#fun coming up with partial four designs the player character could have

[rizardofether]

Who am I?

An idea that started with me thinking about a game idea made in the style of a visual novel in a fantasy setting centered around a kingdom's noble families. Political intrigue and mystery.

The player character would be created in the beginning, dollmaker-style since it would be in 2D. The race, appearance, outfit and noble family would be chosen in the CC, each race having a couple different options.

The game would start with you waking up in a bedroom. The game tells you that you are not the character you've just made but are instead a regular person who ended up in that body, whether that is meant to be you as in the player or the POV character themself is left unclear.

The intro is your attendant, who they are depends on the noble family that was chosen, coming to your room, finding out you have no memories, and explaining that you were in an accident, likely being the cause for the memory loss. You get to choose your character's first name, and personality traits they used to have before the incident.

The gameplay would then be you attempting to act in a way the chosen character would act to not raise suspicion while investigating the cause of the incident, finding it suspicious. The run would end with you figuring out who caused it and finding a way to make them face justice.

The player could then start a new playthrough with a new character. The incidents and events would be varied but the backstory of the character being someone who just woke up in this body remains consistent.

As you play more and more and discover new secrets, you start to find out about the POV character, that they are indeed meant to be their own character and not just a stand-in for the player. They begin to awaken vague memories about their life before, and eventually realize they remember each of the playthroughs of the game, being stuck in a type of timeloop, with the character they end up possessing being different each time.

Their memories of their original self being very vague and the many roles they take in the game leading to an identity crisis. The true endings relating to the player character themself would likely have multiple options, good, bad, neutral.

This whole idea going out of control inspired me to draw the poor Player Character, which is the name I will be referring to them as, if I ever return to this idea. It was a fun experiment.

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : WandaVision [Disney+, Episode 9] (2021)

All good things must come to an end, and after roughly a year of speculation and nearly two fabulous months of weekly anticipation, Disney + and Marvel Studios have (seemingly) wrapped up the highly anticipated MCU-based series WandaVision.  For the general viewing public, it’s been a slow but steady growth of new fans (which I anticipate to boom now that the series can be binged in its entirety), but for many of us with a vested interest in the MCU (as well as a deep love for nostalgiac television and referential film), WandaVision became the gift that kept on giving : giving us fuel for what became rampant speculation, giving us a deeper insight into Wanda Maximoff as a grieving character and a being with power greater than she understood, and giving us new characters that will surely have a lasting impact on both movies and television series moving forward.

As an experiment on connecting a cinematic universe to an entertainment medium not dependent on box office returns, I would consider WandaVision a success, and one that can not so easily be duplicated by DC or any other entertainment entity.  Over a decade of work has been put into the foundation of the MCU that was Phases One - Three, and with a lore firmly established, it was really up to Marvel to fumble transitioning their storytelling style into longform storytelling for television.  With a handful of new series on the way, and movies expected by year’s end, the future is exciting for both Marvel and fans of the MCU alike.

THE STORY THUS FAR

Episode 09 : The Series Finale With Tommy (Jett Klyne) and Billy (Julian Hilliard) firmly in tow, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) continues to goad Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) into a confrontation.  Wanda eventually gives in and attempts to attack Agatha, but Agatha absorbs the blows, revealing that she can (and intends to) absorb all of Wanda’s abilities.  A greyed-out version of Vision (Paul Bettany) appears and accosts Wanda, but Wanda’s Vision created in The Hex comes to her rescue, confronting and battling Grey Vision while attempting to appeal to any reason in existence.  Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) watches from the captivity of a nearby home, with Quicksilver (Evan Peters) standing guard.  Director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg) recaptures Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) outside of The Hex, but Woo manages to contact Quantico.  Before they can arrive, however, Wanda is forced to partially remove The Hex by Agatha, and Hayward takes advantage of the situation to move S.W.O.R.D. forces into The Hex.  After realizing that a complete removal of The Hex will cost her Tommy, Billy and Vision, Wanda seals The Hex once again, leading to a final confrontation between her and Agatha Harkness with major consequences.

THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW For a series that was supposed to introduce us to Phase Four of the MCU, as well as potentially set up Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I can’t say that I have any complaints with the execution.  I came into the show with Wanda Maximoff and Vision as two of my favorite characters, and like many people, I’d been referring to Wanda as Scarlet Witch despite this name designation having not taken place within the MCU.  Being rewarded with gift was the perfect amount of fan service (if you can even call it that, as it is key to Wanda’s story), and the way that future storylines have been set up will lead to worlds of revelations in the coming years.

Watching those willing to enjoy the series during its initial run lead to some of the grandest and widespread sets of theories and speculations that I’ve ever seen in regard to a TV show, although the implications of impact on the MCU cinematic universe makes that understandable.  The MCU is certainly showing a new approach to this speculation, as the inclusion of Evan Peters (as well as the fun and games they had with the introduction of the latest Spider-man film title) showed us, and I expect more trolling and swerves moving forward.  Be it Mephisto, Nightmare, Grim Reaper, Reed Richards, Professor X, Magneto or even Deadpool, the list of names that people attempted to will into existence was incredibly impressive (although, props to those who speculated on Skrulls, who I imagine will be EVERYWHERE moving forward).

As we move forward with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki on Disney +, and the eventual release of Spider-man : No Way Home and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I anticipate more magic, more cosmic adventures, and more mind-bending antics that will introduce (and remove) characters from the playing field in soon to be iconic ways.  The future is really and truly an open door of possibilities the way that the MCU and Marvel are stepping their game up, and if WandaVision is any indication, be ready for some bold steps ahead.

As we move forward with Wanda Maximoff embracing her Scarlet Witch designation, and the depths of her powers in turn, it seems as if we are seeing Marvel take their already established practice of blurring the lines between hero and villain (a la Bucky) to staggering new heights.  It seems as if not even Wanda knows what the true ceiling for her powers is, but with the final moments of her battle with Agatha and the image of her dedicating a projection to absorbing the secrets of the Dark Hold, her ability to learn and adapt appears to be a key element to her strength.  With Agatha outright stating that Wanda’s powers exceed that of the Sorcerer Supreme, a clear line in the sand has seemingly been drawn between Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange.  Ironically, the discovery of her potential has only made the implied fear from the Infinity Saga into a very real thing in the wake of her manipulation of Westview, which could separate her from the Avengers for a time.

Many speculated that WandaVision would play out as a sort of swansong for the Vision character, and while that appears to be the case for Wanda’s approximation of Vision, the enlightenment given to Grey Vision (and the absence of a resolution for this new character) leaves the door wide open for what will be with the character.  As a character (and also thanks to Paul Bettany’s stellar performance of said character), Vision continues to be one of the most compelling members of the MCU cinematic universe with his consistently thought-provoking and deeply emotional dialogue.  I thought that WandaVision would be a one-off, and based on the upcoming slate of films that may be the case, but with many unanswered questions left, I wouldn’t be surprised of Vision and Wanda find their way back to the realm of the limited series (again, contingent on character involvement in the already slated projects).

Bravo to Kathryn Hahn for bringing Agatha Harkness to life, and making her an instant fan favorite.  With her imprisonment presented at the end of WandaVision, we are not only seeing a potentially powerful played being put on ice and ready to reemerge at any given moment, but her connections to Mephisto and the Fantastic 4 leaves her open for future involvement in the MCU as a key player.  With Westview being so close to Avengers headquarters, she also serves as a living reference library for Wanda (although, as mentioned before, Wanda’s connection to the Avengers is unclear at this point).

Another fan favorite was Teyonah Parris, who stepped into the MCU fold in a gigantic way as Monica Rambeau.  Using her to bring “reality” into the series was a beautiful play, with her inclusion in The Blip serving as both a marker in the MCU timeline and an emotional shock for viewers looking for a character to root for.  It feels as if we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in regard to Monica’s power potential, which leaves room for her evolution to take place on-screen, and based on what we’ve seen thus far, it feels like Photon, Spectrum, Captain Marvel, or possibly even some combination of the three could be her next step.  With Nick Fury showing his hand in the form of a Skrull contact, it is almost a sure thing that Monica Rambeau will be playing a key role in the upcoming Secret Invasion storylines.

The appearance of Tommy and Billy marked a huge point of story potential for the MCU, and with so much of their fate left up in the air, seeing where their journey heads will certainly be interesting.  With announcements of a handful of future MCU characters on the way, it seems certain that Marvel has plans for the Young Avengers.  As previously mentioned, tying the twins physical form to The Hex, only to have them still seemingly alive and in existence somewhere, opens up two very specific doors of narrative : option one being a future encounter with Mephisto, and option two being Wanda’s journey for her twins serving as the breaking point for the Multiverse that sets up the Doctor Strange film.

I am even more excited about the future of the MCU now that I know where Wanda, Vision and all those tied to this series currently sit.  With the rampant rumors out there in connection to Spider-man : No Way Home, who even knows if these spaces that each character occupies will be the same by the time we revisit them.  What I do know is that the MCU/Marvel Studios and Disney + make a good team, and I will be wholly invested moving forward with anything that comes out of their collective camp.

[auncyen]

I FINALLY FINISHED STELLA GLOW.

my thoughts--

I paid $9.99 (and tax) for this game and for that price I think it’s safe to recommend if you want to try a strategy rpg that’s...usually on the easier side?  I don’t play strategy rpgs often myself, and most of the times I was having difficulty it was really because I was trying to do the “bonus” missions--the only difficulty spike I’d fault the game itself for is the final boss, who has a gimmick that you can’t really adjust for on the fly--if you don’t bring the right equipment/orbs, you’re probably sunk.  Also, 6/8 of your party will be fixed for the start of the end, so you’re screwed if like me, you did not level some of them :)  That is the part that sucked and broke all the immersion of “oh the world is ending in only a few days and the party narrowly saves them” because that is the only time in the game I actually had to grind.  And I had to grind a lot.

If I had to name the biggest reason not to buy this game, I would first point you to this character design.  This is arguably one of the best characters for combat in the game outside the witches.  Her personality is decent.  Inevitably, however, things keep coming back to her appearance, and somehow I just.  Managed to miss that this game is kind of a harem set-up.  Outside Nonoka’s character design there’s other little unfortunate things like “tuning” being set up as somewhat adversarial (there’s eventually a decent in-world explanation for why that is, but it still doesn’t stop it from coming off as like “oh [girl] won’t tell me what’s wrong, GUESS I GOTTA FORCE HER”, which actually makes it kind of satisfying when one witch is like “you know what?  yeah.  get in my spirit world.  FIGHT ME.  I’M GOING TO PUMMEL YOU.” once you have met all the witches you can easily guess which one this is) and the animation for “conducting” a witch to bring out her strongest powers is...thrusting your dagger into her chest while she gasps and of course. the first witch you actually do this with.  is the 15-year-old.

...

There were distinct points where I was glad to have only paid $10 for it.

I mentioned when I was playing the demo of the art being charming to me like BD’s and that’s true pretty much all the way through.  It looks very nice, and since it’s a plot based on song, there’s quite a few songs with vocals that are pretty nice.  The plot is a little “uhhhh??” at times but stays simple enough that nothing’s too glaring.  Unfortunately quite a bit of character development seems to be kind of gated behind free time usage, and your first playthrough you will only have enough free time to max six characters with careful planning, according to other players.  I only maxed four.  So especially at the end, you’ll have moments of characters talking about things that sound like they probably came up in their free time character arcs and I’m just like “well yeah that sounds appropriate for this character type but WE DIDN’T REALLY DISCUSS THIS”.  Free time is supposed to be much more generous in ng+, which kind of makes sense as a bonus, but at the same time, it’s so restrictive in the first playthrough it kind of works against the close-knit group they seem to want to portray at the end.

Similarly the exp cap from lower level enemies being a thing for only the first playthrough is baffling to me because first playthrough is the time when players would most need grinding since they have less experience with the combat system??  otherwise you gotta rely on play coin battles.  I only had 13 play coins so I could only do 1.  I started trying to earn more play coins only to realize my 3ds does not count steps accurately at all, so...that was discouraging.

That said I blasted through this in less than 3 weeks (it’s supposed to take about 40 hours, my playtime has quite a few hours over but that’s partially because of times I just put the 3ds down and started doing other things), so yes, gameplay wise it’s pretty fun.

[murasaki-murasame]

Ieyasu came for my saving-for-Gala-Luca throat and I still managed to get him with 100 of my 250-ish saved up sommons >:3c

Now to go back into saving-for-Gala-Luca mode. After the absolute nightmare that was the Gala Elly banner, I’m not taking any risks this time.

Anyway, more about my summons under the cut [TL;DR: I got more than I even wanted, and also if anyone’s feeling iffy on this banner I just wanna let you know that Chitose is basically Light!Emma and he’s probably the best new unit on the entire banner lmao]

The last few weeks of events were really generous and got me all the way up to 250 or so saved summons, and after seeing that Ieyasu was gonna be featured on this banner along with like four other units I was terrified that it wouldn’t be enough to get him, and that I’d be left with no real chance of getting Gala Luca afterward, but then I got Ieyasu after 100 summons so we’re all good, lol. Let’s just say that once I saw that rainbow blade every single muscle in my body was clenched as I faced the imminent coin toss between getting Ieyasu and Nobunaga. And thankfully I got what I wanted in the end.

I also got two copies of Mitsuhide, who I didn’t really care one way or another about, but now I have her, lmao. I honestly don’t even think she’s worth pulling for since she only seems somewhat better than Fleur, but I’m happy to have her.

The most surprising part of this banner was that I randomly got my first copy of Yaten, which I’m EXTREMELY happy about. His banner was one of the first times [along with Ieyasu, ironically] where I really felt bad about not managing to pull him while he was featured, so I’m happy he finally came home. I was seriously considering dream summoning him in the future, and now I don’t have to. I’ll probably still be dream summoning Delphi soon, though, since Cygames is doing everything in their power to make me regret initially thinking he was a bad character, lol. So yeah this banner gave me the two 5-star shadow unit dudes who I’d missed out on previously so that’s pretty nifty. I think the only shadow 5-stars I’m missing now are Summer Verica, Delphi, and I guess Veronica but I’m not really counting limited units. And out of those three I only really care about Delphi since I already have Heinwald and Gala Cleo.

