#FP&A automation

[damilola-doodles]

🍎Project Title: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Insights Generator via Advanced Data Mapping and Transformation.📌⭕

ai-ml-ds-business-intelligence-erp-analytics-021 Filename: erp_insights_generator.py Timestamp: Mon Jun 02 2025 19:43:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Problem Domain:Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Operations Management, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Process Automation. Project Description:This project focuses on building a sophisticated system…

[dammyanimation]

🍎Project Title: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Insights Generator via Advanced Data Mapping and Transformation.📌⭕

ai-ml-ds-business-intelligence-erp-analytics-021 Filename: erp_insights_generator.py Timestamp: Mon Jun 02 2025 19:43:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Problem Domain:Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Operations Management, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Process Automation. Project Description:This project focuses on building a sophisticated system…

[damilola-ai-automation]

🍎Project Title: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Insights Generator via Advanced Data Mapping and Transformation.📌⭕

ai-ml-ds-business-intelligence-erp-analytics-021 Filename: erp_insights_generator.py Timestamp: Mon Jun 02 2025 19:43:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Problem Domain:Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Operations Management, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Process Automation. Project Description:This project focuses on building a sophisticated system…

[damilola-warrior-mindset]

🍎Project Title: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Insights Generator via Advanced Data Mapping and Transformation.📌⭕

ai-ml-ds-business-intelligence-erp-analytics-021 Filename: erp_insights_generator.py Timestamp: Mon Jun 02 2025 19:43:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Problem Domain:Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Operations Management, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Process Automation. Project Description:This project focuses on building a sophisticated system…

[damilola-moyo]

🍎Project Title: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Insights Generator via Advanced Data Mapping and Transformation.📌⭕

ai-ml-ds-business-intelligence-erp-analytics-021 Filename: erp_insights_generator.py Timestamp: Mon Jun 02 2025 19:43:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Problem Domain:Business Intelligence (BI), Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), Operations Management, Data Warehousing, Data Integration, Process Automation. Project Description:This project focuses on building a sophisticated system…

[aconsultancyblogs]

Growth-Focused Businesses Turn to F&A Outsourcing for FP&A Efficiency

The complexity of today’s business environment has made finance and accounting outsourcing a critical enabler of modern budgeting and forecasting practices. Companies rely on outsourcing to bring accuracy, speed, and strategic focus to financial operations.

Specialized budgeting services offered by outsourcing providers help businesses establish realistic and data-driven budgets. These services leverage historical data, market trends, and business objectives to ensure aligned planning.

Forecasting has also been revolutionized by outsourcing. Improved forecasting accuracy means businesses can anticipate market shifts, prepare for uncertainties, and make proactive decisions.

FP&A automation is another key benefit. Outsourced teams often use cutting-edge financial software to automate data collection, reporting, and analysis, saving time and reducing manual errors.

Strengthening financial control is essential for long-term success. Outsourced FP&A teams bring governance and structure, ensuring that budgeting and forecasting processes are compliant and strategically aligned.

By adopting finance and accounting outsourcing, companies can modernize their budgeting and forecasting processes, improving efficiency and achieving stronger financial outcomes.

[financemastery]

Revolutionizing FP&A: From Data Chaos to Predictive Excellence

Month-end close can feel like a race against time for FP&A services teams — reconciling data, managing spreadsheets, and delivering insights under pressure. But what if your team could flip the script? The FP&A Time Trap Most FP&A teams spend 85% of their time preparing data and only 15% generating insights. This imbalance leads to reactive financial management, leaving teams stuck in manual…

[pathquestsolutions]

Empower Your Accounting with Next-Gen BI and Automation

Maximize your accounting functions with PathQuest, which is a subsidiary of Pacific Accounting & Business Services (PABS). With PathQuest, you can efficiently manage accounts payable, gain valuable insights, and take control of your financial landscape. By eliminating manual tasks, you can focus on business growth. Experience advanced financial operations for informed decision-making, automated workflows, and simplified accounting processes. Utilize data and automation to drive next-generation financial intelligence, streamline accounts payable processes, and transform real-time financial data into actionable insights. With PathQuest, you'll harness the power of financial efficiency and achieve business success.

