#i can identify every single npc in the game

[alpaca-clouds]

BG3 fans, we gotta talk CPTSD

Okay, I have spend about a week considering writing this blog, but I really gotta say, that it is something people really need to understand. See, I mostly see this issue with Astarion and his depiction in fandom. However, I would argue that it is a thing that affects literally all characters that play some sort of bigger in this entire game. Including many NPCs.

But let me start with Astarion. See, I wrote the blog two weeks ago about people being judgy on people, who do not want to have graveyard sex with him. Mostly people will argue how Astarion should be allowed to have his agency in that moment - while I argued that whoever the player is playing should have also agency in that scene. Including the agency to say "no" for whatever reason. I also included that my Tav absolutely denied Astarion, because he was not trusting that Astarion in the scene really was ready for it, for a variety of reasons. Which is very much a valid reason for someone not to want to sleep with someone else. (Literally every reason is a good reason for that, mind you.)

And obviously there came the comment, that went basically: "As someone who was raped I am very appalled by you saying that raped people cannot consent." Which is very much not what I said.

What I said was, that my Tav did not consent. Yes, he did not consent because he thought Astarion was not ready for it - but he is the one not consenting. It does not matter for this whether his assumption about Astarion is true or not. Tav does not feel comfortable in the scene, so Tav does not want sex right there.

However... If you consider the drow orgy scene, Tav is also very much right. If you do that scene after defeating Cazador, Astarion is enthusiastically consenting to that orgy, but he still ends up dissociating during the scene. (And in that scene, even if your character notices it, you cannot go "Stop!" Which I hate.)

Here is the thing. If you are in the BDSM scene, you might actually have encountered a scenario in real life where someone was enthusiastically consenting to something - only to them realize, that they were not into it at all. And people can withdraw their consent IRL at this point. Only that in this game, obviously you can't. So within the game choices I will just start out with "no" for this character.

Still, that is actually not what I mainly wanted to talk about. No.

What I wanted to talk about is the other thing. I absolutely know that for a variety of reasons a lot of SA survivors do identify with Astarion, and I do not want to take that from anyone. I think it is amazing that we got a character with whom we see this issue portrayed seriously. And let's face it. Especially in tumblr fandom circles, we will have a lot of SA survivors, because the userbase of this website is majority afab, and many are queer. And we know from statistics that queer afab people are even more likely than non-queer afab people to experience SA at some point in there life. So, yes, Astarion is going to be embraced by this community makes sense - even without his dashing looks.

But here we get to the actual meat of the issue: Astarion was not just raped. Astarion was abused in a variety of ways - some of them sexual - over the course of 200 years. He went not through a single traumatic event, but an ongoing trauma that, again, lasted for 200 years.

Or to put different: Astarion does not have PTSD. He has C-PTSD. Complex trauma. The kind of trauma that develops when the trauma lasts over a long, long time, without the survivor getting a chance to ever really properly ever relax. Something that was very true for Astarion's time under Cazador. He was under constant threat of rape, torture, and other forms of violence.

While CPTSD is a form of PTSD, it has some differing symptoms - and additional symptoms from plain old PTSD.

I found this graphic on this blog here, and found it fairly good in the depictions. (If you google CPTSD you will find several graphics like this.) It shows very well the additional symptoms, compared to normal trauma.

Generally speaking, CPTSD brings a lot stronger issues with self-worth, interpersonal problems, and emotional regulation. CPTSD folks are often prone to emotional outbursts (this graphic names anger, but technically it can be all other kinds of emotional outbursts - which is why at times CPTSD gets confused with BPD).

And Astarion is written like this. He shows very much all the symptoms of CPTSD. And let's be honest: That is an issue he will have to deal with for a long, long while.

But... As I said, the same is actually true for pretty much all the characters.

If you look at the companions, it is obvious.

Gale spent at least a year in constant fear of blowing up. While Mystra's abusiveness towards him within the relationship prior the orb is more fanon than canon (though the relationship was defnitely not an easy one), the "one year in constant fear of death" is very likely going to instill some form of CPTSD in him.

Karlach was a slave for 10 years, forced to fight in the hells. While she will also probably suffer from certain forms of PTSD more common in soldiers. Additionally I would argue that she also has some CPTSD from tiefling-racism. While she does not bring it up often... She does seem to have a thing there.

With Wyll it is a bit more complicated. Yes, for him I would see the kind of CPTSD I have - parental abuse related. Ulder was not openly abusive, but neither was my mother, and guess what fucked me most up in my childhood, despite experiencing some really bad violence elsewhere.

