#but that aside. the reason the games not going to stick is the designs.

[gachaparadise]

i've been dabbling with the hot new gacha reverse/1999 and its... okay so far. like everything is presented gorgeously and the battle system seems fun! but i can just tell this is NOT a game that's going last for me >_>

[blue-likethebird]

Reusing the memory system from botw for the tears of the dragon storyline in totk was such a terrible decision on so many different levels that it’s honestly kind of impressive.

While the botw memory system had flaws of its own, there was one small but significant thing that worked in its favour: botw’s memories were largely separate from the main plot in the past, and have absolutely no bearing on the story being told in the present. Aside from a few specific instances (ie the calamity striking, the ceremony, Link and Zelda becoming closer) the memories are all self-contained moments that emphasize character development over driving the story. Because there’s no major narrative throughline between them, it gives players more freedom to discover in any order regardless of how much they’ve progressed through the main quest without running the risk of stumbling across a memory that ruins something else later on in the game.

(This got long so the rest of my analysis is going under the cut.)

The biggest change between the memories from botw and the dragon’s tears from totk is definitely what kind of information these cutscenes relay to you as the player. Botw’s memories are primarily snapshots of small interpersonal moments that hold very little significance to the greater narrative taking place in the past. Totk’s memories are the greater narrative. With only one major exception -that I’ll touch on in a sec-, every cutscene in the dragon’s tears shows a crucial moment of story development with no time left to explore the characters driving that story forwards. There’s no organic moment revealing, say, a quirk of Rauru’s that Mineru finds annoying, or Sonia’s sense of humour, or any of our literal Main Villain Ganondorf’s motivations for going to war with Hyrule. If there’s any moments of character focus they only happen in ways that advance the plot (meaning the only real character focus is on the characters totk wants the entire universe to orbit around, namely Rauru and Zelda), and as such it’s harder to bring myself to care about what happens to anyone.

To illustrate the point I’m trying to make here, compare the memories of the champions Link regains during the divine beast quests to the conversations with the ancient sages at the end of each temple. The memories make passing mentions of the ongoing preparations for the calamity, but the real purpose of those scenes is to showcase who the champions were as people before their deaths and give us a reason to mourn them, even though we know at the start of our journey that they’re all long gone. In contrast, the conversations with the ancient sages are all about the events of the imprisoning war and their promise to Zelda that their descendants will come to Link’s aid in the future, very obviously copy pasted for each of the five times that cutscene is brought up (which is a particularly egregious moment of bad quest design but that’s a rant for another time) in such a way that none of the 5 incarnations of that cutscene reveal anything new about the ancient sages as characters, to the point where none of them even show their faces. I care about Daruk because the game shows me that he cares deeply about the wellbeing of his fellow champions and brings out the best in others. So why should I care about the nameless, faceless sage of water? What’s there to move me about their struggles if my only interactions with the sages are a series of exposition dumps? If the game can’t give me a reason to sincerely care about its main characters, the whole rest of the story is meaningless.

(As an aside, I get the feeling someone on the dev team caught on to the issue I’m describing here, because the tea party memory sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the dragon tear cutscenes. It’s such a jarring change of pace to have the otherwise plot-heavy dragon’s tears come screeching to a halt for a scene where Sonia sits down with Zelda to have a cute little tea party and talk about absolutely nothing of significance that the whole thing almost seems like it was hastily tacked on to the story later. Given that the next (chronological) memory sees Sonia fall victim to an unceremonious death by chiropractor, it feels like someone realized that Sonia really doesn’t do or say much in the scenes before she dies and threw together the tea party scene so players would have at least one moment to look back on fondly when she’s fridged. But I digress)

The story told in the dragon’s tears is a highly linear one. But the open-ended nature of botw’s memory system remains, meaning that these tears can be found and viewed in any order. At first this doesn’t seem so bad, since the first two tears you’re likely to find if you follow the game’s intended path are also the chronological first and second of the memories you can discover through these geoglyph tears. But after those first two, the game kinda gives up on guiding you towards these tears in a way that flows well with the story they wrote: the closest tear geographically to the two the game initially guides you towards correlates to one of the penultimate scenes of that entire storyline, while the next scene chronologically is found almost halfway across the map. As such, it’s all but guaranteed that you’ll spoil yourself in some way without using either a guide or the (somewhat unintuitive and never fully explained by the game) little map in the forgotten temple. Finding memories in order didn’t matter so much in botw because the scenes you could find still worked well as standalone scenes before you discovered every memory and pieced together the full picture, and the game is never trying to surprise me about the characters’ fates at the end of this storyline: hell the first memory you’re guided to shows the calamity striking. But in contrast, viewing a dragon’s tear at the wrong time can completely ruin the story they’re trying to tell in those cutscenes. During my playthrough, for example, the first tear I found after the game stopped guiding me to them showed Ganondorf removing Sonia’s stone from her dead body. At this point I had known Sonia existed for all of like an hour, so every subsequent appearance she made was ruined for me by the fact that I already knew she was nothing but cannon fodder to be killed off for the sake of another character’s pain (Rauru and Zelda a-fucking-gain). I expected to be pissed that it was so easy to spoil myself, or maybe sad in passing that a character with her potential was so underutilized, but instead I just felt… tired. I wasn’t even halfway to the first settlement and already I was completely numb to the story the game was trying to tell.

But the worst was yet to come. And oh boy was it ever a low point for storytelling in the Zelda series. Remember how I said up above that the memories in botw had no connection to the story in the present? Let’s just say the same cannot be said for the dragon’s tears.

It’s May 2023. I’ve just finished the sage of wind questline. I still have hope that the story the game is trying to tell will be good. Deciding that I’ll go to Goron city next, I head towards the Thyplo skyview tower to expand my map, catch a glimpse of a nearby geoglyph from the air, and glide over to check it out. This geoglyph shows me a memory that not only recaps the entire dragon tear storyline, but also ends on a bit of foreshadowing about Zelda’s fate that’s about as subtle as a brick to the fucking face. By exploring -the thing the game claims it prioritized above all else in the design of its world and quests- I’d once again been hit with spoilers for a major story detail.

My main objective in this game is to find Zelda. It’s the only driving factor behind my journey towards all these different regions. The current big mystery I’m supposed to solve is why Zelda’s causing so much hell for the people of Hyrule. I now knew exactly where she was and what the deal with her appearances in other parts of Hyrule was, and I’d found it completely by accident by doing something the game says over and over again that it wants me to do. Unlike with Sonia’s death, this time I was a mess of emotions. I was pissed the fuck off that this open-world game had punished me twice already for trying to explore. More than that, I was disappointed that a game I had been so excited to play, from a series I had so many fond memories of, had let me down like this. With every subsequent quest where the sages and I chased a Zelda I knew was fake to our next objective, and every NPC wondering where she was that I couldn’t tell the truth to, that disappointment grew. The entire rest of the main story was ruined for me before I had progressed past 1/4th of the regional quests and a third of the dragon’s tears. There was no more sense of anticipation or mystery. I finished the rest of the game with a bitter taste in my mouth and haven’t touched it again since.

Do I think this story could have been good? Honestly, I don’t know, and by now I don’t really care either (that’s a lie. I care so so much and that’s probably why I hate totk as much as I do). But it’s all irrelevant, because like Cinderella’s stepsister cutting off her own heel so she can cram her foot into a glass slipper that’s never going to fit, totk is sabotaged by the devs’ insistence that everything fit itself into a world they custom-made for botw. This isn’t a new formula that the series is following, it’s Nintendo slapping a new coat of paint on an existing skeleton, and I’m not optimistic to see what this particular approach has in store for the Zelda series. Especially not at the price they’re charging for it.

[bluefever]

MMV2 Soft AU [Pt. 1]

M (“Horror Mario/Ultra M”)

[DESIGN TBA]

M -an unknown entity in the form of a human- is a former musician and a talented toy maker (instead of a video game expert like in the original). He always dreamt of working for a toy company, but failed to find one that would accept him, so he went onto “Plan B” and took the musician job, where he would partner up with Frank Fairest (this whole thing would’ve taken place years back, even before Benjamin was born). Frank wasn’t the best man to M, but if sticking by his side meant gaining money then so be it. The music business began to lack interest for M and even would sometimes miss rehearsals for toy ideas. At some point in this, Frank got extremely pissed and wanted for M and him to have “a chat”. At the same time in this, M finally had the money to work at a well known toy company in another state far away from his, but before he could get to where he wanted to be, Frank pushes him aside and kills him by cutting his head open with a butcher knife and trapping his corpse in a toy box (since Frank had the idea of M “becoming something he loved” or something like that). Remaining in the toy box, M reincarnates in a Mario like form, but horrifying and “broken”. To relief his anger from his dreams being crushed, he uses his powers to create his own world in the toy box, controlling the entities/individuals who enter like his own, little toys. 

M’s real name (in the AU) is AdaM (his surname is unknown), which is one of the reasons why he is referred to M (despite the other being him taking the form of Mario). He doesn’t like to be referred to the name anymore as he believes that it was a sign of his former self being weak.

M could be a bit prideful at times but had never wanted to be too cruel (until he was killed). It was believed/assumed that he had NPD, which once diagnosed, wasn’t the case at all (so no, M/AdaM doesn’t have NPD).

M’s favorite types of toys are puppets or dolls, liking them for their ability to “do as M tells them and understand him” (another reason why people assumed he had NPD), and also for their fascinating features. 

