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cru5h-cascades · 1 year ago

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Okay, music update time.

So I should be getting my guitar by tomorrow (should be arriving by 10 PM but with some of my packages tending to come in super early like my inkling plush and obviously Hot Fuss it could be earlier who knows). I was planning on releasing one last track before going on hiatus but idk. It's nearly finished but I don't think it's my best work (this track is supposed to be another Sirenide track btw).

Anyways, I'm already looking at tutorials online to figure out how I'm gonna learn. I found some that can supposedly teach me how to play in 10 to 21 days. As to how effective these vids are going to be is unknown, but hey if I figured out how to use photoshop and sort of figured out animation (ain't no way I can animate shit on my home chromebook so I haven't attempted anything on it yet), maybe I can figure this out. Also, I need to figure out how to tune guitars. Thankfully, guitar tuning websites and apps exist so they can do the heavy work for me 'cause it's been FOREVER since I've been in a music class and I've never tuned a guitar before (My music teacher before going to high school was A CHAD. Bro is what got me to start making music to begin with! He let us dabble in playing guitars for a little bit but just towards the end of a unit we were doing. After that we started our electronic music unit and the rest is history...).

I dunno how long I'll be on a break from music for (depends on how long it takes me to become confident enough to make some stuff using my newly aquirred guitar skills). When I do come back to music, I'm probably gonna post something showing off my guitar skills. I may not have a mic to record this stuff on, but I got a plan. Finally, soundtrap actually has an upside! Basically, I can plug in my guitar into my computer (obviously my school one) and use that as an amp to record my stuff on. Of course, I'm going to have to test this out first to see how effective this all is (might post some test audio for that), but at least I sort of have a plan for all this guitar buisness. Will I start out with covers or try making my own stuff? I dunno. But at least expect some stuff featuring actual instruments. Might go back to my OG soundtrap junk now and then why not. One of my friends and I are working on something behind the scenes and if all goes well I'll properly reveal this huge project of whatever (I guess this is your first clue to what that project might be).

And what about my other stuff? Calamity Circus, my art, and the planned Murder Trilogy essay (yep that's right I'm still gonna do that! I might start writing it after finishing Calamity Circus or towards the end of summer. I think it depends on weither or not S3's judgement day aka final fest is happening this summer or not 'cause I have a story planned for that event.)? Well, don't worry I still plan on working on all of that, especially Calamity Cicus since I've been working on that ever since I finalized Your Side of Order's basic story beats and I really wanna get this story out there. Art's still coming out, maybe at it's usual rate.

So yeah that's what to expect for the next I don't know how long. I'm still working on getting a job since I still haven't gotten word back about my application that I sent out a while back, so things should be pretty normal until I do ultimately get a job (hopefully I'll be able to get enough cash to get a functional computer with a touchscreen). In the meanwhile I'm just gonna take it easy, recover from the hell known as the previous school year, make my art, and try to beat the summer heat. This has been your local paranormal pest, cru5h. Stay fresh, y'all :D

#update #music update

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giuilily · 1 year ago

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"But I'm not gonna complain if it gives us the possibility of getting her back in Part 3 lol" <- agree haha I was totally ready to accept her death (tbh i did not even consider that she wouldn't die this time until people were speculating about it before rebirth's release loll) but I am happy that we may get her back and also intrigued to see how they try to tie all of this together...

I think my overall feelings on Rebirth in general will depend a lot on how game 3 ends up going. Remake I feel can stand on its own a bit better since it is so contained. But truly why did we literally fight destiny at the end of Remake if things are just going to end up the same lol what was the point of all this! It also feels quite a downer to be like well you actually cannot change fate sorry lmao nice try though.

Something that concerns me with the defying fate/destiny thing is 1. Biggs dies anyway despite being saved 2. Zack ends up facing a firing squad no matter what (when he goes looking for hojo or when he goes after Biggs, although ofc in that case he chooses to throw himself into the void instead which i suppose could be seen as a change lol) so it's like... their fate is repeating itself in these different worlds, can it be changed? (I'm still confused as to the big rainbow flash on the Biggs path when Zack chooses to go to Hojo, does that mean theres a universe where Biggs goes to the reactor and Zack doesn't follow him so Biggs.. lives in that one?)

"I'm gonna hold the devs to that since no one asked them to add in new themes to an almost 30 yo game lol." <- lmfao for real. One of my biggest concerns about this whole thing was that they were going to waaay over complicate it (looking at you kingdom hearts) and I am reserving full judgement until things are complete but I def have not had my worries assuaged yet lol

Oh yes! I forgot we saw a chihuahua/spitz plush during the date. So the terrier-verse is still around but im pretty sure Zack is no longer alive in it lol unless he got sent back there again since it is the most relevant other universe. I wonder if Aerith and Cloud will ever wake up there... (maybe Saved Aerith will wake up there? if that did not create a New stamp-verse).

I agree with you on Rebirth. I did enjoy it gameplay-wise (except the moogles they can go to hell lol) and the battle system should definitely become a staple in future numbered FFs, but narrative-wise, because it's the middle part of game, there were a lot of new set-ups along with the OG story beats that we're still waiting for the pay offs in part 3, and I think they need to make it good, otherwise, if they did all of that in Rebirth and it's just gonna be the same as OG, then they just dangled Aerith's fate for suspense and marketing and nothing else. That would be pretty disrespecftul for both the character and the fans tbh.

Hmmm... I think Biggs's situation is kinda tricky in both Pug and Terrier verse because he sorta put himself in a situation where he's tempting fate. I'm kind of leaning on him dying in Terrier too since he's already at the Mako reactor already, but maybe Zack not being there to distract him puts him less at risk of getting caught by Shinra?

Biggs' death and Zack getting pulled in situations that mirror his OG death kinda reminded me of Final Destination, but I hope Nojima wasn't watching those movies while writing the Re Trilogy lol.

I think as long as they keep on putting themselves in those situations, serving their OG purpose in the narrative and facing exactly what got them killed the first time, they're basically tempting fate to finish its job. Idk how this will all play out or how they can avoid it if they need to take action.

And I'm sure Aerith will wake up in Terrier, but I'm worried about Sephiroth hunting her down in every world she's in. Cloud might find himself waking up there as well after he falls into a coma in the main world, and probably will have dreams of the place like in Rebirth, but I'm unsure if they'll wake up at the same time or not. Ngl, I would LOVE it if we form a party with him, Aerith and Zack. The potential awkward conversations would be SO funny lol.

Honestly the new worlds are so fascinating to me because the writers aren't constrained to OG in those parts. I know they'll all eventually merge, but I can't wait to see how they'll handle them and how the game will conclude!

#anon ask #ff7 rebirth spoilers #multiverse and timeline shenanigans

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teary-eyed-circle-of-friendship · 7 years ago

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Accidentally just stepped into a pile Mass Effext feels and suddenly want to replay the games again...

#i literally just finished a replay through the og trilogy this summer #and i have so many unplayed games sitting on my computer #that i should reslly play #and now free time to actually play #and i really don’t need the emotional rollercoaster that the series is so soon #but part of me is just itching to open up me1 right now...

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immaturityofthomasastruc · 3 years ago

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think you'll get around to watching the pretty cure all stars movies? it's pretty understandable if you don't, considering it's a series of crossovers between the cures from each season. though, if you're willing to give it a go, i'd say there's little major continuity lockout asides from spoiling mid-season cures from seasons that've finished by the time a movie rolls out.

I decided to check out the first three, seeing how it’s a trilogy.

Precure All Stars DX

This one’s a crossover between the first four teams: Team Fresh, Team Five, Team Splash Star, and the OG Team. Granted, they take their sweet-ass time to actually get together. This is a 65-minute movie, and we don’t see two teams fighting together at the same time until the 45-minute mark. Of course, I’m not exactly complaining, as we still get to see them fight, and the slow assembly is pretty cool.

The first half pretty much introduces the old teams to the audience like myself going to places usually frequented by another team. Team Five stops at the takoyaki truck the OG team likes to go to, the OG Team gets some chocolate cornets from the bakery run by the parents of one of Team Splash Star’s members, and Team Splash Star goes to the accessory shop owned by the fairy allies of Team Five. It seems like padding at first, but it leads to a pretty wholesome scene where all the Cures reflect on how similar they are towards the end, kind of like that scene in Batman vs. Superman if actual effort was placed into it.

The villain of the movie, Fusion, is also really cool. He’s basically this amalgamation of the monsters defeated by the Cures who wants to absorb their powers, engaging them by taking on the forms of past monsters that he’s somehow. He even manages to capture Chiffon, though it’s unclear if he knows that she’s really Infinity or not.

Things get better towards the end, because the final battle with Fusion is just awesome. There are so many creative action sequences that really take advantage of the sheer scale of the conflict with this small army of magical girls taking on a giant monster. I especially loved this one bit where this one veteran Cure, Milky Rose (not sure why she isn’t called Cure Rose, but that’s just me), punches a huge hole in the ground just to disorient Fusion with, and you can just feel the impact. The whole climax is just a pure spectacle for the eyes.

The only other problem I had was that I thought the current team didn’t get to do much due to being captured by Fusion and not getting nearly as much screentime as the veterans, but I still thought it was a pretty good movie.

Precure All Stars DX2

This movie centers around an amusement part owned by the Cures’ fairy companions, where everyone plans to celebrate something called the Rainbow Jewel, which a new threat, Bottom, wants to seize for himself.

This one’s a direct sequel that follows Team Heartcatch in their early days, back when it was just Tsubomi and Erika. I say this because unlike the last movie (which was set just as early judging from the absence of Team Fresh’s weapons), you can really tell the writers didn’t have a lot to work off with Tsubomi and Erika. Not only does Tsubomi act more energetically in some scenes while Erika plays the straight man, a far cry from their usual dynamic, there’s another scene where they’re confused at the existence of past Cures... when both of them should know that when not only have they dreamed of Cure Moonlight, they know that Tsubomi’s grandma used to be a Precure.

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Other than that, the movie’s plot is somewhat similar, though obviously, the stakes are far higher. I like how the actual team-up is set up far quicker than the last one. It only takes until the 23-minute mark to see all seventeen Cures together. I also like how instead of Fusion taking on multiple forms to engage the Cures with, he revives several past villains to form his own Legion of Doom, while one of the old villains destroys the bridge connecting the amusement park to the road, essentially stranding the Cures there.

