#Looking for the Kale cutscenes

[magic-magpie]

Live Peppermint reaction

[archivist-the-knight]

physically restraining myself from going into the tags of *several* hi fi rush posts and infodumping about either aspects of the game that i know about or aspects of different things op is talking about i know about because 1: i dont wanna derail 2: Jesus Christ i know a lot about this game and noticed way too many hidden details.

[nyaagolor]

I was rewatching the path of legends storyline cutscenes and got thinking about the types of sandwiches Arven was making because I refuse to believe he’s just slapping those herbs on a sub with cold cuts:

Sweet: He made a fruit sandwich for this one!! The herba mystica leaves are a bit like stevia and naturally sweet, so Arven boiled them down in water, strained them, and frothed the extract with some cream to make a nice whipped cream base. He piled up some crustless, fluffy milk bread with various fruits, filled in the gaps with the HM whipped cream, and made sure it looked cute when he sliced it! Mabosstiff’s portion was also slathered with peanut butter

Salty: Salty HM got a modified Cubano!! To entice Mabosstiff to eat it, this sandwich was based around using the herba mystica as a rub for some meat. It was dry-brined, keeping it tender and moist even when it was cooked and sliced really thin. This was then piled onto some good quality bread with cheese, pickles, and a mustardy sauce with more HM mixed in, then toasted so it got all melty. It’s super salty, but full of ingredients Mabosstiff likes a lot

Bitter: Arven was a little afraid to tame the bitterness of the herba mystica TOO much for fear it wouldn’t be effective, so he basically just made fancy toast. A sandwich in name only, it was just avocado toast with ricotta and garlic piled high with some massaged HM— basically like kale, right??? He knew acidity would make it a little more bearable, so he whipped up a quick vinaigrette and thickened it enough to slather on more toast to top off the thing. It’s more a salad between bread, but it worked! Getting Mabosstiff to actually eat it was a nightmare, but the avocado helped

Sour: This one stumped Arven for a while, but he eventually settled on a tuna melt. Whisking the herba mystica together with water made an herbaceous liquid that tasted in a bit like lemon juice, so he added some canned fish, Mayo, celery chunks, red onion, pickles, and layered it all on sourdough with cheese, more HM, and tomato. Grilled them up and boom. Super melty sandwich with a sour bite that still tastes good

Spicy: Arven really wanted to make this one something Mabosstiff would like, so he knew he had to make fried chicken. He dredged the meat in a flour mix with powdered herba mystica to shallow fry and folded the rest into a hot sauce. Covered in cole slaw and piled on a sweet brioche bun, it was bearable despite the burn. Mabosstiff didn’t even bother chewing it

[saturns-cryptid]

crashes down through the ceiling tiles

- "hibiki" comes from the name of chai's favorite action-rhythm game where you play as a rebel taking down a corrupt corporation :^) his belt chain thing was a preorder bonus

- both peppermint and macaron are vegetarian

- peppermint and chai became roommates after the events of the game

- chai's right arm injury is monoparesis caused by a stroke he had sometime in high school, treatment was ineffective at helping him regain his motor skills so he sought out project armstrong

- it's implied the game took place over a day or two at most, but i like to stretch it to four because it just seems way too short to me. i could see chai doing some of the fights while sleep deprived, but not all of them

day 1: most of the early day is just chai getting through all the armstrong onboarding stuff, QA-1MIL and rekka are fought in the afternoon. him and peppermint have to lay low for the rest of the day because she knows kale will be looking for her with security drones now

day 2: chai sneaks into R&D in the early morning, is captured by the afternoon, and it's night by the time him and korsica are taken to the hideout

day 3: him and korsica are recovering for pretty much the whole day so it isn't until the evening that they go after mimosa

day 4: chai sneaks through production late night/early morning (this is outlined ingame so this part isn't really a headcanon) and it takes the whole day to get to roquefort and then kale

HAII i enjoy this assortment of headcanons nods nods but i especially enjoy the last one!! i never really did register how long the story is in the game now that i think about it... but i'll get to that!