His first ever toy he created was a puppet, it (or he, the puppet) being M’s greatest masterpiece, despite the puppet looking a bit creepy and people believing that the puppet would “steal your soul”. (Oh you know who I’m implying, do you?) M ignores those people and kept the puppet as his most prized possession.

M never was big on video games, but late on in life became quite obsessed with Super Mario Bros once finding out about them. With his toy making career, he imagined making Mario toys for Nintendo, wanting that to be apart of his goal (this would be the reason why M took the form of Mario for his reincarnation). His favorite Mario game was “Super Mario World”, but would’ve really loved the “Mario vs. Donkey Kong” games if he lived long enough for them.

In this AU (only), the following is canon: M’s the age of 38 (being +30 in the OG), he’s both bisexual and asexual (in a way), and has an ex girlfriend who he rather sees as a sister now days. 

For now, it is unknown of what his “Ultra M” form would look like, but would possibly take the form as some mixed up doll with mismatching limbs representing the entities of the Toy-Box, calling this the “Amalgam Puppet” (this isn’t official, but it’s an idea). 

Once Benjamin and Pico end up “entering”his Toy Box, M would figure that Ben was a musician once realizing he’s the father of Frank Fairest (despite Ben actually really wanting to be a artist, but M doesn’t know this and doesn’t bother anyways). With this, he insists on having an “encore” with Benjamin before he plans on either turning him into one of his “puppets”, just straight up killing him, or maybe letting him go free (mostly likely not the last one). He also ignores Pico who tries confronting M.

The Toy-Box

The Toy-Box is apart of M’s world and the “entrance” of getting in (that’ll be when M grabs a hold of you), this would be the OG mod’s replacement for M’s Cartage. Its appearance looked just like the ? Block from the Mario games but lost its color over time -mixed with stains of blood- during M’s decomposition in the box. It’s just an ordinary, dirty-up’d toy box, but by the grab of M’s hand, you could be pulled into his own little wonderland of madness.

Ben and Pico would had found it during a stroll, spotting the Toy-Box nearby a dumpster. They checked it out, noticing dried up blood that leaked through the lid of the box and once opened by Ben (who hesitated when lifting it) quickly gets grabbed by M’s hand. Pico gets concerned by this and starts looking in the box, wondering where Ben was dragged off to, not shortly after Pico getting grabbed by the same hand into the box.

The world inside is similar to the OG’s, but more wonderland like and full of tricks and tactics.

Despite being the Toy-Box, the world can contain other types of entities, but are all still considered puppets to M.

[spiritualviolation]

HEADCANON FREE SPACE - GRIAN

from the response to this post

hi hello!! this post is a free space for people to come by and share their headcanons about a specific mcyt character, and this post is for grian!

grian is like. one of those chars that are just headcanon central, so i thought it be appropriate to start with him

not-exactly-rules but some guidelines + my own headcanons under the cut!

- GO ABSOLUTELY NUTS!! share as MANY as you like, i literally don’t mind if you’re going to make a ten page essay about your headcanons. just go wild, just as long as it sticks to the character of this post! bc if it i do multiple characters on one post it might get overwhelming and messy

- you can either do it in the tags or you can just reblog and add to this, i don’t mind as long as it’s convenient for you! you can add to other people’s rbs but i do think it would be better if you rb it straight off this post, but that depends on you!!

- if you want to reblog with your design as well so you can explain your hcs, go ahead! i would absolutely love to see how people design the characters individually!!

i will probably make a masterpost for this but for now we’ll start humble, but i’m aiming to release one post per week, but maybe would speed it up if my schedule allows me!

so yea, go wild!

i will probably start with the life series peeps first but i am thinking of maybe doing qsmp peeps as well after!

my grian headcanons cause i wrote a whole thing in my notes app:

- in my hc, the forms of watchers are dream-like and amorphous, basically visual mindfucks in appearance. grian who was fairly new to the watchers still kept his regular human form, but those who have been watchers for a very long time eventually would lose their individual human identity, and is assimilated into the collective that are the watchers. grian, if give or take maybe a century, the same thing would have eventually happened to him.

- his wings, gifted to him when he was ‘taken’, are generally amorphous and shifting, and you can never focus what shape they’re supposed to be (they can give you a headache the longer you try to look at their genuine form), but he can disguise them in any shape he wants (bird wings, dragon wings, etc.) so it doesn’t hurt to look at them.

- grian cut off his association with them just several months after he was taken, joining hermitcraft not long after, estranging themselves from them.

- he can still use his powers (which include astral projection, and etc.), but because of his cut ties they’re significantly weaker than the average watcher. for example, watchers can ‘watch’ over an entire server, but grian can only ‘watch’ one person at a time.

- his reasons for not wanting to be assimilated into the watchers is that he knows what it’s like to have been pushed and forced to take up a role against his will (ahem high school ahem), and it’s hurt him and he won’t want to let it hurt him again. aside from that, he finds that the watchers are extremely boring, considering all they do is observing passively from the sidelines and all that, which is the complete opposite of how grian likes to operate. he finds it extremely restrictive and prevents him from actively participating in things. not wanting to be confined to that, he cut ties with them.

- however he still uses his powers for troublemaking and mischief, and also to help others when they need it. he doesn’t consider himself affiliated with the watchers because he thinks it’s merely some godly title and also because he wouldn’t want anyone to think him differently, so he doesn’t really hide it.

- as he denied his watcher status very early into joining them, he still has the physicality (stamina, energy and such) of a regular human. only his wings are amorphous instead of his entire form since his wings were given to him when he joined them.

- made the life smp as a fun game for his friends, but in my hc, they did a test run before starting 3rd life. it was during that test run when the watchers seized control over the server.

- during 3rd life, he put admin restrictions on himself to remove his wings so he couldn’t fly and it was fair game for the rest.

[genaleah]

It's probably beating a dead pig at this point, but I haven't seen anybody else mention this enemy in the game.

(Under a read more for antisemitism)

This enemy type called "Mr. Pinch" can be found in one of the later levels of the game, in the slum section. He hides in the upper portion of the screen to grab the player and fling them upward. He also pulls a coin out of their back pocket.

I don't think I need to pull up the direct references images, but this guy looks like an extremely antisemitic caricature. I've also seen the same said about the merchant npc "Mr. Sticks", but I think that design is a bit less egregious.

Its just that when you have TWO character designs that look this much like antisemitic cartoons, and their gameplay behavior is about money/greed, there's absolutely no way to wave that off as an accident or fluke. And especially after seeing so many of the creator's racist, misogynistic, ableist, and transphobic comments; I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything.

This whole thing is a huge bummer. I don't think that this situation is quite that same as Hogwarts Legacy, most people didn't go into it knowing anything about this guy's views, and the game had just come out about a month ago. A lot of folks were having fun and enjoying the positive aspects of the game like it's animation, gameplay and music. And aside from this enemy and the racist cheese slime, there isn't much within the game itself that comes across as negative. It's also really easy to miss how bad those enemies are when you're playing, I talked to some other people who had played and none of them had noticed Mr. Pinch's stealing animation. But, once you know about them, it can sour the whole experience.

I've seen a few different reactions to this situation, some people have talked about pirating the game and modding out/replacing the nasty elements, and I've seen other people who are going to stay away from anything remotely related to this game because the entire thing gives them a bad feeling now. I think those are both totally reasonable. But I'd say the barest minimum should probably be to not financially support this game anymore. Avoid buying the soundtrack, plushies, etc, and don't buy it on Steam if you hadn't yet.

[legendarybelmont]

To go back on the topic of NFCV redesigns, I think one of the worst issues (aside from the general artstyle that is deep in the uncanny valley) is that the designers took elements of the og designs but without understanding what they mean

N!Trevor has the iconic scar over the eye. Why? He got into scruffles with normal ass humans. That is supposed to mark him as the first Belmont who killed Dracula. N!Sypha and N!Alucard got scarred by N!Dracula, but him? nah it's not like he matters am i right?

N!Alucard is in theory pretty, statuesque and elegant, but his clothes simply look like a cheap cosplay, and no prince would go around with his cleveage exposed like that. Also, in his SotN bio, Alucard is stated to look lithe but being stronger than he looks, while N!Alucard has a lithe frame combined with evident muscles.

N!Hector looks actually very good in terms of design simplification (except for the stupid ass bobcut they gave him), but in-universe he sticks out like a sore thumb for his extravagant outfit that doesn't even fit what he does. Why does Hector wear one glove and an arm guard? Because he's a sword fighter. Is N!Hector a sword fighter? Not even in the slightest, he's a blacksmith.

N!Isaac's uniform is taken straight out of PtR, but apparently the designers didn't know that Hector wore the same uniform in that manga, so now the two Forgemasters look mismatched for no reason (not helped by the different crests they have on their backs - why???). Also, N!Isaac has tattoos like Isaac, but... they don't really convey anything about him, and they're too generic to be as memorable as Isaac's intricate runes. They're just there.