Read More at https://patch.com/users/pathquest-solutions

[iteratorsex]

Entanglement, Impurity, and Kegare in Rain World

I mentioned before in another post that I would touch on the topic of impurity, rot, and kegare and how it continuously reappears in Vanilla and ESPECIALLY Watcher. Here it is.

But yes, it can't really be understated how important these are to the themes lore of ascension and entanglement in RW and the dichotomy that exists

This topic relates to FP, Hunter, Watcher, and the Ancients. It's all over the place man.

I actually got this idea from Darthz, who was the one who brought it up to me initially. I'm just expanding on it and writing it all down further

What is Kegare and Why Am I Bringing It Up

Kegare is a Shinto concept. Specifically it represents pollution alongside magakoto (abnormality) and tsumi (imperfection). The avoidance of these taboos itself is called imi. Though I'm only mentioning kegare, technically I am referring to all 3 of these terms (to make things easier)

It was accumulated through and/or caused by being victim of disaster, proximity to death, being physically unclean, committing terrible actions, or even childbirth (for sexism reasons. Don't worry about it)

It operates very similarly to karma, being determined by cause and effect and was amoral and natural. Though it was taboo, and those who may have had it were avoided, it was not out of sinful reasoning

"Also, suffering is not regarded as a form of punishment for human behavior, but, rather, as a natural element of human experience."

Having too much kegare would bring more misfortune, illness, and disaster with whoever carried it

About the Ancients and Karma Gates

The ancients themselves seem to ALSO have a taboo of a similar nature.

"May Not as long as the Stars stay fixed on their Celestial Spheres Grey Hand, Impure Blood, Inheritable Corruption, Parasites, or malfunction settle in Your establishment."

Though this isn't much to go off of.

Though maybe we can look to some outside sources. The steam released by the karma gates is said to be decontaminating. This is big. This is huge

Here you can see the steam coming out of either a vent below the grate, or coming off a heating coil, before the other side opens up.

These gates exist and were built in order to filter out and decontaminate whoever passes through, similar to harae. You wouldn't want any impurities passing through your temples and homes and facilities, would you?

"...and when the production was automated it would generally remain on the same site. So that the old stones could... radiate the material with holiness, I suppose."

Even in industrially automated processes, there was some spiritualism involved. Decontamination may have been pretty important as to not dirty up those so called holy stones

You see these gates in front of the AU voidbath and the path to FP in a long hallway. You even see it in Verdant Waterways, which may have just been a huge water purification plant! So the decontamination is still a factor there

Ancient Urban, FP's Roof, and Verdant Waterways in order.

"I was embalmed, adorned, readied for the journey."

If being dunked in void fluid required you to first be embalmed and sterilized, what does that imply? There was a worry of decomposition or decay when it came to the process of ascension.

About Five Pebbles and Hunter

Now seeing how kegare exists within the beliefs or actions of the Ancients and how much they wanted to prevent it from settling, what about seeing the consequences for yourself?

Five Pebbles contracted the rot after essentially killing Moon, something that would cause kegare (or, specifically tsumi here). He tried to break his taboos and ended up entangling himself further and also terribly hurting someone else, bringing with him sorrow that he tries to make up for in Hunter (see how often he mentions Moon?)

Though yes, it was CERTAINLY caused by him fucking up an experiment. Metaphorically, it is a form of kegare

Even the wording for the rot. Unfortunate... corruption... its a natural but terrible thing that happens

"He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments.""...on his first fit of corruption he dumped a lot of infected material there..."

I even feel that the one off dialogue about FP and not using holy ash was subtle foreshadowing to what he's experiencing

Even in the only other place rot appears and spreads in is an actual DUMP!

But what about Hunter?

I believe that Hunter and Five Pebbles are intended to be narrative parallels to each other, having tried to change themselves in an act of desperation, but failing and contracting a disease.

"We both have something... unfortunate growing in us."

But how did Hunter get this "unfortunate" disease? Is it even The Rot?

