#why release news of a dlc when you can’t say what it will be about

[twilightknight17]

Last night on P5T: We start the DLC at last, jet-set into a twister of nonsense, find mice instead of squids, and I freak out a bit over Satanael~

If you want to skip me ranting about the Velvet Room, scroll down to the big bold text. XD

Look at him. He’s beautiful. And he knows megidolaon!

But my Quest for Satanael, I feel, has exposed another flaw in this game. It’s not a problem if you’re just playing straight through, but if you’re my dumb ass and you want to finish the compendium/obtain Satanael/forge the best weapons, it starts to become an issue.

Fusion is expensive if you’re pulling things out of the compendium. You need personas of specific levels to fuse the weapons, and obviously the best weapons are very high level personas, which won’t drop during battle. Special fusions like Lucifer, Chi You, and Satanael have five or six components each. The cost can be mitigated some by using personas obtained during fights, but in that case, you lose skill options if you’re trying to pass on a specific one via fusion chain. (I can’t imagine trying to get a specific skill on a high-level persona in this game. Ugh. At least megidolaon was a base skill on one of Satanael’s ingredients.)

Which brings us to the actual issue: there’s… no good way to get money in this game.

Money is purely obtained from winning battles. There are no bits and bobs to sell, no money from releasing unneeded personas, nothing. Which means that if you are trying to raise enough money to pay for your multitude of weapons and high-level persons, you are going to be replaying prior battles.

A Lot.

The battles in the final kingdom give around 10K yen, from what I can tell. That can be boosted to around 18K if all three party members have a sub-persona with the “Easy Money” skill. In comparison, personas like Michael and Lucifer (components of Satanael), cost somewhere in the 20-25K range to call from the compendium. You need Michael to make Lucifer in the first place, so you’re going to have to summon him from the compendium at least once.

I don’t know if I did something wrong or inefficiently or what, but I spent the whole game feeling like I barely had enough money for the things I wanted. New weapons often broke the bank, and I wasn’t always using Easy Money because I wanted to actually take specific skills or personas into battle. By the time I was trying to get Satanael, I was basically grinding the same mission multiple times in a row because I knew I could finish it in the least number of turns. It's a little disheartening after unlocking all the endgame bonuses and tricks in Royal and racking up hundreds of thousands of yen in one go to spend on fusion.

That’s not even counting the fusion accidents. The first time I went to fuse Satan (also a component of Satanael), the forge exploded. That probably should have been my cue to start save-scumming, but I didn’t. I assumed that special fusions were immune to fusion accidents. They are not. I placed all of Satanael’s components in the forge and it exploded, wasting least 30K yen.

In hindsight, I probably could have loaded the autosave. But I honestly forgot that the autosave was happening. I always saved manually when I stopped and didn’t worry about anything else. But that’s not the point.

The point is that Satanael should not have been able to explode. X’D

(Side note: fusing Lucifer got a special animation. It’s the only one so far. Why just him???)

But yeah. My compendium still isn’t done, and I’m not even close to the best weapons. I kind of want to take them into merciless mode for NG+, so that means going back and grinding more. But not right now. Right now, we’re off to Spray Paint Land.

It’s time for DLC!

We begin this chilly November late afternoon/evening/whatever with more Quality Morgana Faces.

It has to be November, because Goro’s on the team at this point. Plain and simple. There’s literally only like a 3-week period this can take place in. Akira receives a text from Sumi that says she wants him to meet her in a nearby alley. I guess she was on her way to the cafe. But Morgana says that he knows when to mind his own business, and to call if Akira needs anything.

Call what phone, Mona? Are you gonna answer the cafe phone? Just admit you wanna nap.

Wait. Wait. Morgana. Wake up. The plot is happening. Wake up!

Well, I suppose that means Goro isn’t the artist. He wouldn't have had time while all the Okumura stuff was happening. All these sad mice, tho. Very strange. And isn’t Guernica the artist from Ib? I went on a classic RPGMaker horror kick a few weeks back. I’d watched Angels of Death a while ago and really liked it, and so I watched playthroughs of Ib and Mad Father for the first time. Ib was good, Mad Father was… mediocre, I think.

...oh. That’s Guertena. Neeeeeeevermind.

So, Sumi wants to show you a mural of Arsène being eaten by a giant rat. Which is… not what I was expecting the mural of Akira’s persona to look like. As they puzzle over how the hell a picture of Arsène ended up in a random alley in Yongen, Goro also shows up, ready to investigate.

…...I swear to god, Atlus, why is he the only one who you won’t call by his first name? Also, how is he here to investigate? How did he know about a random mural in the backstreets when everyone is busy paying attention to the giant one on the security building?

He asks if Sumi and Akira had anything to do with this mural, then laughs at Sumi when she gets all flustered by the question. They speculate on the artist’s motives for a bit, since Guernica’s identity is unknown, and then Akira hears a voice calling for the Phantom Thieves from inside the wall.

This made me laugh very hard for inside joke reasons, but Goro assures Sumi that there is no way that there is a person trapped in that wall.

But the mural starts to glow, Arsène disappears, and everything and all of us start getting sucked into the rat’s mouth. And I love and appreciate Sumi dearly, but… none of us are safe here, and you have had your persona for like a month. I should be protecting you.

Joker arrives in a spray-paint covered cityscape, and I already love this place. Holy shit the colors. We’re immediately thrown into a battle, and shooting the little dudes throws paint all over the ground around them. Hehehe. It’s like we’re in Splatoon or something.

...oh. I was joking. But we ARE in Splatoon!

When you’re standing on the enemy’s color, you can’t do anything. No attacks or skills. So there’s definitely an element of strategizing here. I really like it, even if I did die on my first attempt because I was figuring out how it all worked.

……Lavenza, I appreciate the classic literature, but you’re scaring me just a little. XDDDD

Anyway, Joker gets surrounded, the other two jump in to save him, and we get a minor pointing Spiderman meme of “wait, you have powers?” It’s also a little silly because Sumi’s idle stance is a constant pose. Your arms are gonna hurt.

Sumi clarifies to Goro what happened in the Palace when she awakened, and he’s just glad she can fight, even if she’s not formally a Phantom Thief. He clarifies that he is only sort of kind of a Phantom Thief for reasons that would take too long to go into.

...my dear, that is every situation involving these two.

But no, this is completely unrealistic. Goro would have at least a question or two about a random Palace that just spawned somewhere. If this game doesn’t imply that he asked something before January…….

They hear screaming, and a have their first encounter with a non-hostile denizen of this world, who collapses in Sumi’s arms, begs for help, and explodes into paint, leaving Sumi concerned and traumatized. X’D

Goro reminds her that these are cognitions, not even bothering to hide how confident he is in his knowledge about the metaverse, and the trio follows the continuing screams to a mouse massacre.

A crazed woman with a parrot is just gunning down vast amounts of cute mouse people. Paint is going everywhere. It’s insane. Even Goro is put off by the sight.

Meanwhile, Sumi refuses to stand for this and just goes right up to confront the problem.

The bird’s name is Jerri, and I had to message Po in the middle of this, because I was having a crisis.

I can’t unsee it. Help.

Anyway, this is Guernica, and she wants to paint the walls with our blood!

Fortunately, everyone is rescued by a mysterious hole opening up under us, and we meet our savior.

Well… one of us is.

This is Luca, and she’s so happy to see us, because she wants us to help Guernica. Apparently, she was different before Jerri showed up. She felt a kinship with the Phantom Thieves and their quest against corruption. Now, she has strange powers to "peer into people's hearts", and her art can… basically cause a variation of a psychotic breakdown.

Apparently her mental state is fucked because someone stole her Treasure (the first piece of art she ever made) and broke it into pieces. The memo section says, "She was driven to carnage by the theft of her heart's core, prompting her to go on killing sprees in the Metaverse." Which has some WILD implications that I doubt the game is gonna touch on. X’’’’D

Luka also takes us to see this world’s version of the Arsène mural, which is… gruesome? Like, there’s bones sticking out.

Apparently this art was Guernica’s last cry for help before she snapped completely. And she knows what Akira’s persona looked like because of that power to “peek into people’s hearts”. It’s a bit wobbly, but we’ll go with that for now.

Guernica’s “first statement” is in three pieces, so we’re off to retrieve the first one. And I love Luca already.

Jerri wants us to hand over Luca. I might have considered it if she didn’t call me a mop. She claims she’ll send us right home, but that sounds like bullshit.

Also, shoutout to Goro for using his “real” voice here. Time to get dangerous~

It’s nice to hear, because I actually find myself missing abrasive, snarky third-sem Goro compared to the Detective Prince.

This whole thing is such a wild vibe of Splatoon, TWEWY, and Jet Set Radio. The music is fun, the aesthetics are top-notch, and so far the levels have had that extra level of challenge of working with the paint mechanics. It’s really great.

Luka’s ability is creating “manholes” to warp from place to place, and Goro is quickly getting tired of having to jump down them. XD

Our hideout is basically down in the sewers. Luca fished new weapons out of the trash for us, and there’s no Velvet Room, so I guess we’re stuck with whatever sub-personas drop during the battle stages.

We get to have a fun conversation about bouldering, and I caught Goro blinking in the picture, but he actually looks genuinely surprised that you’d want to come try his hobby.

I love the mental image of the three of them going rock-climbing together.

And then, tragically, the Switch ran out of battery. But I’m loving it so far! This is a fun side-story, even if I am a little skeptical of how they’re going to justify everything when they get back to the real world. I’d need to go watch the beginning of January again, but I’d swear there was explicit dialogue that neither of them knew the other had powers beforehand.

Oh well. A thought for another day. Right now, we wonder what kind of disguised god named itself “Jerri”. XDDD

#Li plays P5T #loooong post #just scraping the image limit; blame the cool spray paint XDDD

[everygame]

Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4)

Developed/Published by: Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment Released: 12/11/2020 Completed: 11/01/2023 Completion: 100% playthrough. Trophies / Achievements: 82%

Well,  I wrote “see you in a year, Miles Morales” after playing through Spider-Man’s DLC and it took me about a year and a half to get to this, but I'll count it. I’ve written about two of these, so let’s just bullet point this one out, no order.

Peter Parker’s new face suuucks. I know it’s a done deal and it’s not even like the original face actor (John Bubniak) does his voice, but the new guy doesn’t fit the voice at all and does, as everyone says, looks like “we’ve got Tom Holland at home” except even more of a twat. At least he’s only in this briefly, but man, it’s going to be tough to play the next one. And I like the PS4 Spider-Man suit so much, too! It might even be my favourite Spidey design.

Miles is a great character. He’s completely out of his depth, and I love that they’ve drilled down on this even down to how he moves through the world, with a more awkward swinging style than the OG Spidey.

Unfortunately the main storyline here is a bit… cliche? Not only does it hit all the beats you expect, there’s far too much convenience to it. You’re in serious trouble when the mysterious baddie turns out to be like, the only other character that’s in the game, and without spoiling too much, super-hero stories are (imho) at their weakest when you think the existence of the hero might be the reason why the villains exist (rather than vice versa) and ending with the same “Eyyyy, New York protects it’s own, Spider-Man” beat again is played-out.

The worst thing about this is that the game is absolutely at it’s strongest when Miles Morales is doing what it feels like he set out to do, which is be his neighbourhood Spider-Man. I can’t tell if this is something that happened when they turned this from something DLC-adjacent into a full-priced game, but there’s a thread of missions where he’s helping out his local bodega and stuff that basically gets dropped completely and it actually feels unfinished. The conclusion is given in a… podcast, where your side-kick Ganke literally names every person in Harlem that helped which made me think it was going to lead to a conclusion where the big-bad kidnaps them all or something, but… no. Nothing.

To be honest, actually, that this uses the whole city is a weakness. Whenever I play these big open world games I think about how I never really learn the city, they’re just a backdrop to whatever I’m doing, unlike your Yakuzas and that, where you’re intimately familiar with the map and it becomes ever more real. Why couldn’t Harlem have been that? I don’t really need to be swinging all the way to the bloody financial district. Fence me in!

Yet… the game still feels great to play, all the side-missions and collectibles and shit are a breeze to play/fun to collect, and you don’t even notice that just as in the original the upgrades barely matter. Even here when combat and stealth are even more complicated with new invisibility and electricity powers (that aren’t especially well tutorialised) you can just basically play the game as competently as you wish and enjoy it.

Why does this game have a museum flashback? Is this something that all PlayStation Studios games have to have? It feels like such an afterthought here though, adding nothing to the major problem that the main baddie is a big-time idiot who, at the end of the game is basically running around with their fingers in their ears shouting “la la la I’m not listening” and it really, really undoes the pathos. I ain’t crying about a museum visit again, Sony!

I’m so very tired of Ashley Burch’s one voice. I guess I never played enough Nolan North games to feel this before.

Will I ever play it again? I like that the main storyline is so quick and actually, I did briefly consider beating the NG+ quickly to platinum this. But my backlog spreadsheet has more than 700 games on it. Really.

Final Thought: Starting to feel a bit weird about how much of my media consumption is Marvel now. At the time of writing I play about an hour of Marvel Snap a day and the next game I’ve downloaded to play through is Guardians of the Galaxy. Ah well, I did spend the Christmas period watching Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, I’ll let myself away with it.

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#video games #games #gaming #marvel #spider-man #miles morales #spider-man: miles morales #ps4 #sony playstation 4 #text #txt #review #2020

[teronsrickman]

WELL... You all know that the FarCry fandom, and in particular FarCry5, over the past year has become for me as beloved, close and dear as Outlast, GF and the like once were. I dug into the fandom so deeply and with such pleasure, the characters were always in my thoughts, and, naturally, the release of new content was something great and scary for me at the same time. (By the way, I warn you about the mate in the post and that my opinion may differ from yours. And also my opinion may change during the discussion of the game with you or just after a while) After the release of the DLC with Vaas and the DLC with Pagan, honestly, I no longer wanted the DLC with Joseph to come out, because I was afraid that the canons I loved would change there too. I liked a lot of things about these DLCs, but they were overshadowed by a lot of things that I didn't like too much. However, I hasten to reassure you, this DLC, in my opinion, was not as bad as I thought. I would even say that of all three additions, I liked it the most. Therefore, there will be only a few claims here (only a few, but a bitch of huge claims), and otherwise I have nothing to criticize this DLC for. However, for the first half of the game, we were still biased towards the DLC because of the past parts. And personally, I was determined in advance that I would not like a lot and was ready to scold everything right away. Therefore, in the first couple of emotions, I cursed very strongly at things that now seem normal to me, but by this I did not want to offend anyone. Now my opinion about the game is a little different than when I was in the game. All the same, thoughts were scattered on the shelves. Perhaps I didn’t burn so much, because I no longer had any hopes for Ubisoft and understood that something might be waiting for me that would upset me? And something really upset me. Let's, as usual, first what we didn't like, then what we liked. DID NOT LIKE: "live Boomer in Yara and Hurk's letter says that Ubisoft will fuck up a lot if they make New Dawn canon in the DLC" © my comment under criticism of the DLC with Pagan AAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHA This is hysterical laughter, I feel so sad about this, yes, but at the same time it has become some kind of meme and I already have fun with the things that Ubisoft does and how I react to it. The DLC has made it clear that Far Cry New Dawn is canon, and the collapse ending is canon. I don't know HOW else I can show how upset I am about this. I'll digress right away: I LOVE New Dawn. I can't call it a good game, it's just normal and I love it, I would even say I love it very much, although I criticize it. (If you want, I'll write an opinion on her as well) I love her as an alternative development of events, as an alternative ending, where the Deputy resists. I love it like a headcanon, like an experiment, because it's really interesting, but what would happen if the Collapse really happened? And what would happen if some people escaped and survived a nuclear war? Yes, come on, I fell in love with the Joseph/Deputy pairing with New Dawn and even wrote fanfiction. It's cool to see such familiar characters in such an interesting outcome. BUT NOT AS IN THE CANONICAL OUTCOME OF EVENTS. Now on the shelves, why I wouldn't want New Dawn FC to be canon. Reason: inconsistencies in canonical sources. The whole of Far Cry 6 literally says that the "Only you" ending is canon. From the notes on the Boomer container in FC6, we are made clear that the cult in Hope County is functioning, which means that the Deputy lost and remained in the cult. (or he/she won idk suddenly he likes the sect). Also, Hurk sending Boomer to Yara is direct evidence that the Collapse did not happen in 2018. And for a second, in Far Cry 6, the validity period is October 2021, as it is written in Dani's ID. “But in New Dawn, only Montana was bombed, and the rest of the world is intact, so FC6 can occur after the collapse!” Fuck, no. Can not. Because if so, then again there are a lot of questions. Why aren't people from the district being rescued, since the whole world has survived? Why don't scientists come to explore an ecosystem that is acquiring new features? Why didn’t Rush say that the whole world is intact, except for Montana, and why then does he ride around America and help people if everything is ok? Why is Boomer's grave in FCND located in Hope County? Will Dani then send him back from Yara to die there? "Ajay blew up Montana." NO. Okay, I can believe that Pagan really could have a nuclear weapon, although the reason why he wants to blow up America, for me personally, is very far-fetched. Due to the fact that American organizations ruined his affairs and set up assassination attempts, to bomb an entire country, and not find specific people and take revenge? Besides, I don't think Pagan is that stupid and doesn't know how nuclear war works. If he presses the button, then in less than an hour, half of the planet will be destroyed, because retaliatory nuclear strikes in other countries are coordinated in a few minutes, and if at least one person launches missiles, the whole world will launch them in response, and then the promised Joseph, Collapse. Here Joseph fumbles how it works. However, Pagan couldn't be that stupid, and Ajay isn't so vicious as to fire missiles at the country he grew up in. The detail with the fact that Pagan has nuclear weapons under the palace is good as a reference, as an interesting thing for an ALTERNATIVE version of the development of events in the world of Far Cry. Although I can't believe Ajay is capable of such a thing. Personally, I don't take Pagan's nuclear weapons as an argument that New Dawn is canon. I would not want this detail with weapons under the palace to exist at all, because it only confuses people and makes them argue and argue about the canons. Well, a mini argument to the fact that I consider FC ND an alternative - in FC5 and in the Book of Joseph there is not a single mention of Megan, and even more so of Ethan. (“Forgiveness” has not finished reading yet, if there is something there, tell me) Which suggests that these characters were invented after the release of fc5, invented specifically for New Dawn (which probably was not originally conceived), and stuck into the plot of fc5 very indirectly and unconvincingly. Oh, and it also turns out that Joseph knew what would happen to Ethan and still raised him the way it happened, left him alone for the whole village. “Having chosen the path to escape from fate, we meet it there”? Or what? You may not agree with me, but I will not stop thinking that Far Cry New Dawn is an alternative development of events, it is, roughly speaking, a headcanon. This is evidenced by a lot of things that I described and in which the fans are already confused. And what do Ubisoft do in the DLC with Joseph? That's right - they confuse people even more by presenting the FСND as canon, sending all the details of past and future games to hell. Okay, it would not be very good not to insert something from New Dawn into the DLC, because New Dawn is beautiful and I liked how the symbolic moments were transferred from there to Joseph's mind. But the DLC did not give any super significant information in the lore of the characters, although they have as many as 13 chapters of the FC5 off-screen story in the Word of Joseph, 13 CHAPTERS, why couldn’t, for example, instead of Ethan, depict something from there? With an Deputy, the moments were good, really interesting. It's great that they added it, because otherwise how to add an Deputy from the 5th part, if he really doesn't have a face and gender, and in fact many people just have their own OC there. (This is cool, by the way.) By the way, Joseph, when he enters the room to the Assistant in the bunker, says "I know whose room this is, the last member of my family." That is, he already recognizes him as a family, and then a minute later he comes out and: Who is this "But he is my worst enemy" ?? What? But why, after the New Dawn part of the DLC, couldn't the voice say "this is what it would be like if the deputy disobeyed you and continued to resist", and not "this is what will happen, because you are now you sit in the bunker alone with an deputy and cry for your brothers and sister and your mind has your head with memories and visions, but soon you will come to Eden and there see to it Ethan does not kill himself, okie?" Again, even here New Dawn is the canon ... WHY? It’s just that all my above-described arguments about the connection between the games and the adequacy of the ending with “Only you” go to waste. Ubisoft is again confusing everyone, not answering questions, but creating them, just driving me into depression, and probably not only me. Ubisoft does not seem to pay attention to details that players may not even think about or touch, but people sitting in the game's fandom notice all this. There are many such examples, from those that I described, to comics and the games themselves. In the FC5 game itself, there is a story of Joseph and his late wife and daughter, there is not a word about this in the Book of Joseph, but in the comics it is again. Maybe I missed this moment in the Book? Or did Yubi just forget to put it in? Pagan, it seems, according to his interview in Yara's magazine, is alive in 2021, and then in the comic book Anton is first like “I don’t know if Pagan really existed ..” and after two frames “But Pagan died ... ..” Grandfather, drink pills , you have magazines with his interviews scattered all over the villa. Why is Ubisoft creating this confusion? God knows, I'll save myself from her with headcanons. Faith: I also didn’t like Vera, or rather I liked she, but there are complaints about the plot. I actually fucked up all the scenes in the bunker (in the van) in the recording of the passage, because I listened to the phrase of the Voice that it was “what would happen if all the Seeds were saved” and began to perceive it as real memories. But even after I was told that these were theories in Joseph's head, I still gave a fuck about all the visions in the van, because I was biased and determined to criticize any content that Ubisoft would give me. Because before that I was disappointed with past DLCs. However, then I calmed down, revised it, and now I don’t like only one scene - with Faith. I didn't like Joseph's behavior very much. For all his cruelty and madness, it always sincerely seemed to me that he was not capable of injuring his family unless a voice ordered him to. And it seemed to me very OOС that he swung at Faith, and in general behaved aggressively. Whether in the place of faith, even John, even Jacob, I do not believe that Joseph can attack them or beat them. Only if the voice commands him, and then he will do it through pain, because he loves his family. Three or two Faith. Where? When? Where to share? I've heard about this theory for a long time. However, there is nothing about this in the Book of Joseph. Why? I considered it only a theory and got burned in the passage of the DLC on this fact, referring to the Book of Joseph. However, now I literally looked up the bowels of the Internet and found a note about Lana, okay. Selena was never found, although somewhere someone said that another Faith was Selena. Here I admit that I was wrong and burned out without understanding the issue. Then the claim changes. Why didn't they show, for example, what happened to other Faiths, why they disappeared from the Gates of Eden? This would show the sect in even more detail. But instead of revealing the issue with other Faiths, showing these scenes directly, they only confuse us, on the head with the statue of Joseph. Maybe my friends and I missed it, but we still didn’t understand who Vera pushed, who Joseph’s heart was occupied with. Was it Megan? Please don't. Were these other Faiths that Joseph brought to the statue and told to jump? I didn’t understand anything from this level and they didn’t really show us anything. Maybe you will explain to me such moments, and I will admit that I was wrong and I will resubmit the post Some textures: Literally in a couple of places I didn’t like the colour, in prison, for example. There, at the place where the brothers were tied, a lot of flowers were mixed, and some kind of lava thing, and purple NewDawn, and white and green bliss. As an artist, I say that it not looked well .. so. There was also a feeling that the saturation of textures was somehow tweaked on John and Jacob. Not critical, but it looked strange. + In past DLС in visions, they shone somehow more beautifully or something, the effects were cooler on models in my memories, as for me: color, light, environment, glow, animation of such an “aura”. Here it seemed poorer WHAT I LIKE: Actually .. everything else? No, really, in addition to the above, I really got good emotions from the passage. And the moments that I liked .. I probably won’t even be able to find words to describe how much it sinks into my soul. I liked the overall design, symbolism. Like it or not, we stuck to locations, colors, ideas. Just with bated breath, I looked at the familiar and already native places, but distorted by the exhausted consciousness of Joseph. It was so trembling and scary to run away from the impending collapse. For a long time he looked at the reflection of Joseph in the mirror, trying to catch his emotions. I really missed him while I was playing the other parts. I liked Jacob. After the Word of Joseph, I fell in love with all the brothers with renewed vigor. And the fact that here in the DLC they showed Jacob completely broken, grabbing the musicbox as if for salvation .. it touched me. Seeing such a strong character in such a state is a very emotional reception. And when Joseph came up to save him and console him, I simply disappeared into this scene. I love Jacob immensely, and I was very glad to see him. (Although at first I criticized the ending of this scene without considering anything emotionally) I don’t know about John, I didn’t have enough of him in the DLС. More precisely, I was not particularly imbued with what his words and his conflict, posed here? But again, I didn’t see anything bad and was just glad to see him, I love this piece of anger with a knife. Faith Faith, if you do not take into account the confusion that I say above, then my God, how I love her and how I love her music. In her levels, I literally shot and sang her main theme in parallel. And the design of its levels is just awesome, all this bliss, fog, green shades, 3D effect - it's all there and I really liked it all. DEPUTY. JUST AAAAA. I do not cancel my opinion about the FCND and all my words above are still valid. However, I was overjoyed to see him in a vision. How Joseph comforts him/her, caresses, reassures him/her. Lord, this is the comfort of my soul. How he puts a mask on him/her .. and literally they stand in the position in which I drew them for my fanfic about the ending of New Dawn, just the other way around. I'm just here, if I played alone and did not record a video, then I would sob, honestly, as with Jacob. I am so glad that they finally touched the Judge, showed his relationship with Joseph, because the Deputy was already deprived of attention in the FCND, that I just thank you from the bottom of my heart. (But it's still the alt version for me) For the scene with Jerome, separate respect. It's just that this is what I wanted to see besides Joseph's thoughts. I wanted to see what was left behind the scenes in FC5 and this scene made me happy. (I was the only one who thought the place was called Falls End Church, but was it really a church on Joseph's Island?) Loved the scenes in the book. (Although they lied with John, here again here again the confusion, he did not betray his father, the teachers noticed the beatings on him. And Joseph himself did not shout at him and was calm with the fact that they were taken away from his father) How the doors and this tree were decorated. I really liked the symbolism, it is right at every step and coolly decorated. By the way, in this book there was a dialogue with a very interesting one. We as a whole team expected that there would be incest in this DLC (albeit pseudo, but incest). Ubisoft made Vaas fall in love with Citra, Yuma with Pagan, and I was really resigned to the fact that we most likely will see Faith and Joseph together. Even in 2018, the screenwriter talked about their connection. But surprisingly, everything was said so incomprehensibly and so ambiguously, not openly. That's how you like it, and can be discovered. If you ship, imagine they had a romantic connection; if you don't ship, imagine a spiritual connection. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but due to the fact that I have already come to terms with this topic, we just had fun with how the dialogues were ambiguous. upd FUCK the current just remembered about the secret probability after the credits. Strongly. VERY. Glass ate delicious, like it, thank you. No, it's really very sensual and I don't know how to react, because... it's... touched, very much. I love this kind of glass IN GENERAL I enjoyed playing the DLC with Joseph, had fun and was overjoyed to see characters, music and familiar places. But I still can't really say "I liked the DLC" because the canons disappointed me in some places, even though I was ready for it. Therefore, again, instead of a short answer to the question “How do you like DLC with Joseph?” I will take a deep breath and link to this post. Nothing would have changed if this DLC, like the others, hadn't come out. I was not particularly hooked by the conflict between Joseph and “God”, although in my own ff (https://archiveofourown.org/works/31168862) I described a similar concept and it seemed to me win-win emotional, but here only some scenes seemed emotional to me, and not the whole Joseph. Everything is so heaped, so it scatters attention from one thought to another. I'm more and more inclined to believe that the expansions were released more for the money than for the love of the characters. I saw there the love of actors for their characters, I saw the love of artists and game designers for work. Yes, in general, like games, DLC are made with high quality, they are playable, fun, beautiful. However, too many things evoke "but" after the phrase "I enjoyed playing, but..". I don't want to sound like a suffocating hypocrite in the DLC fandom, but I love all these characters too much to just eat content with them and not discuss or think about it in any way. I love Far Cry and love their fandom, and any of my outrage like that is due to huge warm feelings for the game, not hatred or nerdiness. In any case, thanks for reading, taking the time to review the new content C:

#art #fanart #far cry 5 #far cry 6 dlc #joseph collapse #joseph seed #ubisoft #fanfic

[neon-moon-beam]

I haven’t touched PLA in almost 6 months. 