(and while she's so different I don't even want to consider her a game character, N!Carmilla looks very generic in her #girlbossness, and she should have had a more prominent mask or skull motif, not just a "pointy chin" like the wiki says)

The others are pretty much decent, although I'll always have reservations about N!Dracula's weird elongated yet too short proportions. But yeah. There is a distinct lack of care in the redesigns, even those who in a vacuum look good.

don't have much to add but all correct all factual here 👍 i agree very much. its also crazy how they decided to transplant trevors chest scar onto alucard for... some reason, and then had to give alucard fashion that doesnt suit his character at all, also for... some reason (we know why. its fanservice that doesnt even work because he is not nice to look at in the first place). the forgemaster uniforms always get me as well... ughhhh its all so baaaaad. also call me a hater but i never liked the dracula design he looks so off to me!! you either go full in on the hot old man or you go full in on the mathias, the in-between never works well (even kojima couldnt pull it off perfectly, and she didnt do it often besides)

[soulsty]

....dude Fi was designed to look 13-14 according to the devs. it's really creepy that you ship her with anyone tbh, ESPECIALLY Ghirahim. she's literally a child. says a lot about you imo

Alright alright alright, let’s clear this up.

!DISCLAIMER BEFORE I START!

Do not mistake this post as me trying to excuse weird shit. Ew. I hate pro-shipping. Get it away from me.

Now into the nitty gritty-

Quoting DIRECTLY, from Hyrule Historia, it is on my lap as we speak

“• Looks 13 or 14”

Does this concept art look a lot like our finalized Fi design? Yes it does. This is the second closest to the finalized version in the book

So let’s go over more of this, and the several reasons why I think this isn’t canon.

“• metallic texture”

That didn’t stick around. I often joke that everything in Skyward Sword looks like it’s made out of fondant, and while her clothing does, her skin and wings looks much closer to porcelain.

“• a naive cuteness”

uhh, sure? She never seemed naive to me, but she is still cute so… that stuck I guess?

I don’t need to go over the last bullet point, because that is just true lmao

But here’s the kicker! Right?

“Like the Fairy Queen in Wind Waker”

The Fairy Queen is obviously a child. We know this, look at her, she also flirts with 12 year old Link iirc

But what makes this design look like the fairy queen? The hair does, it’s exactly the same, just parted on the opposite side. The grey-blue color is really similar. Her… eyes? But wait… that’s the same eye type as the regular Great Fairies? And Ghirahim?

She didn’t even carry over the circular toon style eyes in her final design

I’m pretty sure I could assume the Great Fairies in WW are meant to be adults right? Other versions always have been, and they very clearly look like an older version of the Fairy Queen… so why does Fi’s finalized design actually look a bit more like them? From the pointed eyes to the strong nose-to-eyebrow ridge, she’s starting to look less like the Queen to me…

But let’s go back to the concept art. What else does it say?

These are the same design as the other one that says she looks 13-14, just a bit less detailed

hmm… huh… that’s interesting. Her gem changes color? Well, that’s not canon

Wait what? “Connected to the arm, which is why it bends.” She has arms under her wings?

THEY TOOK HER GODDAMN ARMS

So yeah, in that same design where she “looks 13 or 14” she had arms. Do with that what you will

How about we dive even deeper into Fi’s concept art, hmm?

It seems pretty clear to me that she wasn’t meant to be a child character from the start, some of these designs appear child-like (the one next to the iron man design in particular), but lots of these are also just women

But okay, okay, let’s take a step back from Fi’s concept art. How about Ghirahim’s, what does his say?

The same age as Link? This mfer is 17?? Jesus Christ, talk about the jock kid in high school

Jokes aside, I don’t believe that, he refers to Link as a child the entire time, all of his concept art pre-finalized, just looks like old men, so I assume that moreso meant they were straying away from that design element.

I would also like to mention that Ghirahim’s concept art states in his sword form “He shows emotion without using his eyes”

While very clearly showing a picture of him expressing with his eyes, something that remains consistent in-game as well. So this could be translation error, or just… idk honestly it just doesn’t really make sense lmao

The tl;dr of all this concept art talk is this:

Don’t take concept art as fact. As an artist, concept art is literally that. A concept. I have made designs with elements that have been changed drastically by the finalized version. It’s all a process.

SO! Now that we’re done with the concept art, let’s actually move to references from the game.

At the beginning of the game, this is said, by Gaepora and Fi

Link is referred to as “a/the youth” multiple times, as opposed to Fi being referred to once as “youthful in likeness yet wise with knowledge immeasurable.”

Youthful in likeness. Not an actual youth, and the youthful in likeness thing could not even necessarily tie back to saying she looks 13-14, just that she looks young. Youthful is a very large age-range after all.

My second point about in-game… Scrapper. This doesn’t really lead too far, because we have no idea how “old” Scrapper is “supposed to be”, he’s a robot, he has less of an age than Ghirahim and Fi, BUT he’s allowed to be an absolute simp, to the point of calling her “Mistress” non-stop, so idk, that just doesn’t read as something a child would go through to me.

UPDATE: more evidence on the front of Scrapper, when he firsts meets Link, he explicitly doesn’t want to help Link because, and I quote “Serving children is very low in my task priority.” Then Fi appears, blah blah blah, you can’t carry the windmill propeller in your pouch, right? Then Scrapper says “Who are you!?” And does what I can only describe as his version of an AWOOGA (what being “zrrt-FWOOOSH”, paraphrased) and continues, “Your name is…Fi? Should I call you Mistress Fi? Are you looking for something Mistress Fi? …I…understand. At your request, I will carry anything, regardless of weight or destination…”

So there you go, serving children is very low in his priority, Hylia was around at the same time the LD units were active, so Hylia would’ve known about the Scrapper units priorities, (assuming they all have the same priority list) so why would she make a child? Just why? And in the same vein, why would Hylia make her servant sword-spirit a child in the first place, that doesn’t make any sense 😭

Looping back around to where this all started, what does “looks 13 or 14” even specifically mean? She looks that age, not she is that age. And I’m not going to go Lolicon topic with this, I’m not here to say “she’s like 1,000 years old! So of course she isn’t a child!” I’m here to say, lots of people look older, or younger than they actually are. She’s almost the same height as Link, so if she were meant to be around his age, she’d probably be around 16, and if she’s 16, and Ghirahim is 17 according to his concept art, where did your argument go?

Speaking realistically, Hylia probably designed her to look young and ‘cute’ so she wouldn’t scare Link. Let’s be real, her personality is intimidating, and she was going to be projecting herself into his dreams, so if she had a intimidating appearance (like some of her old concepts), Link would probably be afraid of her.

That’s all. I could go deeper into some of these points, and add on other things, but I think some stuff is self-explanatory.

Now, even if you want to discredit everything I just said, Ghirahim and Fi are both adults in all of my work. Unless explicitly stated or shown otherwise.

I draw and write them how I envision them in my head. In Skyward Sword, I have always read both of them as adults. I have not aged-up Fi for this ship, that’s fucking weird. They are both adults.

[miiilowo]

Me me! I have so many questions about Afton but I'll jsut ask one. How far does his knowledge in robotics go? I thought Henry was the one who built all the animatronics, and that William was only a business partner who managed the accounting and all that stuff, but in Sister's Location he was the one who programmed Circus Baby so now I'm super confused

Sorry if it's basic knowledge for most, I'm still new to the fandom

hey no prahblem i got you covered

The details of the answer for this one will vary wildly depending on who you ask, but as a general baseline, youre both right and wrong. Henry was generally more knowledgeable on robotics, working behind the scenes, and William WAS more of the businessman + social relations type half of their whole schtick. This is partially due to their personalities (Henry being quiet and reserved and haunted looking, William being outgoing and charismatic and a bit weird) HOWEVER !!!!!!!!!

William's skill in robotics eventually DID surpass Henry's; either that, or William simply had more drive for it. There is a popular fanon belief (half-backed by evidence in one of the novels) that he was jealous of Henry, admired his skills in robotics, and purposefully decided that he needed to get better than Henry was. This is partially due to TSE bringing up that William had '...stacks of journals full of raving paranoia, [and] passages about Henry that ranged from jealousy to near worship.'

It can be pieced together based on other evidence in the novels that these journal entries about Henry were specifically referring to his robotics expertise, alongside stuff about his family, but we're focused on the robot thing here. William says on multiple occasions that he thinks his animatronics are vastly superior to Henrys, but also backtracks and sort of contradicts himself by saying that a lot of what he (will) has achieved was purely DUE to Henry.

It can get kind of muddy there, due to the novels getting into illusion disc territory (which, as far as im aware, are not canon to the games and will be ignored effective immediately) BUT we can easily assume that William is mostly entirely responsible for the funtime animatronics. This is for a lot of reasons, but these are the basic obvious ones:

they belong to the afton robotics label, NOT fazbear entertainment

baby is designed after williams daughter, elizabeth, and was essentially built for her as stated by the little lady herself

the blueprints having things in them that william would never let henry know about in one million years (having compartments to store bodies in + ways FOR those victims to be attained by the animatronics)

they have a very different direction than the robots we know henry worked on (mostly in how theyre built; endoskeletons are different, the plates, so on so forth)

william used the funtimes for the express purpose of toying around with remnant/possession. the dead kids from fnaf 1? theyre in there ! im like 90% sure theyre in the funtimes! (remnant is...strange. the souls can be kind of split apart and stored in different places its confusing and fucked. something something memories something something presences idonr.know its not worth trying to explain)

anyways. aside from that. even if we dont take williams WORD for it because im not sure hes the most trustworthy individual, it can be easily observed that the animatronics he worked on himself are leagues more advanced than most anything Henry created. the funtimes are one of a kind, and you can see across the board that anything henry had a hand in tends to stick to the same sort of frame. the og animatronics, the toy animatronics, spring bonnie, the mediocre melodies, the rockstars, so on so forth.

