meglosthegreat

[meglosthegreat]

I've been addicted to Cyberpunk's photo mode lately, in particular taking un-posed shots of the random NPCs in this game. Thought I'd share some of my favourites so far!

Feel free to download these for personal use such as wallpapers, etc. but please do not repost without credit!

[meglosthegreat]

I think it’s somewhat telling that part of making Solas appear more ‘villainous’ included making him into a more traditionally masculine character. He’s supposedly ageless, yet the softness of his face has been chiseled away, he’s physically larger/more beefy (except for his poor magnifacent ass, RIP) and dressed in all black leather with not a scrap of his iconic fur because oooooh scary man in leather is scary just look at his biker gloves. Can’t put anything remotely fluffy on him or people might not be tempted to think he has feelings or whatever.

And yet, of all things they could have changed, they left the scar above his brow, which I’ll kindly remind you is the physical, visible trace left behind from the slave markings once branded onto his face by a woman he respected, loved, and trusted with all he had. A woman who, as is now apparent, rendered those marks of ownership in the shape of his old self. Every time he saw his own refection he saw an abrupt and unflinching reminder of the peace, happiness, and sense of identity he sacrificed for the very woman who lied to him, branded him, and used him as a tool of war.

Of all things to leave in the game, one that that spends the entirety of its runtime carefully sidestepping the fact that the abolitionist war veteran they were trying to convince everyone was some evil mastermind, they left in the visual reminder that he had himself been a slave, and that his slave master was a woman they decided needed to have all ambiguity and nuance stripped from her in the interest of putting her on a pedestal like a delicate vase that mustn’t be fussed with. Because even in all their incompetence, surely they realized how fucked up that was on at least sone level. Surely.

Of all the details they could have adjusted and revised about his design, they kept the one detail that punches a massive hole in the entirety of their half baked story and its Sesame Street sense of morality. And that detail is quite literally staring you in the face through the entire game.

[meglosthegreat]

Chapter 3 is here!

Sometimes you get to rewatching a beloved piece of childhood media and realize there's a deeply compelling pairing buried in there that you hadn't given much thought to before. And then you look up this pairing, and find that hardly any fics exist on it, and that there's a canon book that covers the specific time period you're thinking of but seems to be not really all that good, and you think to yourself "well if someone's gotta do it, it may as well be me..."

Anyway, I would like to present my brainrot of the past couple months: What exactly happened between Cutler Beckett and Jack Sparrow?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66140125

“And what of you, Mr. Sparrow?” Beckett set his empty glass down. “What do you desire, at the end of all this?” Sparrow downed his third—or perhaps fourth—drink. “Me? I’m a simple man. Ship’s deck beneath my feet, bottle of rum in me hand, pair of buxom wenches at my side—call me satisfied.” Beckett leaned forward. “Is that so?” The captain paused in the midst of pouring his next glass. “’Spose I could go for a few barrels of rum, maybe three or four wenches...” “Why stop there, Jack? Why settle for a ship when you could have the whole fleet?” Sparrow finally met his eyes. “I admit, I do like the sound of that.” -- When Cutler Beckett finds himself in need of a new captain, there is one promising candidate within his sights. But Jack Sparrow's ambition rivals only his own, and the two find their fates more closely intertwined than either could have possibly imagined...

This is a 5-chapter fic which will update every Monday until the end of June!

[meglosthegreat]

so we have confirmation that veilguard was made in a year and a half. that's understandably such a time crunch and must have put unimaginable stress on the dev team, especially with the mass effect team coming in partway through. I do have empathy for the writers. no one deserves to lose their job at a time like this, especially not after such a roller coaster of a development cycle and after working on this series for so many years.

however.

obsidian made kotor 2, a game praised for its writing and many fans' favorite of the pair, in 14 months. they then proceeded to make fallout: new vegas, again praised for its writing and hailed as a shining example of video game storytelling, in 18 months. a lot of content was ultimately cut from both of these games, but in kotor's case, it was lovingly added back in by fans over the years despite not being especially easy to mod because the fans were so passionate about what they already had that they wanted to enhance it. these games are both known to be kinda janky as well. but the games at their core have satisfying stories, characters, and an incredible overall narrative that feels satisfying and fits with their respective universes, maintains respect for the established lore and characters, and is tonally consistent with the atmosphere and themes of previous games. hell, dragon age 2 was also made in about the same time frame based on what I could find, and as much as the assets were reused there and it could be occasionally glitchy, it remains one of the best bioware narratives with some of their most memorable characters, and it accomplished that while both keeping to the lore and vibe of the dragon age series AND expanding it into new territory.