As always, please don’t send me your headcanons, theories, etc. I don’t like to discuss these things with strangers. I’m also not interested in arguing over my opinions, or calling anyone out specifically, nor am I saying all headcanons, au’s, are bad, etc. And please don’t ask for my approval of yours’! Make what you want, just please be considerate of how you portray characters and whether or not making an OC might be a better choice!

bl*nkshippers dni--I will block you.

Sometimes I think about shiny hunting, since the shiny spawn rate in that game is ridiculous, but the game itself made me feel bad because the plot is that you do everything literally everyone asks, but NONE of it helps the player character (or Ingo) go home. I can understand sometimes devs run out of time and sideplots resolve quickly and/or anticlimactically, but not only were some sideplots just dropped, but the main plot as well! Story is one of the most important parts of a game for me, and PLA seemed to not even know what it wanted the story to be. “Complete a PokeDex. Wait, stop Dialga and Palkia. Oh wait, the real issue here is Volo with Giratina! Oh, finish the PokeDex. Show Arceus around...perpetually?” The “ending” is unsatisfying. There’s no payoff. We don’t even find out why two characters have been misplaced in the first place, or if they return home! Yeah, Arceus wanted the PokeDex done, but why was this urgent, and why did this require sending almost definitely Dawn/Lucas back in time? Why wasn’t the player character an ancestor? When a game poses more questions than it answers, it’s often a sign that the storytelling is not good. Some mystery is OK, and not being able to know every last thing is realistic, but dropping everything seems like all the developer effort went elsewhere, they ran out of time, or in some cases, are DLC or sequel-baiting (and doing so via dropping the plot is poor).

It also feels like PLA didn’t bring much to the table in the end; we had some new mechanics that might not even return for Scarlet and Violet, a few regional variants, and one (hideous) new Force of Nature. Being able to choose when Pokemon evolve was great--no more having to press B after every level up or perpetually have an Everstone. Sneaking up and throwing a ball at Pokemon was fun. Being able to send out Pokemon almost anywhere and interact with them was fun. But on the other hand, the trade-off seemed to be the plot, as well as so much of what made battling fun. Abilities are gone and Pokemon can’t hold items. I didn’t enjoy Strong and Agile style, nor did I enjoy that I could only use one Pokemon while someone else sent out three, or getting attacked by multiple wild Pokemon at once. It felt unfair, especially because at times level seemed meaningless when 3-4 Pokemon could attack twice before mine could get a hit in.

PLA itself wasn’t advertised as open-world--fans made that assumption based on the trailers. Scarlet and Violet are supposed to be open world and if some of the mechanics are reused (it’s rumored many won’t be), that makes PLA sound like a test room that was released to the public with a price tag.

And then as a fan of Submas prior to PLA, PLA has now left me wondering if they’re just going to ruin two of my favorite characters, And fan spaces have become unbearable in response to PLA, when they could have been a refuge from a game that left Dawn/Lucas and Ingo’s fates up in the air. First it was overwhelming angst, often without resolution. When you’re not a fan of that, it gets tiring and alienating. Then other trends picked up, such as specifically making Emmet and Volo ooc in order to make them “unhinged”, ships that more often than not center on the characters being unhinged and possibly abusive to each other, bl*nkshipping rearing its head again (though thankfully much more people are opposed to it than during Gen 5′s initial run), Submas and Volo being ooc to the point of asking, “Why didn’t this person just make an OC?”, and of course, the ableism. 

As someone who played PLA and combed through every inch of it in order to make reassurance posts for anyone worried they might just leave Ingo, it was disheartening to see how much content that made fan spaces unbearable for me came from fans who hadn’t even played PLA, and/or their takeaway from the game was “Submas = angst” and “Volo and Emmet are unhinged and will hurt anyone given the chance!” I’m aware that some people may be unable to play PLA for whatever reason, and this isn’t about them. This is about people who haven’t played and won’t play, or played and didn’t bother to think critically about what they just played, who just came for the angst and/or s*xymen, and rendered complex, canon characters into two-dimensional OCs without giving any regard to the source material and what the game devs showed regarding these characters, to the extent that fans not into this kind of content, or not wanting to constantly engage with this kind of content became alienated from their own space.

Volo is a complex character dealing with some deep-seeded trauma that, unfortunately due to the story being dropped, we don’t really get any details about what happened. We do however, get hints in-game that he’s not a completely bad person, but more morally grey, likely a more good-aligned character having a bad moment. And Emmet isn’t even in PLA! As of right now, we don’t even know that Ingo is “missing” in the present day. For all we know, Ingo will be returned to the exact moment he was pulled from and nobody will even know, or the devs may go on to say PLA isn’t canon in some way. But for people to take these characters and run wild with angst and then get ableist on two autistic-coded characters (for the second time in 10 or so years), has been a huge turnoff in engaging in any fan spaces, and I wonder if the devs had more time to develop and finish the story, or whatever the issue was that led to this game being released unfinished with little hope of a DLC, if we could have gotten more answers and maybe the fandom wouldn’t have taken this kind of content too far. Many people have tried to address the ableism (here is a link to Submas Autistic Joy’s resources, a by no means exhaustive collection of such posts), but people are going to make what they’re going to make, whether it’s appropriate or not, and sometimes this means people have to leave the fan space, or create their own, which has become sadly necessary here.

PLA looked like it was going to be a great game, but it needed more time and care than apparently the devs were able to give it, and unfortunately in fan spaces, it seems characters in or associated with PLA are all too often not being given time, care, and tact in how they’re being portrayed. All of these issues have made me come to not care for PLA at all.

#moonbeam's personal posts #I'm afraid to tag this because I know how people can be--this site is full of reactionary ppl and #ppl who have zero reading comprehension or critical thinking skills...often all in one! so...yikes #And I don't want anyone to feel attacked because I'm not attacking anyone...I'm just saying PLA ended up being a mostly negative experience #for me personally and fan spaces have only made it worse when they could have been a refuge!

[ohthehypocrisy]

Exclusions for Pokemon Unite!

So, while I’m taking a break, I figured I’d make a quick post about something. 

Since there are over 900 pokemon, with more coming out with Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet about to be released soon, the unfortunate reality is that not every pokemon can be added to the game. What I mean is that the Pokemon games will outlast Pokemon Unite, the game will end long before the series does. This may be a wake-up call for some of you, but no spin-off ever outlasts a main game (unless they become their own series like Donkey Kong Country or Yoshi’s Island).

Even if Pokemon Unite walked alongside the main games, there are more pokemon than they can put into Unite. Most people know this deep down, which is why you see social media comments on the official accounts flooded with requests for certain pokemon. Calls for Mewtwo, Luxray, Gallade, that sort of thing. They ask because the games can’t fit all of them, even though they most certainly will try. Same thing happened with Pokken Tournament. The DX version even gave us new fighters, and people really wanted DLC, but even the developers of that game knew they couldn’t fit every single pokemon in the roster, even with the pokemon Assists outnumbering the pokemon fighters.

That’s what I’m going to cover in this post. I can’t say that the pokemon I’ll discuss aren’t in consideration with the Unite devs, but rather these are pokemon I won’t be making a moveset for. If you disagree with me on any matter, please feel free to respond. I’d love to hear your critique.

Mewtwo

Easy with the pitchforks, guys. At least until you hear me out.

I have no doubt that Mewtwo would be a great addition to Pokemon Unite. A massive Speed stat, skyhigh Sp. Atk, and it’s iconic status as the first overpowered pokemon, It would be so great to play as Mewtwo.

However, I feel like that would be missing the point of Mewtwo in general. Mewtwo is supposed to be the ultimate pokemon, it’s not meant to be controlled. Even though it was in Pokken Tournament, it was still the final boss when it was in shadow form. And even afterwards, when you defeated Shadow Mewtwo, you could then play as regular Mewtwo, emphasizing the fact that it was the ultimate reward for conquering this powerful pokemon. The same characteristic just wouldn’t apply in Pokemon Unite.

Mewtwo in Pokemon Unite would work better as a Raid Boss, not unlike the Boss Rush mode that was added not too long ago. However, rather than showing up at the end, it would be the sole opponent at the start, throwing out light hits, not taking you seriously until you start gaining EXP and becoming stronger, proving yourself a threat to it. It would have to be defeated in 3 rounds, the first would be Mewtwo taking you lightly, throwing warning shots here and there, until you take it down to half HP. Afterwards, it would teleport away, sending in wild pokemon to cover its retreat. You would have to fight your way through them and then seek it out, having hidden itself somewhere on the map. Once you find it, you have to hold out until your team arrives, because if you get KOd, it’ll teleport away again. But once the team comes together, the fight starts over. On the last round, Mewtwo stops holding back, dealing insane damage frequently with hard to avoid attacks.

Now granted, in keeping with the spirit of accomplishing victory by overcoming Mewtwo, it could be a great reward to gain its Unite License afterward, or by collecting points from successful raids. Either way, I’d be more excited with Mewtwo as an ideal raid boss over an actual character, but that’s just me.

Gastrodon (East Side/West Side)

Talk about a tonal shift.

Now, Gastrodon would make a great Pokemon in Unite, as either a Supporter, Defender, or All-Rounder. I have a fondness for Gastrodon, personally, having started my competitive pokemon career in Gen 4. It could be a janitor type of pokemon, where it cleans up the passive moves left behind by the enemy, such as Venusaur’s Sludge Bomb or Crustle’s Stealth Rock.

But before any moves can be decided, the most important question has to be answered first, which form? The pink and brown Gastrodon is notably known as the Western variant, while the green and blue one is the Eastern variant. Some trainers like one form over the other, so perhaps they would have the ability to choose? Well, that’s gonna be a bit tricky. See, lorewise, Gastrodon are split between west and east because they evolved in the same region divided by a big mountain, Mt. Coronet. As such, it is part of their identity that the two forms are split depending on the position of the map, and that leads us into a difficult problem.

Teams are split into western and eastern sides of the battle map, just like this one.

You may not have noticed it, but you have had games where you are on the eastern side, not west. As such, it wouldn’t make much sense to be an eastern Gastrodon spawning on the western side of the map, huh?

Not only that, though the two pokemon are identical in every way aside from appearance, that makes a difference in Pokemon Unite. They would have to make two models for the same character, two sets of holowear for the same pokemon, the prices would be inflated, and they wouldn’t be able to justify the price since it’s functionally the same pokemon. And there’s no way you can have Gastrodon and exclude one form, that defeats the purpose of the character.

Unfortunately, this means that Gastrodon just wouldn’t be able to get into Pokemon Unite, at least, not as a playable character. Gastrodon would work as a wild pokemon, denoting the cardinal side it spawns in, but other than that, no license for you. Shucks.

Hisuian Pokemon

Now granted, this is definitely going to change when trade between Pokemon Legends: Arceus becomes possible. However, as for right now, I have to say that I cannot make a moveset for any of these pokemon.

I’m sure we’d all love to see Hisuian Zoroark or Hisuian Arcanine come to Pokemon Unite, and I would love that too. There’s just a couple of problems here and there that make that flat out impossible.

Firstly, Pokemon in Legends: Arceus do not have abilities. Except for Regigigas. Because screw ‘m. Every playable pokemon in Pokemon Unite has an ability, or a passive, if you will. That’s already the first problem. Now, you might say, but of course they do! They will have abilities later on, we even know what they’re going to be! And to that I say, Did you know abilities can be switched out between generations? Believe it or not, it happened. Zapdos once had a hidden ability in Lightning Rod, but it was unreleased. When it was finally accessible in a different generation, it became Static instead. this also happened to Chandelure. It’s hidden ability was Shadow Tag, you know, the ability that made Wobbuffet and Mega Gengar Uber? It was also unreleased, and then changed to Infiltrator in the following generation, so the world would never know of the terror it could’ve unleashed.

My point is, the same thing can happen here as well, which is actually a good thing, because many of these regional forms have the same ability as their counterparts. A change in their abilities would be welcomed, but that means we can’t speculate the pokemon for Pokemon Unite with what we have for now.

Speaking of which, a lot of the moves in Legends: Arceus are...functionally different from the main games. Status effects and boosts wear off over time, hazards are replaced with passive damage effects, stats have been fused together in battle calculations, it’s all weird and off putting. We don’t even know how these moves would work in the main games, let alone Pokemon Unite.

Take Hisuian Lilligant for example.

It gained a signature move called Victory Dance, which boosts its Attack, Defense, and the power of its moves for a short time. Now, that’s great and all...but what would it do as a move in the main games? Does it give one stage boosts? 2? How much PP? Is it like Focus Energy? We can’t exactly translate that to Pokemon Unite if we don’t know how it will work in the main games. Not to mention, as I’ve stated before, the abilities can be changed between generations, and it’s possible these moves will be changed when they are transferred. 

And yes, moves have changed between generations. Knock Off used to be a weak move that was only meant to disarm the opponent of their item, now it’s an overpowered Dark type move that punishes you for playing optimally (I really don’t like that move).

With all that said, I’ve opted to wait until the pokemon database is updated with the Hisuian Pokemon and their abilities and moves. As for who would be my first pick? Probably Sneasler. A safe pick that allows Weavile to come in later.

Mega Pokemon

I know you miss Mega Evolutions. We all do. If Mega Evolutions hadn’t been dropped in Sword and Shield, we would definitely see them in Pokemon Unite.

However, that does bring up an important dilemma. Would Mega Evolutions be fair in Pokemon Unite? In the game at the moment, Charizard, Blastoise, Venusaur, Lucario, Gardevoir, Slowbro, Absol, Gengar, Garchomp, and the soon to be released Scizor are all capable of Mega Evolution, or, at least they were. That’s 10 out of the 42 playable pokemon in the game (counting Mew and Dodrio that have yet to be released). 

My point here is, would it be fair for these pokemon to be stronger when the other 32 pokemon can’t Mega Evolve? See, in Pokken Tournament DX, the pokemon that could Mega Evolve will do so when entering Burst Mode. But for the other pokemon, they gain a similar power boost that puts them on par with these evolutions. Here, the other pokemon have no such recourse, so if one of these pokemon went Mega, they would be overpowered. No matter how you balance it, these pokemon would be unable to break through the power level Mega Evolution grants them.

Speaking of balance, if Mega Evolution made the pokemon stronger, then it’s just a simple matter of making the base form weaker to compensate, right? Well, no, that won’t work. In Pokken Tournament and the main games, Mega Evolution operates under the rules that every pokemon is on an even playing field, whether they’re all Level 100, or their stats are shifted around to fit an archetype. That doesn’t happen in Pokemon Unite. If you gain enough EXP early on, you will gain access to your Unite Move. What if that pokemon could Mega Evolve instead? It would widen the EXP gap even further, making comebacks nearly impossible. Any attempt at balancing Mega Evolution would either do too much or too little, so it’s probably for the best that Mega Evolution be omitted altogether.

Most Legendaries

Saved for last, it seems like a given that certain legendary pokemon are...

...way too big. This is nothing like the whole Ridley for Smash debacle, whereas the only compromise they could come up with was to shrink Ridley a bit, and even then, have him crouch constantly to keep him in size.

In Pokemon Unite, there are two ways to put Legendary Pokemon in. If they’re small enough, we can make a spot for them. If they are too big, then they become wild pokemon that act as bosses meant to be overcome. Even some of the small time legendaries get relegated to boss positions, such as Zapdos and Articuno. 

That said, there are some exceptions, apparently.

In the new Theia Sky Ruins map, the 5 elemental golems are going to appear as wild pokemon that can be defeated to gain boosts or experience. Now, certainly, each one would make for a fun Pokemon Unite character to play as, but I suppose it makes sense to have these guys pose as guardians of the ruins. 

Honorable Mentions

-Wailord

For reasons stated above.

-Phione

I mean, why have Phione when you can have Manaphy? Why do you even exist?

Split evolutions

More specifically, pokemon that can have two possible evolutions in one playable character, not at all how Eevee and its evolutions are being impemented in the games. If the pokemon can become a different species entirely, that’ll just complicate things like, who is the Unite License for? 

Like, I thought about making a Bellossom/Vileplume set, but when I tried this with Wormadam in a previous post, I nearly crashed and burned trying to finish that post. I’m proud of what I’ve put out, but I can’t do it again. It especially won’t work for a pokemon whose evolution you can’t control.

However, Scizor is coming out soon, and it’s possible to not evolve and remain a Scyther for the whole battle. That’s a different case.

Unown

There is an Unown rune for each letter of the alphabet including the ? mark and ! mark. They only know one move and, believe it or not, it got removed in Sword and Shield, effectively removing Unown’s status as a pokemon entirely. F in the chat for this little guy. 

Bonus points if you use Unown F.

-

That’s it for this post. If you have any comments I’d love to hear it. Maybe you want to add to this list or disagree with me. Or call me names. I welcome it.

#Pokemon Unite #Mewtwo #Gastrodon #Hisuian Voltorb #Hisuian Lilligant #Mega Lopunny #Eternatus #Regice #Registeel #Regirock #Regidrago #Regieleki #Wailord #Phione #Silcoon #Cascoon #Unown

[jcmarchi]

Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide Preview - DLC dose of Leviathan - Game Informer

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/final-fantasy-xvi-the-rising-tide-preview-dlc-dose-of-leviathan-game-informer/

Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide Preview - DLC dose of Leviathan - Game Informer

Final Fantasy XVI, the latest wholly new single-player installment in one of gaming’s most storied franchises, is nearing its first anniversary this June. After the surprise release of its Echoes of the Fallen DLC, which focused Clive and Co.’s efforts on combat in a single dungeon, Square Enix is readying its final announced batch of FFXVI content with The Rising Tide DLC. Announced at The Game Awards back in December alongside the reveal and shadow drop of Echoes of the Fallen, The Rising Tide features Leviathan, the water Eikon mysteriously absent from the main game’s events.

While that reveal trailer promises some watery Eikonic action in the DLC, which takes place before the finale of FFXVI, little else is known about it. But Game Informer spoke to FFXVI producer Naoki Yoshida and DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka to learn more. The first thing I asked the duo about the DLC is why Leviathan was left out of the game. It turns out Square Enix was playing smart and leaving something on the table for the team to examine with potential DLC.

“In terms of making the decision of creating and selling a DLC, we had to wait until the game was actually released,” Yoshida tells me through a translator, explaining Square Enix wanted to see if demand for more FFXVI was there. “That being said, we actually did think of a possible route, a possible story, that we could do if we were to do one.”

That’s why, in the base game, the route to the tower where Echoes of the Fallen takes place was present from the jump. Fans have speculated that a mysterious head-shaped crystal stuck into the side of a continent in FFXVI might be Leviathan or at least related to the god – that remains unclear, but if so, it shows another example of Square Enix creating doors for it to open with DLC such as The Rising Tide.

With it taking place before the game’s finale, I was curious if Clive obtaining Leviathan powers would affect the ending. Yoshida says it won’t and that the ending will remain as is. However, “You will get a deeper understanding of how the world of Valisthea is and how the characters are in Final Fantasy XVI,” he adds, stopping short to prevent himself from spoiling too much.

Anyone who’s played FFXVI knows the Eikon fights are the highlight of the experience, which means Clive’s forthcoming bout with Leviathan carries some lofty expectations. Kujiraoaka, who led design on the Eikon battles in the base game, says he understands that but approached Leviathan like any other: “[ensuring] that we were moving these Eikons in the way that players envision and imagine.”

“In terms of what players can expect for this battle, when you look back at past Final Fantasy titles, there actually aren’t many cases where you see Leviathan moving around crazy and in a real-time action battle system,” Kujiraoaka says.

With the Phoenix Eikon fight reminiscent of third-person on-rail shooters and the Ifrit fight in spired by professional wrestling, I wondered how Kujiraoaka would describe Leviathan’s inspiration. He plays coy, explaining there isn’t one word or genre to describe it. “One thing I can say is that there’s going to be a lot of water involved – visually, graphically, there’s going to be a lot of attacks made from Levithan and that comes with a lot of water. It’s going to look really different from past Eikon battles, and that’s one thing that players can look forward to.”

Unlike Echoes of the Fallen, which runs about three hours, this Leviathan DLC features around 10 hours of content, and I can’t wait. The Rising Tide DLC for FFXVI has no release date but is due out this spring.

This article originally appeared in Issue 364 of Game Informer.

#anniversary #Article #content #crystal #december #Design #Developer #Events #Features #Fight #game #gaming #how #Inspiration #it #Learn #LED #One #Other #platform #PlayStation #PlayStation 5 #prevent #shadow #spring #square #table #time #water #word

[reliquiaen]

As promised, here are the games I played in my Clearing The Backlog quest for 2023. I didn’t get through all of the games on my list, but I got through quite a chunk of them, so I’ll be continuing my challenge into 2024 in the hopes that eventually I’ll get all caught up! I also kind of want to write reviews for some of the games that really resonated with me,  but I don’t know when I’ll have time for that and I also don’t know what format I want to do them in, so we’ll see.

Anyway, below the cut are all the games with little summaries of my thoughts on them. I’ve started 100%ing games, but that’s not what this is about so it’s not mentioned here but most of the ones I enjoyed I completed to 100%. Figure that’s a good way of saying ‘hey I loved this’.

Released This Year & Enjoyed:

Dredge – Fishing mini-game but make it the macro-game instead, throw some Lovecraft in there, mix it in with a fun mystery. Literally it’s like someone crawled into my brain and made a checklist of things I enjoy: chill game, the ocean, sea monsters, Cthulhu, insanity mechanic, fun art style, fishing mechanic, unreliable narrators, mysteries, like oh my god. They just made a game special for me? Play it if you haven’t. Thanks.

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty – The DLC and the 2.0 patch really did wonders, like I had a lot of complaints about the base game but so so many of those complaints were addressed by the DLC. I have so many thoughts and feelings about how Phantom Liberty changed the story and the themes and the overall progress of V’s arc and I’m just so emotional okay.

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Literally rekindling my love of crpgs, my 2024 is now gonna be all the ones I’ve been putting off for aaaages.

Above Snakes – Interesting exploration/survival game where you unlock ‘tiles’ while doing your survival stuff and you get to build the world how you want it. Can be a bit obtuse and grindy at times but it’s pretty and it’s wild west themed so that’s fun.

Terra Nil – Billed as a ‘reverse city builder’ this is just a chill game about making apocalyptic environments green again. It’s laid back and pretty, very good for after work when you’re tired.

Released In Previous Year & Enjoyed:

Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen – This was a revisit to polish off achievements because the sequel was announced and I’m obsessed. Go play this right now, it holds up so well, the combat is excellent, the STORY IS AMAZING GO PLAY IT!

Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning – Finally got around to this one; this is the third time I’ve bought this game and second time I’ve 100% it (maybe third? idk if I finished it on Xbox). I think that tells you something. The new Fatesworn DLC was such a grind though, don’t recommend that at all, but the base game is mwah.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order – Again, finishing off achievements in preparation for playing Survivor. and I understand now why past-me never 100% it originally because some of those chests were ANNOYING AS HELL. It really needed some QOL things like fast travel back to the ship and like PLEASE why does he move SO SLOWLY while force carrying something? You’re using mind magic, boy, go faster!

Mass Effect Legendary Edition – I think the last of the games I revisited for full completion this year? I think ME4 (if/when it releases) is going to be a very divisive game, primarily because this trilogy is so good, so beloved, and no matter what they do, ME4 won’t live up to it. Prove me wrong, Bioware.

Kena Bridge of Spirits – This game is SO good I made an exception to my ‘no soulslikes’ rule (which I guess I did for SWJFO also but I didn’t know that was soulslike going in) the vibes are immaculate, the art style is so cute and pretty and the story! Man it was good.

The Entropy Centre – You know how there’s no Portal 3 and we’re all really sad about it? Play this instead it will literally scratch the exact same itch. Banger puzzles, banger story, banger dialogue. 10/10 game I can’t believe I waited to play it.

Spider-Man Miles Morales – Was so thrilled this came to PC. I loved the original game when I played it on PS4 so much I played it again on PC and getting to play more? Wonderful. I’m chomping at the bit for the sequel to be ported but I’ve gotta get through Horizon Forbidden West first. And you know what? Kudos to Spider-Man for making the movement so satisfying that collectibles don’t feel like a chore. Honestly, that’s the most impressive part.

Lost Ember – Also a really lovely art style and the story had me in TEARS a couple of times like it’s SO good I would love to do a full review for this one it was an emotional roller coaster from start to finish. Absolutely DO NOT recommend you 100% it though. This game is collectible hell and it’s not fun. Enjoy the story and call it a day.

Coromon – Pokémon wishes it was this good. Seriously. The QOL features this game has makes Pokémon look like an indie title. The sprites are fantastic, the art is fantastic, the creature designs are fantastic, the story is off-the-wall batshit insane, but who cares. You can change the spinner you catch your mons in. You can select which colour morph you want. You can get a one-time chance to upgrade each mon’s stats. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on this one, lads. Forget Pokémon. Play Coromon. (The devs are still updating it also!!)

Doom Eternal – Rip and tear, you know the drill. Was just as fun and frenetic as i was expecting. I understand why some people were saying the platforming was too much and to be fair that purple goo is my ARCH NEMESIS like who thought it was a good idea to put ‘slow down sludge’ into the ‘run and gun’ game? Imbeciles.

Spyro Reignited – Legit just cruising through the levels is so fun? Like a lil bit of childhood, and what more could you ask for? Dragons, pick up shiny things, set stuff on fire, perfect.

Abzu – Swimming around in a pretty underwater space with fishes and stuff. So chill, so good vibes, so glad I finally played it.

Dorfromantik – It’s like a… landscape builder… I guess. Place tiles with matching edges, make a pretty lil township and a forest as big as possible. It’s another one of those chill and unwinding games, you can really tell that work was kicking my ass this year, huh.

Journey – FINALLY played it. Worth. Now we wait for Sword of the Sea pls be just as good.

The Pedestrian – The puzzles are really fun, some simple, some more complex, but it has a low stake feel to it that I really loved. And the twist at the end!! Was so good!!

Stray – cat game cat game cat game

Biped – A really fun little co-op puzzle game. The controls can be a bit wonky but it’s a good time if you’ve got a friend who’ll play it with you.

The Stanley Parable – This was the year I got to unlock that achievement for not playing it for however many years that was. So I replayed it and got that. Still such a fun game. Doesn’t make me want to buy the anniversary version though.

Superliminal – More puzzles! (This will be a trend that continues into 2024 I have many puzzle games to play this year.) These ones were SO mind bending it was unreal. Like they aren’t kidding when they say to think outside the box. Forget boxes. Forget thinking. Good luck. Some of the movement was a bit rough, gave me a motion sickness feeling so be careful I guess if you tend towards that.

Assassin’s Creed & Assassin’s Creed II – Replayed these just for something fun and easy to tickle my nostalgia. They’re still really good. This is the style of AC game I really love.

Games I’m Neutral Towards:

Armello – I often feel compelled to buy games that are made by Aussie creators, this was one such case. It’s fun, honestly; it’s a hero-based game where you play matches. In my head I compare it to things like hearthstone and idk chess. You play your hand, try to outmanoeuvre your opponents, and it’s got great mechanics to keep it interesting. I had fun with it, but it’s not something that appealed to me enough to make me stick with it.

Hooked On You – Yeah, the Dead by Daylight dating sim, okay it was fun. Really silly, but really fun.

Ship of Fools – This is a cute little rogue-like where you sail through cursed waters fighting sea monsters as adorable like… um… seashell people? And it’s co-op which is why I gave it a shot. It was fine, I had more fun with it than most rogue-likes, probably because I brought a friend with me.