Williams own creations have....More. Going on. And it makes sense for them to, given how their motivations were very, very different; Henry wanted to make robots and entertain kids. William wanted to entertain kids. He also wanted to kill kids. He also wanted to be better than Henry. He had more of a reason to become more skilled, and so, he did. sorry that this is so fucking long btw i have a lot of. information up there

[terra-drone]

My gripes with Rift Apart

Consider this a review of Rift Apart (PC ver). After playing this game twice on Renegade Legend, I have... opinions. Being a fan of the franchise since Going Command/Locked & Loaded, I admittedly have some strong biases for both the PS2 saga and the Future Trilogy for various reasons. But before I go lambasting this entry into the franchise, a TLDR summary;

Pros:

The game is pretty and well executed on a technical level (for the most part).

The platforming and movement is refined and a step up from previous titles.

Cons:

Quite literally almost everything else.

Also has a propensity for crashing (both freezing and blue screen of death).

Movement & Platforming

One of the core aspects of RaC that I am happy RA got right. The movement is buttery smooth and chain daisying from one platform to the next using wall runs, dashes and rift pulls is excellently designed. The addition of the dash function adds an extra dodge ability that was absent in previous entries although granted we can still use the age-old side jumping while aiming/shooting.

I do wish however that the hoverboots were more integrated into the platforming since most of the time you only ever need it for super long leaps or the timed step puzzles. Something like the jump pads from ACIT would be nice to see paired with the new wall run and dash mechanic. You hardly need to use it outside of Savali and Torren IV and the last part of the Nef Mech fight.

What I wished they truncated however was the glide mechanic the hoverboots had. Given that the hoverboots could both glide and make you go fast, it makes this better than whatever Clank could possibly offer. @erablisme has done a wonderful breakdown on this matter (see here), but essentially having the hoverboots be an upgrade of both the charge boots and fulfilling Clank’s contribution to Ratchet’s mobility (gliding) renders Clank, from a gameplay standpoint, moot. It renders Clank into nothing more than a glorified backpack/exposition device, which beats the entire purpose of the franchise’s own title.

Gameplay

Weapons

The arsenal, while fun to use, is too bloated. A lot of the guns overlap in functionality:

Shotguns: Enforcer, Pixelizer, Void Repulser

Seeker/Turret weapons: Agents of Doom, Bombardier, Mr Fungi

Crowd Control: Topiary Sprinkler, Cold Snap

Grenades: Shatterbomb, Bouncer

Rapid fire: Burst Pistol, Blackhole Storm

Lock-on weapons: Drillhound, Richochet, Buzzsaw, Lightning Rod

Heavy hitter: RYNO, Negatron Collider, Warmonger

Do we really need multiple weapons that do the same thing just with different particle effects?

The level up mechanic, while a staple of RaC games, is frankly outdated by this point and actively hinders the game. If anything, it punishes players for sticking to guns they enjoy once they hit max level. It makes the motivator for using weapons not be its function but rather to chase that arbitrary level cap. Plus, there’s no telling what the level up actually did for a weapon aside from damage buffs.

It’s not like they couldn’t do away with this feature, Deadlocked made the guns increase so many levels it frankly deemphasises them in favour of choosing the best weapon for any given scenario, ItN decreased the max level to 3 (6 on challenge) in favour of more meaningful weapon upgrades, and ACiT had the Constructo weapons and mods (which Deadlocked also had called Omega Mods) that incentivises experimentation on what combos worked best while allowing you to spice things up post max level. Why not tie weapon upgrades to collectibles? They already had the Raritanium collection, sprinkling effect mods for weapons throughout the locations shouldn’t be too difficult. They already did this for the armour system, so why not do it for the weapons too? Heck, why not make all the weapons customisable like the Constructo weapons? It would solve the bloated arsenal problem.

Enemy Design

The enemy design in this game just isn’t great. While it makes sense considering you’re fighting an army so it’s obvious they’re gonna have standardised units, you would think they would spice up their combat stratagem when they know they couldn’t beat our protagonists by throwing the same old shtick over and over. Instead, we keep having to fight the same miniboss Juggernaut over and over and over again. Sometimes there’s two of them! Make it three during the Juice fight!

It’s not a problem with just the Nefarious troopers, it’s an issue across multiple factions too. Across all three factions (Space Pirates, Goons & Nef’s army), they all follow the same formula; 

the one with the gun: Pirate Corsair, Goon, Nef Lasertrooper

the one that does melee: Space Pirate & Shield Pirate, Goon Rusher & Undead Goon, Nef Slugger

the tiny short range/melee swarmer: Cutlassies, Robomutt, Nef Trooper

the vehicle one: Goon Dropship, Nef Dropship

the flying one: Zoom Goon, Nef Sniperbot & Blitztrooper & Sniperbot

the heavy flying one: Vroom Goon, Nef Peacekeeper

the rinse repeat miniboss: Pirate Marauder, Nef Juggernaut

While stylistically different, they don’t differ much from how they shoot/do damage at you. It would have been great if they did some things different from one another. Some really simple fixes;

While I think giving shields to pirates makes little sense, it is some variety at least. Expand on that. Maybe make the Goon Rusher actually rush towards you faster than the others, or make the Nefarious Slugger can do 360 attacks or have more range since it’s a) a robot, and b) basically has the Scorpion Flail for arms. 

Make the Vroom Goons try to ram you instead of just having to avoid the taser things it shoots cuz that’s the exact same thing that the Nefarious Sniperbot does since all you need to do to avoid both attacks is sidestepping it.

Make the Pirate Corsair shoot high damage while the standard Goon does horizontal strafing rapid fire compared to the Nef Trooper’s vertical one

Make the Zoom Goons dodge your attacks, maybe give it a ground pound that opens it up to attack so it's at least somewhat different from the Nef Peacekeeper other than being a slightly squishier variant.

For a game so pretty it is bizarre they couldn’t put more effort into gameplay itself. The repeating minibosses get stale very quickly since once you’ve figured out a tactic that worked, it is rinse and repeat across the whole game.

Two Protagonists, Same Shtick

The gameplay doesn’t differentiate itself between Ratchet and Rivet. They play the exact same way, with the exact same arsenal, and the exact same progression. What is the point of having separate playable protagonists if they’re just gonna end up the same? You could replace Rivet with Ratchet and vice versa for 90% of the game and nothing would change. It would be something if they had separate weapons or separate movement gimmicks that make them distinct, but we didn’t get that for some reason.

Character Issues

The character writing is just abysmal, even when compared to the Future trilogy. While the Future trilogy (and by extension A4O, FFA and ItN) had plenty, and I mean plenty, of plotholes from a worldbuilding standpoint, the character writing was solid and fairly consistent. I cannot say the same for RA. Some examples;

Ratchet(?) & Clank(?)

I can hardly recognise Ratchet as the same character we had over the PS2 and PS3 instalments. He feels more like the 2016 reboot version just haphazardly retconned as the ItN version that RA was supposedly a continuation of. Being afraid of being a washed-up hero was Qwark’s thing, not Ratchet’s. Why would he even care? The man was downright tired of being a hero come ItN. And why is he even worried about meeting the Lombaxes? He saved Polaris multiple times and beat Tachyon, y’know, the reason why they left in the first place? The reason he gave up searching for the Lombaxes was because he had more going on with Talwyn and was assured the Lombaxes would do just fine without him. Why the sudden change of reason? What, is acknowledging Talwyn one too many female characters for Insomniac?

And why would Clank, despite knowing Ratchet not wanting to pursue the Lombaxes, go out of his way to make a whole ass parade about the Dimensionator? If he was just trying to cheer Ratchet up from his fear of being a washed-up hero (which, again, made no sense for his character) he would have just done the parade and given him the Dimensionator in private. The entire premise of Rift Apart hinges on the fact that Clank decides to give Ratchet what can be considered as a WMD since the Lombaxes used the Dimensionator to get rid of the Cragmites in an open public setting. Had he not done this, had he not told Qwark he wanted to surprise Ratchet, Nefarious probably wouldn’t have found out about the new Dimensionator, and the entire game wouldn’t have happened.

Another gripe I have with how Clank was handled was that his Zoni heritage was conveniently forgotten about. They could have tied the Zoni more deeply into the mysticism of the RaC universe and be the reason why he was able to fix the dimensional anomalies, but instead it was tied to Gary and... the Lombaxes. Huh.

Rivet, or as I like to call her, “Furbait”

There is so much missed potential with Rivet. Where to start? Instead of a grizzled, closed-off survivor of a robot dystopia, we just get miss middle-of-the-road, clearly made for pandering, furbait. Design wise, she would have been perfectly serviceable had this NOT been a robot dystopia. The only physical giveaway to show that she was a survivor/rebel fighter was her arm. It is the only thing that shows she’s a rebel fighter survivor. Her suit is well made, her eyelashes are on fleek, her hair is silky smooth, her tail is all fluffy and clean. Nothing about her says she was a survivor. No scars, no dirt, nothing other than the obvious robot arm. It is lazy. Lazy and stupid.

Her personality doesn’t make sense for the universe she supposedly inhabits either. Heck, no one in this franchise fits well in this robot dystopia, tbh. She distrusts robots due to past experience, yet  is chummy with both Clank and Kit (and by some extension, the Zurkons & Pierre) relatively quickly. For someone who should have gone through a lot of adversity, she hardly acts like it. She’s confident, has a lot of friends, and whatever negative aspect she does have (which is just distrust instead of the obvious robot racist she should have been) that would have given her an opportunity to grow as a character is watered down and conveniently forgotten, so she hardly grows as a character, if any.