I am aware that there are differences like engines, era, expectations, pushes from management, etc, but I'm mostly focusing on the writing and the narrative team's priorities. I wouldn't care if they reused assets to save time and money. I wouldn't care if a couple side quests had to go, or some character arcs were a little less polished, or some side characters were cut entirely. honestly I would have preferred it if some of the characters WERE cut entirely. if you're just going to spit on all of her character development, don't bring morrigan back. cut some of that banter in the lighthouse and let me talk to my companions properly. cut that goddamn arena and put those resources toward fleshing out the lords of fortune. even if the rest of the team wanted that entire faction cut so they could focus on other things, cut the fucking faction.

I will never apologize for rightfully criticizing the choices the writers made while making this game. the game talks to you - both you as the player AND you as the character - like you're stupid. repeating things over and over again just to make sure you Really Get It, dumbing down so many aspects of its own lore, reducing any kind of conflict to therapy speak or an HR meeting, etc. rook has no characterization to speak of and their dialogue and tone is wildly inconsistent depending on which npc you're speaking to at the time. why is rook clever enough to do playful, flirty hunter/prey banter with davrin but also too awkward to properly flirt with harding? the one canonically nonbinary neurodivergent companion frequently expresses themselves by growling and roaring and their individuality and competency are repeatedly undermined by their own writer's narrative decisions and banter. the game disregards its own lore and at times straight up contradicts itself. it's pretty, but lacks substance, and fails to live up to the standards a lot of us had for a dragon age game.

I won't pretend I know everything that went on behind the scenes but I think a year and a half is more than enough time to write a better narrative than what we got, even with some pushback from another dev team. I've seen countless thinkpieces by fans who have come up with solutions for plot holes and fixes for the overall narrative, and these are people who came up with this stuff in a matter of a few days or weeks, or sometimes just a few hours. you can't blame me for thinking veteran bioware writers - who SHOULD know their own lore by now - could have come up with something better than this in that amount of time, regardless of the limitations. choices were made and things were prioritized that shouldn't have been. I do not forgive the writers, EA, or bioware execs for this, and I will continue to criticize the responsible parties for the product we were sold, which includes criticizing the writers for shoddy work.

tl;dr: I don't believe the writing team made the best of the time they had and I fault them for that. but maybe that's on me for hoping that a game with its narrative led by weekes and epler would have actually been good in the first place.

[meglosthegreat]

the thinggggg about Dragon Age. is that while i do believe almost all the writers have only ever had good intentions there's no escaping that the worldbuilding has always had underlying threads of racism/colonialism, just because at the end of the day. it's created by mostly white people from North America. that's just stuff that is going to come through in the stories they choose to tell and tropes they are gonna follow. but in the first 3 games, these things (like islamophobia and depictions of the Qun, or the parallels between the Dalish and indigenous/Jewish/Romani people, or the Circles and slavery, etc etc etc) were also surrounded by incredibly complex characters who in turn either refute or emphasize different aspects of those assumptions. In Origins we hear about the Qun in codex entries and from people who only have second/third/fourthhand knowledge of it, but then you can recruit Sten, our window into how it's seen from the inside. And rather than a giant bloodlust barbarian, the huge warrior is the most disciplined and reserved member of team, with an enduring appreciation for art and a secret love of sweets.