Sons of the Forest – Survival games are very hit-or-miss with me and while I enjoyed my time with this one, it’s best with friends and always so hard to schedule time to play. Generally, with early access games, I don’t sink a ton of time into them and this is a good example. Maybe I’ll go back to it when it gets its full release.

Destiny 2 – In the search for a game to play with all my friends, we tried this. The combat is fun but the grind is REAL and none of us wanted to commit to the many hundreds of hours Destiny was asking us to sink into it. I miss when Bungie was making story-driven single player games.

Sable – A very pretty and peaceful game that gives me similar vibes to Breath of the Wild. I had a nice enough time with it, but just like BotW, I got bored of just moseying around aimlessly. Something about the way the animation was done gave me a headache, too, but I really wanted to love it so I might go back and play it now and then. The fishing is fun. I already know I’m going to be fishing obsessed in it. That’s my end goal.

Prince of Persia (2008) & Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands (2010) – Putting these two together because you have NO IDEA how upset I am about these. I ADORED these games on the Xbox and played them so much, the stories and the combat, the art style in the 2008 game, the monster design in the 2010 game. Like. They were so good. Maybe some of that is nostalgia goggles, but replaying them this year (or attempting to, I should say) was such a chore. The controls were extremely unresponsive and I had hard crashes in both. In one case, I couldn’t even close the menu in the 2008 game. I paused it, couldn’t close the menu, it crashed. Couldn’t find any fixes, either. I am distraught.

Games I Did Not Enjoy:

Bastion, Transistor, Dead Cells, Hob, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Othercide (has FANTASTIC monster designs, I really wanted to like this one)

These games all gave me more or less the same feelings: they’re very pretty with fantastic art styles (I love a stylistic commitment, and I love not-realism thanks) but with gameplay that didn’t hook me. The fight, die, repeat loop of rogue-likes/lites and the extreme precision required during combat or platforming that punishes anything less than flawless execution simply isn’t for me. I can appreciate the high skill ceilings and for some games I’ll even stick with it, but it’s a rare game that makes me want to pour hours and hours into mastering every system and mechanic. They’re not for me, and that’s okay. From now on (my 2024 gaming commitment!) I’m not going to buy a game with a fun art style unless the rest of the game also vibes with me!

#personal #reliviews #games #game backlog 2023 #welp #that's that with this year i guess #there are a lot of crpgs and puzzle games on my to do list for 2024 #so i'd say it's a good thing #there aren't a bunch of games i'm looking forward to #basically just dragons dogma 2 hfw and avowed #which are all gonna take a while now i think about it #oof #oh god and there are three games from this year i didn't get #jedi survivor rogue trader and dark descent #yowch okay nvmd #got my work cut out for me still #wish me luck guys!

[dianight]

My very pretentious but totally correct take when it comes to the video games industry is that the atrocious state it is at the moment comes entirely from the fact that big companies care more about money than art.

Which might be like a “duh” moment for most in here, but in real life people do not put 2 and 2 together.

Why are lootboxes, battlepasses and subscriptions so prevalent? Are they important when talking about the state of the video game industry compared to say, 10-15 years ago?

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Small tangent to talk about how one of my friends told me about how there’s a crossover thing between magic (card game) and lord of the rings. So there is an Aragorn card, and I was told “he’s black”. So my first thought was well he seems more red/white to me, but yeah he commands an army of ghosts so I can see it.

But it was black as in skin colour, not black as in mana colour. And then I was like, what does it actually matter. How is that even important.

---

So the overall point is, why do people care about (I believe it’s called) identity “politics” in games? Whether it’s a character skin colour, gender, sexuality, etc; how is it always, without fault, the thing that causes so called “controversies”?

Why is it that companies get away with insane work conditions, a misogynistic culture, predatory monetization models, layoffs when the company itself is doing great, and many other outrageous problems?

---

I see people playing the new diablo game, and it’s like. Terrible memory some people have.

Diablo 3 was a disaster until more than a year after launch. It was an always online game, totally unthinkable at the time. Diablo is mostly[1] a single player farming game, why would anyone need to log in to a server to play it? Well there was this thing called the real money auction house, where players could sell items to other players for real money. And it was terrible, because in the first weeks there were already bots flipping items (scalpers, basically). Eventually it was removed, but the always online remained.

The game had other problems that are less relevant, such as an overtuned late game, terrible balance (melee characters were inviable), terrible loot and a very, VERY mediocre story.

Moving on, other blizzard fuck ups include, among others:

Killing off any support for heroes of the storm, a moba that was relatively unpopular. They decided it was not worth putting money into it, fucking over many casual players and a few profesional ones.

Several lawsuits because the bosses literally can’t stop sexually harassing their employees.

Killing off any support for overwatch just to promise a PvE mode on overwatch 2. Releasing overwatch 2 with no PvE. Making an announcement that there will be no PvE in overwatch 2. Just because overwatch 2 has better (for blizzard) monetization.

Old expansion packs uses to include way more back in diablo II and starcraft. Now it’s just DLC after DLC with very little. This is “standard” these days, but it doesn’t make it any less shitty.

So, if you know all (or some) of these things, why would you give money to blizzard? At this point I just ignore when they release anything.

But “gamers” will see a new game and they HAVE TO play it. Like I am aware it can be a fun game. It probably is. But it is simply not worth paying for it.

---

How are we meant to preserve games (as an art form) when they are always online games that when the company decides are not giving them enough money get abandoned.

How are we meant to appreciate the story, visuals, sound design or gameplay when all of them are so influenced by how much money they can give to the company.

Games have to be released at X date > Features are dropped or incomplete or not properly tested > Game is terrible on release > Patches are put out (maybe) > Game is in a decent state, several months/years after release (optimistic).

All of this impacts every single aspect of a game. The story might be inconsistent, incomplete or simply bad because the writers didn’t have enough time for it. Or it was two people doing the job of five people.

Visuals are a big one, because as long as it looks shiny enough other problems can be ignored. That’s why there is such a big emphasis on graphics (games that are 100GB+ because of fancy cinematics) over everything else. But artists are affected by crunch culture too, and as far as I’m aware severely underpaid. I do think “AI”[2] it’s going to make it even worse by virtue of being cheaper, even if results are not good they will be good enough.

Sound desing can be monetized too. Make players pay for tracks. Copyright everywhere so it can’t be shared easily. I haven’t mention it but it applies to both visuals and sounds (artists), and that’s the fact that they are underappreciated profesions that are nonetheless vital for any entertaiment industry. Yet the trope about the starving artist is unfortunately true.

---

To finish off. We still get objectively good games every once in a while, usually from “indie” developers before they get popular, become a big studio and fall to their own hubris. Who are we kidding at best they get bought out by a bigger company and never release anything interesting again.

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[1] A big part of diablo 2 was (is) the trading aspect of it and the community around it, but you could experience 100% of the game by yourself in single player mode.

[2] “AI” would deserve its own post, but my opinion on it (in short) is that it is simply a tool and any hate should be directed at capitalists that will use it to keep oppresing workers in new (not new) ways.

#dia talks

[annakie]

Games I Played in 2021

Because Why Not? 

Only listing games I spent a “Significant” time playing (Let’s say 10+ hours) or played to finish.  Not including like, dumb webgames or mobile games (which I didn’t play much of anyway.)  There’s lots of other games I tried and decided against playing, or dipped a toe into and thought “Yeah I’ll get into this” and then have not yet.

Wildermyth

I’m going to start with the game that inspired me to make this post, just because I really think more people should know about Wildermyth.  It’s an RPG where you create characters who yes, fight monsters and save the world, but also live their lives in the background and in the in-between years between chapters.  They fall in love, get married, and have children who also join your party.  You play out the story, often with your earliest heroes retiring before the story is done, leaving the youngsters to finish the work.  They can die heroically.  They can be blessed (or maybe cursed) with transformations turning them into werewolves, ravens, elementals also completely changing how your character works in some cases.  And then you can make some into legacy heroes which can be pulled into other adventures.

There are several campaigns to play out, each starting a fresh story.  There’s a crafting element.  There are pets, artifact weapons... the game is deep.

There are mods in the Steam Workshop which will make the game easier than intended, if you choose to use them.

The artwork is papercraft, but it’s gorgeous.  The story plays out in comic-like panels, which somehow works so well. The dialog and narration is poetic.  The overland map is generated at random.  You will get surprisingly attached to some of your characters.

Honestly I can’t recommend this game enough.  It was the best new thing I played all year, and has gotten some accolades to back it up.

The rest... under the cut because otherwise this is a very long post..

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Cyberpunk 2077

Technically started in 2020, but finished in 2021.  I didn’t pay any attention at all to this game before it was released, but it looked interesting so I bought it just before release, ignored 98% of the controversy surrounding it, and enjoyed the hell out of it for what it was.  Am disappointed all the big plans for updates and DLC seem to have gone out the window.  But I did nearly everything this game had to offer, and as a bonus when I was about 2/3rds done I upgraded to a 3090FE so at some point, maybe this year, I’m excited to revisit the game with the graphics cranked up the entire time.  Romanced River, loved all the main characters.  It was worth it.  I understand that this game didn’t live up to expectations, but I went in expecting nothing and loved it

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Fallout 4 (Incomplete)

I tried replaying FO4 and I probably put about 30 hours into it and haven’t gotten back to it.  I keep meaning to.  But I probably did the typical Fallout/Elder Scrolls thing where I spent as much time fiddling with mods as I did playing, and I did make the game kind of unstable.  Oops.  Didn’t make it far enough to do a romance, but I did have a mod installed where Nate (your husband) survives so that was interesting, having him along.  It was REALLY nice to play with all the graphics cranked up, though.  I’mma finish!  I played like 200 hours the first time and never finished the game because I was mad that my preferred ending wasn’t possible.  (I wanted to take over the institute but make it a force for good. 

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Mass Effect 3

Did a ME3-only playthrough (before the LE came out) to knock out some goals I’ve always had of the game, seeing a few things different than my typical all-Paragon-win-everything-Femshep/Kaidan canon.  Played as MShep, did several renegade choices - including betraying Wrex - that I normally wouldn’t, and finally saw the MShep/Kaidan romance.  Game started crashing during Citaldel Epiloge Mod and I never got around to troubleshooting that so I guess technically I didn’t finish completely, but good enough.

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Mass Effect (1) Legendary Edition - 1.5 Times

I played ME1 on release up through finishing Noveria and nearly every sidequest possible to this point, then decided to put it on hold til the modders could do some modding.  Like I’ve posted extensively about lately, I did finish it and am now waiting on the LE2 Community Patch to get started on a LE2 playthrough.  Did my canon Femshep/Kaidan/Vanguard/Paragon run and will continue to do so for amazing screenshots.  But I’m already planning my next trilogy playthrough.  Really, really love LE1 and all its changes, especially with the mods helping perfect it.

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Boyfriend Dungeon

I actually Kickstarted this game way back when because it looked hilarious.  I do not play “Visual Novel” type games typically, just not may jam.  But this one had the isometric fighting element and seemed off the wall, so I was like “Sure!  Why not!”

So I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it!  I did most of the romances (not the kid in college, felt they were too young, and I dipped out of Sunder’s) but my main romance was Issac.  The story was interesting, the fighting was fun, good experience overall.  Will probably play again when the last two characters are released.

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The Outer Worlds

I’d played this game on release via Xbox Game Pass, then waited for it to come to Steam and go on sale, including the DLC, to buy it for real and do a second run.  As I hadn’t done the DLC before, that was the main draw to replay.  I really loved the game the first time around, and felt the same this time, but will forever be mad I cannot romance Vicar Max, (or Nyoka).  Especially after softening him up after his personal quest.  But it was still really fun and I enjoyed both of the DLCs, Murder on Erandios a little more.

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New World

Yeah, I played New World.  The launch was terribly typical botched MMO launch, and things didn’t get much better from there.  I did join a company of nice people and reconnected with an old friend while playing for a bit, and I did enjoy a lot of what I did when I did play it, but after things got so bad that they started shutting off the economy for a week or two at a time, I dipped until this game can get its shit together.  Not to mention the way that the guild leaders are able to fuck over the playerbase even more than they can in a typical MMO and that it’s nearly impossible to get into the endgame/PVP stuff (which, admittedly, I wasn’t close to and didn’t do ANY PvP in this game while I played) without being in one of the elite guilds.

Amazing visuals, until you realize they all repeat themselves a lot.  There was a lot of copy/pasting to get this game out.  I usually try to be more positive about games I played, but tbh this is one I probably would have told myself not to really bother with, at least not yet, if I could turn back time.

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Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Another game I’d Kickstarted.  A pretty faithful D&D5e adaption mechanics-wise.  Really enjoyed the gameplay, and yay modders bringing in more options.  Also there are now player-made campaigns being made and released for more content (like Neverwinter Nights.) 

The main campaign is... good.  Not great.  Enjoyable.  Still a recommendation.  I did enjoy how you get to create your own party and can assign them personalities so that they have unique voiced lines.  If you want to pay a 5e-based video game, it’s a good one to try.

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Pathfinder: Kingmaker

I made it uh... maybe halfway(?) through this game on release a year or two ago.  Giving it another shot.  Slowly making my way through it again.  I don’t know if I will finish, I load it up and play a few hours every couple of weeks still.  Something about it just doesn’t grab me, even though I feel like it should.  I’m cheating heavily this time to get through the more tedious aspects.  TBH I more feel like I’d like to play Kingmaker in a TTRPG using PF2e rules.  Does that exist? Someone run that for me and other nice people who like PF2e, thx.

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The Sims 4

I mean... who didn’t play The Sims in one way or another this year?  I really like playing The Sims while like, watching Critical Role, or MST3k, or any movie/show I want to watch but not pay 100% attention to.

What I maybe spent the most time on with The Sims 4 this year is making an entire house as a map for my Sunday night D&D game that I run.  Which is what that screenshot was from, the boss-fight room that was a magic/alchemy lab that had been trashed by The Monster.

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House Flipper 

Like The Sims 4, it’s a great game to play while paying a lot more attention to something else.  Also like The Sims 4, it’s about decorating houses.  But also about cleaning up houses and doing tasks for people and earning money.  Yes I think House Flipping IRL is Not Great.  But it’s a pleasant distraction game and I’ve been enjoying playing it.  This is a screenshot of the starter shack you get as a home/office, I’m mostly done redecorating it.

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Torchlight III

I’d played 1 & 2 and enjoyed them.  Three was fine.  I enjoyed it.  Nothing groundbreaking.  Again, I mostly played it while watching CR/movies/TV as it didn’t take a lot of concentration.   Eh, I don’t have a screenshot and I’m not gonna go get one.

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The Stanley Parable

lol just kidding, all I did was boot up the game and get the achievement for not playing the game for 5 years.  I should replay it, though.  It’s a cool game.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic

I mean, I’ve been playing this game since Beta, but some years I don’t touch it.  And I didn’t for most of this year.

But since I’ve been playing that long, one of my big regrets is that all my screenshots from my first few characters are all small, and ugly in many ways.  The graphics in game have been somewhat improved since 2011 but also I couldn’t run the game at even close to the max settings back around launch.  Not only that, but there wasn’t armor customization and both you and your companions were often stuck looking like a clown (sometimes literally) because you needed to gear yourself and them in whatever you could find, and that usually didn’t match.

But a lot changed since then. 

So, I went and made an exact visual clone of my main character (A trooper), and named her the same thing with one extra letter, and ran through the main storyline plus a couple of favorite planetary quests again, screenshotting and videoing along the way.  Technically I haven’t finished, still need to do Corellia and the endgame, but I will.  Also I just played around on my other characters a bit (I have so many) and uh... spent a lot of cartel coins (I had tons saved up from being a subscriber) on this winter sale + unlocks.  But yay, lots of pretty (for an 11 year old game) with maxed settings and matching outfits and outfit changes with some of the best looking outfits in the game.  I’ve made some gifs, need to make some more to keep posting that Beth/Aric romance storyline.

Might do the same for a couple of other favorite early characters.

Next I gotta get my main through the Onslaught storyline, because the last time I played seriously was right around when that came out, but then I burned out.

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Fable 2

I don’t have a screenshot because I’ve been playing it on my Xbox360.  Literally the first time I booted my 360 up in 5+ years.  I have not bought any other consoles except a Switch since then because I just don’t play consoles much.

Stalled on the playthrough a bit, but I’m about to recruit Stephen Fry’s character.  Probably need to give up on doing a completionist game and just put my head down and finish it.

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Minor Mentions:

I literally stopped playing Animal Crossing New Years 2020. I played every day from May til then.  I picked it back up for a week or two, but not sure I’ll actually be a daily player and I hate getting guilt tripped by the game and having cockroaches in my virtual house every time I don’t log in for a few days.

I played a Hidden Objects / Adventure game all the way through on my Switch.  It was cheap, and entertaining enough.  I don’t remember the name of it and don’t care enough to go look.

I play Mah Jong and Solitare games on my Switch to wind down at night while listening to podcasts and hanging out with Patchy before going to sleep.  It’s probably sad that besides maybe Animal Crossing, this is what I’ve used my Switch for the most.

Also have a Mahjong game on Steam that is my other “distraction while watching Critical Role / MST3k” game.

Played a little bit of the Star Trek games that released on GOG this year.  It IS fun running around Voyager.  Also tried again to play Star Trek Online and I just CAN NOT get into the spaceship fighting part of the game, which is like, half of the game.  I am bad at it.  I don’t want to do it.  I like the storyline/ground team/building the spaceship parts of it.  But you can’t really play STO without the spaceship fighting part, and there’s no Story Mode in an MMO.

Does playing Dungeons and Dragons on Roll20 count as video gaming?  It doesn’t.  But I did that **A LOT** in 2021.  And will continue to do so in 2022.

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Games I would like to play in 2022:

ME:LE2 & 3, close to starting my MELE2 playthrough as soon as that Community Patch drops.

Finish Pathfinder: Kingmaker maybe? And maybe buy that 2nd Pathfinder game, is it better?

Also play, possibly finish, Fallout 4?

If Baldur’s Gate 3 releases, I’ll play it.  I bought it already, played for a few hours, and am waiting on release before I play again.

Finish Fable 2 and play Fable 3 which I bought on Steam last year.  I did play F3 to completion when it came out, but two attempts after that and I got caught in the game-breaking bug that gets you trapped in the “home base” area.  Heard that’s fixed on the PC version.  I hope so.

I bought No Man’s Sky because my brother loves it.  I dipped my toe in and haven’t been back.  Would like to.

Bought Outward and haven’t tried it.  Would like to.

The Waylanders - I Kickstarted this and the official release date is in February.  Played the first hour or two and think I’ll like the full game.  There’s 2 or 3 other games I KS’d that may release this year that look good.

New SWTOR expansion drops in February, will probably try it.

I stalled out on my playthrough of Divinity: Original Sin 2 in 2020.  I should finish that.

Possible Replays,: Enderal (seriously, please play Enderal.), a renegade “fuck up” Mass Effect (LE) run where I deliberately ignore/lose most of my beloved companions, Cyberpunk 2077, Pillars of Eternity 1&2, maybe Baldur’s Gate 2 before BG3?  All of these should take a backseat to newer games I haven’t played at all or lately.

I’m sure there are things coming out I haven’t thought of, and surprise drops may happen. 

#gaming #video games #mass effect #swtor #wildermyth #the sims 4 #house flipper #the stanley parable #solasta #crown of the magister #pathfinder kingmaker #the outer worlds #new world #boyfriend dungeon #fallout 4 #cyberpunk 2077 #mass effect 3 #annakie's misc stuff #fable #fable 2

[hollysoda]

I can’t believe I’m still seeing people complain about the Animal Crossing direct

“I can’t believe Nintendo are turning into EA and making us pay for dlc-” so you’d rather pay £50 for a separate game? People complained about Happy Home Designer being it’s own spin-off game for full price when it came out but now a remake is coming out that is not only considerably cheaper but also directly connects to New Horizons you’re whining because “dlc = bad”. Hypocrisy much (also Happy Home Paradise looks awesome so it’s worth the money)

“But I wanted mini-games, a new hourly soundtrack, bulk crafting-” while I do agree that those features would improve the game Nintendo gave us so damn much this update. If you came away from the Direct upset about something not being in the game ngl it’s kinda ungrateful. Nintendo clearly listened to their fans, they brought back so many missing characters, including Froggy Chair, and features which we’ve begged for since the beginning. Just be happy with what we’ve been given. Who knows, we might get some of those features in the small updates we get over the following year.

“I can’t believe Nintendo made us wait so long for all of this content why couldn’t they just release it at the start-” because they couldn’t. If they wanted to release all this content on release day then the game would look and be horrendous. Plus people would burnout quicker with no new features to look forward to, as seen this year during the hiatus. Releasing updates gradually was a clever tactic on Nintendo’s half, not only to keep interest up but also so they had longer to work on things. “But why couldn’t they just delay the original release date-” it had already been delayed once and I speak for a lot of people when I say March 20th was the perfect date considering the state the world was in.

Basically, just be grateful. Nintendo is a shitty company at times but they clearly worked their asses off to make all this update content and I am so thankful for them.

#animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #animal crossing direct #acnh

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: July 10th

I really let asks get away from me lately. I was super focused on working on that Patreon Moment. With that done I can finally think about doing other things, so here’s a new collection of answers!

Thank you for sending in questions everyone ^^.

For the new Patreon moment, will you be able to reference it in step 4? Or just like a tiny nod to it if you pick certain choices?

There won’t be. I’m sorry if you were hoping for that! The Patreon moment is meant to be entirely optional, it’s not something that gets you extra content in the main game.

Is the new CG artist the main one now? :0 I’ve noticed theres been a difference in the art style recently. Is the old CG artist still going to make art for the game? :0

The original artist still makes CGs for the game sometimes, but he mainly focuses on character sprites.

Are you going to put the NSFW our life moment on a website other than patreon? I would love to get it but I can't use patreon atm.

I don’t know. I'm afraid we can't release the Patreon Moment on a normal game storefront because we can't mix 18+ content with our family friendly game. If there's some other place similar to Patreon where it's not the normal type of full-scale public content releases we'd consider using that, but I’m not sure if there is another site that’s better than Patreon in that regard. I'm sorry.

Out of curiosity, in all of your games so far, which characters in each were the most fun to write? They obviously don't have to be your favorite characters!

Buffalo Seer in AFA, really everyone in XOD/XOBD is pretty equally entertaining to write, The Guide in LoV, and Cove in OL!

idk if you accept "personal" questions, but is there anything you've been watching/ listening to lately

Mostly, I’ve been watching/listening to Authortube videos as of late! It’s people who talk generally about the process of how books become traditionally published and/or share their own experience as they attempt to be published. I don’t have an interest in writing normal text based books, but it’s really interesting to hear about that world. I’m listening to a video about royalties right now as I answer these asks.

Will one of the desserts we get to pick be fudge? That'd be such a cute reference! 

Haha, yeah, it should. Unless I completely blank on it and forget when trying to include the various referential food options.

I don't know if this has been asked previously but what would be the approximate heights for the presets MC can choose from Step 2 ~ 4? Are there any measurement you had in mind? Sorry if I didn't make myself clear kk I've been struggling with my English lately 💀 

I don’t know, ahah. I didn’t have any numbers in mind for that. So it’s whatever you imagine it is!

I noticed a bug with the Patreon moment when it comes to what your character wears. When Jamie and Cove are kissing while my character only had dresses selected, I had both the option to remove the dress or to remove the shirt... Picking one of the options to interact with Cove, after he removed his shirt, it had Jamie remove their shirt followed by ther pants despite only having dresses picked. 

Thank you for reporting ^^

I keep refreshing steam to see when the new doc for xobd will be released. I noticed you haven't posted anything about it in quite some time. Would it be possible to ask about a timeline/potential date? (If it's even this year—) I know you and your team are probably working super hard, I'm just super curious! ~Thank you!~ 

There are more stories done, I just haven’t gotten around to publicly releasing them. Hopefully I will have a chance to spend the time on that sooner rather than later!

hello!! i’m not sure if it’s an update but i’ve just replayed our life and at the end i can’t propose to cove anymore? :(( i’ve actually tried playing twice but the options are not there anymore, did you guys remove the options? i’m sorry if you’ve answered this before!! thank you and have a good one :) 

I’m afraid things haven’t been changed or removed, so I think you might’ve accidentally picked the wrong things somewhere along the way and locked yourself out of being able to propose by mistake. Sometimes you meant to say you want to get married but instead you mis-click and have it so the MC isn’t thinking about marriage or something. All I can suggest is starting from the beginning of Step 3 and making sure to follow the steps listed in the FAQ. I’m sorry for that.

Did yall remove some of the options for when youre making out with Cove in the charity moment? I could've sworn you could grab his bonkadonk and its not there anymore 

This is the same situation as the above. We didn’t remove things and you’re not wrong that there are sometimes those options. But there are various choices you have to make to get those options and it sounds like you accidentally missed something. If your relationship isn’t long-term, you can’t do it for example.

HI IM SO EXCITED I CAN FINALLY GET THE STEP 3 DLC 

Thank you for getting it!

Is Shiloh super totally straight bc I’m very gay and a huge Shiloh fan, would my man make an exception?😩

Sadly, he is one of our super straight characters. I’m sorry.

Hi, I have a very dumb question. In Step 2 does Cove not wanna share his drink with us at the mall (or rather why he stops drinking it) because it's an indirect kiss? Or is it like ...weird to him to share? Because if I remember right he eats off our spoon in the birthday scene right? 

Yeah, he’s awkward about it because he likes the MC and it feels very personal to share a straw with his crush.

Hi! If you don't mind me asking, who is the artist for OL2? Their style is so pretty! 

Thank you for saying so! This is her Twitter- https://twitter.com/redridingheart

Do Beginnings & Always and Now & Forever exist in the same universe? 

Yep! XOXO Droplets also exists in the same universe. It’s one big GB Patch world, haha.

Do Pran's parents regret the way they raised him? Do they feel ashamed of it?

No. They’re the type of people best cut out because they’re not gonna change. Which is why Pran does go very limited contact when he’s an adult.

Hi! I just wrapped up my second playthrough of Our Life, and I absolutely adore it, but I had a question. I went to the gallery and found I was missing 2 CGS (specifically Step 1-3 and 2-3) and I had no clue where they would've shown up. Which moments are those found in? 

You get it by telling Cove about his dad offering you money to be his friend in Step 1 and Step 2. You can’t get both in one playthrough, since you can only tell Cove the truth once. I’m really glad you liked it!

Hi hi! Please, how tall is Baxter and Derek? Love the game so much and I can't wait to see more! 

I don’t know, aha. I think Baxter was around 5′10 and Derek was like 5′8/5′9, maybe. I really am not one who has specific heights for things in mind.

is adult cove a bottom, top, or switch? 

A switch, though would choose the top if he had to pick.

I was wondering if there is a way to transfer save data? Even if through the game files. I wanted to be able to transfer my save data from my desktop over to my laptop so that I could continue playing right where I left off from but I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. 

If you save the save folder/persistent data of the game from your desktop and put it into the game folder on your other device, that could work.

Hi! Is it possible for us to know the date when our life: now and forever comes out on steam? Sorry if you've mentioned it before but I haven't seen it and I'm looking foward to that happening and just wanted to know :) 

It’s gonna be a long time, I’m afraid. There’s no estimate right now.

I started playing Our Life with my sister a while ago, and I think you guys should know that we discovered your secret. >:)

L from death note and Cove are clearly the same person, and this whole game is just an origin story!!

I’ve never seen that show so I’m sorry to say I don’t understand the connection/reference you’re trying to make. I’m pretty out of the loop when it comes to media. I don’t watch movies or TV.

Will OL2 have options for disabled MCs?

