#but he still has clockwork and gears as some details because of his relation to time and his disconnection+connection to kenix

[roboyomo]

playing around with ken's main fit and i think i have it set, i'll def draw it digitally later!!! just to clarify the text there says "Left scissor blade/sword" cuz that is exactly what it is that is his weapon of choice

fun fact kenix and ken are supposed to wield the two sides to the time scissors (<-what those scissor blades make when are out together) as their weapons so kenix wields the right blade and ken wields the left blade

[flowerbloom-arts]

The Clockwork Muddler

(another fanfic idea/concept/AU by me that other people can use, just please @ me and stuff I would love to know if you do)

Summary

Stumbling upon the aftermath of an accident never meant to be seen by anyone, a young Moomin(pappa) finds out that the Muddler is some sort of... Mechanical being. Moomin is completely horrified by this discovery, but before he could do anything the Muddler grabs him by the arm and tearfully begs him not to tell anyone, and that he'll do anything he pleases if it keeps him silent about the whole thing. Moomin, not being one to pass up an opportunity, agrees to this on the condition that the Muddler follows his every whim.

Tensions rise as Moomin sees him as far less of a person and Muddler tries to please him as best he could, and although they don't say a suspicious word of the incident, everyone else notices the strange change in their dynamic. It's only a matter of time before tensions rise to their heights; and that Moomin discovers another devastating truth.

Concept explanation

So basically this whole thing is an allegory that can apply to many things and it has alot of literal metaphors but if one were make too much of a detailed lore/explanation of the central concept then the need for logic would supersede the central message of the story.

To simply describe Muddler I would say he's basically a steampunk/clockwork android but not in a super literal techy way. It's kinda like the gems in Steven Universe, they are technically light robots but they still have bodily fluids and human emotions and the ability to digest food and stuff, you know?

Muddler's been adopted by Hodgkins since ages ago, they're not biologically related, but Muddler and Hodgkins still call the people who took care of him previously his "parents" and "uncle/nephew" are like petnames for eachother because they grew such a close bond.

Muddler is really janky on the inside, alot of loose ends and problems that cause him to be clumsy and overemotional and fixated on his collection. He also lost the lid for his chest a long time ago (probably back when he was still with his parents) and so his insides are constantly exposed but hidden under the layers of clothes he always wears.

The story takes place like... some time after Muddler's wedding. Moomin(pappa) is a very dumb and naive kid with a huge ego (I'd say he's around 16-17 while Muddler is atleast perceivably 21), and Moomin has alot of inexperience with the concept of sympathy or empathy due to his upbringing and what little he does have is relegated to Hodgkins, because Hodgkins is Moomin's favorite and most important person in the world while everyone else is just, whatever.

So when he finds out about Muddler with his gut gears spilled and trying to fix himself up quickly he freaks the heck out because holy crap did his reality just shatter right that moment. When Muddler begs him not to tell anybody he's still trying to process but gives into his offer because he's an egotistical brat with an unstable, warped self-image and who doesn't care about anybody but himself and Hodgkins.

Moomin gets progressively bitter towards Muddler because Muddler has this really cool uncle who's really nice to him and Joxter is also really nice to him and he already has a wife while Moomin doesn't get anywhere near the affection Muddler receives, even though he thinks Muddler isn't a real person but he himself is the realest person he's known his whole life. He is slowly inching closer to telling on Muddler anyway, and he doesn't even know that Hodgkins already knows. He even starts calling him a clock in his head to further dehumanize him.

During the height of this tension, Muddler and Moomin have a private conversation/argument which culminates into the reveal that Hodgkins knew, Moomin asks why in the world because he's already built up this bigotry towards Muddler in his head and Muddler starts getting all sentimental talking about his backstory. And then he looks at Moomin sadly;

The Muddler reached out for the Moomin's chest.

A click rung out in his head.

"Hodgkins always had a fondness for machines, you know. He seems to have this sixth sense for finding one," the Muddler said kindly. "The broken ones, most usually, we seem to be easier to spot with those ears of his."

No no no this can't be, the Moomin thought, he can't be like him!

The Muddler continued softly and sadly, "You told the Hemulen Aunt you were found in a seashell padded with velvet, yes? Excuse me, it must've been nice to be treated so gently and elegantly as a small one."

A shopping bag padded with newspaper...