(1) DUDE i have seen plenty of people argue for a different headcanon that hibiki is either the name of a band or the name of a fashion brand but i have not heard of this angle!! do you think this also explains his shoes or 808's collar though... bc if it does, i totally think at one point post game, chai and peppermint find out they like the same game and it actually ends up being something that brings them closer

(2) but also do you think it counts as cannibalism if peppermint has peppermint candy/tea and macaron has a macaron though LOL

(3) WHY NOT EVERYONE COWARD... /j lh ... but actually though i totally think it would hit home for chai to solidify that sense of belonging somewhere because i think he's been a drifter / loner for most of his life. FOUND FAMILY FOR THE WIN

(4) you are so big of brain, asker!! i LOVE seeing people's takes on how chai's disability came to be. i will be shelving this one away in my brain nods nods

(5) OKAY i ended up scrubbing through the game cutscenes while i was on break at work and like. DUDE i had no idea the story progressed so quickly LMAO. it really does seem like... it all took place somewhere between 24-36 hours?? Peppermint really worked Chai to the bone as the field man dude holy shit LMFAOOO bro probably crashed and slept like 15 hours after all that. i will be adopting this, BUT... how long do you think it would take if you also include the second arc / the secret SPECTRA doors + the underground lab? i personally think it would take an extra week since they're. really difficult sobs

[chai-fi-rush]

Hi-Fi Rush and Capitalism

I've seen multiple posts about how Hi-Fi Rush is capitalistic/neo-liberal propaganda and like. I'm not gonna say they're wrong but I'm also going to say it's a little more nuanced than that. Or at least there's multiple angles to look at this thing and I want to do that so I will.

Also I just want to quickly say that I think that even if something endorses certain aspects of capitalism while critiquing others doesn't mean that what it does critique is meaningless, or that everything that critiques capitalism should end with a radical change in it's story's system. Sometimes things that are sort of milquetoast can be fun or make some good points, albeit not rly something to strive to.

The first thing to address which is undeniably on the side of those posts I've seen is that HFR basically assumes that capitalism is the default. It tacitly accepts that the system must function through capital, and not just at the end where instead of getting rid of the company they just replace the CEO. This comes up the most in Zanzo's level when CNMN and Macaron say that budgeting and development are a balance. There's no implication that the idea of well-managed projects shouldn't have to rely on money to be able to function, just that Zanzo himself is bad with money due to unrealistic goals and Kale's light hand as long as he gets what he wants. Honestly, this is where a lot of real life people get tripped up on. They genuinely have a really hard time conceptualizing how a world without capital would function and often think of it as some lawless world. So, even when they disagree with capitalism they often try to think about how to change it without the removal of currency.

That being said, it's more accurate to describe Hi-Fi Rush's early stages not as a critique of capitalism, but as a critique of the conditions of capitalism (I know to us red-blooded commies those things are basically the same but hear me out). The only point where money is really important to the plot is in Zanzo's level and the overarching point of Kale using SPECTRA as a market manipulation tool. There are also undercurrents of class when it comes to Chai and Kale as foils, but that point is also linked with ableism (which is linked with classism under capitalism, but the game is very purposefully vague about Chai's backstory so I don't necessarily feel comfortable making too much speculation about it). The game vlog's heavily discuss the labor and physical exploitation of their employees, such as how all of the old Vandelay units such as CARR1E are being overloaded for the sake of productivity and you know. The fact that there are three or four Mondays. But the game rarely mentions the wages of the employees. I'm not going to say it never does even though I don't remember a time, but needless to say the actual working conditions of Vandelay's labor force is a much bigger focus. It does sort of come into play when Kale talks about how he's planning on firing almost everyone once SPECTRA gets up and running (something we are supposed to consider is Bad because without those jobs those people won't have money).

Breaking all this down abstractly, HFR is a story about corrupted intentions. The game's narrative exists in two different camps, the experience of what Vandelay is right now, and how everyone talk about what Vandelay was when Roxanne was in charge. Obviously, the first one is going to be more powerful. Characters like Peppermint, Macaron and Korsica can talk all day about how cool Roxanne was, but we basically have to take them at their word. There's no reason for us to consider them untrustworthy, but lets just say that as an audience member it's hard to fully reconcile the idea without actually seeing any of it in action besides Roxanne being kind of chill in the final cutscene and some vlogs about how the company used to work (particularly from O5KAR).

But what we can glean from this narrative is that Vandelay under Roxanne was not productivity driven. You get this idea from both the Zanzo and Roquefort levels, and a couple of those aforementioned vlogs. One that comes to mind is about how production used to take the time to actually fix defected products, but under Kale they all just get immediately scrapped because it's faster to just make a new one. Roxanne was someone who wanted to make things whereas Kale just wants to sell them. I mean, Roquefort is literally crushed underneath the quarter profits. HFR has a lot of metaphors, and they never really claimed that any of them were subtle.