I understand if it's too complicated, just curious

Unfortunately, it’s not really something we have a plan for. We couldn’t finish the game if we tried to include every disability and have it be meaningful. It’d just be too much content to create. But if we decide to only include a few, how would we choose which disabilities get to be represented and which are left out? I don’t know. It’ll probably have to be something we don’t include as an option again, sadly. I’m sorry.

playing our life > anything else 

Haha, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

Honestly, I would like to thank Our Life for helping me come to terms with my sexuality. Before, I never would've actually thought that it was possible to like boys romantically and still be asexual. Almost all of the BL visual novels I've read had unskippable sexual content in them and it honestly just didn't click with what I feel. I'm glad I found Our Life. I love the game, the developers, and this fandom so much. Now, I can safely come out as homoromantic AND asexual (at least anonymously here anyway; my parents are still huge homophobes 😂). 

Aw, it’s great to hear you felt comfortable being yourself in the game! That’s wonderful. I’m really sorry about your parents, though.

Will the demo for OL2 be on android? Really not sure if I could wait any longer than I have to aha 

Yeah, it’ll be available for Android once we eventually release a demo!

Do all these reveals perhaps mean development is progressing ahead of schedule? Please let that be the case I'm already obsessed with Qiu 

No, sorry, aha. Art comes along much faster than script/programming-work for us. It’s gonna be a long time before the game is a finished thing you can actually play. But at least we can look at the beautiful images.

Hey! First of all I wanna say I reallllllyyyyy loooovvveeee Our Life and XOXO Droplets! I have over 300 hours of playtime on Our Life… Anyways, I was just wondering, are the Derek and Baxter DLCs going to come out at the same time? If not, which one do you plan to release first? :3 

They will come out separately and Derek will be first! Glad you like the game.

I keep replaying Our Life to get every possible iteration and I am loving it <3 I was wondering if Cove gets locked out of his confession because MC was talking to Lee, would it be possible to confess to him in step 4? 

Yeah, you can avoid the confession in Step 3 and then get it in Step 4.

Hi, my Cove wears bracelets through step 2 and 3 but I still don't get an option to give him a bracelet? I didn't even know that was possible until I seen someone else ask about it lol 

Hm, did you use the Cove creator? Maybe there’s a bug where using the creator to add bracelets doesn’t fulfill the requirement to give Cove a bracelet in Step 3.

Wait, I'm dense, when does Baxter appear in step 2? Is it from big park firework? I feel so bad since i really love Baxter and waiting to buy his dlc. 

It’s in the Soiree Moment. You have to be just friends with Cove, indifferent, or crushing but not ask Cove to the dance at all. Then while there you can find someone new to dance with. But if you bring Cove to the dance while crushing, the MC won’t wanna dance with anyone else so you can’t get the scene.

In step 2 when we go to the soiree I made my mc go alone and baxter chooses the mc to dance, i'm curious, why did he pick the mc? sorry if this has been asked before! 

Because the MC looked to be around his age, seemed to also be searching for a partner, and had nice legs. A perfect option for him.

I read some of the FAQs, and I saw that we could tell Baxter about the condo that he rented there was previously the mean old grandparents. how do we get the mc to tell him that? 

It happens in the DLC Moment “Late Shift”. If you don’t have a job you instead get a longer scene with Baxter.

I don’t know if you’ve addressed this or not, but are you planning on paying voice actors for our life: now and forever? 

Yeah, we pay our VAs in all our projects.

hey can i ask how you did the moments thing in ol? im trying to get into making visual novels and while im VERY sure its out of my comfort zone and all that atm i kinda wanna know just for the future, bc im p sure it would work well for something i wanna do :O but its also fine if you cant say for other reasons :> 

I’m afraid I’m not sure what you mean. Are you asking how we programmed the screen or something script related? Adding Moments like that is pretty straightforward, though. You just have buttons that open to different labels and then the scripts are essentially individual short stories/vignettes. Good luck with your VN!

Since Autumn becomes gender fluid later in the game, will there be a character who remains as he/him to romance in game? 

OL1 has the he/him LIs, OL2 is all about other genders.

I don't want to impose on your creative plans, but a parrot could possibly make a good pet in an OL-type game? They're pretty long-lived and likely to still be thriving by the end even if the MC got them back in step 1. 

I do appreciate the suggestion, but I’m afraid it’s not likely going to happen. I understand there are technically some animals that could theoretically live long enough to last the whole game that or we could have the MC only get a pet after some years have already passed. But the many things that would have to be considered/accommodated for makes it just something we probably can’t manage adding. I’m sorry.

As time passes will we be able to see Qiu and Tamarack's other stage arts as well?

They are both so cute i can't wait to be friends with them!

Yeah, we’ll show content from other Steps in the future. It’ll be a little while from now, though.

Can you date Cove and still have your family comfort you in the car?

You can’t get Cove’s Step 3 confession scene if you have the family comfort you in the car. But that’s not the only way to date him. You can get together with him earlier in the game or later on in Step 4.

Is Mc always going to be the one walking down the aisle or could Cove do it? Also could you choose to have one of your moms walk you? 

No. Cove wouldn’t want to walk down the aisle like that and the MC automatically respects that. And the MC also gets to have their preferences respected, so it’s up to you whether they want to do an aisle walk or not. You also can pick who, if anyone, walks with you.

Once step 4 is out, will you be able to go the whole game on crush/love without either of you confessing? 

Yes, as long as you tell the game you don’t want to progress the relationship. Even in Step 4 it won’t force you to officially get together.

Howdy, so in Step 4, there will be any Romance with Derek that is not part of any dlc? 

He’s only a friend unless you get his romance story.

Will the step 4 in OL2 be one big step or are you considering moments? 

Step 4 is just an epilogue in both games.

hi kind of a weird question but!! we know tht cliff doesn't start dating again but. wht abt flings? like does he ever do 1 night stands or anything? thank u!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Nope. Cliff has a very small interest in sex. If he’s not in a real relationship with a partner he’s crazy about it simply isn’t something he feels a need for, so one night stands wouldn’t even cross his mind.

sorry if you've already answered this, but i was wondering if there were plans for there to be bonus love interests in OL2 like how we have derek and baxter in OL1.

Maybe! There are side characters who could be given romance stories, but whether or not it will happen depends on funding and how long everything else takes to finish.

I don't know if i'm allowed to ask about ol2 here yet, if not u can ignore this or answer it later. My question is can you date one of them and be good friends with the other? I don't want to be strangers with the other bcs i love them both a lot :<

Yes you can!

what patreon level do i have to be to unlock the nsfw moment? im on the $5 one right now, will that give me access to the moment, or just access to the moment progress? 

That’ll give you access! Tier 2 and anything higher allows the player to download it.

#our life #ask #gb patch #gb patch games #all projects #Our Life Beginnings & Always #Our Life: Now & Forever

[0poole]

I LOVE No Straight Roads

Honestly it’s hard to keep me away from a game with great visuals and even greater character design. I knew from the INSTANT I saw these characters that I was going to love it. I just finished it because it’s (unfortunately) pretty short, and even though I cheesed the final boss through it’s very lenient death mechanics (Instant respawn at the cost of a good rank) I actually appreciated that it wasn’t a pure cake walk. I’ve yet to rematch all of the bosses, but since I had genuine trouble with the later ones I’ll hold off on that.

But who cares about gameplay, am I right? I sure as hell don’t. I would’ve bought the game no matter what the hell it was. I wanted the characters (and the music, although I realized that second) and that was it. 

First of all, I love any world that is super fantastical but cheesy in its concept, ala a city powered by music, and battles between artists using music. Ideas like this only spawn from a mind that wants to create a fun atmosphere, if nothing else, and it was sure as hell fun. I genuinely love when someone goes so far into a crazy idea and doesn’t waste your time explaining it with real world logic. Wanna know how a city can be powered by music? Shut up and look at the cute virtual mermaid. Lord knows I did. Every once in a while, it does you good to just let the player/reader/viewer just revel in the idea without having to go out of your way to make things seem realistic. It’s not about “turning your brain off” or whatever, it’s picking your battles.

Also, I can seriously love a world with great background characters to it. Any game with the right situation to insert the random nobodies you find onto the streets into the art in the credits really played into the greatness of the world’s less important characters, and that’s always a good thing. It’s technically world building. But, since I always love to pick favorites, I’d have to say my favorite background character is easily Mia, the NSR infodesk assistant. It’s funny, because you can literally search “nsr characters” into Google and she’s the third image result. I love how jumpy she is when you first interact with her, since NSR probably spread the word about B2J suggesting they’re rock thugs who’d beat up anyone, so for all she knows she could die right then and there with a guitar lodged in her skull. She’s probably just some intern trying to pay for college. She don’t want trouble.

Also, I just realized that 90% of the characters in this game have the same body structure that I always love, that being having arms/legs that sort of fan out in width into relatively large hands/feet. It’s a kind of limb structure I fall into so much because it just really hits me right for some reason. I really can’t explain why.

Anyways, I gotta talk about the big boys individually:

Mayday and Zuke are an amazing duo. I’m always a sucker for a cute and crazy girl, but honestly Zuke hit so many of the right notes too. I will say it’s weird to pair the martian Zuke with the humanly-skinned Mayday, but honestly it doesn’t even matter because he looks so cool on his own. I love his weird blocky blue dreadlocks, and his weirdly shaped shirt which bares his chest in the weirdest way... And, oh my god, Mayday’s weird Spongebob background flower eyes? It’s little tidbits like that that really make me jealous. How could I have ever thought of that? It looks so perfect, and I don’t know why. And her little booty jig she does in her idle animation? Adorable. I played as her as much as was reasonable not only because I’m a filthy button masher with little strategy but also because she’s so damn cute. I can also appreciate how she has a tough-as-nails persona while still keeping a semi-girly attitude, like with her falling for 1010 and Sayu. Characters are so much better when they’re a perfect blend of characteristics, instead of being all one-note, like how Zuke is the quiet one but gets heated against DK West, and all. 

Honestly the voice acting for every character is great, but I love when Mayday’s VA’s accent shows through. It’s a perfect twang to accent (consider this the only acknowledgement of a pun in this post) her snarkiness. 

DJ Subatomic Supernova was going to be an easy favorite since he’s all space-themed. Also, I don’t know why I always end up liking the egotistic characters. Not in the sense that I like their egotistic-ness, but in the sense that I like everything else about them and they just so happen to also be egotistic. The same applied with Empoleon (maybe like my 2nd favorite Pokemon) and Rarity from MLP, probably among others. Either way, I’ll never not love space themes. Not to mention he’s got a funky disco theme, and I’m slowly starting to realize that I am in extreme love with techno-funk styles of music. The instant I heard his music he cemented his place into my playlists. 

As for design, I still have no idea what the fuck he is. Clearly AI is at human levels in this world, but if he’s a robot why does he still have hairy legs? But, if he’s a human, is that weird orb his head? Is it just some sort of puppet which he controls from inside his giant jacket? I know I dissed explaining things realistically but I actually want to know with this guy. Even the wiki doesn’t say. Either way, he’s clearly the logical extreme of “being at the center of your own universe.” Even his jacket depicts a solar system, with his hood being the sun. Didn’t see that until I tried to draw him. I really wish this guy wasn’t so tied to his DJ stand so I could reasonably draw him without it. I don’t want to draw his hairy ass legs. It is a great touch for his design though (although I prefer his beta look with pants and long boots, another design trait I tend to gravitate to) since DJs could reasonably not wear pants, since they’re always behind a table.

Sayu is my favorite. It’s so plainly obvious. It’s weird to say that sometimes, because some characters like Sayu are so clearly engineered to be as adorable as possible, to the point where they’re basically a parody of whatever they’re supposed to be emulating, but then they do that so well that they are still likable for what they’re trying to parody. Also, even though I’ve never looked into any vocaloid superstars myself, the fact that they exist and are loved in real life is absolutely perfect to be used as a character design in a world like this. It’s so weird conceptually, but we all know it’s normal and realistic. But yeah, she’s a giga-cutie whom I’ve already drawn and I’ve listened to her theme on loop on many different occasions. Favorite character, favorite track, favorite weapon of choice (What did I say about Empoleon?), which, and I wouldn’t have noticed this myself, looks like the USB symbol you see above USB ports on computers. How crazy perfect is that?

Even apart from my unbridled love for cute monster robot(?) girls, her boss fight is probably the 2nd greatest of them all, at least conceptually. She’s just a hologram, so you can’t touch her, but you CAN disconnect the artists which control her in order to defeat her. It’s the kind of concept for a boss fight that could only work for this type of character. I’m a sucker for the cute girl that provides her voice, but I love how the animator (video editor? the yellow one) actually attacks you with a mouse and lowers the brightness of the setting once he appears. Also, the mocap guy being the deeply-voiced type but still providing the adorable movements of her body. It’s such a great combo of characters, and their little extra art in the credits makes me like them even more. I just wish we could interact with them individually.

DK West was probably one of the most interesting characters visually, especially since I knew of every other NSR member long before the game came out, but I only just heard of him closer to the release. I wasn’t sure where he was placed, but I definitely assumed his gig was the weird shadow demon we saw in the trailers. When I finally saw him in game, I was shocked to hear him speak an entirely different language most of the time, which was really cool. Also, finding out he was tied to Zuke and wasn’t strictly an NSR artist really made him more interesting. You know, if his fucking shadow clone magic didn’t make him crazy cool enough. Even though I suck at his game and am not especially fond of his raps, the visual of him rapping with this giant monster behind him and dozens of weird shadow wingmen by his side hyping him up was probably one of the coolest in the entire game. The dark way they were hyping him up too gave such a bizarre atmosphere, especially since it parallels his seemingly chill and smiley demeanor. 

I definitely hope they’ll introduce new bosses as DLC in the future, and make them sort of in the same vein as DK West, where they aren’t the biggest artists ever, but they want to pick a fight with B2J. I’d kill for any extra content this game can provide.

Yinu is obviously special since she was the subject of the demo they put out for the game. Even though I knew all her bells and whistles, she and her mom still beat me a few times in the full game. Considering she’s semi-tied to story-ish spoilers I kinda want to go more into her in a separate section. It is worth considering playing the game first since it’s not hard (with the easy going deaths) and it’s short length.

1010 seriously grew on me as I learned more about them and interacted with them. I got their shtick when I first looked at them, but after seeing that animation of them touring the city on Youtube I was kinda falling for them. Then, I learned that they’re apparently repurposed navy war robots? I mean, maybe not them specifically, but it seems to heavily point in that direction, with the warship cars and “attention!”s and all. It took me a bit to get into their music too, but once I actually fought them and put their actions to the music I fell in love with it. I swear, Neon J’s weird dancing can has some of the smoothest moves in all of gaming. I don’t know whether they mocapped out those movements or got one of the greatest animators ever, but it looks so impossibly clean his part of the song gets me like 30x more hype than it would normally. 

Also, their little art piece of them looking at fan mail in the credits is probably one of the most adorable things ever. Even if they’re just Neon J’s puppets, that piece of art really makes it seem like they love every one of their fans. I’m not gonna lie, I might swoon a bit too if they picked me out and gave me some special attention.

Oh yeah, and the fact that Mayday was super sad in her showstopper against them was adorable and hilarious at the same time. The little tweaks they made to the showstopper for each fight were great.

Eve just has to be Lady Gaga, right? Like, an even crazier Lady Gaga. DJSS is Daft Punk (or any artist with a helmet persona, you know what I’m talking about), Sayu is Hatsune Miku, DK West is Kanye West, Yinu is a generic child protege, 1010 is a KPop boyband (just pick one) and Eve is Lady Gaga. That’s just how things are. But, again, this is the kind of boss fight that only this type of character could provide. It’s not just surreal imagery, it’s ARTISTIC surreal imagery. The fight is so mesmerizing in every way, especially by how it starts off so slow and calm and progresses to insanity, as well as the increased emotional investment in the fight making you feel so much more into it than just “That’s the boy band. Let’s fight.” Not only does it get you more invested, but it makes her artistic persona go deeper than just “she looks weird.” She is genuinely conflicted about her relationship with Zuke, and naturally that leads her to literally split him and Mayday apart. That mechanic specifically was the coolest, although I do wish they made it more obvious when you needed to switch over to a different side. I was getting pulverized by her fight too, since there were so many things to pay attention to. Her fight was definitely the best one. 

Tatiana and Spoilers:

Let’s be real with ourselves, the twist was so obvious. I do also think, though, that obvious twists aren’t bad if they’re just good reveals. At some point, a person just has experienced so many stories that “only pretty good” twists are easy to spot. It doesn’t mean that the twists are bad, it just means you yourself experienced.

I feel like her transition from rock to EDM was pretty understandable, even as a non-musician. She was so caught up in what she assumed was popular that it basically consumed her. It’s easy as an artist to want to forgo what you truly want to make in favor of what makes you popular, and clearly since her transition to EDM made her the CEO of the biggest company in the city (world?) that probably made her think she truly needed to change her outlook. Then, when she saw B2J try to bring it back, she sort of coined them as being as misguided as she was and knocked them down a peg. Plus, they were kinda being jerks about it.

It’s kinda like the Trolls sequel, where everyone pegs rock music fanatics as being too stuck up in their own heads to appreciate other types of music, which honestly seems more like the case than the alternative. When I first heard of the story of the game, I was seriously hoping they did put an asterisk on B2J’s ambitions because they were a bit sketchy from the start. 

That’s kinda where I want to talk about Yinu, because she was the true turning point in what they were doing. She’s literally 9 and yet she’s getting dragged into all this BS. When she said “I hate you all” at the end of her fight, and played a somber tune on her broken piano after the fight destroyed it, you kinda got a kick in the face to realize you’re kinda being an asshole to some of them. Sure, they fight back, but they wouldn’t fight in the first place if they didn’t have to. They are just people who play music under a joint name that B2J just so happened to get in hot water with. 

Then, of course, there’s Kliff, who also reeked of surprise villain, and who’s basically the embodiment of the bad side of B2J, where he just wanted to destroy for his own sake and not for the actual greater good. Once B2J realized their mistake, they backed off, but Kliff was so hard pressed to do what he planned on in the first place he wouldn’t stop. I kinda wish he got a bigger fight to his own since he’s clearly a big enough tech genius to divert a whole satellite into one specific building. Maybe the Elliecopter chase bit was his thing, but I do kind of wish he was there to fight against them too.

Even though Tatiana did kind of reform a bit quick, It’s still not too crazy to assume she could see that B2J was just misguided and the fact that they worked to revert their wrongdoings for her sake would make a pretty strong impressions. They clearly can hold their own, so it’s not like she wouldn’t want them to join NSR too. 

Oh yeah, and her boss fight was clock/time themed. If there’s a theme under space that I love, it’s clocks/time. 

And If I am to be respected by the internet, I must provide a negative opinion to balance out my positive one. I will say that the character model physics (like Mayday’s braids, DK West’s vest thing, Neon J’s fluffy neck thing, etc) got kinda funky at times. Especially DK West’s vest, which was completely messed up for every scene he was in... Also, even though the voices are mostly great, some lines felt a bit off. Just a bit. That good enough? Good.

But yeah anyway that’s another favorite game to add to the pile. Eventually I’m gonna have to compile a true list of my all-time favorite games/movies because I do kind of want to have a solid idea of what my all-time favorites are.

#nsr #no straight roads #bunk bed junction #dj subatomic supernova #sayu #yinu #dk west #spoilers #1010 #eve #tatiana #rambling #review #poole #etc #opinions #rant

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

I try and keep these as consistent to the original games as possible, in that, like most DLC tends to be, the game is not completely upended by the playing or not playing of these stories. These are expansions on ideas or explorations of concepts and stories that I feel were not explored to their fullest in the official games. If I wanted to rewrite the whole game outright, I certainly would, but the idea here is to come up with expansions and concepts that fit within what the game is, rather than rebuild it entirely, even if the end result is that I come up with at least another full game’s worth or story and mission.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

Ah, back again. Here to continue with the Hypothetical DLCs of Mass Effect 2, and this is entry two of four, because there are just that many ideas I’ve had. Might as well just get used to this, since ME3 is at least as long if not longer. If you need a refresher of the prior entry in this series, here, have a handy dandy link. I’d hoped to only need three entries for this game, but it reached a point where the break would either have to be much further in or I could have a fourth part, and I reached a rather natural break for this.

That break being that all of the DLCs here would be immediately accessible for the player after Horizon is completed, while the others are either set to be accessible followign the Collector Ship or even explicitly post-game. That’s not to say that, in terms of where they fit in to game play, they play best after Horizon, just that, in the same way that Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival become available after Horizon, while in terms of their story and the overall portrayal (plus original release) they came after the base game and the Suicide Mission.

This arc, for lack of a better term, of ME2 DLC ideas are very heavy on the concept of developing and expanding on the various races of Citadel space. Because ultimately, I tend to feel that ME2 really is the weakest of games in the trilogy - I’ve said it elsewhere, it feels like it suffers heavily from bridge syndrome, telling an isolated story in the middle of the trilogy, the plot spinning its wheels in the name of holding back the payoff for the finale, rather than telling the natural development. So the focus in this branch of things is primarily focused on giving us an expanded look at the various peoples of Citadel space. Shepard is, by nature, meant to be as much a diplomat and representative of humanity as a soldier, and we’re here to, at least thematically, focus on that aspect.

I say “arc,” but these are still unconnected with each other. I do have ideas that are episodic or sequel-like, but when I get to those, they’ll be clearly marked. No, it was just thematic to group these all together, rather than have them tossed around in my notes.

Proud Soldiers

There’s trouble brewing on Palaven, the turian homeworld. The military forces there are beginning to show signs of tension between them and the government. With the Reaper threat imminent, the last thing the galaxy needs is the strongest military force weakened with dissent. Garrus asks Shepard to help out his people before the galaxy loses the war before it starts.

Sure would’ve been nice to actually SEE Palaven proper, wouldn’t it? Yeah, we’re fixing that.

Obviously, this is a Garrus-centric DLC. Cuz we can’t well visit the turian homeworld without taking the time to focus on our resident turian, right? While I’ve looked at the mandatory companions in pairs so far, I’m only really gonna focus on Garrus for this one.

Now the motivation here is actually building off of a comment from ME3 – when Victus is declared the next Primarch, Liara mentions his actions on Taetrus during “the uprisings.” Having not paid any attention to the Cerberus News Network (which, y’know, doesn’t even really function now anyway, so newbies probably also have this issue), I was deeply confused. So we get to have Shepard be involved. Because, really, what event can happen in the galaxy that doesn’t involve Shepard? But, seriously, it is good optics from the perspective of getting the galaxy to ally in the name of the coming war with the Reapers – humans and turians have had their relationship diplomatically described as “tense” since the First Contact War. If a human intervenes in the name of aiding the turians, that offers something to build on when the Reapers actually do show up.

Which, y’know, if the Council wasn’t saved in ME1, that might be a good thing to do.

Granted, I’m gonna take some liberties with the idea, and it’s probably not gonna tie in to the CNN thing very much because of my lack of familiarity (yes I do have the wiki articles open in the other window as I write this, but I’m not gonna be bound to this supplementary material that is functionally going to be replaced by my work here, so...).

Garrus does take point, since turians aren’t going to be all that appreciative of a human ship showing up uninvited and wanting to land on Palaven, especially a human ship flying Cerberus colors. This is where Spectre status can help smooth things a little – if Shepard has maintained their status, they can leverage that to get clearance. Otherwise, Garrus leans on the port authority – apparently someone he served with back in his military service. Because turian military service is compulsory, so there should be a great deal of people who he knew in the military before his C-Sec service.

While I’m not gonna to make her mandatory, I will say that Tali probably will get a solid position as the other companion in this – it’s a good way to create banter opportunities, both of them are already popular characters who people will enjoy having the chance to spend more time with, and it gives us some room for the building blocks of their potential hook-up in ME3 to get teased as well. Sure, there’d be the people complaining about one of them flirting with the other when they’re in a romance with Shepard, but I really don’t care about the people who are going to be assholes like that, they know it won’t go anywhere if either is romanced by Shepard, but it might be that Shepard isn’t romancing either of them and deserve to be able to find happiness if Shepard isn’t gonna date them, so the people who complain about it can shove it.

This really is our chance to get a better glimpse at the turian culture – you know how, in the Omega DLC, Nyreen brings up how her biotic abilities got her sidelined by the military? Yeah, that biotic discrimination among turians is something only really mentioned in codex entries, which might not really be something the player interacts with, doesn’t get to really see that the turians, culturally, look down on biotics among themselves (which, to be totally honest, seems a little odd to me as is, considering how pervasive biotics are, given that they’re an extension of Element Zero and all the developments around... well, the mass effect as a phenomenon), so we’re gonna give it a big deal here. These turian separatists are giving turian biotics a place of belonging so we can actually discuss this in game.

While I mentioned Victus’s actions on Taetrus being part of the inspiration, that is still going to be something happening offscreen, because, obviously, we’re on Palaven, not Taetrus. But that’s something that’s happening in like background news reports and maybe some incidental dialogue. Mostly because I’m sticking with Shepard not having met Victus prior to ME3, as their introduction there indicates – again, I am TRYING to weave these into the fabric of the existing game, rather than upending that applecart in its entirety.

And I want it to not go missed that Garrus, being from this culture, being a proud member of the turian race, being a member of a military-focused culture, is not going recognize the flaws right off. See, one of my things about Garrus in ME2... He doesn’t really get much character development. First of all, if you took the Paragon path of ME1, he’s actually REGRESSED in character when we start ME2, him having left C-Sec is saying that, once again, he got fed up with rules and regulations, even after Paragon Shepard made him realize that they all had their place in the chain. Secondly, we get no follow-up with him and Sidonis, even though there are varying results of that mission.

So the idea I’m going with here is to address that Garrus is a flawed person and needs to grow and develop over time, rather than just comfortably slot in to the role of “Shepard’s best friend.” And not just because occasionally I’d like to roll a Shepard where that isn’t the case. Plus there’s the fact that, in ME1, in the elevator conversations, he makes a lot of little micro-aggressions born of privilege in Citadel societies – turians are pretty much second only the asari in terms of popular perceptions, and he says a lot of things that are in the “you are a credit to your race” to Ashley, Kaidan, Tali, and even Wrex in the first game. Make this a genuine character trait and character flaw, you get a character who learns and grows.

So initially, no matter his stance on alien biotics, Garrus is going to be unfazed by the way that turian biotics are treated, which prompts a conversation from Shepard, one with some specific dialogue if they are a biotic, and if they’re in a romance with him – it’s like a neon sign of “CHARACTER ARC AND DEVELOPMENT” so far as this DLC is concerned y’know? Where he has to come to learn about how the turians’ way of life is actually flawed, that it’s not that he’s a bad turian but that the turians perpetuate bad ideas and ways of life. That it is, in many ways, the turians who need to learn that they’re not always right, and how to correct their behavior.

Y’know, make a point to Garrus that the turians are the problem, that it’s their cultural attitude and perceptions that need to change, not that he’s wrong – because I find a supposed military-focused society who reacts to the mission with Tarquin Victus in ME3, ready to hang him or put him in front of a firing squad, for the crime of looking at a situation, deciding that it will be certain death for his men, and trying something unconventional in the name of being able to accomplish their mission by actually getting to the battlefield... That reaction is one that has never failed to drive me up the goddamn wall. I the untrained civilian know the first axiom of battle is “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Why don’t these soldiers from an explicitly militaristic society recognize this? We might not be able to influence the society, but we should see Garrus learn this lesson. Because I’m pretty sure that his characterization in ME3 is him doing this... but that’s not really what his ME2 character arc centers on.

Anyway, we experience some stuff with turian politics and stuff, while getting a chance to run around on Palaven itself – let’s make this part of the record, we have a long non-combat section here, because a human in a ship flying the colors of a known xenophobic alien terrorist organization running around the capitol world of a sovereign military culture who still hold grudges for the events of a conflict only thirty years prior... Letting Shepard walk around Cipirtine, the capitol city of the turian Hierarchy, with the armory that is their loadout in ME2 strapped to their back (particularly soldier class Shepard), is ASKING for them to get put in jail. So at most, they might be able to walk around with a sidearm. AT MOST – I figure that it’s not unreasonable for the turians to allow Shepard – especially a Shepard who still has their Spectre status or saved the Council in ME1 – to have their standard body armor and SOME weapons, but not the mobile armory they generally strap to their back. Through most of this, Shepard only has their pistol available, and much of their interactions are more about dialogue than combat (like there MAY be some street violence or something, some scuffles with the separatists, but not enough to justify breaking out assault rifles, sniper rifles, the tactical nuke, etc).