Things get even more tense when right as the Cures unite, Bottom ambushes them, causing them to get separated in the process. There was something like this in the last movie where all of the fairies were away and talking about how to stop Fusion, so it seemed like when Fusion tried to attack some of the past Cures whose powers are dependent on their fairy allies, it would be bad... until the fairies conveniently showed up anyway. This movie really plays this aspect up for drama, as Tsubomi and Erika get separated from Chypre and Coffret, and can’t transform while having the OG Team’s fairies, Mepple and Mipple, so this is bad for both the oldest and most recent teams. Even when Tsubomi and Erika get their fairy partners back, they still need to get Mepple and Mipple back to their predecessors while the other teams help hold off any villains who get in their way. It’s a really cool sequence of events that gives each team a chance to shine.

Even Team Heartcatch actually gets to do stuff, as they’re the first to directly engage Bottom before being backed up by the other teams and the Miracle Lights which supercharge all of their powers.

Even the ending credits were a blast to watch, essentially serving as an anthem for all the teams getting to dance to their theme songs.

Overall, I think it’s just as good as the first one, with a few improvements in other aspects.

Precure All Stars DX3

This film is essentially Precure: Endgame with how high the stakes are. They seriously went from fighting an amalgamation of the past monsters to the literal God of Evil, Black Hole. Okay, technically, he was created from the spirits of all the past villain groups (think Fusion on steroids), but with the sheer scale of the conflict being to stop the Earth itself from being consumed by Black Hole, the Cures might as well be fighting a god.

This movie just doesn't screw around, as it shows realities bleeding into each other as a result of Black Hole's mere presence, and there's another team of past villains to lead the charge who do the smart thing and immediately separate the Cures, trapping them in pocket dimensions with armies of monsters to face. It's a really clever way to show some interesting character dynamics, as all the Cures are grouped into teams that make it hard for them to work together. The Pinks are in one team and can't really work together due to each of them trying to take charge, the Blues, Whites, and one Green are in another team and can't come up with a plan without a consistent leader like the Pinks can, and the rest are clearly overwhelmed by the villain's board game that's rigged against them. Yes, I just said that.

The climax has a lot more emotional weight to it, as there's the chance that all the fairy allies will have to leave Earth after channeling the rest of the Prism Flower's power to give the Cures their powers back as an absolute last resort. As soon as everyone figures this out, they all break down crying, but they all realize that they have no choice but to press on. I don't even know half of these characters, but I can totally see how hard this is for them. Hell, the sequence where they got their powers back managed to make the Miracle Lights look cool, leading to a final attack to rival the Giga Drill Break in terms of sheer awesomeness.

Of course, the fairies come back, but I'm imagining Yuri was going to cling to her magic jar like in that one episode of Heartcatch, considering her fairy was the only one to stay dead.

Overall, even though I'm sure a lot of these references flew over my head, I still thought these were some really good movies. From most of the references I did get, I could clearly tell there was a lot of effort put into writing these crossovers born from a clear understanding of the Precure franchise. It didn't just focus on mindless action and all these magical girls teaming up. It went out of its way to showcase each Cure in a grand story that feels like a celebration of the franchise, while still providing some spectacular fight scenes.

If only the people at another of Toei's TV divisions took the success of this trilogy into consideration when working on a certain other big crossover film that would hit theaters the very next year...

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #not miraculous ladybug #precure #pretty cure

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imperiuswrecked · 4 years ago

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To me, it doesn’t make sense to make Magneto the main villain because it has been done so much before and it would connect it so much to the Fox Films. Also I think there is a GREAT laziness in writing Magneto especially in films. He generally didn’t want to kill all humans, subjugate them yes because he doesn’t trust them. Which isn’t a ‘good guy’ move in itself and he slips in and out of.

He legit murdered genocide I think when he was going to kill all humans. Like no.

I also think that the average cinema goer likes Magneto too much… or maybe that is me. It would also require them to recast the most famous faces of the franchises?

Like is anyone going to care if they recast Jean, Scott, Iceman, Rogue, Kitty, Beast even Mystique but Magneto? I don’t know. I have long been a fan of an actual Jewish actor playing Magneto but following Ian McKellan would be difficult for the casual fans to accept. I don’t think Fassbender left such an amazing impression.

Even my most average MCU fans friends (and god they love the MCU 😤 but I see past it) still talk about how much they want to see a Magneto solo film.

To me I would put the focus on their reveal and sentinels. Then again I thought they’ll go through Krakoa stuff. Like it turns out the mutants have been living on this Island etc

With the ‘simpler times’ comment I have to for the sake of my sanity have to think that it was because Pietro knew where he was. Things were clear to him, as much as it hurt he had his sister. The following trauma had not occurred. Again I don’t think this is true but I am trying to reason bad writing. He didn’t doubt his morality but was indebted and controlled. Shitty actions were out of his control.

I don’t read Avengers so I didn’t know he was shelved for so long.

I think the Trial of Magneto is trying to ride on the coattails of Wandavision because even though she’s not a mutant a lot of the internet was wanting Magneto to show up. So what is the best way to get those fans who wanted to see that? Set up a family comic book where they establish the family again because I guess the MCU fans heard they’ve changed their background and themselves didn’t like it.

I see the Trial of Magneto as something poorly thought out as they saw what the audience was interested in. The timeline kind of clashes uncomfortably with Inferno. Which makes me think it was wedged in there to ride the Wandavision train and undo the retcon on the side of the main storyline.

Thank you for reading my essay/rant

Ok so I'm going to first say you have a lot of great thoughts and great on picking up the whole forced feeling. You are right, it does feel wedged in there and it does feel forced because that's exactly what Marvel did.

The Trial of Magneto was supposed to be an X-Factor plot, it was Leah Williams next arc, here's an article link talking about her podcast: link (yes I know it's bleeding cool but I don't have time to listen to the podcast)

Leah Williams tells us that X-Factor was canceled because Leah's pitch for the Magneto/Wanda story for X-Factor, now called Trial Of Magneto, became such a popular pitch at Marvel but they thought the reader numbers for X-Factor wasn't big enough for this story, so they wanted it as a separate comic. And canceled X-Factor #10 rather than seeing it run as originally planned, with the Trial beginning in X-Factor #15. Williams says she only learned about the cancellation of X-Factor when she was writing #9, so as she had to finish the series quickly, squeezing six issues worth of story into those last two issues, calling it "cramped and rushed".

So I'm not a fan of Leah but the way Marvel treats it's writers has always been terrible so this cancellation doesn't surprise me. Could this be about W*ndaVision? It's likely, but it's more likely this has to do with Hickman bowing out. It's no secret literally everyone hated the retcon and I always knew it would be undone but I didn't think it would take 6 years but here we are.

Hickman leaving is a bigger thing, he stated in an interview ( link ) that he had planned Krakoa and X-Men to be a 3 arc story, and he wasn't allowed to move onto the 2nd arc because the clowns at Marvel liked the idea of Krakoa too much and I'm so mad because that's exactly the kinda behavior that annoys me with the fans, them thinking Krakoa is just a fun playground for the mutants to mess around with.

"Oh, plans have changed entirely," Hickman says. "When I pitched the X-Men story I wanted to do, I pitched a very big, very broad, three-act, three-event narrative, the first of which was House of X. And while this loosely worked as a three-year plan, I told Marvel upfront that I honestly had no idea how long the first part would last because there were a lot of interesting ideas that I had seeded that other creators would want to play with, and so, we left this rather open-ended. I was also pretty clear with all the writers that came into the office what the initial, three-act plan was so no one would be surprised when it was time for the line to pivot." Hickman continues, "However, I also knew that I was cooking with dynamite, and it was very possible that what I had written in House of X, and the ideas contained within, was not actually the first act of a three-act story, but something that resonated more deeply and worked more like Giant-Size X-Men, where it would represent a paradigm shift in the entire X-Men line for a prolonged period of time. So, during the pandemic, when the time came for me to start pointing things toward writing the second-act event, I asked everyone if they were ready for me to do that, and to a man, everyone wanted to stay in the first act. It was really interesting, because I appreciated that House of X resonated with them to the extent that they didn't want it to end, but the reality was that I knew I would be leaving the line early."

I'm so MAD because the thing I was predicting, that Hickman would have it come crashing down and everything would be revealed to be terrible and Mutant Death Sex Cult Island wasn't a paradise is never going to happen because the fucking CLOWNS at Marvel don't want him to move past it. I may have my personal gripes about some of Hickman's writing but we can't deny the man wrote one of the best if only the best Marvel Event with Fantastic Four/Avengers/Secret War.

As for the simpler times comment, like I have my theories that I wrote out here, and that's what I think is most likely but I do think Pietro's life has never been easy or simple once his adoptive parents died. Pietro could be drinking to a time before the Brotherhood.

I would love for a Jewish actor to play Magneto and any other characters who are Jewish. I would love for a Jewish writer to be able to write them too. However Ian's performance literally set him in the minds of the people as Magneto, not even Fassbender's bleh one note Magneto could compare. Imo the only reason people liked the younger Magneto was because he was young, handsome (? ig idk i dont simp for him) and they could ship him with young professor X (cowards. where is the old man ship???) But I feel like a new actor could definitely fill the role if they are Jewish and the writing was good.

Magneto's writing in comics... well I just wish we could have a Jewish writer for him. There's some great stuff for him but I feel like characters like him and Doom could be written better by non white/american writers.

Although by today's standards the og X-Men trilogy doesn't hold up I will defend the first two movies with my life simply because after Blade these movies opened up the idea that a good serious, non campy version where characters called Magneto and Cyclops were taken seriously. X2 in my mind was the definitive X-Men movie. Was it totally comic accurate? No, but it doesn't do what the MCU does, it doesn't treat the watcher like they need to have their hand held through all the military propaganda and "hints to the comics". Also side note; the reason no one cared about any of the other X-Men being recast is because all through most of the X-Men movies the focal story point has been Professor X vs Magneto. If they really want people to care about those characters/actors then we would need stories that focused on them. Not like how Storm barely had any character growth or plot in the og X-Men and even young Ororo got mishandled by the script. This is why I feel we should have "origin movies" for the X-Men that don't do what Wolverine Origins did and try to make a whole new cast but instead should use the stories as they are. If it was Kurt's story then we would see him join the X-Men, and have the other actors revolve around that. Same with each of the others, the X-Men work best when they are working off each other and each given enough screen/page time to shine. Unfortunately we all have our favorites, even movies and writers, so those are who are going to be pushed for fans to love.

