#unless they don't really have much to show and we'll be in this limbo until final shape

[thefirstknife]

I've emerged. Did the whole campaign and some side stuff, haven't had time to touch the season but I will do so shortly.

Overall, I really like it. Visually absolutely stunning. I adore Nimbus to death. Love the extent of involvement from Osiris and that we and our Ghost got to speak so much. The whole campaign feels much more Guardian-centric than any other before.

I played on normal mode because I do not want to think about difficulty and to sweat when I'm just trying to get through the story for the first time so difficulty wise, normal mode is fine to me. Didn't experience any issues with that or with new mod system or anything.

Full spoilers under (Deterministic Chaos mission as well) and because it's a long post:

Despite loving it, I feel like some stuff was rushed. One of my major issues is that we did not really have any meaningful explanation about the main point of the story, which is the Veil. I feel like we should've known exactly what it is in order to understand why we're protecting it outside of the whole "the Veil powers Neomuna so if it gets destroyed, people will die." That's understandable enough, but we have no idea what it is. I think we should've known that.

Without knowing what it is, we can't really understand what happened at the end. It's a really shocking, unbelievable and stunning ending, but also confusing. We do not know what happened. Zavala and Ikora both spoke as if the Traveler disappeared which got me confused until I read Ikora's summary in text:

And ofc, until I saw the view in destinations and from the HELM:

From Zavala's speech, I genuinely thought that the Traveler just disappeared entirely, despite us not seeing anything in the cutscene after the Witness entered it. Only this line from Ikora's summary explains that the Traveler isn't gone or destroyed or dead, just kinda... Shut down. I guess.

Which again, we simply do not understand. I love when things are mysterious and we can speculate, but in this case there is nothing to even speculate about. We simply do not know what happened or why. We have no idea what the Witness wants or what it did.

Some of it might get explained in the raid, but I believe that the main campaign plot point should be explained in the campaign. There was a brief possibility that some stuff would be explained in the exotic mission for the machine gun, Deterministic Chaos, but instead of clarifying the Veil, it just made it even more confusing.

Basically, the mission explains that the Vex tried making a copy of the Veil, but the copy was not successful entirely. The copy? The Black Heart in the Black Garden. It obviously didn't pan out for the Vex, but it's unfathomable to me why an object of Light would turn into the Black Heart, even as a failed copy. Not to mention that the Vex can't handle paracausality. Perhaps that is why they failed? There's a lot of text involved in the mission, but it does not explain anything further and it ends with us getting a core from a Vex mind that has yet to be researched.

This might possibly all make clear sense in the future, and I don't mind waiting at all. But I do feel like we could've easily gotten more substantial information during the campaign. The Veil was an entirely new thing introduced here and the whole campaign has us chasing after it, but we have no information about what it is. And the information we do have is wildly conflicting. It's tied to the Light and it's an object of the Traveler, but it's also able to be copied as the Black Heart and can be used to slice open the Traveler? Like, on one hand it's obviously Light based, but on the other it's highly dangerous and helpful to Darkness.

We'll probably find out eventually so I'm not too bothered, I just think we should've found out during the campaign. It's definitely going to be a sore point for everyone, since we literally do not know what we were doing.

On another note, we're finally fully done with Nezarec! A thing I am glad to be wrong and overly cautious about. I had huge dread over hyping myself up for something like that and only for it to not pan out so I advised caution. Luckily, it is panning out!

However, I have some issues with that as well and it mostly stems from the past year of Nezarec simply not being set up sufficiently enough. He got set up as a past disciple and then as having died ages ago and then as having several of his body parts ground into dust and also as a "traitor." Assumed traitor to the Witness since he was a disciple. Then suddenly he's still on the Witness' side. For ... reasons? I guess raid lore will clarify.