This is as much about immersing us in turian society and culture as anything else, so that’s where any little side quests are, again, I’m not devoting time to those, these go ON as it is already.

Back in the main plot area, we start seeing the simmering resentment among turian biotics to the turian military’s attitude towards them. That’s why we’re having Garrus be blind to the flaws of his own society – Shepard will eventually have to call him out, I like to think even sooner if they’re a biotic. Because as we call out this behavior, we’ll see some advancement and growth from him over the course, and yes, I know I’ve said this already, but dammit, it really needs to be reiterated, because Garrus really DOESN’T grow over ME2. And I am here to address and fix this problem.

The core is to acknowledge that turian society is making mistakes (just like any other) and, on a metaphorical level for “what is this saying about the world we live in?” is asking the audience to address their cultural biases – it is easy for people to look at other cultures and say something is wrong. We as humans easily do that with the turians. So having Garrus look at his culture and realize that something is wrong and that he has missed it, that he’s let his biases blind him to those problems is suggesting to the audience they do the same with their society.

Okay, back to the plot stuff. Turian politics, blah, blah, blah. This eventually turns into a more combat orientation (because this is still a shooter video game, the weapons do have to come out eventually). I know I said that Shepard is leaving a lot of their armament on the Normandy, but we can have the shuttle fly in and let them have a proper fitting of weapons when things start hitting the fan. What I’m thinking is that a group of these rebels who are uprising decide that they’re going to storm a turian government building.

I know I said that I’m not looking at a companion here other than Garrus, but, especially if Miranda, Jacob, or Jack (the human biotics) are there, but even without them, if Shepard is the only human biotic, I want to explicitly have a callback made to the side mission in ME1 that featured Chairman Burns, the guy who was taken captive by L2 biotic extremists. This is about people who don’t feel they’re being heard, lashing out against those who have ignored them.

The turian response is to lash out at them – put this down, squash the rebellion. Shepard (or Miranda, if she’s there) gets a comment on how ‘yeah, because that worked so well when you did it to humanity in the First Contact War.’ Because there’s legit a lot to question with the whole concept of ‘shoot first, ask questions after the orbital drop.’ Considering that’s turian SOP with regards to military action, it’s likely to not end well if things keep on this – some of the more reasonable members of the turian government think that this is going to just create a schism, one that Garrus, development kicking in or not, is quick to point out can only end in a weakened turian military, right as the Reapers roll in.

So Shepard offers to be the diplomat and find a way to resolve this without storming in, killing everyone, and sparking a civil war. Because, like I said, the turians fracturing like that is the kind of thing that is bad when the Reapers come along – they have one of the galaxy’s most powerful militaries, even with the awareness that conventional combat and tactics won’t win the day, a unified turian military certainly won’t hurt anything.

Being able to resolve matters peacefully will require having done the various little sidequests that were over the rest of the DLC, which offer more expansion of the turian culture and people, basically rewarding you for going out and investigating and interacting with the world. Or, if you’re Renegade, you can cut right through this, and have the big fight scene. The idea is that learning about the turian people will reward players with a peaceable alternative, something OTHER than a shooting gallery.

Because that really is one of my most frustrating things with ME2, that all the RPG elements fall in to the background in favor of the shooter stuff. Y’know, we have a game billed as an RPG, but the rails seem pretty firmly placed on who we can have Shepard be. So having a story that is relatively major (in the way that DLC tend to be, and in the way that this will have some broad impact on the future of the series, even, again, acknowledging the inherent bind of these as hypothetical DLC ideas) that can portray Shepard not as the unstoppable juggernaut of force but as the diplomat who resolves the impossible... That’s a pretty big deal for an RPG.

Garrus also offers an assist on this – he’s been recognizing the failures and problems of turian society because of the various callouts he’s gotten, the dysfunctions he’s been exposed to now that he has recognized as wrong. It’s not that he’s going to be a changed man as a result of what he’s experienced, but this is the story of someone from a privileged background and society having his eyes opened to the fact that his society is deeply flawed and full of problems and is willing to stand up and argue with the status quo.

Because you know... I’ve been pretty quiet on Garrus’s family in the midst of this. Well, this is going to lead to us to a proper introduction with Castis Vakarian. He’ll be among the turian response team who arrives once Shepard has wrapped up the hostage situation, and he’ll be the voice of how things were handled. Remember how Garrus said in ME1 that his father wouldn’t like Shepard because they’d been given the Spectre wings? Yeah, well resolving things peacefully shows him that at least SOMEONE with that authority is using it wisely – it’s easy to run in, guns blazing. Finding a better solution takes more work, shows more willingness to listen and find a good solution, rather than a quick one. He won’t be outright antagonistic if Shepard does things the non-peaceful way, but he will be chillier.

There’s also some bits of Garrus having some family time, including, for a romanced Garrus, a chance for him to introduce Shepard to his father as his partner. Because whatever you might want to say about offering a character unbalanced content in the series (and I’ve said plenty myself), once we’re in the situation, if it makes sense in character, they SHOULD get that content.

And so after some fade to black to act as the offscreen character interactions, we return to the Normandy and have a conversation with Garrus about how his views of the turian people has shifted, now that he’s really had a chance to see how flawed his people are, especially in the face of the various other races that he’s serving alongside and how they handle similar situations.

Oh, and, like Tuchanka is in the game proper, Palaven remains a small hub area afterwards, so that we get some furthering of the connection that Shepard has with the planet and the devastation happening there next game has actual emotional weight to it.

Also, while we “have” Garrus’s VA in the studio for this, I want a new conversation patched in that acts as a proper response that varies on the basis of how the Sidonis mission is handled. Because the fact that the end of Garrus’s character development in the base game has no response to the mission with a variable result, just cutting to the whole “reach and flexibility” thing... BUGS me. Especially since, if he’s not romanced, that’s the end of his “character development” in ME2. So we’re patching that while we’re here. The existing conversation can wait an extra mission while we acknowledge the growth and development of Garrus as a character, giving him reactions to whether or not Sidonis was killed and actually getting to hear what he thinks about what happened. Give that mission with a variable ending some actual fallout, emotionally speaking, considering that we’re distinctly lacking that as things are now.

Post-Game Followups:

ME3: Bonus dialogue with Garrus about his father and family, preferably with a cameo of some sort from Castus (don’t worry – Garrus’s sister is featured in the next game’s edition of these). In a peaceful resolution of events, the turian have a stronger military presence due to an increased position of biotic operatives. If violence was the solution, they’ve taken damage to morale and are weaker in war assets.

Eternity’s End

It’s said that civilization in the galaxy began on Thessia, homeworld of the asari. Now, a doomsday cult has formed there, believing that the end of the galaxy is upon them. The asari are trying to keep this quiet, but rumors still reach Commander Shepard, and they’re suspicious about how much this sounds like a cult of Reaper worshippers...

So, about a year ago, I made a big rewrite of Thessia in ME3. One of the points I hammered in during that was that Thessia, as we see it in ME3, means absolutely nothing to me, since the first time we ever set foot there, it’s already in the midst of the Reaper invasion. Y’know, showing up to Atlantis as it crumbles in to the sea does not make me feel like I’m personally responsible for said crumbling. That’s what Thessia is to me.

So priority one here is to visit Thessia at a point prior to Priority: Thessia in ME3 and make this a place that actually means something to the player. At least if we can think “I’ve been to that place, and that place that I really liked there is now being destroyed,” it offers some kind of connection to Thessia, rather than just “hey, this place being harvested should make you feel bad.”

Now, while Samara is certainly an obvious option for a companion during this, I do feel like she isn’t in the same position as Garrus was in the last write-up. Unlike Garrus, Samara has a full character arc that goes through the whole of the base game, it doesn’t just abruptly stop after the conclusion of her loyalty mission. That said, I think there’s room for a subplot that explores the Justicars in greater detail – this is a cultural facet for the asari that really doesn’t have the opportunity for play elsewhere, given that Justicars do not leave asari space. But, as a subplot, that’s not the heart of this write-up – I’ll offer it some expansion after the main plot write-up because it’s a character spotlight, but it’s not what we’re here to focus on.

As for the prospective cult, yeah, this is a concern about this being another of those machine cults like we see in the game proper and in the prior “Ghost of the Machine” entry. And this is where we talk up the importance of Thessia – the asari, having had their headstart granted by the protheans, not that we know that here, have “the seat of galactic civilization.” This is supposed to be the proverbial center of the galaxy – the Citadel is the melting pot of the galaxy, but Thessia is the origin point.

Also, going back to the earlier entry of “Underworld,” this is going to be asari-centric attitudes on display and being called out. Because there is plenty of casual arrogance in the asari cultural attitudes – they have thousand year lifespans, they can afford to take the long view of matters, the “everything will unfold as it should” approach. They might be able to survive the issues that come up, but waiting a couple of centuries for the legislation to wind its way through doesn’t work for the other races, at least, aside from the krogan. After all, the salarians and the vorcha have a shorter lifespan than humans. Humans hit about the average – the other races don’t GET centuries to consider things.

That is, ultimately, the asari’s big flaw, how much they favor “the long view” of matters, while ignoring the damage that is done in the short term. Which wraps us around to the original idea going on here – the people being drawn in by this doomsday cult are the ones who are more open to the idea that the rest of the galaxy can’t just wait out matters, that they require action more than contemplative consideration.

Unfortunately, if you have a desire for meaningful societal change, there’s going to be someone who’s going to prey on that concept. This version has managed to get the desire for change to be conflated with the idea that the asari are actively responsible for galactic civilization stagnating. That the arrival of humanity and their drive for advancement has shown that the asari may have begun “galactic civilization” as it’s known today, but it’s not the asari’s responsibility to drive it forward, that, for the good of the galaxy, the asari should step back from being the ones acting ‘at the forefront,’ that their involvement just calls for the galaxy to stagnate, taking a view of things that slows so much, no advancement will ever truly be made because the people pushing for advances end up dying off from old age before they can do anything.

Not inherently bad to start from, though still carrying that patronizing benevolence – they are CHOOSING to step back and away, they are giving the ‘younger’ races the opportunity to take the center stage. But this group has been twisted in to the idea of the asari themselves are hampering galactic development with their involvement. This is actually going to build on the idea Morinth brings up – she claims that she is “the genetic destiny” of the asari, a statement that Samara calls a sign of her delusion, because ardat-yakshi are sterile. Since BioWare never returned to this idea, I’m working it in that the ultimate idea there is that the “genetic destiny” is less “genetic” and more “destiny,” re: extinction. We’ll build more on this idea in a later story, but this is addressing it again, at least broadly, to remind people that this idea exists.

The way that this is working out is that the concept is that these asari are being suckered by a concept that they should die out in some manner – this is convenient to the (obviously Indoctrinated) leader, because the asari, for all their value as eventual Reaper juices (ew), are a powerful force to be reckoned with, and so something that depletes their strength, such as taking a chunk out of the younger generation of asari (which, given the length of a generation for the asari, is not an insignificant number), is valued by the Reapers. They may not be a full on extinction cult (at least, not at this point, but having the potential for it to get there), but they are saying that the asari are TOO present in galactic affairs, and that, if the Matriarchs aren’t going to withdraw from these matters by choice, take that choice away.

This is all part of what we piece together through investigation – the cult itself is an underground thing, and, especially because Shepard is a human and not an asari, it takes effort to uncover them and gain access to where they are keeping all of the information. This runs Shepard all over the capitol city of Armali, because we should have some connection to the place when it ends up destroyed next game.

The leader of the cult is a former member of Benezia’s commando unit who I’m gonna name Naiya P’Vari. Seriously considered making this a return for Rana Thanoptis, since I was disappointed at her offhanded email death in ME3, and, considering that the mission on Korlus has to be completed and has to be completed before Horizon, I could have made the argument for her to be responsible, but she can be outright killed in ME1, so making her an arc boss is too tricky. Plus Rana’s a scientist, not a soldier, and wouldn’t be much of a threat as an end boss. So it’s an original character. P’Vari ultimately emerges in the name of responding to Shepard’s meddling.

Now, obviously, of course, she is indoctrinated, that she was sent back from the forces that Benezia had with her when she joined with Saren and Sovereign. She’s heard the voices of the Reapers, has set out to stop the asari from getting involved in the coming fight. I’m also inclined to say that she’ll also be able to hint at how the Matriarchs are sitting on a prothean beacon at the expense of the rest of the galaxy as well, though that’s the kind of thing that will need to fly past Shepard in the first playthrough.

She was sent back, specifically, with a Reaper artifact, the thing that has indoctrinated her lieutenants, other former commandos – the idea here is for her to plant the seed of paranoia, because she could have indoctrinated others as well, made them also servants to the Reapers. There could easily still be asari commandos who are acting among their fellows, acting normal, just waiting to be unleashed when the Reapers arrive and betray their fellows.

Obviously, it eventually devolves into a fight. It’s a full on case of Shepard versus an asari commando unit. Because the game itself already calls back to Benezia asking if Shepard had ever faced such a thing. Plus I did find the biotic enemy combat in ME2 to be some of the better upgrades between the two games, so let’s take advantage of that with a full field of biotic opponents, a real combat unit of asari commandos who are ready and able to fight to the death.

After the fight’s over, the question becomes first, what to do with the remains of the cult – they’re still the asari’s disaffected youth, and they’ve got to be encouraged to try out some alternative to just letting the Matriarchs do as they’ve always done, put that passion to better use by suggesting that they give it new focus. Paragon/Renegade choice of how to motivate them, by encouraging more new forms of scientific discovery and exploration (in the vein of how Matriarch Aethyta had commented about how she’d gotten the blue laughed off her ass for suggesting they work on developing their own research into Mass Effect Relays and trying to figure out the secrets of the tech that they rely on), or to put the focus on military and combat strength.

But the second, and more pressing question is what to do about the possibility of indoctrinated infiltration of the asari military – that could undermine the eventual war effort before it gets off the ground. Here, there is no Paragon/Renegade choice – We’re not offering a strict morality dichotomy on this one, you have to guess what’s best, and who knows for sure if your guess is right? Maybe you’re acting to prevent indoctrinated troops, outing those who P’Vari had been in contact with as possible security risks, but maybe you just had some of the best military operatives in the asari ranks sidelined and questioned and put on a permanent suspicion/surveillance listing, just because you took seriously the ramblings of a madwoman. You don’t get to know (at least, not until ME3 impacts the War Assets).

And, as Palaven before it, we retain the ability to visit a small segment of Thessia afterwards in the same way that Tuchanka and Illium exist in the base game. Because after all this development of the connection with the planet, we should be able to return at least a little.

As for the matter of the Justicars (I told you we’d come back to this after the main plot), we’re going to be taking the opportunity to expand on them as a part of asari culture – because they have a Code that demands that they see only black or white in a universe full of gray, this is obviously going to be butting up against a lot of reality. To the Justicars, according to Samara, their purpose is to bring order to a universe that laughs at the notion. And by having given her oath that she will allow Shepard’s morals and actions guide her while she is working with them, Samara would, by a casual interpretation of the Code, be violating that.

We’re going to be at odds with another Justicar – I’m thinking Phora, who is mentioned on the datapads in the Ardat-Yakshi monastery in ME3 who has been terrorizing those she brings in. Because if she’s an issue there, and the Justicars aren’t supposed to be very numerous, why not connect the two. Phora’s opinion is that Shepard is a problem.

Shepard is, she believes, pushing Samara into acting against the Code and its teachings, and that makes Shepard both a problem and a threat. Because here’s the thing about black and white mindsets: Once you are in them, you are in the right, and anyone who is not in agreement with you is in the wrong. So Phora is going to be pushing and poking, trying to create a situation where Shepard will call upon Samara to break her Justicar oath in the name of following her oath to Shepard.

Phora is a zealot, who believes unquestionably in the moral rightness of the Code. So Shepard bringing Samara, one of her sisters, into their world of the moral grey, the place where these squiggy questions of subjectivity come in to play... That threatens her mindset – if one Justicar even seems to be considering how “right” the Code is, surely more questions will come. The zealots want to “defend” their faith at the expense of anyone who does not view things from their specific lens, which, for Phora, means that she can only view Shepard as a threat.

This culminates in a confrontation between the two, Phora and Samara. Phora is swayed to back down because of Samara calling her to the carpet – her ideas only really worked in that either/or stance that ignores the element of Samara’s choice – she chose to undertake the oath that she swore to Shepard, that bound her to their morality. The Code even allowed for this, an interpretation that Phora is resistant to accept, because it is a bending of that rigid morality.

Phora will withdraw, but I see her having room to reappear in, say an ME3 installment (see, this is what we call “foreshadowing”). Meanwhile, Samara is... not shaken, exactly, but perturbed. One of her Justicar sisters was interpreting the Code in a way that diminished it. How is it that, even among the asari, whose civilization has stood firm for millennia, there is this gap? It’s the same kind of question that is facing the main plot of this DLC – conflict among the asari is unusual, normally they just debate things out and agree on the best course of action, but this is those debates taking an actual cost in... well, okay, not quite lives, this wasn’t a life or death situation, but it is actually reshaping the ideas that the asari are following by having people come to blows on the matter, reach a point where they would draw a weapon upon one another in service of resolving their problem.

She will express some mild belief that some of this is simply the spread of new ideas from sources like the other races, and humanity in particular – like she says, if three humans are in a room, you’ll get six opinions – but that this is, ultimately, an asari issue, down to the culture of their people. That the asari haven’t just trained themselves to believe that this black and white dichotomy is good and ‘just’ (hence it being the moral code that the Justicars are all sworn to), but that they are often forgetting even one of their own tenants in diplomacy – how to compromise within those varied opinions.

This is some further cultural building for the asari – something that better justifies things like (as I mentioned in the first Mass Effect write-up) Liara being the only proponent of the cycle theory, despite the two thousand years of study. The asari are not just set in their ways, they are refusing any change, in a way standing in the way of progress – new ideas must be talked about long enough to become old ideas before they will even start to take them seriously, let alone implement any change that they might cause. That’s what Aethyta is certainly implying when she says that she got the blue laughed off her ass for suggesting that the asari build their own Mass Effect Relays. The asari don’t WANT to progress. And the point here is that we’re calling this out because it’s the kind of situation the Reapers are easy to take advantage of.

Samara is going to acknowledge that she too is set in her ways with the way that she is and the way that her society is. But for the future, the asari must foster that change, rather than attempt to stifle it. And it may call in to question even the idea of the Justicar order, because of the rigidity that they adhere to. Samara will not be able to change the world or the order. But she may attempt to apply this within the Code and how she follows it.

Because this is laying groundwork both for the response of the asari in ME3 and how Samara handles matters at the monastery.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The asari military is weakened no matter what Shepard chose – there WERE indoctrinated agents among the military, but not as many as would be displaced by exposing P’Vari’s plants, which means that their military either has to fight among itself or has lost many of the best operatives they had. There will be asari who confront Shepard over this choice on the Citadel, either way. And, like I said, Phora will be back in a future installment.

Moon Crash

A Terminus colony world sends out a distress beacon – their planet’s moon has abruptly entered a decaying orbit, threatening to shatter their world. Because of the human population there, the Illusive Man is determined to send Cerberus to the rescue, and who better to handle this than Commander Shepard? But how and why did this happen – are the Collectors involved?

So let’s just answer that teaser question first: No. This is not the Collectors. They’re not responsible and we’re not dealing with them. This is not their MO, and we’re not going to go in the direction of that changing. But it is a legitimate concern for Shepard and company – they are acting to protect these border colonies from threats, and this is a colony world in danger, the kind that SHOULD be easily avoidable. After all, we get several planet descriptions that talk about projected lunar collisions with the planets they orbit, even a few that have anticipation for selling tickets for the event.

Which means that, when Shepard and company arrive, this is something that they really do need to do, regardless of Collector involvement or Cerberus’s stamp on the orders. The colony may have refused to be a part of the Alliance’s official register, but they’re not turning away help in their time of need – Shepard’s reputation is good for something here, with the fact that they were the one who is named as the one who saved the Citadel as reason for them being accepted as assistance right off.

I’m leaning towards saying that we’re not going to be requiring any particular squadmates this time out, just on the basis of this being a crisis that takes whoever we get in terms of who Shepard is bringing with them. Bring anyone, game mechanics say you can’t bring everyone – though, because I think that it’s kinda crazy that in a game with twelve possible companions, Shepard only ever runs around with two of them at a time, we will put the understanding that it’s explicit that the other companions are running efforts at evacuation. This is absolutely busy work, but in bringing up it’s acknowledged that this is about making it so that the people don’t panic.

The first thing that happens is a run through the colony’s main area, helping with the evacuation efforts. Yes, this is busy work, but it’s because while Shepard and company are doing this, EDI can assist the colonists in tracking mysterious signals (because there are always mysterious signals on missions like this). There’s a signal that Shepard is able to track within the main area of the colony that acts as their link – there’s an object emitting a signal that’s pulling the moon in, and it’s got a counterpart on the moon itself.

This means that Shepard and company head up to the moon, hoping they can stop it before the moon’s orbit decays too badly – it’s not clear at this point if the moon’s orbital decay can be undone, though Shepard is going to be acting on the idea that either a) if the orbit can be artificially knocked out of whack, it can also be restored OR b) at the very least, they can have enough time to properly evacuate the colony.

(For the record, I’m imagining this as a colony of a few thousand – too many to load up on the few cargo ships available to them, but not enough that it would need like a fleet the size of the quarian flotilla or something to evacuate.)

So Shepard heads up to the moon, finding the counterpart emitter, but can’t just shut it off – it’s unknown tech, just straight up shutting it off might mean it never comes back on and can’t be used to put the moon back into place.

This is when we meet the true source of the moon being knocked out of orbit. An AI, left behind from a prior cycle, even prior to the protheans. It takes some work to get it to translate in to Standard, given that it was programmed for languages dead for over a hundred thousand years, and when it does start speaking understandably, it’s not particularly interested in talking – apparently, it’s seen enough of the Reaper cycle that it’s ready to simply consider the Reaper invasion a fact of existence.

And the terrifying thing of what it is doing is that it believes that crashing the moon into the planet below is doing a kindness to these people. Because it’ll be a swift death. These people settled on a world so close to the time of this cycle’s Reaper invasion, the AI simply can’t consider it “good conscience” to allow them to survive just to be made into husks – or, if this is played post-game, orange goo for the human!Reaper.

I’m looking at this from a foreshadowing perspective – this is an AI convinced that it’s doing the right thing, despite the damage it inflicts upon the individual people. It’s thinking is that it is preventing a greater evil by doing this damaging thing that the people who are being sacrificed would certainly not agree with on their own.

The core of the AI is inaccessible – everything that Shepard can interact with is just the shell that it inhabits, it has preserved its core functions in places that are burrowed in the rock around them. What we get instead are a series of combat points that lead to dialogue that accumulates “points,” the same system we see with like Omega and Aria, trying to sway the AI towards letting the people survive, putting the moon back in orbit. This is one of those things that the goal is the same regardless of positions on the dialogue wheel, it’s just how you handle it, and you accumulate enough “points” in the dialogue that it unlocks the final persuasive dialogue once you make it through the gauntlet of combat.

So when Shepard reaches the access point that the gauntlet is leading them through, it’s a choice time. Not just does Shepard argue with the AI and sway them that there may be a chance for this cycle, and, if there is, then the AI is not sparing these people pain but killing them because of its own fear, but does Shepard even see the value in arguing – this is an AI, an artificial life form. It could be said that, afterwards, this was a program that believed itself sentient, but still bound to its programming that told it this.

Indeed, while I am not mandating a companion to join on this mission, I feel like EDI in particular (and Legion, if they were kept and activated) would have some things to say in the aftermath. Legion might be able to offer some additional dialogue points, but I feel like the focus is on EDI, and not just because there’s no way you could even start this DLC without having access to her. It also builds in to her eventual ME3 arc. EDI is going to be the one who speaks with Shepard afterwards about what they did and the why they did it.

Obviously, killing the AI is the easy, straightforward option, and how things are handled if Shepard doesn’t earn enough points through the dialogue choices. If they do convince it to back down, though, well, first of all, there is still an option to shoot it. The AI, having built itself into the interior of the moon, is not something that can be just taken from this place, and will need aid to be removed, a difficult task on its own, but also an AI is illegal in Citadel space, which means that the experts who could help download it to a more proper shell, get it out of the moon and take it somewhere else, are going to be hard to track down and be convinced they won’t get locked away for their efforts.

Resolving the issue of the AI is not going to be enough to stop the moon from colliding with the planet. But it does slow it down so that the colony can be evacuated, down that, really, they’ll get a handful of decades out of the planet itself before the collision happens. And I want to see some aftermath – some colonists are certainly getting the hell out, but some are going to stay until the crash comes. It was one thing for it to be a sudden event, but now there are people who want to catalog the planet’s uniqueness for history, an archive that says that this was once here.

Because that’s the counterpoint to these AI intelligences that say they are “preserving” life or “sparing” people. One of the things with humans (and so we extend this into our fiction to be a part of being organic) is that even when something is hopeless and doomed, we can decide that we will act to preserve it, even if it is just in the name of making sure it’s something that can be remembered. Whether or not something continues, we want to memorialize and remember things. This planet’s unique flora and fauna will be cataloged by the colonists who remain, conservation efforts made.

And, back on the Normandy, that conversation with EDI is waiting. She is asking the questions that react to Shepard’s choice – why did you kill/spare the AI? She is curious about how AI is handled in Citadel space, and how it will be impacted, both in eventual aftermath of the Reapers’ coming and in her own contributions. (I figure there are a few differences depending on if this is played pre or post Suicide Mission.)

Post-Game Followups:

ME3 – Destroying the AI provides some actual advancements in the realm of AI, which is suddenly all the rage come the invasion. The field is getting some real study now, which provides a boost in war assets. The AI being kept intact is providing historical information, details that are useful as the Citadel races are trying to map the course of the invasion, and offering some ideas on what order the Reapers will hit things, giving a defense boost in war assets. There’s also a bonus quest of trying to convince AI experts to get involved in the Crucible, and Shepard gets a bonus to convincing them to join in if they spared the AI – it says to these scientists that they won’t be clapped in irons for their work when civilization is saved (assuming they pull it all off, of course).

Dying Gasps

The drell, as a species, are in peril. Their numbers, low already because of the limited numbers the hanar were able to rescue, are nearing the tipping point between survival and extinction. With the debt the drell feel towards the hanar, they won’t leave Kahje, even as the planet’s aquatic nature threatens them. Commander Shepard and crew make the effort to intercede...

In the first part of these write-ups for ME2, I make mention of how we’re coming back to issues with Thane? Yeah, here we go.

I have been over before that I find the hanar-drell Compact to be sketchy as fuck. In the drell, you have a species native to an arid and dry world. When the hanar discover them and rescue them from their self-destructing society, the hanar take them to THEIR homeworld, a planet 90% water. The hanar, who are big stupid jellyfish, suddenly have a species who feel indebted to them who fit the general shape, body, and build of the other major species of the known galaxy. The drell are then chosen to train as assassins for the hanar from childhood, a choosing that is considered among them a great honor that they’re technically free to refuse, but how often do they?

So we have a species in existential debt to another, act as their assassins, and they feel compelled to give up their children for this duty? While living on a planet that is actively hostile to their own biology, while apparently all that is being done to try and cure Kepral’s Syndrome is to have ‘the greatest minds in the hanar Primacy’ work on it, as opposed to... y’know, giving the drell their own planet better suited to their biology? This is not right. You cannot convince me it is.

And I think that Thane is considering it at least by the course of ME2, but not quite able to admit it aloud. He will apologize to Shepard, say he’s given them the wrong idea, when Shepard calls out his use of the word “investment,” and then gets almost angry when Shepard compares the Compact to slavery. Except... How is this NOT slavery? Just dressed up to seem “nice” by providing a veneer of options – if the drell consider the selection of a child for this duty under the Compact “an honor,” then they’re compelled to give their children over for this.

