danceswithswords

[danceswithswords]

realized I haven’t drawn hector despite him being the best fe7 boy

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The only thing I require for this setting is for there to be an episode where a normal human patient to be admitted to the supernatural wing, with doctors trying to figure out what on earth is wrong with him. However the biggest requirement is that the ailment MUST be Lupus.

The urban fantasy show I actually want to see is a hospital drama with a dedicated wing for supernatural illnesses.

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

Someone somewhere out there is having their perception of the world irreparably shattered by the knowledge that magic is real, and at the other side is a team of doctors who have to roll their eyes and pull out Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales because some high school kid tried to go Carrie with a cheap spellbook and turn all the kids at prom into frogs, and the doctors have to wrangle a couple dozen teenagers into admitting if they have a true love who can break the spell.

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you know what's good? 1st form basic dragon pokemon

theyre just so baby. and a lot of them are ready to bite you

some of them aren't ready but not for lack of trying

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So walking along a trail a thought struck me. Did the Toa Metru not know their masks? They seem genuinely shocked (with one exception) about their mask powers, but I feel like some of them would at least have an idea.

Matau: This one is probably the least surprising. Why would he know at all?

Nuju: Not a part of his hyperfixation. He could have found it out, but why would he ever need that information?

Nokama: This is probably the weirdest one to me. She's a teacher actively imparting knowledge. I can't help but imagine using her mask as an example in like kanohi history. Best guess at this point is that it's not her area of expertise, but still seems odd.

Whenua: He knows. That man has probably cataloged the kanohi exhibit of the archives like 3 times. There's no way he doesn't know what a great Ruru looks like. My interpretation however is that he never thought it was useful, so why bring it up. The shock he got when it activated wasn't at its power, but at the actually utility.

Vakama: He knew everyone's mask power frame 1. You don't spend years forging masks and not knowing what a great Huna looks like. Of course though he was too nervous to mention this with the visions and everything.

Onewa: Similar to Nuju in that he could find out what it was if he wanted to, but why would he? Though most importantly he's the one who figures out that Vakama knew. I imagine either on the way to Mata Nui or back. The question gets asked. You're a mask maker, did you know? And from a nervous yes from Vakama, Onewa contemplates, not for the first time, throwing his leader overboard.

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started watching code geass

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"the three dots on the side" call her by her REAL NAME.. Meatballs Menu

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Why can I only read novels when I'm hours away from home next to a lake?

I've owned this copy of The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay and yet I've never been able to dig deep into it, but then I bring it on a family fishing trip and I breeze through 150+ pages

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Nemona, 0.1 seconds upon finding out about the Z-A Battle Royale

[danceswithswords]

what are your opinions on botw compared to totk? Do you think botw is better?

...Eh...it's more nuanced than that.

Did I enjoy BotW more? No, not at all. I was an avid Zelda player BEFORE BotW came out. My first and favorite game was Twilight Princess, so that's the standard of fun I tend to hold things to.

Let's start with enemy diversity.

This is the entirety of the map in Twilight Princess. A lot smaller than BotW, sure, but:

In Faron Woods, it's crawling with Bokoblins and Deku Babas and Skulltulas.

Once you leave the woods, though, no more giant spiders. The occasional bloodthirsty plant, sure, but now you've got things like Kargaroks and Bombskits in the mix.

Then this whole area lacks Bokoblins, but instead has Bulblins, and adds in Leevers.

The desert region has Moldworms. The ice region has ghostly Wolfos. You can only find Lizalfos in the northern half of the region, and they have variants that change how their combat works significantly.

Look at this guy! He's a pain in the ass and I hate him.

In comparison, Breath of the Wild has...

...Bokoblin territory.

There's some variety in enemy type. There are Lizalfos, and Moblins, and Octoroks. But what's region specific? The only real change between areas is "fire Lizalfos in Eldin, ice Lizalfos in Hebra." You don't get to see new enemies by going to faraway corners of the map. You don't have to learn new tactics to kill any of them.

I do think they did good with the inclusion of overworld minibosses. Killing Lynels was one of my favorite pastimes. With the right bow and a large enough stamina wheel, I could kill one before I hit the ground, and that was FUN relative to their challenge. But the rest of the world swiftly grew boring.

Then there's your reward for exploring. In BotW, it's really only ever one of two things.

Shrines and Koroks.

It all feels very...copy-paste, if you know what I mean. Sure, you could shoot a bunch of flying targets or follow a flower around, but the dialogue is exactly the same, and the reward is a chip of the price towards an extra inventory slot.

An inventory slot that gets more expensive, mind you.

The shrines are a little less repetitive; each one DOES have its own unique puzzle. But you know what the reward is from the get-go, so if you don't particularly like the puzzle, it's already starting not to feel worth it.

Meanwhile, in Twilight Princess, you want a piece of heart (which is effectively what the spirit orbs are)?

Snag it with a fishing rod!

Land at the top tier of a minigame with other rewards!

Be an absolute gremlin and climb on the dungeon's chandelier!

Not a whole ordeal that may or may not be fun. A dangling treat. "Hey, there's a treasure chest up here. Don't you want to find out what it is?" Because any of these might have been a silver rupee instead.