Something that hangs over the entire story but rarely comes up (even within meta discussions about it) is that Project Armstrong was something born out of Roxanne's love for her disabled daughter. It's not just that she came up with the implant tech and then had Kale make the project as a scheme, Peppermint specifically says in Track 12 that it was Roxanne's idea. This was something that was made to genuinely help people, and Kale warped it into something that would get him more customers because it's not profitable to just "help people."

That's the story that HFR is trying to tell. It's about a project that was good, became bad through its management, and then had people who believed in the original intention of said project (I should note that Korsica's inclusion as someone who hadn't worked pre-Kale was also probably intentional so it wasn't solely a return to the old guard). The game isn't trying to say that any company can be fixed with the right leadership, that this one had its reigns taken away for the sake of profitability. A corruption of intentions. If you're willing to accept capital as the implicit base of society, it's incredibly inoffensive, but if you can conceptualize outside of that system it becomes a hand-wavey response to the problem. We all know that "just put good people in charge of capitalism" isn't actually a solution the the problem.

It's also worth mentioning that HFR bears a lot of meta-narrative about the video game industry specifically. The director said that some of the emails were literally taken from ones that he had received. It draws attention to its relationship in several ways, ESPECIALLY with the addition of Vandelay Gameworks. It's all stuff that can be applied to companies in general, but there's still that undercurrent of game devs upset about crunch time or being forced to throw out something that they worked hard on at the last minute because it "Just doesn't work." The kind of people who love what they're working on but work underneath conditions that make it feel like hell.

Anyways, hope that made sense. Hope I didn't sound too apologetic because I also take beef with endings that handwave capitalism away as an individual issue. Honestly, I think that HFR has far more interesting things to say about disability, but that's something that has to be its own post.

[erigold13261]

Love looking at characters to figure out if they are right or left handed (or ambidextrous). It's fun!

Wanted to see if Roquefort was right or left handed and I think he is ambidextrous. Reasons for why I think this:

We see him stroke his beard and fix his tie with his left hand in the cutscenes during his fight.

He also pulls out his Z-shielding using his left hand from his cane. (The plasma shielding or whatever it is called is summoned by him raising his cane, which is done with his right hand).

Both of these could literally just be because he is holding his cane in his human form. Him holding his cane in his right hand has nothing to do with hand dominance and all to do with whatever kind of injury/disability he has and what side it's on.

However, he also catches his weight on his left hand after he is thrown into the glass (right before going into the vault). He could have easily caught his weight using his right hand, just had it as a fist as he hit the ground holding his cane (or used both hands to catch his weight and then go into a single hand holding him up).

From here, he runs up to Chai and hits him with his right hand, but also holds Chai in his left. It could have just been a a more fluid motion, but at least for me, I would have hit someone with my right hand and then held them in my right hand. He uses his left hand, which Chai in it, to break the vault door, which would need a good amount of strength (could he have done it with his right hand as well? Probably, but in a fight like this I would think Roquefort would use a preferred hand to break down something like that).

Going more into his wolf form, a majority of his single attacks (the swings of his claws, either by themself or at the end of dashes) come from his left hand. While his triple attacks seem to go Right>Left>Right. His fury attack (the very fast successions of hits) seems to end in his right claws.

His other attacks such as the tornado, the stomp, or the dive don't really give away much as it uses both hands. The Big Bad Wolf and lazer attacks don't use his hands at all (he might be directing the lazers in his human form but it was hard for me to see).

So a majority of his attacks lean more towards his left hand, while also using his right. Now this could be just a coding thing, where each attack could end in a right or left swing (I noticed in the fight I was watching to analyze this that the first phase had a lot more single left swings while the last phase had about an even amount of single right and left swings).

Which is why I think he is ambidextrous! To me he leans more towards using his left hand since he has to use his right to hold his cane, but he can use both hands (Though, all of this could be that he can just fight with both hands and has learned to use his left hand more instead of constantly switching his cane to do something like sign a piece of paper, but I prefer the idea that Roquefort is ambidextrous and leans towards his left hand).