It seems like this is something that IS on Thane’s mind by the time that Shepard asks about it, given how defensive he sounds about it, as if he’s busy trying to talk himself out of asking the questions that Shepard’s comments are bringing up. So instead, we’re here to tackle these questions head on.

What’s happening is that Thane hears from some contacts back in the Kahje system, that there’s some discomforting rumbles beginning to happen around Kahje, about how the drell – in particular, the youth of the species – are starting to wonder whether or not the “greatest minds in the Primacy” really are putting in the work to resolve Kepral’s Syndrome, and maybe the drell would be better off leaving Kahje entirely.

Thane’s initial response to this is to be all generationally frustrated – “this is just the anger of the youth, lashing out at the established systems, darn those kids and their rap music and their pop culture and their 23-skidoo!” Shepard gets to be the one who brings up that often, when the next generation is complaining about the way that things are, it often means that the prior generation is stuck in their ways and negatively impacting the future by clinging to the past (real world commentary, what real world commentary?). There may well be something to the complaints of the young, and it couldn’t hurt to actually listen and acknowledge them.

So, I know that the ending of Thane’s loyalty mission is variable – if Shepard loses sight of Talid during the tailing sequence, Kolyat is able to kill him and get away. But we’re just gonna assume that things went well here, again for simplifying my role as expositor, seeing as how, much as I enjoy the failure possibility of Thane, Samara, and Tali’s loyalty missions, I don’t fail those, not even intentionally – the only reason I see to do that is to get them killed on the Suicide Mission, and I prefer to find ways to do that that don’t leave me feeling shame for doing nothing to make the lives of my friends better just to follow that up with getting them killed. So we’re going from that understanding.

This means that Kolyat gets to greet us on Kahje (at what I’m going to refer to as “the drell enclave,” but assume it has something nicer and more distinct as a name) and act as the voice of the young drell who are becoming resistant to the hanar. (He’s been doing community service on the Citadel under Commander Bailey, but the idea here is that he has done enough to earn a bit of a reprieve, leading to him being called back by his own friends on Kahje – he’s not the only young drell with a family member who’s contracted Kepral’s Syndrome, and he IS feeling skeptical.

This is going to start the butting of heads – Thane reflexively takes the side of the hanar in all this, because he’s had to go along with the Compact for years, but Kolyat has the element of righteousness, since he’s JUST gotten his father back in his life, and now he wants to see if there’s anything that can be done to extend his life (Shepard – romanced and non – will have a response to that as well, though Thane will be more accepting of any comment in agreement with Kolyat from a romanced Shepard).

This is going to be another investigative focused story, because that appeals to me and these are my ideas. Mostly because the real drama is in Thane and Kolyat bouncing off each other – their story in the base game is about a father reaching out to his son, but the point here is that the grand gestures are the easiest part of making amends. It’s the little things, such as can Thane recognize Kolyat as a person who is thinking for himself and coming to his own conclusions rather than just following the crowd, or can Kolyat see his father as the flawed mortal he is, rather than the extreme of being the father who abandoned him and regrets that he prioritized that.

Our drama is in the human element, even in the fact that this is a pair of aliens interacting. The thing for me is that even in the game proper, Thane acknowledges that he and Kolyat need time to patch their relationship, and time is a resource that Thane has little of, not just because of Kepral’s but the Suicide Mission – which, let’s be clear, Kolyat is going to have a few additional words towards Shepard on the subject of. Shepard can take the lumps he throws at them, though Thane will try to intercede.

We’ll also be expanding on the drell and the hanar – the hanar themselves only have a minor cameo in ME2, as non-interactable figures in the Citadel docking bay. But the hanar are for the sidequests of this DLC, where they get to give Shepard the chance to explore their society and culture – somewhere in this, surely, is the quest about learning the soul name of a hanar, and further exploring why it is that the hanar have this distinction. Plus some further expansion into the hanar’s version of the protheans, the Enkindlers, and show some of the ideas that the hanar have of them, the kind of ideas that Javik’s existence in ME3 will either prove or disprove.

The big combat portion that we have to go in to (if we must, we must) is that there will be call to infiltrate a research facility. It’s on an isolated base, beyond any of the hanar cities or facilities that are traditionally given to house any non-aquatic life. The drell separatists (for want of a better term) believe that the hanar have been hiding additional research and information down there, things that the drell deserve to know, about the research into Kepral’s Syndrome and other things related to the drell living on Kahje, and they’re begging Shepard to go with them. Thane will accompany them in the name of finding a way around this. (Kolyat will be remaining behind – Thane insists, wanting to keep his son out of combat.)

However, as it turns out, this particular facility has mercenary guards, rather than the expected drell operatives. That’s already setting off alarm bells, and Thane’s connections only get them access so far. Once it’s clear that the information they’re looking for is not going to be given over easily, things will devolve into fighting.

Thane is not pleased at whatever is coming out of this – it’s going to be causing upset no matter what, that the hanar have trusted their safety with mercenaries loyal to a paycheck, and, by using these mercenaries, it makes it seem likely that the youth are on to something with the recognition that something doesn’t seem right among the hanar-drell relations.

In terms of design, I’m thinking this place is kinda like the Sith base on Manaan in KOTOR (updated to the engine used in Mass Effect, obviously), and uses similar puzzles (because this is still a video game). The puzzles and combat all lead to the lead scientist of the base – a drell. Who is actively dissecting his own people in his studies of disease.

Yes, the horrors are being done by a drell, who is studying the effects of Kepral’s and other similar diseases that the drell have developed. His studies began under the allowances of the hanar, and have been growing out from that point. He’s basically been given a blank check and a blind eye from the hanar, to study these things and investigate further. And it’s around this point we realize that it’s not dissection – it’s vivisection. His present subject is still alive, if only barely.

(If he’s part of the party, Mordin has some choice words for this mad science, and even Miranda, the woman who led the team to rebuild Shepard, is discomfited at the idea.)

We’re killing this bastard, let’s just be clear on that. There is a morality choice here, but it’s not in letting a guy studying still beating hearts up close live.

No, what it is in detailing what has been going on here. Because this is going to shatter the image that the hanar have for many drell. Rather than protectors and friends, this will reveal the hanar as having been unconcerned to handle this themselves, and let a madman do unspeakable things to their family. Learning about this will be devastating to the drell overall, and perhaps undermine their standing among one another. Thane has to question how this is going to impact his people. If Shepard reveals this to the drell, it’s going to make the drell question their place – and perhaps do damage to any hope of Shepard having the drell and hanar as allies, because Shepard becomes the one who blew the lid on this.

That’s the choice – tell the drell what the hanar were allowing to be done in their name because they just... didn’t bother to take this responsibility on themselves, leaving it in the hands of a complete monster, or keep this secret in the name of preserving the hanar-drell relations. Thane is willing to leave this in Shepard’s hands – he is too conflicted, and he can’t settle his emotions enough to make the decision. Much like Mordin and the genophage data, he is willing to let Shepard make this decision rather than make the choice himself.

Afterwards, he and Kolyat get to speak to one another, spends some time together, as Shepard gets the ability to go around, do the various sidequests and stuff – again, I’m not covering that here, but this is our only real chance to visit Kahje, so let’s get to explore it a little and do things. At this point, with the main plot resolved, Kahje’s a bit of a hub world for Shepard to do things and learn about the hanar people and culture, as well as the drell.

But afterwards, back on the Normandy, Thane is still rethinking the cultural mindset that the drell have towards the hanar. This has, regardless of how the other drell are reacting, shaken him, putting forth the fact that the hanar may not be the strong friends and allies that he and the drell in general have always believed them to be. This is a major blow to him, because the hanar were saviors to the drell, and that these people have been his friends, and yet... to an extent, they haven’t really CARED. Maybe individually, but on the whole...

For Thane, this is one of those moments that really makes him reconsider things – he was at peace with his death before. But now, knowing that things aren’t as assured as they were, he’s considering the world that will be left to go on without him – the world he’s basically leaving his son to at this point. It makes him care a lot more about firmly reconnecting with Kolyat, encouraging him to have knowledge and awareness of the things that consist of the drell culture, so that the old ways aren’t going to die with him (and giving more significance to Kolyat reading from the prayer book in ME3, “speaking as the priests do”).

Oh, and consider that drell enclave a remaining minor hub to visit. Bit of a running theme, I know, but it does help make these homeworlds of the races of the galaxy seem to have a little more to them, that we can visit them and subsequently want to see more of them.

Post-Game Followups:

ME3 – First off, I do want to point out that there’s going to be another drell-hanar focused DLC when I reach ME3, so there’s a lot that will likely come in to play there that probably lean on what happened here. But until I reach that point in my development, I don’t know the specifics yet, so just understand that there’s some flux happening here.

More specifically, though, I want to at least hear of, if not actually see and assist with, some efforts of drell to leave Kahje, appear on the Citadel – either they’re the growing dissident movement, now that the hanar’s failures have been exposed, or they’re part of the dissatisfied drell youth who are leaving Kahje, and their people, behind. At one point in ME2, Thane mentions that the old ways of the drell are dying, so among Shepard’s fetch quests is to do a flyby of the original drell homeworld, Rakhana, and receive a cultural codex of some kind that can be passed on to those trying to recover anything of the drell ways prior to the encroachment of the ideology of the Enkindlers. This gives a boost in war assets, and unlocks a Kolyat-centric side mission on the Citadel after the Cerberus Coup, something that effectively checks in on him and his plans following the death of his father. Because really, where was he after Thane dies, anyway? (Not anything major, just a “put feet to the fire in the research of Kepral’s Syndrome after his father dies saving the salarian councilor” kind of thing that has Shepard go to Valern/Esheel and make a point of bringing this up – this has the same kind of element of the side missions with Kasumi or Zaeed, in that it’s got a choice that having completed the DLC will have Kolyat there and it resolves things with both war assets and Kolyat.) 

Succession Crisis

A renowned salarian Dalatrass abruptly dies, and with her death, Sur’Kesh is in an uproar, seeing many of the lines of salarian breeding suddenly upset. Mordin suggests to Shepard that this would make for a chance to build allies among the salarian leadership for when the Reapers arrive. He is not the only one who has this idea, however...

So some codex talk here: There’s an offshoot of the salarians only referred to as the Lystheni. That’s all the information that we really get about them, save that they’re apparently unwelcome in Council space. I see this “offshoot” as being, in effect, the same kind of “offshoot” as Star Trek’s Vulcans and Romulans, where the Lystheni have an ideological conflict with mainstream salarian society, that a schism formed between the two and the Lystheni have left Sur’Kesh to the salarians, that they began as a political group, but because of their conflict with mainstream society, they’ve taken their political label as their race name. Though, obviously, not as separated as the Romulans and Vulcans, but probably separated by a few centuries, which, given the salarian lifespan is only about roughly forty years, is still multiple generations more than it would be for humans.

Now, how does this all tie back to the above blurb? Well, this death of a Dalatrass is a big deal. Think of “Britain after the Queen dies” big deal. Not necessarily THE “Queen” of the salarians, but a really big deal, and it creates a lot of chaos. Not just the “one of our leaders has unexpectedly died” kind of chaos but the upset this is going to shake up their various breeding strategies, which we know have a high level of importance among salarian culture (see the side quest on Illium), in that her line was one that many were angling to be a part of, and, with her gone, now there’s a political gap, the kind that can only be filled by multiple people, rather than just one individual replacing her at the top of the proverbial heap, and so that’s going to impact who’s going to be in charge on Sur’Kesh.

Y’know, it’s the “now that we CAN have a better position in society, we damn well deserve it” kind of thinking, and it’s hitting with several of the various political factions and families across the planet.

Mordin’s idea that Shepard get involved stems from a handful of matters – of course, there’s the obvious fact of there being a crisis among the salarians that needs to be resolved, and, as with the above situation with the turians in crisis, it’s about preemptive coalition building. In assisting here and now, there are going to be salarians in general and families more broadly who are going to owe Shepard one, and a salarian owing you a favor is always handy on a rainy day.

Again, this allows an opportunity to explore Sur’Kesh some, since we basically just get to see a single building (or block of connected buildings) in ME3 – I have words about the smallness of the maps in ME3 in general, but for a major Citadel race planet, Sur’Kesh offers so little, it’s disappointing. So yeah. We get to play around in the salarians playground.

Same as our prior forays into Palaven and Thessia, I’m not going to get too in depth in what we get to see, but this should give us a little more grounding into Sur’Kesh in general. And, like Palaven, Thessia, and Kahje, Sur’Kesh will have a small hub accessible after the conclusion. Again: Themes, connections to the homeworlds, so on, so on. Also, obviously, Mordin is our primary companion in this mission, though, for the record, I honestly see a place for Miranda in a secondary position, during the subplots and such, which I’ll come back to closer to the end, once the main plot is out of the way.

It’s here that we get out introduction to the Lystheni. They have an emissary here on Sur’Kesh, and they’re looking to find some way back in to the mainstream of salarian society. We get some briefs on the differences between them and the salarian majority – I’ve said it’s a political divide that led to them separating enough to consider themselves almost separate species, so it’s gotta be more than the simple thing of like “we want war! We want peace!” and the like. Going back to the Vulcan/Romulan comparison, that was a divide over the philosophy of logic and the suppression of emotion – the Romulans took issue with the idea of Surak’s philosophies, they made a mass exodus of the planet. So this is something that is a divide on a deeply cultural level.

So I’m thinking that the divide has a lot to do with the hierarchy of the salarian people – we know that the leaders of the salarians are the Dalatrasses, who get described in the codex and reference materials as heads of dynasties and kingpins. Taking this to an extreme, this seems like it’d be sort of like a mafia family, only with Godmothers instead of Godfathers. Part of the Lystheni’s grievances with the mainline salarian attitudes is going to be the fact that it’s frequently the Dalatrasses, who are making decisions for the culture at large, when the male-to-female ratio is about 9:1, and basically leaving the males out of decision-making, even on matters that have direct concern of them.

Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot to discuss about Mass Effect tackling the subject of sexism, especially through a lens of “reverse the dynamic.” Let’s just put that aside for now, huh? We’re in fantasy realm, and this is where everything works the way that it should. And we also are going to involve an element of pointing out that, even in this leadership structure that favors women in power, Valern got made a Councilor over any of the qualified women. Despite the Lystheni’s claims, the salarian government may be made up of mostly their rare women, but it is not actively blocking the advancement of men.

But that’s where the big polarization between the two groups comes down – the Lystheni want this to be an opportunity for the salarians to put their money where their mouths are (or utilize a more appropriate cultural metaphor). With an abrupt opening in the local hierarchy, the Lystheni are saying “this would certainly be the time to have a male Dalatress, prove to us that all this business of the salarian leadership being open and free for all isn’t just words.”

While the Lystheni are going to play a part in this, thought, they are only a part of it. We’re here to get a grip on the salarian political situation – again, the dalatrasses are something of a mafia structure, and that means there’s a lot of jockeying for power and skullduggery taking place, so the Lystheni are basically going to be sharing time with the main plot – just because they feature, they’re not the stars here. It’s the salarian politics that we’re focusing on first and foremost.

Because the thing about this kind of a gap in the salarian leadership, the heads of the families, is that usually, they’re seen coming in advance and that head has an opportunity to groom their successor. Here, however, there are a few qualified candidates – let’s go with three, as a nice, simple number. Two are the dalatrass’s daughters, which, having multiple female children is part of why she’s managed to be such a voice among the salarians, the other is her son.

Yes, we’re going for a big family squabble here. Mordin explains some of the family dynamics – salarians, being born in clutches of eggs, have close ties to the mother who birthed them (well, laid... You know what I mean) and to the siblings from their clutch. This is a typical triad in personalities – the conservative, the revolutionary, the middle ground (the daughters as the conservative and middle ground, with the son being revolutionary, considering the dynamics of salarian politics). I would assume that there’s also a strong tie to those who are from the same clutch, which makes this the mother of all sibling rivalries – all three want to assume the role of leadership, all three have political beliefs that will exclude or diminish the role of the others.

The thing that they’re all coming back to is disbelief that this was a natural death – it was unexpected, how does a salarian not see a medical issue coming, etc. etc. That’s actually probably the thing that they’re all unified on – if this was a murder and one of them killed their own mother, then that individual has no business taking her place in salarian politics, which is spiking the tensions between the siblings, and it quickly falls on Shepard to act as the neutral third party to investigate the matter – even salarian law enforcement is not going to be very trusted at the moment.

So this becomes a matter of exploring the salarian attitudes (hence Mordin’s involvement, offering the perspective and being able to be clinically divorced from it – and yes, as things go on, his calm is damaged, because this is his people, his planet, and he does have an emotional reaction).

Investigate and explore, you know how this works by now. The end result is that Lystheni (who the son has been favorable towards, though keeping his connections to on the downlow because it wouldn’t reflect well on him) were NOT responsible, and it was the ‘middle ground’ daughter who set about finding a way to eliminate her mother – this is an instance of trying to set the others at their throats and make it so that she comes out seeming better in comparison.

I see this having a resolution in the same manner as the Dragon Age Inquisition Winter Palace segment – the boss battle of the DLC is one you CAN have, but if you take the right dialogue options, you can also resolve matters without having to fire a shot.

As I said in my ME1 write up, Shepard is supposed to be incredibly good at what they do, and this includes the art of diplomacy. I know this is an action-adventure sci-fi shooter RPG and all, but considering how much galactic level issues Shepard ends up resolving over the course of the trilogy (particularly ME3), they need to have their credentials of talking on display as well.

The issue with this, however, is that with her out of the picture, the salarians have only the extremes as options, and look to Shepard to help cast a vote. Do they upend everything that has guided their society and have a massive cultural shake-up on the cusp of war with the Reapers, a war that will likely bring its own upheavals, or do they stick to the status quo and leave the fostering resentment?

Once again, I’m looking at this without the Paragon/Renegade distinction – even aside from the fact that just in general, I think the Paragon/Renegade scale is a holdover from the days of KOTOR and its light side/dark side mechanic, this is a political decision, and if IRL has taught us anything about politics, it’s that, when it works (let’s not get into how well it accomplishes this), it’s a matter of picking from various lesser evils. I think there’s more of BioWare’s much touted “grey morality” when there isn’t a clear cut right or wrong.

Sure, Shepard isn’t going to be the only voice offering an opinion on the matter, but, like getting the human Councilor in ME1, they’re influential enough that it sways public opinion – the endorsement is the kind of boost that makes a difference.

Going back to the Lystheni, they are something of a barometer of the future of salarian society. The obvious reactions are obvious – there is a great deal of frustration at the absolute failure to change if the conservative daughter was chosen, and expectation of opportunity if the son was. I know they haven’t exactly been much of a player in this, but part of the point of their involvement here is in the name of expanding and exploring the salarian culture in how the cultural rebels have built themselves up – these are the counter-culture, balanced against a shift in the mainstream culture. They don’t know what’s next, and they want to make their voice heard – despite the schism between the two groups, they are still family (yes, I want to use the “house divided, family split asunder” with the Dalatrass’s children as a metaphor for the salarians and Lystheni).

Mordin is not silent in all of this, of course – he’s going to have his own thoughts on the matter. My Mordin voice is presently unrefined, but his opinion will have something of a ‘my people have much dysfunction, perhaps an outside perspective will do some good’ attitude to it. That said, he also ends up having a push-pull to deal with of his own – his family’s mating prospects are damaged in the revolutionary coming to power, and yet he sees it as a good for the greater whole, that the salarians need some kind of change – a species who stagnates doesn’t evolve. (Yes, we’re planning seeds that pay off with the salarian-krogan arc in ME3, give it some better foreshadowing. Because I can do that here.)

While I’m here, I also want there to be some exploration of Grunt as a companion. I’m not saying it’s mandatory, because bringing a krogan out on the town on Sur’Kesh could easily qualify as A Bad Idea. But if you DO take him out, I want it to be discovered that there’s a questline for him specifically – just as much as a krogan on Sur’Kesh is a bad idea, it’s an interesting encounter at the same time. Grunt is also a source of interest for the salarians, being tankbred by Doctor Okeer.

Grunt is not impressed by the salarians, of course, and has no particular interest in them, but does get perspectives on the genophage – one of the things that comes across to me, hearing about it, is that the genophage isn’t JUST a fertility disease. It’s the biowarfare equivalent of a dirty bomb inflicted on a populace, because of the stillborn factor. It’s not that they can’t reproduce. It’s that they can’t give birth to living young.

To a lot of the salarians, the krogan are a distant threat – anyone living on Sur’Kesh probably doesn’t even get the chance to meet a krogan. And so here we see a representative of what the krogan get driven to because of the genophage. It’s the kind of experience that I think would challenge the beliefs of a lot of the salarian people, actually having a krogan on Sur’Kesh, interacting with them.

Post-Game Followups:

ME3: Impact on the salarian political situation – Dalatrass Linron will have her hood in a snit either way, but there’s a new short questline on the Citadel about the Lystheni, featuring her as the obstructive diplomat as they argue for rights. The conservative leader has them on defense and basically pushing to be recognized as a separate people from the salarians, while the reformer is pushing for peace talks and questions of rejoining the populace. Either way, Linron is objecting to even hearing their proposals. Mostly, this is me thinking that Linron needs to be taken down a peg, given how she’s the one talking about “a bully has few friends when he needs them most” while being the only one at the conference engaging in bullying behavior. Here, we get the chance to professionally undermine her. Because it’s satisfying.

Frozen Blood

Red sand is illegal throughout most of Citadel space. Given the way it impacts biotic abilities, it’s incredibly dangerous. And now, it’s managed to spread through a major Citadel port. Although it’s smaller scale than most of the threats on Commander Shepard’s plate, both Miranda Lawson and Admiral Anderson suggest they do something to stop it.

Red sand gets brought up on enough occasions in the games, I kind feel like we miss out in not getting to actually have any practical experience with it in the games proper. So, yeah, we’re doing a drug bust storyline here. It’s mostly about expanding the lore in terms of the underworld of the universe – as much as BioWare claims that Omega is the seedy underbelly of the galaxy, it’s still pretty clean for the most part, all things considered. Granted, it may just be that my millennial sensibilities, knowing that I’ll never own a home, are envious of those studio apartments we ransack through in the quarantine district in Mordin’s recruitment mission, and don’t understand why those places are said to be in the slums when, while small, don’t exactly look like unpleasant living spaces. Anyway...

So this is gonna start with Anderson contacting Shepard – I feel like it’d be nice to see Anderson communicating with Shepard in the Debriefing Room instead of TIM. Miranda will be along as well, because this is “an opportunity to make in-roads with someone in the halls of power” and that such rubbish – remember, Miranda is still the Cerberus cheerleader, and she is only seeing the good of what Cerberus can accomplish, thinking of it as the Alliance’s answer to the asari commandos and the salarian STG, or even the Council’s Spectres. That’s what Cerberus is TO HER (even if it isn’t in reality, that’s just how she views it at this point in time). So she wants to take advantage of the opportunity to legitimize it.

We need to pause and define the properties of red sand, just so we’re all on the same page going forward – it’s supposed to allow non-biotics a high that allows them to feel something akin to having biotics, even being known to allow non-biotics some biotic abilities. Also, to date, humans are the only race known to be impacted by red sand, which honestly makes me think that its legality on Illium is another sign of the casual anti-human tendencies of Council space – this is going to come up as we go on.

Anderson is concerned about a new strain of red sand that’s been found in a presently-comatose Alliance marine. More potent, giving the users more of a high, more of a biotic kick, and more of a risk of a damaging crash. Miranda has also heard rumors about this – because of the effects red sand has on humans and only humans, it’s something that Cerberus monitors (I say take the opportunity and give Miranda and Anderson some chance at a back and forth – for Anderson, his disgust with Cerberus is on full display, and he’s making it clear that he’s not enamored of Shepard’s alliance of convenience, meaning that we’re disappointing Space!Dad in working with Cerberus, as a reminder to those who thought this alliance could last beyond ME2, while Miranda gets to show off her character growth, depending on the completion of her loyalty mission, that a pre-loyalty Miranda spouts the party line, while post-loyalty Miranda focuses on the fact that she – not Cerberus but Miranda – wants to help).

So with them on the same side of the argument, it’s pretty much inevitable that Shepard should go ahead and investigate. They’re gonna start on the Citadel (because, as I’ve said, the Citadel has a lot of areas to explore – you could probably set an entire trilogy of games here), doing more investigative work. And yes, I know, I lean on this a lot in the name of keeping things hazy, but (incoming soapbox) this is part of my problem with Mass Effect 2 on the whole – so much of this game is oriented towards combat. While I understand that in terms of being an action-adventure RPG, the thing for me is that Shepard needs to do more than “shoot good.” We need to see them as an intelligent person as well, giving them mysteries to unravel that involve finding and uncovering clues and putting pieces together, rather than just have answers to questions handed to them and being told their ability to shoot things makes them “the greatest EVAR!” Shepard’s abilities should be more than just the shooting.

The shooting will come, though, rest assured. Just... I want more to Shepard’s skill than their ability to fire a gun. And Mass Effect 2 is not given to these kinds of missions very often – Samara and Thane’s Loyalty Missions are about the only opportunities for this, along with a couple of non-combat missions through planet scanning, but still that’s like... five total, maybe – out of HOW many missions, exactly, in the whole game? – and I want more of that, and these are my DLC ideas, so what I say gets to go.

Back to the plot. The Citadel investigation leads us to our drug middleman. I was tempted to say that this leads us to Harkin again, but... eh, I don’t think we necessarily need to go there. I would have liked to have made this a cameo appearance from some minor ME1 character, but I can’t think of anyone who’s a real fit for it. So unless I come up with something better, we’re just going with random salarian person. They provide the next step – the drug factory itself is out in the Traverse, he just sells it on the Citadel.

The pause allows us a chance to meet with the victims of this drug – although there’s a coma and death involved in its side effects, we get to meet the people being impacted by this. I’d like to also get the chance through this to humanize the victims – y’know, we opened with concerns about a bunch of nameless, faceless others, it’s about trying to make connections, giving the audience a reason to care.

The Normandy heads out to the drug factory, and I picture this as a big set piece for the DLC. If you’re familiar with Star Wars Bounty Hunter, I’m thinking something like the deathstick factory level here. Because, sure, my critique of ME2 in general is that it’s too combat oriented, but you know something? Every now and then, you DO just want to shoot something, and my DLC ideas so far have been heavy on the investigative stuff. This is combat sequences in some inventive new areas, and it is mostly combat-centric, as opposed to a deeper and more intricate story with a great deal of choices. Nothing wrong with that every now and then.

And, on the thematic level, it’s a reminder – not every threat to the galaxy out there is something like the Reapers. There’s always a domestic threat to deal with, people with bad intentions out to hurt people in order to make a little cash. They’re a problem as much as the big level threats.

In point of fact, that’s what both the encounters with the people being impacted by the friends and family of those impacted by this red sand do AND the discussions with the crew – this isn’t an instance of having set companions, but I do expect them all to have comments during the stages, and Miranda gets a full conversation – her work with Cerberus, and even the Lazarus Project in specific, had her investigating red sand and its effects on biotics as a part of working to reanimate Shepard’s dead tissues (kinda want a comment here if Shepard has changed class between ME1 and ME2, and that the use of element zero in the process influenced that, though I’m not sure if that’s something that’s supposed to be acknowledged in universe... Whatever).

So the overall big bad is not some particular mastermind with dreams of galactic domination and such. It’s just some drug peddler who came up with a particularly potent product. But, in the end... That’s the point here. This is some lowlife who has no particular scheme beyond enriching himself. He HAS no connection to the greater story – or to the greater galaxy. All he is doing is thinking of himself. In a story about showing the importance of connection, he stands out for failing to have any, and considering it a strength – he’s claiming to be on top because of his lack of connections, his inhumanity towards others.

Shepard is proving him wrong.