Thank you for your long rant and sorry for my own long rant/reply.

#xmen #x men #comic talk #xmcu #magneto #erik lensherr #imp answers

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felassan · 4 years ago

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Highlights and insights from the MELE launch cast & crew reunion panel

[rewatch link] [highlights & insights from the N7 Day 2020 reunion]

In case a text format is better for anyone (in terms of accessibility for example). Cut for length.

Some paraphrasing.

If anyone’s interested in just the line-reading session, it starts at timestamp ~1:04:45.

In addition to the cast and crew from the N7 Day reunion, at this reunion also in attendance were:

Mac Walters (Project Director for MELE, Lead Writer of the og MET)

Melanie Faulknor (Lead Producer for MELE)

Crystal McCord (Producer for MELE)

Fred Tatasciore (Saren)

Seth Green (Joker)

Kimberly Brooks (Ash)

Ash Sroka (Tali)

This was the biggest reunion / meetup of the cast so far, and some of the cast and crew were meeting for the first time here.

It’s been so long since the og MET that PW & KW are getting to watch their kids experience playing it for the first time

JHale doesn’t play but since MELE she’s been sneaking around Twitch jumping into peoples’ MELE livestreams to lurk, watch and comment a bit

What drew Seth to the character of Joker? The whole concept of the game. He likes games and MET’s mechanics (different trees of adventure, stacking reputation, choices carrying between games) at the time were the most sophisticated that he’d ever heard pitched. He thought this was new and exciting and wanted to be a part of it. For the character they cast him based on his personality traits (i.e. he sounds quite similar to Joker personality-wise)

Would Seth ever want to play Joker again if the opportunity presented itself? Sure, he loves the character, and if the writers ever had more things to explore/expand with Joker he’d be down for it.

Seth said that it’s a different kind of fan that approach him about this project. The fans have spent many many hours in an intimate exchange with “him” that he hasn’t been a part of, but they experienced it nonetheless. “I’ve hugged a lot of strangers, you know what I’m saying? It’s great, you get an interaction with fans that you never get as a performer in any other experience”

Seth has been a space guy since he was little, it inspires him

With the state of the world the way it is now [covid, masks etc], does Ash think Tali’s story will be more impactful now than it was before? Ash hopes so, and that anything they do here will have a positive impact on a bigger level. Ultimately that’s why most of them do what they do, they want to reach people in deep ways. She hopes Tali is an inspiration in courage, bravery, standing up for what’s right and thinking about the greater good

The [MELE I think] dev team had a last team meeting with Greg Zeschuk, one of the founders of BioWare, who they had invited to it. He was regaling them with stories of the inception of Mass Effect. “You would imagine this sort of well-laid out, drawing boards everywhere... [but] it was basically just a napkin sketch in a Greek taverna with him and Casey going ‘We wanna do a space opera’, and then it took off”

The process of creating lore through development is very organic. A lot of it comes from character and story development. It builds up over the course of the game’s development. They did the codex entries at the end, the idea being that if they saved them for as late as they could, then they could pull from the story, characters and meaningful moments, and build them from there

PW wrote a bunch of the codex entries, elevator banter & lots of little bits of lore. They describe their time on the og MET as being a “baby writer”. They originally came in after Mac had back surgery and a junior writer was needed to fill in. “It was really fun, it was us sitting in a room together going ‘What do you think a hanar or a krogan thinks about this or that’?” For a first project for them this was an amazing experience - the world building itself creatively with all these awesome people

They tried to add multiplayer in every game but only got it to work in ME3

They had a lot of plots laid out in ME1 that they called “global plots”. These were outside the core critical path and would take players from planet to planet, and were sprawling stories. They pulled out a lot of really interesting concepts and ideas from these that did make it into the game, but all of the global plots ended up getting cut due to time. Mac still has old diagrams and spreadsheets which detailed how all of these would have come together

Q. If you all had to take a long-distance road-trip with two squadmates, who would you take and why? PW: “Jack and Mordin. Mordin because the drive would never lack for things to talk about at length quickly, Jack because you know you wouldn’t pay for the room. You wouldn’t know how you’d get the room, but you wouldn’t be paying for it.” Courtenay: “I’d take Mordin because there’d be singing, and FemShep just to have this thing - happen. In the room that I get for free.” JHale at this point fistpumped while saying “Yeess” [then I think what she said was “steaming hot”]

Seeing as asari are long-lived, how open is Ali to one day reprising her role as Liara? “She’s a character very close to my heart, it was such a great opportunity. In some games that we work on the character has already been created or voiced by someone else, but this was really a group effort. When I first went into the booth, the only thing I’d seen of her was a sort of like, rendering, and we slowly kind of came to her voice and presence. I would love to bring Liara back any time... hey, she can live a really long time guys. :D”

Caroline and people who do what she does (Creative Performance Director) are so critical to the quality of games. Caroline: “This group of people are extraordinary. We were lucky to have such an extraordinary cast. Every [recording] session was new and challenging. It was a labor of love. I’m tearing up right now thinking about it. I’m remembering my last session with Jen, she was the last session, just sobbing and sobbing”. When JHale was trying to say the lines of Shepard’s goodbye with Garrus, a line hit her like a tonne of bricks and she was in tears and was like “Shepard does not cry”. “It took me a second, I got it out and took another run at it, it was in there but stuffed down as it should have been, and I finished the line [and there was silence in the booth when usually Caroline would have been talking to give direction or instruction] Did we lose her? Did Skype crash?” and it transpired that what had happened was that Caroline was in floods of tears

ME was the first time Keythe had ever come across branching dialogue. “Normally when we work on a script and it’s from page 1 to 100. In this it was get to page 5, then go back to page 2 and play it a little differently. The skill and the fun and joy of it was to be able to go back and play a scene in a different way, with different writing, with different outcomes. This was not only a challenge but a real treat. So to all the writers who dreamed up how this build-your-own-adventure plays out, you have my undying respect. It was a real pleasure”

VEDA is a proprietary system that BW use to record the dialogue, which is the closest way of having it feel like having people in the booth together (it’s all digital and VAs get to hear the line someone else has done in that scene). Caroline really pushed for this because of the amount of time etc that was wasted due to lack of this sort of thing on ME1. William: “It was a god send for me, thank you, getting to hear a cue from Jen or Mark.” Ali: “Us being able to bounce off each other helps make it more real. This for me was the most real acting experience on a game I had ever had - the writing being so good, Caroline helping us through, being able to hear each other.” JHale was always early coming in to record relative to the others so only got to use VEDA a few times - a bit of Liara content and the scene with Anderson towards the end. “Those two times, oh my god it was amazing”. VEDA being a thing also helps from a scheduling standpoint

Seth and Tricia Helfer (EDI) only got to be in the booth actually together 1 time, to record/shoot a piece of promotional video. “We actually got to record a scene together and we were like ‘oh my god this is the best thing ever’. It was great, even though I had to stand on a stool. She’s the best”

Seth: “As an actor, the kind of opportunity to do this kind of material in games just didn’t exist.” Fred: “Oh, never! I had never had a villain part that was complicated like that. In a game? Never before, it was really interesting”

Raphael always goes back to the fact that ME brought more women into gaming than any other game before it. “The writing and the complexity of the relationships gave us so much ballast”. “This set this apart from running, shooting, gunning, looting”

JHale: “What I noticed in the times before when I got to be around fans, there was a huge hunger among women in the gaming world for something they could really jump into. They were starving for something which fed them what they deserved and needed”

Mac: “[praising Caroline] Caroline would often come to us as writers and challenge us and say, as an example, ‘Do we really need another male character to do this? Why are we writing another male character for this?’ She pushed that very early and to the betterment of everything we created”

PW: “Karin and Cookie and all of the editors across the trilogy, [were critical in] making sure that Shepard sounded consistent - [especially since] we had a large writing team, writers came and went, Mac is the only one with a significant writing contribution on each of the games”

PW: “[on game dev] It’s a process of getting hundreds of people pointed in the same direction, all believing that this is something worth doing”

Ash: “Having all the different possibilities and avenues, going back to play them all out in the different ways [really helped to round the character of Tali out and make her feel like a natural person]”.

VAs only get paid for the original recording sessions, not again (as in they don’t any royalties or anything from something like the remaster)

In MELE, they left all the original credits at the end of each game in

Fred: “It’s creating in five dimensions [because of all the outcomes and relationships etc]”. Seth: “The cool thing is that the audience feels that. They’re immediately struck by how dense, thought-out, prepared and planned the entire universe is”

How was it for the new MELE devs coming onto this? Crystal: “I knew it [the series and fans’ love for it] was big, but I didn’t know it was BIG! Working on MELE there was this infectious excitement. Being part of it was so exciting.” Melanie: “I came on at ME3, I had a 3 or 4 year honeymoon period with BioWare. Coming onto MELE, I’m getting really emotional. One of my first meetings originally was going into a cinematic review for an epic Tali scene in ME3”. Crystal: “On MELE, we had an hour or 2 every day where the team came together to play the game. In those reviews, a lot of the devs who worked on the original would tell all these stories. It was really fun to hear all the inside stories on ME’s creation and be a part of that”

DC: “Should this unit get vaccinated?” Ash: “Of course”

How do they think ME will be viewed in the next 10-20 years, what do they think its legacy will be? A piece of history, ground-breaking. It broke down some barriers and opened doors for people. It’s a powerful, powerful community. It’ll continue to age quite well and be enjoyed by a new generation, it’s original and evergreen and there’s a lot in it that people go back to. There’s a lot of universal things in it (personal experiences, like there will always be love, people fighting to belong, trying to make sense of their pasts etc)

JHale and Alix did the “I love you Shepard, now go save the world again” Shep-Sam exchange and both got teary. It was then Seth’s turn to line-read: “Jesus Christ, now that I’m good and choked up, fucking mess”. Ali was also actually crying from it

Seth: “It can’t be overstated, this community is so large and global, it is one of the most powerful fandoms that I’ve ever been greeted with. Thank you”. Ash: “It’s the most amazing group of fans ever. We’re all so grateful”

Some funny anecdotes/stories:

PW didn’t realize that Alix could do different accents. They remember a time when they were listening in the booth and an Alliance soldier was complaining about the gear had been given. They said “Wow that’s really good, who is that?” and the VO producer said “That’s Alix, Patrick”, “because she wasn’t doing her [normal British accent but was doing a Californian accent instead]. Alix roasted me later for not recognizing her voice and never let me heard the end of it”

Alix: “[on Sam’s toothbrush] Caroline’s like, ‘So then she pulls her toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘What? Sorry? A toothbrush?’ and obviously it’s funny now as everyone knows that Sam’s thing is her toothbrush. Caroline’s like ‘Yeah, you’ve gotta like, flirt, over the toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘Who wrote this - a frickin toothbrush, are you kidding me? Really guys?’ ANYWAY. I was wrong and it worked. :D”

Fred: “I remember a 12 year old kid coming up to me and being like [flat tone] ‘Oh yeah. I killed you’.”