Ultimately, Rivet boils down to being “What if Ratchet, but a girl?”. There’s work put into trying to make her her own thing, but there’s also the narrative yanking her by the collar to be Ratchet’s other self. She’s the last Lombax in her dimension, she also wonders where the Lombaxes went, and she’s trying to be a hero. At that point, how is she any different than Ratchet? They don’t even differ much personality wise for a version of Ratchet who never met her Clank, so to speak. One would think she would be the spunky RaC1 Ratchet since it was meeting Clank that got Ratchet to grow as a person. Instead she’s just your lovely neighbourhood Rivet, friend to all except robots except the ones she meets I guess. What is the point of having two main characters if they are just gonna end up the same?

Kit

While arguably the better other of the new duo, she has issues as well in the writing department. She had the most growth out of our titular cast, however how she got there is ramshackled at best. 

In comparison to Clank, he was a defective warbot, which made sense why he was small. Kit on the other hand was tailor made by the supposedly competent Emperor Nefarious, so why does she have a cutesy mode? Why does she even have a character crisis from hurting Rivet, for that matter? Stopping rebels was what she was designed to do, and she suddenly gained a conscience from doing her job? If Kit is so effective at what she did, why did Emp Nef stop at making just one of her? Shouldn’t there be multiple Kit models roaming about? She could mow down hordes of newer Nefarious Troopers and Juggernauts, so why didn’t Emp Nef expand on that?

These inconsistencies make Kit as a character start falling apart as soon as you give it more scrutiny than a surface level glance. The writers could have easily solved these issues by just alluding that she might have been an outdated model, or was damaged and abandoned on Savali where Gary and the monks fixed her up and gave her a new purpose — protecting the Archives. Instead of an exterminator, she became a guardian. They could have taught her how to be more “human” as it were, too,  which would tie up nicely to why she regrets her actions in her previous line of work. Instead, they went with the “Oh no, what have I done, I did my job and injured a trespasser, now I’m gonna be a recluse on Savali” route.

She doesn’t gel well with Rivet either because the only one actively having something to overcome was Kit. Had Rivet been written better (having to overcome her prejudices, letting go of her past trauma, solving her trust issues) it could work with Kit growing out of her self doubt and regrets, but it just isn’t there. Plus, there weren't enough scenes of them together to build towards that conflict resolution that would make their friendship more believable. She has more of a relationship with Ratchet than Rivet.

“EmPeRoR” Nefarious

He is boring. Simple as. There is no driving motivation to him other than “conquer everything”. We could have gotten an Ultron (which would make a perfectly sensible callback to the Biobliterator shtick our Nef pulled from UYA) but we just end up with a sassy English bastard with the personality of wet bread. There was no fun interplay between him and our Neffy, anything to make both their personalities shine as they work together or grind against each other, it just sucks.

The Plot(holes)

Imma just list it down.

How does a helmet clearly designed to fit a Lombax head is supposedly “one size fits all”?

How did the fish kid Rivet saved in the intro made it around Nef City in the first place if this was supposedly a robot dystopia that eradicated all squishies? What, was he just having a stroll, taking some fresh dystopian air? Could have made it that this was a fellow rebel she was tasked to save cuz he had some intel that he swiped and Rivet decided to use herself as bait to draw attention away from him so he could get the intel out of there, but no.

On that matter, why do planets like Savali and Torren IV still have organic inhabitants?

What was Skidd trying to achieve by hacking the propaganda blimp? This served no purpose at all narratively since it didn't even turn any robots against the Neffies.

Why was Skidd even in Nef City, for that matter? What was his original mission that he was going undercover for? Busting Rivet out of prison? Couldn’t be, since he made no mention of it.

Why did none of Emp Nef's cronies question our Nef just popping in despite looking clearly different? He’s a whole head shorter and the wrong colour. What, do they not have colour vision?

How did Emp Nef know about the existence of the dimensional map? He barely knew about the Dimensionator so how does that make sense?

If Ratchet already has hoverboots, why couldn’t he dash/sprint with it until he gets to Savali?

Where and when did Rivet get a rift tether?

Where and when did Rivet get a pair of hoverboots?

Wasn’t the Space Pirates/Decadroids designed by Tachyon? Why do they exist in this dimension? Why aren’t they allied with Emp Nef since they too are robots? None of this is explained.

Where did the Lombaxes of Rivet’s dimension disappear to? Did they have a Tachyon-like threat in this dimension too? Did Emp Nef wipe them out? Don’t know, and the game doesn’t bother explaining it cuz Rivet is supposed to be girl Ratchet and nothing beyond that.

Why would Emperor Nefarious announce for the whole galaxy to see where he was going during the finale? Did he lose that much intelligence in the short timeframe we’ve known him? This is the guy who conquered the galaxy?

Why would he leave a portal for our protagonists to conveniently follow him through? 

Where did that telekinetic abilities of him suddenly disappear to?

Where was this dimension’s Lawrence counterpart? That stupid little secretary is so dumb as to not recognise her own boss she couldn’t possibly be the Lawrence replacement.

Environmental Storytelling & Worldbuilding

Environmental storytelling & worldbuilding has never really been Insomniac’s strong suit. RA is pretty and all, but aside from Blizar Prime, none of the other locales did anything different from Ratchet’s dimension. If this was supposed to be a galaxy where Emp Nef has conquered it all, you would think that there’d be more neon, more cyberpunk, more Emp Nef aesthetic, more robots flying about. Instead, we just got the same thing we had from Ratchet’s dimension, just in prettier graphics. It is set dressing with no story to tell. It's a puddle pretending it was an ocean. While I appreciate seeing the graphical glow up the locations got, it’s a missed opportunity to actually show the impact Emp Nef had. 

Take Nefarious City for example;

How was Ratchet able to move around Nef City without raising alarms? This negates the entire point of Rivet needing a robot disguise in the first place.

Why does a static statue in the middle of a city have a terminal that activates a platform that leads to Emp Nef's office in the first place?

On that note, why is an EMPEROR working from an office? Where’s the throne? The grand palace and palisades? The royal guards? If he’s an authoritarian that likes to take control, where’s the giant screen with a hundred monitors that watch every inch of Nef City?

Why does Emp Nef have a tiny four seater shuttle? If he needed to commute planet-side, wouldn’t he have something more posh? More grand? A Rolls Royce of shuttles instead of what can be considered a slightly pricier but still shitty Tesla model? They could have made Ratchet or Rivet have to steal a fighter jet and that would make infinitely more sense than what we got.

The same can be said with the inhabitants of this universe. They only exist to serve as plot devices or to point the protagonists to the next goal rather than actual people. There is no culture, no differing beliefs, nothing to tell you about what they are about or what they do. If all they exist to do is to be exposition devices/mission pointers, what was the point of even making distinct characters? Then again, the Future trilogy suffered the same problem with environmental characters being practically stand-in cardboards so points for consistency, I guess.

Verdict

Essentially, Rift Apart is a creatively bankrupt, designed-by-committee tech demo for Sony Playstation. What used to be a franchise that does satirical commentary on capitalism that later tried to delve into narrative/character driven sci-fi story, has ended up being the most capitalistic-designed entry imaginable. Which is unfortunate because I want to like this game. God, do I want to like it.

Did I enjoy playing it? When it works and doesn't crash on me, sure.

Do I like it enough as an entry to the franchise though? No, no I don't. The gameplay hardly expanded on the RaC formula, and the narrative just killed it for me.

But of course, that's just me. If you enjoyed RA, more power to ya. If you told me to play it again, I'll probably do it. It's just not for me for the long run.

[rad-hound]

Do you have anything to say about metal gear: survive? It feels like you’d have some opinions on that

Oh, I most certainly do. As a matter of fact, I'll go off on a limb and say that there is a really good video on the subject which likely will hit more bases than I will in my own... "review," per se. (Granted, the video in question is a little lengthy, capping off at around 40 minutes, but if or when you have the time to, I would most certainly reccommend it.) And the video in question appears to void or ignore several instances which may have proven the creator's points wrong, BUT ALAS.

This is my opinion, not his, so here it is.

For those of you who might not know, Metal Gear: Survive, developed and published solely by Konami Digital Entertainment—and I'll try my best to describe it without sounding ironic or patronizing—was a little more-or-less a... "deviation," from the already-established base of the franchise, for more reasons than just one. However, the star aspect of the game in question which sticks out like a sore thumb above all the rest, would be the fact that you... fight zombies; the gist of the story following that of "the Captain, an MSF soldier who enters a parallel dimension and establishes a local command center to unravel the mysteries of a strange virus that turns people into zombie-like creatures."

Which, yes, isn't an entirely foreign concept within the Metal Gear franchise at all; given the existence of the Skulls / Parasite Unit within Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, joined with the vocal cord parasites, which—more or less—caused a similar, almost zombie-like effect within infected soldiers... however I believe that within that game—and every other Metal Gear game—such a presence of... idiosyncrasy, so to speak, was at least digestible without necessarily being overbearing. But, within a game like Metal Gear: Survive, it's the entire plot.

In essence, the game was quite similar to the likes of Bloons: Tower Defense, perhaps Clash of Clans... but instead of popping balloons, you're bursting blood vessels at the mere thought of not only having to micromanage platforms and... "survive", but at the cost of having to sit through a near-infuriating, almost comically disconnected story which is so far separated from the source material, that you wonder to yourself; "Is it true that Kojima greenlit such a thing?"