the worldbuilding always felt deep because just like real life, you see people who have all manner of opinions about things that are shaped by their own experiences with them. Vivienne's reaction to life in the Circle compared to Anders. Merrill's experience with the Dalish vs Minaeve's. On some level, all of the lore inconsistencies we get in the games are softened by the fact that they are plausibly influenced by the perspective of who we are getting the information from, and there were almost always other characters expressing different viewpoints--not always with the same narrative weight behind them, but in a way, that made it almost feel more realistic. the frankly largely unbacked fear of mages leading to them being imprisoned for life in towers, there being no perfect option for who will rule Orlais because everyone involved is at least somewhat corrupt, etc--all of this reminds me of the real world. I do in fact disagree with many things going on large scale in my country, but feel powerless to stop them as an individual. I don't always like my options for who i have to vote for in elections.

when a narrative takes itself seriously, and is willing to engage with heavy topics like the cost of war, should the individual be prioritized over the masses, how can different cultures with different values meet when they fear each other--the biases within the narrative are easier to take as part of the world overall even if it's not what the writers intended. I do not mean that this makes them in any way excusable. In some ways, it's worse, because when done unintentionally they usually hide darker implications than the creators ever intend. But it DOES mean they do not detract as starkly from the rest of the narrative. Often, in the dialogue options, many even become "in-world" viewpoints your character can respond to and in engage with. Outside of the game, they're another thing that people can discuss and compare to real world events and history. like, why DOES Sten find sugar such a novelty, and what might that say about the writer's assumptions about the cultures the Qun is based on?? these are debates we have been having since Origins came out. not every fan chooses to engage with it but these threads have always been part of the larger discussion around the games.

what was different about Veilguard is that the unintentional centrism, colonialism, and racism remained part of the world when the writing otherwise attempted to strip out all of the darker complexities that were put in on purpose. the creators told us "this will be a brighter, happier, more hopeful game--no more huge focus on slavery and inevitable corruption and religious differences!" so sure the game doesn't show the specific mistreatment of elven slaves in Tevinter, or the Crows buying orphans to run through the murder gauntlet. But it does show the Qunari reduced to crazed soldiers who only follow orders and don't think for themselves. The elves are framed as responsible and even deserving of their own downfall. Bringing up these criticisms is just carrying on the larger conversation that has always existed, it's simply that there is barely any in-world way to hide it anymore. to me, this is what made playing the game so jarring and tonally inconsistent. the framing of "hurray! it's all hopeful now!" paired with what colonialism/centrism/etc that remains, means those things feel like an intentional statement now instead.

and frankly: learning about the work conditions at Bioware/EA, the upheavals during game development, their massive levels of burnout--only REINFORCES all this, rather than excuses it. the lack of time for writing means that first-draft decisions became ingrained rather than reviewed and edited, and even more implicit bias can slip through. rushing a plotline they don't have time to develop fully means that complexity cannot make it into the end product, resulting in simplification of previously complex portrayals of other cultures/lineages. last minute massive cuts like losing Kal-Sharok outpost as a location means we barely get any dwarf reaction/perspective to massive lore dumps about their history, and Rook's default to flat, joking dialogue mean the player can't respond to them with much variation themselves, even if you pick different dialogue wheel options--there's 1-2 lines of variation, and then the scenes play out identically every time. the player/protagonist can no longer respond to these things in world, limiting how much they can be handwaved as intentional worldbuilding vs development oversight. and i DO think the departure from wanting to tell complex, deep stories itself was a decision at least in part influenced by these conditions. why WOULD they want to spend so much extra time and effort adding those layers when in real life they were overworked, jerked around, and repeatedly seeing all their previous hard work scrapped?

yes, it's a miracle the game shipped at all. no, this does not mean it is for some reason exempt from the same conversations fans have had about the series for years. yes, it became way more noticeable to many of us in this installment. no, that does not mean everyone hates the individuals who made it. people can have multiple opinions. they can enjoy the characters while also criticizing their framing or the limited growth the plot allows them. many of us are perfectly capable of acknowledging the devs were backed into a corner in many ways--but the end product is what we got. It's the content we are going to be analyzing and discussing in context with the other games for however long interest remains in the series. I have the deepest sympathies to the people who worked on it, and I think they were failed by editors, managers, and higher ups who put them in that position. I also do not enjoy a great deal of what they ended up creating in as a result of that situation.

burned out writers/devs cannot create art to the same quality as healthy ones. saying "and look at how well they did in spite of it all!" feels, to me, more like a slap in their face than admitting this game did not match the complexity and standards seen in previous entries in the series. i don't want to cheer on how brave they were in the face of it all. i want to show the higher ups and corporations who put them there that it was inexcusable, and leads to products I'm not going to enjoy or support to the same degree anymore, in hopes that this stops happening in the future.