Well... it's not directly the rot. But it's confirmed to be RELATED to it.

As for the cause of Hunter's disorder? I think this quote from the 1.5 kickstarter announcement can answer part of it.

"...It is a being pushing beyond the confines of its place in the ecosystem, and thus is karmically imbalanced in this world."

This is likely because of the fact that Hunter CHOSE to start killing and eating meat when it previously did not need to. It engaged with unsanitary acts of eating raw meat and hunting and killing, possibly out of desperation

And considering Hunter's disease, this and the karmic imbalance could very much be tied into each other. The fact that Hunter also accepts to deliver the Green Neuron, when it could have simply abandoned at any point, also shows that they're willing to also make up for the misfortune they carry, similar to Five Pebbles

Whatever it is, its clear disease, desperation, and karmic alignment all correspond and relate to each other. This desperation which is entangling, and which the Drainage pearl warns about, how struggling in the fishing net only results in you being more tangled in it

Also, the use of unfortunate in that pearl is not lost on me

"It says that the world is an unfortunate mess."

About Watcher

Watcher definitely ALSO leans into the uncleanliness aspect, as you can tell with the absurd amount of rot that's around everywhere

As well as this... there are no karma gates. The warps cannot cleanse you of whatever you carry between regions. Both ST and Watcher are like 2 kids dragging mud (rot) with them where they go

"So glad I cannot sniff! Spoiled meat, dissolving proteins. Yeeck."

There are entire regions dedicated to just this raw Pollution. It's disgusting and dirty and nobody wants to be in it, yet its clear this is just a natural thing. An unfortunate reality

The rot IS just straight up entanglement and the embodiment of the cycle itself, only existing to Consume and Reproduce. Its sticky and web-like, it corrupts and eats and decays. It's pretty in your face about what it is. The fact FP caught it while being desperate...? But I already talked about that before.

As well as this, Outer Rim is caked in mud, and so is Badlands (which warps to Unfortunate Evolution). These are the only places currently that have mud at all, and both lead to rot one way or another. The regions themselves Are Just Disgusting

Not to mention Station Annex (which also leads to UE) is just littered with lizard corpses...

Conclusion

Rot is kegare. A pollution of existence that is brought by disaster or terrible actions, and which causes misfortune and brings even more disaster

The Ancients themselves must have known of this- or at least known of a similar phenomenon to the rot with the same root and effect, and so built karma gates and continued practices to keep themselves clean while they lived and while they ascended

[icon-resources]

https://www.iconresources.com/7-fpa-trends-that-can-help-you-gain-an-advantage-in-2024/

[gods-favorite-autistic]

If the bad kids played Minecraft

Gorgug: redstone builder my guy loves making rollercoasters and security systems and anything redstone for the others, loves the enchantment table and fights monsters purely for xp, has a little farm of rainbow sheep and flowers, his workshop looks like a flower (Fabian may or may not have made it he just came to the joint world and found it there one day)

Fabian: achievement maniac he must prove that he is the best at the game, loves all the fortresses and like the raids and all of that, fights any monster he sees and brings the spoils back to Adaine for her building, hoards all the gold and diamonds he finds and refuses to share, once killed a piglin on accident and had to give all of his gold to Fig, main person who finds and downloads mods for everyone (he has the nicest computer after all), has a list of which person got one mod after everyone started fighting about who requested a shaders mod that just makes everything look really pretty but also insanely slows everyone’s fps (it was Gorgug he liked how it looked)

Fig: trying to make and collect everything she physically can and if she can’t she will find a way, has about a million mods installed because why not (her personal world is like 4 fps), “rules the nether” (Adaine turned a fortress into a castle for her and she only trades with piglins), has at least one cd playing at any time and tries to start a campaign for one of her songs to become an official cd (it almost works)

Riz: automates everything and anything he can, just does insane experiments for funsies, has a gang of iron golems and a village that he rules with an iron fist (is very offended that fig refuses to trade with his villagers, has waged war on the nether multiple times but Fabian (his “knight”) and Gorgug (Figs “knight”) refuse to fight each other), Kristen is banned because she keeps trying to start a rebellion

