#Game analysis

[thefawnfallacy]

Curly isn’t just a “man protecting a man” from his actions, he’s an amazing juxtaposition of both victim and witness. There is an unspoken story of potential sexual abuse in the relationship between Curly and Jimmy told exclusively through the pill sequences. The choking and gasping as Curly is forced to have pill after pill shoved down his throat while Jimmy gets his own private high off of knowing the power he now holds over the ex-captain. Anya isn’t the only one being forced to take blame from her rapist, Curly experiences a similar experience as Jimmy contemplates cannibalising him, forcing his autonomy over Curly’s own and blaming him for making him do something Curly has no control over.

[humblefryingpan]

The "Amy likes spiders" poem in doki doki literature club (Natsuki's second poem) just makes me think of being closeted with internalized homophobia and I think it works really well for her

There's the poem if you haven't seen it!

(This is just me analyzing the poem and it's probably my longest post yet. I've been overanalyzing all the poems but this is the only one I've typed out atm lol)

It specifically makes me think of four things - Yuri liking different things and her disliking her for it, Natsuki being so far in the closet that she'll take any excuse to avoid the pretty girl™, Natsuki's self projection onto "Amy" and most importantly internalized homophobia, like I said earlier

It generally makes me think natsuri but I'll get to that later. So if we go from the internalized homophobia + closeted perspective (more like raised homophobic and doesn't know she's gay but ykwim), it reads as "a girl I know is a lesbian and Im meant to hate her for it. She's pretty and she makes me feel things but I can't be friends with her because she's a lesbian"

'The narrator' (Natsuki) heard a rumor that a girl, "Amy" (the lesbian), apparently likes 'spiders' (girls) and is repulsed. And that's why she isn't friends with her.

"Amy" sings the narrator's favorite love song, her voice is cute and it's making her heart pound. But she still likes 'spiders', so she can't be her friend.

She hurts her leg and "Amy" helped her get to the nurse. She tried to avoid touching her because her hands might be gross due to touching 'spiders', so she still can't be her friend.

"Amy" is very popular, but "she probably talks about spiders" (being gay). "What if her friends start to like spiders too?" (This entire verse rlly speaks for itself)

The next verse is shortest and even more repetitive than the rest of the poem (to emphasize her point) "it doesn't matter if she has other hobbies, it doesn't matter is she keeps it private, it doesn't matter if it doesn't hurt anyone" because to the narrator - she can't be "Amy's" friend, no matter how bad she wants to, because she's always going to be a 'spider lover' (lesbian) and she won't be able to ignore that.

And then the final nail to seal shut the door to the closet - "it's gross, she's gross, the world is better off without spider lovers. And I'm gonna tell everyone" because she needs everyone to know she hates 'spider lovers' to make sure no one knows she is also one. It's so gross because she was taught it was and now she can't stop thinking it's gross, no matter how nice/pretty/kind "Amy" is.

Onto the natsuri part so if you don't like that ship feel free to skip the rest of this (if you're still here lol)

Yuri and Natsuki like such different things (creepy and complex vs cute and simple) and they reach the point where they've argued so much that Natsuki doesn't want to admit she doesn't dislike Yuri. Even if she likes her poems, she'd never tell her because she feels like she can't at this point.

Natsuki couldn't see past their differences for a while, when she finally does, she's too embarrassed to apologize and too uncomfortable to befriend her without apologizing.

Nearly every verse of the poem will talk about how great the girl is. How she has a cute voice, she helped her, she has lots of friends, she makes her heart pound. But every verse she will still come back to "but she likes spiders. That's why I'm not friends with her". It feels like her gradually warming up to Yuri but still reminding herself that she can't be her friend, they're too different, Yuri likes creepy things (Yuri probably does like spiders so that's a bit more literal but it's also that spiders seem to symbolise everything she likes that Natsuki doesn't) and she couldn't be friends with someone so different.

And lastly, Natsuki's self projection (this is what the meaning is said to be in-game), meaning "Amy" is Natsuki herself. Natsuki likes manga and her friends won't believe it counts as literature. Her manga is the spider in this interpretation, she doesn't want people to judge her based on what she likes. She's had to be so defensive about what she likes, she may even judge herself for liking it at this point. She doesn't want people to judge people by their interests.