I got Chitose really early in my summons, and it almost made me contemplate stopping there, but I decided to keep going until I got Ieyasu. Which thankfully happened without me using all of my summons. I do think that Chitose is the real gem of this banner, but Ieyasu’s new mana spiral upgrade also makes him noteworthy again.

I thought that maybe at most Chitose would be a light version of DY-Xanfried, but nope he’s literally a light version of Emma, lol. I thought Cygames wouldn’t put such a powerful unit behind a limited banner, but here we are. Light continues to suffer from having most of their good units being limited. At least this whole banner makes me feel a bit better about not having gotten DY-Malora.

I was kinda worried about the idea of Chitose being a curse-res light wand, since I feel like endgame curse-res light content is kinda punishing toward ranged units, but they pretty much specifically designed his kit to make him super tanky, with his +20% defense passive and his 30% Max HP shield on his S2, lmao. At least if you use Chocolatiers or something on him, using those two together is probably enough to get past HZD’s HP check, so he might actually become a really good, accessible meta unit for that fight. But in general as a strength buffbot he’s pretty much automatically one of the best light units already.

On the other hand I think Hanabusa is probably going to be inferior to Yachiyo until he hopefully gets a mana spiral upgrade that fixes his partial curse res and gives his kit some new elements to make him shine. But I think if he can get that upgrade later [or if he can manage to get by with a curse res print in HZD], he might be really good. It’s hard to tell how good his kit as a whole is at the moment, but I like that he has team strength buffs built into his kit, and some pretty high buff time increases based on his S1 skill shift.

We’ll see how it shakes out, but I feel like Mitsuhide probably isn’t going to completely erase Fleur from the meta. It’s not quite like the Thaniel-Jiang Ziya situation, since Fleur is still super strong on her own, and I feel like Mitsuhide doesn’t provide much more aside from higher stats as a 5-star.

I’m basically forcing myself to not care about Nobunaga so that i can resist the completionist urge to keep pulling for her to have her in my collection just because she exists, so I’m just going to think of her as a unit that I can live without, for my own sanity, lmao. But honestly she doesn’t stand out a whole lot, at least not after all the massive buffs the flame roster just got. Her buff dispels don’t seem very special now that Euden and Naveed can do that too, and the unique debuff on her S1 kinda seems like . . . a worse version of bleed, lol.

Daikokuten seems like a good dragon, but I’m not gonna bother chasing after him since I got Cupid a while ago and I’m working on unbinding him. He seems like he provides more raw strength than Cupid if you can maintain a high combo count, but Cupid’s heal and crit rate buff pretty much ensure that he’s still going to be a highly valued dragon in the long run, so I’m fine if I don’t get the new one.

I honestly might have done the platinum dragon summon once if it was a thing where you got a guaranteed copy of Daikokuten each time, but it’s literally just ‘you get one of the 5-star dragons and Daikokuten has the exact same appearance rate as the rest of them’, which is basically useless to me. Same with the adventurer one, but I wasn’t going to pull on that anyway since i don’t care for the two new 5-stars. I can tell that they’re trying to give people a bit more incentive to spend money on this game, but I think it’s only worth it if you’re a super new player who barely has any 5-stars at all. Some people will probably do the adventurer one because they really like the new banner units, I guess, but it’s a horrible deal.

Also on the note of Nobunaga, I’m kinda disappointed that she’s just the Year of the Horse character, lol. I would have liked it way more if she was an unofficial Year of the Cat clan leader, with Ebisu as her pact dragon, but then that would have made me want to pull for her more because I’m weak for anything that I can twist into a Fruits Basket reference, so maybe it’s a good thing that they didn’t go down that route. Either way it feels kinda weird to not have her be about the Year of the Cat when she’s being bundled with the Rat clan leader, and Ebisu is already based on that whole myth anyway. It seems like a vaguely uncomfortable and off-putting message of ‘yeah this game isn’t going to last long enough for us to actually get to the Year of the Horse so we’re giving her out early :)’. If they were gonna do it this way in order to get all of the clan leader characters released within 6-7 years rather than 12, I kinda wish they could have done that from the start so it didn’t come as a surprise now. Oh well.

Anyway, even though I’m not a fan of Nobunaga at all [and even after the event story I still don’t have any interest in her lol], I really like the rest of the new units. I could take or leave Mitsuhide in terms of her being a 5-star light dagger, but the event story actually made me like her a fair bit. Plus, her 3D model helped sell me on her design.

But mostly Chitose is my absolute son boy and I adore him. I get the feeling he’s going to be very . . . polarizing, but I love him. He’s absolutely perfect, and to top it all off he’s exactly the character that the light roster has been waiting for. As soon as he came into my summons being like ‘here comes a slice of cutie pie <3′ it was over for me.

Hanabusa’s also fun, in a surprisingly Danganronpa character writing kinda way. I think his facial expressions really gave me that sorta comparison, since it’s kinda rare for characters in this game to be that cartoon-y. But I also really love him. The fact that purple’s my favourite colour may or may not be making me extremely biased in his favour, though.

Also, Ebisu seems to be a 40% HP shadow dragon, which I think shadow’s been lacking. He’s probably not as good as a MUB NIdhogg/HZD, but I don’t have either of those so he’s nice to have. Even though I use Heinwald as my shadow healer and he prefers mixed dragons.

The new event wyrmprints also all seem pretty good. The Wyrmclan Duo basically seems to be Resounding Rendition but with crit damage instead of crit rate, and I’ll have to see how the math on that one turns out. I think most characters benefit more from crit rate than crit damage, but I’m not sure. A New Year’s Battle seems like a pretty solid print for daggers, and probably other units that can get high combo counts.

And then A Game of Cat and Boar seems like it’s gonna be the best wyrmprint for light buffers like Chitose and maybe Hanabusa. It actually has the highest buff time percentage for a wyrmprint in the game, at 25% compared to the current main ones being 20%, but it’s locked to light units. The 10% shadow res also works nicely with Chitose’s innate focus on defense, to make it easier for him to pass HP checks and whatnot. It’s a potent enough buff time increase that you can pretty easily just run something like the HZD print in his second slot without losing out on much, but outside of HZD he might just use a second buff time print anyway since there’s no real reason to bother buffing his offensive stats.

Anyway, in short, this banner was extremely gracious to me, Chitose is Best Boy, and I’m going to skip everything between now and the next gala in the hopes that we’ll finally get Gala Luca.

On that note, I thought Gala Luca might be a light dagger, but that seems a lot less likely now that Mitsuhide exists. I think he’ll probably be a light blade, or maybe a light spear, instead. I think him being a light blade would be great. We really need more of those [especially since Hanabusa’s stuck with a welfare unit kit], and it’d be great to see Luca get the vindication he deserves by getting a really strong gala alt. So until then I’m just gonna try and keep hoarding my resources until I can pull for him. I think I have a little over 150 summons worth of resources saved up, and I hope that’ll get a lot bigger over the next month.

[beyondmistland]

“May your heart be your guiding key” (Full thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III below!)

Graphics:

Ø  The game is bloody gorgeous, which helps mitigate the long and frequent cutscenes

Ø  The lip-syncing rarely fails

Music:

Ø  The new remixes are awesome and the brand-new tracks don't disappoint either

Ø  What does though is the actual audio mixing:

More often than not I struggled to hear the music over the sound effects during gameplay and the voiceovers during cutscenes

Ranking the Worlds:

Ø  #1: Corona: The world is huge, with varied terrain and a kick-ass final boss

Ø  #2 Olympus: The sheer scale and scope of the world took my breath away, plus we (finally!) get to fight all four titans

Ø  #3 The Caribbean: Assassin's Creed IV meets Kingdom Hearts, what's not to like

Ø  #4 Monstropolis: While not as eye-catching as some of the other worlds the way it intersects with the broader KH lore is really neat and the final cutscene was a delight in that it averts the Disney characters being useless when dealing with the original KH villains, on top of which its straightforward design is a nice change of pace, my only complaint is that there are only four types of Unversed

Ø  #5 San Fransokyo: The story is surprisingly short, which means you don't really get the chance to explore the environment, which sucks because the verticality and day/night cycle are awesome, plus there are a number of memorable boss fights

Ø  #6 Twilight Town: If it had been fully recreated based off the KH2 version the world would be much higher on my list but despite how small it is I love the liveliness, not to mention how peaceful it is in comparison to the other worlds, the same can be said for Hundred Acre Wood

Ø  #7 Keyblade Graveyard + Final World + Scala Ad Caelum: Though jaw-dropping in terms of visuals and audio they're not fully realized worlds, the same can be said for Dark World

Ø  #8 Toy Box: I loved the final boss as well as how the story tied into the larger plot of the game and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy exploring Andy's room while "You have a friend in me" played in the background

Why then is Toy Box so far down on my list, world design

Even with endgame stats (LV40-45) the Gigas are tough to take down and as a result they come off as gimmicky in the worst sense of the word, beyond that the fact that the majority of the world is set in Galaxy Toys made me feel constrained and claustrophobic, which could have been partially alleviated if we'd been allowed to make our way through the parking lot outside, finally, the story kind of got repetitive with the backtracking whenever the characters were about to leave because "someone went missing yet again"

Ø  #9 Arrendelle: Though it has one of the best final bosses in the game along with Corona there is so much wrong with this world that I wonder if it's less Square Enix's fault and more Disney placing an insane amount of red tape on their favorite cash-cow:

1) Elsa does not become a party member even after you beat the world

2) You do not get to explore the city or the ice palace despite the latter being fully rendered on the map

3) Larxene, a lightning-based character, randomly traps you in an ice labyrinth when that would have made a lot more sense both logically and thematically if it had been Elsa

4) Speaking of Larxene, she does practically nothing the whole time you're there unlike Marluxia and Luxord, who are at least semi-active

5) You climb a mountain and get knocked off of it so many times that even Sora gets fed up

6) The bloody minigame where you have to find Olaf's body parts

7) Forcing us to watch the entire "Let it go" sequence and then having "Do you want to build a snowman" play over Anna's voice as she's explaining herself to Sora

8) So much of the story is excised that you have little clue as to what's going on to the point Hans appears for all of five minutes, doesn't say any lines, and isn't even named when it would have been cool, not to mention, just plain better, if he had started off as a guest member of your party

9) As a result of #8 Sora, Donald, and Goofy's presence feels like even more of an afterthought than usual in the sense that them not being there wouldn't have changed anything at all apart from Hans' Heartless then having no one to defeat it which can be seen by the fact that when they leave no one tells them goodbye unlike in every other world

10) The visual design was bland and tiresome after a while

11) The world's gimmick was uninspired to say the least

12) Fighting alongside a giant snowman (AKA Marshmallow) was awesome and in terms of pure gameplay the labyrinth was actually quite fun

Story Pros:

Ø  Master Xehanort's new voice actor is good but after hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice for the past couple of games the change is a bit jarring

Ø  The way previous games are referenced and tied together is a nice way of bringing new players into the fold while also setting up the finale's resolutions

Ø  The game has a better sense of humor than previous installments

Ø  Sora is more like his KH2 self than the bland caricature we saw in 3D and quite a few characters display some degree of genre-savviness

Ø  Master Yen Sid gets out of his chair to lend a hand for once

Ø  Donald Duck is the most powerful mage in Square Enix canon (and I am not making that up)

Gameplay Pros:

Ø  Being able to switch between different save points in the same world is a welcome addition

Ø  The secondary ability of all shotlocks to airstep is ingenious

Ø  You can have more than two party members finally!

Ø  The secret ending isn't too hard to unlock

Ø  You can upgrade your Keyblades, which means older ones aren't automatically relegated to redundancy

Ø  Donald and Goofy are useful again after being nerfed into uselessness in KH2

Ø  Towns and cities are actually populated by fully-voiced NPCs!

Ø  Cutscenes in Theater Mode are unlocked after completing each world rather than after beating the game

Ø  I never tried the Classic Kingdom minigames but the cooking one with Remy was a nice break from the normal gameplay (I suck at the egg-cracking one though)

Ø  The camera doesn't get in the way like it infamously did in KH1

Ø  I like the new main menu design (Feel free to disagree though)

Ø  The Gummi Ship is entirely optional outside of a few mandatory boss battles

Ø  Moogle Tickets are a nice way of giving players a second chance during difficult encounters (I do wish they didn’t activate so quickly though) 

Gameplay Cons:

Ø  The game never once tells you that you can switch between Situation Commands using L2

Ø  The game never once tells you that you keep all your lower-tier magic (Fire, Fira for example) and that your shortcuts don't automatically update to include the higher-tier version of whatever magic you have equipped

Ø  There's no real incentive to switch between Keyblades (That being said, my favorites are Wheel of Fate, Nano Arms, and Happy Gear/Ever After)

Ø  Attractions lose their charm quickly and completely ruin the flow of combat

Ø  Summons aren't too big of a deal since I only ever ended up using them once and even then it was by accident

Ø  Donald still heals you at the wrong time more often than not

Ø  Even on Proud Mode the game is way too easy for the most part (Apparently Critical Mode addresses this but I can't confirm that)

Ø  There is a lack of sidequests and post-game content that contributes to the feeling Square & Disney gave us half a game (For example, there is only one secret boss, said secret boss has a generic design, no ties to the story, and can be defeated at LV40 on your first attempt)

Ø  Hollow Bastion, Mysterious Tower, and Destiny Islands are not playable

Ø  The parkour from 3D has been nerfed too much in terms of distance to actually be useful

Story Cons:

Ø  Nomura fridged Kairi and he worfed almost everyone the first time you arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard!

Ø  The wrapping up of plot points and character arcs from prior entries was a little too nice and neat for me

Ø  The out-of-nowhere introduction of Subject X

Ø  Pete and Maleficent do literally nothing the whole damn game

Ø  The pacing is awful:

Almost all of the game's resolution is held back until after you've beaten the last Disney world

Ø  There are two important cutscenes in the Final World that you can accidentally miss because for some reason they are optional

Ø  We don't get to see what happened to Lingering Will, which also means we don't get any more insight into the third aspect of being (AKA the soul)

Ø  There are no Final Fantasy characters in the game, not even Sephiroth!