Adaine: the builderrr girlie likes her games on peaceful and her structures luxurious, she made a castle for all of her friends in her joint world (even if Fig and Riz usually sleep in their kingdoms), does not know how to fight in the slightest so she just enlists Fabian and Gorgug (Riz makes her pay to enlist Fabian in tnt no Adaine he is not making another nuke what are you talking about), genuinely a good archer but freaks out anytime she sees a monster and becomes instantly useless so she mainly uses it for hunting purposes

Kristen: loves mining, also has a million pets like if she can find a way to make it a pet she will (she once tamed a polar bear nobody knows how), her room in Adaine’s castle is in the basement with little mining carts that Gorgug made her that go throughout basically their whole world, runs as fast as she can away from any Warden chamber (she cannot fight), has an army of snowmen in a cage, technically has a fee for being the blacksmith of the group but forgets every time, has a White House built somewhere in the world after the school election

Bonus!

Ayda: Crafts books so she can write in them, lives in Figs castle in another room than Fig (for the drama, according to Fig)(“the fans will love it!” “My love who are you talking about nobody is watching us” “excuse you my tumble audience is very much enjoying our live-blogged tragic love” “my paramour we are literal blocks”), rotates between living there and living in the tallest tower in Adaine’s castle, is fascinated by Gorgugs inventions

Ragh: Fighter, insists on only using his bare fists, drinks any potion he finds, is the only person willing to go on raids with Fabian and Gorgug, figured out a way to play bloodrush in game, loves elytra’s, lives in a dirt hut that is big enough for him to stand in next to a bed and nothing else, Adaine built him a room (that looks like a gym) in her castle but he prefers dirt hut

Aelwyn: Only on there for the cats, steals Kristen’s cats any chance she gets, surprisingly really good at fighting but refuses to fight unless absolutely necessary, has one mod on for herself and it’s the shapeshifting mod (no clue if that’s a mod or part of a game mode) so she can prank Adaine anytime she wants, loves making tnt even if she doesn’t use it (“the goblin uses it in funny ways” “Aelwyn he is exploding a village” “like I said funny”), fucking hates goats and polar bears for no reason

[lobautumny]

Alright, guess this toy's gonna talk about Palworld, because it's seen Discourse™️ start to crop up about how "supporting the game is immoral because it's stealing designs from Pokemon!"

Now look, this toy's not about to sit here and tell you that all of the monster designs in Palworld are completely original and the game isn't, on some level, a bootleg. Obviously a lot of the designs are bootleg pokemon. That's not the point it wants to get at. The point is that it doesn't really matter.

First of all, nobody is being hurt by Palworld having knockoff pokemon among the ranks of its monsters. Game Freak is not some tiny indie developer struggling to make ends meet having their work unfairly co-opted by a big, bad corporation. Pokemon is, in fact, the largest, most profitable media franchise of all time, and Palworld is an indie game. The reason that something like this would hypothetically be scummy/shitty is if someone were taking someone else's work, changing it slightly, claiming it as their own, and thus depriving the original creator of credit/visibility that they should've had. But that literally can't happen here, because everyone already knows what Pokemon is. So unless it gets found that they're stealing designs from fakemon artists or something (there was one alleged instance, but it seems to have just been a coincidence of two different people having the idea of "what if Chimecho but with big, bulky arms?"), Palworld is hurting nobody through having bootleg designs, so the moral argument against the game falls flat.

With that out of the way, there's a much more interesting topic to discuss here: Why is it that when someone's fangame gets C&D'd, everyone immediately jumps to the creator's support, accurately assessing that our copyright system is broken and primarily serves to hurt independent artists, but the moment a developer makes the changes necessary to make sure their fangame doesn't get hit with a C&D (and to allow them to make money off of it), it's suddenly bad and cringe and unoriginal?

The argument that "Palworld is lazy and unoriginal and therefore bad because the monster designs are too similar to Pokemon's designs" is something that this toy would be willing to hear out if Palworld were a turn-based singles-format RPG with similar systems/overall structure to those found in Pokemon games, but, uh. It isn't. It's a third-person shooter with monster-catching mechanics and, like, Factorio-ass automation and base-building, from what this toy can tell. And it doesn't know if the game is good, as someone who has not played it (or even really seen gameplay of it), but it can absolutely tell you that the game's not lazy.