I keep seeing people say that Amy is a real person but that's one of the only interpretations that makes no sense to me. Because Natsuki may be a bit judgemental but even she wouldn't make an entire poem about disliking her classmate's love of spiders. She said herself that anyone that agrees with the narrator in the poem is a bad person. It's far more likely that "Amy" is a made up idea, she's barely even shown as a person. She's seemingly meant to be symbolic of Natsuki's flaws and insecurities, whatever you perceive those insecurities to be.

Portraying Amy as an actual person kinda cheapens the poem, at least in my opinion, because she was talking about how people should be given a chance no matter what (or who) they like and if Amy was a person it wouldn't make sense

[thechaoticfaelostitsshame]

Ok I’m more convinced that Coyle’s next trial is gonna be a military base. Someone else I talked to pointed out that a military base would leave a lot of room open for torture and killing too, besides just being an escalation in how far Murkoff bends the law.

[akechi-goro-lover]

you ever think abt how loki’s “call of chaos”, aka the ability to drive ppl insane/psychotic and leading them to harming and even killing themselves and/or others due to becoming more unstable and aggressive is probably a projection of how akechi has felt for his entire life, since persona powers can only be born from the user’s soul?

akechi, for majority of his life, has absolutely felt like he’s been driven to the point of insanity, of no return. driven to harming/killing himself and others. and considering projecting onto others is one of akechi’s favorite things to do, this doesn’t shock me at all.

[blurredfloweryblood]

You see the characters in a one dimensional way because that's the point! They are all people with aspirations, struggles and pain! You don't get to see that because the point of the game is teaching you just how dehumanized it is!! You are all going up and down but the result is the same! You are all going another day, and another, and another!

Nobody cares! People that work for giant companies like Pony Express are doomed! Those companies dehumanize you and convince you that there is no other way to live! They will never learn your name! They don't give a shit about you! Fucking mouthwash is ridiculous and it doesn't matter! If the cargo ship doesn't arrive, all of them will be fired!!! They will never be found when there are hundreds of other ships getting to their destination!!! They never had a chance in the first place!!!

But you can humanize them. You can try. It's a cry and a warning. Please care. Please look at the dead pixel. Please, take responsibility, otherwise, it will hurt and kill us all.

[anthurak]

Something I’ve come to appreciate in video games recently is when a game about some special place needing to be saved by a newcomer who just showed up doesn’t actually have everything go to hell before the protagonist shows up or within a few minutes of them arriving.

To use the example that really made me appreciate this trope, I actually really like how in Psychonauts, Raz/the-player gets to experience Camp Whispering Rock as more or less normal for a while before Oleander’s big ‘steal a bunch of kid brains and stick them in an army of psychic-death-tanks to take over the world’ plan gets revealed, Lilli gets kidnapped by the giant, hulking traumatized lungfish and everything really goes bad.

Like I feel that most games would have all that stuff happen within the first five or ten minutes or so, but with Psychonauts, somewhere between a third and a full half of a playthrough can potentially take place before night falls and everything really goes bad.

Just to give an example, look at how much the game restricts your movement around Whispering Rock in the early game, or rather doesn’t actually restrict it. I think it’s easy to imagine a version of the game which blocks off the different areas of the camp until that area’s relevant mission became available. But no, the only real roadblock to exploration the player faces in the early game is the first mind level. Once Raz completes Basic Braining, the entire rest of the camp becomes open to explore at your leisure.

Heck, the game even encourages exploration by being deliberately vague on where exactly Sasha Nein’s secret lab is. And with the combination of the game both explaining how PSI-Challenge Markers work right in the tutorial and teasing you with a ‘New Psychic Power When You Reach Level 10’ whenever you level up, and a lot of those Markers and Cards being accessible even before you unlock Levitation, the game is already nudging you to go out and explore the camp. And that’s not even mentioning the Scavenger Hunt items.