Shadowheart was abused by Viconia and midwashed and tortured and was forced to kill her fucking pet mouse. Bonus points that a lot of it happened during her childhood. She very much is gonna suffer the consequences.

Lae'zel... Do I really need to say something about her upbringing among the Gith?

Then we have Halsin. We know fairly little about his background, given that he is very coy in talking about it. But his "three years as a drow slave" definitely make it likely that he has developed some form of CPTSD.

And then we have Jaheira and Minsc. For whom just the... Well, look folks, the adventuring lifestyle would logically also leave you with CPTSD of some sort.

Even if you play a Tav who entered the game after having a very untraumatic life... They will spent what has to be at least two months with a tadpole in their head threatening to kill them - while half of Baldur's Gate is trying to do the same. They'll have PTSD after this at the very least, if not CPTSD. (Even though, let's face it, chances are we all gave our Tavs more than enough background trauma to go along with it, right?)

And same goes for so many other characters. The tiefling refugees. Our main villains (especially Gortash and Orin). Cazador. The other vampire spawn (duh). The list goes on.

So, what am I trying to say here?

Well, for once I just want to make sure folks understand that CPTSD is a thing that exists and while being similar to normal PTSD differs in some points. Including the fact that people with CPTSD have a high likelihood to make very rash decisions driven by instable emotional states, that might be harmful to them on the long run.

And mind you. In real life most people with CPTSD have it because either they were bullied for a long time, or were in an abusive relationship of some sort. (Abusive parents, abusive partners, abusive friends/roommates.) But even in those heightened scenarios the game represents for the most part - the issues are gonna be still mainly the same.

[goblinroleplay]

hes so babygirl i need to woobify him NEEOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!

[tea-and-conspiracy]

One Ishgardian's Unsolicited Take on DT

...Which is a bit of a misleading title, I realize, because I did DT on Laelia first (cowboys and cyberpunk, I had to) and I'm only now doing it on Eliane, but this is my main XIV account here on tumblr, so whatever.

Spoilers and Opinions below the cut, obviously! If you aren't prepared for either, please don't read. :)

I guess I'll begin with the good.

Tural

I really liked the first half of this xpac. I enjoyed how casual and low-key it was, I loved how it was about engaging with people and getting to know them rather than racing to save the damn world again. By now they've established narratively that the WoL really needs a break and I'm glad they got to get it for a bit.

To this extent, the first half of the xpac felt like ARR in a good way. You were back to being a nobody (why would anyone in Tural know or care who you are?), so the most that was ever asked of you were random, easy tasks. You got to adventure. There was worldbuilding aplenty. Every once in a while you punted a threat that got too big for its britches. That's what ARR was too.

It's hilarious to me that the WoL was there to basically be advisor to Wuk Lamat, because our cute little fragment of that goblin Azem is simultaneously the best and WORST qualified for the position. And I also loved how we would just be pointed at whenever somebody went, "Or else what?" Or else her, obviously.

Tural is breathtaking and might be the team's best round of environmental design yet. I find Urqopacha especially striking, but as a whole it was so refreshing to be back in colorful and vibrant environments again. This includes the dungeons, especially the earlier dungeons.

The Characters

Wuk Lamat started to exhaust me and I still love her. She's sweet, she's genuine, and she's a nice departure from...well more or less every other character in this game. I have a weak spot for shonen protagonists and that's basically what she is. Hell yes, Power of Friendship.

It was hard not to be on Team Koana after the rescue scene. Boy is that cat hot when he's mad. His VA really nailed the subtleties of "guy-who-is-super-intelligent-and-thus-can't-People-as-a-result", and while I can't claim to be particularly bright, I identified with his awkwardness. :P

Otis. Nuff said.

I, uh. I'm definitely confused about the Bakool Ja Ja love but I think I get it. :P Internet Things <tm> aside, I do love a good heel-face turn, although the execution of his turn was, uh. Hm.

I guess it's time for the bad.

The Scions

Didn't need to be there. They didn't add a single thing to the story and were clearly shoehorned in for marketing purposes. A case can be made for Krile obviously, but outside of her, only G'raha made sense because of his specific experience and expertise.

"What about trusts?" A lot of early trust dungeons use random NPCs. We're out here to engage with other cultures, why can't I have a Hanu healer or a Yok Huy DPS? That makes more sense to me than forcing Alisaie to heal.