The Muddler opened the Moomin's chest to reveal the dusty and rusty clockwork in him, "Oh dear," the Muddler covered his mouth, "I thought since you were so clean... Perhaps your Hemulen didn't bother..."

A thousand 'no's repeated themselves in the Moomin's thoughts, this cannot be true, he has to be a real person himself. He has to be! Because if he wasn't, then...

They locked eyes. Sincerity and concern met with earth-shattering terror. A pause.

"Oh," said the Muddler finally, "I'm sorry."

-

Moomin himself is made of clockwork, that's why he was different from the other Moomins and had those clicks in his head when he got ideas. His old Principal didn't even bother figuring out what he even is, let alone take care of him properly, his insides are all rusted and somewhat malfunctioning.

Moomin spirals and thinks that all the things he thought about Muddler applies to him aswell, that everything he tried to do since his escape are rendered null because he's not a real person and fake people can't become Famous Adventurers, they can't be liked or belong anywhere if people knew.

Moomin starts denying everything but he knows it won't do anything and he breaks down crying.

The Muddler looks down at him, feeling pity wash over him. Despite the cruelty and bitterness Moomin treated him with he can't help but feel bad for this child who had his whole world crash down on him. Muddler pats his head, and then Moomin receives the first hug he's ever had in his life.

[asjjohnson]

Info about the Gears 'universe'

I think some people noticed I'd tagged my last two pictures with 'Gears universe', and I thought I would talk a little about that, and those two fics. (And I'm experimenting with what kind of content I should have in this blog, since I'll run out of finished Danny Phantom pictures soon and I draw and write very slowly.)

It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment tag. I thought I would probably have a reason to label things for later, and I figured I should make my tags unique, and my fic nicknames "Gears" (previously "Dan fic idea 2") and "Another Gear" don't feel very unique. The two fics are related in a way, and the first word that came to mind for a tag was 'universe'. It's not an 'AU' or something. Just two fics that share the word 'gear' in their titles and share a fic universe. (Because my fic ideas tend to have different headcanon sort of things, so most don't have anything to do with each other. Dan may have different motivations or a different backstory - or even a different personality - in different fics. But in these two, Dan has the same history and is the same character. Well, mostly.)

"When Gears Come Loose" and "Another Gear in the Clock of Time" are actually very different fics. "Gears" is a oneshot mainly focusing on a conversation between two characters. "Another Gear" is (supposed to be) a pretty long story with a lot of characters and multiple things going on. The two fics also take place at different times. ("Gears" also hinges on people not guessing its ending, or else it'll just be a boring back-and-forth conversation; and if I say the wrong thing about the other fic, it will spoil "Gears". So I may be misleading at times in order to steer people away from the shared details.)

"Gears" is a conversation between Dan and Clockwork that involves repeated attacks on Dan's part, and forcing one's hand on Clockwork's part. It may involve some dark ideas, so some people may not like it (I'll need to figure out how to mention warnings without spoiling things). Clockwork's really overpowered in the fic, but... well, Clockwork is like that. He'd planned a lot more during that TUE episode than Danny realizes.

"Another Gear" was inspired by someone who'd looked at what I had written for my "Gears" oneshot. After I explained the last scene (which I still haven't finished writing) and how the fic ends, they seemed to think a lot of people would like it and would like to see the story continued. But it just wouldn't make sense - "Gears" is only meant to be a oneshot and can't be continued. But, as I thought about possibilities, I started getting some ideas for a connected multi-chapter fic.

Though I don't have too much for it yet, I think "Another Gear" will be a kind of a growing-up story. It's supposed to be like a new season of the original series, but it also throws in several new things to show that time is moving forward and new things are taking place. Danny will have his fifteenth birthday near the start of the fic, will enter his sophomore year in school, and, later on in the fic, will play a Jazz role (he'll discover that Dan has been in disguise in Amity Park for awhile now, and even helping out at times, but Danny won't tell Dan that he knows. He'll keep a suspicious eye on him for awhile, though).

Dan's powers are diminished due to his disguise, and it frustrates him because things aren't as easy as they used to be. He has to get used to it and learn how to compensate for it. He also makes reasonably-believable excuses to Danny and them (when they interact) for why he knows things that he shouldn't. Danny only suspects something when he has a strange dream triggered by Nocturn (so he visits Clockwork to check on Dan's thermos, and discovers that it's empty).

