#this game is flawless

[eggsploded]

heiress eternal

[giselles-dumping-hat]

So Act 3 is going great,

[kael-writ]

@samreich

[halequin]

The Shorekeeper — The Beginning of our Story "The beginning... of our story. I understand now, I exist because of you."

[whipbogard]

Just finished Gotham Knights

Many thoughts but here's a quick doodle of the bestest boy ever ❤

[citrinekay]

Wi Hajun for Netflix Korea's Squid Game Season 3 Promo Shoot

[titanomancy]

The big show is, of course, Emperor's Children getting a full reveal including special edition launch box and cross-promotional tie-in novel. My original guess had been summer before they just full on exposed Fulgrum for Christmas,

The new Tormentors and Infractors (Noise Marines with bolters or pistol/close combat weapon, respectively) do a fantastic job of filling a gap in the range that Emperor's Children (or other Slaanesh marked Chaos Space Marine armies) have long suffered, that being a suitably degenerate form of regular infantry. Yes, you can just paint a Legionnaire pink but is that really excessive enough?

The new Noise Marines, themselves, are a home run. There are a ton of new details evocative of actual musical instruments that mesh nicely with the existing, distinctive silhouettes of the blastmaster and sonic disruptor.

And new to the range are the Flawless Blades, evoking much more of that freaky-deaky cenobite self-mutilation aesthetic that's always undergirded the Slaaneshi design brief but never really manifested in the miniatures to date. These are ugly dudes, body and soul, and that's beautiful.

The multipart Lord Exultant looks to offer a fair amount of flexibility for a modern character model, and the studio examples do a great job of working within a single pose to make it look like three completely different figures. Some thought clearly went into that cape.

But if you really want to go loud, you know you're going to want to take the Lord Kakophonist. What an absolute banger of a model, just a completely wild throwback to that Rogue Trader vibe. I'm curious to see how the kit actually breaks down, if he's only got those screamer pistols or if there's another option on the sprue.

And last of all, Lucius. Disgusting, traitorous, degenerate Lucius. Slaanesh's favorite miscreant. He's certainly no prettier than he's been, but what a glow-up. It really makes you wonder who the hell greenlit Coteaz.

Overall, great showing. Extremely satisfied with the range, ten out of ten, no notes.

[allthe-starss]

amanda and arasha imitating angela and it being 100% accurate. they did this for me and my triple a heart

[lulu2992]

This post is long overdue, but because I promised exactly seven years ago today that I would talk about this “later”, I want to finally do it!

So, prior to annoying everyone here about the Far Cry series, mostly Far Cry 5, and complaining about its nightmarishly-inconsistent lore, I used to annoy everyone with Final Fantasy XV and its... surprinsingly-not-that-inconsistent story. It’s not perfect, of course, and I’m sure many people could tell you more about it and its flaws better than I can, but considering it was told in the span of at least three years across four versions of the main game (which was updated several times to add more cutscenes and information), four DLC episodes, two films, two books, one animated series, one multiplayer expansion, as well as a few more spin-off games, demos, and trailers (not all of them canon), I still think it’s impressively coherent and that things could have been way worse.

Despite having never played this game myself (I don’t even know if I’ve ever said that), I fell in love with it, and more specifically with a character named Ardyn Izunia, a charismatic antagonist with a tragic past. Yes, I have a type.

Anyway, one thing I loved to complain about at the time was the English localization of the game. Although it’s far from being terrible, it slightly differs from the original Japanese version, and while some changes are appropriate and make sense (a localization isn’t meant to be a literal translation, after all), others are... questionable. The English version also had the luxury of having its own facial animations, which means the team didn’t even have to worry about being 100% faithful to the character’s original lip movements and emotions. And they weren’t.

Some of the choices that were made regarding Ardyn in particular are still upsetting to me. The way he talks about his name is unclear? People get confused. A sentence he finishes in Japanese gets interrupted in English for no apparent reason? That creates a non-existent mystery. A frown is turned upside-down? That erases a rare and therefore important angry reaction. He doesn’t chuckle at a key moment? That changes the tone of the scene and his feelings on the whole situation…

So, on March 19th, 2018, I said I wanted to talk about “when he sounds mocking and unimpressed instead of surprised and offended in the Pocket Edition”, so this is what I’m going to do, at long last. The mobile version of FFXV is interesting because it contains a few lines that were not in the original game and never included in the other editions (unless that’s changed; it’s been a while since I’ve studied this game). Those lines are exchanged between Noctis and Ardyn during their final battle.