Mad we didn't get to duel Urianger and Thancred though. >:(

Erenville was done completely dirty and didn't catch a break this entire expansion. Thanks for coming with us as a guide, buddy! One of your childhood friends turned evil, your village is now destroyed, and your mom is dead! That's it, that's all you get. :)

The Story

Like I said. The first half of this story was nice. I really wish the rest of the xpac had stayed that way.

The problems began around about the time I hit Yak T'el. Unfortunately, there's some content there that started hitting a little too close to home for me, and yeah, it hurt me a lot. I don't think the devs realized what they were engaging with, which is kind of par for the course for this particular subject matter. :/

That aside, I agree with others that the Mamool Ja's story is a bit of a stretch in general. Part of the reason the Yok Huy and the Mamool Ja exist -- at least to my understanding -- is so that the game can explore what fundamentalist cultures look like without them being linked to any one culture in the real world, and I think that's a good thing. But the writers seemed to lose either their nerve or direction with the people of Mamook, and it undermined Bakool Ja Ja's character progression as a result.

We didn't spend much time in Shaaloani, and I had a feeling we wouldn't, even if I was hoping for more good ol' fashioned spaghetti western tropes. But more importantly...where tf are the Whaalaquee (sp?)? Erenville even mentions them but they're not physically present? Wasn't the whole conflict there due to ceruleum being dug on their sacred lands?

But anyway, let's just get to the elephant in the room: the latter half of the story. Why. Why did we have to do any of this? I don't understand Zarool Ja or anything about him. He had a loving family, he had everything, and instead turned into Varis 2.0 because he felt...inadequate? How do you go from, "Man, I'll never measure up to my dad" to, "I need to fucking take over the world?" Shit, even Varis was at least a little sympathetic in that he was hoping to free his people from Emet-Selch. I never bought into Zarool Ja and found him a really shallow and boring antagonist.

ALSO WHO DID HE FUCK? I'M AMAZED HE WOULD EVEN TAKE THE TIME TO FUCK. WHAT OTHER MAMOOL JA WAS EVEN UP THERE? FHEJAKRFGHJKE

This might be a weird take, but I'm tired of the leadup to the endgame zone being the people you previously helped out coming together to get you to a place you cannot reach. That was *incredibly* moving in Shadowbringers, because you spent the entire game getting to know these people personally. And a callback to it in Endwalker worked because this was the culmination of your adventures on Hydaelyn. But we had to do it with the train again and it just felt...lacking. Like, "here's the obligatory cooperation scene!" We don't have to keep rewriting Shadowbringers, guys. Also, these scenes work better when it involves individual characters; since Dawntrail was more about getting to know the cultures instead (and that's ok!), it unfortunately lacks a bit of that more personal connection.

We didn't need Alexandria. I am so. Tired. Of the end game zones being megatech. It was a fun and wild shift ONCE in Heavensward, but you can't keep doing that on repeat, especially when you keep amping up the technological advancement. What made Alexandria/Solution 9 worse is that there's way too many hints of real life in there. You know, government employment offices and recycling bins and advertisements and stuff. I play this game to get away from real life, not be reminded of it. And yeah, Garlemald had cars and stuff, but it at least felt justified because the Garleans can't use magic. They are a mundane people, so of course they'd be more like us. Solution 9 feels like it belongs in another game.

I found Sphene exhausting, not sympathetic. We've already done this before with Emet-Selch and then again with Golbez, and she didn't have a fragment of the depth of the former. I personally dislike the trope of "the leader so universally beloved that they're practically worshiped". I can never buy into it and it always creeps me out.

While I love Vrtra and the first brood, I was mega bummed that getting outside help was the solution to protecting Tuliyollal. Like, Koana's been hyped up as a brilliant engineer this whole time, I was fully expecting him to engineer a defense for the city. I guess time was a consideration but there's some kinda eeeehhhh implications in the Turali being unable to defend themselves, and it's a little cheap imo that the solution was apparently Draco Ex Machina.

But what made Alexandria most exhausting of all is that we literally just finished this storyline, almost beat for beat, in the 6.X patches.Right down to having a flashback dungeon set in a medieval kingdom in the middle of the calamitous war that destroyed it, like what the actual hell. Do we really have to keep doing a narrated dungeon at the end of every xpac, btw? It worked for Amaurot. It was already a bit much with Meteion. But we're just rewriting Shadowbringers again forever, I guess.

I didn't like the end zone at all for the same reasons: another reconstruction of a long-dead place and long-dead people for the third expac in a row. Please stop. I loved Shadowbringers but for the love of god please move on from it. By the end I was just rushing things along because I was just so tired of it all. It's lost its emotional impact by now.

