Unknown, in 2006, however the series was much different than the one that was aired. It was originally designed to follow two brothers, Walter and Gregory, as they travel the Land of the In-Between to track down pages from a book of forgotten stories after signing themselves into a contract with a devil named, Old Scratch. However, McHale had difficulties creating a larger story arc for the series and as a result, it was placed on hold for a number of years.

McHale would go on to storyboard for The Misadventures of Flapjack (makes sense why I got that vibe) and co-develop the famous Adventure Time where he would serve as Creative Director and eventually, as a writer. After having more experience underneath his belt, Cartoon Network returned to McHale and asked if he would like to pilot another series. McHale, then, returned to Tome of the Unknown; polished it up; pitched it to the network again; and it would pilot on Cartoon Network in 2013. After having piloted the episode, McHale sat down with the network again where they would decide that instead of an entire, full-blown series, they would simply trim it to a mini-series that would air over 5 days. It was initially envisioned as an 18 chapter (or 18 episode) series but due to budget and time constraints, it was trimmed down to 10 episodes

The interesting thing about this series is that I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to experience another cartoon as dark yet oddly whimsical as this series. In some regards, I would almost like to call it a darker version of Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle but even then, I don’t think that it would actually do this series justice with that sort of comparison. As I was watching this series, I couldn’t help but feel a similar feeling as when I played those one-sentence stories games as a kid. You know which one I’m talking about! Everyone is gathered in a circle, or a campfire in my case, and each person had to say a sentence that would add to the story. You couldn’t change what the previous person said, but you could change the context of how it would affect the story.

For example, if someone said a sentence along the lines of, “Trapped inside the closet, Susie began to cry loudly and alerted the monster of her hiding place.” that doesn’t exactly leave you with a whole lot to work with. Your immediate conclusion is that the monster will find Susie and that she will be eat/maimed/destroyed/etc. However, with a little bit of creativity, you can change the situation to something like this, “Susie, frantically searching for some sort of weapon to defend herself, finds a panel on the back wall of the closet that leads to some place that was not part of the house.” This can lead you to a crazy situation where Susie might find Narnia, or another dimension that is almost exactly like this one, or that there’s a curse on the house because a body in this secret, unmapped room of the house. The situation that you start with won’t be the situation you end with and the only rules are that you can’t undo what was already said and you can only add one sentence. And this is what I felt was going on.

Rampaging gorillas became long-lost loves in animal suits. Graves dug for the main characters ended up being skeletons for pumpkin people. Ferry rides for frog people turned out being a migration for hibernation. The things that you expected would turn on their heads very suddenly and what seemed terrible and fraught with dangers, would end rather cheerfully and full of hope. I felt like it was such an important lesson for young and old alike and I’m very happy this ended up being such a staple theme of the series.

As a sibling myself, I thought that the brother interactions were pretty accurate enough. Wirt likes to blame his brother for all his woes and get rather annoyed with his upbeat attitude; it was funny how much of my younger self I saw in Wirt and there were so many times I had to laugh and cringe at the true renditions of being a Freshman in high school. Greg never dumb, or naive which is something many, many cartoons like to paint younger siblings. I will easy admit that my brother is a whole lot smarter than I was at his age. (Doesn’t make him less of a brat but still!) So having Greg be that rock for Wirt and to help stabilize him when he starts overthinking things and panicking underneath the responsibility of taking care of him was such a refreshing thing to see in cartoons. It felt oddly real.

Some of the shining jewels in this series’s crown is how heartwarming and touching some of the more serious moments of the series is. In the last episode, I found myself fighting back tears despite the fact that I already knew what type of end was coming. (Of course, things were turned on their head as they always were but regardless.) These heart-to-heart discussions and these moments of #realtalk really tugged at my heartstrings and made me feel about ten years younger. But even the whimsical moments were always fun and weird. Did some of the humor fall flat? Yeah, but that’s also because it wasn’t meant for me. Other instances of humor however had me snickering at the realism of such an absurd situation. It was simply a pleasure to watch.