Sure, they could have done more to make the monster designs feel more unique, and that's absolutely a valid criticism for the game. This toy doesn't want to come across like it's saying otherwise. It just wants people to recognize that that's kind of a nitpick when the game is, on a mechanical and genre level, something completely different from anything any Pokemon game ever has been or ever will be, and that nobody would be complaining about laziness or a lack of originality if this came out as a fangame literally just using actual pokemon. In that reality, people would've been popping off at how high-effort it is, actually. And like, even putting money aside, this game literally could not exist as a fangame. A while back, someone uploaded some videos on Youtube showcasing a fangame they were developing that was an FPS where the enemies were pokemon. They got hit with a C&D and their Youtube account was terminated within a couple days of the videos being uploaded. The game was not monetized, and in fact, never even had a download link, to this toy's recollection. Palworld would have suffered the same exact fate if it wasn't its own IP.

[ratgirlexe]

Beyond Citadel

CWs: Gun Violence, Death, Gore, Incest, Body horror.

Beyond Citadel is a beautiful indie boomer shooter style FPS. It's gunplay is fantastic, it's story is esoteric, and it's atmosphere is beautiful. It's a great game and I highly recommend it with some very heavy caveats. It is a game that leans into the ultra violence inherent to the act of killing someone with a gun, and as such it's a game that comes with some pretty heavy Content warnings. While I feel some other retro-inspired FPS games as of late have also leaned into this idea of hyper-violence, (ULTRAKILL springs to mind) there's a certain grainy grit to it that I really enjoy that other games lack. ULTRAKILL, for all of it's blood-is-fuel ultraviolence rarely leans into what that sort of violence looks like in reality. In contrast, Beyond Citadel is *gruesomely* aware of what it looks like to hold a gun to someone's head and pull the trigger. It revels in this fact. The girls in this game are highly "gib"-able and as such you will regularly throw a grenade into a crowded room and after it explodes walk into a room full of viscera and half-dead women panting or gurgling on their own bloom, many of whom are now missing limbs. It does so with a delightful PNG aesthetic that is both wonderfully simple, and extremely detailed. If you shoot one of these PNG soldiers in the arm, their arm will be blown off, shoot them in the head and you'll punch a hole in their skull. Playing this game feels like the way reactionary talking heads discussed the dangers of violent video games in the aughts. Playing this game feels like being a cat playing with a dying rat. It's wonderful! I love it. But beyond this the game is just extremely fun to play. Shooting and reloading a weapon in this game feels like porn in every sense of the word. While some milsims might have more detailed mechanics for jamming/loading/unloading/fixing/repairing guns, Beyond Citadel allows for a degree of control that feels accurate and realistic, without being so bogged down in the details of how every individual part of the weapon goes together. Reloading takes three separate buttons, each of which represents a unique aspect of the reloading process. For some guns, reloading is as simple as loading a bullet into a chamber, some are significantly more complicated, involving a set 5 button-press combination of inputs. This might sound finicky and difficult to manage, but in the midst of combat it allows for a degree of panic when a gun randomly jams, or you're forced out of your comfort zone. This also adds a level of balance to some of the stronger weapons. Easy-to-use weapons might have simple reloading mechanics, while powerful heavy weaponry requires a significant amount of inputs to reload, but can blow most enemies away when they have ammo.

An anecdote on this topic that endlessly delights me, is the fact that at one point I managed to fully jam the AMR by accidentally reloading it's magazine with an open chamber and a bullet already loaded. This meant that the bullet in the open chamber couldn't be slotted, and since the chamber was open I couldn't fire. I had to take out the full magazine, close the chamber, fire while the magazine was unloaded, then reload the magazine to actually utilize the weapon, and the fact that this is simulated so accurately continues to blow me away. In any other arcade-style FPS this wouldn't be possible, since reloading would either be automated or simplified to a single button press but even so, the fact that you can fuck up your weapon that badly just by reloading it improperly is a really beautiful bit of programming to me.