Which is all a very long way of saying that I wish we didn't have to save the world again, I guess. We were supposed to be done with that but either the devs (or more likely the execs) didn't trust that we'd remain engaged if the stakes stayed low. I wish they would trust us like they used to.

ARR wasn't about the end of the world. Heavensward wasn't about the end of the world. Stormblood wasn't about the end of the world. We already know they can do it. We already know people enjoy it. It's safe to relax and take your time building back up, dammit. It was kind of disappointing.

In Conclusion

Despite all my whinging, I actually enjoyed the xpac a fair amount. I'm not hooked, but I didn't hate it. There's a lot of good, and a lot of endearing things too. But ShB was clearly too successful, and I'm wondering now if we'll ever get away from it. The new writing team is proving very hit and miss and I really do miss Ishikawa.

We'll see where things go from here. :think:

[graphicabyss]

DOS2: A Tale of Frustration

So BG3 doesn't run on my old PC so I turned to DOS2 to fill the void and I finished it out of pure spite. I'm sorry to all the fans but... omg why is it so frustrating? So I'm putting some of the things that were driving me crazy to get it off my chest.

the skill icons on the panel keep disappearing when I try to click them like 30% of the time

the 98 damage types and every enemy has a resistance to each of these

the undead heal from poison damage for some fucking reason

the fucking clouds. poison clouds can be extinguished by fire? makes total sense. Electric clouds? You're fucked unless you know a specific spell.

in half the fights everything ends up on fire, often cursed or necrofire. good luck!

Don't you just love the fights where you start of fighting 3 enemies and end up fighting 12? Not my idea of subverting the expectations.

crafting makes no sense, there are 6834673 items to be crafted and half of them are only useful in early game

how are you supposed to learn the recipes? you get some from dozens of crafting books but it's still only like 30%. How am I supposed to know hammer to a potato makes fries?

I was googleing up quests, crafting, combat and everything else every 5 minutes because I'm tired of going into shit blind but honestly it wasn't enough.

you are free to go anywhere except the areas all have specific levels so you struggle through enemies that are 2 levels higher and then find areas that are 3 levels lower you missed

And what's up with Arx? You expect a chill city phase and end up slaughtered wherever you go. And good luck finding those source points!

Half the quests only work if you have a specific character, specific race or trait and you don't know which. Better prepare for a fight.

Persuasion checks make no sense and you only know the requirements once you fail. Have a fun fight!

Finishing a really tough fight, being really proud of yourself... Looting the dead enemies only to fight... Sir Lora. That little bitch has a deathwish and shall run through necrofire and deathfog like its full of nuts. I redid almost every late-game battle more than once. Goddammit.

I appreciate the immersion but could the NPCs stop pacing for 5 seconds? I need to talk to them! I was running after Hannag for 5 solid minutes and only managed to speak to her after I froze the water making her fall.

The inventory drove me crazy... It's not just gear and potions. You have a pyromancer and the enemies are immune to fire? You better get those scrolls. 97 ingredients half of which you're never gonna use. And I just love putting all my keys into my bag of keys manually.

The armour, man. The armour has physical/magic protection stats, skill points, ability points and sometimes spells. So you wanna swap those gloves? LOL now you can't use 3 spells and are also overburdened.

Faithful Item Set. Just that alone. The set has like 9 items and they're all dispersed all over the map, with the most important parts found on random NPCs! Like, there's no quest relating to it, there are no clues. Just... look in every crate and trade with every single character, bro. Good luck! I got all the items using a very detailed guide... except not. Turns out I got the boots first and sold them off at some point. Woo!

Right-clicking doesn't work half the time. Wanna identify shit or disarm a trap? Nope. Wanna look up that boss that you're about to fight? Don't be a pussy, just hit them and see if it works.

I am using a reasonable number of giftbag perks. I'd probably quit without them by now.

Spent about 260 hours on this game and about 100 of it was just inventory sorting.

The final battle... where do I even start? You get all the spells, all the scrolls, all the potions... only to get one-shot by the fucking Kraken. I expected something epic and received an utter clusterfuck. I only managed to win after about 6 tries and only by drinking invisibility potions, waiting for everyone to murder each other and then finishing Rex.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Sorry for your time.