The answer towards which would be: no, he didn't, and even touted its existence in the very same fashion, alongside Yoji Shinkawa, who stated that, "If [he] were to have worked on Metal Gear: Survive, there most certainly would have been mechs [present within the game.]," to paraphrase. Predictably, all of this was entirely out of Kojima's hands—for reasons I'm sure we're all aware of—and thus... inevitably resulted in being a massive mess. Despite its... mixed reception.

Would this game have been better as a standalone, far separated from the Metal Gear franchise in its entirety? Perhaps... but seeing how this game appears to have been created for the sole purpose of... "milking the Metal Gear cashcow"—given how eager Konami Digital Entertainment was to resume production of its Pachinko machines, mobile games... already having brought into consideration throwing Metal Gear into the mix, even before all of this mess occurred—I find that to be highly unlikely, given how this game wasn't necessarily made with... good intentions.

Even aside from its messy production, and the entire... "Kojima v. Konami" debacle, I find that the game's artistic and programming design absolutely, positively pale in comparison to Metal Gear games of old. Which could likely easily be explained by Metal Gear concept artist Yoji Shinkawa's absence in said game's creation... however I find that the game pales in almost every category, not just in regards to its visual design. Even if, that too, is a little...

Like... I don't even know what to say, or how to describe this, in complete honesty. And with little-to-no valuable information upon this... creature's Wikia page, much less within the game itself, it seems it would be inconsequential to just pass this off as a hiccup on Konami's behalf. And while this game is non-canonical, and a spinoff, it just... it makes no sense, at least within a Metal Gear-centric context. As well as a visual aspect, and from a conceptual aspect. Both in theory and in execution, apparently.

This, alongside its music and sound design, I find to be appalling and almost shameful, because... even if you've never touched or seen anything out of this game, nor have you desired to so much as poke it with a ten-foot-pole, you can just tell that its music is completely soulless. As evident by the lack of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain's primary composer, Ludvig Forssell, alongside several other musicians and composers which have come together over the years of Metal Gear's conception to carefully craft many masterful and memorable pieces we've all come to know and love.

If I asked you to compare these two soundtracks, blindly, which one would you prefer? If I were to give no other description, other than "ALBUM #1" and "ALBUM #2," in your honest opinion, which do you truthfully believe you would fancy better?

ALBUM #1?

Or ALBUM #2?

I'm not so sure about you, but without a shadow of a doubt, I would choose the first album. With the conception of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain's music, near-instantly could I pick apart not only rhythms and patterns within Mr. Forssell's writing, but trademarks, of which are near-impossible to miss. I cannot say the same for the music of Metal Gear: Survive; all of which sounds too corporate and generic to have even a fragment of soul within it. As evident between the difference of "Ludvig Forssell," and "FILM SCORE LLC," present beneath each of either album's tracks on Spotify.

Because, as we all know, a very important factor of a video game's irrefutable success is its music; its memorability, its notoriety... being able to hear even a single set of notes from a piece, which near-instantly causes you to point at your radio or device screen and exclaim, "Hey! I know that song!" A very good example of such musical genius being—despite my vices against its base—Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. And even if you've only ever listened to a single song from that game, you'll know that it KICKS ASS, even if you've never once played the game in your entire life. A sort of general consensus that all of the game's "fans" can agree upon.

But, I suppose, at the end of the day, even bad games have their fans, just as horrible, irredeemable villains have their fans. And even if I were to never touch Metal Gear: Survive with a ten-foot-pole, there are people who find it to be entertaining; viewing its punishing gameplay design as a sort of plus, in a way. And, if you were to play the game without thinking too hard about its associations or deeper themes, I would agree with that sentiment. Sometimes, just playing a game to play a game is the better route to take.

And even if that game is nothing more than a cheap grapple with relevancy, all the while remaining false to its home series's pretexts, then by all means: be my guest. Just don't expect me to make a post—as long as this one is—praising the game for anything.

[otakween]

Digimon Adventure 02: Revenge of Diaboromon

Wow...somehow this one just completely fell off my radar, otherwise I would have watched it a long time ago lol. I seriously thought I was all caught up with pre-Tamers anime until I saw this on the 02 TV Tropes and was like "oop..." It was a good surprise though, I can never get enough of these Mamoru Hosoda style shorts! (Looks like he didn't actually work on this one though).

I watched this dubbed first to take screenshots and then subbed. It's hard to find a non-crunchy version of the subbed short. The OG Japanese was a lot stronger imo because, as usual, the dub ruined some stuff with it's jokey tone and music choices. Still decently faithful though. Full thoughts below.

Notes:

So this is like a midquel, I guess. I don't know if there's an exact place within 02 I was supposed to watch this, but I didn't feel like my immersion was wrecked or anything haha.

While the aesthetic of the short was great, I felt the story was pretty redundant and eye-roll worthy. "Oh Omegamon/Omnimon is back for some contrived reason and the OG chosen children's digimon can't defeat him like they did last time...for some contrived reason. This looks like a job for the 02 protagonists!" Whatever, it doesn't have to be deep to be fun.

The early 2000s CG looked pretty good actually. I thought it added a fun otherworldliness to the Kuramon.

Kuramon look a lot like Takodachi (Hololive fans know what's up). I wonder if there was some inspiration there on a subliminal level.

I wonder if Daisuke's character designer intended him to be from a southern part of Japan. His tan skin sticks out more in this art style.

I feel like Diaboromon got uglier somehow compared to Our War Game lol. Armagemon's design was deliciously creepy though. He looked like something out of an Alien movie. His entrance was epic and probably would have freaked me out a lot as a kid. Weirdly, they never actually said Armagemon's name so I just assumed it was Diaboromon until I googled it just now lol

Sora and Mimi were like two sides of the same coin in this. Mimi was useless, but in a delightful way. Sora was useless, but in a boring way lol. Seriously, she didn't need to come all the way home from her tennis club trip to just go "I'm here!" and then do nothing. I'm not saying there was much she could do anyway, but I get really pissed that they never gave her character a real point aside from "bland love interest" in any Digimon show/movie.

Loved Mimi's interactions with Koushiro. Their awkward "we're in the same friend group but have nothing in common" chemistry is so fun.

Yamato seemed extra cool with his rings and stoicism. I do kind of wish he and Taichi got a little more dialogue though.

Really didn't like the direction of the fights inside the internet. They were either animated too up close or too distant so I felt like I couldn't really follow what was going on half the time. Also, the choreography wasn't that inspired. The IRL fight at least had a cool Evangelion vibe going for it. The harbor was a really aesthetic setting for a final fight.

I've started shipping DaiKen for funsies (there's some really cute fanart) so it was nice seeing them together in the elevated art style hehe.

Daisuke has a Yamato phone strap! So cute and supportive

It's funny how the digimon sizing suddenly changes when we're in movie-mode. Angemon and Angewomon were huge in this! I was excited to see the 02 digimon, but they mostly looked the same as they looked in the show tbh.

The Shibuya vibes, complete with Hachiko statue, were fun. Was 02 set in Tokyo? I honestly don't remember...

Seeing all those children running around at night without any worries about safety...must be nice, Japan.

When Omegamon "ran out of energy," I had the thought of like "can a jogress digimon die in the real world or would they always just de-digivolve??" I guess they'd never go that far for plot reasons anyways

Imperialdramon gets a new mode! Paladin mode, according to Google. Were these names in the credits or did they just decide things later for the TCG or something...?

We got the 02 theme inserted towards the end and even the OG show's theme as a ring tone. Really cute touch. (I was a little triggered to hear Bolero again for the millionth time though).

All in all I'm glad the 02 kids got their due in this style. Was it groundbreaking? No. Was it worth 30 minutes of my time? Absolutely!

[whymustyouhurtmeinthisway]

Ok, I gotta admit it, that ending was sick as fuck. Alucard’s return is a somewhat flagrant bit of fanservice, but it was still cool. I’m very excited for the second season, and the establishing of setups and dynamics brings me back to something I loved about the original Netflix Castlevania series.

I like all the new characters, with particular favourites being Olrox (I mean, how could you not love him), Drolta (every single outfit she wore slayed harder than anything has ever slayed), Annette (I adore both metalbending characters and Haitian culture, how could I not like her), and Édouard (I love what’s being set up with him, if we could get our first night creature protagonist all my dreams would come true. Also his design fucking rules).

Some honourable mentions would be Tera (First time in a while I’ve seen a certified Action Mom in a show like this, I enjoy her involvement, I wasn’t expecting it) and Mizrak (his struggles with loyalty and faith were very interesting, and I enjoy him and Olrox together. Also it’s nice to see a full-on martial fighter in this team full of spellcasters).

Now onto some sore points:

I liked Richter enough, but he just didn’t stick with me very much. He seemed very much like Trevor Lite, similar humour and rudeness as Trevor, but a bit dulled. While in concept his PTSD towards Olrox is interesting, in practice it’s a bit underwhelming. I do like his magical brawler fighting style though, it’s pretty cool.

As for Maria, I liked her fighting style and backstory with her parents, but in terms of her own personality, I didn’t really find much there. She bears little complexity of her own, her familial dynamics being the entire reason for her existence, and I’m never the hugest fan of when characters are only interesting because of their relationship with someone else.