And we’re also going to be addressing that, to the greater galaxy, this is a matter of “human-on-human violence,” that, because red sand only really impacts humans, it’s something that the other races don’t really pay attention to. It’s not that they’re encouraging it, but they don’t see it as a problem, because this isn’t impacting anyone but humanity.

It’s another sign of humanity being seen as the uppity attention grabbers of the galaxy, that, since humanity wants to be on this stage at a time when they’re “not ready” for the big leagues (even with being on the Council – remember, the Council is saying that all those human colony worlds Shepard is investigating the mass disappearance of isn’t worth their attention, even though humanity basically ends up taking over the primary fleet defense duties in the aftermath of the Battle of the Citadel), then humanity can solve its own problems, don’t look at us aliens.

This drug problem gets as big and as bad as it does because of the broad apathy towards human-centric issues in Citadel space, and, to build off of that connection theme, speaks to a disconnect on both sides, human and alien, where neither group is all too invested in one another – while I harp a lot about how the Citadel races have that subtle negative attitude towards humanity, it also feeds a negative attitude towards the other races in humans as well, and in this instance, it does need to be a case of both sides trying to listen. The problem both groups are having now is that humanity’s issues aren’t really being heard, and that closes humanity off to the issues of these others.

In this instance, I don’t think we really need a Paragon/Renegade conclusion – not just that this is a smaller scale story, in opposition to the bigger threats or connective stories of these other hypothetical DLCs, but the point of this whole story is in its themes and the message it is sending in talking about the importance of connection.

And it’s why we do get to have a follow-up with Miranda, since she is the character who began this DLC among our crew. Her whole façade in the beginning of the game is about being this dispassionate, rational, logical being, and she herself says that she cut most of her ties to her life before Cerberus (barring Nikket, who, I actually would like another conversation on the subject of, particularly in exploring her feelings surrounding his death and whether or not she was the one who pulled the trigger on him, so let’s patch that in as well while we hypothetically have Yvonne Strahovski and the Shepards in the studio). Miranda has been disconnected through much of her life, but, with Shepard, she’s forging new ones – while I did bring up above that there would be a pre-loyalty mission variant of Miranda’s dialogue, I do think of this as a post-loyalty mission DLC, and that should be reflected in her discussing the connection of being involved with Oriana and having built up relationships with the Normandy crew. She IS connecting, and she’s beginning to see the importance of that.

I was going have Anderson’s involvement be just an e-mail, let the character who’s here for character development and is part of the crew be the big focus, but I do figure we’ll also touch base with Space!Dad after this, hear from him about the approach that he’s going to take with regards to addressing red sand – our drug dealer was a lowlife, but his operation involved more than just humanity, which means the production of red sand is not limited to “human on human” issues (I didn’t particularly pick a species for the big drug boss here, but, to build on the whole theme of “connection” and it impacting the galactic level issues, I’d think the drug peddler with a potent product would likely be a turian – I feel like it would HAVE to be a member of a Council race for the impact I’m going for with this theme). This is becoming a much bigger deal than something that limits the spotlight in humanity and human issues. It needs to be acknowledged by the Council as an issue they need to be getting involved in – not just because human lives are impacted by this, but because LIVES are impacted.

If the theme is connection, it needs to be acknowledged that we need to connect, regardless of how different the others in question are. This isn’t a “well, we must listen and acknowledge both sides” kind of situation, it’s a “your indifference to the situation will only make it worse, and there will be those on ‘both sides’ who use your indifference to their advantage, so stop acting like you’re not involved in this at all.”

Y’know, I feel like Shepard kinda needs to say that, considering the whole “ah yes, Reapers” business...

Post-Game Followups:

ME3: The red sand facility has been seized, and, while red sand itself is still illegal drugs and such, having the files available has offered some upgrades in biotic amps for a war asset boost. Also there’s a drug recovery ward at Huerta (what, we can totally add some to the Huerta map in ME3, right?) where there are victims. I’d also say that there should be a fetch quest in that ward, something surrounding the idea of getting the patients something that helps them through their withdrawal symptoms, which can also be adapted to help with soldiers who are getting hooked on the pain meds, though this would be something I’d say would be available regardless of DLC, the same way that the batarian terrorist on life support in the Wards after the Coup is available regardless of if Shepard completed Arrival or not.

Zeroed Out

Eezo is the lifeblood of Citadel space – both what allows FTL travel and the generation of biotics. With recent concerns about dark energy and lingering resentment from human biotic extremists, a major security presence has been mandatory at many refineries. And the Illusive Man thinks Commander Shepard’s presence might be a help...

We’re going to an eezo mine! Obviously, this is Mass Effect “MacGuffin,” the thing that does what the plot needs it to – eezo is to Mass Effect as dilithium is to Star Trek, it’s the handwave that gives us faster than light travel, propelling us forward with the power of pure plot convenience. But we know enough to know that eezo can be mined out of places.

The moon Arvuna was apparently supposed to be a scannable planet in ME2 but was cut (eventually appearing in ME3 as a site we can scan for Doctor Garneau during Leviathan). Well, we’re putting it back in and having an eezo mine there being where we’re going. A Cerberus operative is given Shepard’s contact info by the Illusive Man (we really need to have a chat about how freely Shepard’s number is given out to random strangers, don’t we?). This operative, who I’m going to just go ahead and name Operative Piper for want of a name, is currently operating out near the eezo mine there and is concerned about some rumblings she’s been hearing through the proverbial grapevine. Considering the importance of securing eezo, since it’s what’s necessary for FTL travel throughout the galaxy, with or without a Mass Relay, this is something that she finds to be important to be monitoring and something that having the assistance of someone like Commander Shepard in keeping secure.

Going back to my habit of having mandatory companions on these, despite that it runs the risk of overusing them, I think Miranda and Jack will be the best fit here – both are human biotics (because eezo influences biotics), they represent opposing ends of the Cerberus spectrum... They make for a good spectrum of attitudes in the matters of things related to eezo and how it impacts people and Cerberus itself. Not sure HOW we’re arranging having them specifically locked in as companions, particularly given the loyalty conflict and how that might have locked Shepard out of one or the other’s loyalty

So Shepard arrives at the mine and meets with Piper, who is not thrilled to be calling in help, especially from an outside “contractor” like Shepard. Consider this another instance of comparing and contrasting Miranda at the start of ME2 to her development over the course of the game, going from Cerberus loyalist to “consider this my resignation.” Particularly since here, it allows Jack to be able to (grudgingly) acknowledge that Miranda, the Cerberus cheerleader, is not actually as pro-Cerberus as she could be and is actually somewhat on the level in terms of what she’s doing (Again, Jack is grudging about this and I’m basically expressing the gist of any comment she has to say about it).

Since Piper’s going to butt heads with Jack and Miranda, even if Miranda is more sympathetic to her point of view, it’s going to lead to Shepard acting as the voice of reason and compromise (because, as I’ve said before, Shepard’s diplomatic skill honestly NEEDS to be front and center in the course of this series, given what they’ll be called on to do in ME3). So I expect a lot of little moments of debate that utilize the dialogue mechanic in the same vein as the crew conflicts. I’d particularly be interested in having some kind of tracking meter of the way Shepard handles things that could potentially restore the character’s loyalty if it was lost in that conflict, though I’m not so sure about the proper implementation (and, personally, I aim to time my completion of their loyalty missions so that I have enough points to resolve their conflict peacefully, so I’m not even sure if that would be content I, the writer of these, would interact with anyway... moving on).

Piper’s concern is that the eezo mine is going to be coming under assault by biotic extremists, that plot thread we never really saw appear after the first game. Shepard will, of course, raise the obvious point – shouldn’t the appearance of Shepard disrupt any plan they’re up to? And that’s going to lead to her second concern. There’s a fluctuation within the eezo being mined. It’s ostensibly nothing to worry about, a variance within the standard deviation and blah blah blah. Piper’s superiors at the facility (the ones who don’t know about her Cerberus ties) believe it’s nothing to be concerned about and that it’s all just expected. Except she’s finding this variance consistently, and, if it keeps going, something will happen to eezo. And, of course, while the civilizations of the galaxy in this cycle have been using eezo to go faster than light for a couple thousand years, how much do they REALLY know about eezo? As we frequently see in this franchise, the galaxy’s races like to leave the unanswered questions alone, even if they probably should try to get a better grasp of the things that make civilization as they know it go round.

So to sum up: Human biotic extremists, demanding better treatment may be looking to take over the mine (reasons will be discussed shortly) and something is unusual about the eezo itself as it’s coming out of the mines.

And we are going to get some idea of just how bad it can be in these eezo mines – y’know, ME3’s Omega DLC will talk up about the mines in the station, but we don’t actually get much about the work and process of eezo mining, which is going to be our focus here. The way we’re going to see and hear about it, this particular mine is not the worst of operations in terms of safety, but it’s also not the safest, either, and it is getting worse over time – that the mining is wearing away things, and no one is particularly invested in upgrading things, that things are reaching their breaking point, but there is no one in a particular position to make the effect to increase the safety standards – this is a place willing to accept the hazards as just how it’s all done, and hey, if there’s any exposures, well, you can survive it, right? And the asari are evidence that there are species who are going to be better off for exposures, so why prevent it?

Investigation happens, you know how this part works by now. Now, as it turns out, yes, there ARE biotic extremists among the people here, but they’re not BIOTIC extremists, but the FAMILIES of biotic extremists, who are convinced that the mines across the galaxy are not safe from biotic exposure – they’re specifically using the asari as an example, since the asari, being a naturally biotic race, are “unconcerned” with the hazards (this is immediately debunked by Miranda – asari have the most stringent safety standards in the galaxy, even acknowledging that humanity could learn more from them than they have).

But... Well, I think by this point we’re all aware of that segment of the population who are determined to not be swayed by facts and reason on what they claim as a moral crusade to protect the children. And, in the Mass Effect universe, I think there’s a fair attitude to have in assuming that, due to the applications of biotic abilities, there is no particular emphasis for preventing biotic exposure – biotics are insanely powerful, but they also have extensive drawbacks – Kaidan himself says that he’s lucky to get off with just the odd migraine, and since biotic exposure is effectively inducing mutation during gestation, odds are there are additional health issues and even birth defects that take place because of it.

So legitimate medical concerns here – like, I was a little worried as I started piecing this together that this would be framed as being approving of something like “curing” autism, so trust me, I’m aware that this is stepping on eggshells here in terms of metaphors made and drawn from all of this. But in this case, considering that we’re talking about something that (as we have an example of in Jack) is explicitly manipulated by horrible people as an active weapon... I think there’s the reality of biotics in-universe that gives it a different feel to the IRL comparisons that one can draw. In the case of biotics, we DO know that there is an external cause for them, and it is something that I can easily see being misused – even Kaidan and Shepard can bring up the potential of Conatix possibly intentionally exposing people to element zero. So there ARE canonical questions surrounding the idea of “[thing] causes biotics, people are actively exposed to [thing], corporations are actively trying to expose more people to [thing].”

So while the metaphor CAN be brought up, it also is refuted by the context that the universe has applied previously – we KNOW that IF a mega-corporation (particularly one given monopoly) can do something underhanded to cut corners on the budget and do something sketchy in the name of profit, it’s done it before I even started this sentence. So it’s never confirmed but almost certain that there ARE instances of people being intentionally exposed to create biotic abilities, and it also has been known to just as likely cause brain tumors and other defects. This is a legitimate concern within the universe that something is being done without concern for the health impacts it has on fetuses in utero. It’s a legitimate question to ask “are the glowing space ninjas we get as a result of this worth the babies with brain cancer?”

Thing is, some of these people are genuine about thinking that there need to be better protections, some are just looking for the local cause to create chaos, and some are out for blood.

That last faction is where the problems are at their peak, because they’re the ones who are causing mayhem for the sake of mayhem. They want to make things worse.

The idea is to destabilize this haul of eezo, and make it cause problems – ostensibly, it’ll make the demand come for a great deal more safety regulations to be imposed upon the efforts to mine eezo, but, really, the actual effect is going to be more damaging in ways that have nothing to do with the people who are supposedly being “helped” by these efforts. Damaging eezo damages all interstellar commerce and travel. It won’t lead to better safety measures, but it will lead to the overall disruption of space travel... And it won’t actually do anything to prevent any exposures. It might even make more exposures possible, the kind of exposures that result in too much exposure and the death of the person who has been exposed to the eezo. And these people do not care – they WANT the disruption, because to them, the important part is the attention, not the results. And, I’m sure, they’re so interested with the chaos that they’re more interested in destruction with a veneer of purpose.

So we’ll have Miranda and Jack talking about what biotics are in practice – these people are honestly approaching biotics more as a theory than in the practical, because, as I said above, these aren’t biotics pushed to extremism but non-biotics who are, in degrees, there more about how biotics are impacting THEM, not the actual biotics. Where Jack is there to bring up the hardships of being biotic, to show that it’s not about how it interrupts their lives but impacts the people who have this gift and burden, Miranda can bring up the more positive elements of biotic abilities, because her issues have not been because of her biotics.

I know above there was the mention of comparisons to autism, but I’ve also said before that I can see some parallels with same-sex attraction with biotics (parallels that are text within the franchise, what with Cora using that line “what if someone had told me ‘that’s okay’?” in reference to her biotics, which... I’ve had words, I’m not going to go into that here and now). Here are Jack and Miranda to show the various ends of the spectrum – Jack is someone who was mistreated and is finding herself in this identity that she has learned to love about herself despite the damage others have inflicted on her for being different. Miranda is someone who has struggled, but not because of her biotics, even found her place because of her biotics (even if that place is, at this point in time, an illegal terrorist organization like Cerberus).

That’s their purpose here. I would like Shepard to, if they have a biotic class, to be able to acknowledge them as well in dialogue and interrupts (in the way that ME3’s Omega has Engineer Shepard bypass the choice of sacrificing civilians to help Aria and Nyreen), though that involves mapping this out in way more detail than I intend to here. So the idea is there and would grow if this were not hypothetical.

Of course, we do still have to come down to the bang-bang shooty stuff. Because this is a mining operation, I expect a lot of mechanic labor – the enemies here would likely mostly be reprogramed mechs, think something akin to the mining droids from the Peragus level of KOTOR 2. The big boss battle would be a reprogrammed mining mech that’s responsible for creating the variance in the eezo. Like, I’m thinking some kind of spider-like mech – I already mentioned the droids from KOTOR 2’s Peragus level, this one I’m thinking has more in common with like the crab droids from the Clone Wars material, or possibly the Terror Walker from the Force Unleashed 2. I do not know how well that translates into the game engine for Mass Effect, but dammit, it’d at least have uniqueness as a boss fight.

I sort of lost track of Cerberus operative Piper in the course of this, but she’s going to have been a part of matters all the same. Checking in a lot over the course of things, and being opposing talk in conversations between Shepard, Miranda, and Jack – not that she’s arguing in favor of the extremists, since she did call Shepard out there, but she’s looking at this as a pure results manner, to get these people out and shut them down, not listen to their issues and problems, just get them the hell off her rock.

And she’s where there’s a final choice – obviously we do shut down the mining mechs that are causing the problems, but she’s ready to kind of approach this as ‘okay, now let’s get these people off my rock, I don’t care what they have to say, they’re jackasses who tried to blow up the ability to travel through the galaxy, they’re in no position to tell me or anyone else anything at all.’ Shepard has a choice about addressing that – they DO have a legitimate point, since we’ll have seen how this mine is not entirely up to code and no one is really ready to put in the costs to put it back together.

Like, in the earlier entry of “Frozen Blood,” I brought up the idea that the greater galaxy isn’t concerned about this mostly human-centric issue. Here’s a similar perspective, that the exposure to eezo is kinda the “ultimate evolution” of civilizations, that everyone should be biotics. Like, the reason we have human biotics find their way into the Alliance is that this gives them a place to be able to contribute, so humans are seeing biotics as a place to have humanity compete on an even footing with aliens and their advantages. So it’s an idea that humanity is improved by biotics, and, as she’s a Cerberus operative, she’s content to see more exposures and more biotics among humanity, because it advances human interests.

Shepard gets to argue with her about the cost in lives because of the damage done, that eezo exposures can have benefits, but they should still be the exception, not the rule, at least until it can be controlled enough to not have the damage to those exposed to eezo, the mutations and stuff, or agree with her about the human advancement idea, that humans need the benefits too much to make an issue of things. And there are after-mission conversations with Miranda and Jack specifically, talking about their experiences and opinions of how Shepard handled things.

Post-Game Followups:

ME3: The eezo mine itself is a war asset if Shepard didn’t argue for new safety standards, because it’s putting out the eezo that the Alliance needs in the course of the war effort, despite the various complaints about the worsening safety standards – the unfortunate reality is that the war cause needs eezo, and they’re not really going to ask questions about how safe the mine is. Alternatively, if Shepard was more focused on the safety increase, while the mine is at decreased production in the name of putting in these updated standards, the Alliance has had a more positive reputation with human biotics, who are seeing the Alliance (as represented by Shepard, who presumably had Anderson pushing the agenda) as more of a place of acceptance.

We also end up with an encounter with Piper on the Citadel, prior to the coup attempt – she’s claiming to having broken ties with Cerberus and is also there to speak for the miners to the Council. If Shepard argued for the human cost of the safety standards needing to be increased, she’s there genuinely, and ends up injured during the fighting, and can be seen in Huerta afterwards. If Shepard agreed with her about the eezo was necessary regardless of the safety concerns, though, she was a Cerberus operative all the same, and gets confronted after the coup as having assisted in the Cerberus forces getting aboard the station (The idea here being that Shepard’s stark reminder of the value of human life makes her reconsider Cerberus, but, if they don’t make that remark to her, she ends up staying with Cerberus long enough that she gets the Reaper augmentation like their troops).

Security Breach

Commander Bailey of the Citadel Security forces reaches out to Shepard. He’s becoming suspicious of a problem within the C-Sec ranks. He is concerned it’s related to rising tensions between humans and Citadel races, and isn’t sure he can trust his people, human and non alike. Shepard may be his best resource to find the conspirators before chaos breaks out on the Citadel...

It’s gonna be an awkward one here, folks, considering C-Sec are cops, and... I mean, all cops are bastards. We’re all aware of this aspect, and it’s an awkwardness we just kinda have to roll with, given how the narrative is already set. C-Sec is part of the setting and treated as more or less good guys, and I can’t just excise it because I want to. And Bailey himself is not exactly the kind of character who comes off well in an ACAB-world or viewpoint, given that whole “make him scream a little” comment when we first arrive in the C-Sec station.

That all being things we’re aware of, I want it understood that the games clearly treat Bailey as a good guy and on Shepard’s side, in both ME2 and ME3, and we’re going to stand by that here. If you’re not particularly a fan of Bailey, yeah, you’ll probably want to skip this one, because I’m accepting him as a good guy for the sake of this.

We’re kicking off by having a new area on the Citadel being available, a not-quite Presidium environment, some place that would seemingly allow for a more relaxed atmosphere. “Seemingly” because when does Commander Shepard ACTUALLY get to relax?

As they’re trying to relax, they come across a protest. Remember how Thane’s Loyalty Mission centered on Kolyat being hired to kill a turian politician who was running on an openly anti-human platform? Yeah, this is more of those types. While this is still one of those that can be played anywhere after the unlock point, I see it best as after that mission, where Joram Talid has been dealt with – he can end up dead at the end of that mission or he can have had his life threatened by an assassin hired by a human criminal. Both are being held up as banner pieces of evidence of why humans are seizing power in the Citadel from those who’ve lived there for decades.

Shepard gets into an argument with the leader of this protest, another turian who I’m gonna call Gaius Crassus (because when I need to name turian characters, I basically use a grab bag of character names from Spartacus). He’s functionally replacing Talid, who may die by the end of Thane’s Loyalty Mission and I don’t want to deal with one of the major players of this DLC being potentially dead, but we are going to connect the two characters and say that Crassus has taken his position in the race (because, basically, I’m assuming that what Shepard and Thane discover about Talid in that mission functionally tanks his campaign if he survived the mission, and, if he didn’t, obviously, someone else has to run for that seat).

It’s your typical human versus alien argument in this universe (the kind that has been a running theme throughout these DLC ideas, because I think it’s an important detail of the relationships between the races in the Mass Effect universe). Crassus also brings up Shepard’s involvement in Talid’s absence from the election, whether it’s that they were spying on him (conveniently forgetting that it was in the name of preventing an assassination) or they actively killed him.

Eventually, though, C-Sec shows up to break up the protest – this isn’t the first, and the last one turned into something more than just shouting words, so the officers are taking preemptive action to break this up now. This is when Bailey shows up and speaks to Shepard and brings up the fact that this is spreading beyond the Citadel’s general population. He’s noticed it among the officers as well. When we meet him properly in ME2, he’ll bring up that the C-Sec losses during the geth attack allowed a lot of human C-Sec officers to rise through the ranks, that the upper echelons of turian, asari, and salarian officers had gotten decimated, letting the humans get the positions now vacant.

And that’s where there’s some issues in C-Sec, because Bailey believes that this tension is getting into the ranks. It’s something that he needs to address – C-Sec is supposed to be keeping the peace, if the C-Sec officers are getting wrapped up in these activities, it erodes the public confidence.

A-HEM.

Look, I said that the game portrays C-Sec and Bailey as predominantly positive forces and that I was ultimately going to maintain that attitude for the sake of internal consistency with canon, I didn’t say that I was going to approach it entirely uncritically.

Now, because we’re getting involved with C-Sec here, Garrus is an obvious companion to be brought along. To offer an alternate view of C-Sec, of the professional authority figures, I think Kasumi would be a reasonable addition. She’s a thief with a heart of gold, the Robin Hood type (as we see in Citadel, where she assembles a gang to rob the casino, since it’s overflowing with cash while refugees are struggling). While she’s not above taking a bit of a score for herself, she’s there to voice how the “proper authorities” are often no better than thugs with a badge, and that some people go outside the law to do what it fails to do with regards to helping people.

Obviously, Shepard can’t just go undercover here – they’re too well known for that much. So Kasumi is going to lead Shepard through an observation mission in the same way that Thane does in his loyalty mission, having discussions with Garrus along the way about the way C-Sec does things. This is our first bit of questioning the status quo, because Garrus, even if he counts as a “bad” turian, he’s still from a society that doesn’t question authority like C-Sec, like something with that kind of military structure. Orders, commands, discipline, that sort. That’s the environment he knows, that’s the worldview he was raised with.

And sure, Shepard is part of a military themselves, but Earthborn Shepard would know how bad cops can be, and Colonist Shepard was born outside of the military structure. Even Spacer Shepard would have learned about the ways to get around the rules, having been a kid of military parents. Because humans in general are shown to be more initiative-driven than the turians, Shepard has room to push against Garrus’s ingrained ideas of “when a bad order is given, it reflects poorly on the giver, not the one who carries it out.” That’s one of the things that we briefly touched on in the above “Proud Soldiers” entry, but it wasn’t the big focus of Garrus’s time. Here, it is.

Back into the plot stuff, the observation leads Shepard and team to discover that there are basically two types of C-Sec officers, at least among the non-humans. There are the kind who are kind of annoyed about the whole business, but they’re willing to wait until the humans screw up to swoop in and show that they’re in over their heads, and there are those who want to do something about it. Most of the officers are the former, and those “former” are excusing the latter. And that there’s a trend among the humans (because we’ve been observing C-Sec offices, so there’s mingling) to be resentful of the aliens resentment – a sense of “finally, we’re getting to do what we should have done, while the aliens have been focused on the humans as problems and not as victims.”

Like I said, I may have to approach C-Sec as ultimately part of the good guys, but we’re still being critical of the institution – the people who go into C-Sec, into cops as a career, are often people who want the ability to have authority over others, and, as a result, be the people prone to abusing that authority in various ways. Humans may have been discriminated against, but cops are, ultimately, the real bastards in this, and, by being cops, these humans are choosing to be bastards.

Now we get some interplay with Garrus and Kasumi – where Garrus is the cop, she’s been a thief, she’s worked on the margins. She knows what the cops do that make things worse, and she’s bringing up all the issues that need to be when it comes to cops – sure, ideally, they’re there to protect people, but... I mean, if we’re talking ideally, why do we even need cops? And I feel like this would be a good place to insert some backstory for them both that I am completely making up here and now, but I don’t think it’s anything that damages canon. I’ve been trying to avoid anything like this to this point, but it’s in service of the plot here, and, again, I don’t think this is knocking anything particularly of out whack.

I’m saying that Kasumi was, at one point a few years back, part of a group of thieves that C-Sec broke up. Most were arrested, some (like Kasumi) got away. This group furthered that whole “Robin Hood” thing – they stuck to hitting casinos (a la her meet in the Citadel DLC), or swiping the “priceless art” taken by collectors (small “c”) from their “primitive” societies who “can’t take care of them themselves.”

Yes, I’m here, calling out the British Museum via sci-fi metaphor.

Anyway, her group was going after mega-rich people who weren’t hurt by the crime. But C-Sec still decided that THEY were the ones to punish. And, in that C-Sec raid, was a young Garrus Vakarian. She’s never said anything because Kasumi’s just chill that way – she knows enough about Shepard coming in to the squad that she can put aside any old grudges, and I think Kasumi in general keeps loose ties to anyone else – it’s what made her relationship with Keiji so important to her, that he became someone who she would regularly partner with or care about the long term fate of. Likewise, the fact that he didn’t catch her back in the day means that he didn’t realize she was involved.

But the point of this is for her to be able to call out his attitude of “C-Sec is always the good guys, if C-Sec is after someone, they must have done something wrong.” Because, despite having been frustrated by the rules and regulations, Garrus still has that belief in his mind, that there is no real occasion where C-Sec AREN’T the good guys. And he needs to accept that. Shepard’s here to moderate the discussion, and, ultimately, this IS a case where I think that it NEEDS to be Paragon to side with Kasumi’s take over Garrus’s – Garrus is effectively saying “authority is always right by virtue of being authority,” while Kasumi is saying “systems are flawed creations enforced by flawed people, sometimes they’re making mistakes.” In this argument, Garrus is on the side of blind adherence to authority, and Kasumi is on the side of both nuance and trying to make punishments suit the crime – punishing someone who stole food to feed their family is inflicting cruelty for the sake of cruelty, meanwhile the business mogul who cut their wages just pocketed his eighty-fourth billion and demands they be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

The general idea of these discussions is one we’re in the process of having – how does the law work FOR EVERYONE. Garrus, being former C-Sec, being a turian, sees the law as a strict binary, a black and white view of “break the law, you’re a criminal and deserve to be punished.” Kasumi is able to bring in the nuance of crime is defined by people, and laws are fallible. She exposes the flaws in the system with her actions – as much as theft is about the artistry with her, that she seeks the jobs that put her skills to the most challenge, she also sees a connection between the things she steals, the people she steals from, and the laws that protect them – the people she steals from can afford to take the hit. They aren’t losing something. And Kasumi might keep enough funds for a solid nest egg when her days in the biz come to a wrap, but she’s always felt like someone who gives anything she doesn’t need to others.

Okay, that’s the character development stuff for now. We’ll be back to it come the wrap up, now back to plot. As we see, these anti-human elements are working with Gaius Crassus to try and reclaim a position for non-humans in the local political scene. It’s a small scale thing, they know they’re not going to get humanity off the Council or anything, but they’re all being very ‘put them back in their place.’

This all being said, though, in this instance I do want to be clear – there ARE C-Sec officers who are trying to build bridges. But they are not particularly open about this, BECAUSE the culture of C-Sec at this point seems VERY oriented towards resentment. And it is resentment on both sides of the divide, because the humans know that there are those who are against them having any advancement of their rights – it’s common through the series, the non-humans are quick to call humans bullies, and the humans are kinda hotheaded about these things. Both arguments are being represented here, though, because this is a messy situation – although there’s the obvious metaphors to draw, with C-Sec as cops, and talk about the IRL situation (that, admittedly, was not as forefront in our minds when ME2 was released), we do still have to recognize the elements of the fictional construct that are involved.