[meglosthegreat]

Chapter 2 is now up!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66140125/chapters/171057148

Sometimes you get to rewatching a beloved piece of childhood media and realize there's a deeply compelling pairing buried in there that you hadn't given much thought to before. And then you look up this pairing, and find that hardly any fics exist on it, and that there's a canon book that covers the specific time period you're thinking of but seems to be not really all that good, and you think to yourself "well if someone's gotta do it, it may as well be me..."

Anyway, I would like to present my brainrot of the past couple months: What exactly happened between Cutler Beckett and Jack Sparrow?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66140125

“And what of you, Mr. Sparrow?” Beckett set his empty glass down. “What do you desire, at the end of all this?” Sparrow downed his third—or perhaps fourth—drink. “Me? I’m a simple man. Ship’s deck beneath my feet, bottle of rum in me hand, pair of buxom wenches at my side—call me satisfied.” Beckett leaned forward. “Is that so?” The captain paused in the midst of pouring his next glass. “’Spose I could go for a few barrels of rum, maybe three or four wenches...” “Why stop there, Jack? Why settle for a ship when you could have the whole fleet?” Sparrow finally met his eyes. “I admit, I do like the sound of that.” -- When Cutler Beckett finds himself in need of a new captain, there is one promising candidate within his sights. But Jack Sparrow's ambition rivals only his own, and the two find their fates more closely intertwined than either could have possibly imagined...

This is a 5-chapter fic which will update every Monday until the end of June!

[meglosthegreat]

>the presence<

[meglosthegreat]

Okay. many thoughts.

It is downright impressive that rtd managed to throw away any semblance of the coherent (?) Mrs. Flood plot he has been building up for TWO SEASONS. The Rani is eaten and Mrs. Flood runs away and Omega is thrown back like a misbehaving puppy and it's all resolved in the first thirty minutes. because fuck you I guess. The Omega, The Rani and the Super Easy, Barely an Inconvenience plot.

also somewhere out there rani fans are in shock. they are suffering as they had before but it's somehow even worse now. pls pray for them.

And you think oh maybe Space Babies will have some relevance somehow and that was the plot twist. Underwhelming, but okay. Nope. Still not that. That Poppy is chilling somewhere else. No connection. This is Poppy from my wishes. Fun.

For one glorious moment when Poppy disappeared and the focus was pushed on Ruby instead I (still clinging to some bit of hope) briefly imagined a better world where the episode took a sharp turn and it only seemed like a peaceful resolution but there were undercurrents of wrongness (like when someone say, stepped on a fairy circle). Rtd ties this up with a connection to 73 yards and it's Ruby that shifts the reality not the Doctor and we finally figure out what the fuck is going on with her. Nah. What if she just randomly remembers Poppy when no one else does and then disappears from the rest of the episode without any resolution. What about that.

Do NOT like the Doctor's child storyline. There was NO development about that in the season. Nothing even hinting this would be an important part, if not the most important part of the finale.

But if only we had some other family of the doctor we had hinted towards in previous episodes returning. After all we wouldn't call someone THAT important to the doctor for a mere flashback/mild posing in the TARDIS. of course susan foreman has plot relevance. dw guys rtd has it all figured out.

A small light at the end of the tunnel with the nice thirteenth doctor cameo. her and ncuti interacting was always something I wished could have happened. Of course I had hoped for slightly better circumstances but still

THE REGENERATION. I am, of course, always blessed when Billie Piper appears on the screen. But. Again. it would've been an incredibly interesting twist UNDER BETTER CIRCUMSTANCES.