Keythe: “The other assasin I play is Kellogg in Fallout 4. People come up to me like ‘Omg. I love you so much. And then I fucking KILLED you!’”

Courtenay once went out to dinner in NZ with a few prominent people from the Game of Thrones cast. “Everyone around was making a big deal out of it like ‘Omg, it’s so-and-so from GoT’. I was feeling a bit like ‘Hi, I’m here, just nobody’. And I looked around in the restaurant and there's one guy in the corner and he’s got an N7 shirt on and he’s just looking at me like [knowing look, does a peace sign]. And I’m like ‘I got one! I love you guys!’”

PW: “I have a question for the cast members, because I don’t know if JHale has done this to all of you or if she just does it to the devs. Show of hands if Jen has ever made you do push-ups.” JHale: “It’s just you guys”

Karin: “One of my favorite editing files that I ever had was a ME file. It was before Seth was coming in for a session. I opened it up and it was just 20, 25 lines with the word ‘Shit’, over and over again, and I was like, ‘This file is perfect, I don’t need to do anything to it, have fun!’”

Seth: “Didn’t we do a track that’s like 60 seconds of laughing? Escalating laughing? I don’t know about other actors but for me getting into a laughing fit is kind of like trying to get into a crying fit, it takes the same level of commitment, you start to follow a path until like you’re hysterically uncontrollably laughing. I remember looking through the glass, and I’m deep in it at this point, and I make eye contact, and I can see from the other side of the booth and they’re like [making ‘okay you can stop’ now gestures] - ‘Like that’s plenty, we got it’ and I was like ‘okay, okay [dying]’”

JHale: “The craziest thing Mark and I had to deal with was how many times we had to say ‘I should go’”. Mark: “We also, Caroline and I tended to use that as short hand when I needed to go to the bathroom”

The panel host: “The first time I interviewed Ali was a decade ago. She did the ‘I’ll flay you alive with my mind’ line halfway through, it was my first interview and I literally fell out of my seat [from being star-struck]”

Ash line-read Tali’s drunk omni-tattoo scene and in response DC said “I totally get why people wanna romanticize all these characters :D”. Karin: “We’ve had more than one person come up to us and show us actual tattoos that looked like that”

[source]

#bioware #mass effect #video games #covid mention #long post #longpost #garrus vakarian #best boy #feels #lul

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antagonistchan · 4 years ago

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god

fucking

DAMN

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is so fucking good

i’m not gonna go so far as to say it’s the only way you should ever play these games again. i think it’s the best way to play them, especially if you’ve never played them before. but the originals still have value if you’re a Mass Effect superfan like me.

Legendary Edition 1 fixes a lot of the clunkiness that the original ME1 had. this is mostly a good thing.... but also, that clunkiness had a certain charm, and i absolutely want to revisit it on occasion.

i don’t know much about LE2. i haven’t experienced much of it myself. if i had to guess, i’d say LE2 is probably the only one that outright obsolesces the original; everything looks way better, and ME2 didn’t have much clunky charm to it to begin with. but of course, OG ME2 inherently just still has value since you’d want to import from ME1 and to ME3.

and then from what i’ve heard, LE3 is largely identical to the original ME3, just with AI-upscaled textures (which makes sense, even by modern standards OG ME3 is a really good-looking and graphically impressive game). this’d also make it the definitive way to play ME3... if it weren’t for the fact that it removed the multiplayer, and the multiplayer is still really good. i fucking adore ME3 multiplayer. and the fact that it came out in 2012 does it a lot of favors, because that’s when studios were just starting to experiment and test the waters with lootbox mechanics. back then, lootboxes were still an unproven concept, studios didn’t know if they could get away with them, so they weren’t as disgusting as they are in modern games. honestly, if it weren’t for the mere presence of microtransactions (which are inherently exploitative), i’d say ME3′s lootboxes do more good than harm. i’d actually honestly recommend new fans pick up the original ME3 (it’s pretty cheap these days anyways) just so they can experience the multiplayer. don’t touch the microtransactions, just use the in-game currency. there’s enough of it to reasonably get new lootboxes regularly, don’t worry.

all that, and the fact that there are mods for the original trilogy that haven’t come out for the Legendary trilogy.... yet. but i’ve heard for a fact that the Expanded Galaxy Mod- the ME3 mod- is getting ported over, and i’d imagine a lot of the other essential mods (like the ones that re-implement the gay versions of Ashley, Kaidan (ME1), Tali, and Thane’s romances) will also eventually make their way over. so that’s only an issue for now.

but enough about the original trilogy still having value, let’s talk Legendary Edition.

for some background: the Mass Effect trilogy is collectively my favorite game of all time. i replay the entire thing at least once a year, and i have since i first got the trilogy collection on PS3 in 2013. so i fucking know these games like the back of my hand. i can basically play them in my head. and it’s especially true for ME1, since it’s the first one (and thus, if i start a playthrough and don’t finish it, i’ll at least have seen ME1) and also imo the best one (just to clarify though, while i AM a “Mass Effect 1 is the best Mass Effect” person, i’m NOT a “Mass Effect 1 is the only good Mass Effect” person; i’m actually one of those weirdos who genuinely loves ME3, and i honestly hold equal amounts of affection for both, with ME2 not far behind).

and god.

i’m just constantly finding myself blown away by how good Legendary Edition 1 looks.

even on the ultra-high graphics settings, OG ME1 looks super rough in a LOT of ways. i think OG ME1 is a good-looking game, for sure, but it’s a testament to how a good art style can salvage a game with garbage graphics. ME1 only looks good because the style they were going for is so unique and beautiful. the actual graphical capabilities? it’s bad even by 2007 standards, and imo 2007 was the worst year for video game graphics since the N64-PS1 days. games from 2007 almost universally look super weak now.

but here....... god. everything looks so good and intense and sharp and detailed.

the Mass Relays are a standout. they looked cool in the original, but god they’re so beautiful now. i’m constantly finding myself thinking “jesus i really understand what Tali means when she talks about how Quarians appreciate the aesthetic value of the Mass Relays”.

there have only been two major annoyances i’ve had so far:

the dumb Femshep redesign is still dumb after all these years, and when they announced New Femshep could actually work in LE1/2 now, i was really hoping they’d also do the reverse with Old Femshep, and.... only kinda. when you go to customize Femshep’s appearance, the first preset it tries to go to does actually look a lot like the old default, even moreso than what you’d get if you tried to import ME1/2 Femshep into ME3 (that was actually a bit of a pleasant surprise). but it’s still not perfectly like her. they outright removed the old default hairstyle. it was already baffling when they removed it from OG ME3, it’s even more baffling now. that used to be the default, why is it not even an option anymore UGHHH

they STILL haven’t fixed the menus. i’m used to these games on PS3 and only migrated to PC last year, and god, navigating the menus is a pain with mouse and keyboard. if you want to back out of a menu, you have to either hit “escape” (which is in the corner of your keyboard) or click a tiny little button in the corner of the screen. it’d be so great if you could just back out of a menu by right-clicking or something, like how on PS3 you could back out of a menu by hitting the circle button. i know Legendary Edition also finally fixed the controller support on PC, but when i migrated to PC, i realized i did actually prefer mouse and keyboard for actual gameplay. it’s just the menus that suck with mouse and keyboard.

#antagonist originals #mass effect

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stina-is-a-punk-rocker · 4 years ago

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‘always and forever, lara jean’: a bungled mess of my thoughts while watching the movie

Alright, cards on the table: I never finished reading the book. I got bored a couple of pages in, so I just read up the summary on Wikipedia and called it a day.

Not gonna lie, I expected better from the movies. I loved the first movie; it was cute, it was fun, it hit all the right places. The second movie was… eh. Jordan Fisher is cute, so that’s a plus.

And then we got the third movie; the final in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy.

And it was somehow even worse.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. Despite its shortcomings in the plot and character development-related departments (the fact that Lara Jean wrote addresses for letters she never meant to send is something that will bother me on my deathbed), the movies have their merits. They’re cutesy and charming and enjoyable, overall; movie-LJ is sweet and unashamedly a girly-girl, which is a refreshing change from the #NotLikeOtherGirls, pick-me girls and bruh girls we had in loads of other YA movies growing up. Peter’s pretty cute, too; he’s not a possessive freak like so many other love interests (The Kissing Booth, After, Anna and the French Kiss), and his and Lara Jean’s dynamic is cute, too. Not to mention- we finally have an Asian lead whose Asian-ness isn’t the whole focus of the story!

Again, maybe I’m being extra with all this. The series is, at its core, solely for entertainment purposes. Not every piece of media has to have an underlying message and you shouldn’t need to read between every goddamn line to find something worthy of enjoying. They’re certainly helpful for whiling away a couple of hours; perfect for bingeing with a pint of ice cream in hand, and all of this is in good fun.

Also, it goes without saying, but: spoilers ahead.

