#I'm all for accessibility and archiving of old games but in a lot of cases it's just an exercise in making money off of nostalgia

[patchwork-crow-writes]

It's been almost an entire year and I still get a little upset whenever I think about Tales of Symphonia "Remastered". What a waste of time and hype, honestly.

Compare to Metroid Prime Remaster which came out around the same time. While not really a remaster in the truest sense of the word, at least it has the decency to look amazing, play better than the original release, and have every type of control scheme going.

Then back to ToSR with its five-second loading screens between each encounter. In an 80+ hour JRPG. And let's not bring up the AI-upscaled graphical "Improvements". Or the 30fps-locked framerate, when Gamecube ran seamlessly at 60.

What I'm saying is emulate Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube and play it if you haven't yet done so. Save yourself 40+ quid and experience the game as it's meant to be experienced.

Sincerely, an old person whose first JRPG was Tales of Symphonia.

[pinkyjulien]

Yesterday's modding session got me pretty frustrated, I wasted so much time and was feeling overall pretty shit. Woke up feeling a bit violent, so to calm my nerves and get some serotonin I decided to check some old posts of mine over my old blog @pinkydude

This blog got flagged last year, I was always upset about this, especially cause I always suspected the fandom to be the cause by mass-reporting it

Well, today I got confirmation that this was indeed the case, so from the bottom of my heart

Fuck you

And especially Fuck You to all the passive homophobic pieces of SHIT that couldn't handle a fictional character's queerness, y'all are fucking pathetic HGFHH

NOW For more context; one thing I loved to do back in the day was to share some of Pawel's streams, pics and videos in majority.

A lot of people didn't liked his streams mainly because of "the favoritism"; the Sasko Sunday streams became an habit for a lot of us, watching him for literal years, he recognized our names and we had "inside jokes" in streams with the community there. You can see why some people felt jealous and became nasty about it.

There's a lot to be said about people feeling "left out" of something they don't even willingly participate in, the streams were always public and anyone could join at anytime they'd want to, but I disgress.

His streams were always really interactive; we would ask questions about the story, the characters, and Pawel would reply and give us insight, BTS infos, hints and other cool crumbs!

Pawel eventualy had to stop most of his interaction with the community because he was being HARASSED by SOME PEOPLE on Twitter openly tagging him about his "favoritism" and even sending letters to HQ complaining about it.

Back to my old flagged blog; We can't search up tags on flagged blogs, it becomes really hard to look up for anything there, we can't access the archives either Friendo gave me this tip months ago; if you have a pinned post, simply add tags to it and you'll be able to click them, like a lite "search box"

So that's what I did this morning, in bed, on my lil phone, adding "pawel sasko" to my pinned to go through my old stream posts!

And imagine my surprise while scrolling down past the majority of my posts being flagged for...... sexual content??

Now I recognized these posts simply by the comments and reblog on them, they are nothing sexual. Y'know what they are?

Posts about Mitch! Of course, who else, it always goes back to him doesn't it? All the drama, all the bullshit this fandom ever gave me alwaaays goes back to him.

So anyway, I couldn't see these posts on Mobile, but I can actually see them on desktop, so let's see what The Fandom TM wanted to take down sooo bad

My post about Mitch's database being fixed Nothing surprising here, I'm the reason Mitch's database got fixed and people didn't NOT like that at all!

Of course this one would get reported too We're starting to get a better picture of who went on a reporting rampage.

Pawel comfirming that they left hints of Mitch being gay on purpose in game? Of course it'd get flagged too

Pawel reacting to my stuff in general? Boom

They even went as far as to report my FIRST ever post about Pawel, when I talked on his streams for the first time back in 2021.

We all know who could've been so butthurt about all this that they went on a flagging spree ghfhg fucking PATHETHIC oh my god

Anyway, y'all have a nice day ✌😩

[atla-lore-archive]

Hello. Hope you are doing well. Are the things written here canon ? And are the Earth Kingdom Chronicles canon ? Thank you in advance for answering. Have a nice week!

