balketh

[balketh]

my actual thoughts on COE33 so far

I literally just walked into the Gestral village for the first time. Lune and Maelle in party. I know fuck all about the plot, but there might still be a spoiler or two for anyone wanting to go in COLD.

But, pre-spoilers? It's good, not great? Like 7/10, maybe 8/10 if the graphics weren't hot slop on my ancient 1070 Ti (and if they could eliminate the fucking upscale smearing in all fucking UE5 games, that'd be greaaaaat.) At least it runs above 30FPS.

Thing is, I suppose, is that I've seen all of this before. In better forms, at more impressionable times in my life than, well, 33. Yes. I am the exact audience age for this game.

It's Xenoblade Chronicles 1 but with Paintings instead of Robots, dressed in a Final Fantasy 16 looking engine, but Paper Mario gameplay - right down to the equippable badges and everything.

Yes, I'm only up to the Gestral village. Yes, I've guessed - correctly - several of the major plot twists of the game (hence correctly comparirng it to Xenoblade Chronicles 1). I already know who I'm backing when shit hits the fan (Maelle, because backing the 'kid' in anything French is almost always the correct way to go.)

The characters take time to get going, and I'm slowly becoming endeared to them, but not at the pace I think the game wants me to be before they start getting picked off one by one, which is obviously what's going to happen.

The combat is trivial. Even on the higher difficulty, it's basically identical to Paper Mario; at any level, no boss is insurmountable so long as you learn the attack pattern and dodge accordingly. Having dodge be a more lenient and less rewarding parry is very clever, but it only cements, for me, the idea that the combat is just a fun minigame to play between story beats.

And, given how linear the game is - exactly like, say, Final Fantasy 7, or almost any other oldschool JRPG - that's perfectly fine. In my mind, I could with pixel perfect accuracy, envision this game in 2D, top down, on the SNES, with all the dialogue in text boxes, and it's almost as effective.

Also, the card game is called Double Dyad? An hommage to the Final Fantasy 14 card game Triple Triad? Well. I'll be. How unexpected. /s.

There's something to be said for the quality of the expressions of the character models though. While not super life-like, I've rarely seen such good eyebrow, eyelid, and upper-cheek emoting in video games.

The thousand yard stare that 20-something year old Maelle gives is fucking haunting. The confusion and anxiety that Robert Pattinson Gustave experiences feels palpable. Lune smiles a bit... Broadly... For someone that's portrayed as reserved and melancholic, but I chalk that up to whoever her facial capture actress was.

I suppose one of the main things that the game has done well, is a very, very basic thing.

Establish a set of questions about the setting before embarking on the adventure - some answered, some unanswered. What are the stakes, who is the villain, who are the heroes, etcc.

Then, on first contact with the enemy, unwind every single answered question by having the entire endeavour go to absolute shit, and put the answers behind a presently insurmountable force that causes a lot of trauma to the characters.

I.E. Xenoblade Chronicles. Final Fantasy 7. Most World of Warcraft expansions.

It's a very standard thing. But if done with any kind of skill, it's intriguing.

And, so far, at the very least, Clair Obscur is intriguing, and not making it difficult to indulge in that curiosity.

It's not even close to Game of the Year for me, and I don't even have another game in mind yet (maybe Death Stranding 2, but we'll see), but it's decent so far. I don't think the plot revelations are going to change that, either, unless they pull the rug out from under me so hard I do a backflip and land on my feet.

[balketh]

look im gonna be one of those snobs. i'm gonna say it. (no spoilers in any part of this post.)

Clair Obscur with original French VO and subs is objectively the correct choice for the best game experience, and it's to do with cultural translation, not voice acting skill or quality.

(excluding, of course, accessibility-related reasons for using english VO - not having to read subtitles/etc.)

It's just... Better, and it's not the lipsyncing. It's not even just things like little british children saying "MADAME" unironically, or still using untranslated, non-loan-word, entirely French words like 'Gommage' - because it wouldn't hit the same if they just called it Erasure/Scouring, would it? That's what Gommage means: to Erase/Scour/Rub Out.