Ø  What happened to Demyx?

Ø  Master Eraqus has absolutely nothing to do with Terra’s restoration

Changes I’d make:

Ø  Require us to go through the Disney worlds a second time like in KH2

Ø  Have Aqua and Ven be saved halfway through the game instead of at the end, they could then spend the second half of the game resting or join you on one of the Disney worlds to refresh themselves

Ø  Have Lea and Kairi join you on one of the Disney worlds to get practical experience

Ø  Make the Keyblade Graveyard sequence be a series of one/two/three-on one battles so that members of Organization XIII can use their full arsenal of attacks from previous games

Ø  Let us play the second battle between Lingering Will and Terra-Xehanort

Ø  Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, we should have fought him alongside the Guardian Heartless

Ø  Have us explore Scala Ad Caelum while hunting down the individual replicas before then making us fight all of them in a boss battle

DLC

Ø  The presence of it says a lot about the game and not in a good way

Final Score

Ø  7/10-8/10

[pkmnsdarkqueen]

Johto!

(My home girl’s region! :D)

1. Which starter would I pick?-This is like Sinnoh but instead of me adoring them all my reaction is more,‘eh, alright.’ Out of them all I always end up going with Cyndaquil no matter how many times I tell myself Im gonna choose someone else. Idk, maybe it’s the eyes and the part of me that cosplays Italy can’t get over them. X3

2. Favorite Evolutionary line/pokemon?Ok when it comes to Johto there are alot of pokemon in it that I forget are from Johto. It’s partially due to there being few complete lines in this region, which is something that can’t be fixed now. However houndoom and houndour hold a special place in my heart. They most closely resemble my own dog, and it combines my two favorite types. Idc if it’s a mainstream choice, this is one line that is amazing. 👌

3. Least favorite evolution/pokemon?-Sunflora. Hands down because it ever so greatly triggers me. See my favorite flower is a sunflower. When I heard there was a sunflower pokemon I flipped in joy. I saw sunkern’s adorableness and gushed. When it evolved I adored the happy attitude. Then I found out how much it sucks in battle and felt my heart get crushed. When I say bad it has one of the worst stats in the whole series, and I know my muse is Karen, so yes I know her quote about fighting with your favorites, but when your favorite looses to a top percentage rattata it’s time to get a new favorite. Also they missed the chance to make a fire grass type. ;_;

4. Favorite gym leader/elite four?-Alot of the gym leaders in this region left an impression, and really interacted with the player. However Jasmine, and her precious pure self always makes me smile. I mean c'mon she’s one of the only people we’ve seen nickname their pokemon. Plus she calls it Amphy, like how a kid calls a teddy bear ‘teddy’. Then at the same time she also commands a giant metal snake that can snap you in half with one good hit. Bless this girl. Ok this next one I maybe a lil bias but um, Karen, duh. X3 Dark type was my favorite long before Karen came along, and btw I never played the original gold and silver so it took me awhile to meet her. When I saw her in the game and heard her quote I was like,“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!? WHY DIDN’T I GET TO INTERACT WITH YOU AT ALL IN THIS GAME!? HOLY FUDGE! You’re like…woah…” It was that same sense of awe I got when first meeting Cynthia though this chick had more edge. Then I found out about her crimminal side and I am sold on her as my favorite for eternity.

5. Favorite town/city?-Blackthorn, and half of the reason is due to that name. When I played HGSS I was going through my warrior cats phase and so this nake was everything. Tbh it still sounds like such an amazing name for a town. I mean it’s intense, causes emotion, and makes the place seem intense. Which it is. I mean it’s in the mountains, you have to scale a cliff to leave, and there is a cave called the den of dragons that has dragons. Can you imagine telling people that’s where you grew up!? Just introduce yourself as the person from Blackthorn and watch people awe over it, you win life bud.

6. Favorite non-town/city location?-Hint it’s a tower. No not the bell one, I’m talking the burned one. Idk why but exploring abandoned or grungy places is so much fun to me! It’s like an adventure, and you never know what could be in there! (Lol like legendary doggos x3) Plus this place is like falling apart and has all of this history! I would go nuts researching and taking in the details of the place! Finally I know some people hate the smell of campfires but it’s my favorite thing ever, so any burned wood smell would be like a bonus.

7. Side mechanic that distracted me from the main game.-The pokewalker was up until I accidentally washed it a week after getting the game. Yeah, lost an eevee that day. Anyway by far the pokeathalon sucked my attention away more than any other side mechanic in any other game. I loved that place cause it could make my wimpy pokemon (like Sunflora) great, and my already strong pokemon stronger. Also I believe it was the flag capture that I struggled the most with. Took me literal hours but I finally beat the record there and felt such victory getting to the final room.

8. Would I punch the main antagonist in the face?-I’m not gonna count Giovanni cause he wasn’t really a part of this except being someone they were trying to get back in the crew. As far as the antagonists go there’s four of them which makes it a bit harder. Also like I said they were just trying to get the band back together, it wasnt like they were going to destroy the world like alot of the other villians. So like the last one, if it was in the moment yeah I’d try to apprehend them, and punch if necessary. Though I wouldn’t say too much was at steak for anything too extreme. Also post game I think just talking to them all individually would be good. Not in a therapist way just a casual convo might go a long way.

9. Would I punch my rival in the face?-I probably would of tried to multiple times. Sorry Silver but stranger or not you stole a pokemon and broke a wall of someone’s prolerty. That’s kinda illegal. After kicking your butt in battle I’d try to arrest you. I mean if Elm later said it was chill, said you were free to keep the pokemon, and you two worked out some deal for the wall then I’d be cool with it. However knowing myself I would be focused on righting said wrong until it was handled. I mean maybe we’d befriend each other somehow while I’m nailing his face, but even then I’d encourage him to go handle the situation.

10. Rating of the game 1-10?….I am sorry Sinnoh fans but 8. Look, this isn’t nostalgia talking. I never played the original games so if anything I ought to have more nostalgia with Sinnoh. However I don’t because when it comes to games I look for story. Johto just felt as though it had a more complete story. The characters were engaging, and I could relate with them. There were so many quirks and twists that made it feel unique. Yeah ok the pokemon designs lack in evolutions, and style, but I prefer story to design. No the whole world wasn’t at steak. In all honesty the villians were more brutish than they were intimidating. Though I could follow their reasoning, and in some ways rooted that things did work out somehow for them. Plus the ties of different families with Clair & Lance, Janine & Koga, Silver & Giovanni, were all elements I enjoyed seeing. (Then there’s all the ones in the manga that I found out about later). It made the region seem more personal and tied together. Plus who didn’t love the calls from your mom, trainers, and yes even Joey. Though slightly repetitive it all helped bring the player into the world, and I love seeing that.

(Dont get me wrong though, we need another Sinnoh game first, then maybe a Unova or Kanto would be good.)

(And @evolutionexpert , tbh Elm is my favorite prof so nice. 👌 )

[crystallinerays]

In ref to last OC ask thing: Gimme all of L! (Am also willing to take questions in return)

Hope you were expecting one of my patented Way Too Much Thought Was Put Into This response to most things because you’re getting it, kid!

L. For the Writer/Owner

How have your characters changed since you created them?

Most of them have changed a lot, yeah.

Pumpkin was originally a pacifist. A glass canon who was afraid of everything and was very much not into the idea of shooting alien with guns. (She was also two inches taller.) Now she’s a pvp monstah.

Desh is... more of a person, less of a concept. She’s become a lot more vocal to me and a lot less vocal to other characters about how she really feels. Mostly bc in her mind they obviously don’t care. (Seriously, she will 20gp to anyone who can tell her the name of her brother and/or the country they were born in. WITHOUT the player checking any of the reference I posted.) Desh started off pretty happy and innocent and now she’s... not. She’s scared and she’s hurt and she’s honestly pretty broken and just pretending to be her “normal self” because that’s what she thinks she’s expected to be. But honestly she’d be in Serious Desh mode more often right now if she thought she could get away with it. And it honestly breaks my heart.

Keth started off as my da:i dalish inquisitor and in her current incarnation she’s a giant four armed alien. Don’t ask.

What do you consider the biggest themes in your character, if any?

Family. Family, especially found family, is very important to all my OCs. Loss is another big one. Betrayal and loss, especially of people I care deeply about and I often use them to carve out my OCs because I know it works. 

Honestly this says a lot more about me than them.

Did you create the character to be like yourself, did they end up being like yourself, or are they very different from you?

I never want to make characters like myself. Each of my characters represent an aspect of me, but I don’t want them to be me.

Desh has a lot of my curiosity and love of lore. You try telling me she’s not a massive dork, okay? She also has a casual spirituality that I don’t think gets played up enough. She’s not into ceremony or church going (not that that would have even been legal at any point in her life), but she believes in a more personal god that she can have casual conversations with (mostly in prayer, occasionally in person). It’s not lack of reverence, it’s just how she does things. I have a lot of trouble trying to balance faith with traditional institutions and I’ve always had the idea that whatever divine power runs the universe, they’re something I’m meant to be casual with who doesn’t want pomp and circumstance. Just a casual “hey today was shit, but I had a killer mojito at a bar before I forget that my antidepressants have absolutely killed my tolerance. But my friend told me they’d pick up the tab if I ate a whole lime so thanks for limes.”

Pumpkin holds a special place in my heart. She holds a lot of my fire (partially literally. Fire is her Thing™.) and passion and I can’t think of her without overwhelming fondness. Even when I am being awful to her for rp purposes. She means a lot to me. She was originally supposed to be an innocent glass canon who reflected a lot of my feelings of inadequacy as a player and as a person. But playing solo pvp as her and then into Destiny’s Rise of Iron expansion she kicked ass! I wasn’t the team liability anymore, I was fucking top chart! I was fire! It was also a very hard and long grind to get her completely maxed out, but I got it. The first one in the playing group to be 40:400 and I honestly started crying when that happened. And honestly I could go on for days as to why she matters to me and what aspects of myself she holds for me.

Keth is... complicated. She was an oc I made when I was first figuring myself out so she was really fun to be like so maybe I like girls??? Here’s a girl I made who kisses other girls a ton. This is really fun. (Girls are great, but turns out I’m aro-ace.)

Cel has never been played with before, so idk about them.

Yasha gives me an excuse to brush up on my Russian.

Tierney got all my charisma and none of my morals.

Would you hang out with your OC if you could?

Desh. Girl’s got a bottomless tankard of mimosas and whiskey and would honestly listen to all the shit I’ve been going through lately and SHE CAN FINALLY TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT HER FUCKING BACKSTORY BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT IT A LOT AND IT’S ALMOST NEVER RELEVANT OTHER THAN TO ADD TRAUMA BC YEAH THE CITY’S ON FIRE, THAT’S UPSETTING FOR MOST PEOPLE, BUT FLASHBACK INDUCING FOR HER! THAT GIRL HAS LAYERS OF PTSD! AND SOME OF IT I DIDN’T EVEN INTENTIONALLY GIVE HER!

Which OC do you think is the most decent morally or behaviorally?  AKA, which is supposed to a “good guy”? 

Desh. Surprise, right? She might be chaotic but she actually does have a moral code, mostly built from her own life experience and what she sees as good/bad. The main tenants are:

THE SUBJUGATION OF OTHER INTELLIGENT BEINGS IS FUCKING UNFORGIVABLE

Those who knowingly harm children don’t deserve mercy.

Be true in all actions except for when being dishonest protects others or avoids unnecessary conflict. But above all, be true to yourself. You’re all you have in the end.

Family is important above all, in bond more so than blood.

Killing is frowned upon but straight up murder is out of the question

Civilians are not to be harmed ever

DON’T MAKE ANY KIND OF DEAL WITH ANY KIND OF EVIL OUTSIDER.

Which OC do you think is the worst morally or behaviorally? AKA, which is supposed to be a “bad guy”?

Tesni. She’s a 6′6″ Rattataki bounty hunter/force adept I used to rp with a former friend of mine. His OC was a Knight of Ren and she was sort of contracted as his handler. She’s deaf and uses the force as a sort of replacement sense to hearing??? Also she always wears her helmet during meetings and stuff bc the HUD has subtitles. But she is very much not a good person at all ever. Huge fan of casual murder and going out of her way to be an asshole.

Which OC do you think is the most attractive?

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

Either Keth (because I designed her “normal” au aesthetic and look with “what do I find attractive?” in mind) or Tierney (because it’s her job)

What’s the longest you’ve had an OC for?

And still use? Maybe five years. Characters get recycled but no one has yet to stay super long.

How did you come up with your OC?

uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh which one?

Keth - da:i character I liked enough so i decided to turn into a multiputpose oc for EVERYTHING

Pumpkin - the character I was playing in Destiny. I spent a long time in the character creator and I was playing with other people and decided “I like this kid. She needs a story.”

Tesni - asshole I used to be friends with was on a star wars kick and a group of bad guys for rp

Desh - Pathfnder

Cel - D&D

Yasha - Dusk City Outlaws

Tierney - Dusk City Outlaws

[honestlysoconfused-blog1]

Playing a Game

I wrote a thing! Probably all wrong but eh, I had fun writing it.

Key Points

Sherlock series four was created from fandom theories

The fandom is currently playing a ‘Game’ on itself

Evidence in Summary

The number of fan predicted moments that are portrayed in the series

The larger ‘ARG’ elements that have currently been explored (TLS site, Dale Pike) have been ‘exposed’ as being part of the fandom

Foreword

Firstly, my apologies for any mistakes and I honestly encourage anyone to point out flaws or counter arguments or indeed assumptions I have made that could invalidate this argument, because I think healthy scepticism is required when looking at anything currently surrounding Sherlock. I’m also placing this in a essay like format so it should be easier to pick apart or add your own sections/thoughts.