I liked the fact that he's shown as "stuck" in a prison of being in between life and death (his lines in the strike), since that fits with where he would be given that he died. And was turned into tea. But we know that he can still speak from his remains so that's cool! I also like how he sounds utterly silly evil. Like in a good way silly. He just sounds evil, which is sometimes refreshing given that all our villains get expanded to the point where I feel sorry for them. I hope he stays like this.

Another thing that bothers me is, again, the whole nightmare thing. It's reiterated once more that he's tied to nightmares, but Lightfall CE specifically untied nightmares from the Lunar Pyramid and Nezarec. Which falls with my issues with him not being set up properly; we should've known about his powers unambiguously when he was introduced in Plunder, or earlier. Again, this might be explained in the raid lore, but I feel like it's something that should've been explained as a part of the setup. I already made the suggestion that Nezarec may have made the nightmares and has nightmare powers and that he distributed that power to other Pyramid ships which would explain why the others have them. I hope this gets addressed or it'll bother me forever because Collector's Edition lore stuff is usually crucial to understanding the new expansion and characters so the contradiction is currently odd. Until we get an explanation ofc.

Another thing I like is how some Tormentors are named! And when they're named, they're also called "Imprints of Nezarec." Suggesting that they're either controlled by him or made by/from him. Or modelled. Not sure which word to use here but they're definitely tied to him. It's an interesting little tidbit. Would explain how they look half Rhulk and half.... something else. That something else, as I've speculated, might be Nezarec and it might explain why the Witness wanted his body parts (though this is then an issue yet again with Plunder because we prevented it from having those body parts. So if the Witness acquired some other body parts regardless, then what was the point of Plunder. I digress).

Also the first Tormentor we see is the only one with a different title:

Hoping for more info about them! Possibly through the raid!

I read all lore tabs that are available and I loved those! Some really cool stuff in some of them. These are all available for reading right away in collections! Seasonal gauntlets have really sweet lore with Saint-14, Caretaker sword actually made me cry with lore about Drifter helping the Eliksni and specifically Eliksni kids. Guardian's Angel Ghost shell killed me dead with lore about Mara being concerned for Crow and Crow accepting her help. Tech Witch Ghost shell mentions Sjur Eido!!!!

From the campaign lore stuff and little details, I really love the lore book Last Days which is about Neomuna citizens preparing for cryo. Some really sweet interactions and information. There's another gay couple in there! And a really neat concept of how the Neomuna citizens choose different appearance for themselves when they're in virtual reality which consists of choosing an avatar and gender (!) and they can change that any time.

Absolutely thrilled that Maya Sundaresh and Chioma Esi, aka Golden Age science wives, were revealed to have been among the founders of Neomuna. They even have areas named after them!

Also super excited to do some side missions like the ones in the Archive about other Cloud Striders. The leader of the Archive, a lady called Quinn sounds really cool and she's voiced in the quests and in patrols, as well as some other really cool characters. Quinn is also super neat because of the lore of the exotic ship Tropopause in which she speaks to Ikora and manages to completely stun Ikora in what interpret as Ikora's wlw impulse. This can be read immediately in collections.

Also, Calus is finally dead and gone! Good riddance bitch! Also super chilling cutscene with him pissing off the Witness. What a bad move, Calus. But I love to see the difference between Calus and Rhulk in how they treat the Witness. Super interesting.

Our Ghost... Man. My boy needs a break. If I see anyone slandering him for anything, I will personally end them. He literally cannot stop being taken over. It's super concerning (and also not fully explained why the Witness can just do that). On the upside, my Ghost shell (catboy) was super funny in those scenes:

Kitty Witness real.

Overall, I liked it and I feel like the story and the new setting and everything adjacent to it has a lot of potential and I'm excited to play more and get more information as we get through the year. I really do think that we'll get everything explained eventually, but it's definitely slightly disappointing that no questions were answered. As a matter of fact, we just got more questions. Things that we never knew existed were brought up only to not be elaborated on at all, but they were treated like the most important thing in the world and crucial aspects of the story. Even if you know that we'll find out eventually, it can feel strange to follow a self-contained expansion story and not get any clarifications as to why we're doing the things we're doing.