Also this is unrelated but I love that the entire motto of the fifteenth doctor is like: haha I leave with joy, I am finally ready to heal and move on 👍 and rtd is just like:

also justice for Belinda. she was done INCREDIBLY dirty.

I will need several business days to process what the fuck happened.

[meglosthegreat]

it just occurred to me that all the relationships between companions in the veilguard are just... kind of the same?

they really have only 3 dynamics: friends right ahead, lovers and "we disagreed until HR rook entered the room". and that's it. it's very repetitive when you look at the banters, and gets irritating quickly.

remember how back in the day wynne became a alistair's nother figure which highlights how he never really had one? how justice asked others about the world yet was quick to judge nathaniel/sigrun/vellana? how vivienne got genuinely worried for cole but can't admit it because he's a spirit, a thing she's been taught to fear all her life?how blackwall and sera kind of created another girldad & lesbian daughter duo? or never-ending bitching between fenris and anders of aveline and isabela that haven't really changed that much because these people have been formed by their personal experiences and can't change overnight? the... whatever the hell sten and morrigan were doing?

this choice of forcing everyone into becoming friends has prevented the story from exploring deeper themes. toxic and unhealthy relationships, parenthood, rivalry (friendly or antagonistic), the fact that some people will never like or agree with you and that's ok

it's like I'm watching teletubbies ffs

[meglosthegreat]

need him unfortunately

[meglosthegreat]

I don't think that Veilguard is a product of developers who didn't care. I feel like it's a product of developers who cared so much that they were willing to do anything and everything to get the game finished. Even if it involved a million concessions. A million compromises. An FPS game engine that had to be twisted far beyond what it was designed for, a set of assets and mechanics and art style created for a polar opposite game to the "gritty" singleplayer narrative they were making. With all the core veterans of the series that shaped its identity having been driven out or fired, and the ones remaining either inexperienced/unskilled in their new roles or burned out beyond belief to the point where they actually felt they needed a "fan council" to advise them on writing it.

I think they wanted so badly to deliver on the promise of DA4 that they kept going even as (imo) everything that would have made DA4 worthwhile got stripped out of the game.

I know a lot of people think of that as a miraculous achievement, "at least it Got Made", but personally "a hypothetical great DA4 that just sadly never got finished" would have been better than "the shitty DA4 that every new piece of fan content is now obligated to include or reference in some way by virtue of being the capstone finale to the series".

Especially because getting it made didn't...save their jobs or the series or anything they still got fired and the studio still got shuttered. Sometimes "cut your losses", "listen to your regrets", and "the little wins aren't enough" are acceptable things to say. So much of Veilguard's script feels like it's full of the mantras that the development team was telling themselves over and over just to get through a hellish cycle and you know, I think a lot of those messages are wrong, actually. I'm not looking to be judgmental, in that position I might have made the exact same choices, but looking in from the outside I think it was a mistake to just keep going at any cost.

[meglosthegreat]

Me whenever Johnny asks me to do something

[meglosthegreat]

This is so fun in a way because I finally understand the old english proverb “the worst doctor who showrunner is always the current doctor who showrunner”

[meglosthegreat]

Sometimes you get to rewatching a beloved piece of childhood media and realize there's a deeply compelling pairing buried in there that you hadn't given much thought to before. And then you look up this pairing, and find that hardly any fics exist on it, and that there's a canon book that covers the specific time period you're thinking of but seems to be not really all that good, and you think to yourself "well if someone's gotta do it, it may as well be me..."

Anyway, I would like to present my brainrot of the past couple months: What exactly happened between Cutler Beckett and Jack Sparrow?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66140125

“And what of you, Mr. Sparrow?” Beckett set his empty glass down. “What do you desire, at the end of all this?” Sparrow downed his third—or perhaps fourth—drink. “Me? I’m a simple man. Ship’s deck beneath my feet, bottle of rum in me hand, pair of buxom wenches at my side—call me satisfied.” Beckett leaned forward. “Is that so?” The captain paused in the midst of pouring his next glass. “’Spose I could go for a few barrels of rum, maybe three or four wenches...” “Why stop there, Jack? Why settle for a ship when you could have the whole fleet?” Sparrow finally met his eyes. “I admit, I do like the sound of that.” -- When Cutler Beckett finds himself in need of a new captain, there is one promising candidate within his sights. But Jack Sparrow's ambition rivals only his own, and the two find their fates more closely intertwined than either could have possibly imagined...