I want Vlad to have some kind of master plan in the works, relating to the mysterious things he'd been doing in the series, but I haven't figured it out yet. It has to be something big, though, and involves Ectoranium. (That last episode isn't just crossed out for this fic. Dan had gotten out of the thermos before that point, and had been secretly watching Vlad, and he prevents the accidental course change of the ghost-proof asteroid at the start of the episode. Not that he knows he'd prevented that. So whatever Vlad had been planning is still on.)

Technus will discover that he can mess with the Fenton Thermos - causing the thermos to be pretty much useless and making Danny, Dani, and them have to figure something else out. ...Too bad portal-making is one of the powers that Dan has trouble with now.

With Vlad's (reluctant) help, Dani will gain some falsified paperwork that lists her as Jack's deceased sister's (Jeri with an 'i') daughter (Anne Danielle [random-last-name]), who had run away from the orphanage early on and has been living on the streets. Vlad thought she needed a less conspicuous name than Dani, and thought 'Annie' would still be close to 'Danny', but also different enough not to be suspicious. But she'll actually go by 'Dani' and 'Anne'. (Jeri is actually my mom's name. Or Geri. Or Jerri. Or, as my dad has always joked, "Jerrry-spelled-with-three-ars". But I thought it would make perfect sense as a name for a sister of Jack's.)

So there you go. Probably more than anyone would want to know.

(Ack. How do I label this as my own post if 'Asj art' doesn't make sense in this case? ... )

[wristwatchjournal]

Counting Seven Million Seconds in Quarantine With The Jaeger-LeCoultre Geophysic ‘True Second’

Marin County’s shelter-in-place mandate was formalized at midnight on Thursday, March 19th, 2020. By then, the news cycle around the Covid-19 pandemic had already become a dangerous cocktail of science-based fact and rationale mixed with what we now know to be hysteria-driven clickbait and misinformation. Hiding from the cacophony meant a break from the source of discomfort, but this also meant fully sequestering oneself from even digital contact with the outside world and any steady stream of reliable information, ultimately exiting any real timeline of the madness. Little did I know that I was already grieving the loss of normalcy and human contact. Many grieved the loss of loved ones. In a moment, it was the world who grieved. All of us, at once, together.

After returning home on Day Zero with a full tank of gas and enough groceries to last the next few days, I took off the G-Shock I was wearing and set it on my desk. Something about the bristling “end-of-days” capability it implied felt a little too on-the-nose. I started the teakettle and reached back into my safe, popping open my Halliburton watch case and retrieving my Jaeger-LeCoultre Geophysic “True Second.” After a few turns of the crown, it jumped to life. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The Geophysic True Second is a rare bird. Not because it is a limited edition of any sort — on the contrary, actually, as it has been in production since its introduction in the Fall of 2015. It is rare because the “deadbeat seconds” complication is a staggeringly uncommon one in modern mechanical watchmaking, particularly at this price point. Austrian independent Habring2 has the Jumping Second Pilot, which is built around an impressively reverse-engineered Valjoux 7750 gear train, but that and the JLC are more or less your only options under $15,000. For true aficionados of the complication, the next logical *ahem* jump is to a Gronefeld, or an A. Lange & Sohne, either of which will set you back an additional $24,000, give or take.

The days quickly started to blend together. It didn’t matter to the world whether or not I dressed or made the bed every morning, but in an effort to establish a sense of normalcy, I did anyway. Grabbing the Geophysic off the nightstand and snapping the deployant clasp shut after completing these mundane tasks became part of the same routine wherein I tried my hand at latte art with oat milk. I fed my hummingbirds. I let a pregnant doe nibble on our rosebushes every afternoon until weeks later she was joined by a wobbly-kneed fawn. One bright morning after a heavy rain, I watched a coyote cautiously emerge from the bramble to snooze in a warm patch of sun. I pulled the fast, cotton-cased road slicks off my Specialized Roubaix bike and swapped them out for fat tubulars with file treads and a bar bag — the perfect setup for long adventure rides into far west Marin. Out of habit, I once switched to a G-Shock for an afternoon hike, but after returning home, its implications still didn’t sit well with the situation at hand. I returned it to the Halliburton and retrieved the Geophysic.