Looking forward to seeing more though! Exploring the world is definitely a blast and there's a lot of stuff to do. Strand is also incredibly cool to use and I can't wait to get all upgrades.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #lightfall #lightfall spoilers #long post #i have some complaints but also i try to keep positive until everything is wrapped up #we'll 100% get more information as things go on but i understand and agree with being frustrated that some of it wasn't shown right away #especially with how little time we have going forward until final shape #unless they don't really have much to show and we'll be in this limbo until final shape #no clue. still too early to tell. we'll make the full judgement later #for now i am enjoying it despite the little issues since those can be fixed in the future

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #3 | 03.31.23

Almost April already, huh? Time does really fly when you are busy. If February promised to be a stressful month for me and the team, March has been hell let loose. Our second trimester has ended as of today and our plan of action is to do as many things as we can during April, as we will hopefully have less workload from our master.

Without further ado—let's see what we managed to do this month!

Fixing sprites has still been one of our priorities. Truth is our master is doing a good job at teaching us how to do things better, and the eyes that once did those sprites are not the same watching them now. One of our bigger struggles is the lack of personal—we are literally four people doing our best with our daily lives while also being in charge of whole departments, and that is a bit crazy sometimes because there's a lot to do. I hope we can hire some help for the full game, because I don't want us all to crunch forever :').

Following the character art train of thought, this month we will also be giving priority to finishing at least one of our key art / promotional art pieces. Raquel is already working on polishing the sketch and we hope we can finish it soon to really start having a solid package of key art to represent us and our game.

Final piece will include bodies attached to heads, mind you. Unless...

Ahá! Remember last month when we said Raquel and I were working on some LiL backgrounds for a master assignment? Well, they are looking pretty good! We got rid of one forest background during the prologue outline process to alleviate some workload, but we seized the opportunity to bring it back! We won't be showing that one yet as we want to finish it and make an individual post for it, but you can have a look at this one instead!

Taking a stroll through Limbo's woods seems like a good idea...

Not too many news from the writing department this month. I'm going full speed with the fixes and editing the demo script like I planned, and I hope to have everything ready next month, but we'll see how things go. The changes to the script are being very beneficial to the general pace of the prologue. We want to get to the juicy part as soon as possible and have as much content of the LIs as we can, right?

The main lore document is still on the works too, but, dare I say it, I'm very happy with it! I'm secretly hoping we can offer the lore book as a physical reward for our future kickstarter, but that's still far away in the future. The artbook is our main priority!

This month we have also focused on something really special and important that sadly we won't be revealing until it's done because, well, it's in the making, and no one wants to see it all ugly and in progress, right? But we are working very hard and are very excited to be able to show it soon! Agh!

Also, our GUI is almost, almost completely finished! Only the title screen is left, so we are leaving you a preview of another screen right below. Our designer is once again doing an impeccable job.

Yep, you'll have a compendium with all the important bits and lore pieces you discover. Only in the full game, though.

It has been an okay-ish month for us. Very stressful because of our master; there's definitely a lot of excitement we have been bottling up as we found ourselves unable to work on LiL like we wanted to. I hope that April, or at least the beginning of it (before the last trimester of our degree starts getting serious and unhinged, which I'm afraid will happen) proves to be productive and enough to at least tie up some loose ends. The team needs a couple of days to rest, but we are ready to get back on track and do as much as we can this next month.

Thank you all so much for your unending support and for your patience, it means the world to us :') 💜 We hope you all are doing alright!

#lost in limbo #devlog #visual novel #otome #indiedev

[strxwberrycosmos]

"jamais vu"

Jungkook smiles wryly and shakes his head, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact with his hands shoved into his pockets and his eyes watering. “Yeah, I wish life had a reset button. But I guess I just have to deal with it huh? That's just how the real world works,” he chuckles and looks up at Hoseok, biting down on his lips. “this isn't one of my games..”