This is a 5-chapter fic which will update every Monday until the end of June!

[meglosthegreat]

Sometimes you get to rewatching a beloved piece of childhood media and realize there's a deeply compelling pairing buried in there that you hadn't given much thought to before. And then you look up this pairing, and find that hardly any fics exist on it, and that there's a canon book that covers the specific time period you're thinking of but seems to be not really all that good, and you think to yourself "well if someone's gotta do it, it may as well be me..."

Anyway, I would like to present my brainrot of the past couple months: What exactly happened between Cutler Beckett and Jack Sparrow?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66140125

“And what of you, Mr. Sparrow?” Beckett set his empty glass down. “What do you desire, at the end of all this?” Sparrow downed his third—or perhaps fourth—drink. “Me? I’m a simple man. Ship’s deck beneath my feet, bottle of rum in me hand, pair of buxom wenches at my side—call me satisfied.” Beckett leaned forward. “Is that so?” The captain paused in the midst of pouring his next glass. “’Spose I could go for a few barrels of rum, maybe three or four wenches...” “Why stop there, Jack? Why settle for a ship when you could have the whole fleet?” Sparrow finally met his eyes. “I admit, I do like the sound of that.” -- When Cutler Beckett finds himself in need of a new captain, there is one promising candidate within his sights. But Jack Sparrow's ambition rivals only his own, and the two find their fates more closely intertwined than either could have possibly imagined...

This is a 5-chapter fic which will update every Monday until the end of June!

[meglosthegreat]

it is still very funny to me that rook goes "yay! the life force of an Elven God ™️ must hold the veil. to do that, i have taken solas, the guy who very notably and repeatedly said he is not a god, and he is not immortal, and i put him in the veil, with several grievous injuries as well as a stab wound to the chest. this will surely last. the day is saved 😌👍"

my brother in andraste... he is bleeding out. that guy is done. the egg is cracked. it's joever. if he couldn't magically heal up all his other injuries, he is presumably not capable of healing the stab wound, and doing some sort of... self-managed thoracic surgery in the fade is even less plausible. the veil falls in like a day and a half 😭

[meglosthegreat]

i feel like people who act like asserting dragon age should have delivered on a politically coherent story of revolution (as was set up in it's previous entry) is unreasonable from a triple A game studio or in 2025 or whatever other reason why they think its unfair to expect such a story are not watching/reading/playing a lot of media. because this is not a tall ask and its quite literally everywhere and often being put out by massive conglomerations because audiences love them and they make a ton of money.

expecting dragon age 4 to have done the same is not remotely unreasonable. its actually shocking that they did not. all of star wars does this to varying degrees of success, with rogue one and andor doing this to great success. DISNEY OWNS STAR WARS. fullmetal alchemist was written in 2003 and made into a show in 2009 and is consistently in the top rated tv shows of all time and cited as the best anime of all time and is about coming to terms with your complacency in your country's imperialism and then overthrowing the government. cyberpunk 2077 is the most explicitly anti-capitalist piece of media ive ever seen and frequently features violence as a tool for political action and ends with the message that its better to die fighting capitalism than be complacent in its evil. the hunger games is one of the most best selling and beloved books of the 21st century and its about a violent revolution and was explicitly inspired by the iraq war. speaking of the iraq war, miyazaki's adaptation howl's moving castle has no revolution but a similarly blatant anti-war anti-imperialist message inspired by the iraq war. much of studio ghibli does something similar. so does much of classic literature. ever heard of this little book called les miserables? half of sci-fi in general. do we get the point. feel free to leave more examples below.

do i need to keep going? because i could. do we get the point. why would it be a big ask to expect a story about revolution and structural change. this is a fan-favorite money maker. what are you watching on a daily basis that makes you think this is too high of an expectation. if THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY is out-revolutioning your stories you have a problem.