Another thing to note actually, before I forget, is that Roquefort gestures with his right hand at the end of the fight to Chai. While he does use his left hand to gesture in the cutscene with Kale, however, in that specific cutscene Roquefort is holding his cane so it would have taken more effort to undo his position to reposition his hand on his cane and gesture more naturally than simple gesturing with his left hand. Kinda leans more to right handed Roquefort, but I still wanted to point those out.

Which I guess I could also point out that all of these decisions I am pointing out could literally just be how the camera is angled and how if they stuck with only one hand over the other some shots would look weird. But hey! That's the fun part of over analyzing! :D

[salty-dracon]

genshin impact 4.0, or as i like to call it, fantasy tears of themis ft. lifeweaver overwatch/kale vandelay hfr/mael stronghart tgaac/idk but people are drawing him with that specific kind of face and i love it

liveblog begins now

Get Out Of India And Get Your Ass To France!

People can find my previous liveblog and livetweets for what I think of the Sumeru section. I thought it was great, I loved the heist scene, but *grumbles in desi* you know how one of the most popular (and thirsted after) characters in the west right now is a DARK SKINNED INDIAN SPIDERMAN-

Paimon lore...she got tired, fell in a whirlpool, and got sucked out to sea...

sus.

... Niagara Falls...... somehow geographically across from a desert.... which also ends in a big cliff...

welcome to fontaine. literally just french for "fountain". Looks like any steampunk city but with more blue and stars. God I miss Arcane: A League of Legends story.

Neuvilette. That's the Mael Stronghart looking guy's name.

Lyney and Lynette. They're uh. little guys

we're just normal men.

CAITLYN KIRAMANN ARCANE?!

... Is this Fischl's VA? Has the same smug aura. Also, why are her eyes two different colors? Is she tainted by the Abyss or a Schneznayan puppet or something?

I'm not writing all that down Furina but I don't fuck with celebrities. I only fuck with gods.

She's so grand I hate it.

Tears of Themis 🤝 Genshin Impact Fontaine

I'm too poor and ugly for this shit

FIGHTING GODS?! BITCH I'VE GOT A RESUME

..... what the fuck is happening in this place. first god wants to beat me up, then god wants to battle me in court ace attorney - er, tears of themis style, while the rabble are saying that god-slayer traveler's DUEL would be boring while a COURT battle would be more exciting..... and now there are weird laws

that's not called being absolved of sin that's called climate change

why would you build boats that function like subway trains on giant aqueducts when you could just... make bridges with... okay I guess depending on how you do it, having aqueducts instead of roads could be pretty fast in a world without cars

How many little siblings does this guy HAVE

How many dragons is that now? There was Dvalin, Durin, Ahzdaha, the one Raiden killed, and now the Hydro one. Was there a Dendro one?

You'd think that a HYDRO city would have some kind of STEAM POWER

I love cute engineer girls! Damn, she's just an NPC.

... wh. YOU'RE A GOD OF WATER IN A STEAMPUNK CITY JUST USE HYDRO POWER TURBINES

nothing like getting the Italian mafia to beat up the French mafia

sorry to this guy who has now voiced characters in two games where his fantastic voice work is badly complimented by piss poor lip sync (swank from rain code)

Oh shit are we going to ace attorney childe? that would be really funny. he'd be such an ace attorney witness too

traveler: childe, why are you in fontaine?

childe: depression arc

So these little humanoid dog creatures are "Melusine".

Friends with benefits (the benefits are knowing all their siblings and also theater tickets)

There he is. Mr. Justice man.

Neuvilette: I think she wants you to look at her.

Paimon: Yeah, sure...

Furina: Hehehe~

Traveler: *holds up middle finger at Furina*

Oh he's literally Mael Stronghart

Lyney's VA is pulling out all the stops for this stage magician cutscene

A "bang" right in the middle of a magic show?? For sure we're going to be Ace Attorneying this chapter.

OH YEAH. OH YEAH THATS A CLEAR CASE OF SOMEONE USING STAGE MAGIC TO MURDER LIKE IN DRV3 OR AA6

Paimon puts on Groucho Goggles while quoting Sherlock Holmes. Fun...

Waiting for Rosa Tears of Themis to get isekaid to this universe with a random boy. Because I like Rosa and she's cute. And never alone.

So Lyney's rope was replaced with a flammable one. That explains the murder method, But how did Lyney switch places with Carrow, and where did Halsey disappear to?