Hoseok catches sight of the gleam in the younger ones eyes and his chest is singed with a sharp, deep, pain. “Hey..” he begins to reach out then pulls his hand back hesitantly, causing Jungkook to be hit with that same sharp pain. “I wish this was all just a game. Yeah, it'd be a lot easier to get over this if I could just press a button.” Hoseok grimaces and clenches his fists. “but I can't continue like this Jungkook, being so close to you and knowing you feel the same, only to have one thing stand in our way.. I blame myself though.” He locks eyes with Jungkook and a hot tear rolls down his cheek before he quickly wipes it away. “I feel myself breaking down everyday I have to pretend not to love you in front of everyone else, of pretending like just being friends is okay with me. I feel so stuck and torn down.. Not only in my head but it's showing on the outside too. And it'll continue unless I step away.. For good this time.” Hoseok's face is streaked with a few more tears at this point, his hand gripping onto his own arm and his jaw tightening. “I just wanted to show you that I could be good to you, as more than a best friend.. I only wanted to make you smile..”

Jungkooks shoulders gently shake with his quiet crying as he listens to the older male's words, and he tightly grabs onto the plush upholstery of the white sofa he's sitting on. “Please..” he starts softly before getting louder and braver. “Give me a way to fix this..” Jungkook felt like his heart wasn't even beating as Hoseok only stared back into his eyes with frustration and defeat. “.. So, what do I do now..?” Jungkook felt as if he could only beg fate to save him and give them a second chance at this point. “All the memories we have together, our friendship.. Is it better now to just pretend none of it ever happened..?” Jungkook was only getting more emotional and slowly stood up from the sofa. “All the little inside jokes, all of the good mornings, goodnights, the future plans we had.. Everything?” Hoseok covered his mouth with one hand and slightly turns away from the boy that stood in front of him, his brow knitting together. “Hobi,” a ghost of a smile graces Jungkook's face before it's gone again, as he realizes the little nickname slipped out by habit. “I know this isn't the first time we've tried distancing ourselves for the better, but why does this feel more permanent..? I can't keep telling myself I'm alright when it feels like that.”

Hoseok scoffs and sniffs before trying to gather himself enough to speak again. “The trial and error of trying to distance ourselves is over. It has to be actual this time. It hurts to have to do it over and over again, only coming back to disappointment and a reminder of why exactly we can't be together.” He then grabs at his hair frustratedly and moves for the door, twisting the handle and swinging the door halfway open. “I can't keep it up!!" He suddenly yells out in angst. "Every word of mine, every thought is fucking consumed, by you..." He looks back at the one person he couldn't get out of his mind and shakes his head. "And I have to suppress it all.. I can't fucking hold you like I want, you can't say anything I wish to hear without guilt..” he holds onto the doorknob with one hand, the other holding onto the doorway as he faces outside, nearly doubled over from the feeling of having the breath knocked out of him. Jungkook comes up to his side cautiously, placing his hand on Hoseok's shoulder as he clenches his teeth to keep from crying any louder. This couldn't actually be a goodbye. “Kook.. I just can't do it anymore.. You know I love you, so much. Everytime we do this I come back, but this... This is it.. You're all I want and I can't have you. So I have to move on instead of torturing myself this way. This, is how we fix it.” Jungkook turns Hoseok around and desperately takes his face in his hands looking him straight in his eyes, Hoseok placing his hands over the other's. Both of their visions were blurred from the excessive involuntary crying, but they could see how red and puffy the other's eyes were, both of their eyelashes accentuated by the tears that clung to them. “Please.” Jungkook says again seriously, and Hoseok's bottom lip quivers as he tries to stay strong. “I don't know what I'll do if we go through with this Hoseok. I already feel as if I can barely breathe right now.. Maybe we'll get a better chance in the future.. Please, can we fix it..” Jungkook frantically searches Hoseok's eyes for anything that says he'll stay.