Background - Derren Brown and Prediction Techniques

Derren Brown has always fascinated me and so I have watched a fair amount of his stuff. Certainly not all of it, but enough to start recognising some patterns. The first, of which he seems very fond of, is making things that should be random appear planned. The beauty of doing this is to create a sense of being able to predict the future, or future actions of people. This can be seen in pretty much every show he’s ever done, and I’m not going to pretend I know  how he does it, but an example is when, throughout a show, he encouraged a man to take more chances and eventually to bet his savings on the roll of a die. The roll of the die should have been random but obviously ended with it landing oh-so-amazingly on the correct number and the man winning lots of money.

More details here although as it is an old episode, the link to the Channel 4 video no longer works but the comments give you a brief overview: http://derrenbrown.co.uk/derren-discusses-secret-luck/

The second of Brown’s favourites is making things that appear planned random. This I believe is the more key element and is beautifully summarised by a trick he played on a group of people (including David Tennant!) whereupon they were put into a room containing various different coloured playground objects (balls, space hoppers if I remember correctly, sticks, and so on). They were told that a counter (displayed on a large screen for the people to see) had to reach 100 within a set time limit and then they would each win some money. Cue the people running around the room, bashing sticks, grabbing certain coloured items and generally doing stupid and silly things trying to work out the pattern to make the counter go up.

Briefly outlined here (Series Two, episode title - Supersitition): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick_or_Treat_(TV_series)

The trick?

It was completely random. There was an adjudicator in a completely separate room watching a tank with two fish in, clicking a button whenever one of the fish swam over a line drawn on the tank. This is what made the counter increase. Derren also revealed that there was a briefcase containing a much larger prize of £150 000. If one of the players had decided to step away from the game, wander back a little and look up, they would have seen the a giant sign saying ‘Congratulations, you’ve just won all this money’ or words to that effect (I can’t quite remember whether it was instructions to get to the money, but the point remains the same).

What does this have to do with Sherlock?

The parallel I would like to draw is that the players (the fandom), are staring at the room (series four) full of objects (hints, clues and ‘fuckery’) trying to create an explanation and draw a pattern that will get us to 100 (the explanation, the rug pull, the truth and/or ‘The Lost Special’).

I believe it could also be an explanation as to why so much doesn’t make sense regarding series four and its aftermath.

The Game - Setting the Stage

Here I have to make some assumptions.

The first of these is that there is actually a reason behind series four being, well, bad.

I don’t think anyone can seriously defend the continuity errors, the villainous character repetition[1], the gaping plot holes, the ludicrousness that is a cameraman being left in shot and the show ignoring its own canon[2]. If this is prime-time, heavily promoted television and if there is not a greater plan then all of my argument is invalid, although I would then be questioning the state and sanity of the BBC at large.

However, for now (and frankly because it is more fun) let us believe there is a plan.

The second assumption is that series four as we saw it had not been filmed before the trailers had been released.

On this assumption I would very, very much like people to chip in to either disprove or provide evidence for as - confession time - before series four I was what you would probably call an enthusiastic casual. I certainly knew very little or nothing about the conspiracies[3] and codes[4] and predictions surrounding them[5] but I could read the surface level ones[6] and regularly picked up on the amount of romantic subtext between the characters of Sherlock and John. After series four and being very confused as to why my one time favourite show had turned, to quote, into a parody of itself[7], I sought answers and that led me, naturally, to the online world.

Of note here, I was surprised at the various levels of defence of the show there was on certain platforms (Reddit[8]) whilst anger and disappointment on others (Tumblr and to an extent Twitter[9]). This, unsurprisingly, seemed to run parallel to how much the show was, and is, analysed and the level of dedication the average user has to the show. In other words, ‘casual’ viewers picked up on plot holes but dedicated fans were more likely to be emotive (and therefore later engage in the game).

It is also here where I would like the define the term ‘stage’.

The crowd are who you want to direct, encourage and discourage but what platform this is done on is actually very important. Ethically and morally the I believe platform would have to be ‘open’ and partially anonymous. This is to provide players with an escape route should they need it so a closed platform, such as Facebook, where posts are hidden behind a login wall and are more likely to be linked with personal data, would not be suitable. It also provides the benefit of a larger audience, encouraging others to join in and engage. As Sherlock already had a stable fanbase on Tumblr, this I believe was largely left alone. However, again, as I was not ‘around’ for it, please do counteract this if there were Tumblr specific Sherlock promotions designed to encourage engagement.

The platform to be developed was Twitter, which was actively and officially encouraged first with the live tweeting event[10], then grew unofficially through the Tumblr platform by fans with #Norbury[11] and finally the ‘contact’ accounts of @contactSH and @contactJHW[12]. At present it has been stated that the contact accounts are “not real”[13].   

This, in essence, is what I believe the final stage to look like; Tumblr the hardier and staple platform with Twitter as the advertising and set dressing element.  

The Game - Gathering a Crowd

The crowd, to a large extent, already existed but I suspect has quietly been grown amongst ‘casual’ viewers like myself.

Much of this is hesitant guesswork but certain articles on the actor’s private lives and the rumours around Sherlock’s possible cancellation[14] which has previously never been in question strike me as a deliberate ploy to garner more attention from populist media (The Mirror, The Sun etc.).

However, as there are ‘real human lives’ at stake with this particularly on the first point regarding people’s private lives, I do not encourage further rumours or any assumptions made on my opinion. Simply take it as that - an opinion. As to the implication of my opinion - are the rumours true? - again on the first point I would actively encourage not to think about the content but rather the means, motive and opportunity of said rumours. The means by which they were reported, the motive of doing so - which I have already stated I believe to be a plot to get more people actively engaged - and the opportunities that arise.

Reaching an un-engaged audience through manipulative mediums (which populist media are, give them the hint of a scandal and they lap it up) to pull in more potential players also nicely mirrors the pointed warnings in Sherlock series three - “I don't have to prove it, I just have to print it”.

The Game - Selecting the Players and Providing Motivation

The guide the audience one must next pick key players that - knowingly or not - guide the wider mass. It is here that my assumption of series four not being filmed until after the trailer had been released comes into focus.

In order to make your audience trust the players and follow their lead, one must make them credible. The easiest way to do that regarding a television show is to validate their theories - people are more likely trust someone who has been right about a plot theory or arc before. Here I will decline to mention any specific accounts or names, and I endeavour to remember the real human lives element. However there is a startling correlation with series four following predictions made on Tumblr. [I may here ask said accounts for permission to name them, but for now out of respect I would like to leave them out but encourage others to look at who predicted what.]

At this point there is one key element missing - the motivation to play. It has to be carefully implanted and made big enough to distract and focus everyone’s attention: this is, I believe, ‘The Lost Special’[15] and possibly the affirmation of a canonical, romantic relationship between John Watson and Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock[16a]. On a wider scale though, the prize could simply be ‘the thing that makes the series make sense[16b].

With key players selected, validated and motivated the next step is to start directing them towards playing the game itself.

The Game - The Room of Random Objects

Continuing on the first assumption, creating a series based off fan predictions has the dual benefit of not only validating the players but providing the perfect room of random objects.

Each clue, visual or textual error becomes an object on which the players can focus, discuss and generally ‘play with’ and the potential randomness of where the mind of the crowd will turn becomes much easier to predict. The mind of the fandom has essentially been mirrored.

It also accounts for the clues that didn’t amount to anything, namely the 8th of March, which taken in this context actually provides further proof of this theory. The reveal - nothing happened - is that there is no real game.

The problem here is that using the Derren Brown room metaphor the stated prize is cheap and the potential larger reward comes from stepping away from the game. If we believe that they are using this gameplan rather than another, a reward will be given at the end but it will not be as great or satisfying as if the players were to step back. In contrast to this point, the motivation of the gamemaster must be taken in account.

In the Derren Brown series he is the gamemaster and his motivation is to make a television show, get some people looking silly on camera, and provide an important message about confirmation bias.

Is this the same message being put forward? Or is there another message?

What is the motivation of the gamemasters, if I am correct, in this case? And does the second, larger prize exist?

I do not know.

But on the off chance I am right, here I am, making the point.

In Conclusion

Series four of Sherlock was a huge disappointment and the possibility of redeeming it is very tempting. It’s dragged me here, to Tumblr actually posting this, a place I never thought I would find myself.

However, knowing that the writers are clever, and that at least one is a friend of Derren Brown (and who of course appeared in the show itself), I can’t help but think we are, or where, being played and played against ourselves. Such a thing is fun initially, yes, but at some point the game must end.

If it doesn’t, or it doesn’t exist, and if they truly, unequivocally and totally defend series four as it currently stands then I shall remember series one to three of Sherlock as being fantastic.

References, evidence bits and expansions on points

[1] Toby Jones’ character Smith is described as the most “dangerous and despicable” man Sherlock has ever come across, very nearly the exact words used to describe Magnussen. Moriarty is also described as the most dangerous man Sherlock had ever faced.

[2] In His Last Vow (series three) the character of Sherlock Holmes is shot in the chest, prompting the character of Molly Hooper to remark “It’s not like how it is in the movies. There’s no great spurt of blood and you go flying backwards.” However, in The Six Thatchers (series four) the character of Mary Watson is also shot in the chest; shown jumping in front of the bullet (flying backwards) as blood spurts from the wound. In His Last Vow, the character of John Watson is shown burning the AGRA memory stick which contains the details of Mary Watson’s life before she met him. In The Six Thatchers the character of Sherlock Holmes explicitly states “she destroyed it” referring to the memory stick and Mary Watson. There are many more examples.

[3, 4 and 5] TJLC, Tie Hell, The Elephant in the Room as examples.

[6] The mirrors between characters, of note John Watson’s girlfriend in A Scandal in Belgravia and Molly Hooper’s boyfriend ‘Tom’.

[7] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/16/sherlock-how-the-tv-phenomenon-became-an-annoying-parody-of-itself and http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/sherlock-season-4-episode-one-benedict-cumberbatch-martin-freeman-tv-series-mary-watson-amanda-a7509261.html  

[8] Despite pointing out plotholes, the general impression is of enjoyment with a comment thread about enjoying the episode having 2000+ points and plothole threads ranging from the hundreds to low 1000+ Whether or not this a true reflection of being annoyed by said plotholes or amused with the comment delivery could be debated: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sherlock/comments/5o6t49/the_final_problem_postepisode_discussion_thread/

[9] As Tumblr and Twitter are a more fluid platform this is harder to prove, but I saw the Tumblr reaction firsthand trying to find explanations/theories, and nearly all of the posts were pointing out plot holes or attempting to find a redemption with the ‘Secret Fourth Episode’ theory. This article notes a ‘mixed’ reaction on Twitter: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-01-17/31-tweets-that-perfectly-sum-up-the-mixed-reaction-to-sherlock

[10] http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/efwwhn/live/c36g9r

[11] I’m reluctant to link the Buzzfeed article as it was written by a user named Christopher Melas which may or may not be a reference to the BBC John Watson’s blog post The Geek Interpreter. Whether this article is then a reliable narration of events can be questioned: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismelas/twitter-is-destroying-bbc-sherlock-right-now-2ssvd?utm_term=.cxzeqXBgXX#.pqywAKR9KK

[12] https://twitter.com/contactsh?lang=en and https://twitter.com/contactJHW

[13] https://twitter.com/joelidster/status/821029727439900672

[14] http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/sherlock-end-because-benedict-cumberbatch-9635585 and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/01/17/sherlocks-cold-shoulder-could-cumberbatch-freemans-frosty-relationship/ and https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2629818/sherlocks-benedict-cumberbatch-and-martin-freeman-cast-doubt-over-further-series-due-to-frosty-friendship/

[15] http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-01-23/steven-moffat-responds-to-fan-theory-about-a-secret-fourth-sherlock-episode

[16a and 16b] I don’t believe in demanding plots from writers and if this is truly not the story the writers want to tell, so be it. (On the one-in-a-billion chance anyone of note reads this: why not, though? Really, genuinely curious, why not?) But I will damn well demand that the plot makes sense and this series had plot holes and nonsense in abundance.

[laurietom]