Honestly, I'm not sure there's a solid concept of 'canon' for the Avatar franchise.

We could say that everything approved by Nickelodeon is canon, but then that brings in things like the Trading Card Game, and a lot of fans don't consider the unique elements from that to count. Likewise, this policy would include the material from the old website that's archived here, but stuff like Ursa's background has been contradicted by later works.

Maybe we can go by stuff that Mike and/or Bryan have worked on, then? But thanks to Mike's involvement, that would include this information, so are we left to conclude that the 'Bryke Canon' contains contradictions which cannot be reconciled? Or do they have a ranking system favoring primary works over reference material?

And in cases like the Earth Kingdom Chronicles books, it's hard to tell who worked on what. The books are officially credited to Michael Teitelbaum, but they're based to an unknown degree on the episodes of the cartoon. Did Teitelbaum have access to original scripts and/or the completed episodes? Were the books reviewed and approved by any of the cartoon's writing team? Did Teitelbaum have the opportunity to ask questions of Mike, Bryan, or the rest of the writing team?

We don't know and we can't know.

The only statement I've ever seen from Nickelodeon or any of the creatives was a recent quote from Mike regarding the comics, novels, and other spin-off material:

"We've been involved in all those main ancillary stories, so in our minds it's mostly canon. There’s probably some stuff if we may go back, like: 'that doesn’t totally line up with this', so there may be some little tweaks here and there, but as of right now we’re proceeding as if all this stuff is part of the proper universe and hopefully building on it."

So there you have it. The 'Bryke Canon,' at least, makes use of out-of-universe retcons, and seems to include at least everything they've had a hand in. There are no definite boundaries that we fans can know about, and of course Avatar Studios is bringing in lots of other creative influences. For now, Mike and Bryan are still in charge of Avatar Studios, but I have no doubt that Nickelodeon wants the franchise to remain active and profitable for many decades, so it's entirely possible that eventually we'll be receiving major 'canon' works that don't have any involvement from them at all. (I also have no doubt that, at that point, fans will be arguing about whether the new stuff fits with the 'Bryke Era.')

So all this is to say that if anyone wants to cite the Earth Chronicles books as canon in arguments about Azula, you're probably just going to want to say, "those kiddie book adaptations say this" and leave it up to your audience how much credence they want to give it.

[untilteddocument]

After-Action Archive Phoenix Point 1st Gig - Shoot the Moon

Welcome again, one and all, to the After-Action Archive! I've been writing and posting these up in Discords I'm part of, and in the interests of archival and having easier access, now that I have a Tumblr I'm putting them up here with some edits and extra information where I feel necessary. Bear in mind, these are nowhere near plentiful enough to count as a full LP, but consider it a sort of highlight reel. With that in mind, let's rise to the occasion.

Note: As this mission is related to the ending, there are unmarked spoilers ahead!

This report is well into the game, and I'm happy to get to it because it involves Synedrion! I've been talking about how research is how you progress the game and win, and here is finally concrete reference to that.

Once you're Allied with a faction, you are able to help them with their research, which is definitely going to be faster than them doing their research by themselves. The story-advancing research projects differ for each faction, though they all relate to the Phoenix Project's own story-advancing research projects, as reactions to the information the Project recovers.

In Synedrion's case, the reveal that the Pandoravirus is a terraforming bioweapon released by some ancient extraterrestrial dubbed the Yuggothian Entity for the purpose of preparing the Earth for its arrival spurs them to follow their scientific roots

Many of their founders came from the Firebird Initiative, a mostly-leftist - minus Fred, he's a Libertarian - nonpartisan research group dedicated to circumventing nationalist and protectionist efforts from governments to hoard knowledge about the Pandoravirus as part of their usual power plays

and chase the data lost from the old Phoenix Project's mission to the moon.

