#crosscode carla

[lesserl]

SIX TIMES THE GOOBERS!!!!

lil gang

[buttercatrho]

Pride crosscode headcanons

[yamis-ramblings]

So, I recently finished Crosscode, and I've bee thinking about doing these little reviews on my tumblr for a while.

So, why not start with Crosscode? This is gonna be a bit rough around the edges but here's my attempt at a mostly spoiler free crosscode review! There'll be spoilers for the first little bit of the game, but nothing else and nothing major.

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Intro

So, Crosscode is a game about an mmo named Crossworlds. This probably sounds stupid off the bat to you, right? Like some more SAO shit? Well you'd be very wrong.

First of all, Crossworlds isn't virtual. It takes place on a distant moon using something called "instant matter". There's a small section of this moon called "the playground", or "the croissant" due to it s shape, that the mmo takes place on. Now, you aren't traveling to this moon to play this game. You have a headset that lets you make an avatar out of instant matter and transports your conciousness into this new body, letting you control it and experience the game from its perspective. You can even turn on certain settings that allows you to feel what it feels.

There are however real flesh and blood people on the moon, but they don't normally enter the playground- at least they're not supposed to. They consist of mantience crews mostly from what we know, and they're the ones keeping the place running. Players however don't see them.

Now, the game isn't simply about this mmo. You're not playing a rpg to play an mmorpg. You've got goals, and you're experiencing a story, an adventure. Relationships and bonds. Throughout the game you'll experience joy and heartbreak, and the game goes into some really clever topics and is full of references and jokes. Its a very clever game, and this mmo setting doesn't hold it back- infact, it takes full advantage of it to tell a story that provides a fresh and progressive look at familiar ideas, ideas about the rules of robotics, freedom of people, anxiety and stress, trauma, and many more.

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Story

The story of Crosscode is very strong. It consists of ten chapters, and the only time it lags behind is chapter 8. However if you maintain your energy for the chapter it has a really large area for you to explore, and in my opinion it had one of the best end bosses out of all the chapters.

That aside, you play as Lea:

She's a smug, sassy, kind, caring, strong, soft, and brilliant protaganist. Oh, and she's mute. Lea's voice module is broken, meaning she can't communicate like other players. She does however become able say seven words throughout the game.

Now, Lea doesn't start out in the Playground. That's because she's not a normal player. Lea's lost her memory, and Crossworlds may be the only way to help her get it back. Lea's not alone in this, infact from the start, Sergey is at your side communicating as a sort of guide, but also companion:

Sergey is the one that believes Crossworld will help Lea regain her memories. Lea'll awaken in a cargo ship a fair bit aways from the Playground, greeted by not only Sergey, but Carla:

Carla is Lea's first friend in the game, and she'll effectively give you your tutorial. But by doing this she's making sure Lea's able to control her avatar and is alright. She's the ships mechanic, she's tough, she's got a sense of humour, and she's lovely. Skip a few minutes forward and you'll be introduced to Captain Jet:

Jet is the captain of the cargo ship, and wary of having an avatar on board. The backround we get for him hints towards an existence of community and civilization outside of these maintenance crews and crossworlds, as he's actually a previous tourney champion using VRP's. I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what that stands for, but to repeat the joke the game makes

Balls

Essentially the captain, and Lea, use instant matter balls as ranged weapons. (Lea also has melee attacks).

The captain will finish your tutorial, and after that some really cool stuff that I won't spoil will happen, and you'll be brought into the tutorial area where you meet three more lovely characters. To save your time however, let's just talk about the best character in the game

I love Emilie. I'm convinced that Lea and Emilie are a crushing on eachother, if not just incredibly good friends, due to the nature of their relationship's growth.

Emilie is spunky, peppy, a little airheaded, and ready to punch anything. She despises bugs, but she loves Lea. She's Lea's best friend, and they'd do anything for each other. Play the game, if only for Lea and Emilie.

You'll encounter a dungeon here that Emilie will race you through (its instanced, so you won't race in person). This will teach you the basics about dungeons.

After this, you're in the playground. Soon you meet a friend of Emilie's, he introduces you to the story, gives you a tour of the first town, and you're off on your own. The girls' dynamic is highlighted right away, and the game is great.

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Gameplay

This is where I get a little mixed. I think the game is excellent, I'm just too stupid. Thankfully the game has various difficulty/accessibility options to help.

The combat of the game is lovely. Its fast, fluid, creative, and the loop is wonderful. The bosses are intuitive and fun, and the fights get very creative in how they involve the elements (you get four elements throughout the game, each with different effects in combat and puzzles) ranged attacks, and melee attacks.