But those are still really just the tip of the iceberg, as there's a lot going on in the deeper levels and the story that I want to discuss as well! This will be veering away from the format of a game review and into a short essay on my thoughts, but I'll keep the spoilery bits below the cut.

So. Beyond Citadel is weird, right? Like. The vibes are fantastic, but ultimately the story it's telling is pretty contemplative which is in stark contrast to the ultra-violence that is the gameplay. This can be seen in the simple music choice, which is largely soft piano tracks (with the occasional bit of upbeat electro retro goodnes) which make the game almost peaceful as you blow through swarms of demons and gun-wielding girls. It lends itself to a really beautiful experience, which leaves you almost in a trance as you progress through the game, even as the *act* of what you're doing is gruesome and awful. In my mind it mirrors the way in which the Martyr is progressing through the story. She's not here for the killing, even as every other NPC begs her to kill and kill and kill, she just... does not care. She's not here for that. She'll do it, yes, because she has to, but there's an air of indifference that really lends to that feeling of being a force of nature. This is increasingly explicit as you get deeper into the game, killing demons almost as an afterthought. Early on you're ducking behind cover, taking potshots at grunts and picking enemies off one by one, but by the end of the game you're nearly unkillable, even on the hardest difficulty. At a certain point the game just gives up on the idea of having lives entirely, and that's great! It's fun to see a game that is so willing to break its own rules for what the game *is*.

And then you beat the game. You kill the last demon, and that's that! The goal given to you by basically every character is complete. You kill the final boss, and that's that. It's a fine fight, and the level containing it is *genuinely* a bit cruel, but at that point you're so kitted out that even when the game is being unfair you can blast your way through most of your problems with ease.

And then the game gives you a fucking wall-run.

It gives you a wallrun *after* you beat the game, which is used in no other part of the game, but the epilogue.

It's truly a beautiful amazing thing, and I was genuinely floored. After such a delightful, fun game, it feels like a flex by the developer to have what would be a mainline mechanic in basically any other game, included essentially as a little bonus flair on top.

If this game was not made by a solo developer, if it had a publisher that was dictating what could and couldn't be in the game, this decision would never be made. It's genuinely insane to put your coolest power up in a handful of bonus levels at the end of the game, and not even allow for it to be used to break earlier levels in new game plus. And that led me to consider more on how *none* of this game could really have been made with significant publisher oversight, or as anything but the vision of one person who clearly loves guns and loves retro FPS games.

Much has been said by the developer about how this is *NOT* a guro fetish game. How this is *NOT* a porn game that freaks *DEFINITELY* should not get off to. And while I get where the developer is coming from (plenty of Japanese games are labeled as "fetish art" just because they feature anime style women), I do think there's a reason that my guro-fetish loving ass enjoys this game. Maybe the developer doesn't view it as fetish art, but when the girls are panting on the ground, gurgling on their own blood and you get to stomp their lights out, or put a bullet in their brain, or chop them up until their guts come out, it *is* pretty delightful.

But none of that would be possible with a publisher lording over the game. Hell, I don't even think the gunplay mechanics could get put in a more mainstream game that wasn't advertising itself as a tactical milsim.

Because this game is risky! It's niche! It's a small game where you blow pretty anime girl's brains out with guns that feel like glossier adaptations of real life weapons. Clearly a ton of love went into this game, but ultimately that descriptor just isn't going to fly with most audiences. Most people who like "violent" video games like games where there's a bit of blood, or you can chop peoples arms off and its a bit red inside. Most people do not want a game where when you die your guts come spilling out and you get to watch in your final moments as a giant spider creature tears your body apart until all you are is a severed head above a ribcage and spine. Most people who like FPS games like the feeling of shooting a gun without having any conception about what that actually entails. They like when you press R to reload and a gun has a good spray pattern or whatever, not when you have to actively unload the last chamber, and manually put in each bullet, and pull the handle on your SMG and your guns jam and sometimes you reload it wrong and your gun is out of commission until you do a 5 step process to fix it. Most people who like games with rich narratives like games where the story feels like a sweeping narrative, not a game where the story is patched together from different esoteric things people tell you, in which the story largely revolves around the fact that the main character and her little brother fucked. While this game is fantastic, it's just not a game for most people. I have several friends I love to recommend games to, and even then there's only one of them that I can *actually* recommend the game to, because a third of them will be put off by the scantily clad women, half will be put off by the gore, and the rest probably just wouldn't enjoy the gunplay or style of game that it is.