They plan an unmanned mission, called Operation Moonshot, to try and see what the Phoenix Project astronauts were unable to retrieve. The Pandorans do not like this, predictably, and attack the launch site. Synedrion asks us to step in and defend.

I do also wanna take this time to voice my admiration of how...I don't wanna say lighthearted, because they definitely take things seriously, but definitely less...tense than either of the other two factions Synedrion tends to be. Their havens have jokey mottos, one of their possible haven names is Forty McFortface, and Stas here is an adorably enthusiastic nerd. Like...more than any other faction, they remember that this is about more than just survival. They want to live. New Jericho is mired in fear, and the Disciples cloak themselves in mysticism, but Synedrion is here to have a good time.

Anyway, Firefighter Squad, Roll Call

Thanks to all the missions they've been on, everyone in the squad has made it to Level 7, though they're still trying to accumulate enough skill points to get what they want. I'm not quite sure exactly what else I should get for Jess Thomas here, aside from more stats, but whatever! She's still got her trademark Anvil-class heavy armor, flamethrower, mounted laser cannon, and is also packing a piercing assault rifle and an incendiary grenade.

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Meantime, de facto commander of the squad, Louise Thomas (no relation...? Maybe?) has access to the pinnacle of the Priest class's abilities, Mind Crush, which does a buncha damage in an area, bypassing armor entirely. Aside from that, she's still got her usual kit, a Redeemer-class virus rifle and that unique laser assault rifle and a medkit, but I also added two incendiary grenades because she gets bonus range on grenades.

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Isabella Días remains much the same, but with Sneak Attack active, she will be doing a lot more damage now. Same loadout, a Slamstrike-class shotgun and Arachni spider drone launcher.

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Bobby Danso has a couple of minor changes. In addition to giving her a much more appropriate amount of spare ammo for her Deceptor machine gun, I gave her a Disciples of Anu sword and replaced her helmet with a Golem-class heavy helmet, just for extra protection.

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Last but not least, minor change to Facundo Ibrahim's kit, I added a Piranha-class piercing assault rifle for close-range, with the Sanctifier-class acid pistol in case he gets an arm disabled.

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So I'm gonna set the stage here. It's a big facility, with one half of it dominated by this huge multi-floor building here, linked to other sections by hallways, and my team scattered among the floors of the central building. Isabella and Jess on the rooftop had eyes on one of the big immediate problems:

a Chiron, a variety with a directly-explosive mortar instead of generally-manageable worm launching. A bit later, I would discover a second one on the opposite lower corner. Now, the good thing about this is, they were close enough for me to actually do something. In that Chiron's case, I had Bobby do her Terminator thing, shot her charge in with...someone? I wanna say Jess? Either way, I managed to do enough damage that Bobby could finish it off, and then take down an Arthron that had gotten into the facility. There were no other Pandorans in range, so she just hunkered down to wait out the next-round daze inside.

Meantime, on the other side, I had to deal with the other mortar Chiron, which I did by rushing Facundo out, dropping a Decoy, and ducking back so that the Chiron would bombard it instead of anything else. Next round, I try to work the second mortar Chiron, disabling its head to reduce its willpower and sending Louise to mind-control it. That part is because I see a third Chiron - this one thankfully an Acidworm-launcher rather than a mortar - at the launch site area, plus a couple of Tritons and Arthrons. Not particularly good since the Tritons had long-range weapons and one of them was overwatching, but that's where I was able to use that mind-controlled Chiron. One gleeful mortar shot later, I'd done a bunch of damage to the Triton and Chiron, and...unfortunately broke the corner wall, but oh well.

It was getting kind of expensive to maintain control over the Chiron, so I then had Louise release it and then immediately hit it with virus rifle shots and had Isabella daze it with her shotgun.