It’s darker tones and moments of horror is such an interesting thing to see in a children’s medium that it almost becomes a rare thing to pull off well. For those of you who grew up with Courage the Cowardly Dog, I’m sure you remember at least a portion of the fear you used to have watching a couple of these episodes. But one of the interesting things about Courage is that there was never any threat of death in the series. Courage’s family might be turned into battle robots, or turned into grotesque creatures, or some unknown horrific happenstance occur, but never really any threat of death. In this series however, that’s the main threat that prevails throughout the course of events. By the end of the series, we know why this is the case, but that still doesn’t make it any less of a gutsy move by its creators. On top of this, it’s so cool and interesting to see all of the little Easter eggs that plant in each episode that point to the twist at the end of the series. Although the series may be a bit too scary for younger kids, you can easily see that this series was intended for as many audiences as they could fit into such a short run.

I think the little things in this series is what shines through the most. The soundtrack was stellar, oh my word!! The voice acting, although at first seemed pretty generic, really fit the tone of the series and breathed life into these quirky characters. Even though the animation itself is pretty cheap (Flash animation isn’t the greatest ya’ll), the backgrounds are stunning to look at and the character designs were very creative and interesting to watch. Each part of this animation played well into the other to the point that the entire piece felt like a wonderful, cohesive whole. Not many cartoons can say that. Not many pieces of art can say that. For that, I salute the entire team of Over The Garden Wall for creating something so wonderful to indulge in. Although part of me wishes that this could have been a full series, I realize that to do so would ruin the good of what I have, so I am content to leave things as they are. However, if anyone has a suggestion for any similar series, send them to my inbox because I will definitely check it out.

For many people, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween/Christmas tradition. For others, many like to watch Soul Eater for its spooky themes. Still others will watch classic scary movies like Psycho, or The Shining, or Nightmare on Elmstreet for their scares.

For me, this’ll be my new Halloween tradition. The harvest-time aesthetic. The Halloween-like themes. All of it screams everything Halloween was for me growing up and man, did I love enjoy this piece of media.

Overall, this series easily rates a 9 out of 10 on my scale.

It has very few flaws in it (even now I’m having a hard time picking them out) but they’re still there. Perfection is such a hard thing to achieve so I doubt there will ever be a series that reaches a 10/10 on my scale but the fact that it got a 9? It speaks volumes to this series.

I’ll gladly watch this every Halloween. I wouldn’t even mind watching this even more than once a year. I heartily recommend this series to everyone who hasn’t watch it before, even if you don’t like the more bizarre series of Flapjack and Adventure Time. I do adore this series. And it will forever hang in my Hall of Fame for being such a beautiful and fantastic series.

If there are any corrections you’d like to make in regards to this post, please feel free to send me a message with your corrections and I’ll get back to it as soon as I can!

Do you remember a cartoon your friends have never heard of? Got a scene from an animated film that you’re dying to know the name to? Send your questions to The Cartoon Archivist and I’ll see what I’ve got in the vault!

#over the garden wall #otgw #Cartoon network #2010~2015 #miniseries #weekly spotlight #halloween traditions #god I want to watch again already #I literally binged this series yesterday but I still wanna watch it again #i have a problem

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sketchiedetails · 6 years

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This is gonna be part of a series of posts about my thoughts on Devil May Cry 4′s story. I already talked about Dante and Nero, so I’ll cover the rest of the cast.

The supporting characters aren't as fleshed out as Dante and Nero, so I'll just go through the list of them based on their importance to the plot.

Credo is Kyrie's brother and the captain of the Holy Order Knights. There seems to be some tension between him and Nero, but it's never elaborated.

Credo is devoted wholeheartedly to Sanctus' cause, and this places him in opposition with Nero. Once Credo learns that Sanctus ordered Agnus to kidnap his sister Kyrie, he turns over and tries to help Nero escape from the Savior's clutches. Unfortunately, Sanctus killed him and his dying wish to Dante and Trish was for them to save Kyrie and Nero.