Or how while the game does direct you to Ford Cruller after the first Brain Tumbler experiment, it’s entirely possible, even likely, that you’ve ALREADY met Ford thanks to simply dropping into one of the fast-travel stumps while exploring.

I mean, consider this; it’s entirely feasible and without too much trouble for Raz to have Pyrokinesis before he even learns PSI-Blast from Sasha. And to have Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis and Invisibility by the time he fights the Blueprint Tank at the end of the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Heck, if you’re really going the grindy-route, basically ALL the collectables in camp, save for one scavenger hunt item, can be acquired before nightfall.

And personally, I really like that you can do this.

Because it feels like Raz/the player gets the chance to experience Camp Whispering Rock as a camp in a more relaxed, easy-going state before night falls, Oleander’s plot is fully revealed and everything becomes a lot more urgent and dangerous. Instead of being thrust into the meat of the action right off the bat, Raz gets the chance to explore and learn and basically do the stuff he actually WANTED to when he came to Whispering Rock.

Thematically, it fits really well with just how driven Raz is to become a Psychonaut, as well as the limited time he seems to have before his dad comes to pick him up. Why wouldn’t he throw himself into exploring, learning and generally doing everything he can at Whispering Rock with what little time he had?

And it also fits nicely with the rest of the game as well. It makes the first third/half of the game feel like Raz is actually learning to become a Psychonaut, and the battle against Linda, breaking into the asylum and rescuing Lili, Sasha and Mia feel Raz is putting everything learned in the first third/half of the game into practice.

Or how Ford’s faith and confidence in Raz’s abilities start making a lot more sense if Raz has both picked up and become reasonably proficient in FIVE psychic powers in what was basically an afternoon.

Honestly I wish we could see this sort of thing in more games with this sort of ‘hero arrives at a super special place and has to save it from destruction’ premise. Just let the protag/player explore and experience the place in a more casual, relaxed manner before everything goes to shit. Like give them a reason to get invested and CARE about this place so it feels all the better to actually save it.

[blackblooms]

I just really wanted to talk about VS yourself from the Hit Single Real mod of Friday Night Funkin.

It does a great job of communicating the essentials of its story through the way the song is presented. At first, boyfriend is meant by a creepy figure, which players would assume is some kind of evil doppelganger, but as the song progresses, you start to connect with yourself and eventually come to understand what he really wants as the song reaches its climax. Everyone of course talks about the amazing vocal part, but i think an underrated part of the songs are those brief but very hype segments where Yourself and Boyfriend begin singing and moving in sync. It's an obvious fit for the mirror imagery but i think it's also a great way to symbolize Yourself and Boyfriend managing to connect for a moment. Knowing the lore of Yourself definitely adds to the experience, but i think the essential part of the story is perfectly communicated through the song itself. Simply someone reaching out to an alternate version of themselves, seeking to find a voice that can empathize and relate to his pain and allow him to feel understood...

[canonically47]

i don’t like how almost the entire fandom is on jimmy’s ass but loves curly. while jimmy undoubtedly did worse things, curly PROTECTED HIM. you cannot stand there at your computer and type straight-faced about how ‘jimmy is a horrible monster!! ...but curly could treat anya sooooo well’ like HUH??? this game is NOT about how jimmy is the worst person alive ever WITHOUT also the message of curly being AT LEAST half as bad.

because HE KNEW. and i think this is also beautifully represented through his design. he chose to turn a blind eye to anya’s struggles, HE CHOSE TO NOT SEE, and then, after the crash, he found himself with one eye constantly open, FORCED TO SEE. and by god did he see. he saw, first-hand, how protecting his absolute bastard of a friend led to the death of the entire crew and their prolonged sufferring. i saw one person suggest that the scene in which swansea kills daisuke could be from curly’s POV since it aligns perfectly with the hallway and the look he would get of the scene.

so curly, who once always protected his friend and turned a blind eye to his misdemeanors, is now forced to see these terrible events unfold firsthand. because guess what? it’s about half of curly’s fault for these events jimmy creates. because he could have prevented so much if only he wasn’t part of this toxic culture of males protecting each others from the consequences of their own actions.