Jess, still on the rooftop, had her back-mounted laser cannon, and the roof shielded her from view enough that she could kill one of the Acidworms the Chiron had launched, peek out, laser the overwatching Triton she could see, and do some damage to the Acidworm Chiron. Facundo managed to kill the other two, which had landed near him.

Back over on the east wing with Bobby, she had managed to wait out her daze, none too soon because an Arthron (with Tar Shadow) was poking around.

I had her hulk out again and carve her way north, killing that Umbra Arthron, another that had been out of my sight, that second Triton (which was also overwatching), a third Arthron, finished off the Chiron, and then ran all the way back to the central building so that the Umbra that would be coming out next turn wouldn't be in range to attack her. Thankfully, it proved little to no problem, and I was ready for the final push to clear the launch site.

There was a second Tar Shadow Arthron hiding behind the wall, but sneaking Jess over, I was able to kill it with fire and thus prevent the Umbra from coming out.

Job well done, and Operation Moonshot (and its newly-dubbed IGOR-1 probe, nice job, Stas) was able to pave the way for an eventual Synedrion victory.

[why485]

I'm interested to see what you think are plot holes, especially as someone who hasn't gone through half the game. Perhaps put it under a read more? Part of what you may think are plot holes could also be the result of Automata being a (very distant) sequel to the original Nier, which itself is a spinoff of the Drakengard games. Automata's pretty self-contained though, so I kinda doubt it. As for DLC, IIRC it doesn't really add much story aside from some bits about the arena mode.

This is all going under a read more as it’s pretty much impossible to talk about this without getting into spoiler territory in a game where that matters.

I may write an update to this post later on after I’ve beaten the game and had more time to think on it all, as I’ve already re-written half of it because I answered some of my own questions in the process of typing it out. Rubber ducky debugging, basically.

Fair warning, there is a huge amount of text beyond the break because there’s just way too much to talk about when it comes to any one aspect of Nier and its universe. Like it’s a totally unreasonable amount of text for anybody to read. You have been warned.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR NIER AUTOTOMATO AFTER THE BREAK

Before I start, it is obligatory that I mention that I’m somewhere in route C. I’ve destroyed one of the resource units as 9S. Specifically, the one in the forest if that makes a difference. I have no idea how far I am in the game anymore because at this point it feels like I’m playing this game’s sequel.

There are a lot of minor questions/problems I have with the game, but there is one issue bothers me the most as it feels like bad writing in a way that’s incongruous with the rest of the game. The best way to describe it is in the form of a question: 

Why do YoRHa androids care so much about dying?

I feel like the game contradicts itself on this, and the confusion it’s caused me has taken away from some key moments in the story. The core issue is that the main characters treat dying as if it’s a big deal, when outside of very specific circumstances it really isn’t. For the YoRHa androids, dying seems like an inconvenience at worst because they can just “respawn” based on their most recent backup.

It starts with the very opening of the game. Why does 2B care so much that 9S is dying? She didn’t care at all when her wingmen died in the opening, but the purportedly super serious with “no emotion” super soldier (that’s a whole other post, but my opinion on that has changed a bit since then) is completely torn up and super emotional that 9S is dying. Why does she care? He’s going to respawn at the Bunker when he dies, just like they both do literally a few minutes later when they self-destruct to no real consequences.

Yes, I know that 9S makes a big deal out of the fact that he’s backing up 2B during the fight so she can respawn just fine. He specifically calls out that he hasn’t backed up since before the fight, so he’s going to lose maybe an hour or so of his memory and his memory of the fight. Why is that a big deal? Why is 2B so distressed about the idea of saving 9S even though he’s way gone and definitely going to die? If anything, she should have killed him right there so he could respawn sooner and not suffer in pain. (Although it’s unclear if maybe 9S was the node from which 2B was getting backed up, so if that’s the case then let him finish first. However if that is the case, it implies he should be able to save anywhere and they wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with.)