Okay, I swear, we’re working our way to the inevitable combat segments.

Crassus is able to uncover that Shepard and gang are there, and he’s... not happy to be overseen. He’s basically looking to have his people among C-Sec stage a revolt of some sort – ostensibly, he wants it to be peaceful, but, given how many guns are at his disposal in this facility alone, it’s obvious he’s preparing for conflict. A conflict he intends to pin on humans – if humans had just stayed in their place, this wouldn’t have happened, humans have forced their way onto the Council, shouldn’t the other races do all they can to force them off?

Garrus and Kasumi have a brief bit about the optics of gunning down a bunch of cops, considering Shepard and Kasumi are humans against a bunch of aliens. Garrus wants to make an appeal to the officers, but he might just be seen as a traitor to his kind and no one will listen, while Kasumi thinks she can set off an EMP that’ll shut down their weapons long enough to decide what to do, but she’s working on the fly with material that she questions the suitability of, and it might do more than just knock out the electronics in the place.

I’m leaning towards THIS being the big Paragon/Renegade choice of this DLC, rather than anything else. Does Shepard trust in the system that an appeal to the better nature of these officers implies, or do they make a decision that acknowledges them as a threat that needs to be stopped. Because it’s going to say what Shepard’s opinion of C-Sec is overall – is it a necessary system that can be fixed, or does it need to be rebuilt from the ground up?

I mean, the fact that I’m questioning it at all probably should say where I stand on the subject, but, see again, C-Sec is a part of ME3, it can’t be disbanded entirely.

Garrus can’t persuade everyone to lower their weapons, and Kasumi’s EMP overloads some weapons enough that they blow up in the hands of their users, so there’s drawbacks either way. And, because there are engineer officers among the C-Sec officers, while the biotic officers engage Shepard, they can get their weapons back online enough to be a threat.

This does, however, give Shepard, Spectre status or no, enough room to arrest Crassus, effectively quashing his attempts at a political career, and, by extension, making his anti-human efforts dead in the water, at least for the time being. This comes back to a conversation between Shepard, Bailey, and Executor Pallin, discussing how all this went down. Neither’s particularly happy of things, calling it subversion of C-Sec’s authority and credibility. They do acknowledge that Shepard did the best that they could under the circumstances, but it’s still made C-Sec look bad at a time when they’re needing to appear more unified, what with the whole “politicians openly campaigning on anti-human platforms” thing. Both of them doubt that this is where it all ends, even if Shepard’s done their part.

And, back on the Normandy, we get a follow-up conversation between Garrus and Kasumi, chatting in the mess hall, talking about how things went down and whether or not the other was right, as well as discussing their history. Garrus gets to bring up his whole “I don’t know what to do with grey” thing, acknowledging that, while he wouldn’t have joined up with a guy spouting the rhetoric that Crassus did, he has carried these ideas of the superiority of turians. Kasumi, meanwhile, has just seen her opinions of C-Sec reinforced, though she is willing to acknowledge that, if these organizations are going to stick around, they need people like Garrus, now that he’s asking the questions, to guide them to better places. And they need people like her to keep them on their toes.

Post-Game Followups:

ME3: C-Sec has taken a bit of a dip in their ability, given the numbers who’ve been fired and arrest for their involvement in the subversion attempt. But, if Kasumi’s EMP went off, some of the tech people at C-Sec will boost War Assets, having been working to address and patch up the holes her EMP exposed in their tech. We also get a follow-up sidequest after the Coup, a Presidium protest and counter-protest over how there are humans in C-Sec facing pushback because of pro-human Cerberus acting, while they’re countering with how the aliens would have seen them reduced in numbers anyway, allowing Cerberus less of a fight in their attempt to take over the station that leads to Shepard either siding with one or the other or convincing them to disperse/threatening to arrest them for public disturbance.

Market Crash

The volus are responsible for much of the Citadel’s economics. They have kept the Citadel running, in monetary terms. But, despite being responsible for this, the volus are still considered a “lesser” Council race, clients of the turians, who came later. Now, a group of volus on the Citadel have acted to wrest control of the markets on the Citadel, and the situation is only going to deteriorate...

The volus kinda get the short end of the stick, don’t they? Like listen to their history, they were one of the first races on the Citadel. It’s because of their efforts there even IS a galactic economy. And yet, despite that, not just are they not represented on the Council, they are a CLIENT RACE to the TURIANS, who didn’t even join the Citadel races for about a thousand years after the volus made it to the stars. Sure, the ostensible reason is that the Council doesn’t want to impose “undue burden” by making species responsible for matter beyond their ability in the event of an emergency, such as, for example, a planetary evacuation of people who have entirely different atmospheric and even pressure needs, but... It’s still saying that this species who’s been part of the galactic community for near two thousand years isn’t worth putting on the Council, on the governing body of the galactic community.

Din Korlack being pissy when we meet him in ME1 makes total sense. He’s just taking out his anger on the wrong person. Humans aren’t advancing too fast, they’re just the only ones who are willing to break with the accepted social contract among the Citadel races of accepting the status quo.

So the point here is that a group of volus are taking matters into their own hands and saying “no, we’re not putting up with this second class citizenry when you all depend on us to keep your markets open.”

This is something that’s honestly the kind of question that I’m legit surprised isn’t being asked as things stand in game. So what we’re going with here is that Shepard gets an email from Barla Von, the volus from the Presidium who works for the Shadow Broker in ME1. He’s noted several major volus investors have suddenly been making particularly odd purchases, the kind that can be indications of things like setting out to cause problems. Because the volus MO tends to be to complain without taking action, Barla Von finds this questionable (and, in the event that the player has gone through Lair of the Shadow Broker by the time that they start this mission, he’ll also mention that the Shadow Broker specifically suggested Shepard look in to this, otherwise it’s just his own initiative).

The first stop is the Presidium, which, if it wasn’t clear by now, we are DEFINITELY getting an expanded map for that – I’ve said often and repeatedly, the Citadel could absolutely be home to an entire game (or more), and we’ve just had little slivers of it in the base game. What I’m looking at here is a grander version of the financial district that the Citadel surely has. Basically, we’re going to Citadel Wall Street.

That means that weapons are meant to stay holstered, of course. Shepard is a Spectre (more or less, since the Council may not uphold that, but that’s temporary anyway, since they get the status back come ME3, so we’re just gonna handwave that away if a player hasn’t been reinstated), so they and their companions are authorized to have them, but the whole point here is to have the challenge of NOT busting out the weapons.

So it’s a variant of my general attitude here – you CAN break out the weapons to resolve things (when applicable – the standard game mechanic of ‘designated combat areas’ is in effect, where we can’t have Shepard bust out weapons in, say, the Illium market square or something). It’s just gonna lock you out of the golden ending. There’s a challenge in both finding the peaceful solution and in talking things out.

In this case, the initial work is even finding out about the volus syndicate we’re looking for. After all, given all that the volus do for the Citadel, they’re very capable of covering their tracks. This means investigative work (so this is our usual ‘not where my development focus is on, due to it being based mostly in gameplay) to even discover them, but the more Shepard uncovers, the more that they’re going to tip off the volus.

This is part of the dynamic – It benefits Shepard to be thorough, but it also means that they’ll have a harder challenge because the volus know they’re coming. Pick your poison – information or secrecy, having one means the other side has it as well. Not all the information will be necessary for the quote-unquote golden ending (for whatever value you attach to such things), but you don’t know where it is (at least on the first play – of course, as ever, knowing what is coming and where to find things will obviously streamline and assist in later replays), so you have to seek out what you’re looking for throughout the trading area and sift through what is and isn’t important.

So investigation through the financial district. I’m not mandating squadmates on this one, though I do imagine that Kasumi and Miranda would likely have some commentary to add about the commercial trade floor, a hub of galactic economies.

The information that Shepard finds is, when assembled, able to paint a picture – a pact of volus have come together (I’m gonna call them “the Clan of Righteousness,” but I want to make that clear that it’s a translation of a volus term that’s more unique. But, since the volus language hasn’t been established, and I’m inclined to think that it’s awkward for most humans to speak in whatever is volus-generic, that’s the term I’m using). Their goal is to, rather obviously, make the volus position among the Citadel races have more weight – with how quickly humanity ascended to a seat on the Council, they damn well believe that it’s time that they were as well.

And y’know, Shepard definitely should have the option to agree with that concept – call me America-centric and all, but... Well, “no taxation without representation” feels fitting to apply here. I think it’s reasonable for Shepard, and, by extension, players in general, to be kinda not-okay with the fact that the Council excludes the volus from the halls of power and thinks this is a situation that does need to change. Have some discussion with the companions on the subject – again, I expect Miranda to have some comments on this particular subject, given that it’s humanity’s advancement that sparked this behavior from the Clan, a commentary about how humanity sparked a demand within the galactic community to change.

The information also points Shepard to their next target – a volus trade world, though there’s a space station in orbit for non-volus, considering its economic functions on the galactic stage. Granted, there’s still the reasonable expectation that there are volus operating on the planet below, but the idea is to at least start in the atmosphere that Shepard and company can breathe. Start with the easy place before actively making it harder on matters.

On the station is the payoff to the information seeking – if you sought out everything, the search tipped off the Clan, and they have a whole host of mechs on hand, including some top-end experimental types (re: new mechs beyond the FENRIS, LOKI, and YMIR models, one that I’m gonna dub the BALDR, which I envision as something of a mid-point of the LOKI mech and the Rampart Mech from ME3’s Omega, and another dubbed the FRIGG model, which is basically a support unit for any mechs in the area who reinforces them with shields, sort of a prelude to the Reaper barrier engines in ME3, only supplying local mechs with shields). If you didn’t seek out anything beyond the bare minimum, the place mostly consists of the standard civilian crew – keep the weapons holstered, and Shepard has freedom of movement, at least to a point. And the “golden” zone of knowing exactly where to look and how much looking can be done will lead to some LOKI mech patrols that are not immediately hostile – the Clan suspects that there may be someone investigating them, but they aren’t certain and can’t just shut everything down on that basis.

And that allows Shepard options – they CAN go in guns blazing, but it will tip off the Clan, allowing them to dump evidence and throw up enough of a smokescreen that they can slip away, plot and scheme to return another day. They can get on board, posing as a trader and make their way into the areas of the station that are housing the heads of the Clan, but, of course, the more the Clan’s tipped off, the more they’re aware of someone coming for them. The information that Shepard found (or didn’t) allows them to know where on the station to gather the evidence they’d need to take the members of the Clan to whatever court of justice is applicable (remember – the reason Barla Von sent Shepard in was because nothing had actually been done YET, but the supplies had been taken and indicated a plot to make some kind of attempt). It’s possible that they can talk them down entirely (as I said, the challenge is in finding the peaceful solution).

So getting through the station, whether shooting everything that moves or through stealth, leads Shepard to the heads of the Clan. They are pretty straightforward – as we determined, they’re out to secure a place for volus at the table, and they want it whether or not the Council will agree, hence the threats of violence. They’re also ready to move on the Citadel – their supply of mechs are going to help with this, prove that they have the ability to back up their talk with firepower. And, like Din Korlack, they’re not very fond of “Earth clan,” given that they’ve managed to secure in years what the volus haven’t in millennia. So Shepard has a bit of an uphill climb to get them to listen.

Still, it IS possible – obtain the golden information search result, enter stealthily, and generally stick to the idea that what Shepard is trying to do here is make peace between the frustrated factions, they will be swayed by an argument of how assembling what they have is starting that conversation already – they won’t get what they’re trying to obtain at gunpoint, because the Council will just make the appeasing motions until they can gain the upper hand, and, with both the turians and humanity to oppose them, just these resources won’t be enough. But it’s not that they need to be “model minorities” or anything, but rather they need to come to the table arguing that they should be seen as equals, not a “lesser species” (the term Avina uses when explaining why species like the volus aren’t on the Council) and not a “client race,” or an attempted invader causing a hostile takeover. All this done and it’s entirely possible to never fire a weapon once.

But, of course, there’s also the alternative, which is them sending in waves of mechs to take Shepard down, and blowing them all up – at that point, they’ve lost the most potent weapons in their arsenal. And, if the player is very determined to cause violence, there would also have been the option to plant some explosives and cause further destruction of their resources. They basically HAVE to surrender at that point.

Afterwards, Barla Von invites Shepard to their office in the financial district on the Citadel to discuss how he sees matters of galactic economics shifting, dropping some hints about the Shadow Broker having begun preparations for the Reaper invasion (stronger ones if this follows having played through Lair of the Shadow Broker). And, of course, he gives Shepard a reward for their troubles.

Post-Game Follwoups:

ME3: Depending on how Shepard resolved matters, the volus, having made in-roads with the Council, will be using the crisis of the invasion to prove their worthiness for greater galactic recognition, so their space stations are open to house refugees and their mechs and in use for the war effort. Alternatively, with the depletion of their resources and material, the volus have raised prices on any product from Irune and the volus colonies, as well as any economic service they offer, and their prices remain elevated even with the new crisis of the invasion.

#dg's hypothetical dlc #mass effect #mass effect meta #mass effect 2

[akaluan]

psssst. hey aka wanna talk about code vein meta and the life cycle of the BOR parasites -ser

The life cycle of the BOR parasites, huh? Those parasites, huh? The horrific, vampire-lite creating parasites that underpin Code Vein's EVERYTHING, huh?

SURE WHY NOT!

(Cut because Ser and I have legitimately done some "the ground is soft and I have a shovel" world building + a lot of these suppositions / worldbuilding is based off of story spoilers. So if you have no desire to read horrifying parasite / invasion worldbuilding based on Code Vein spoilers, skip this post, lol!)

Okay so, I'm going to start with some basic facts that Code Vein's story tells us:

1) we don't know where the BOR (Biological Organ Regenerative) parasites, the Horrors, or the Thorns of Judgment come from

2) the BOR parasites show up first, and are found because dead animals literally GET UP AND START ATTACKING EVERYTHING in search of blood

3) BOR parasite research initially starts as MEDICAL research, not to create Revenants for fighting

4) It isn't very long after BOR parasite research begins that the Horrors show up

5) all BOR parasites in the current Revenants are "artificial" (I'm actually suspecting that it's similar to using a weakened virus to train the immune system -- it's still a true BOR parasite, probably a cloned one, but it's been nerfed in order to generate Revenants that are in control of themselves)

There's a lot more than we get to see and that I'll be mentioning during this ramble, but these are some starting tidbits to build from.

So, first off.

BOR Parasites, which have never been found in ANY BIT OF PREVIOUS HUMAN HISTORY, are suddenly discovered. It's a medical miracle! Let's try to do some research on these things!

During the process of the research, gigantic beasts call Horrors suddenly appear and start wreaking havoc. Humans die too quickly to these things, so the BOR Parasite research is turned away from medical miracle to...

generating an army.

An army of pseudo-immortal soldiers. An army of pseudo-immortal soldiers that ALL REQUIRE BLOOD. And that, upon messing up and going into Frenzy, become Lost.

Revenants can be ashed (permanently killed) by stabbing the heart, where the BOR parasite resides. Becoming a Lost means that the BOR parasite takes over the entire body, not just the heart, and thus the BOR parasite itself becomes no longer vulnerable. Lost cannot be killed because upon taking near-fatal death, the parasite triggers dissolution and the body turns into motes that reform later in another place. (Revenants go through this same process when they take near-fatal damage that isn't damage to the heart. It's the BOR parasite's will to survive showing through.)

At some point, I'm hazy on the exactness of the timing, the Great Collapse happens and the Thorns of Judgment erupt from the earth and essentially rearrange the Earth's surface. The Thorns of Judgment are often a deep brown with glowing golden bits. I think there might be a few other colors, but those are the majority.

So in the process of all of this, more research is done and Project QUEEN is begun in order to find ways around some of the downsides of Revenants. Project QUEEN is carried out by feeding the subject Revenant the blood of (game says "all known animals" but I'm calling bullshit bc that's A LOT) many many animals, which ends up changing the Revenant and "evolving" (games stop using "evolution" when you mean "metamorphosis" challenge) the BOR parasite, at the cost of horrible pain to the subject and the feeling of harboring a growing monster.

Project QUEEN ends with the subject going into frenzy and becoming the Queen, who is ALMOST like a Lost, except... not as irrational / instinctive / driving to JUST EAT. The Queen is shown in several instances to fight intelligently, and seems to lead the Lost in some way. Drinking the Queen's blood (which is BLUE, btw! Every other Revenant is shown as having red blood, as are the Lost) is guaranteed to make a Revenant frenzy.

An INTERESTING note is that the Queen has access to... thorns. That look exactly like the Thorns of Judgment except WHITE AND SMALL

So now we get into "the ground is soft and I have a shovel and a will" area

We don't see many Horrors in this game -- we canonically see one in the main game, which is a gigantic canine/monkey-esque beast, and then three others in the DLC Depths maps -- but Mido (eugh, I hate taking this bastard's comments into consideration, BUT) makes a comment in the late game that Revenants and even the Queen are but stepping stones, and the Horrors are the next point in the "evolution" of humanity (STOP USING EVOLUTION WHEN YOU MEAN METAMORPHOSIS CHALLENGE)

Mido has also altered himself and.. essentially forced a metamorphosis of his own, making him look almost like a Lost except retaining his human rationality (not that he had much =| bastard) and ability to reason, etc. Or at least some level of it, since we can't be entirely sure how much his brain chemistry is being affected by the BOR Parasite and how much is just.. Mido is a fucking bastard like Kurotsuchi.

ANYWAY

Ser and I have shoved the puzzle pieces together in this order:

BOR Parasites and Horrors are from the same place, with the BOR Parasites leading the way.

BOR Parasites appear. Start to infect low level things, (animals etc) and begin to transform them into Lost. The Lost generate something called Miasma that affects other infected beings around them. Lost also become STRONGER via Miasma intake over time, which tends to... make them larger.

The growing population of Lost + Miasma serves as a beacon, drawing more BOR parasites to the planet. It's canonical that Lost blood (and also Revenant blood) affects inanimate objects -- it's called Ichor and it's used to make Blood Veils do their thing. The more Revenant / Lost blood that's spilled, the more "infected" the world becomes.

At some point, Ser and I believe that a BOR Parasite managed to essentially "infest" the planet itself. As a result, the Great Collapse happened, and the Thorns of Judgement appeared. I believe that the Thorns of Judgment act as a... a beacon of sorts. Where there were only a few Horrors here or there, there's now a veritable flood of Horrors, which accelerates humanity's desire to create revenants to fight. More revenants means more potential Lost. More potential Lost increases the miasma levels which makes more Revenants frenzy and become Lost, cycle continues.

Project QUEEN resulted in a "frenzied" but STILL RATIONAL entity that cannot be ashed, causes instant frenzy upon ingestion of its blood, and IS ABLE TO USE AN ABILITY THAT LOOKS LIKE THE THORNS OF JUDGMENT.

Proposition: Queen is not a Lost, Queen is A BABY HORROR.

Proposition: BOR Parasites are the larval form of Horrors.

So the life cycle, before humans intervene, looks like this:

BOR Parasites -> Lost -> Horrors -> [a "queen" is created] -> new planet is found -> Queen creates and releases new BOR Parasites on the new planet, cycle continues

When they come across humanity, the life cycle becomes a bit tangled, BUT:

BOR Parasites -> Revenant [a "queen" is generated in THIS stage and skips to Horror stage, but isn't truly mature the way it should be] -> Lost -> Horrors

I propose that the relics that are being handed around are Similar To But Not Quite Identical To the "eggs" that a true, mature queen entity would produce to make more BOR Parasites. Except in this case, I think that if they actually allowed the Relics to fully take over the bearers, you'd end up with more of the weird, "baby" queens that still need to mature before the cycle can truly continue.

So, in short, every Revenant is a Horror in potentia.

("In order to kill the monsters, we became the monsters")

Anyway, thank you for reading my long, rambling thesis on why Code Vein is a truly horrifying game no matter how you look at it or what ending you get.

=)

#code vein #code vein meta #the soil is soft and i have dug deep #look you can tell me it's not that deep but really? REALLY? #besides i like this horrifying realization it is now how I plan to treat any fic I write for/in/about Code Vein from now on so get comfy #=)

[slimy-eye]

So I saw this person on Reddit talking about Mora

They were going on and on about how stupid Hermaeus Mora is in the Dragonborn dlc. They talk about how Hermaeus Mora couldn’t even deal with Miraak in his own realm, and wonder how the hell The Last Dragonborn would ever be forced into a similar position. Of course, I’m a bit of a lorebeard, so I chuckled lightly that the entire point of the dlc went over this person’s head. I figured I’d talk about it here.

For those that don’t know, Hermaeus Mora could have killed Miraak at any given time. We see this at the end of the final battle, where Mora himself impales Miraak, killing him. So why didn’t Mora do it earlier? Why did he allow Miraak to foster such rebellious ideas for so long? The answer is simple. The Golden Eye sees the tides of fate, and he knew of The Last Dragonborn before they themselves were aware. You see, Mora collects knowledge, but more than that, he likes to hoard it for himself. A Dragonborn is a unique, one of a kind mortal, even more so now that the Septim dynasty is destroyed. You are the Last Dragonborn. The last of your kind. Hermaeus Mora sees an opportunity that he cannot resist.

You know how, when animals are nearing extinction, the last of their kind are often protected in zoos? Think of The Last Dragonborn as a creature that is the last of their kind. Now imagine Mora’s insatiable desire to preserve it for himself. The Last Dragonborn is akin to an exotic trophy for The Golden Eye. So when Miraak begins rebelling, Mora sees the perfect opportunity to lure The Last Dragonborn into his realm. He encourages TLD to read Black Books, which, if you don’t know, trap a part of whomever is reading it inside of Apocrypha. This process is gradual, but every time TLD opens a Black Book, a part of them is stolen away by Hermaeus Mora. At some point, they are likely to become trapped.

Mora saw an opportunity to replace a dull, old and cracked trophy for a much shinier one. It’s only to be expected that he would seize any and all opportunity to claim TLD for himself. He could have dealt with Miraak at any time, but if he had done that, TLD would never have entered his realm. Would never have opened those Black Books. Would never have fallen victim to Mora’s trap. The entire point of the Dragonborn dlc isn’t Miraak. It’s Hermaeus Mora slowly but surely staking his claim on The Last Dragonborn’s soul.

Some people like to say (or perhaps speculate) that Hermaeus Mora could never take a Dragonborn’s soul. Of course, we don’t know this for sure. But it’s interesting to think and debate about either way. I personally think it’s plausible that TLD could end up in Sovngarde, or some other aetherial plain. But consider Miraak’s fate. Miraak never died. Mora didn’t let him. When he was near death, and fatally wounded, Hermaeus Mora dragged his broken body into apocrypha before he could pass. This supports the idea that a Prince could not actually claim TLD’s soul above Akatosh, at least in my opinion. But it also means that TLD is likely to suffer the same fate. 

One day, they will meet their match. TLD isn’t some demigod. They’re no Hercules. The only ‘super power’ they have is the ability to learn shouts faster than everyone else (yes, regular people can learn to shout). Though the end of the Dragonborn dlc is pretty open ended for the sake of the player, it’s easy to assume what the likely canon fate will be. Part of TLD is already trapped in Apocrypha through the use of the Black Books, which will make it all the more simpler for Mora to drag a wounded Dragonborn back into his realm before they can die, just like Miraak.

So in short, I don’t agree that Hermaeus Mora is an idiot or a fool. He manages to trick TLD into potentially trapping themselves in Apocrypha forever. And even if TLD is rebellious, and doesn’t follow the command of Mora after being released from Apocrypha after the Miraak battle, they’ll still do exactly as he wants them to do. TLD is powerful enough to go where most other mortals can’t, such as ancient tombs and forgotten lands. And you can bet that every new ounce of knowledge TLD finds in their travels, Mora will be there, watching from over their shoulder, gleefully adding all the new knowledge to his library as he waits out of sight for someone to strike a near killing blow.

Anyways, that’s my lore ramblings for the day. 

#hermaeus mora #elder scrolls #skyrim #dragonborn #ramblings #myramblings #apocrypha

[c-aureus]

Checks watch: Ooh, look at that. It’s time for another rant. So. Wall of text incoming. So, has it occurred to anyone else that, of the 6 Zelda fighters that are in Smash Bros. Ultimate, 3 of them are Link, 2 of them are Zelda, and one is Definitely Not Captain Falcon? Here’s another fun thing to think about: Technically, we haven’t had an entirely new Zelda character introduced to the game since Melee was released in 2001.

TWENTY YEARS AGO. Yes, I’m aware that Toon Link came with Brawl in 2008 (which is still 13 years and 2 entire games), but even so. Toon Link was a direct replacement for Young Link in that he is a smaller, faster Link. Besides, they’re still the same character, with the same moveset. What I’m getting at here is that... I honestly think that the Zelda series has been kinda neglected for fighters in recent years/DECADES. Especially considering the saturation of certain franchises that shall not be named. And, it’s not as if the series is lacking characters. I honestly think that Midna deserved to be playable in Brawl, and Ghirahim deserved to be in 4. Sadly, at this point, I think that their moment has kinda passed, and they would never get in now. Especially since both are assist trophies. I’ve heard that apparently Toon Zelda was intended for Brawl, but even so... this is just worsening the problem of having not enough diversity. Like, the Zelda series has some amazing characters, that have definitely deserved spots. But, they’ve been passed over for some... underwhelming picks, let’s say. (Yes, I’m salty.) In case it’s not obvious, what I’m getting at is that I want more Zelda reps. Specifically, ones from a somewhat recently released Zelda game that, uh... was pretty good, y’know? Obviously, I’m talking about Triforce Heroes. Jokes aside, I’ve wanted a BotW rep in Ultimate since it was announced. I do not consider Link to be a specific BotW rep, since I think that he more represents the Zelda series as a whole, since his moveset, appearance, etc. are the same between incarnations. Aside from his clothes, and the remote bomb, he could be literally any other Link. And, if/when the next big Zelda game and Smash Bros. game come out, he WILL be any other Link. I honestly think that BotW was momentous enough of a game to warrant its own dedicated rep (or 4, in a Pokemon Trainer style format). This feeling is given infuriating hope by the fact that the Champions are not assist trophies, nor background cameos in the Great Plateau Tower stage. In fact, the only manner in which they feature is as 2* support spirits. I mean... I can’t be the only one who thinks that they’re better than that, can I? So, yeah. Champions for Smash. It makes sense in so many ways, which is why it’s going to be so crushing when they inevitably are not announced. I mean, I’d even accept a Mii costume, but I’d wager we’re not getting that either. Lol. Fuck me, I guess. To elaborate, between the 20 (or 13) year drought of Zelda reps, the significance of BotW, plus the design and nature of the Champions, as well as the fact that they have not been deconfirmed, or have barely any presence at all in Ultimate, I genuinely believe that this is a fitting, and awesome, character to have in the game. Alas, I don’t think it’s ever gonna happen. Although, if, by some unfathomable luck, it did, then I would never complain about Byleth, Corrin, Roy, Chrom or Min-Min ever again. Either way. Praise Sakurai. He has done such an incredible job with Ultimate, and that will always deserve recognition and praise. It sounds entitled as fuck to think that you can demand your favourite/preferred character(s) to be in a game that you love, however after seeing other people being genuinely ecstatic to get their favourite/preferred character in the game, there is no harm in wanting to experience that same kind of joy for yourself.

(Provided that you don’t start sending death threats about it. That’s trashy as fuck.) None of the (new) characters announced for Ultimate (or even Sm4sh) have really been ‘for me’ in the sense that I was hyped beyond words at their announcement, so I’m kinda just really holding out for a miracle, here. Alas, not everyone can be pleased, so there will always be those who will be disappointed. And, alas, it’s the hope that really kills ya. Can’t wait for the final DLC character to be a Gen 8 Pokemon. Sigh.

#Smash Bros #smashbrosultimate #smash #ssb #ssbu #ssbdlc #fighters pass #ultimate #Champions for smash #I just want to let Mipha kick ass and take names #long post