Navia, a mob boss. Or a detective. Not sure which.

There's honestly no way they didn't take at least a LITTLE inspiration from Arcane because that's the only steampunk setting I can think of where little furry guys are common. Pookas are in Odin Sphere, but that story isn't exactly steampunk... Well, it is. And supposedly Neuvilette is the only male one.

That's how the trick itself was performed. The audience member basically got put on a giant rotating, moving elevator. So in the middle of it, someone must have hijacked the trick. They forced Halsey out and Cowell in, then escaped with Halsey.

... Lyney didn't hear the thud? How? Why?!

THEY'RE FATUI?!

It literally is the most Ace Attorney sort of thing to ask the judge for a brief recess and then talk with your client who immediately admits to being a Russian spy whose excuse for not being present during a murder scene was that he was doing spy things

yeah I was thinking, it had to be someone from the crew. how else do you tamper with the random number generator and the rope? but the real question is how did he become a victim of his own scene after the fact?

what

this is entirely out of left field. they should have gotten one of the tears of themis writers on this one.

girl your drink was spiked

yeah that was what I was thinking too. the disappeared people are being dissolved and ending up in the fountain somehow

oceanid!

aether: bye pretty oceanid! I'll find your lover for you- OH GOD THERE'S ROBOTS

... Did they honestly watch Arcane and get nothing from it? Looks like they tried to recreate Zaun and missed the fact that Zaun isn't run by women in big hats

girl...

I'm just bored throughout this entire investigation segment and then I learn that the Italian Mafia got arrested for water crimes

We're unwatering the water crimes

I was also wondering if vacher was the one who murdered the oceanid. yeah it was. and looks like we hunted down the mastermind of one piece of the murder plot

sometimes I fear that the gimmick for AA7's prosecutor will be a robot and this is why. at least we get to see the guy go ham again

Oh yeah that guy's girlfriend is in the place where all water flows to, Doyha District the fountain.

... Imagine you're a baliff, and you're at court, and the defendant wants to see his wife who has dissolved into a fountain, and the chief justice helps him, and so the chief justice takes him to the fountain, and then five minutes later the chief justice comes back and says he stuck his face in the fountain and drowned

[bledsun]

lukayuk - stardew valley wiki

birthday: summer 2 lives in: cindersnap forest address: abandoned house the variq home family: mother, father, brother (eldest), brother (middle) friends: dwarf, junimos, krobus, evelyn, linus, pierre, alex(?) marriage: yes best gifts: spicy eel, fire quartz, complete breakfast, gold bar, sunflower, whale meat soup

schedule varies by season, varies by year. typically returns to father’s home island beginning of winter & returns in either spring, summer, or fall of that year. each year is different based on her father’s fishing schedule back on his home island. obsidian isle is a relatively small island nestled in the middle of the gem sea between the ferngill republic and the gotoro empire. although it is technically gotoro empire territory, the island itself has been a neutral ground for decades. it’s fishing and mining industries supplies both the gotoro empire and the ferngill repubic with much needed resources. each season, her schedule varies. sometimes, she picks up shifts at the bar. other times, the library/museum. sometimes even pierre’s store. most often, she can be found at the community center or the cindersnap forest near her home. she frequents the mines adventuring. on rare occasions, she may be found in the secret woods or witches swamp/hut. she is never seen at the beach or near bodies of water except during festivals/events (this may change after the eight heart event).

relationships she has a complicated relationship with her parents, who are fairly strict. she is pretty close with her brothers & often talks about missing them since they’ve moved out & moved on with their lives. she flirts with just about everyone. she has very few close friends. morris is her sworn enemy. she often gets in trouble with mayor lewis. pierre has a soft spot for her thanks to her anti-joja corp antics. she has an innate connection to magic and the supernatural, making herfriends with the junimos, dwarf, and krobus. she enjoys picking flowers to give to evelyn whenever she is in town as a thank you to looking after her for some time while she was younger and she often offers linus food she forages. verse dependent: timeline dependent, she and alex spend time growing up together when evelyn is her caretaker, her parents are very busy working and needing the support.

gifts- birthday

loved:  ❛ wow, this is a pretty great gift. thank you! ❜

liked:  ❛ a birthday gift? for me? thanks! ❜

neutral:  ❛ i’m surprised you remembered my birthday. ❜

disliked:  ❛ what a weird birthday gift. ❜

hated:  ❛ ...are you kidding? ❜

gifts

loved  ❛ for me? really? wow, thank you! ❜ spicy eel. fire quartz. complete breakfast. gold bar. sunflower. whale meat soup.