The puzzles are where I struggled. I can't say it struggled, because the puzzles were very smart! I just wasn't. Your ranged attack has a charged mode, where if you wait a second you'll throw a ball that will bounce off walls. This uses physics to do this, and it gets incredibly clever and hard. The puzzles are excellent, I enjoyed a lot of them, I just needed some help because I'm slow

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Music

Absolutely

Amazingly

Beautiful

That is all

[buttercatrho]

MAP part for the Umi no Koe MAP with crosscode horrayy You can go here for the yt video it shows the process But also I made up an AU specifically for this MAP part and will now proceed to yap. Crosscode Spoilers.

The basic summary of this AU is that Satoshi did not agree to Sidwell funding his Evotar project, instead separating from Instatainment and researching and developing it independently along with Shizuka, Sergey and Gautham. Basically removes the direct/stronger character horrors which is the prompt for the map, PTSD-less Shizuka horrayyyy.

More detailed AU ramblings/plot stuff.

The Evotar project is less a completely independent project and more an independent modding project, as Evotars still rely completely on the crosscode and exist purely through instant matter avatars, and is against TOS/ not legal (IDK how illegal modding online multiplayer games is irl but seeing as the Crossgear has the ability to do such wonderful things as torture someone if you turn off a limiter (assumedly i don't see how that would be limited to just Evotars) I can see the law around it being more strict). Funding is met through Satoshi's position being very high pay, giving him some savings, though it isn't enough to fully fund it so some of Shizuka, Sergey and Gautham's money is also used (this is probably very optimistic but so is this whole au really). They also got some equipment for the project (such as things needed to make instant matter and continuous access to up to date code) from connections/friends at/connected to Instatainment (Jet, Carla and Sergey as main ones probably). While Satoshi, Shizuka and Gautham all completely left their jobs at Instatainment to work on the Evotar project, Sergey kept his job and only works on the project part time.

Shizuka in this au isn't really all that jazzed to be the base of the first Evotar, but goes through with it as she; was the first choice being the youngest as well as the most physically fit and healthy (which considering some Shizuka headcanons I have, is kinda sad), wanted to support her brother on something he was very passionate about, and knew if she didn't Satoshi probably would and she didn't want him risking it with his heart problem.

When Lea is 'born' she's not actually called Lea in this au, due to Sidwell not being present. She's called Serika with the spelling 星璃花 to fit with the names 'Satoshi' and 'Shizuka' (I do not know Japanese I do not know if that name/spelling makes sense, but 星 means star). (This name also kinda ended up as my IRL Lea's real name so whoops, though Lea is a nickname she has and is the thing she's called the most. IDK how she gets it yet dw that's a different au anyway).

Sergey would probably take the role Sidwell did of trying to teach her things/seeing exactly what's up with her not being able to talk/internalise some things, though overall she would interact with Satoshi, Sergey, Gautham and later Shizuka a lot, as opposed to my general headcanon with the main game where while she interacted with Gautham and Satoshi some, she spent most of her time either alone or with Sidwell.

Relatively early on in development they figure out that the 'breaking' that happens when an Evotar is made aware of what they are is less of a literal computer break and more a physiological crisis (general headcanon I have mainly cause of the Luke stuff, also what's shown of Lea, with the only time we see an Evotar breaking being due to a fake malfunction). They decide to ease Serika into making her aware of it instead of trying to avoid it completely since her being unaware would probably cause more problems in the long run (both for Serika and Shizuka, it'd end up with both of them a lot more isolated, and its bound to fail eventually). Serika would still have some sort of crisis about it because hell of a thing to learn, but it'd be manageable (funny way to describe a crisis). Serika and Shizuka would have been introduced after Serika had worked mostly through that crisis.

While Shizuka isn't actively aggressive and hateful towards Serika at first like in game, she is still rude, dismissive and prickly towards her, not really internalising that Serika is not just an ai copy immediately and also her being a result of something she was hesitant of. She is at least somewhat ('''somewhat''') polite towards her, though Serika is very wary of her at the start because of this. As time goes on Shizuka gets warmer towards her and starts seeing Serika as her own person, with Serika also growing more fond of Shizuka, though she is still under the impression she's basically tolerating her. The second part of the MAP part shows basically the 'conclusion' of this, with Shizuka fully accepting that Serika is her own person. Serika would start to fully internalise that Shizuka does not hate her actually after this, and becomes very clingy towards her.