I’ve always loved the Geophysic’s dial. I mean, how could you not? As the physical expression of the movement beneath, it’s a portrait of simplicity and restraint, but one whose intent is only fully revealed under a loupe. And it’s here, where the striping on the white gold markers, the sharply faceted handset, and smooth graining of the silver dial reflect a deep integrity of design to produce something that can only be appreciated by the wearer. From the details in the dial to the behavior of the movement itself, the Geophysic, as a whole, is a love letter to watch geeks — it is not an outward expression, but an inward one, meant to communicate something very specific to its wearer, and its wearer only.

As the weeks went by, I started to notice things. I stopped thinking about my watch box — my daily ritual of agonizing over its contents fading like the memories of standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to the bar on the canal whenever Phil Lesh would show up and play a surprise set, or my favorite Burmese restaurant in the Outer Sunset where the air, thick with spicy pepper and sesame oil hung lazily between tables spaced inches apart. I stopped opening and closing the strap drawer like it were the refrigerator, hoping that I’d somehow missed a leftover wedge of cheese. I started taking more stock of habits that I never found myself able to break. Less was absolutely more at such times. A moment in history when time itself remained important, partially because routine was important, but also because every day needed to count for something — anything, as we inched toward a conclusion that may never come. Ultimately, the aesthetic of time mattered less. It only mattered that friends, family, and neighbors remained healthy as we all did our part to flatten the curve — a duration being measured by a simple watch, reliable and running. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Unlike the dial, which I’ve always found easy to love, I didn’t fully appreciate the many subtle complexities of the Geophysic’s case until I handled a Polaris. In a similar manner, its short, sculpted lugs appear to be stretching the dial width to its absolute maximum before terminating in stubby, but sharp downward pointing angles. Its lines are restrained and elegant, while simultaneously sporty and aggressive — just as the prototypical mid-century tool watches once were. “But does it bother you that it ticks like a quartz watch?” It’s a question I’ve grown all-too accustomed to answering. What the inquirer is really asking is, “Does it bother you that this expensive thing could be easily mistaken for something very cheap?” The question, in and of itself, is both complicated and simultaneously revealing because, if you have to ask, this watch isn’t for you. Generally speaking, most luxury watches belong in one of two camps: watches you wear “for them,” and watches you wear “for you,” and the Geophysic True Second is without question the latter.

Predictably, and like clockwork every two weeks, the shelter mandate was extended by another two weeks. “Mid-April” first became “late April.” April became May, then May became June. And what lies beyond June remains anyone’s guess, though it’s quite safe to assume that the routine that settled in after the first few weeks is looking a lot like a sneak preview of the summer of 2020 for many of us in the United States. I grew a “quarantine mustache” as a silly measuring stick of sorts with some friends, but the joke had run its course by week six. I shaved it off.

The Geophysic doesn’t just “tick like a quartz” watch, though. To understand its functional design intent, you have to first understand the period after which it was named: specifically, the International Geophysical Year in 1958, an era defined by the concerted exploration and study of a number of key earth sciences (gravity, oceanography, meteorology, and seismology, just to name a few) on a global level, with over 60 countries pooling knowledge and resources toward the collaborative aim of better understanding the planet. During this unique period in history, the availability of precise, accurate timekeeping instruments upon which researchers could depend for synchronization or various time-related measurements (particularly in navigation, where exact demarcations of each second are required) was paramount. But I’m not studying geomagnetism and how it pertains to the migratory instincts of the flycatchers that are building nests in the fragrant eucalyptus at the edge of the yard. I’m perched on my steps, binoculars in one hand, KSA Kölsch in the other, bathing in the early evening’s warm glow as I wait for the family of quail to make the rounds. Even without making eye contact with my wrist, I can hear each second being announced between the four-hertz oscillation of the automatic movement. As many of these moments soon blended into each other, I began to realize that the watch on my wrist wasn’t just displaying a specific time when called upon; it was quite literally telling the time, audibly articulating its passage, second after second, minute after minute. And though I did not feel the movement of time between the many days spent at home, I witnessed its movement with my eyes and with my ears. And for three months, this was good enough. Tick, tick, tick.