The film beings with Lara Jean scribbling a postcard to Peter while she’s in Korea with her family. The inclusion of that little snapshot of Asian culture made me so happy- seriously, fuck everyone who says diversity in media doesn’t matter. I’m not even Korean, and I was overjoyed at seeing a couple of scenes just from the same continent I’m on. The K-pop music in the background was a fun touch, too (although all Korean music isn’t K-pop, but that’s a rant for another day).

(Also: Blackpink has so many more suitable songs than Pretty Savage that go with the theme of the movies. Kill This Love in the second movie while Lara Jean is getting ready to go to her boyfriend’s match is bad enough- they’re supposed to be in love in that scene, goddammit.)

One thing that bothered me throughout the movies is how obviously non-Korean Lara Jean and Margot look. It’s like whoever chose the cast went for any random Asian- Lana’s Vietnamese and Janel Parrish is half-Chinese, and it’s so obvious. You seriously couldn’t find two Korean-Americans who even vaguely resembled each other so they could pass for sisters? The actresses do a stunning job and I don’t want to shit on them, but I just wish they didn’t go with the ‘all Asians look the same, what’s the difference?’ mindset.

Also, a nitpicky thing I’ve noticed in movies with characters who read a lot: no one holds their books up while they’re reading. Your arms start to cramp, which is why you keep your book in your lap while you’re reading, or you rest on your belly and hold the book in front of you. My spine and shoulders didn’t suffer years of torture as a chronic reader for you to include characters who hold their books up while reading.

A major gripe I have with Always and Forever, Lara Jean is how the characters are almost jarringly out of character- not from the books, but from the two previous movies, too. Lara Jean didn’t have much of a character to begin with, so I can’t say much about her (she dissed Oasis at one point; it’s okay for me to be mean to her), but the rest of them are either caricatures of themselves or just totally different people.

Movie Peter >>> Book Peter. He’s almost too perfect (except for the fact that he unironically loves The Fast and the Furious, which… ew), almost too much of the ideal boyfriend. Not that my perpetually single arse would know. How do boyfriends even work? I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with one; how often should you feed it? Do you need to take it on walks?

(In the notes I’ve written towards the end of the film, I’ve complained about Peter being immature and making Lara Jean feel bad about following her dream to go to NYU. He confuses me.)

Not to mention how distractingly adorable Noah Centineo is from some angles and under certain lighting conditions (other times, he reminds me of the human version of Shrek and that bothered me). King of weird Tweets and Instagram captions though he may be, he’s got a really nice smile, and his gravelly voice is both parts sexy and disturbing.

But I digress.

I’ll never forgive the directors for what they did to Kitty and Chris- two of my favorite characters, from both the books and the movies. Kitty’s annoying to the point of being borderline unlikeable- gone is the occasionally snarky comic relief we all came to love; in her place is an annoying brat whose every line comes out forced. Also, making soap is fun; fuck you, Kitty.

Chris is essentially Dixie D’Amelio’s character from that TikToker Grey’s Anatomy ripoff; the main character in One Direction fanfiction from 2012 who doesn’t want to go to the concert but her best friend gets a ticket for her so she can’t bail but Harry Styles sees her in the crowd and falls in love at first sight and 50k of mutual pining and misunderstandings late, they get together. She’s cynical and snarky and hates capitalism and consumerism and prom (because of course she does), but secretly, she’s into it (because of course she is). My guess is that she’s there to appease all the arseholes (including myself) who accused the characters of being too one-dimensional, but it seems too out of place in a movie that doesn’t have much plot to begin with.

I really, really hate how Lucas was done dirty- throughout every single movie. Of course, it’s Lara Jean’s story so not every side character has to be fully fleshed out- but you’d think three. entire. movies. would be enough to give Lucas a bigger role than the GBF and the token black guy for the diversity brownie points. Every single time Lucas shows up, it’s to push Lara Jean and Peter’s story forward. I would’ve liked to see a romance for him pushed forward instead one for Chris- especially because he says, at one point in a previous movie, that it’s hard to find other gay boys, so it would’ve been sweet to see him find love- and Chris’s character arc could’ve been focused on reconciling with Genevieve. Instead, we see the OG Reggie from Riverdale be the one to show Chris the bright side of monogamy, and Lucas gets a date to prom as an afterthought (another darkskin black dude, so no one thinks the film is racist).

Genevieve’s character in this movie gives me whiplash. Look, I’m all for girls supporting girls- healthy female relationships are something way too many YA movies lack- but she goes from bitch queen extraordinaire to friendly the moment the next scene calls for it. Her character isn’t consistent. A redemption arc should be executed cleanly and believably; you can’t have a character be a total prick one moment and then suddenly be, “Hey, if you get into NYU, let me know,” the next.

And Genevieve’s still an arsehole to Chris; at one point, in NYC, while they’re at the NYU campus grounds (I knew that Lara Jean was going to go to NYU the moment she saw all the banners; I fucking called it), Genevieve tells Chris, “University is for people who actually have a future,” and I recoiled. I’m not the nicest of people and yet that was going too far. Chris doesn’t hesitate to shoot back a, “You peaked in high school,”, but still. Y i k e s. You can’t convince me someone’s turned over a new leaf when they say something like that.

Lara Jean’s dad (forgot his name; gonna call him Dr. Covey) is as unremarkable as ever, and his new wife (forgot her name, too… Trisha? Trina? Eh, something like that) is… unsettling. I mean, I get that they’re all loved up and twitterpatted, but there’s something about all the smiling they’ve got going on that chills me to the bone.

Also, Trisha/Trina kinda looks like TikTok’s ThatVeganTeacher and it bothers me.

Another huge problem with this movie even being made is that the series never had enough plot to continue onto a trilogy. Lara Jean’s letters are what the plots of the first and second movies revolve around; the third only mentions them in passing. The final love letter from Peter was a cute callback, but there’s a massive continuity issue with the first two movies and this last one- both character and plot-wise.

Maybe I’m not articulating this clearly enough, so I’ll use an example: take Harry Potter, for example. Harry’s main goal throughout the series is defeating Voldemort. And it takes all seven books for him to get there, to finally achieve this.

Lara Jean’s goal in the first movie changes midway; from keeping up the façade with Peter so she can avoid the crap with the rest of the letters getting out, to making her fake relationship real. It forms a bridge with the second movie; the letter that went out to John Ambrose, and her dithering between Peter and perfection (I’m not sorry). But what does the third movie have to do with any of this?

There were way too many music montages. You couldn’t go five minutes without a random pop song playing in the background, and it was annoying as hell. Don’t Look Back in Anger was w a s t e d on this stupid film. The artsy scenery shots were even worse- no, I don’t give a fuck about the New York skyline or a bird’s eye view of whatever vehicle Lara Jean is in. A few shots of Seoul would’ve sufficed; the rest was overkill. This movie is way too damn long already (almost 2 entire hours!!!); cut out a couple of those. No one cares.

I thought they’d pull the whole Aladdin trope with character-A-keeps-trying-to-tell-character-B-the-truth-about-a-lie-B-believes-in-about-A-but-B-keeps-interrupting, but Lara Jean (typing her name out is annoying, why couldn’t she have a single name, like both of her sisters?) comes clean earlier than I expected. Peter’s reaction about LJ not getting into Stanford is… uncharacteristically mature? No “Why did you lie to me?”, no accusations, not an ounce of betrayal. Which I did not expect from a guy who’s a little bitch for the greater part of book one (I really don’t like Book Peter, in case you couldn’t tell). I know fuck-all about book three’s Peter, so I can’t tell if he really did adopt this mature, well-adjusted persona, or the movie did it to make Peter seem like less of a dick (like they did it with the sextape-that-wasn’t-a-sextape in the first installment).

On a sidenote, how do these main characters in YA books get into really good colleges with zero to no visible effort? These arseholes fuck around for the entirety of the story and have way too much going on to actually do schoolwork, but they waltz into Ivy Leagues at the end. And apparently, I’m not the only one bothered by this.

There’s something to be said about how the movies don’t really sexualize minors (characters who are minors, to be fair. None of the MCs look anything like teenagers), though. It’s almost weird to see them not getting drunk and partying and having sex all the time. Maybe that’s why Lara Jean trying to get her hand on Peter’s dick felt so stilted and awkward (I cringed so hard when she kept trying to touch him and he kept pushing her hand away, holy shit).

And the kissing. It’s to be expected from a romance film, but there was so. Much. Kissing.

The amount of product placements (… actually, I could count only two: Apple and a pair of Beats headphones Lara Jean puts on at one point, but the movie shoved so many iPhones in my face that I’m obligated to exaggerate) would’ve made anti-capitalist Chris mad.

I’m guessing this all takes place in a parallel universe, sans the coronavirus. Still, being in quarantine this past year and being socially awkward for every other one, it was agonizing seeing everyone so close together in NYC. When Peter kissed the ball (lol) (I have the sense of humor of a straight boy in middle school, don’t judge me) when him and Lara Jean go bowling, I had a visceral reaction. And what are the odds of Peter meeting his estranged dad at the very same bowling alley?

Speaking of Peter’s daddy issues (I’ve written “Hardin but diluted” in my notes; I watched this movie at, like, 1 AM; I’m not entirely sure what was going through my head at that point)- I hated how they guilt-tripped Peter into giving his father another chance. In the wise words of Hannah Montana, everybody makes mistakes- but leaving your wife and two kids for another woman is pretty far from a little oopsie on Mr. Kavinsky’s part. I don’t blame Peter for hating him, and I’m not in a place to judge whether Mr. Kavinsky (does he get a first name?) should be forgiven or not, but I feel like they let him off too easy and made Peter seem like a misunderstood teenager with anger issues for not accepting Mr. Kavinsky’s (crappy) apology at once.

And it adds nothing to the story at all; Mr. Kavinsky peaces out after having one (01) coffee with his firstborn, and he’s never seen again. If you’re going to introduce a subplot, make it tie into the main storyline- the very least you could do is make it an important enough part of the story to have more than 10 minutes of the run time. It makes no sense as to why they’d bring up Peter’s dad in this last film, when he’s already gone through two perfectly fine. I guess it was a ‘tying everything up’ part… even though no one cared.

Lara Jean’s handwriting is surprisingly ugly for someone who’s written that many love letters. And her styling took a definite nosedive; her outfits in the first movie were so effing cute, but now they’re just… meh.