liked  ❛ oh, sweet. thanks! ❜ anything foraged. all flowers. all cooked food. all animal products. 

neutral  ❛ hmph. thanks. ❜ all fish. alcohol. shells. anything related to magic.

disliked  ❛ ha! seriously? ❜ seaweed. algae. white algae. seafoam pudding. monster items. void items.

hated:  ❛ this is a joke... ❜ anything bought at joja mart. joja corp products. trash. scraps.

movies & concessions

loved: natural wonders, it howls in the rain fries. ice cream sandwich. nachos. personal pizza. truffle popcorn. sour slimes. stardrop sorbet.

liked: the brave little sapling, journey of the prairie king cotton candy. hummus snack pack. kale smoothie. popcorn. star cookie.

neutral: wumbus, the zuzu city express apple slices. jasmine tea. jawbreaker. salmon burger. salted peanuts. rock candy.

disliked: the miracle at coldstar ranch  panzanella salad. chocolate popcorn. black licorice. cappuccino mousse cake.

hated: mysterium joja corn. joja cola.

heart events

two hearts: enter the cindersnap forest anytime during fall year 1.

four hearts: enter the community center anytime while she is there.

six hearts: enter pelican town between 11pm and 1am at the end of spring year 2.

eight hearts: enter the beach between 8am and 10am during summer year 3. luka is standing by the water. as you approach, she explains she has been afraid of the water since a terrible accident where she almost was swept out to sea as a child. she takes your hand, saying she wants to be brave and trusts you. you both slowly wade into the water.

ten hearts: enter the secret woods. when you enter the secret woods, you will see luka practicing her sword skills and chatting with the junimos. she is surprised, however says this is the perfect time to tell you her secret. she explains her connection to nature, keeping the balance, and the junimos. she states that she is grateful to find someone with a similar connection, you kiss under the stars, and fireflies sparkle around the screen.

group ten-heart event: luka does not participate in the group event.

fourteen hearts: exit the farmhouse between 5:30am and 7:30am on any day in winter. since its close to the holidays, luka will admit she has been working on your gift. she states she can’t wait until the holidays to give you your gift. luka takes you into her workshop space and gives you your gift: a small set of hand crafted clay figurines of whatever is listed as the farmer’s ‘favorite thing’.

note: if you choose to destroy the community center and replace it with the joja warehouse, there is no way to earn any of luka’s heart events. joja corporation is the enemy and if you choose joja corp over the community, it will not be possible to trigger any of her heart events in the future or even become her friend.

marriage once married, luka will move into the farmhouse. like other marriage candidates, she will add her own room to the right of the bedroom. she’ll also set up a small greenhouse workshop behind the farmhouse where she'll sometimes go to study magic and work with the juminos on improving the town, working on art projects, and protecting the wildlife. when she leaves the farm, its often to go to the community center. on rainy mornings and mornings when luka stays inside the farmhouse all day, she may offer you ginger ale. on rainy nights, she may offer you dinner: roots platter, chowder, autumn’s bounty, super meal, or fruit salad. on new years' eve (winter 28), she'll give you a bottle of wine.

quests

vandalize joja mart: luka will randomly request help with a ‘secret project’ by bringing her an egg (any size/quality) to the east side of pelican town between 11pm and 1am. if you walk into pelican town with the item in hand at that time, you will have a cutscene where she is egging jojamart. she will ask if you’d like to join. if you say yes, you will receive 3x item value and 1 friendship heart. if you say no, you will receive 50-100 friendship points and 1.5x item value.

art project: in winter of year 2, you will receive a letter from luka requesting 100 pieces of clay upon her return in summer of year 3. completing this quest will reward the farmer with 1000g and a handcrafted piece of jewelry.