Finally, my only real other complaint would be the main antagonist. Erzsabet is hyped up to the moon and back as this fantastical deity of bloodshed, but in reality I didn’t find her very interesting at all. Unlike Dracula, Carmilla, and her own right-hand woman Drolta, she has absolutely no swag, no style, no reason to look at her and go “This is a villain worth watching.” Quite honestly, before things were fully explained, I thought Drolta was the vampire messiah, and honestly I think that would’ve worked much better. Drolta has passion, style, a real sense of love for the game, meanwhile Erzsabet is nowhere near her level. She’s certainly creepy and uncomfortable, but not really any more than your average vampire. I hope she shapes up in the second season, as she’s looking rather sauceless as things stand.

Anyways, whinging aside, that first season was excellent, and i’m very excited for season 2.

[s-b-party]

Lepus: Amber and the Hare

****Possible spoilers ahead!!!

It is finally time for me to talk about the famous Outrider & Gliding Champion of Mondstadt, Amber! I’ll be honest, I never really thought that I’d be doing a constellation analysis for her or even for other characters that I don’t really care much about but I decided that I will try to do constellation analyses for all of them EXCEPT for Aloy

To start off, Amber’s constellation is called Lepus, which means “hare”. Rabbits don’t generally use Lepus as part of their scientific name, but they are considered part of the Leporidae family, Leporidae meaning “those similar to Lepus” (thus meaning “those similar to the hare”). Although hares & rabbits look very similar, there are some differences between them: one of them is that hares are generally larger & faster than rabbits, they’re also not domesticated unlike rabbits

****There are times when the constellation’s names will be a bit from what we may expect (a good example that I’ve done already is Cyno’s constellation analysis; the animal we tend to associate w/ him is the jackal bc of Anubis but his constellation [even in CN translation] literally translates to “golden wolf” which is an actual animal but it is not the same as the jackal); I usually try to stay consistent to what the constellations translate in both EN & CN unless I can’t make a good case for it for some reason (the hare & rabbit are very similar so there is bound to be a lot of interchanging between the terms across different languages; in CN, it translates to “Little Rabbit Constellation” but it should be noted that the CN character used for “rabbit” doesn’t really make a distinction between rabbits & hares, it’s used to refer to all leporids, so the translation itself could very well be referring to a young hare as well)

TLDR: a note about technicalities on translations of constellations & translations being different from each other (I’m going to try my best to stick to “hare” as opposed to “rabbit” in this thread mostly bc their speed & wildness are more in line with Amber’s lore, just remember that hares≠rabbits ^_^)****

When we look at Amber, you can tell that her character design is meant to look like a hare, especially w/ her headband representing the ears & having the same design in her constellation; she’s also agile as it is part of her job as an Outrider, which is essentially a scout

To emphasize her agility, our first meeting with her was when she was running & jumped out from the forest we were walking in; in addition, she is the gliding champion of Mondstadt as well, which speaks to her skill in controlling her glider while maintaining speed in the air

Aside from the obvious connection to swiftness, hares are symbols for a number of concepts, some of which we might not necessarily think are related to them while others can be more easily connected

They are related to fertility/abundance, innocence, the moon (nocturnal creatures), good luck, spring, love (usually associated w/ romantic love, having connections to Venus/Aphrodite), resurrection & rebirth (in line w/ spring when flowers grow after winter), wisdom/knowledge, mischief (fun fact: hares could sometimes be the familiars of witches before black cats became more associated with witches)

Some of these concepts can be found sprinkled throughout Amber’s lore; the ones that I find prevalent are mischief, wisdom/knowledge, rebirth, and the moon

It turns out that Amber was quite the troublemaker when she was younger & it was usually her grandfather, the senior/leading Outrider, who had to clean up after her messes; looking at her now in the game, we see that she doesn’t seem like someone who would cause trouble for others

As someone who tries her best to help/guide others, she has her own sense of wisdom which wasn’t present in her childhood; she has been a mentor to Collei mostly

The Windblume’s Breath event with Collei can speak to this wisdom

There is a point where she, Eula, and Klee see Collei & Sucrose interacting w/ each other; Klee wants to join in but Amber stops her bc she understands that Collei still struggles interacting w/ others & what she needs at the moment is someone who can relate to her like Sucrose before she can go on to interacting with more extroverted people including Amber herself

Now w/ the concept of rebirth, this is shown more so figuratively when the Outriders group started to deteriorate due to her grandfather no longer being there; at some point, it was just her alone

We can see a bit of transformation happening for Amber, going from a mischievous child to a mature & helpful Outrider in her Character Story; it almost feels strange to think of her as a former troublemaker when she has helped a lot in Mondstadt

Now the moon is an interesting aspect to consider when we look at how it fits into the overall world building; aside from the fact that Amber calls Mondstadt (Moon City in German) her home, rabbits and hares are often times associated w/ the moon due to them being usually nocturnal but what stands out to me is that she is the first person with a Vision we meet & she hails from the first nation that we visit which has connections to the moon; I think that although she might not have strong ties to the moon itself, she does help to establish the importance of the moon in the world of Teyvat with her intro to Mondstadt

I know we like to joke at times that Mondstadt may be the favorite child of HYV but I think there’s something to be said about how Mondstadt helped to establish much of the lore for many of us especially with Istaroth & the Moon Sisters presented to us early on; there’s also the duo of time & wind being established as important concepts by Mondstadt as well

So if anything, Amber’s connection to the moon seems more as a driver of the game’s starting lore rather than as a symbol to her own lore

Maybe the answer of the truth points to Mondstadt after all 👀

****This was supposed to be out in March.....for Easter.....because you know......rabbits and hares.....RIP to this thread and a few others which have been sitting in my drafts for a long time T^T

[bryan360]

Here’s my note before I’ll get started….

(NO COPYING OR PLAGIARIZING FROM ME AND ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIEND’S WORK! THAT INCLUDES OUR CHARACTERS, DESIGNS, STUFF, ETC. IMPOSTERS AND SEXBOTS ARE NOT WELCOME TO FOLLOW MY BLOG WHATSOEVER! 😡 That will be all….I mean it.)

Item Review of 2023 - My NexiGo NS32 Controller (Part 1/Unboxing and Comparison) (March. 15th, 2023)

I’m up for another review share, everyone! Previously where I got the mashup style for three of my new accessories, it’s time I went moving on for something controlling tech related. Today is where I’m getting started with my new video game controller I’d obtain from last year’s Christmas. Same goes to my new Xbox controller; which will be waiting for my future review soon. For now, here’s mine to share first: A NexiGo NS32 Controller. I’d picked it from Amazon.com for $40 affordable price; at least as an alternative choice. The reason because originally I’m supposed to get this new controller from the same brand I had with the TV Dock. (Link Here #1) (Link Here #2)

It was a bit disappointing, but hope there’s another time to save it the near future. At least I got with this one from the brand NexiGo; in which had all kind of tech and accessories to check out. (Link Here #3)

⬆️ (1st through 4th Images; after unboxing and checking my new controller from front to back) (March. 15th; from 2:44 P.M. to 2:50 P.M.)

Anyways, here’s what I picked for a new controller; as I going through unboxed and making comparisons to my previous controllers. Except with my Joy-Cons because it’s different from these controllers I’m using. I’ll see I can save it after this review is done.

While going through unboxing for a moment, the package does includes the USB Type-C charging cable and a user manual. This is sure to be enough to get started with my new controller. Speaking in which, it features turbo function and displaying RGB Lighting. Nice! This is the first time I’ll be using for my Nintendo Switch system; especially if I would to try out its turbo functionality. Hope it won’t be too complicated while working on either of my games I have. Did I forget to mention the color theme I’ve picked? The “Comic Nebula” theme looks nice to choose. There’s other variety themes to choose from, but at least I’m going for with this one.

⬆️ (5th through 10th Images; after did a comparison to my other video game controllers) (March. 15th; from 3:36 P.M. to 3:41 P.M.)

⬆️ (11th through 12th Images; I nearly forget til a month later; as I already did this one while doing stacking each controllers in side to side comparison) (April. 30th; from 9:56 A.M. to 9:57 A.M.)

⬆️ (13th through 14th Images; another one when trying to stack with my Xbox One controller) (May. 23rd; from 2:54 P.M. to 2:55 P.M.)

Now I’m moving to comparison with my two controllers; from Xbox One to my old YCCTEAM controller. They’re in similarly shape and designed alike from my new controller to compared; so does everything else. However, the YCCTEAM controller fair match better with my new controller; aside having different color plates and grips after holding them together.

As for my Xbox One controller though, the stick caps apparently show its ages as I going through this review. Here’s a close-up look from its analog stick. I’ve tried to cover up with my other caps; which is from the unboxing accessories for my Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons. Though I know it was bit too small until I’m waiting for the bigger ones from Amazon.com.

⬆️ (15th through 18th Images; where I’d covered with these caps) (May. 27th; from 1:22 P.M. to 1:25 P.M.)

Right now, my mom wasn’t here at the house while she’s on important work or something. Hoping she’ll be coming back home.

Anyways, hope you enjoy this first parter after unboxing and comparing to my other controllers. So far of my overall thoughts, it matches with my previous YCCTEAM controller right up. However with my new one stands out for its “Cosmic Nebula” color plate theme, RGB Lighting, and turbo functionality. Can’t wait to get started for the next one, but while going through testing phase first. I got it recorded in videos already, so don’t miss it. 😉👍

Photos - created by me (Don’t steal for plagiarism! 😡)

Tagged: @murumokirby360 @carmenramcat @alexander1301 @rafacaz4lisam2k4 @paektu

[iamgrowingstronger-blog]

Cloning Clyde

Hours played: Around 10

Completion: 100%'d

I believe this was among the first wave of games for the Xbox 360 marketplace, and man, I remember playing the shit out of the trial version of this game as a kid. I don't think I even knew what the concept of trial version meant, but that didn't stop me from replaying the game again and again. Recently, I saw it was cheap on Steam and decided to buy it and finally see once and for all what was in the full version of the game.