At some point Satoshi goes against probably common sense/survival instinct something like that and shows Instatainment the stuff he's been working on. They're impressed enough with it that Satoshi and the gang aren't charged for anything and Serika is allowed to log into Crossworlds (albeit a limited part), with the condition that Satoshi comes back to working at Instatainment and start working on implementing parts of it into the game (This is helped by Satoshi previously being a key member of staff who never stops fuckin working, but is also probably optimistic)(the horrors of game integration stay at least earlier on). While Satoshi, Shizuka and Gautham would all go back to Instaintment to work again, Gautham would probably end up splitting off due to feeling creatively stifled still, maybe to make indie games. This would turn out much better for him in the long run I'd hope.

While Serika is allowed into Crossworlds she is only limited to the currently unintegrated part of the playground, the old hideout. With this and mostly a smallish office being mainly the only places she can go, she starts to feel depressed due to yk only being in a couple very limited places, depraved of stimuli. Due to this all of them but mostly Shizuka push to give her access to the whole playground like an average player, which they manage to get (as shown in the map part).

In the game Serika meets Emilie and joins the first scholars as she usually does. She also probably meets Apollo and Joern in a similar way (possibly with Lea being taken by Shizuka to autumns rise as a surprise to show her she's allowed out into the playground, and when there she ends up gaining a level. She's then teleported to where she was in base game as she knows the basics, stuff plays out and CHEATER YOURE A CHEA-).

This AU's premise does make Tronny existing kind of not possible but I am a stubborn god that wants the fucked up little fella to exist. The basic thing I've thought of is Sidwell managed to keep informed about Evotars through some connections, and manages to make an Evotar of himself both as a test and possibly as an earlier concept version of his data gathering torture in main game, where its basically just an Evotar of him stalking people under the impression they themselves told them to do so. This fucks up somehow and Tronny ends up wandering around Crossworlds very confused and not knowing what the fuck is happening. He ends up meeting Emilie and Serika, though later than in main game (probably around when vermillion waste would happen). Somehow its figured out he's an Evotar of Sidwell and Sidwell's newly hatching bullshit gets shut down real quick. There's a lot of somehows and how did that happen in this idk its a base concept, the point is the boy exists.

This au does make it so Luke also doesn't exist tho so L. Possibly Lukas could get an evotar of himself later on tho idk why he'd do that and that evotar would probably turn out a somewhat different person than Luke, with none of the events in vermillion to shape him (Maybe some more Luke brained mfers can make this up my noggin is lacking in that department).

Shizuka in this AU, which still snippy, isn't as aggressive and bitey as in main. I'd probably describe her more as aloof? Not fully sure, but she's still jaded compared to Serika and still has medical insomnia (random headcanon) (It might make more sense for Shizuka and Serika to start out pretty much the same, but I like Lea and Shizu always being noteably different). She's generally a lot more lenient, both of peoples behaviours and requests. E.G for behaviours, in the DLC Shizuka runs away from Emilie after she starts taking to her in the dungeon, in this AU if Emilie approached her and started yapping like that she'd probably look unimpressed but put up with it. With behaviours, I imagine Shizuka being pretty stubborn about not doing things she doesn't want to in main (unless somehow guilted into it by herself) due to her previous experiences, while Shizuka in this au would be more easy to convince.

Serika would be mostly the same, though she'd be fully aware of herself and who she is at the point where the game starts. I don't know exactly how she comes to love hugs so much without the whole Vermillion trauma and seemingly growing to like them a lot, but she has to ok its important /lh (Maybe sometime earlier on she was upset by something, whether being stuck in one room or not remembering herself or her memories well or frustration at her troubles communicating and learning certain things, and she was hugged to calm her down, ending up really liking hugs). She also still cannot talk until around the same place in main game where Sergey starts giving her words, him coming up with the idea and implementing it to give her means to talk to players.

Satoshi would still die due to his heart condition in this au, though later on than in main game due to the stress of Sidwell as well as overworking due to that pushing him along. He'd still probably die quicker than he should have due to overworking though my man will not stop.

Some random other bullshit, Shizuka would meet Emilie after her and Serika do the desert temple, coming to check on her. She's how Emilie learns Lea can't say much as opposed to Tronny.

But yea a pretty lose AU with a bunch of random strewn about concepts, just like the majority of my aus which i barely ever share. It was fun thinking of it for/while making this animation.

thank you for scrolling through my bullshit aka how I have fun, have this as extra.

[buttercatrho]

Wanted to practice character design which somehow lead me to this

many crosscode cats, i'm tempted to do more (interested in at least doing Carla and Hlin) but I'll see what happens

Some design guidelines I made up for fun:

The different classes are all assigned to one breed, though its more like a base than a strict guideline. Out of game they could be other cat breeds but in game they're always the breed of the class.

Avatars always have the shape of their class somewhere on their pelt

Because Spheromancers are supposed to look chimera adjacent, a cats pelt should look plausibly like a single one and not a mish mash

all the other cats ears have to be smaller than leas (very important)