My Favorite Games of 2016

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed. But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you? These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2016, in the order I played them. Virtue's Last Reward * I enjoyed 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the Nintendo DS, so I intended to pick up the sequel, but took a while due to a bugged 3DS version (now patched) and not having a Vita at the time. Virtue's Last Reward is quite simply the strongest entry in the Zero Escape series. Science, pseudo-science, multiple universes, time travel, non-linear gameplay, and an incredible cast of characters made this a joy to play. I was up at 3am with tears in my eyes (on a work night!) because I had to see a particularly bittersweet sequence through. Fair warning there is a lot of reading, and the gameplay is all making choices and escape room mechanics, but if that's even remotely your bag it's worth playing. It'll mean more if you play 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors first, but the good news is that both games are coming to Steam in a remastered edition. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest I was looking forward to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, and despite the child problems I blogged about, I enjoyed it. It was refreshing to have a game so focused on family and divided loyalties. I really liked the moral gray area that Corrin and her siblings occupied and as mentioned in my RPG Talk entry, I like that the final confrontation features Corrin standing together with her siblings rather than Corrin plus love interest and motley band of heroes. Familial relationships are usually set behind the romantic ones in games, so having family placed before everything else makes this unique. Zero Time Dilemma Zero Time Dilemma had a hell of a lot of hype to live up to, and at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be anyone's favorite out of the Zero Escape series, but it's still an enjoyable game. It keeps a lot of the same mechanics from Virtue's Last Reward, but suffers from a less satisfying mastermind than the other two. There's also a plot twist that people tend to either love or hate. But that said, it does a decent job of wrapping up the series, the escape rooms are still fun, and offers a lot of emotional rewards for fans of the previous two. Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth This is the best otome game I've played to date. I would have liked to include it in my top three games of the year, and it was a narrow miss. Otome games are usually given lackluster, passive protagonists to serve as the female player insert, but not Cardia. That girl is amazing, whether she's piloting an airship, busting herself out of confinement, or being a supportive girlfriend, because why can't one person do all of that. The boyfriends are more interesting than average, with only one route that really bored me. If there's any fault to this game I'd say it's locking Lupin's route behind everyone else's and making it so clearly the "real" route. Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls Ultra Despair Girls is a little strange in that I don't think it's a particular good game, though I still finished it. It's a third person shooter, which is a strange genre jump for what had been a visual novel series. I only played it when I did because the Danganronpa 3 anime had Monaca, who originated in this game. The story isn't bad, it asks good questions and even clears up some others (like where did Junko Enoshima get all those crazy robots), but I'm not a shooter fan and I can't imagine the overlap between visual novels, shooters, and Danganronpa is enough to justify this game's existence. If you suck at shooters though, there's no story penalty for playing on easy. You can still see the whole thing. Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice I still haven't posted my VN Talk for this, but the sixth entry in the Ace Attorney series was a bumpy ride. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I think this is mostly due to character bloat. Dual Destinies had three lawyer protagonists so by golly Spirit of Justice has to too, even when the game can't quite figure out what to do with them. Unlike Dual Destinies, where the story honestly belongs to all of them, when it comes down to it, Spirit of Justice is really about Apollo, but the writing tries to showcase everyone, including several supporting characters, which results in a lack of focus. But if you like Apollo, this is the game to play as he has his best moments. This War of Mine * I waffled a lot on whether to buy This War of Mine because the vertical cut-away view of the buildings made me think of old platformers I was terrible at, but This War of Mine needs very little in the way of reflexes. I bought it for the for miserable experience of surviving as a civilian in an urban warzone and I was not disappointed. There's no tutorial, but the basics can be picked up by point and click, which feels oddly immersive, as the characters you're tasked with caring for have no idea how they're going to make ends meet either. Chances are, a first playthrough is going to be unsuccessful. People will die along the way, and you'll feel awful, which is the point. You get to put down the game and go home whereas the people who really lived this life could not. It was a sobering realization. (This War of Mine was inspired by the real world Siege of Sarajevo.) The Room This was a purchase based on a friend's recommendation because we both like escape rooms. While you're not escaping anything in The Room, the type of puzzle solving is familiar to anyone who has done escape rooms, and it's a affordable fix that can be done in an afternoon or two. The story is minimal and the atmosphere creepy, though it's manageable for those who scare easily (with one possible exception during the ending, but you've solved everything by then). I'm skipping the sequel because I react poorly to jump scares, even the ones that are so mild that most people wouldn't even consider them jump scares. Civilization V * When Civilization VI came out, I realized I wanted to play a Civ game again, but rather than getting the latest and greatest at full price, I decided to pick up Civilization V during a Steam sale, which netted me the base game and all the expansions and DLC for under $14. This turned out to be $14 well spent as I've now logged an embarrassing amount of hours on it. It's a lot of strategy and management to bring my chosen civilization to victory, but fun since the AI leaders of other civilizations have their own personalities. I had a really good tussle with Caesar in my Carthage campaign, which felt appropriate. My only complaint is that Europe feels over-represented in the number of civilizations available. There are multiple options for a continent like Africa, with Carthage, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Songhai, and Zulu available, which show that the game designers did put effort into avoiding a Eurocentric world, but it feels like it's not enough when 15 of the 43 civilizations are European (17 if one counts Byzantium and Ottoman, which I'm not since they're partially in the mideast), making them slightly more than a third of what's available. As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing. I'd also like to mention the four games I replayed this year since it's rare that I replay anything, and four is unprecedented. Fire Emblem: Awakening (second time) Dragon Age II (third time) Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (third time) Danganronpa 2: Good-bye Despair (second time) The Danganronpa games were mostly because of the anime and wanting to relive the experience, but Fire Emblem: Awakening and Dragon Age II were purely unprompted, with the former having happened before the release of Fire Emblem Fates.

Mirrored from: The Rat’s Den

[itsworn]

New FST Carburetors Tested on the Dyno

In a famous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail,  a character drags a cart full of bodies as the town crier proclaims “bring out your dead!” But instead of Black Plague victims, in our remake we’re looting dead carburetors. The cart might be piled high with old Rochester 4GC’s, Carter WCFB’s, and Solexs. What won’t be found in the lifeless pile is a brand new line of performance carburetors from Fuel Systems Technology (FST). This shiny new company has just introduced a line of carburetors that merely reinforces that the carburetor has evolved from a calibrated fuel leak to a sophisticated fuel mixer. The carburetor is not dead.

It may seem odd in this day of high-tech electronic control that there would be a brand new player building carburetors with tons of options to the classic square-bore carburetor approach. There is no radical new science here. For those conversant with the Holley carburetor, these new FST mixers are very similar and use the same small parts. So if you have a stash of Holley tuning parts – then you’re in the game.

Beyond the similarities, FST also introduces a few enhancements. First, this is no flash-in-the-pan single part number approach. FST offers eight categories of carburetors ranging from the RT Series 600 cfm vacuum secondary all the way up to Billet Excess Pro race carburetors that can flow up to 1,450 cfm. The selection is far too elaborate to detail here, but a jaunt through FST’s website (FSTcarb.com) should satisfy specific model option questions. It’s enough to say that whether you’re looking for a mild street carb or a full-function race carburetor, between the off-the-shelf part numbers and the optional components, there’s something here for everybody.

As part of the development process, FST scheduled a few days on the dyno at Westech and we were invited to tag along. We immediately met FST’s development technician Phil Freeland, who is not only incredibly enthusiastic but can back up his high-strung spirit with plenty of down-in-the trenches tuning ability. It proved to be a very fun day playing with carburetors and gasoline.

Test day was spent on bread-and-butter carburetors of the 750 cfm species. FST offers carburetors in this size in both vacuum and mechanical secondary varieties but also with an eye toward affordability. All the FST carburetors are designed, forged, machined, and assembled in the USA. In fact, a large part of the FST lineup benefits from billet parts and CNC machining.

Starting with the affordable versions, the RT series uses a cast aluminum body available in the least expensive mode as either side-hung or center-hung floats with either manual or electric choke in sizes ranging from 600 to 750 cfm. One step up is the RT Plus line that retains the cast main body but adds “pressure forged” metering blocks and includes a 4-port idle system in the same 600 to 750 cfm range. The RTX line adds a black electroplating appearance still with the cast body but with billet metering blocks. The RTX Viper is the top of the cast body line with what FST calls a Viper fuel bowl that adds a touch of the exotic with a third potential fuel inlet located in the center of the bowl. These are fully CNC billet parts that offer a unique style.

The X-treme and Billet Excess lines feature full CNC machined billet components with some tricks that will appeal to more knowledgeable carburetor tuners. The Xtreme line starts at 650 cfm in the 4150 configuration, building up to a 4500 version that can flow up to 1,450 cfm. This line of fuel mixers begins with the standard 2-circuit variety with an option for 3-circuit opportunities with the 4150 Billet Extreme Pro carburetor, which is the top of the line 4150style carb.

The 4500 series Billet Excess and Billet Excess Pro come with all four circuits in place and these carburetors are fully configurable as either two, three, or four circuit designs. A two-circuit carburetor is what most Holley style carburetors use utilizing idle and high-speed air bleed circuits. Three-circuit versions add an intermediate circuit that operates just off idle. The word on the street has always been that three-circuit carburetors tend to run very rich at part throttle and they’re not practical for the street. While this may be true with an out-of-the-box carburetor, knowledgeable tuners will tell you that more circuits offer more opportunity to trim the fuel in a desirable direction at part and full throttle.

FST’s four-circuit option really isn’t the type of carburetor you will find (or even desire) on the street, although in the hands of a well-versed tuner it could be easily applied. The four-circuit versions are intended for the hard-core drag racing crowd where the opportunity to modify the fuel curve over a wide rpm band can be critically important.

More applicable to street engines with a big cam is the idle bypass feature found on all of the billet main body carburetors. Looking closely at the area surrounding the air cleaner stud, you’ll see four small brass restrictors. These can be individually removed and drilled with small holes –starting perhaps at around 0.035-inch to introduce additional air for idle speed. A major problem with carburetors on engines with large camshafts is these engines idle at very low vacuum levels.

The issue with big cams is they demand a larger throttle blade opening to generate an acceptable idle speed. This larger opening moves the curb idle position of the throttle blades into what is called the transition slot. This is an off-idle circuit intended to flow additional fuel during partial throttle opening between idle and when the boosters begin to flow fuel. To return the throttle blades to their proper curb idle position previously called for drilling holes in the throttle blades. By including the bypass air feature in these new FST carburetors, the tuner is able to place the throttle blades at the proper curb idle position where the transition slot is just barely uncovered. The bypass air is fully adjustable, and if the carburetor is later used on a milder engine, the bypass holes can be closed off or changed, allowing ease of adjustment.

With billet metering blocks, the machining is completely controllable compared to inconsistencies that can occur with cast metering blocks. The billet metering blocks shown in these photos were all prototype pieces and you may have noticed that the main emulsion bleed circuits feature six tuning positions as opposed to only four. Freeland told us that actual production FST metering blocks will change to five emulsion holes.

While performing some preliminary testing using Westech’s 372ci small-block Chevy as the test engine, Freeland offered to show us their flexibility. The engine is a 4.125-inch bore Dart block with a Scat 3.48-inch stroke crank with JE pistons, a Comp Cams 242/248 at 0.050 hydraulic roller camshaft topped with a set of AFR 195cc Street Eliminator heads and a Victor Jr. single plane intake. The carburetor on the engine during this particular test was a cast aluminum body RX 750. A previous run with a Billet X-treme 750 FST carburetor had revealed a difference in the fuel flow and slight power difference between these two carburetors.

Freeland removed the primary and secondary metering blocks and modified the emulsion circuit. He removed and blocked the existing 0.028-inch emulsion bleed at the second emulsion bleed from the top (on both the primary and secondary blocks) to add a little more fuel at the lower end of the power curve – around 4,000 rpm. He also replaced the existing high-speed bleed on all four corners with a slightly smaller bleed which would help bring in the main circuit earlier and also make the high rpm portion of the curve slightly richer.

We’ve plotted the power difference to show you what this simple change accomplished. Just those slight metering changes improved the torque down low by 17 lb-ft while horsepower near peak gained a solid 11 hp. Could this same improvement have been accomplished with other carburetors? The answer is yes, with the important point being that the opportunity to trim the fuel curve is available to those who wish to pursue it. All it takes is a little knowledge and experience. There is power to be made with intelligent tuning techniques.

Some may ask why any carburetor can’t be created to work this well right out of the box. The simple answer is that each engine has slightly different fuel requirements. Just changing from a single plane to a dual plane intake manifold can have a profound impact on the fuel curve. This presents near-limitless possibilities of fuel curve combinations. The manufacturer is effectively forced to provide a generic carburetor and fuel curve to satisfy as many combinations as possible. It’s up to the final tuner to perform these final tuning steps to optimize each carburetor.

With the calendar quickly unraveling toward our second decade into the 21st Century, it appears the carburetor is far from dead and has in fact gained strength with fresh approaches to the old issue of mixing fuel with air to make horsepower. It’s a great time to be a hot rodder!

Carburetors are a long way from being extinct, and FST is improving on the techniques of mixing air and fuel with an expansive line of new carburetors. This is FST’s technician Phil Freeland who conducted our tour of FST’s impressive cfm lineup.

The cast-body RTX carburetors are offered with a black electro-plating or a silver vibratory finish. This carb also comes with cast fuel bowls and red billet metering blocks and are really affordable. All of these carburetors offer screw-in air bleeds and fully adjustable idle and main well emulsion circuits.

The four small brass fittings surrounding the air cleaner stud post are idle bypass bleeds. These can be individually removed and drilled to allow additional air into the engine which saves moving the curb idle throttle blade position. This is an excellent tuning device for engines with big-overlap camshafts that idle at low idle vacuum levels.

This mechanical-secondary 750 is the Billet X-treme Pro that has 4-corner idle, center hung bowls, and 3-circuit adjustability. The third circuit essentially offers tuning at part throttle between idle and when the main metering circuit begins to flow fuel.

The Viper Bowl comes standard on top end FST carburetors, and it’s also standard on the RTX Viper 600 to 850 cfm carburetors. You could also add this bowl to any FST carburetor. The Viper features a third, center inlet producing a unique appearance. This carburetor is a Billet Excess 1,050 cfm carburetor.

A two-, three- or four- circuit carburetor can be instantly identified by the number of air bleeds located on the top of each individual venturi. This photo indicates this is a four-circuit Billet Excess 4500 series carburetor. Arrow 1 is the intermediate air bleed. Arrow 2 is the idle air bleed. Arrow 3 is the high-speed air bleed, while arrow 4 is the low rpm side of the high speed bleed. The 4500 series carbs can be run in a two, three, or four-circuit configuration.

Because FST offers three different air bleed configurations, there needs to be three different metering blocks as well. The red unit on the left is the classic two-circuit style, with a three circuit gold unit up top, and the four-circuit block on the right. Note how the four-circuit block separates the upper and lower portions of the emulsion circuit with separate passages to individual bleeds.

A slick feature on all the billet FST carburetors is the slick bolt-on throttle position sensor (TPS) bracket. It can also be added on the cast carburetors by tapping the holes and adding the bracket. Doing so allows adding this switch for the latest generation electronic overdrive transmissions.

This is the two-circuit metering block that Freeland used for his changes. Note he has removed the top two emulsion channel restrictors. These introduce air into the main circuit as the float level drops, uncovering these holes and allowing air to enter the main metering circuit. Freeland eventually blocked the second hole from the top, which combined with a slight decrease to the main air bleed, made a significant change to fuel flow.

This is a power curve comparison created after Freeland made a minor emulsion tube and air bleed change. That’s an 11 horsepower and 17 lb-ft of torque at the widest difference but note how the entire curve improved.

The post New FST Carburetors Tested on the Dyno appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of Hand of Fate

Hand of Fate is a rogue-lite/deckbuilding hybrid RPG made by Defiant Development. You play as a nondescript bearded adventurer who approaches a table, after passing through the thirteen gates at the end of the world. If that sounds impressive, know that it’s really not. At the table sits a hooded figure, the Dealer, who engages you in a children’s card game.The cards appear to represent your memories, and you must go through them in succession over the course of each run. At the end of a run, you encounter a member of the Dealer’s court, and every third such boss, you acquire a symbol of the Dealer’s power, although your own stakes in this are uncertain.