This happens again at the end of route A/B, albeit with slightly different circumstances. 9S is infected and so he cannot be backed up in his current state to the Bunker. However, he still has a backup from maybe an hour ago before the fighting starting, so why does it matter so much that he’s going to die there? Again, when he comes back he’s not going to remember how he helped save the world, but that’s really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things and 2B will have a super rad story to tell him when he wakes up on the Bunker.

Things get weird though, because 9S saved himself on the machines nearby before he died. I’m very unclear on what happened between the ending of A/B and the beginning of C because he’s back in his body as if nothing happened, seemingly remembering everything, and nobody mentions it. I’m not sure how he got there, what happened to the 9S in the machine, how he got to the Bunker, and so on. If the 9S in the machine at the end of A/B is the same one you see at in route C, that seems like a huge liability and is probably the source of the infection that wipes out the Bunker. This whole thing raises a lot of questions, but this seems like the kind of thing that will get addressed in due time. There are some very important scenes that happened in between A/B and C that, at least where I am in the game anyway, we didn’t see.

For being such a central and defining feature of the plot and the game’s themes, I feel like the mechanics of android death and revival need very clearly defined rules. Which, they do have, but the characters opinions on it seem to contradict it sometimes for the sake of dramatic cutscenes and relationships. They act as if they don’t know how it works when there’s no reason they wouldn’t.

Ignoring the character’s opinions, this is my understanding of how it works:

1. To respawn requires some server in the Bunker. If the Bunker is destroyed, that means all androids lose this capability, and so when they die, there is no coming back.

2. Only YoRHa androids can access the server in the Bunker, which means only androids like 2B, 9S, and so on can respawn. Resistance members universally talk about death as if it is very permanent. I was confused about this for a while, but thinking about it’s easily explained as their designs being too old to be compatible with whatever technology drives the whole resurrection system.

3. Some level of communication must exist between an android and the Bunker at the moment of death. 11B’s death provides this example. After getting stuck, 11B wants to respawn back at the Bunker, but cannot because her communication systems are completely destroyed. 11B is one of the three examples I can think of off the top of my head where the resurrection process fails.

4. When androids respawn, they come back based on their last save/backup. This means that whenever they die, they lose memories of whatever happened between their last backup and up to the point where they died. It sucks, but they’re soldiers, and it’s something they should be well aware of and used to. All things considered, that’s really not a big price to pay for what’s effectively immortality.

As a corollary to this, there are two clear ways for a YoRHa android to permanently die:

1. Communication with the Bunker is completely cut off, meaning that the Bunker will never get the trigger that boots up the backup of an android in a backup body. The only example I recall of this happening to this degree was when an android’s communication system was completely destroyed, which seems to be an extremely rare occurrence.

(This process raises a lot of the same questions that come up when discussing transporters, but I’m willing to overlook that for the same reason most fiction does. It starts getting into questions about souls, which to be fair Nier makes explicit reference to in the Project Gestalt archives. Maybe there’s more to this?)

2. The Bunker itself is destroyed and so the mechanism by which androids respawn is completely broken. There doesn’t appear to be a backup of any kind for this system. As of route C, this is now the case. 2B dies and she’s now really dead. Meanwhile 9S is still alive, but if he dies now, he dies for real.

(This also raises the question of where do androids come from in the first place, which is something I don’t know but I suspect will be answered eventually.)

As an aside, 2B’s memories are in her sword now. It’s not clear how important an android’s “memories” are in terms of the backing up process. If all it takes is nebulously defined “memories” to respawn an android, then 2B will probably come back at the end of the game by restoring her memories into a new body. Whether or not your personality and thought processes are intrinsically stored in those memories seems like a question worth asking but that’s approaching a whole other philosophical discussion.

I could go on and on and on, but I think I’ve covered what has bugged me the most about the game (and then some) pretty well. In the process of writing this post, I ended up answering most of the questions I had going in. Just putting it to proverbial paper has made me think about a couple things and after reviewing a couple things I ended up answering my biggest question which was “how do androids die?”