now before i get any angry comments or reblogs: i do not despise curly. i do not even despise jimmy as a character. i condemn their actions 110%, ESPECIALLY jimmy’s - but i think they’re such deep and shockingly real, raw depictions of humans that not only could, but DO exist. as concepts and characters, i admire wrong organ for their bravery to create them into existence - and i hate them as people. again, they are representatives of the toxic culture males have in which they protect each other (“my buddy couldn’t have raped/SA’d/etc her because i know him and he wouldn’t do that!!” etc etc.) and it is so upsetting but so necessarry to witness this. i just wish the fandom would be willing to witness it fully, not just go “FUCK JIMMY” “so sorry you had to draw jimmy” while simultaneously pushing out curly x reader or saying shit like “curly just wanted everyone to be happy :(” “curly would treat anya better” etc etc.

this is such a raw and real story once again ruined by a fandom whose minds are rotted by hehe hot man, toxic yaoi, and amatonormativity. and yea that sounds funny when you read it but so many of the messages of the game are ignored in favor of all the above. i’m tired of it!!!

TL;DR: i condemn both jimmy AND curly’s actions and i think that you guys should not give curly a pass for protecting jimmy. if you’re going to call jimmy a horrible fucked-up monster, acknowledge that curly enabled him time and time again.

[grandwitchbird]

Veilguard is generally a well designed and well written game. I’m clear on what I think about DA as a whole, but it’s easily the best actual game in the franchise.

People are picking up, however, on a real critical flaw and mostly failing to locate the flaw while getting distracted by nonsense. It’s a flaw present in every DA game if you dig enough. Let’s talk about story bosses.

This is a tricky thing in arpgs. RGG and CDPR try to ensure that story bosses are densely interwoven into the world in a way that works thematically.

Adam Smasher would have been a problem in any universe; he’s just enabled and enshrined by this one. Hansen points us right back to the military industrial complex, the ghost of which we’ve spent the entire game wrestling with. Literally. All of that directs us right back to the systems in place in our cyberpunk world. It points us at our own motivations as V and interrogates our love of the power fantasy as a player.

In an RGG game, when you run down a corridor towards a boss, it’s a gauntlet. It’s there for fun and also to highlight the legendary clash that’s about to happen with reference to the Yakuza films the series started as an homage to. The boss may wait at the end or jump you, depending on their personality and goals. There will be mini bosses along the way because you’re generally fighting hierarchical organizations.

In Veilguard, our enemies wait at the end of a corridor. They’re powerful and don’t need to come to us. Ok good start, also a nod to ME. Occasionally you’re lucky and get story ‘minibosses’ that interrogate that very idea. The first warden is here to flesh out everyone’s motives and challenge us as the player. Sometimes you’re very lucky and the boss is Johanna Hezenkoss and she’s exclusively here to have clear motives that flesh out Emmrich’s arc and to cause problems because it’s fun. Most of the time, you get Aelia or whatserface Aelia 2.0 in Lucanis’s arc. Or the others I don’t remember after playing the game 5 times. Anaris? What did he even want? No I don’t mean power. What was under that? What was his motivation? Because I can explain the power-hunger in every Yakuza shithead or nationalist asshat I’ve fought in an RGG game. But Veilguard, like all of DA is avoiding real discussions of power and psychology and ~implications~.

I’m not a forgetful person. I’m meticulous and have the true blue autistic pattern recognition. I genuinely can’t say what made Aelia and Aelia 2.0 anything other than cosplay tyrants. Not without projecting onto the text or stretching it to breaking point by leaning hard on one specific short story.* Dragon guy and other antaam guy came out of literally nowhere. Mail order villains those two.

Even with our big bads, we get mere hints and gestures. Everyone is impressed with whatsisface doing a bad imitation of Bowie’s lines in Labyrinth. He’s a spirit of tyranny though. What does that mean. What makes the tyrants work in this world. And why are we cribbing from the Goblin King while carefully editing out the sucker punch?