If the Hand of Fate’s genre description seemed like a word salad sammich, it kind of is. The adventure and combat encounters are, as mentioned, represented by cards in a deck, and your deck can be edited between each run. While this is a really interesting idea in concept, I managed to get through almost the entire game without editing my deck beyond the “recommended” cards. In addition, while it wants to be called a “roguelike”, I call the game a “rogue-lite” because death has zero consequences beyond needing to start that particular run over again. You even get to keep any new cards you earned over the course of your failed run. That said, the game is not always a cake-walk, and the later runs become quite difficult.

Also, if my opening paragraph seemed drastically shorter than usual, and also light on plot (especially after my previous two reviews), it’s because the game doesn’t really have a plot. It has a series of vignettes, carried out on different cards, some of which are chained together in a way that presents a sort of sidequest.

So, the game doesn’t really have a plot. What it does have is a personality. Enter the Dealer, the hooded figure in the splash image, and the game’s primary antagonist(?). The cards are but your own memories, and the members of his court are mere extensions of himself. You gain all knowledge of the stakes of the game, and also what the game entails from this enigmatic figure. He deals you the cards, he tells you how to play the game, his forces are the obstacles in your path, and it’s his artifacts you’re playing for. In a sense, it feels as though the Dealer is the game.

^(The Dealer deals, and the Gamer games, and the Reviewer uploads his reviews late)^

However, the Dealer may be the sassiest character I’ve met so far in my career (hah) as a game reviewer guy. He has a quip or a response for everything, and very often, he lets on a little more about the nature of the game you play, deepening your understanding all the more. Sometimes, however, he’s a massive douche, taunting you with weapon abilities you could have used before you died, despite the fact that you were in a trap room, and weapons wouldn’t have helped.

^(Motherfucking trap rooms^)

Speaking of dying, the game does not penalize you very much at all. The worst that happens to you is that you have to sit through a few clicks worth of menus and screens. I didn’t actually notice how cheap death was until near the end of the game. At that point, you will die a lot. Often to rats. Fucking rats. In fact, the Dealer will sometimes lampshade the apparent irrelevance of death, asking if it’s even possible to really lose if you just keep trying.

In fact, while the bosses were the hardest parts of the early game, after the first six bosses or so, it was getting to the boss at all that was the hardest part. Rats are definitely overpowered. I think I died to rats more often than to any other enemy in the game. This was especially frustrating during the final run of the game, wherein I only managed to get to the boss once, only to die and never get to him again. I ended up getting so frustrated that I had to cool off with some Minecraft and Age of Empires 2, each of which feature frustration via explosion death and pathfinding terribleness, respectively. See, it’s not about mitigating frustration, it’s about switching the target of your frustration so it doesn’t fester.

^(Another death to add to the pile. What is this, Dark Souls??? Actually, it’s much easier, I just got hungry.)^

Anyhoo, I’ve spent the first half of the review vacillating between being neutral on the game, and dissing it the way certain musical artists might diss their exes. But here’s the part where I praise the game, because there’s genuinely a lot to like about HoF.

First off, it really does feel like you’re playing a real card game. More than once, I found myself wondering if there was a physical version of this game I could play with my 2-3 friends somehow. This plays into the personality the game infuses the Dealer with, and presents the illusion that HoF isn’t just a one-player game with a peculiar conceit, but that there’s an opponent, someone to face off against who isn’t just an AI, and that the cards actually mean something besides being stand-ins for normal RPG encounters. Each enemy encounter is characterized by either an “# of [Suit]“ or by a face card. This also helps significantly with the card game aesthetic, as it feels like the Dealer is playing with cards that anyone could buy, but have been enchanted somehow. It’s not your father’s Yu-Gi-Oh!, that’s for sure.

^(The board. You get way more cards than this in the later stages.)^

Second on, the combat is actually super fun. It’s a very fluid dodge-counter-combo combat system, where you succeed by countering each enemy’s attack as it comes, and reflecting missiles as the enemies fling them so that you can dish out counter attacks and keep your combo up. I personally enjoyed it quite a bit. The phrase “simple yet elegant”, springs to mind like an item in Zelda springs from a chest.

^(Battle in motion. Also, that lava golem is fiiiiine.)^

The way non-combat challenges work, except in the case of the infamous trap room, is that you’re given a selection of four cards, each with a degree of success ranging from “Hug Failure” to “Huge Success”. Different challenges can have more than one copy of a card in the four. The cards are then shuffled around, and then you pick one. Depending on which one you pick, you’ll either get fucked over utterly, or you’ll get something awesome. When I was first introduced to this mechanic, I was ready to lambaste the game for an apparently random element, but as I played longer, I realized that you can actually see which positions the cards go in, and react accordingly. I even managed to score a few of what I would call “Kwisatz Haderach” moments when the challenges got too fast for me to see the cards but I got it right anyway. Getting the right card, knowing that you actually managed to track the cards, is a greatly satisfying feeling, specifically because it isn’t randomized. Because you actually have to exercise your ability to track moving objects, it comes off as an actual challenge, as opposed to the game telling to go fuck yourself every so often.

The art for each card is fairly beautiful, as are the graphics in combat encounters. Although the bosses kinda just look like beefier versions of the same enemy; I feel like they could have been more interestingly designed. Also, what is the deal with Queen bosses and totems? It seems like every Queen boss has a totem.

I didn’t use the deckbuilding element very much, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an interesting idea! It reminds me a teensy bit of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, wherein you collect persistent cards and eventually phase the weaker ones out in favor of stronger ones. In a similar way, you’ll be phasing out equipment and encounter cards for stronger or more advantageous ones.

One last tiny nittypicky, (in a “Yahtzee” Croshaw voice) without wishing to spoil, the ending boss fight was disappointing. I actually predicted exactly what it would be, and then discarded that expectation in favor of a more interesting idea. I suppose it’s partially my fault; if I had stuck with the suckier expectation, I wouldn’t have been as disappointed. Oh wait! I have one more: there doesn’t seem to be any invincibility frames when you dodge-roll. This means that you have to be dodging away from an enemy attack, and it has to be pretty precise for it to work. I’m just used to games that let you fudge that a little, like Dark Souls, or some fighting games.

Në përfundim, Hand of Fate is definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of deckbuilding games, rogue-lites, and nice combat systems. I probably won’t be playing it for much longer; I might try another couple of times to beat the final boss. What’s the game saying? Probably nothing about real life. Although, there’s a few lines the Dealer throws in that might be hinting at a greater theme. One particular line hit a little too close to home, in fact. I would lay them out here, but again, I don’t want to spoil, and they’re fairly early in the game anyway. Basically, pretty entertaining game with a pretty fun premise.

^(Agh, it’s so bright! Look away before the eclip- glowing magic card blinds you!)^

[ccinthecity]

Living in the Illusion: Queer expression and relationships between fiction and physical spaces and representation

My portfolio (and effective final) for HUM4938: Media, Power, and Sexuality. In abstraction, an analysis of the role of media in portrayal and/or realization of queer characters and spaces, and its relation to the constructed fictionalization/stigmatization of queer people in real life.

Introduction

On June 24th, I landed in London. It was my first time outside of the United States, and an opportunity to study and learn a new city, a new culture outside of my own, and of course, explore my own relationship to that. But I was a student, first and foremost. I spend my week studying, going from class to class, to excursions and museums and parts of town I couldn’t even dream of finding on my own. As the days went on, so more did I see new prismic projections down the streets and up the escalators of the underground, peering through at tube stations and in coffee shops and in the alleys of Leicester square. The west end soon became a flurry of rainbows—the city, although already diverse and buzzing, was more and more colourful as it anticipated the arrival of the celebration of freedom of expression of love.

Although I’d been somewhat involved in LGBTQ+ groups and discourse in my time in high school, and certainly had gone through moments of questioning my personal identity, I’d never been to a Pride parade, or any queer community event for that matter, before. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to go; at the time, and still currently, I identify somewhere between asexual and bisexual—a demi-bisexual. Since there’s some ambiguity among the members of the LGBTQ+ community about ace and bi individuals as to where they belong in representation, activism, and portrayal, it seemed a little difficult to throw myself in the mix. In any case, my preferences have never been evocative of any particular direction or affect, and I’d been hesitant to label myself, either in fear of being wrong, or perhaps in fear of being misunderstood, judged. Quite simply, I was never really sure if I was really queer enough, so I never came out.

And so, out of pure curiosity, and perhaps with a little sense of hopeful belonging, I went the second Saturday of my trip to London Pride—it was a special event, as it was the fiftieth anniversary of the partial decriminalization of Homosexuality: a civil rights benchmark that was so significant to the progress and acceptance of so many individuals in modern society. It was a colourful event, filled to the brim with unbelievable spectacles of love, joy, happiness, exuberance, glitter, rainbows, and what seemed to be absolute magic performed by drag queens and shown by endless seas of flowing rainbow-coloured fabric, flags flying down Oxford street, highlighted by a rugby player’s proposal to his boyfriend, furthered by the unending positivity between all those who attended. I felt an innate sense of grounding in camaraderie with the people surrounding me, in the crowd and on the parade route, that I never felt before, regarding sexuality and identity, really.

But it so too felt almost unreal—not only in the way that I was four thousand some miles away from home, but too because my understanding of LGBTQ+ history was that of struggle; up to this day. The presence of protest groups in the pride parade made a stark contrast to the parties surrounding—while the parade remained a spectacle, and celebration of what had been achieved, groups like stonewall and others were reminiscent of the original intent of pride; to make it clear that queer individuals existed, and should be treated as any other human being, through breaking that spectacle, and agitating others as to make sure they are heard, and change takes place (as Oscar Wilde noted, “That is why agitators are so absolutely necessary,”). The perfect, rainbow-coloured parade was manufactured by the many corporations that sponsored the event, and that “pink-washed” (and furthermore was a part of the depoliticisation of) what was once a political protest and communal event for demanding solidarity and equal representation. It was dismal to think, even at the back of my mind, that something so beautiful was at its foundation, (like many things) corrupt.

The day after pride, our class took an excursion to the new music biannual conference—or festival, I’m not too sure—it was the final performance of the series, a piece composed by avant-garde contemporary composer Philip Venables, featuring the London Sinfonietta and queer performance artist David Hoyle: Illusions (read more about this excursion here). It wasn’t exactly a speech pattern composition, but an orchestral interaction between parts of the text that elicited rhythm and meaning.

Although it is the title statement, one phrase did manage to stick out to me, after pride, and even continuing into further exploration of queer culture in London—Hoyle mentions of democracy in the current age (2015 was the original release of the piece, but Venables, in an interview between the performances, still noted its relevance two years later) “you know and I know it’s an illusion,”. The piece was addressed mostly to the new conservative government—but too was shown to those in attendance, ranging from any given socioeconomic class (but most likely, those who could afford a ticket were of middle or higher status) and sexuality or gender identity. So, which population experiences that illusion? Perhaps it is all those there at the moment.

This idea (moreso a conundrum) remained in my mind until now—and I thought I should explore the idea of illusion when it comes to the portrayal and understanding, as well as the identification of homosexuality and queerness in media.

Illusion (n.) - 1. a misleading image presented to the eye 2. the state or fact of being led to accept as true something unreal or imagined 3. a mistaken idea

The Illusion

So often queerness is treated as if it is illegitimate; perverse; a figment or fancy of the imagination. Homosexuality, although partially decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967 under the Sexual Offences Act, was only decategorized from major psychological association’s published texts as a mental disorder in the 1970’s—trans* folk were even more outspoken in the medical community, with gender identity disorder only leaving the volumes of the DSM-V in 2012. Being queer was to be mentally ill, and was to live in illusion, to the understanding of society.

But who truly lived in that illusion? To queer folk, their experiences were all but as real as any other. The fictionalisation, or rather, assignment to obscurity of homosexuality and queerness too fictionalised those individuals accounts and agency when it came to social action: it was (and still, to a certain extent is) harder for LGBTQ+ individuals to assert certain self-evident rights in many situations. That fictionalisation too worked against them, when they were victims of continued cultural persecution, legal prosecution, and violence from various outlets. The stigmatisation of the community and of homosexuals in media, and the cultural paradigm that had existed prior to legal decriminalisation created a heavy ideal that, still today, continues to threaten even the basic levels of hierarchical need of queer individuals, forcing them to live “in the closet”, diminishing personal mental health and relationships, fostering subversive and possibly dangerous ways of life (queer individuals more prone to homelessness, drug use, contracting STIs, prone to domestic and direct violence), taking away access, or not deeming necessary, social resources, all caused by accepting queerness as fictional, and denying the existence of quite a large portion of the population, dismissing them as unreal.

It’s no wonder, then, that queer individuals have become so accustomed to their lives being called fiction—as they have produced some of the most intricately creative pieces of artwork, literature, and music, that exist in the realm on the edge of stark, political, reality and sensual, blissful, scary, manic dream matter.

The Theatre

There is no secrecy in that the Theatre is a queer space. Not really that all people who work and live in the theatre scene are gay (as somehow, that’s become another stereotype in this weird world of ours)—but its one of the safest spaces for creatives who have different identities, historically. Among those dancers, writers, actors, and more, Vaslav Nijinsky (as discussed in the V&A Tour, post coming soon), Stephen Sondheim, on and on and on, furthermore, the material that comes out of the theatre is usually intersectional in its inclusion of different demographics, from race to identity to sexuality, and there are so many queer cult classics from the theatre world: RENT, Fun Home, Belle Reprieve, etc. etc. etc. If I had to list all of the queer creators and significant creations in the performance world, I would probably not be able to write this piece.

The Theatre is also a place where illusion itself lives. The entire concept of the theatre is a space in which one experiences a suspense of disbelief: a temporary adoption of ideas or mindsets, settings and events that aren’t necessarily true. Whether through costume, set design, make up, technical design and lighting or the sheer action and verbiage of the script, plays, musicals, reveries, cabarets, and skits involve the audience and actors in a whole mirage of make-believe. This is important.