There are so many conversations and lines that the writers must’ve thought sounded good enough for someone to type out the quote in curly font and slap it on a screenshot from the movie to post on Instagram, but when it comes to the actual delivery, they just sounded… weird.

Peter says one time near the beginning of the film, “You know what I’m looking forward to the most in college? Never having to say goodnight,” because he expects him and Lara Jean to get into the same college.

But I guess the word they should’ve used was ‘good-bye’, because this just makes him sound stupid.

At one point, Lara Jean asks Kitty how much Kitty’s gonna miss her when she goes off to college, and Kitty says, “A four.” Later on, she confesses, “I’m gonna miss you a twelve, Lara Jean,” and all I could think was, “But we’re endgame, Archie!”

(In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t let people know I’ve watched Riverdale; it lessons my credibility.)

Still, there remains some good to be found: all the baked goods looked very delicious and made me crave chocolate chip cookies. Peter wearing the socks Lara Jean gifted him at the beginning of the movie was a cute gesture, and Lara Jean giving Peter her teal hatbox? The one she kept her love letters in? Was so? Cute? Help?

And hey, it’s a cliché that’s been done to death, but I’m always a sucker for that part in movies where the girl walks down the stairs in a pretty dress with her hand on the banister and the boy turns around and his mouth falls open and all he can say is, “Wow,”- and this film did not disappoint! Not to mention how cute both Lara Jean’s and Chris’s prom dresses were.

Dr. Covey and Trisha/Trina’s wedding was cute, too- I struggled to decide whether Kitty wearing a necklace that says ‘feminist’ and a tux is a bit too on-the-nose, but I’ve decided that it’s nothing to get my knickers all in a twist about (for clarification: it’s not the necklace or the crossdressing that made me debate this; I just wish they didn’t make a big deal out of it- I wish they didn’t have Kitty and Lara Jean get into an argument about her not wearing a dress, if that makes sense?).

And the final letter- the one from Peter to Lara Jean- I ate that shit up; it was so, so, so cute.

In conclusion (why is it so easy for me to crank out 3k about my thoughts on a Netflix movie and yet when it comes to English Lit. at school, I’d stare at a blank sheet of foolscap for ages?), did I enjoy the movie? Not really. There were parts of it that I liked, but it was overall too boring and I kept wishing I’d watched the new SKZ Code episode instead every few minutes.

But that doesn’t mean that it was bad. I kinda feel a little sad, actually, now that Lara Jean and Peter’s story has come to a close; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first movie, is one of my favorites, and bitch though I might about them, the kinda grew on me… like an innocent plant, at first, but then like a fungus. Not a parasitic fungus, just not mutualistic, either… kind of like a commensal.

Maybe I should stop with the biology similes.

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oodlyenough · 9 months ago

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aa6-5 turnabout revolution

finished 6-5 over the last couple weeks, which means we've only got the DLC left for soj and the main series of games.

i gotta say ... i liked this finale a lot more than i expected to. i thought it was fun, and in turn that elevated SOJ overall. by far not the best ace attorney game i've played, but definitely not the worst. from the way fandom talks about this game and especially the finale i expected something awful, but i thought it had some fun ideas with mid execution, which is how i would describe ... basically every AA game after the og trilogy lol

anyway. more specifically (spoilers)

the first half of the case -- apollo vs phoenix -- is way up there on the "great idea, mid execution". i was immediately willing to assume phoenix had undisclosed reasons for doing his thing so i was immediately willing to let it slide, lol. "maya is kidnapped again!!!" is not the most compelling angle they could've done, but, whatever. also NPC nick seemed to have a brain in his head unlike player-nick, so that was nice

i also got a huge kick out of phoenix playing (essentially) the role of the prosecution and doing every dirty trick the prosecutors have done to him for 6 games: hiding evidence, leading the witness, manipulating the judge, etc. this prosecuting shit is easy!!! i imagine him making pointed eye contact with edgeworth in the gallery every time. also the idea of edgeworth and phoenix creeping around off screen for the first portion of investigation day 1 was awesome lmfao.

the fey lore was ???????????????? but i guess we can assume paul was lying about most of it lmfao so ... i guess. i WAS very annoyed by the kurain storyline mostly being about dudes and i did spend the whole case certain we were building to a reveal that the crystal of ami fey=the founder's orb bc ami=the founder. but uh. no i guess not. whatever

dhurke is a character i knew to be relatively popular in fandom but i can see why, he really cracked me up. actually his whole return out of the blue and apollo's extremely prickly reception are one of the relatively rare moments of interesting and competent character writing in these later games imo. i thought their relationship was handled pretty well and quite interesting. i mean, i suppose i find it a bit unreasonable that apollo got over 14 years of abandonment in like two days but lots of things in AA happen in hyperspeed

over in khurain i still found that case pretty good and even the trial days kept me pretty engaged, something SOJ had struggled to do to that point.

nahyuta is a bit of a weird one in that i find him overall underwritten and a little dull but i absolutely cannot fathom why fandom hates him so so so much while loving others lol, esp blackquill whose motivation is the same but more inexplicable. is he my favourite prosecutor? not by a long shot, but his circumstances were insane and his motivations were clear by the end and i ultimately just felt kind of bad for him. i liked him much more than blackquill or godot lmao sorry fandom.

but i still cheered when he was not the prosecutor for the last case LMAO bc i LOVED garan and her crazy anime transformation lmao, finally khurain delivers the True Fey ancestor experience: insane sisters who hate each other. chefs kiss. rayfa + garan + the dhurke/amara drama was very interesting imo. i knew that chick couldn't channell!! maya for queen tbqh

rayfa's a good character and i enjoyed her a lot. i was frustrated in the end that they tried to make it seem like her big development/inspiration/etc was apollo ... like ... it should definitely be phoenix, who spent more time with her and investigated with her and started trying to show her other ways of thinking etc. plus she just lost her parents and is clearly searching for guidance and it makes way more sense for her to find that in phoenix than apollo who showed up 2 days ago. i guess they're trying to 1. use the player character 2. push the dhurke connection, but it was stupid when shes obviously more attached to phoenix and/or nahyuta lol

jove "jangly" justice is the funniest name i've read maybe ever and i assume apollo's middle name is jangly. it's so funny how they build to doing his divination seance only to spend almost no time on him fhgkghhklg

anyway in conclusion i liked 6-5 a lot more than i expected. i thought it was pretty fun. i don't really get why fandom is so negative to this game, like even way moreso than DD, when this game is better by any possible margin from gameplay to animation to story coherency imo.

stray other thoughts:

-apollo's backstories are such a meme but i thought his backstory in this game made sense enough with aa4 (where he had no motive/little backstory at all and wasn't much of a player in his own story), and the characters implicated were real characters we got to spend time with and interact with. unlike clay.png

-edgeworth is there for No Reason At All (fanservice) and i find that deeply hilarious. he's nick's +1 and he had to sleep on the floor with a bunch of strangers and crawl through the sewer. hysterical.

-for maya fey's big return game i sure thought maya was going to get to do stuff besides what she always does in a finale, be absent for plot reasons. sigh. oh well at least i got a laugh imagining her and edgeworth spending the rest of the trial arguing about the plumed punisher while nick and apollo are held at gunpoint

-athena cykes sweetie i'm so sorry your role in this game was a fucking embarrassment. so insulting that they turned it all into impressing simon and shit, fuck off man!!! my earlier criticism of this game being sexist even by AA standards remains. even phoenix is like well i can't have you risking your life you're too young (reasonable) and then "simon would kill me" which she acquiesces to???? hfjhgkjg

-nahyuta bamboozling apollo's perceive power by being like "thats the secret... i'm always anxious" was so goddamn funny

#ace attorney #spirit of justice #aa6 spoilers #oodly plays AA #turnabout revolution

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professorspork · 5 years ago

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today in the Andromeda Galaxy, GLITCHES TRIED TO KILL ME BUT I MADE IT WORK. or, well. Helen made it work, actually, and I was very grateful. (Elaaden, what do you have against my triangle button working? and wtf was that Nomad bug where suddenly I could see through time and the world contracted and my hair turned white????)

anyway.

this morning I joked to Helen that I was feeling very “I love all of my crew equally”/“I don’t care for Cora” so today I made a concerted effort to get to know her better--and tried a few Nomad combos where she wouldn’t sound like the fun police. (turns out, she and Vetra get along great! and also when I put her with Peebee she gets very self-conscious about how she’s totes not appropriating asari culture and it’s v embarrassing. on the OTHER hand, she makes fun of Peebee for peeping on Jaal and like, again, wtf, let me have my ot3.)

I started out finishing up that Morda drive core mission that glitched, and of course I gave the krogan the drive core in exchange for the outpost because I LOVE KROGAN and also RYDER LOVES OUTPOSTS. win/win tbh. but honestly the best part was getting to pick the dialogue option talking to Addison “fuck Tann” and Ryder actually getting to say fuck! it’s the little things.

after closing out Elaaden I decided to try and finish up a few errand-y missions like scanning plants, etc. in doing so, I got to play soccer with my very best friend Liam which was a heartwarming lot of fun, and fought TWO architects because just one was not enough. Peebee’s ex stole our beloved Proof Of Concept (I know the bot is called Poc, but honestly I think full-naming it is much cuter) and I was all “of course I’m gonna help you we’re in this together” which threw Peebee off her game because she’s still thrown every time someone cares about her. I AM, AGAIN, CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH, GENUINELY SAD I’M GOING TO HAVE TO CHOOSE AMONG ROMANCE OPTIONS. this experience could not be more different from the main trilogy, where I romanced Liara out of a sense of obligation/curiosity faaaaaar more than any genuine interest or investment, and wasn’t tempted* to deviate from that by anyone else along the way. there are a thousand mechanical reasons why I think romance works much, much better in Andromeda than it ever did in the main series--among them the very pointed focus on found family throughout, the more nuanced ability to craft a unique Ryder by doing away with paragon/renegade and instead having the more robust conversation trees, and the overworld chatting on the Nomad giving EVERYONE the amount of personality off the bat that my OG crew had to like bite and claw for for two and a half games-- but like. I’m not gonna lie a big part of it is just that I just think more of these people are more interesting as potential partners. I THINK I AM AN ANDROMEDA GIRL.