"Ah, today is the day of my Scouring."

"Heavy weighs the heart, the anniversary of my mother's Rubbing Out."

"No one survives the Erasure!"

It just doesn't hit the same, at all, because the English words have different connotations in English literature, to English audiences.

It's because it's bad cultural translation.

French societal culture - not just music or aesthetic, but how French people think about and relate to each other in their lives - does not map one-to-one to English-speaking-Western-Culture. Not just idioms, but emotions.

The entire game is a musing treatise on the French cultural perception of death, age, sacrifice, youth, revolution, and more. And how any English-lang-primary culture views these topics, beyond a shadow of a doubt, differs greatly to how French culture expresses these topics.

Gustave, I can buy in English - he's literally just... Robert Pattinson. It took swapping to French for me to see him as anything but just Robert Pattinson.

But Maelle? Maelle is a very different character in French. The unique mix of youthful wonder about the fairytales of the world, and the grim, thousand yard determination of a young 20-something girl who grew up around the equivalent of guillotines and disease and war taking lives all around her.

Absolutely NO shade to Jennifer English, but she in no way captures the vibe. Not at all.

It's a French game. Play it in French. I promise you. Shit hits so much harder in French.

[balketh]

Godship Sivran's Agony Cannon somehow sounds even more cataclysmic than this in my head:

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With how much people have been chirping about KSBD today, I thought there were more pages up than what I'd read almost a week ago, but nah just seems like folks catching up.

Absolutely DYING to see what the result of Maya's cut is. it's already fully split the ship's beam.

So very keen to see Allison finally cut loose and fight.

REACH HEAVEN THROUGH VIOLENCE

[balketh]

it is my name day! yiayia made baklava to celebrate! please take one.

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club minnow

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scibs

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Except for, and I think only for, those handy DIY crafter types that see a stack of untouched pallets in a back lot or down an alley and don't rightfully fear them.

They never learn. They can't learn. The siren song of a stack of free, unwarped, heat-treated pallets is insidious. The yearning desire to justify the timber jointer they bought two years ago taking up space in their metro-burb one-car garage. The velvety allure of amateur cabinetry. Knowing what a pantorouter is. It's like a pile of free dirt to them.

For a Nosferatu? The dinner bell never stops ringing at Château de Grabat.

The stealth camper guys are getting so creative. I don't care how practical this is I love it just conceptually. This guy looked at all those vans disguised as worker trucks and went "I can do something way more interesting".

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Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

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If/When Anduin gets his Light powers back, Blizzard better not miss the opportunity to have him Say The Line, musical sting and all.

Faerin: "Don't you see, Anduin?... All you need to do is..." Anduin:

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Children please stop calling the slightest hint of sexual desire “gooning” I’m going to strangle all of you

[balketh]

Had The Most Awesome Dream Last Night

I was some kinda robot, ala Mega Man, but my armour was red-styled (not Zero) (maybe a bit like that red Mournhold armour from Morrowind?). First-person dream. I was with others in this kind of superhero fighting tournament, and even up to the night before the big match, I was still working out my powers.

But most of the dream was me figuring it out. I could already fly (in-built rocket boots). No effort flying, either. Usually it's hard, or takes focus, but no, I could just jet around and hover and turbo boost, no issue.

The coolest part was my powers, it seems. I could, at the tip of each finger, will a small ball of energy into existence. At first, it had a base element of just 'energy', and a base size of about a golf ball. But with a lot of active concentration, I could will it to be different 'elements' - but not strictly 'earth/fire/wind/water'.

Anything that could feasibly fit into the definition of an element seemed to work. Ice, electricity, lightning was its own separate thing (persistent crackling of electricity vs sudden violence of lightning.) I could also increase their size by exhaling(?) or focusing really hard, and then launch them by flinging my hand all cool-like. They'd fly in a straight line, no arcing.