[badsithnocookie]

anyway, thoughts on 6.1 finally. 3 completions - imp loyalist, imp saboteur, pub loyalist.

imperial

i don’t trust sith who lampshade the sith tendency to plot and backstab. moreover, i don’t trust writers who lampshade the same. rivix was untrustworthy the moment he was a sith. i like his design, his voice, his threads. i may even come to like him as an antagonist. i don’t trust him.

i like that it was made explicit that the empire is in the habit of assassinating ‘failed’ sith (compare and contrast the jedi, who... generally leave ex-jedi alone unless they are actively harming the republic and or the jedi and or innocent bystanders, and even then would rather attempt to rehabilitate an ex-jedi who has gone Full DS than like. send assassins after them)

i dislike that you only get that line on a saboteur. the people who need to see the empire at its worst the most aren’t people like me, they’re the idiots who get ~heartbroken~ about uncle vowrawn supporting slavery

republic

i liked elara’s little cameo, even on a non trooper. she’s a medic first, and her running triage on the refugees is very Her.

distributing supplies to the refugees... like i get it, you’re Doing Good Deeds (compare and contrast the imperial intro, where you’re having your ego pandered to), but it’s like. you picked the commander of this base, nay alliance, to give people the contents of boxes they are standing next to. okay.

why would gnost dural be the one trying to push archivists into battle. i mean i know bioware don’t care about Literally Any kind of coherent characterisation for Basically Anyone, but

general thoughts on both faction snippets

i guess it’s supposed to be Reflective Of Player Choice that the sectors won/lost depend on the actions of the PC, but i still hate that bioware is doing this shit for anything more than set dressing, because it makes telling a story where anything has any actual consequence impossible. character can be saved? yeah but if they can die they’re not going to be mentioned again in any notable capacity regardless. sectors won and lost are going to be immaterial to the larger plot.

the punny quest title is kind of wasted on the republic, since it’s not the Hand that the quest concerns. rip

otherwise it’s. not much happens. ‘well some stuff of no real consequence happened, and the real big bad of the next storyline is still on the loose. have some expository cinematic cutscene that you’ll need to see both factions to get the whole picture, even though overall the faction stories cancel each other out because fuck the vanilla storytelling style, that’s why’

kira n scourge

i disliked scourge’s pathetic kale tantrum. like a lot. i dislike this weird lack of understanding and unwillingness to interrogate their own writing that has bioware believing their own hype about scourge not feeling feels, and i dislike that the only way they decided to show scourge feeling a feel (outside of glurge-worthy romance uwu) is him having a temper tantrum at someone else’s (financial) expense. not one of my outlanders would put up with that shit and all of them would have thrown his ass off planet for that. you can sit at the big kid’s table when you can finally scrape together the emotional control i’d expect from a fucking ten year old.

i disliked kira’s making excuses for him and trying to smooth shit over. i found that whole incident to be kind of lowkey triggering honestly? scourge is behaving like a violent abusive shitgibbon and kira is the battered jedi partner having to coo over his paddies in order to protect herself. let me bounce that fucko out of an airlock and give her a break, thanks

that said i did find his ‘ugh’ growling to be kinda funny. are you trying to threaten me, little man? because as it is, the animation reads more like something between a sneer and a pout that just went horribly wrong. it’s not powerful, it’s not imposing, it’s just sad.

this also all said, assuming that game time is still supposed to be about the same as RL time, have they done. literally nothing in the last three months or so? have they been sitting on odessen with their thumbs in their asses? they have achieved nothing from the end of onslaught. ‘we sent out probe droids and are waiting for them to get back’ would be one thing but ‘we sat on our ass for three months and did nothing because the game’s update schedule got in the way’ is quite a damn nother, and not a good look

[paradoxcase]

zenosanalytic replied to your photo: This taunts me.  It’s obviously a hint, but I have...

is that was the windmill’s “fan” looks like? Looks a bit like a ventilation fan. Regardless, I still wouldn’t have any idea what it means(activate something to it’s right, maybe? Like: maybe there’s a fan or windmill or vent with a button/lever/whatever on both sides, and you need to press the right one? Make the blades turn clockwise??)

From what I could see of the windmill blades that is pretty similar to what they look like.

I solved the puzzle, though, I think the sign means “this conduit is involved in turning the windmill on and off” which I had kind of guessed, given what it was connected to.  The real hint was on the back of a door that I forgot to check, because that’s where the hint always is in these games

So far I liked the Rhem II special edition content better than the the Rhem I and IV special editions, which fits with me liking Rhem II the best in general.  A well-designed mini-maze, and the last puzzle was actually very well hinted.