The biggest thing I love about the game is its graphics, honest. Everybody has some old video game artstyle they really love, be it the beautiful pixel art on some of the titles on the PC-98, or the early uncanny stages of 3D on the PS1. For me, it's gotta be the specific kind of 3D in this game that I can't find the words to describe (maybe when I get better at writing). Combined with the surprisingly animated Clydes you control, and the game has this style that, while old, does not feel very dated. I absolutely adore how this game looks.

Anyway. You control the Clydes in individual levels, defeating security robots and exploding chickens to reach the goal while using various switch mechanisms, using animals to get further, and combining your Clyde WITH an animal to gain new abilities. The game only really has a handful of assets: just four or five level types, the aforementioned enemies are the only enemies, and the number of different puzzle-related objects are probably in the single-digits. Despite that, I never really got tired of the game's small handful of assets. I always enjoyed kicking the crap out of the security robots or jumping around the map riding a sheep, or pulling a random lever to see what happens. What the game has is charm.

However, the game does have a big weak point: the level design. Aside from the occasional puzzle that made me think a little bit, most levels can be beaten while functioning on autopilot. If you're going for 100%, the levels can just feel tedious, since some of them have 15 or 20 Clydes that you have to control and have escape individually, one at a time. Other times, the levels just get questionable, like how there were a couple levels toward the end that were very, very spacious for seemingly no reason. I didn't hate it, but it felt like instead of doing something new, they just took a level and spread it way out. GImmicks get reused, objects get used in the same way, and thus, a lot of the game's 30 or so levels blend together. There were a couple that stuck out, like a neat catapult puzzle that made me have to think for a minute, or the penultimate level, which was this absolutely massive sprawling course that felt like this game's The Great Maze from Brawl, but generally, most were forgettable.

Another gripe is the lack of background music. You'll get a little melody at the start of levels or for defeating every security robot in a level, but otherwise, it's just silent. In a game like Frogger Returns, I'm focused so much on not dying that I don't notice as much, but in a more explorative, relaxed game like this, it really bugs me.

For what the game has, I still really like it. It pretty much was what my childhood self remembered: this fun, jank little game with funny little character animations. I really, really wanted to give this game a 7, but it just doesn't quite reach that bar. Too much of the game just doesn't feel like it's pushing what it has to the limit. It's not the lack of assets that's the problem, it's that they mostly get used in very surface-level ways. Most levels in the game you could stick at the beginning and few would bat an eye.

Overall score: 6/10. Can recommend, was a fun experience. If you're an achievement hunter-type, this game is pretty easy to 100% on top of being relatively short.

[claitea]

finished pokemon violet. i am in Shambles in best way possible

major spoilers below! also its super long i have a lot to say

if its not obvious gen 5 is my favorite gen, for all the reasons most people hype it as the best gen. and i agree it totally is the best gen!

i gotta say sv is my second favorite now. it was just. Hough. aside from the obvious ways this game actually sucks, all the glitches and lagging and all that. what the game does well, it does REALLY well.

getting some gripes out of the way first. as good as the story was, nemona really got the short end of the stick here?? this didnt make me like her any less, i love her just as much as penny and arven, but just. unlike penny and arven she doesnt have as much story. she finds a good rival in you the protag and thats kind of it??

i do like sv's art style its nice the game was very pretty but. i do prefer the swsh art style HWJBDHF. i played sword for a bit two days ago to battle a friend and i just missed it. wouldnt mind if this was the style going forward but also want the old one back yknow

taking away the shiny sound is Stupid. i encountered a shiny voltorb and almost went past it because i was jumping and was going so fast i barely saw it in the bottom of the screen. i also tried the mass outbreak strategy today on a mimikyu outbreak, thought i found a shiny because a mimikyu looked grey, but it was just sitting in some shadows.

WHERE ARE THE CLOTHING OPTIONS...... was the school uniform only rule just an excuse to make less clothing options. i'm in hell man. thank god i picked violet i didnt like the orange on the outfits in scarlet.

the whole choose your own path thing they pushed as a selling point is kinda moot if the levels dont scale. also put me in a STUPID situation: for the water gym, you travel across the desert to another town, and that desert has a titan in it. so i thought hey, if these paths converge, surely its because its the next intended stop, right? iron treads wiping almost my whole team in its first phase probably isnt a sign that i'm not supposed to be here, right?? arven sent out a level 44 scovillain while i could only contribute Intimidate from my lv 22 staravia. i ended up using a guide to show me the "correct" path near the end, which was good bc i asked the pokemon center lady for my next destination and she told me to go fight Grusha and his lv 45 or so pokemon while my team was still in the 30s. thanks nurse joy for trying to get my ass kicked

onto everything i Did like though

i really loved this cast of characters!! all of them felt very unique i got attached to a lot almost instantly. i didnt think i'd like clavell all that much but oh my god he's so brilliant actually. arven stole the show though houghguhguhgu i cried THREE times because of this dude. will also say i ADORE grusha, rika and iono, and extra shoutout to that one greavard in the ryme fight. he was GROOVIN

i think the open world was handled Very well. traversal is a little awkward at times, miraidon sometimes doesnt cling to cliffs i jump on and said jumping can be clunky, but other than that, i thought the environments were very pretty (especially liked the gen 1 icon mosaics in that one town thats so cute). as someone who gets overwhelmed by open world games it also wasnt as overwhelming as others have been? i think i saw some people saying it wasnt enough, and i can see why they'd think so but if the map was any bigger i think i personally would have enjoyed it less haha.

noticed some altered pokemon animations which is small but very nice! i remember seeing it on lucario, gardevoir and the eeveelutions where they stand in more of a battle ready pose rather than. Just Standing There.

the pokemon designs were pretty hit or miss for me this gen but maybe i just need some time to warm up to them. but i do ADORE the future forms. hydreigon and volcarona look SO sick, i love how iron valiant mixes both gallade and gardevoir, and i just think its funny that they also included. Delibird. inbetween all these other powerful pokemon. havent seen any of the scarlet versions though i'll look them up later

i dont know if its true but it feels like theres a lot more Unique things about pokemon in this gen, like forms, moves and abilities? like maushold's and tatsugiri's forms, lots of evos got given to older pokemon. when eri sent out an annihilape i was STUNNED. i also appreciate the fact that all forms of a pokemon get a different dex entry. i want to try collecting all colors of flabebe and its evos for example, i somehow feel more rewarded when i get a new dex entry every time, even if it is kinda the same thing but rephrased.

ok now just. the STORY. i'm still an absolute mess over the ending i just. AUGH. i havent played a pokemon game spoiler free for so long, i did accidentally find out cassiopeia was penny a bit too early but it was late enough that i was connecting the dots already. but the ACTUAL ending with turo holy shit???? turo's message glitching at the fourth lock was creepy as hell. finding him slumped in that chair, him telling you the real turo is DEAD and what you've been talking to this whole time, what ARVEN resented for all this time, was an ai that just couldn't physically leave area zero? then the whole FIGHT with him, the way that textbox glitched out when the paradise protection protocol took over, him actually starting to terastallize himself was so??? being forced to leave as well even though he'd just reunited with arven, since he was tied to the time machine and part of why it would reboot every time it was disabled, but also because he still had the original turo's desire to study the future but had been trapped in area zero for so long. checking turo's lab before heading to the time machine shows theres a picture of arven and maschiff on the desk.... :(

(wondering how scarlet handled it actually. is sada also an ai? just assuming its different because the ai thing fits turo's futuristic stuff. i'll look it up sometime, i really wanna see how these cutscenes differ between versions)

ARVEN my god i. many thoughts head full. thought he was just gonna be the asshole rival but ohhh i was wrong. he's the guy ever. mabosstiff's recovery scene made me CRY, and then i just cried AGAIN at his meeting with ai turo. how old even is arven, how long has he just been. Alone. with no one but the miraidon he percieved as the one who destroyed his childhood, and the mabosstiff that was once his only true companion but couldn't even open its eyes anymore. crying over arven's story isnt enough i need to explode

arven's story was my favorite but i have to mention starfall street of course. i love all of team star so much it was so good going through and unravelling why team star does what they do. also team star boss battles were actually kinda difficult?? i was pretty underleveled through most of the game bc i was rushing a bit but WOW. i only won against eri because she Happened to use shift gears again despite near maxed stats already instead of just going for the kill.

anyway tldr. yes i understand this game is kinda garbage in that it was super rushed and glitchy and clearly unfinished on release but its just? the most fun i've had with a pokemon game in a while?? easily a top favorite of mine

i stopped playing right after the credits rolled, so if there's postgame, i dont know about it. i'll get around to it tomorrow

one extra thing i almost forgot actually! when explaining the time machine turo tells you a human could travel one way but is unable to return to the present. this is SO goddamn cruel of game freak to put in the game RIGHT AFTER POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS. maybe its different for people sent over by Gods, maybe arceus can circumvent this or smth, but since its the only time travel related crumb we have right now this is super distressing!!! are you telling me pla protag and ingo were on a one way trip this whole time!!!!!! fuck you put them back!!!!!!!!! finding out this lore tidbit on the same day some new pla art that includes ingo came out is so, so, SO mean