And that's okay! That's great! I'm just so glad that I played it, because this game feels laser targeted to me specifically, and it's a game I will be thinking about and replaying for a very very long time to come.

[uss-edsall]

I genuinely think one of the best videoogame announcement trailers ever belongs to Wolfenstein: The New Order. Rebooting an old franchise for a new decade, it had to make a distinctive splash, and it did so with aplomb. I adore it because of the visuals and music alike. Under the cut below's an infodump looking through the scenes.

The music is composed by Mick Gordon of future DOOM fame, and is a mix that adds an excellent prequel to Jimi Hendrix's All Along The Watchtower. This is especially poignant considering Hendrix is, quite literally, a fairly prominent character in the game.

As for visuals, oh, where to start? Well, at the beginning.

It starts with automation, showing something being built - the Nazi World. The first thing this creation does is erode and collapse the Eiffel Tower, in the reflection of the machine carving out the Wolfenstein symbol, and in the process showing the subjugation of France. "It was a remaking," as Blazkowicz says.

Up next is London Bridge in a pool of water, a cooling pool for superheated metals. Barrage balloons hang above her... and then the jagged metal comes into frame. It cuts to five of them, fashioned into sharp knives - and they're plunged into the pool with an audio cue, the shadows of murdered humanity rises in the steam, alongside faint screams.

London, and Britain soon after, has fallen. "Unethical," indeed, Blazkowicz.

The next shot showcases the bullets being created. The drumbeats match that of a marching military unit, a Nazi parade goosestepping on the wall behind a conveyor belt. Upon it, bullets are being created, the Nazi war machine is ascendant, on the march, towards its next conquest.

Imperfections are carved out of the helmet of the chassis. In the sparks is shown the Statue of Liberty, wreathed in flame - and as the music swells, she loses her head and is visibly damaged.

The armour turns as the factory works on it, showing the Empire State Building defining the New York City cityscape. Bombers are in her skies, flames wreath her buildings, and she burns. "Some... unthinkable." The Nazis have come to American shores - and defeated the Arsenal of Democracy.

The weapons are loaded. Finishing touches on the robot's eyes. The World War is long over - this is a Nazi machine now. The music drops perfectly into the real intro of All Along The Watchtower. "Now they've built a new world..."

The eyes spark to life, an evil red. A flash of lightning pouring rain. "Armies, of steel, and thunder..." It pans out to show an army of robots just like the one we watched being built. "They're rewriting history..."

Captain William Blazkowicz, standing proud and defiant, shotguns in both hands. He can take 'em. He can take all of 'em. Finally, stopping on a key visual and showing the title Wolfenstein: The New Order...

"But they forgot about me."

In my opinion, I think it's not only a fantastic trailer in terms of visual and musical design, it was a great way to announce the return of the franchise. In a minute and thirty seconds, they depict the destruction of the Allied powers, the fall of democratic civilisation. But here comes our dashing hero, our growling classic FPS soldier man, back again - ready and willing to wreak havoc and kill nazis.