I got to know my neighbors. To be fair, we’ve always been cordial, but our daily check-ins became the only human contact any of us would have for weeks on end. A conversation about the weather here, a cup of sugar for the hummingbirds and an extra pineapple there. I started making chicken soup on a weekly basis, making sure there was enough for all three households. The first batch was excellent. The second batch was terrible, but no one complained. Ellen is a longtime human resources professional whose hours had just been slashed by her employer. She is studying to be a meteorologist on the side, just because. Jonathan is a Native American and a Vietnam War veteran — one of the Marines’ earliest Force Recon operators who would later apprentice under the legendary San Francisco photographer Jim Marshall. On a cloudy day in April, I used a long lens to shoot his portrait as he stood on the steps of his porch wearing Apache regalia. “Make me look old,” he asked. “…And make it like a grainy black-and-white photograph.” I did my best.

Flip the Geophysic True Second over to be treated to a jarring contrast in complexity: This is the exquisitely finished Calibre 770, an automatic movement that goes to great pains to make the seconds hand strike each marker, 60 times per minute, theoretically enabling its wearer to record or synchronize a specific time, right down to the exact second. The movement is also equipped with JLC’s then-new Gyrolab balance, which is engineered around an unusual, open-ended shape (visually, it was designed to look a bit like the JLC logo) to reduce air friction, theoretically mitigating energy loss and preserving the watch’s long-term accuracy when compared to a traditional circular balance. Granted, I’m neither scientist nor picky about accuracy, but I appreciate what this watch represents on a spiritual level: the pursuit of knowledge as it pertains to our physical world and the long traditions of haute horlogerie all wrapped up in a deceptively simple, uncomplicated package. And on a functional level, I also quite appreciate the fact that the calibre features an independently adjustable hour hand, making for a neat travel watch — which will again, presumably, come in handy, should we ever return to the skies.

But then something happened in late May. It happened after a custom leather strap I’d ordered for a different watch prior to the quarantine period finally arrived, and in trying it on said other watch over the course of a weekend, the Geophysic’s meager 38-hour reserve ran dry. The ticking stopped. For nearly three months, its reassuring hum had been my constant, simultaneously offering clarity in its patterned simplicity. I paused in front of my desk where it patiently lay idle, debating whether or not I should wind it back up. For a moment, it felt as though time itself had also stopped. I closed the drawer, instead, taking its stoppage as prophesy that I, along with the world outside would be ready for change — precipitously, as it were, despite not yet arriving at any formal conclusion to the shelter mandate. We were all Chilean miners, finally rescued months after a cave-in but forced to prolong the blackness, wearing dark sunglasses even after our emergence from the gloom.

The goats are back, dotting our tinder-dry hillsides to help manage vegetation growth ahead of fire season. Baby jays squawk from the leaves above my kitchen. The fawns are starting to lose their bright white spots. Summer is imminent. I’ve just made an appointment with my barber, who’ll be among the very last to be allowed to resume business. The police tape and orange cones haphazardly cordoning off park benches, trailhead turnouts, and shoreline parking lots across the county have been quietly disappearing. Northern California is slowly filling in its outline with the vivid colors we once knew. But I’m still buying groceries once a week. Still never far from a pocket-sized bottle of hand sanitizer. Still going on long, head-clearing rides into far west Marin. What was once a frightening new reality quickly settled into routine, and what we now wistfully define as the “new normal.” In many ways, everything has changed, while time itself remains just as it always was. Tick. Tick. Tick.

For more on the Jaeger-LeCoultre Geophysic True Second, visit jaegerlecoultre.com.

The post Counting Seven Million Seconds in Quarantine With The Jaeger-LeCoultre Geophysic ‘True Second’ appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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[thementalattic]

We thought Kate Walker’s journey was over after bringing Hans to meet with the Mammoths, but after a rough time, she’s embarking on another quest, to help the Youkols reach their promised land in Syberia 3.

Genre(s): Adventure

Developer: Microids

Publisher: Microids

Release Date: April 2017

Played Main Story

Platforms: PC

Purchase At: Steam

Good:

Beautiful environments.

Bad:

Disappointing plot and clumsy writing.

Terrible voice acting.

Awkward controls.

Review

I remember my lasting impressions of Syberia 2, those being disappointment at its very open ending, which resolved very little in terms of the storyline threads it had spun, particularly relating to Kate Walker and her family and employers in the US and their incessant pursuit of her.