From what I’ve seen and tried to translate thanks to online tools (I still don’t speak Japanese), the English conversation is nearly identical to the original Japanese version, but there’s one thing Ardyn says, and especially how he says it, that is very different to me.

When Noctis asserts he will save him from the darkness, in English, Ardyn replies, “Will you?” in a rather derisive and dismissive tone. In Japanese, though, he replies, “何?” (“What?”), and it seems Noctis’ words actually affect him. You can hear both versions below. Focus on Ardyn’s tone:

Original videos: English - Japanese

To me, the way he replies in English suggests he doesn’t take Noctis seriously at all. It’s like he’s saying, “Aw, that’s cute; as if you could do that”. In Japanese, however, I think he sounds shocked, like he can’t believe someone would genuinely want to help him despite everything he’s done and the monster he has become.

His reaction reminds me of the moment Lunafreya softly tells him he will eventually know peace… and he just slaps her. I could never decide exactly why he did it. I don’t know if it’s because he feels insulted and belittled by her words or if, on the contrary, he can’t stand the fact she’s showing compassion, not to mention right after he’s just mortally stabbed her. Does her kindness hurt him because he believes he doesn’t deserve it? Does she remind him of the man he used to be, the selfless, naive healer she somehow managed to still see, deep inside of him, despite the many layers of darkness he’s spent ages burying himself under?

In any case, it seems Ardyn is supposed to react strongly and be thrown off balance when someone believes he can and deserves to be saved, so what I wanted to say in 2018 is that I thought, and still think, that it’s a shame the English version of his line in the Pocket Edition doesn’t reflect that.

[dreamingofthewild]

I had to make it brief to fit the sign.

Can we normalise critiquing the media we consume and being open to other people's perspectives?

[thedreamerstoryteller]

[roguerambles]

Anyway, I love Dragon Age the Veilguard--

Don't get me wrong, it's not flawless. But I definitely think the people insisting its god awful are being way, way too harsh. And considering the troubled 10 year long production and the game being rebooted like what, 3 times? I'm happy with the end result.

I think once the dust has settled a bit Veilguard will benefit from the "Dragon Age 2" effect - a lot of people hated DA2 when it first came out for not being like Origins, but after a while looked back and appreciated the game's strengths more.

I love the companions, I love the environments, I love the Solas storyline (and this is coming from someone who was kinda meh on him in Inquisition) Act 3 ripped my heart out in the best way possible. I love how the game answers a lot of lore questions while also setting up some interesting new developments (the Blight? The Qunari? Those from Across the Sea? Very interested to see where that goes in the future)

Seeing some of the cut content I'm a little disappointed at some of what we lost along the way (although I'd wager that's more EA's interference than a choice on Bioware's part) and some of the present day lore could have been better explained (the explanation for the Antaam breaking away from the Qun should not have been regulated to a Codex entry) but overall I'm very excited to see what the future holds for Dragon Age.

Now excuse me, I'm off to begin another Veilguard playthrough--

[rocketbirdie]

So I've never played FFVII, why does everyone hate the snowboarding minigame? Is it really so hard?

TERRIBLE controls. As in, I have no clue how the devs managed to make it feel that impressively bad to play. it's extremely oversensitive and way too easy to crash into things and kill all of your momentum. Personally i love it and i think more games should have little inconsequential sections with garbage controls. it builds character

[cleolinda]

Y'all. I learned how to use OBS all mine own self. I learned how to record gameplay WITH my voice over it even though every single control every step of the way was Hard and Unwilling to Work and it took me two hours of dogged fiddling but I DID IT and now I am WRUNG OUT. I am going to go take a victory nap and then deal with my first boss battle tomorrow.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[funishment-time]

love all the Kodaka Detectives fanart i see, always a little saddened to remember no one played or cared about Rain Code because Yuma is always suspiciously left out