Sort of interestingly, at the end of this part of the game was this:

Meneandes is... I’m not sure exactly.  Generally you “interact” with these two guys named Kales and Zetais, I think the first reference to Meneandes was at the end of the original Rhem III where there was a short cutscene that wasn’t really clear about much.  There’s also a location in Rhem IV which is called “Meneandes’ House” but I don’t think there was a cutscene with him.  It’s not clear whether this letter is meant to be addressed to the player, or to Kales, who is the guy who explores Rhem and leaves notes behind for the player.  But Rhem is definitely supposed to be One Place, so e.g. Kales will talk about “going to a different part of Rhem” etc. with the implication that each of the games is in a different part of Rhem (and supposedly Rhem V will connect all of the previous games together).  So it’s kind of fourth-wall-breaking that this letter talks about “Rhem 3″ and “Rhem 5″.  I remember there was a Meneandes letter at the end of Rhem I SE, and maybe Rhem IV, I can’t remember?  But I can’t remember if it directly talked about the games by name like this.

[pagutheshadydealer]

Ok, so one thing I want to ask is why opinions are allowed to go so far into judgement territory that people are bashing on things they refuse to have any other knowledge on.

Cases in point

A friend of mine hates the company of capcom and monster hunter world. Not because it's a bad game but because the talking animation doesn't match up with the dialogue in the cutscenes and he therefore cannot play the game and hates the company because It doesnt matter if they can make the game look as good as it does or how successful it became, they can match up the animation with the dialogue. Normally I would agree but with how much hate the hate filled opinion has, its fucked up on so many levels. Plus I know that companies are sometimes rushed or other things happen so they cant get everything they want to do in the game sometimes. Whether or not a game has a very minor animation issue, which monster hunter worlds dialogue not matching up with the talking animation on their cutscenes is, its very minor most likely ignorable so in conclusion. Get the fuck over it, play and enjoy the game and have fun

Sherwin-williams and firing a guy because he was actually passionate about his job. Ok I have never been a fan of Sherwin-Williams or other similar companies because I never got into paints that much when I was growing up but fuck that company for doing that. That's just wrong. People are allowed to like and be passionate about their own jobs. hell that's a employees that will be one of the best. And the fact that same employee got hired by another company... *chuckles* well, sherwin-Williams get fucked

Same friend going absolutely batshit crazy and telling me I dont know biology because dbs gohan is stupidly weak looking when wearing his tracksuit. Yes I got into an actual argument with the guy over this. He literally refused to believe that clothes, posture, angles, lighting and more affect the look of a character and then tried telling me that atrophy of muscles doesnt work for saiyans because they are built to be muscular and such. Ok some counter points

Super saiyan bulks goku up a bit to handle the new power

Gohan bulks up considerably more when first achieving super saiyan 2

Goku and gotenks bulk up even more due to super saiyan 3 because its power based and not balanced. That's why the muscles are so big

GOHAN IS A HALF HUMAN HALF SAIYAN HYBRID! AGAIN HALF HUMAN HALF SAIYAN!!! If you honestly believe that being only half human doesnt mean shit in db/dbz/DBS then clearly gohan will get sick and die at any age from any space disease, toxin, atmosphere etc, no matter what his half saiyan biology says...oh wait it does matter, humans are one of the most adaptable races out there. Not only that but being half saiyan would bring massive benefits to a half human being, like resistence to diseases and such. Also broly and kale (especially kale) look and are positively meek compared to regular saiyans but have completely different transformation and a demonic inner personality that can affect their consciousness.

Yes clothes can make someone look bigger or smaller depending on the type of clothes used. Body builders will use tight fitting clothes that emphasise their bodies while others will wear dresses and tuxes that will make them look regal and powerful. Yes angles can make something look completely different because have you ever seen fun house mirrors? Yes lighting can make something look different, lighting can make something look demonic and evil or cheerful and good. Posture can effect someone or something as well, take mr crocker from fairly odd parents for example he is very creepy looking and obsesses about fairies. Part of that is due to his posture. Posing also effects, do a superman pose with your hands balled into fists and at your hips with your legs spread a bit apart. It makes you appear heroic.

Literally these are things that I have experienced or witnessed in life in the last 3 months or so I could say more but not sure how long the word count is so this is all you are gonna get. Have a good day/night. I would love to see comments and thoughts on this. However fair warning in advance if you disrespect me or my life or anybody else in those same categories for any reason you can come up with i will block your ass either respect and be kind to others or dont and be blocked. Your choice