We know the answer in the real world and can project that onto the game. But it’s not in the game. Not in a way the text doesn’t flinch from. And this is something people are picking up on. It’s also not been in any of the other games sorry to say. So this isn’t new. Veilguard just isn’t hiding behind obfuscating design choices and allusions to better stories. It’s still making those allusions (see gif above) but it’s a more honest text re: its limitations.

As with everything. The Mourn Watch and Grey Wardens stand heads and shoulders above the rest of the faction/companion-based conflicts. Their bosses have clear psychologies, motivations, and represent coherent and grounded goals (in hilariously disparate ways) Solas, likewise, has us/Rook as a mirror and his needs/wants and the conflict between those needs/wants are forefront and incredibly well developed. It’s not all bad. It’s actually quite good.

But when people flounder at surface details looking for the ‘problems’ with the writing. This is what’s getting missed. The problem is never ‘plot hole’ or ‘bad lore’. It’s something in the structure and conflict and motivation. And I’m afraid to say it’s old news with DA (Loghain is fine but the entire end of origins is an asspull. Don’t @ me). This game is much stronger than the others on that front. That would still be true if we had only Solas. We also got Johanna fingerguns Hezenkoss and the entire Grey Warden plot. I, for one, am counting that a win.

*the extended media is a critical weakness of the franchise. Referencing your own EU is not the same as entering a dialogue with an existing subgenre populated by works from diverse sources.

[lil--ichigo]

One thing that frustrates me mainly about tf2 fic writers is that I think the fandom is too scared to make the mercs not have views that 100% align with 2020s leftist politics because they are worried not doing so implies they support racism and stuff like that, or just because it brings them comfort. But remember, the mercs aren't good people. If characters all had perfect beliefs, we wouldn't have villans. Medic wouldn't be the crazy "doctor" we all love. And if the mercs not having perfect morality makes you uncomfortable, maybe tf2 isn't the perfect media for you. Am I saying the mercs are bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic and that medic is a nazi? No. Not everyone is going to want to write about topics that are that sensitive, and not every tf2 fic needs to have the accuracy of Mad Men. TF2 doesn't take itself that seriously. However, you need to remember these were men from the 60s who have been through years of war, and who have been affected by the toxic masculinity of the time in one way or another. Sniper grew up in a hypermasculine society where he wasn't as physcially strong. Heavy was pushed into the role of the man of his family after his father died. Soldier was raised on pro america propaganda. Scout grew up in a house full of brothers and wanted to take part in fist fights. Team Fortress 2 is a satire of cold war era politics and while it doesn't take itself seriously as mentioned above, completely glossing over the time period also ignores the themes of the game. Soldier is a key example of this - he is a stereotype of how the world viewed [and mostly does still view] americans. They are going to harbor implicit biases about gender and race (look at soldiers domination lines for example, he automatically assumes heavy is communist because he is from the USSR) Even the more emotionally intelligent mercs are more likely to turn to a cigarette or a bottle than talk about feelings so openly. Is it a healthy coping mechanism? No, but good therapy was virtually non existent at the time. (The only exeptions I can think of is scout, soldier, and heavy who would probably get their stress out through physcial excercise which a good coping mechanism when not done to an extreme.)

Maybe I'm taking this too seriously but it's fun to analyze media. And honestly if anyone wants to talk to me about this I'll be happy to ramble some more.

[the-why-of-wonderworld]

WANDERING IN WONDERWORLD

A preview of things to come, an in-depth look into Balan Wonderworld's unique narrative style! Working on a close-reading of Chapter 1, The Man Who Rages Against the Storm, to demonstrate how BWW quietly directs the player's attention and actions through visual prompts and design cues, and encourages use of deductive reasoning and creative problem solving. One of my favorite bits of analysis--it might be a little long, but I think it'll be worth the read :D

[thechaoticfaelostitsshame]

I think I finally figured out Murkoff’s message they’re trying to instill with Franco? It’s anti pleasure and anti ease

It’s similar to how gooseberry started off with “we don’t want kids to do cocaine and murder” it escalated into promoting control through strict parenting and religion, as well as denial of frivolous childhood pleasures which are linked with deviant things (such as sex toys).