In London especially, theatre has played an active role in queer representation and activism, if not simply by being the space for those individuals, then by creating attention. Both Stuart Feather and Jill Dolan remark in their books about the involvement of Street Theatre in the movement for decriminalisation of homosexuality, and collaboration with the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970’s.  The culture surrounding the theatre here, in the west end, as well as on Broadway, is one of avid acceptance of queer art.

A indication of that culture was alive and well in the Cafe de Paris—a nightclub and performance venue in Leicester Square, which our class visited later in the week. The performance that night was the Seven Sins Cabaret—a cabaret, of course, reminiscent of the red-light district, raunchy, and alcoholic gatherings of parisian businessmen in underground bars and performance venues, and the later production between Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, which focused on sexuality and subversive performance culture in Nazi Berlin in the Kit Kat Klub. It certainly surpassed expectations (link to post coming soon) and was a pinnacle of scintillating, slightly erotic? but completely empowered performance. Upon posting to instagram, the emcee and director of the show, drag performer Reuben “Ruby” Kaye, commented on my post, still just as enthusiastic about the openness and the stark portrayal of sexuality, and the intimacy of performance and the way it helps shape ideas and removes hurtful stigma about open sexuality.

Later, I also had the opportunity (on the last night, no less--link to post coming soon) to go to the west end and see Kinky Boots at the Adelphi Theatre. I’d never seen the musical before, but I knew it was one of the quintessential pieces from the United Kingdom that deserved a look—as well as a significant LGBTQ+ representative production, as it focused on the friendship between the protagonist, Charlie, and his opposite story centre, Lola, a drag queen who helps Charlie navigate a difficult time in his life, dealing with the death of his father, and learning how to define himself as a man, as the Mr. Price of his family business Price and Sons.

Its an incredibly liberating and relatable piece—perhaps people don’t come to the theatre to see Kinky Boots if they aren’t open-minded already, but certainly, the older ladies in the row in front of me had a wild time at the show. The most impressive pieces to me, regarding identity and sexuality, are that of Lola’s pieces—first, “Lola’s World”, in which the lyrics read  “Step into a dream, Where glamour is extreme, Welcome to my fantasy,” followed by the number “What a Man” in which the roles of gender are explored and reversed, and used to empower the performer. Of course, “Just Be”, too is a fantastic pride anthem, preaching for unlimited self expression. In the show, Lola is completely open about who they are and what they are, and what it means to be them, completely breaking any sense of deceit or illusion that goes along with being a performer, a person with two identities at face value.

A Stand Out: Todrick Hall

Aside from starring as Lola in the fall/winter 2016 season on Broadway, this openly gay creator has recently risen to a relatively popular stance in the performance world—both on stage (in Oz, Kinky Boots) and in television (as a recent host and choreographer on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the creator of Todrick MTV, and contestant on American Idol) by way of his YouTube channel, which he started in 2006. A decade later, Todrick has amassed over 2.5 million subscribers.

I found inspiration for this analysis in watching some of his videos, which feature his takes on pop culture classics, like Mean Girls, Disney films such as Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, and plays (namely Chicago, as there are several cell block tangoes) and reimagines them as hollywood, gay, and black versions of the predominantly white, straight originals.

One that stood out especially, perhaps because of its magnitude as a project (it’s a feature-length video on his YouTube), is an autobiographical musical re-adaptation of the Wizard of Oz called Straight Outta Oz—the story closely following the narrative of the original, but in this version, Todrick is Dorothy, and his story is a reflection of growing up gay, growing up black, and navigating a technicolor world. These themes are directly related to the course’s parameters: it is media, and the power involved, and how sexuality comes into play.

(If you have the opportunity, skip to ‘Water Guns’ near the end of the video)

Following what Ruby Kaye imparted in her comment on my instagram post of “Perform, Educate, Empower,” Todrick fully explores what it means to be the content creator, producer, director, and performer of queer art and media made for the masses. His art takes the illusion, whether it be from the suspense of disbelief in the theatre, the makeup of drag queens, the use of music, or simply, the line between what is fictional in literature and real life, and applies it to a wholly human and enthralling experience, not necessarily to enlighten, but to ground—to create a common space that feels safe, welcoming, and intriguing, if anything. The fictionalisation which was used against him and other queer individuals is reclaimed in fantasy.

Creators like Todrick, who are now more able to express themselves in openly queer artistic choices, are not only the future of artistic production, but are also leading the way for progress in the destigmatisation of queer identity, diminishing the illusions of obscure gender and sexuality and making them known.

Conclusion

In 2016, the shooting at the PULSE gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was exactly that: a display to make us realise that we were not safe. That to a certain extent, the LGBTQ+ community (especially the L, G, B) did live in an illusion of security. That we were still so far from acceptance. It only took so much hate (that had already existed, so evidently, yet that was shrouded by progress, by the spectacle of parade and celebration) to take away the lives of so many.

The line between what is real and what is illusory has always existed for the LGBTQ+ community. But for queer individuals, the distinction of either is all too clear. They are not the ones living in an illusion, but rather the ones working to shatter it.

References & Further Reading

Venables, P. (Composer), Hoyle, D. & London Sinfonietta, (Performers), Baker, R. (Conductor). (2017, July 9). Illusions. Live performance at Southbank Centre, London, United Kingdom.

Venables, P. (2015, September 19). Illusions. Retrieved July 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4hJQimj45U

Ackroyd, P. (2015). Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London: Chatto & Windus.

Dolan, J. (2010). Theatre & sexuality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Feather, S. (2016). Blowing the Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution, and Radical Queens. Alresford: John Hunt.

Fierstein, H., & Lauper, C. (Writers), Mitchell, J. (Director), & Oremus, S. (Conductor). (2017, July 21). Kinky Boots. Live performance in Adelphi Theatre, London.

“Illusion”. 2017. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illusion

Playful Productions. (2017). Kinky Boots [Brochure]. London.

Kaye, R. (Director). (2017, July 14). Seven Sins Cabaret. Live performance in Café de Paris, London.

Milazzo, F. (2016, September 12). Review: Seven Sins, Cafe de Paris. Retrieved from http://www.thisiscabaret.com/review-seven-sins-cafe-de-paris/

To contribute further to my research, if you are queer or identify in a way that you find different to cis- and hetero-normative tradition, consider completing this survey about your experience regarding the relationship between fiction, illusion, and queerness.  Please follow, and if you’re keen on contributing, citing, or collaborating further to this research, send me an ask or submit!

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

This post is co-authored by Pietro Polsinelli and Daniele Giardini.

In this post we discuss two themes:   How to facilitate writing for games? Given that writing say partially generative in-game dialogue is a specific process, how can one minimize the impact on writing of values from state and output variations technicalities?   and   How to design an in-game dialogue user interface? Designing in-game dialogues doesn’t seem to generally get much attention with respect to other kinds of game assets. We look at existing usages and we point out features to be  considered when designing dialogues’ user interface.

A note on the use of the author’s point-of-view. We sometime write as “we”, in the outlining sections, and sometime use “I” as a part may be one of the authors writing his direct experience, be it Daniele or Pietro. Bare with us - him - me :-)

Stories are remarkably useful tools for creating good games, Bogost aside. But writing for games is hard for several different reasons.   In The future of dialogue in games Adam Hines is quoted:

Writing for games and writing for anything else is a totally different job. It’s more like trying to solve a very complex mathematical problem than it is a pure writing exercise.

Most media have a predetermined, linear, progress. Even when the writer tries to hide this under a complex narrative, there's only one way to go from beginning to end. Under this aspect, games are a completely different medium: writing a game means dealing with mutations, branching narratives, and is a sort of chaos theory applied to storytelling.   Hence the writing style for games needs to be quite specific - this is from Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games:  

Animation, comics, and games fall into the category I think of as “shorthand” writing. This is in contrast to prose writing, where a writer can write plot, description, and dialogue to any length, and can cover all of the senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell—using both external storytelling (description, dialogue) and internal storytelling (thought processes, emotional description).   This specialized form of “shorthand” writing requires the discipline to write within a structured format; to pare description down to an absolute minimum; to boil dialogue down to a pithy essence; and to tell concise, tightly plotted stories.

In the following we consider how shorthand writing merged with state and variations handling can be smoothened for writers using specific tools. Methodological advances in how writing can be prototyped and tested can make a crucial difference in the quality of results (see How We Design Games Now and Why for an historical perspective) and so adding practical writing applications to your toolset can be useful.   Another feature of writing for games is that it has specific properties in the testing process: when you write say a short novel, you can do testing by printing drafts on paper, or reading it out loud, but in all cases you are working on a unique draft. In the case of in game state you need a way to do quick testing and changes while testing multiple possible results. For example this allows testing of the logic of what your characters end up saying in different situations. Narrative in games can solve problems - but it must be capable to relate and change in connection with dynamic state.   Here is a problem described by Daniele that having a dynamic flow tool that supports interactive writing and testing can probably help to solve:  

As a short out-of-theme anecdote, Pietro wanted me to write about one thing I mentioned in our talks, a thing that always kinda annoys me, and which represents a good example of bad flow. It's what I call the "wall of NPCs" effect, which is typical of RPGs but also of some adventure games.

It's when, for a few hours, you went around exploring and met no more than a couple people to talk to, then suddenly you reach a city. And kaboom, tons of people appear and, if you're a completionist / narrative - explorer like me, you HAVE to talk to each and every one of them. If the group of people was small, let's say four people, it would be a welcome change in pace. When the group is city-sized though, the flow completely breaks and you simply enter the "wall of NPCs" section of the game, which I find to be both interesting and stressful, mostly because all these people are not introduced gradually, but as a sudden presence, a feat, you have to overcome.

One solution to this problem is already used by less dialogue-centric games, where most NPCs are idiots with nothing to say. This removes depth from the characters, but keeps the flow, uh, flowing, since the player doesn't see them as a weight anymore. Still, I'm sure there's better solutions for more dialogue-centric games. Just something to ponder about.

  So let’s have a look at the existing writing tools for games.

Inkle’s Ink

A remarkable tool that allows all above is Inkle’s Ink, presented generally by Jon Ingold here and in more technical detail in this GDC’s talk by Joseph Humfrey.

  Ink is free and open source, just download it, install and there you go. Writing is linear (top down), the syntax is a markup language of sorts, and you control everything directly from text.   This is how Ink’s author sums it up:

Possible problems with this (wonderful) tool is that it seems really hard for anyone to get what is happening in anybody else’ writing, and possibly the writer herself could get lost when the text gets longer.

Dialogue as flow graph

A different approach is to write by creating nodes of a connected graph on a plane, as in the pictures below.

Night School Studio’s Oxenfree dialogue editor - image from The future of dialogue in games.

Daniele’s Outspoken (see below).   In a recent podcast by Keith Burgun interviewing Raph Koster, the latter made a wonderful casual observation about IDEs (Interactive Development Environment, Unity's in particular) embodying in their evolution some principles of game design. In the case of Unity, some of this learning by the IDE structure is built-in, and sometimes it is provided by third-party extensions. For the case of writing tools for games, let’s see an example from one of the author’s: Daniele Unity’s plugin Outspoken.

Outspoken

A while ago I (Daniele) found myself in need of a dialogue editor to use in Unity. I'm sure there's some marvellous in-house editors out there, but for what concerns publicly available stuff, I couldn't find anything that suited my tastes, most of all because all editors were pretty writer-unfriendly (except Ink, which is great but is missing a quick visual/organizational side which for me is—totally subjectively—fundamental). So I started the taxing feat of making my own internal dialogue editor, Outspoken. Please note that this is not advertising for Outspoken, especially because it is internal/for-friends-only. It's just a good example of the philosophy behind an in-house dialogue editor which I obviously know extremely well. So. The philosophy I decided to follow for the editor:

1. It must be, first and foremost, writer-centric. As a writer, I will write directly inside it, so I want its flow to be fast, easy to read/use, and pleasant. If my focus is lost and I'm distracted by the usage/complexity of the editor, the coherence and verve of my writing will resent it.

2. It must be fun to use, almost giving the writer the feeling of a comic. Because this editor is very personal to me and I'm a comic writer too, so that mindset works perfectly for me.

3. Nice to the eye, no cluttering UI. A dialogue node shouldn't be cluttered with encumbering UI, and should be as small as possible. In the end, I decided to hide all UI that is not always necessary (which means a lot of it) unless ALT is pressed.

4. Keyboard shortcuts for the win. They allow to write without moving your hands back and forth between mouse and keyboard, which is a focus-breaker.

5. It must obviously have all necessary features, and be expandable. "Necessary" as in "what I personally deem necessary" :P Which means actors, audio clip references, a custom in-dialogue scripting language, in-dialogue text blocks either randomized or chosen from variables/gender/etc, localization, global and local variables, etc.

It was a lot of work, but I used it for a few games and I can say I'm pretty happy with it (and the few friends that used it, Pietro first among them, seem happy too). Clearly, I'm also constantly evolving it.

How to design beautiful dialogues in games? Here we begin by presenting some example of existing in-game dialogues and then describing what we learned from developing several projects with such dialogues.

Learn from comics

I (Daniele) come from a strong comic culture. I loved, studied, cherished, all forms of comics — and also made tons of them. Thus when I made my first mini-adventure, Faith No More, it felt natural to me to look in that direction and start experimenting.

There's one thing comics understand very well, out of necessity. Lettering/written-dialogues are, or should be, an art. They can be used to convey emotions, mystery, fascination, as much — sometimes even more — as the text they display. Videogames instead, either consider text as mere subtitles, even when there's no audio, or as a beautifully printed paragraph from a book, sometimes surrounded by a multitude of decorations (there's just few recent exceptions I can think of, like Night in the Woods and Oxenfree, both inspired from comics). In short, every dialogue is, if not a wall, a brick of text. And that's bad: lettering can be so infinitely better. Both in how it displays text and in how it composes its elements, pulling them apart, shrinking and distorting them, giving a director's touch to their flow. Just look at these wonderful works — please enlarge those images to watch them in full glory.