Syberia 3 opens very soon after those events, with the Youkols, the nomadic tribe that helped Kate on the last leg of her journey, finding her unconscious in the snowy fields. They nurse her back from the brink of hypothermic death but eventually leave her in the care of the doctors at the Valsembor clinic, a small town the tribe approaches on their way to the sacred mating grounds for their Snow Ostriches.

Yes, there’s nothing suspicious about the electric-chair-ish thing!

When Kate wakes up she finds herself in a grimy room in the clinic, with only the Youkol sacred guide with her. He’s been injured, an attack by the local militia took his leg and he’s waiting for a mechanical replacement. But something’s off about the clinic and the staff seems unusually unfriendly and the doctors downright vicious, and it’s soon clear they’re keeping the spirit guide and Kate prisoner. It’s now Kate’s turn to repay their kindness and help them reach their destination.

Those nail textures…

Syberia 3’s plot is about the modernisation of the world and the viability of ancient cultures and traditions in the face of it. The problem is that Syberia 3’s writers aren’t exactly subtle about it and pretty much hammer this point down in the most heavy-handed way possible about every five minutes of the game. Villains even state they want the Youkols to return to the north and abandon their nomadic ways because, “such things have no place in the modern world.” Yet there is no sign as to what sort of problem their migration might mean for them, making their cause vague at best and frankly nonsensical at worst. It’s almost as if the game needed villains but no one bothered to give them something reasonable to pursue.

One of the key lessons in writing fiction is “show, don’t tell,” and in a video game you can use the environment, character animations and even the voice acting to give players important information without drowning them in minutes-long blocks of exposition…which is exactly what Syberia 3 does, the English voice cast not even keeping the emotional intensity throughout, resulting in a monotone that shows just how bored the performers were.

Sure, delight me with 5 minutes of exposition, please!

There is a scene where the daughter of the local clockwork engineer tells you about a nuclear disaster that happened on another town and how the drunkard captain of the large ferry you see rusting at port left hundreds to die there. It could’ve been a simple short conversation giving you the important bits and perhaps even use some camera work to show the state of the captain, but instead you must listen to her drone on, everyone getting increasingly bored.

But to be honest, my greatest complaints when it comes to Syberia 3’s writing are with the characterisation of the Youkols and the wasted story potential.

Youkols, master artisans, great merchants…complete morons when travelling

On the first one, I’m used to dealing with bumbling companions and useless NPCs, but the Youkols take that to a suicidal level of stupidity, often willing to take courses of action that would ensure their demise if it weren’t for the main character taking charge. How did these people do their migrations before?

In Syberia 2 they were skilled and wise and when you read of past Youkols in the Olympia journal in Syberia 3, you read of some amazing members of the tribe which constructed secret tunnels and hid them from the authorities all while being overworked to death in the construction of a new Olympic stadium.

Yes, there’s a giant squid battle…and yes, it’s incredibly dumb

Where is that ingenuity? It doesn’t add up. There is a clear difference between the Youkol of the past game, those you hear of and the Youkols while trading and crafting, and the Youkol when travelling on their migration. It’s almost as if riding drained their intellect. They are morons.

On the other point, even if we skip the purposeless villains, we still have so many threads open and discarded for no reason. A detective shows up at the beginning, intent on taking Kate back, but after a quick escape, her vanishes from the plot, even though he mentions people are looking for Kate for a variety of crimes, up to and including embezzlement.

Environments look great

While Kate is getting the Youkol transportation, they show the villainous Doctor Olga using hypnosis to plant suggestions in the spirit guide’s mind, particularly on giving up on the quest and taking their tribe back north and settle, because “nomad bad” apparently. Yet, this never plays out, he never acts out and purposely tries to derail the migration. He simply does what they all do, point to the player character and ask you to fix things, because they know it’s a video game and thus they must be useless.

Now that I mention all of this, I think of something else. What happened to the setting? Syberia 1 & 2 are clockwork steampunk wonders. It’s an industrial world, where the greatest advance are clockwork automatons. Hell, Hans’ train is another technological marvel. Yet in Syberia 3, the detective has a cellphone, he uses zip-ties to hold Kate for a microsecond and the villains have Helicopters and AK-47s. What the hell happened to this setting between Syberia 2 and 3? Did Kate sleep for 50 years in her coma? Have some consistency please!