And that's not even talking about the hidden treasures. You can get an extra bottle (potion slot) by fishing in the right spot. You can find a heart piece by lighting up two abandoned lanterns in the woods. There are dig spots that lead to rooms full of enemies that rain money when you clear them out.

Meanwhile...go find a spirit orb. Collect another 20 korok seeds and get back to me.

I despise monotony, and if you explore as much of Breath of the Wild as it allows you to, that's what it becomes. Monotonous.

Tears of the Kingdom, for the most part, fixed that for me. The sky became empty and repetitive fast, sure, but the other two layers made up for it. Yiga camps are quick stealth-combat puzzles with unique rewards. The Depths don't show their hand immediately, and while they do get samey, there's enough danger that that feeling gets staved off for awhile; plus, the mirroring of the world above with the lightroots being the bottoms of the shrines made lighting the whole place up have an additional goal. The puzzle became more about "find the shrine" than "solve the shrine."

The shrines had multiple solutions, too. I did like that. It made being clever about them fun, rather than being told "this is what you need to do, now go carry an ice block through three waves of fire."

I can only find Froxes underground. I can only find constructs near Zonai ruins. Like-Likes are cave creatures, and bomb flowers only grow out of sunlight, so it's worth venturing in.

So I enjoyed TotK more than BotW, yes.

HOWEVER

BotW is a more cohesive and complete experience than TotK.

Making a sequel to a game is tricky to pull off. And this is the first REAL direct sequel the Zelda franchise has seen.

Look at all the other sequels:

Legend of Zelda -> Adventure of Link: New map

Ocarina of Time -> Majora's Mask: New world

Ocarina of Time -> Wind Waker: New map that might as well be a new world

Wind Waker -> Phantom Hourglass: New map that IS a new world

Phantom Hourglass -> Spirit Tracks: New map AND new world

Oracle of Seasons -> Oracle of Ages: New map AND new world

A Link to the Past -> A Link Between Worlds: 100 years later, not the same characters

Minish Cap -> Four Swords -> Four Swords Adventures: New characters, new maps. Not the same

This is the first time Nintendo has decided to make a direct sequel happen on the same exact map. And they chose to do so with their first nonlinear open world game.

That's a tricky thing to pull off in the best of circumstances. Because you have to make an experience that feels continuous with both your friend that did the bare minimum of plot in order to beat Calamity Ganon AND the one that did 100% of the game and built Tarrey Town from the ground up.

The ideal way to do that would be to make a fluctuating world state. You know how the stables read your save data to load in your horses from BotW?

The Witcher games do that for the entire game. If I killed someone in TW2, he won't show up in TW3. If I made a choice that decided victory for one group, I get to see the consequences of that. If I romanced one and then chose the other, my ex gets salty about it, but she still has the flower I gave her.

The problem with that is that it takes more work. You have to plan for the eventuality in which Tarrey Town either exists or doesn't, so you have to alter your quest plans around that. Did you free the Rito's skies from Vah Medoh? Did you save that house from demolition to make it your own? It about doubles your workload.

But the shortcut route they wound up taking is...not great, either. You COULD avoid all the fluctuation by making the "true ending," where Link did 100% of the work, canon. Which is, visually, what they wound up doing. Tarrey Town exists. The Divine Beasts stopped rampaging. You had a house. All your hearts and stamina wheels are maxed out. Everyone who could be helped WAS helped.

But they didn't commit to that, so they made all those changes happen without really acknowledging Link as the source. So what we wind up with is a dissonance between world and people. They WANTED a complete Hyrule, but they didn't want to alienate returning players that might not have made those choices, so they're all sourceless changes. Half of Hyrule can't recognize Link's face. Most everything you can do to impact these places in BotW is handwaved into obscurity.

It sucks.

There's also the fact that the Zelda approach to lore is "we're going to do something so insane that it'll make a fantastic story and a unique experience." Which is good! But if you're reusing a map and characters, you have to be a lot more careful with it. You know the Hyrule Historia timeline? The one that's full of contradictions?

This thing?

It tries to weave threads through unrelated things. It half-succeeds, because it can lean on the benefit of "we have no idea how much time has passed between these, of course things have changed." How do you reconcile the vastly different environments between A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time, when you've got Majora's Mask and Wind Waker taking up the sequel spots? Simple, you put it behind a timeline split.

Eras do a LOT of heavy lifting for inconsistencies.

But the same characters? The same map? Now, instead of all your haphazardly tied things lending to the mystery of "how could this have happened? We'll leave that to you," we get retcon, after retcon, after retcon.

Where are the Sheikah shrines? What happened to the Guardians? What's up with Zelda's character not acknowledging her past insecurities?

It's been six years in-universe. That's not enough time to convince your players the "oh, it just changed" angle is realistic.

So, in short:

I enjoyed TotK vastly more than BotW. But BotW knew what it wanted to achieve and had a cohesive story, and TotK felt much more clumsy due to the limitations it placed on itself.

[danceswithswords]

Straight guys who use tumblr are the funniest people ever literally how did you end up here

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Finally a Bionicle animation. I drew a vague concept of this back in 2011. Took a while to get it done.

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I've had this idea stuck in my head all day

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The entire objectum tag is just computers. WHERE are the swords.

(images are from pinterest dm for removal if it's yours)