In Franco’s case, most people would find it reasonable to say that doing heroin, gambling, and having sex with prostitutes at public clubs isn’t the greatest thing to be doing. It escalates and gets a little less bad at its base in “Pleasure The Prosecutor” since it’s mainly just kinky sex at that point, before it culminates in linking the pleasure and ease that comes with union protections with depravity. Murkoff, essentially, wants you to not only not indulge in bad habits whilst punishing others who do so, but they don’t want anyone to advocate for an easier life if it goes against the status quo.

Whether it’s drugs, sex, or being paid a living wage, they all make you feel good and alleviate some sort of “suffering”.

[confess-for-botw-totk]

Re: botw vs totk stories

While I preface that, overall, I much prefer botw story over totk's, but I also feel like totk gets some disservice about the story things it did RIGHT. I agree that the memory system in totk was bad, not just because it spoilers itself, but the overall aesthetic of the geoglyphs to me is weaker than how personal the captured memories felt. But both games have two parallel narratives happening in the past and present, and people don't appreciate enough how cool the pre-dungeon quests in totk are vs botw.

In botw, the lead-up to each divine beast was either super short (Rito), tedious (Yunobo escort mission), skippable (Ruta if you have shock arrows) with only the yiga hideout mission being more involved and challenging. The pre-dungeon quests in totk are ALL an absolute blast. however. For example, in botw, the Rito quest is literally just "talk to npc, go to flight range, shoot a few arrows, talk to npc, shoot more arrows (in the sky this time), aaaand now you can climb Medoh" whereas in totk, not only is the setting infinitely more interesting (Rito village caught in a blizzard), but the quest is much longer and involved, with interesting and varied gameplay, culminating in a spectacular ascent and following descent into the dungeon. The sages are also more fleshed out and feel like they're part of the narrative, which they sorely lacked in botw (yes they can fall back on their established screentime in botw, but they are still a much more integral part of the narrative in totk).

Totk's narrative did as many things right as it did wrong, just like botw, but I think the pre-dungeon quests deserve so much more credit. The story in the present always gets overshadowed by Zelda's time in the past

_*_

[starscreamingg]

Detroit Become Human and why does this game decide that the problem in society is individual people treating androids poorly because those androids are choking them out of the workforce and NOT the corporations and governments who deliberately designed the androids to do this

[candy8448]

Totk: an amazing game, a terrible sequel | game analysis

I can see why cassual fans would love totk, wven have it as one of their top three zeldas, because the game is GOOD

But the reason why i and a lot of more in-depth fans dont really like the game is because of the story. Despite totk wanting to be a more story-focused game, the way they executed the storytelling was the worst aspect of the game. A lot of fans were excited about how this game could develop the zelda timeline more, but what ended up happening was a boring retelling ocarina of time and an explicit retconning of the entire zelda timeline, a single game deleting over 40 years of history.

Like, you understand right?

The memories were handled terribly as well, while botw memories didnt have to be found in order these ones had to be. I made a much more in depth as to why the memories in totk dont work ages ago on my rambles masterlist which explains why the story like this didnt work and completely ruined my experience of the game, in an effort to not spoil myself i had to phuedo-spoil myself as well as only play on guided rail lines.

And the story doesnt even continue well from botw! No one recognises link, the sheika tech is nowhere to be seen nor are even mentioned by people like purah and robbie! The calamity isnt mentioned anywhere apart for a brief second in the school sidequests

And even though the zonai is the main thing in the game, and what every youtube theorist obsessed over in botw (i was never interested in them and didnt really care) but these zonai dont even have the same architecture as the ruind we see in botw! The ruins look completely different and any lore we got for the zonai doesnt fit in with the botw zonai ruins. The botw and totk zonai mighht as well be completelyt different races! (I also made a post a ling time ago about the zonai)

Totk destroys and deletes the previous game's and series' stories while also failing to execute a story of it's own in any sort of engaging way.

Totk, while being such a fun game that i enjoyed the actual gameplay part of, and the way they handled dungeons and such were a lot vetter than botw, but it is trying to be an in depth story game while trying to be an even more sandbox game than botw, whichh ends up with it being lacking in both aspects and being a faceless game, with new characters we dont care about who are there to deliver shallow sidequest stories more often so a singular story doesnt feel developed at all, it trying to be a transformative game but just being really shallow and faceless.