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I think Credo could have been a decent rival, but unfortunately there's not enough screentime for his character to fully develop. He needed a scene of either confronting Kyrie about Nero or a scene where he's shown facing an internal conflict between following orders and betraying his childhood friend. His redemption and death are well earned, however, and he comes off as something of a foil to Vergil in that he started off as a character with a singleminded determination much like Vergil, but the key difference is that he was willing to change his view once he realized the error of his ways. Vergil was too proud to do that, and that was his downfall; Credo died a noble death trying to save the ones he cared for (something interesting about Credo is that Dan Southworth - the voice and mocap actor for Vergil for DMC3 - did the mocap for Credo).

(This dude has the best face in the entire series)

Agnus is a scientist for the Order who is helping Sanctus with his goal of attaining godhood. Sanctus is the key to explaining why all the demons are running amok in Fortuna. Under Sanctus' orders, he had been constructing hellgates to summon demons so that he could perfrom experiments such as enchanting suits of armor to operate without a body, or make Sanctus immortal. It's implied that he's the one responsible for turning most of the Order into demon hybrids. In order to power the hellgates, Agnus had to use Devil Arms as a power source - this is the justification for how Dante keeps getting new Devil Arms after beating each demon boss.

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The best thing about Agnus is that he comes off more condescending towards Nero and Credo but seems to have some level of respect for Dante, and his speech impediment is nonexistent for the first part of their encounter. It seems like he's prone to fits of anger and that gets in the way of talking for him.

I like how the Order maintains an overall motif of white in their clothing and in the colors for their demonic angelic forms. They're capitalizing off of the Western tendency to associate the color white with purity when their designs are garish and assymetric, and there's an implication that they resorted to using any kind of animal as a reference for their angelic forms since Credo looks like a harpy while Agnus has more insectoid features.

Sanctus doesn't really have much going on for him. He comes off as a benevolent, gentle old man but quickly reveals himself to be a psycho with a Messiah complex. He wants to use demonic power to control a giant statue that will kill demons that come from the hellgate he constructed so that he could harvest their demonic power and keep the propaganda train rolling.

It's literally the same plot as The Incredibles.

Kyrie is an interesting case because she's the driving force for most of the plot, but she's barely a character.

She mostly serves as a damsel to dangle in front of Nero to keep him moving the plot along, and that's kind of disappointing honestly considering this is a series that features Lady and Trish (and Lucia, but I haven't gotten to her so v0v). I don't think she needs to be a badass action girl with guns akimbo, but there could have been moments where she was able to make an impact in the plot.

However, she does have one of the better lines in the game when it comes to Nero.

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Also, she’s part of the reason why I like DMC4′s ending credits compared to 3.

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It’s similar to DMC3′s but now the camera is focused on Kyrie and Nero has to defend her from the horde of demonic puppets. There’s a timer counting down how long the player needs to hold off the demons, and it can cut short if one gets to close to Kyrie. It ends the segment prematurely, and I’m not sure if it prevents you from getting the final shot with Nero and Kyrie standing among the ruins of Fortuna, hand in hand.

The least interesting group in the game are the demons. There's no real reason why they're in the setting other than because they came out of the hellgate. It's really by pure coincidence that they happen to run into any of the characters in the story. Something that could have worked would be if each demon guarding the gate was actually an Order Knight that had undergone the demonic procedure. It could have been the way to introduce a proper boss squad that would have been really memorable, but they do have an notable part in the overall plot in that they have no association with the Order whatsoever, and are being used as a means to scare the public into submission to the local hegemony.

I think the thing that holds DMC4′s story back is that there’s a lot more characters involved in the plot compared to DMC3, which technically only had 4 characters make up the main cast. More characters allows the story to weave a more intricate plot, but at the cost of having enough time to fully flesh out all of the characters equally. It’s not a bad story by any means, it just lacks the focus DMC3 had with its small cast and singular locale.

#devil may cry 4 #dmc4 #devil may cry #thinking bout games

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