* well that’s a lie I would have romanced Tali in a heartbeat if I weren’t playing fem!Shep and that was illegal. and I’ll probably romance Sam Traynor after that. so. it’s not a total bust.

but I digress.

saved that scientist’s baby on Voeld, and afterwards had my first ACTUAL, HUMAN conversation with Addison about--shockingly--the nature of friendship. I was genuinely surprised and pleased! look at us go! I also did some spying for that STG agent, and got the world’s most badly delivered “gee, are you really going to believe that old coot?” speech out of my main suspect, which was hilariously insulting.

and then, partly due to Helen’s advice and partly because, again, today was Learn To Appreciate Cora Day, I finished out her loyalty mission! I was shocked to find Sarissa alive after all the build-up-- I was certain that after that long a drum roll for how key she’d be in the Initiative’s growth that we’d find her mega-dead-- but as Helen pointed out to me, the trope is Don’t Meet Your Heroes, not Your Hero Is Probably Dead, Actually. her whole “be calm, soldier” routine @ Vedaria was kind of grating in the moment but is very cute after the fact, so fine. the whole muted sounds and gravity tricks of that final fight were super fun, even though I did accidentally jump into space once or twice. the big biotics lightshow was v impressive, but after I took a pretty hardline stance on Sarissa: come clean and shut up, and you’re fired. I did get a little offended when the asari captain was like “you could have killed us all, it was only dumb luck that Ryder found us” bc EXCUSE ME, SOME OF IT WAS DUMB SKILL, but still. it was good to get that all settled, and very good to hear Cora say what was immediately obvious to everyone but her, which is that her compulsion towards mentors and plans would have made her a poor Pathfinder but makes her a perfect XO.

then I hit level 50 and spent a lot of time upgrading my gear, and like-- a kind god would have put the loadout console next to R&D and the buy/sell screen so I wouldn’t have to run up and down the Tempest corridor like an idiot. but whatever. Baby’s Fourth Beam Gun TM (an Avenger with a beam emitter) is working out splendidly, I’m slicing and dicing with my asari sword, and I’ve just put seeking plasma bolts on my Eagle which delights me. still shopping around for my ideal sniper before I commit but we’re getting there!

then I went to start the new planet, but then realized Ark Natanus was right there, and ended up backtracking twice. First I ran back to the Nexus thinking there’d be another fun homecoming cut scene for the asari like there’d been for the salarians that I didn’t want to muddy with adding turians, too, only that didn’t happen. boo! I did remember to check on my mom, tho, so that was nice and emotional. then I went back to Netanus to start that up, only to realize I was wearing a very ugly and entirely face-obscuring helmet-- and once it was clear the entirety of the mission was going to be me emoting at Rix, I restarted the mission with a different armor loudout. yes, I am that vain, but only because opportunities for mlm/wlw solidarity are rare in this game (Gil’s been quiet lately, lol) and Rix deserved my best. though after doing all this, I am wondering: why do all the SAMs have different voices? surely making even one AI as smart and unique as SAM is difficult; then making each Ark’s SAM unique feels like an unnecessary burden? but whatever.

H-whateverthefuck is by far my favorite planet to Nomad around on. I’ve been complaining about the lack of low gravity mechanics since the Mako in ME1 (WE WENT TO THE MOON, THE LITERAL MOON, OUR MOON, AND NOT EVEN THAT HAD LOW GRAVITY?) and so this felt like pure vindication. (also, in general but very aggressively NOT for this planet because of the radiation, shout out to the Nomad for letting me get out no matter how poorly or vertically it’s parked, because lord knows I glitched the Mako many times trying to pause and get out in ‘impossible’ places the Nomad handles with ease.) anyway. the concept of a broken-up planet is terrifying, and the reality of it was eerie as all get-out. what neat execution!

and speaking of a neat execution, I’m so relieved going with the interrupt and firing at Meriwether while she held Sid worked, because I was again legit scared I might get Sid killed. as you’ll recall re: my Jaal loyalty mission, that’s the second time I was genuinely quite nervous there would be real consequences to screwing this up! I give the game a lot of credit for building a world where it feels like I really could screw up that badly. I’m very proud/fond of Sid, and the whole security camera mechanic was delightful-- a more fun version of the kind of stuff KOTOR always made me do. back on the Tempest, I decided to flirt with Vetra while the flirting’s still good, but tbh her flirt option (“I care about Sid bc I care about you”) wasn’t even all that romantically valanced, if you ask me! but also I love that Sid’s idea of justice is fast-tracking having cats in Heleus.

phew! with so many big things now out of the way, I’m not sure how much dithering I can/should do before continuing with the main mission. but that’s a decision for future me.

#leah plays mass effect andromeda

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thenextchapterbegins · 5 years ago

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dolphin and cyberpunk

idk how its possible but everytime i use dolphin it gets worse

the only way i can play most of my games is if i find speciality emulators that are designed around the game spefically

i s2g 4.0 and below dolphins whilst confusing ran games a thousand times better

spent an actual 1 trying to get metroid trilogy working and with no success. dig around find a specially made dolphin fucking smooth as butter.

you would think the generic would be good and specialites if you want even better quality. yet the og dolphin runs like a dumpster, thats on fire, about to be nuked.

also

speaking of poor optimization

loving cyberpunks story

but jesus fucking christ

even on pc this game just..it doesnt look finished.

running on high graphics i get to see

- trees glitching through existence

-weird collission were standing on a box can literally send you flying across the map or more likely into the ground at mach 10 killing you instantly

-enemies that just slide around

-cutscene animations can be completely fucked with people basically t-posing around

-animation gets stuck in cutscenes and u have to wait for it unfreeze

-objects in cutscenes JUST NOT APPEARING.

-my health bar and stanima bar no longer exist

-more specfically on the health your health goes to 0 when u “die” during a story event and then its supposed to assume jump back to what it was, expect in my game maybe when i replay it again it’ll be fixed it just stayed at 0/0 making me effectivly immortal.

-driving is near..sleeping dogs level on the pc. if you kno, you kno.

-so melee combat is weird. whilst it feels good theres not alot of place to use it because 99 percent of the enemies use guns and those that do use melee. well its weird. see in most games when you block a punch hits your blocked fists. not in this game. the punch goes through your fists and instead hits a hitbox thats behind your fists. so countering is basically impossible because when you think you should counter it doesnt work.

-even with high graphics..it sometimes takes a moment for people to load in? like ive straight up stared at polygons and slowly see the textures come to life. which is strange because if it was just running slow i could change it to low settings but even then npcs and characters just dont load right.

- Listen i get the game takes place in a neon like city but jesus fucking christ its just a bit too much. i dont have elipsey issues but even for me its a bit much sometimes. from static, to flickering, to strobe lights. ive played some cyberpunk games before or atleast its genre and there are a few dnd like games on steam and even those ones arent just in your face “LOOK WE MADE IT NEONY AND FLASHY AND BRIGHT DID WE DO IT RIGHT?” it just feels like their at a solid 11 and they could bring it down a bit. hell even the elipsey warning is siezure inducing.

#ooc #long post #mun ranting #dolphin #cyberpunk 2077 #spoilers?#just in case.

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silver-wield · 5 years ago

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Final Fantasy 7R review

I finished the game this morning and I already have regrets that there’s nothing left for me to do besides replay and anxiously wait for news of the next installment. I want more. I want to not have finished it yet. I need to know what happens next, not just in the updated story, but with the game mechanics, too. I’m happy the team is taking their time to make the game as good as it deserves to be, but on the other hand I wanna throw a toddler tantrum demanding the rest of my game!

Beware, spoilers.

The bad stuff

To be fair, not a lot from where I’m sitting. I’ve seen people bitch about textures and how the scrap yards don’t look dynamic enough and some stuff is flat, but seriously, why are yall looking at the walls? They’re the least interesting thing about the game and you’re just nitpicking. The graphics overall were amazing and I stopped multiple times just to rotate the camera and take in this massive city we actually get to really explore for the first time ever!

I have to admit a slight disappointment in the amount of space, verbally, that was happening. There were times where I expected characters to make comments and they said nothing. Things were overlooked or just not addressed and it wasn’t even anything plot related, just a point where there could have been dialogue and it didn’t happen. It wasn’t often, but those few times the air was left dead I noticed it. The most notable time was in chapter 17, right after Sephiroth appeared on the gangway. Now, I get them being too shocked to say anything when he’s right in front of them, but after, when they separate and fall into two groups? Nothing? No comment? Tifa, I definitely expected to say something in a shocked tone, but even after they found Cloud again, she didn’t mention it. It was like the moment didn’t happen. I know the other times nobody else but Cloud saw him, but this time they saw him, and he’s linked to Tifa’s past too, so she definitely should’ve had some kind of comment in that empty space.

That was the only major point, but other small ones were when people were talking and one character remains silent. The only one I expect to never speak if he doesn’t have to is Cloud. Because it’s Cloud. Everyone else should have something to say. Like when they climbed the stairs. If you took the stairs - I was all done in from so many fights and just wanted a break - then you got hilarious commentary from Barret, Cloud and Tifa. It showed how close they’ve become. Cloud made a joke! His second one of the game! If you missed the first, it’s likely because you obsessed over him going on about money all the time and saying that’s all he cares about when he’s with Tifa. So, yeah, after being shown how the group can talk to each other and banter I’m hoping Square adds more chatter to the next game. I know some people prefer less chatter, but this is a group of people who are supposed to be shown as friends, so conversation is important.

The other thing that got on my nerves was the mechanics of the weapons upgrade. Unless I missed a shortcut, having to go out of each one and then into the next one instead of just switching over to the next weapon’s skill tree. It took a long time to level things up and I wish there was an option in the auto to just unlock every skill one at a time, so they’d do it on auto without me having to go in there. And the ATB. That got on my nerves. I’m lazy af, so I’d like for action to just pause whenever someone’s atb fills so I can give them a command and then go back to the battle instead of having one eye on all the atbs. It’s probably more classic than Square wants to go with it, but having that as a battle option would be nice and a further throwback to the old style of gameplay.