[kraviolis]

someone liked one of my TOH headcanon posts from earlier this year and it reminded me about the specific headcanons i have for exactly what types of games the hexsquad plays and how they play them.

luz is obv an RPG fantasy fan. anything with a juicy story and a character creator and complex lore she’ll love. she definitely plays series like elder scrolls and baldur’s gate and final fantasy. she also plays final fantasy 14 and has her character as the good witch luzura and she isnt good at playing it like an mmo is supposed to be played but she loves the story. when endwalker came out luz couldnt stop sobbing to the point that camila was actually worried about her. also enjoys roguelikes such as hades or binding of isaac even if she can only play for so long before getting too frustrated. she also 100% plays genshin impact and gets into arguments online with other genshin fans.

amity is a fighting game girl. she is highly competitive and practices combos with her eyes shut. she prefers the tekken series but when luz wants to play with her they play guilty gear bcus luz likes it’s art style the most. she also likes fantasy RPGs but is way more picky about which ones she plays. she likes fire emblem. she also plays ff14 with luz and is actually good at the game (she carries luz sometimes) but isnt a huge fan of MMOs. she also is the one in the friend group with the NASA ass PC rig with a custom case and the most organized wiring you’ve ever seen with the lcd screen on the liquid cooled cpu and the azura figurine inside the case. she also does custom wraps for all her consoles.

hunter likes games that are very much like, micromanagement sims. like civ5 or cities skylines or factorio (i dont know anything about it but ive been assured by my sister that hunter plays modded factorio) but he’s also a fan of like, old school FPS games like doom and half life. i can see him doing speedruns of those games. (also he 100% once got addicted to some game like fuckin. galactic pinball or something to the point where he was staying up all night and not sleeping so he could play more pinball. in order to get him to stop playing so much and actually get some sleep, gus used illusions to make hunter think he was hallucinating about pinball and scared him into not looking at a single screen or monitor for like three weeks.)

gus is a very chill gamer but he likes games that he can sink hours and hours into. instead of playing a wide variety of games he has a select few that he dedicates his time into learning every last mechanic, but there’s also some games he just plays casually. like with pokemon games he’ll put hundreds of hours into them and carefully curate his team and does like nuzlocke runs but when he plays on his and willow’s shared-custody new horizons island he’ll just walk around and catch bugs and shit and not really worry about upgrading his house and make matching fits with his favorite villager.

willow prefers cozy games, like slime rancher or stardew valley or the aforementioned shared new horizons island, but she’s also a fucking menace about them. like she goes HARD on the min-maxing and automation and shit. while gus is wandering around their island catching fish, willow’s busy rearranging her fully upgraded mansion up in the hills and harassing any villagers she doesnt like with nets and deciding what hybrids to plant in front of her bell trees (she only has bell trees for the aesthetic. gus isnt allowed to harvest them) she would also be running the most high profit slime ranch ever but the way she treats her slimes makes hunter upset whenever he sees her just fuckin throwing them off a cliff the second they arent useful to her anymore. (meanwhile hunter names each one of his slimes and always feeds them their favorite foods and cried over casey & beatrix)

vee enjoys survival/strategic horror games, like DBD, resident evil, deadspace, or even FNAF. she’s the type of person to see the goriest most violent death in a video game ever and just go “ew yucky” then carry on. masha and her are often playing DBD together while in a call and are the most annoying pair of suvivors ever. she also likes games such as original katamari and pikmin 1 and chulip. she's also the undefeated DDR champion of the friend group.

and of COURSE they all play video games together. they all have a terraria world they play on together where they all are focused on their own little projects while still working together and are slowly building up their own village/mansion/castle/fort but luz keeps rushing ahead of everyone just bcus she's so excited and she definitely somehow ends up summoning the wall of flesh accidentally

they DID have a modded minecraft world for a few months with both tech mods and magic mods but while hunter, amity, and vee all focused on their factories and computers and technology, gus, willow, and luz fucked around with all the crazy magic and accidentally found out by blowing up a factory. this is where heightened tension between the the warlocks & the scientists began. this spark eventually turned into a full fledged war that lasted two months before it ended in mutually assured destruction to the point where no one could actually load into the server without their game crashing.

bonus: camila isnt much of a gamer with one exception-- when she was in college manny introduced her to WoW and got her hooked. it was Their Game that they played together all the time. they made cosplays of their characters together. they had several dates in game. they optimized their characters to perfect compliment one another when they ran dungeons with their guild. even since manny passed camila still plays every so often and keeps in touch with their guild members. for the longest time luz has 0 idea that camila plays WoW at all and only finds out after the whole secret nerd confession.