I also figured out I could combine them by just bringing my fingers together in a flat blade, like making a scissor motion with two fingers brought two orbs together into one. This not only combined the elements, but also made the base orb bigger, so it had a bigger and more potent effect.

So, bringing water and earth together, I could mud up a surface. Water and electricity made a dangerous puddle.

I was in some kind of pre-tournament celebration at my old tae kwon do hall (which was the interior of a large, old church building refitted to be a training hall). Never got to the match b/c I was waking up, but I flew around and practiced lots of different element combinations. Spent quite a while trying to figure out how to charge up a huge orb into a beam attack (kamehameha), but it never seemed to work, though throwing a huge orb of power at something and watching it explode was cool as heck.

The last thing I tried was weird as fuck: I tried 'all' as an element on two fingers, combined them, and dropped them in front of me.

It made like... You know the Green Sun? Of course you do. It made a Pink Green Sun. Maybe the size of a beach ball, just hovering off the ground. Didn't do much before disappearing, but I also didn't touch it, so. It was cool as hell.

At some point (how I figured out I was a robot?) I was 'bleeding', leaving a trail of oil as I flew about. Turns out it wasn't my 'blood', but, hugely embarrasingly, indications of arousal. This was communicated to me by the team hottie who dragged me off to the bathroom to 'help with the bleed', and schlorped it outta me.

Hell of a dream. Been a LONG time since I've had a superpower dream that was actually complex and produced interesting results. I've upgraded from struggling to fly to producing powers.

They called me 'Timewalker'. I think because my armour was medieval styled. Cool as hell, regardless.

[balketh]

Tales of the Underworld isn't good.

Spoilers below.

They gave Cad Bane a son that he doesn't kill and that doesn't come up again in the rest of his life up to and including his death.

They brought back Ventress and saddled her with an annoying fucking kid Jedi, for no reason.

They gave Bane his accent without bothering to explain why he has a fucking accent when he comes from Star Wars Queens. Made even weirder by the fact that his childhood street rat turned cop friend does not have the fucking accent. Nor does anyone in Bane's crew.

They didn't cover what makes Bane actually interesting. They just showed that the chip on his shoulder is inherent. I want to know how he got so skilled. But between episodes 4 and 5, when he ages up from kid to young adult, he's already got those skills and that cold attitude.

The Cad Bane I know would have shot his child son dead, alongside his childhood friend, and walked away without being bothered about any of it. Because it was a loose end, and he fucking knows better.

Fucking stupid.

For 15 minute episodes, they sure wasted a LOT of fucking time on unimportant shit, and SPED through the important shit. Characters make remarkably stupid decisions constantly. It's... It's not fun.

Please don't do this format again, Filoni. Go back to making full series - that's what you were best at. This is probably the worst animated thing I think Filoni has made - and it's fine. It's passable.

But it's not good. And everything else he's made has been good.

I don't like it.

[balketh]

BJ has a very clear understanding of Objectives unfortunately he lacks that level of comprehension when it comes to tactics methods procedures etc. Thus: his Behaviors.

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"A society that separates its lore masters from its horny posters will have its headcanons written by prudes and its erotic fanfic by fools."

[balketh]

Hey you know how viewing the aurbis from it's side reveals it as a tower in the shape of the name of god which is " | " i hope? Well my theory is that it doesn't take into account alternative universes, but it still correct, just like every number is every number when you divide by zero, and thus the name of god could be any combination of shapes of the various universes, for example " | |I || |_ ".

We can only see the tower as | when we see ourselves as-and-in the tower, the |, the godhead. We can only do that, when we have love for all, including ourselves, for all our faults. We can only achieve that, when we grieve the Loss of the self-made self, when we sever without ever touching hilt or blade.

Love is the spear, Loss is the sword-not-held. No matter from which side they are viewed, in their totality, they are the same thing: |

Silly thing.

For I have crushed a world with my left hand, but in my right hand is how it could have won against me.

Like Love,

Loss is under my will only.