I definetly feel like how the story was tackled really really poorly and just knocked down the rest of the game with it

The story is just kinda objectively handled terribly

There isn't even much environmental storytelling, it just reuses the same map as botw (something that never happened before) and fails to use it for it's own development. There is no way where the story effects the world other than the blantant sky islands and caves but that is not the definition fo environmental storytelling, thats just usig the story to make the world a bit different. What "environmental storytellin" there is, is only dotted sparingly around the world with an explicit sign or headstone or someone to tell you "this lore tidbit happened to [important figure] here" there is no care for the past that us players have and the world isnt even used to peaque that interest and we have no reason to care even about the bigger figures. In botw, the stoey had a clear effect on the world, from bits of rubble and abandonned wagons you could piece togeþher your own story about the nobodies that lived in the world, as well as the bigger more important people. We could see how things happened as well as see how this is actually a developed world with character who were there living their lives and not just there to fill space and deliver sidequests. Zelda thrives off of it's environmental storytelling, and while i do love a grand narrative adventure (skyward sword is litterally my favourite game), totk exists in a world which asks for nuance and doesnt deliver any of it. Sksw's grand anrrative works because it was handled well, told a good and engaging story, while also being in a world that is kade to deliver that, totk has none of that

And while i admit that i personally dont like the new mechanics, its not for me and i ended up just playing botw inside of totk and my personal opinions about the mechanics doesnt make the game objectively worse (unlike how some people talk about skyward sword and spirit tracks), and i had a blast actually playing the gameplay and ignoring the story, and the world feels so much fuller wiith things to do, i think that botw had a much more in depth story, and there was just as much content in the overworld but handled a lot more subtly rather than totk's attitude which seems to be "botw was so succesful so we need to make this seem better by making everything sparkle and the content to be even more in your face and easier to find," disregarding the genious triangle map situation and just making everything shine and massive that i just dont like the athetics of the game as much.

And that's why i think that cassual fans like totk as one of their favourites just because of the gameplay and the in your face story

Ive always said ever since i first played totk years ago:

Tears of the Kingdom is an amazing game, but a terrible sequel

Mentioned posts:

Memory system, the Zonai, Age of Imprisonment

[hackfixation]

Some Symbolism in the official Release Date Trailer I just noticed and others might have too:

An orange glow hums on Jimmy's face before fading into the sunset display.

"I see it so clearly"

The camera is focused on the sunset and slowly we fade into curly's eye as the words above are spoken. He is lying in the bed, staring up at the ceiling unable to move.

I personally believe there isn't any other way to interpret this scene:

Curly finally seeing Jimmy for who he is now.

"through the crack in the wall"

Daisuke is show walking into a dark hall or maybe a vent? considering the texture used seems similar to the ones in the vent scene. If the words above are curly speaking, this could be him discussing how he witnessed Daisuke severly injured but never saw him die. Knowing, somehow, that Jimmy did this because Swansea would never let anyone in that vent.

"behind god's back"

Swansea is outside the graveyard, looking in while slowly lowering his axe. He's preparing himself. Curly could have seen heard Swansea run in to the med bay and find Anya dead. That reaction could be him having seen Jimmy run past. Curly watched Swansea take in what the hell happen before running in. Curly knew Jimmy had the gun.

One of them was heading to their grave.

"hell colored electric and constant"

This is the scene with Anya in the cockpit and Poelle looming in the background. Curly is not only empathizing with Anya's pain in this moment but recognizing that none of them would be in this situation if not for the Pony Express placing them in this environment. He is wishing he could've done more for her, potentially grieving.

"were already here."

The full group together. Curly lingering as a presence in the background, as he watches the person he once was haunt the narrative and the person his friend is destroying lives.

I believe this is us experiencing Curly finally losing any existential or religious hope. His idea of humanity finally snapping.

Curly had to either watch or listen to them all die and could do nothing to stop it