Hoseok pulls Jungkook’s hands down from his face and timidly places a gentle kiss on his forehead. “I want to fix it-”

Jungkook starts up again talking while Hoseok does, intending to encourage him “A-And maybe we still can, I know it seems like we only try to fail again but-”

“Honestly though, Kook-” Hoseok says frustratedly, his emotions intensifying again as he begins to pull away.

“Over and over again but I'm ready to wait until the timing is right, I haven't figured out how we'll make it work but we will-” Jungkook tries to hold onto Hoseok as he moves towards the door again.

“How much longer Jungkook?! Tell me when's the right time to let go and move on?!” They were both raising their voices to be heard over the other at this point. Hoseok already had one foot out of the door. “You know I love you more than anything but nothing about our circumstances are going to change!! Time has shown that..” Hoseok started to fall apart again, his voice breaking and becoming quiet. “Please, tell me, give me the fix if you have it-”

“The fix could just be time Hoseok- I don't know how, no, but it's killing me just to think of letting you go like this!! You're my best friend, and you know you're more than that even..”

The older boy whips around and slams his fist against the brick wall on the outside of the apartment, tears still coming even if he thought he had no tears left to cry. “... And what is “more than that” and yet had to remain unspeakable? Kook, what're we doing? We're just stuck in limbo, with nowhere to go.” He laughs at himself and continues, “Limbo.. Guess this has been a game the whole time. Just not the kind you can reset, and we've lost, we don't get a million tries. This isn't overwatch or something- no it's more like being on your last life with super mario brothers, or fucking pacman- but what am I doing sitting here rambling about games for..”

Jungkook can't help the corners of his mouth turning up the slightest bit, and the two of them reach for each other's faces again, resting their foreheads together for a moment. Hoseok's hand carefully petting Jungkook's hair, and Jungkook carefully running his thumb over the other's cheek. A moment of silence then ensued, before Hoseok's broken voice pierced the air again, “Did I at least succeed in making you smile..?” Hoseok asks gently, and slowly pulls back for the last time, letting his hands linger in the others dark hair a moment longer.

“Hoseok, please- I know things are hard this way but please don't leave-” Jungkook grabs onto Hoseok's arm.

“I won't be able to stop thinking about you for a long while, even when it hurts me so bad-” Hoseok pulls his hand away and steps backwards, back outside.

“Then don't leave, we don't have to do this-” Jungkook steps closer with every step taken back, reaching for his friend, for hoseok, for the one he loved.

“We've been through this pain before, it's just a little stronger this time, a little more permanent, but we're going to be okay-” he looks at Jungkook sympathetically and simultaneously injured, backing away from his touch.

“Hoseok don't do this me, to us, please-” Jungkook's breathing was getting heavier as the love of his life was slowly slipping through his fingertips right before his eyes.

“It won't be easy this time, but we need to both understand, we know there can't be an “us”. Not really-” The older male begins to turn around facing sideways to jungkook, speaking to the younger from a few feet now.

“Give it, give us another chance to make it this time? Please..” Jungkook stood holding his doorknob and tightly holding onto the hem of the bottom of his white t-shirt as hoseok continued to turn away.

“I didn't want to give up…” Hoseok mumbles barely audible, and slowly begins to walk away. Promising himself not to look back.

Jungkook hears Hoseok, and watches as the person he cared about most, walked right out of his life until fate felt kind enough to maybe give them another go. Jungkook replies slowly in a loud and clear voice, one still tainted with brokenness and shaking, causing Hoseok to falter in his step, and almost turn around. “I love you Jung Hoseok, and I don't give up.”

- admin kuma

#jhope #bts #bts jungkook #bts jhope #junghope #hopekook #jungkook #jeon jungkook #jung hoseok #angst #jamais vu #fanfic #drabble #bts moodboard #moodboards with context