So many visual glitches though

The first two games in the series are point & click adventure games but Syberia 3 is a 3rd person adventure where you control the character directly, be it with mouse & keyboard or as they recommend, as Gamepad. I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to PC games and tend to play them all in Keyboard & Mouse configuration, but I gave up with Syberia 3, as all puzzles and interactions feature gestures, such as pulling or turning wheels, and they’re so badly implemented on the mouse that in some cases they become impossible if you don’t have the gamepad, and in some really bad ones, even the gamepad will have you struggling.

At one instance, I was using the gamepad to pull on some levers, shifting gears for an ice-breaker to avoid stalling the engine, and it took me many retries because on pulling down the stick, the game didn’t properly recognise the action and slid left and right before ever considering I wanted it to go down, adding to my frustration.

Best puzzle in the game!

Puzzles for the most part are of the inventory variety and very straightforward, without many curveballs to be honest. If I didn’t know the solution of a puzzle at any given moment, it was only due to not having the right item, not because I missed the logic. While it does take from the difficulty of the puzzles, it does prevent the usual issues of trying everything with everything else, which is something I remember doing in the first two instalments of the Syberia series.

My favourite puzzle is one on reflecting light sources to different destinations and I absolutely adored it and wished the game had spent more time with this kind of challenge rather than depending on inventory-based puzzles. This one puzzle is the most memorable of the entire game.

Snow Ostriches are weird

Visually it’s a mixed bag. The character models are ugly and stiff. If you’ve read my reviews before, you know visuals aren’t ever a point of much criticism as I don’t really care that much about them, but it really struck me just how stiffly the characters moved and how low the quality of the character models was, except for their faces. Faces have detail but hands, legs and fingers have such messy textures that I seriously spent five minutes staring at one of the evil doctors’ fingernails.

But as is tradition in the Syberia series, the environments are gorgeous, with intricate details that tell you so much about the world and its people that it baffles me how they still went with the heavy-handed writing. I love the dilapidated Baranour, with its radioactive zones, the homely yet troubled Valsembor and its dirty clinic with a surprisingly pristine lobby, showing you that the entrance to the building is all about keeping up appearances, to make people believe nothing is wrong.

Evil-looking doctor is evil

The music is another strong point. The environmental music is strong throughout the game and the main theme is just amazing, a beautiful melody accompanied by strong harmonies. Of the entire soundtrack, I love that track the most.

I mentioned the issues with the voice cast above, but it’s not just the monotone exposition dump issue. There is also a severe lack of consistency when it comes to accents. They’re all over the place and no one speaks with a regional accent save for the Youkols, and only because they speak in broken English. Unless we assume they’re all speaking in Russian and the game just plays it in English—or the original French—it marks a severe flaw in voice direction.

Having said so, Kate Walker’s performer Sharon Mann is the strongest part of it all, never missing a beat and pretty much slipping comfortably back into character. I just wish she and her character had a better ending to their adventure rather than another open one that leaves most plot threads open, particularly Kate’s fate.

Doctor Evil is watching

Camera glitches are so common in this game

It’s easier than ever to try everything with everything!

The technology of the setting has progressed in leaps and bounds since Syberia 2

Valsembor is a village of clones.

Foreshadowing right there!

Stairs can become invisible walls at any given time

Love that painting by the way

Gamepad or mouse, this one’s a nightmare

Dog or Ostrich, it’s freaky either way

You’ll have problems even with the gamepad!

Chain goes under the skin, sure…

More camera/visual glitches, superimpose camera feeds. Great…

Even good ol’ Oscar is back

Conclusion

I had big hopes for Syberia 3, but what I found was a messy game that doesn’t seem sure of what story it’s trying to tell and struggles to tell what it has. Characterisation is clumsy and uneven, the ending leaves you disappointed and even the setting seems to have undergone a transformation, and not a welcome one. The gameplay is good enough, but even one great puzzle can’t make up for all its conceptual issues.

TMA SCORE:

2.5/5 – Average!

#Syberia3, a game brought down by poor writing. Our review.

We thought Kate Walker’s journey was over after bringing Hans to meet with the Mammoths, but after a rough time, she’s embarking on another quest, to help the Youkols reach their promised land in…

#Syberia3, a game brought down by poor writing. Our review. We thought Kate Walker’s journey was over after bringing Hans to meet with the Mammoths, but after a rough time, she’s embarking on another quest, to help the Youkols reach their promised land in…