The good

Everything from chapter 3 onwards. The intro chapters were good, too, but I really just wanted to dig into the game and that didn’t happen until chapter 3. The VAs killed it! Graphics were amazing! The weapon abilities were fun and added something different to the regular gameplay style of just grabbing the next strongest weapon. Side quests were enjoyable and I wish there was more of them, especially a save the citizens for after the plate fell. That really would've hammered home the tragedy.

The story

I’ve seen people - mostly OG fans - bashing the new elements. Sure, the whispers are a weird angle to come at it from, but the explanation for them, that they’re trying to maintain the OG storyline, made for an interesting twist on a 25 year old story. Sephiroth’s early appearance was just something that had to happen, along with a Jenova fight, because, come on, this section of the OG was like 3hrs worth of content and this is 40hrs, so ofc they had to include new things and it matches with the new storyline and I think people need to release their death grip on the OG storyline and enjoy this game for what it is.

I found the ripple effect(?) interesting too. From what we learned, the OG happened in the future. If things hadn’t changed that’s the future everyone was heading towards. Ok, cool, pretty simple.

This timeline had small changes. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie survived!? Or did Wedge finally get shoved off a building at the end, I really couldn’t tell if he bought it that time, but if he did I’m mad cause he was adorable. The plate falling didn’t have as big a casualty number as originally, either. And Hojo almost spilled the beans to Cloud early, but was cut off, and that’s the other thing Cloud ignored in dialogue afterwards, but it’s Cloud, so we’ll give him a security pass for that. The others ignoring his Ptsd induced freak outs isn't cool though and I expect Square to fix that level of callousness towards him from the others.

Those are the only two changes from the OG. Sephiroth showing up early instead of in Nibelheim doesn’t really matter. He’s his usual cryptic asshole self and his goal is unchanged. The team just knows he’s the big bad earlier now and have a solid goal instead of just randomly wandering after they leave Midgar. So, yeah, does Biggs, Wedge and Jessie living make a big difference overall? Will that ripple from them being alive make further changes?

We also saw that Zack survived because of our team, but the Zack in their timeline is still dead. I think we saw it this way because the planet is trying to find a way to prevent being hit with Meteor and ending up with geostigma, so the OG timeline, everything was still bad. Our timeline gives possibilities for a slightly better future and then the timeline behind it - the one with Zack - offers even better odds, not that we’ll see that. That’s the timeline I think Aerith will live through, so that way Square can say Aerith lives, just not in the game we play now.

Shipping

I’m not into wars, so if you love Aerith, cool good for you, I was focused on building affinity with Tifa and Square didn’t disappoint! There were so many romantic moments between them! And damn do they have chemistry! I squeed at such a high pitch the dog next door started howling! All the small touches, longing looks, affection, support, trust and OMGOSH IT WAS JUST THE BEST!!! They were so damn cute!!

I have no idea how the game changes if you focus on Aerith and to be honest I don’t want to. I think that’s what I love about the options for that. You can choose and no one can say your choice isn’t valid.

One thing though, I would like an end to it because it’s 25 years of people arguing and it’s made the entire fandom toxic af and it’s actually the reason I avoid most of the final fantasy discourse because people can’t be civil to each other. Square should finally say once and for all that Cloud/ is canon and the other isn’t, instead of throwing a bone to them and being all “maybe if things were like this”, like no, pull on your big boy pants, Square, man tf up like Barret on a mission, and tell people who is the canon pairing in this damn game so people can just stfu and enjoy playing it without getting flamed.

This is why I want a FF8R because at least there’s no doubt who the couple is in that one.

Smol stuff

I’ve seen complaints about new characters being 1 dimensional, but they’re new characters in a game series that’s a trilogy, so they’re likely gonna appear again. Roche seemed added not just to give Cloud a boss to fight in the bike event, but also to show there’s other SOLDIERs beyond Cloud and Zack and the ones from Crisis Core, which not everyone has played.

Same goes for Leslie. I liked that dude and I’m interested to see him pop up again. His design wasn’t the typical bad guy henchman, easily disposed, thank you very much for playing. He has a story and I’m betting that’s not the last we see of him.

Again, same goes for Cloud’s infantry buddies. I’ve not played CC, but I get they’re from that, so will we see them again at some point? What about other CC characters?

Best Bits

Cloud in a dress. “Nailed it, thank you, moving on.”

Cloud dancing. Boy got moves and I wanna see him dance again!

Cloud/Tifa. Complimenting her like a smooth mutherfucker.

Cloud/Tifa Battle couple. They were my absolute favourite fighting combo and definitely kicked all the ass!

Cloud/Tifa. All the shipping bits, but especially jumping off the train and then trusting her to go kick Corneo’s ass. That’s how you show you know your girl

Wedge. Kitty momma

Biggs death. Damn you, Square, you got me all choked up.

Red. Specifically the bit where he highfived Barret with his tail lool

Barret. “Damn it, Red.”

Reno. Just Reno in general killed me. Love his conscience though and that he’s not a 1 trick pony.

Tifa/Aerith. Had more chemistry than Aerith/Cloud. Yeah, I said it.

Barret and Marlene. Such a good daddy! His expression with her was like a whole different person!

Aerith bitchslapping a would-be rapist with a chair.

Cloud/Tifa/Aerith teamup to threaten Don Corneo’s balls - though I only include Aerith since she was there and she was about as threatening as a cupcake.

Conclusion

I want moar! I really hope the next one comes out soon! It’s not the same as OG, but has the best bits of OG along with something new to bring in a new generation of fans. The alt timeline angle feels fresh and open to possibilities and I’m excited to play this game for what it is, instead of comparing it and demanding for the OG like a crusty whisper lool

#final fantasy 7 remake #ffviir #FF7R review spoilers #FF7R spoilers #FFVIIR game review #I fucking loved this #I'm just sad it's over for now

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iainwrites · 5 years ago

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Solo Likes and Dislikes

Fair warning: there’s stuff in this film that I think is stupid, story wise. There’s casting that I don’t agree with, character wise. There are decisions made that are just stupid, full stop. Of all the Star War movies, this is low on my like list. I might like the prequels more. So there’s your warning.

Likes:

-Doing static exposition instead of the typical crawl is an interesting choice. It shows that it’s a Star Wars movie, but it’s not quite like a Star Wars movie you’ve seen before.

-It looks good. And sounds good. Powell does a good job of giving the movie a Star Wars sound without being beat-for-beat John Williams. There. Some general praise for this movie.

-Yeah, and Donald Glover has charm, charisma and chutzpah to spare. He does Young(er) Lando very well.

The movie does some little things well, too. Hooking up L3 to the Falcon works as a call ahead (3P0 thinks the ship is rude) and as a callback to Legends (where the Falcon used 3 droid brains to help keep it flying right).

-When it comes to flying, dog fights and space chases, I haven’t seen a Star Wars movie go sub par. Solo keeps that record strong.

-See the Maul entry below. Addendum: it was a stroke of genius to co-cast Maul as both Ray Park and Sam Witwer.

Dislikes:

-Alden Ehrenreich. He’s not portraying a Young Han Solo. He’s playing a Young Peter Quill. Yes, Han has a habit of being sarcastic and quippy, but he’s also shrewd and confident. Sure, establishing that this is Young Han might mean that he doesn’t have all those qualities yet, but he should show some beyond the whole “yuck it up as the handsome leading man” thing Ehrenreich does.

-”What’s your last name?” “I don’t have people. I’m alone” “Alright, then. I’ll put Han… Orphan. Wait. Han Loner. Han Single? Fuck, dude. I’m just going to say Han Ford. Ford’s a great fucking name. At least you can spell that shit.”

-The whole movie was made from the same mold as the sequel trilogies, Thor Ragnarok and all other films that focus on blatant and forced “THIS IS THE MOMENT WHERE YOU LAUGH” humor, instead of having moments that are funny naturally. And I can’t stand that whole style of filmmaking. Guardians of the Galaxy did funny action right. OG Star Wars did funny action right. This film does not. It does half-assed, cheap laugh funny and middling action.

-The Maul thing is so stupid on a number of levels. On one, it expects that the average movie goer (including those who will see a big budget blockbuster and will not consume any related material including tie in books, animated television shows, fan made wiki articles, etc) to know WHY he’s on screen. Because the last time any of the average movie goer saw him, he was cut in half and falling down a pit, looking pretty dead. On another, Solo came out in 2018; Clone Wars (The Lost Missions and thought to be the very last season) was finished in 2014. It had no clue that a final, final season was in the cards and Maul had no resolution from 2014 to 2018. Storytelling-wise, it furthered nothing and had no concrete basis in anything; it served only as a “HEY LOOK! YOU THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD, BUT HE’S REALLY NOT!” scene.

Meh

-The actual plot/heist is a solid meh. It’s a middling “okay idea.” It doesn’t rewrite the playbook, but follows the steps accurately enough. “We’re going to a prison. We need a distraction. Liberate the prisoners? Find out some of the prisoners have a connection to one of our main cast?” It’s paint by numbers storytelling.

Random Asides

-Know how Han met Chewbacca originally? Wookies were being used as Imperial slave labour and Han had morals. He was a lieutenant at the time and was ordered to kill Chewie. Han refused, so the commanding officer went “Cool, okay. So now I’m going to work him harder until he dies. And that’s on you.” Han decided that the whole slave thing was bad, so he shot his commanding officer, busted the walking carpet out and hauled tail because his ass would be on the firing line.

-Originally, The Maw was a super cluster of black holes held in place by some serious old school, reality ruining tech. It was nigh impassible, but because of that, it was an incredible safe haven… if you were lucky and skilled enough to fly into some of the safe zones. And not get too close to the sanity destroying creature that tried to get like the Father, Daughter and Son but went a little HP Lovercraft Ancient Ones instead. The Maelstrom change is okay (same idea, different implementation) but the “creature(s) at the centre of the maelstrom” is a little too piratey for me.

All In All

-A very disappointing Star Wars movie. The things not mentioned didn’t even register as being good or bad, they simply were. And that’s the most damning thing about it: it is an unremarkable movie and unnecessary, the very thing any piece of Star Wars media should try to surpass.

#Iain rewatches #Star Wars #Solo A Star Wars Story

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