Cerebus: Dave Sim and Gerhard Snapchat: Chris Ware Arkham Asylum:  Grant Morrison, Dave McKean, lettering by Gaspar Saladino Giallo Scolastico: Andrea Pazienza Elektra Assassin: Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, lettering by Jim Novak   Obviously, comics have it easy. Everything is—kind of—created altogether in there, with perfect knowledge of each, utterly static, element. Videogames instead live in a dynamic state, with lots of variables messing things up. They're much more complicated. So I'm not saying, "Look at them comics! Let's just make dialogues like they do!" I'm just saying it's a pretty cool visual culture to start from, in order to find one's own way.

Learn from games

Let’s start with a negative example, or “how not to do it” / the standard way / the obvious way: I (Pietro) chose The Banner Saga, because it’s a wonderful game and also its narrative flow is a marvel but its dialogue user interface may be its less curated feature, as you can see from the screenshots:

  The great quality of the graphic design of the game is a bit in contrast with the dialogue and ensuing choices UI. It looks like the designers have a cinematographic sensitivity, that does not consider “user interface” as deserving design attention beyond the basics.   A (very) positive example of user interface for in game dialogue is Night In The Woods (best comic-based example in our opinion - it's just beautiful):

As Night in the Woods dialogues are explored best when seen in animation (and that already tells something), check out this: 24 Minutes of Gorgeous Night in the Woods Gameplay.   For each of the examples we’ll list a recap of the design choices is expresses.   Choices for the user interface: text all caps, fixed font size, animated background, left aligned.   In 80 Days, there are two kinds of dialogues. The most used is a flow of pure text in a graphic context:

And a second less used style is with characters on the side:

Choices  for the user interface: sentence case, no balloon, left aligned on left and right aligned on right.   Now let’s see three examples of user interface for in game dialogue we (the authors) developed.

Faith No More + Nothing Can Stop Us - link

  Notes on the user interface: (Daniele) apart from the comic-based approach, the interesting thing here is the choice of leaving previous balloons present in the background. In my opinion, this helps readability, since the player can see a partial history of the dialogue (still, in a new game I'm working on, I'm scrapping this "history" concept to have single animated balloons, so it all depends on the context—see work-in-progress example of a "thought balloon" below).

In hindsight, I have to say I find the dialogue user interface of the two pictures above as nothing more than interesting experiments, still lacking a lot of the depth and charm they should strive to achieve. The one on the bottom is already going in a better direction. Whew, did I write too much here? Pietro never scolds me and then this is what happens!

  Football Voodoom - link

Choices: centered balloon text, fixed font size, standard “sharp” pointer, slight bounce of talking character.

The above dialogue design examples draw ideas and techniques from comics and game feel (see An Incomplete Game Feel Reader to learn about the latter). What is the conclusion?   The conclusion is that there is no conclusion. What are you, crazy, in thinking the creative work of crafting a dialogue user interface can be concluded anyhow? It's a constant never ending work in progress, and being inspired from comics is just a suggestion, mostly to point out a different creative direction than the "widely accepted and standardized" one :-) But games are games, not comics nor books nor movies, so it's an open ground for experimentation and for bringing your own personality in play. Cheers!   You can follow Daniele and Pietro on Twitter.

[game-refraction]

Game Review: For Honor (Xbox One)

For Honor is a game that for all its intentions, is comprised of some really great, and some really poor design choices, however; most of its shortcomings often fade from memory after a few successful kills on the battlefield. There is just something innately satisfying when you perform one of the game’s many executions on another player, a feat that at times that can be rather difficult to pull off due to often being outnumbered or the inability to pull off a split-second block or parry. For Honor is a game that can be very frustrating one second and bone-crunchingly brilliant the next.

For Honor follows a fairly typical video game concept offering a story campaign and a few multiplayer modes; the latter of which is where you’ll spend the majority of your time. While the campaign is enjoyable and lasts around 8-10 hours, it feels like a glorified tutorial that is meant to show you the in’s and out’s of combat, its classes, and other factors needed to prep you further for multiplayer. I never felt like I was training myself in Call of Duty during its campaigns to train me for multiplayer, but at times in For Honor, that is exactly how it felt. It is also worth mentioning that the entire campaign can be played in co-op as well, which is incredibly more fun having someone at your side and watching your back.

During the campaign, you’ll play with a variety of classes from three different factions; Knights, Vikings, and Samurai. When the game was first announced, I had already made up my mind that the Samurai were going to be my favorite, boy was I wrong. After completing the campaign and watching the bland and lacking ending, I had to say that the Viking campaign was easily my favorite, followed by the Knights and then finally the Samurai. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the Samurai campaign because it is rather good, it was the combat for the Orochi that I just couldn’t get into.

During the Beta, I played almost exclusively the Orochi and thought I had a handle on things, combat felt ok, hits felt fine, and the speed of the character was pretty slick. Maybe it was playing as the other classes throughout each of the campaigns that changed my mind, but I just wasn’t having as much fun with the Samurai. Often my attacks wouldn’t make contact, I’d throw a character back to swing my katana immediately and hit nothing but air, often setting up myself to be hit. Bosses and sub-bosses would inflict combo’s that I just couldn’t defend against, and in many areas of the map, I would be cornered with no escape from those assaults. Sure, It could be my own gaming shortcomings that didn’t allow me to enjoy the Samurai, and that may be partially true, but I didn’t find that frustration with any of the other classes, so it’s hard to say. All I know is, the Orochi didn’t give me the same experience I had in the beta and I’m puzzled as to why.

Each of the factions play host to a 3-hour campaign that will cycle through a few, but not all, of the classes each faction offers. I got rather attached to a few of the characters and enjoyed my time being entertained by these short story narratives. The premise here is simple, a warlord named Apollyon is intent on starting a war between the three factions, and does so in a variety of ways. During each of the campaigns, and even more so in the Samurai campaign, she pits leaders within each faction against each other. These attacks on each of the factions are to set in motion events that will see each faction act like “wolves” and fight each other for survival and force the sheep, those looking for peace, to be slaughtered.

You’ll select your fighter from a cast of 12 warriors, with each faction having four to choose from. These range from the well-balanced Vanguard, the slow but brutal Heavy, the fast and deadly Assassin, and finally the Hybrid, who is a long range fighter, often with a shield. While the campaign will force you down a path of trying a few of these warriors, several of them must be unlocked and are for use only in multiplayer. I found I had a better time with the game using the Vanguard classes, as I tend to not really enjoy the Heavy characters, and my lack of skill with the game made it hard to enjoy the Assassin characters as I would die far too quickly. The Raider, who is the Viking’s Vanguard, is hands down my favorite and one I plan on sticking with exclusively.

While For Honor could come across as a multiplayer arena version of a Dynasty Warriors type game, its combat is more on par with that of a fighting game than your typical hack and slash title. You’ll press and hold the left trigger on the controller to enter into your combat stance. This will allow you to move the right stick to your defensive stance. You can block left, right and above. This will counter an attack from those same directions. You can also use the right stick in combination with the right bumper and right trigger to then attack, again, in those same directions. Now, you could just bash down the attack buttons, but trust me, that doesn’t work nearly as much as you would want it to. For Honor requires you to take full advantage of this system if you don’t want to end up a bloody mess on the ground waiting for a revive from another teammate, and that’s providing you just didn’t have your head taken off.

While this system can sound a bit simple, it is anything but. You may only have access to a light or heavy attack, but there are so many other ways to have an advantage on the battlefield and it only goes to show how robust and deep this combat system can get. Each fighter has a wealth of different combo’s to pull off that can cause some major damage when they connect. The Raider, for example, has a devastating unblockable attack that has claimed many a victim in my hours and hours of multiplayer. You can counter most attacks, dodge out of the way, or stun your opponent to expose them in a crucial moment of vulnerability. You can grab onto your foe to throw them off a cliff, down a pit, or into spike walls or sections of the map that are on fire. You can also get the drop on opponents from attacking from up high, usually resulting in an instant kill. Lastly, there is Revenge mode, where you’ll have a sudden burst of strength and health to attempt to put the odds back in your favor, oh and your attacks while in this mode cannot be interrupted.

Currently, at launch, For Honor doesn’t have a vast selection of multiplayer modes, but what is here can easily keep you busy for dozens of hours. You have Duel, where you and another player face each other in a one on one battle, taking the more intimate approach to the game’s combat system. There’s Brawl, a two on two battle that is settled through a best of five series, so pick your teammate wisely. Deathmatch consists of two modes; Elimination and Skirmish. Elimination is a four on four fight that, like Brawl, is a best of five series. Skirmish, while also four on four, has you earn points to prevent the other team from respawning.

Finally, there is Dominion, where the majority of the players you’ll encounter online are hanging out in. Dominion, like a few other modes, is a four on four battle that has you fight alongside dozens of AI controlled soldiers looking to claim and hold three different bases. When you earn enough points to end the round, you prevent the other team from respawning and once they are defeated, you win.

As you kill other players and the AI soldiers, you’ll earn renown, a level-up currency that makes the game act somewhat like an MOBA. Renown is level based and unlocks customizable abilities called Feats for you to unleash depending on the level of renown you currently sit at. These feats can assist in healing, making you sprint faster or throw fire bombs and unleash a barrage of arrows at your targets.

Completing multiplayer modes will earn you a variety of currencies. One of which is War Assets. These points can be used to take over territories on the map; attacking them or setting up defenses. Every six hours will see the map update to reflect all the War Assets spent on a certain territory. This territory control will then dictate which maps are played via the various modes in the game. To create a deeper more engaging experience, there are also Rounds and Seasons. Controlling these areas on the map will then lead to rewards based on how well your faction has held them for a certain period of time. Rounds last two weeks and Seasons consist of 10. There are five rounds per season and the game offers vast rewards for your accomplishments. It is also mentioned that results of a past season will still have effects felt in the game, but as the first season has yet to end, the full result of this is currently unknown.

For Honor is a gorgeous game with detailed character models and stunning environments. Each battlezone is painfully detailed and factors like time of day and weather will vary on which faction controls that zone on the world map. I’ve seen some maps covered in snow one day and bright and sunny the next. It’s a nice touch that goes a long way to allow the game feel fresh and new, even with recycled content. Each of the 12 combatants have an insane amount of detail to them that really sets them apart from other character models in the genre. Characters have a grittiness to them, with solid texturing that compliments not only the character but their armor as well. It’s not often that a game with a large cast of characters continues to impress me each time I see them up close. Animations are solid and don’t seem to jerk or stop suddenly when changing stances or rapidly trying to block various strikes.

Most classes in For Honor can be played either as a male or female avatar, with a few exceptions here and there. You can customize them to an almost insane degree with body paints, tattoos, and countless armor combinations. You can also create a crest, which is something nearly every PVP game seems to offer now. You will earn a few rewards after each battle; War Assets, Steel, and Gear. Gear is pretty straight forward and is comprised of weapons or armor. Weapons are composed of several individual pieces and each part can have different stats within. Some parts of a weapon may build up your Revenge meter faster where other upgrades like more stamina or health regen may suit your needs better, and these stats are also part of every single armor piece as well. You’ll unlock better gear at later levels that have drastically better stats when you upgrade them and should you be tired or not want a current gear item anymore, you can break it down into a salvage currency.

Lastly, is Steel, and this is a somewhat controversial topic. Steel is used to level up your gear, purchase new items and has a few other uses. The main reason behind this controversy is the fact you can buy Steel with real money. This can appear to give the game a slight pay to win approach since gear does have stats. I did find that despite the slightly better stats the gear could give you, I mean, it still is a random drop, I never once felt I was more powerful than anyone else with my ‘paid for’ items. I bought a 6.99 pack of Steel and got maybe one useful item out of it. I’m sure that once I unlock higher tier armor and weapons that this could be a factor, but as it stands, I don’t find For Honor to be ‘pay to win’. There is also a store that you can buy really cool looking gear and frankly, that gear is drastically overpriced. I would love to see For Honor dish out at least a little more Steel after battles, as you don’t currently receive a lot, or have double Steel weekends or other events that grant more currency or drops.

I mention in the opening that For Honor is a game split between some great design choices and some poor ones. I still believe that despite the story campaign being fairly enjoyable, more could have been done to make it feel less like an 8-hour tutorial and something that truly stands on its own. The issues I have with the game may feel like I am being picky, or petty, but they are still issues I have with the game. I wish the combat was more forgiving as my skill level doesn’t really stack up there against some players as games often were one-sided with the somewhat poor matchmaking. I joined a game where the other side had players all above level 15 where I was paired with a level 2 player and 2 AI bots; we got destroyed. I’ve had server issues constantly with games dropping left and right, and then I’ll have a few hours go by with no problems whatsoever. I’ve been killed while I had connection issues, as well as chunks of my health disappearing when there wasn’t anyone around me. I’ve had framerate problems during a few matches that dropped to what seemed like ten frames per second, often resulting in my death, again.

I could also sit here and complain about my issues with the combat system, but those are mostly my own gaming shortcomings and don’t really reflect the quality of combat because frankly, it’s a brilliant system that is as deep as you want it to be. It’s a very flexible system that I’m just a bit rubbish at, currently. I hope that with some balancing and maybe a slight revamp of the Revenge system that being outnumbered can at least be retooled with some chance at survival, because at it stands, it can be rather frustrating as it happens a lot. I also wish that there was actual destruction in the environment, like barrels and boxes; neither of these can be destroyed and can lead to you being boxed in, no pun intended.

For Honor is a game that expects me to be a better player than I already am. Despite how fun the game can be, I don’t see myself really sticking with it for more than a couple more weeks. The split second nature of combat and your ability to read an incoming strike is pivotal in your enjoyment here. The characters and environments are flat out gorgeous and should Ubisoft ever make an adventure game using this lore and engine, all I can say is wow, I’d be so up for it. For Honor is fast paced, clever and brutal, and you can have a great time bashing heads in, taking over bases and pulling off a devastating execution, you know, if you don’t suck that is.

  Game Review: For Honor (Xbox One) was originally published on Game-Refraction