[meglyfer]

As someone who used to be in the Spanish side of the UT fandom, when my interest for the game revived and I joined the English side of the fandom my mind was blown, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking

(To clarify, everything that I'm going to be talking about is from 2016-2018, so things might have changed over time for the better)

You know how some people say that Frisk's/Chara's gender in the game is not defined so that the player could feel more identified with them? Well, in the Spanish side EVERYONE SAYS THAT, which means that the chances of you finding someone who sees Frisk/Chara are minimal. Most people refer to them as girls, and every now and then you'll see someone who sees them as boys, and the few things you saw of them being non-binary were usually translated comics from the English side (though some of them had their pronouns changed to fit the person's view on them)

On the other hand, god knows why, every single character that was referred to as they/them in the original game, like Napstablook or NPCs, WERE CHANGED TO BOYS. I think part of the blame lies on the mod that translates the game to Spanish, but at the same time, there were people who did play throughs of the game in English, and when they translated the dialogue for the video they changed the they/thems into he/hims??????? You can already imagine my surprise when I realised all these characters were non binary and I had been misgendering them all this time (forgive me if I ever he/him Napstablook, I sometimes forget about this since I found out about it fairly recently)

Funnily enough considering these are Undertale fans, there was also a lot of homophobia in the fandom, and all gay relationships were seen as "one has to be the woman"

Oh, and fucking everyone were proshippers

Because of the previous statement, I was gaslighted into believing Sans and Frisk were teenagers (yes that goes down the path you're thinking. Don't worry, I got better, I was really young and stupid back then, so makes sense for me to fall into that stuff)

I'm probably forgetting a lot of things, but I've already talked for long enough. If anyone wants to add something don't be afraid to do so

I really hope the Spanish side of the fandom got better since then, after all it's been years since all this, I mean, it MUST have gotten better, right? RIGHT?

Either way, I am NOT going to be the one to test that theory, so if anyone knows more about this or is brave enough to go by themselves and find said answer, feel free to tell me "Don't worry, it's much better now" or "It's still an absolute hell. Stay on the English side, where the flames at least aren't as big and hot as in here"

[tobiasdrake]

Mewtwo Strikes Back - IV. Mewtwo is a Rude Host

Beating up that pirate guy causes Mewtwo to take notice of Ash. He sends a Dragonite messenger (Dragonitetwo?) to deliver an invitation from "the strongest Pokemon Trainer". Bold way of self-identifying, but it's Mewtwo so yes. Absolutely. Ego well deserved.

All sorts of Trainers gather to take the ferry to Mewtwo's castle on New Island. However, Mewtwo uses his telekinesis to whirl the goddamn atmosphere and manufacture a hurricane out of sheer telekinetic muscle strength. Holy fuck, we are not messing around with depicting Mewtwo's power.

(Though it's funny that such a feat will become mundane in Gen 3. Mewtwo invented Rain Dance! He is not gonna be happy when Pikachu starts firing off Thunders.)

So now we have a lot of angry Trainers who want to go meet "the strongest Trainer", threatening to Surf or Fly to New Island. The wharf master insists that it's too dangerous and Officer Jenny drops another bombshell: The local Pokemon Center's been shut down because Nurse Joy's missing. So no free heals if the trip goes bad.

I love that they hung a missing persons poster up with a picture of her on it, like she doesn't perfectly resemble every single other Nurse Joy NPC in the entire game world. XD

Unfortunately, despite having eight Badges to his name, Ash has never picked up a single HM. He's pretty much a master of sequence-breaking, but that leaves him without a means to reach New Island. Fortunately, he has something just as good: Reliable stalkers whose Sunk Cost Fallacy flares up whenever it looks like he's about to fail.

So, not for the first time, Team Rocket uses their unsavory methods help Ash overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Which they do by stealing a boat. That's. Um.

Trying to cross waters unsafe for boating through the genius application of a boat goes exactly the way you would expect it to. Fortunately, they get close enough that Squirtle and Staryu can carry the group the rest of the way, minus the Rockets who they leave behind to drown. They learned their lesson from the S.S. Anne.

At last, they've arrived at New Island. Let's see how many others made it here alive.

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Gaming #225

Had to do some digging for this one. For the past two months I’ve been pretty active on Guild Wars 2. I’ve been active in blogging on MMO’s before, mostly WoW but these days there’s not a lot to talk about without spending a short novel contextualizing everything I’m working towards. One of my general goals is to get one of those flying mounts, but they made the process to be known as one of the most pain in the ass processes. One of the very first things you have to do is collect 21 items around a map that was specifically designed with that very flying mount in mind. You can ‘borrow’ world-placed ones in specific areas but they’re typically high up so you have to traverse some bullshit to even find one at all. Got that out of the way, but it took a couple of hours. And there’s like 80 more steps to go. Jesus. I originally came back to GW2 to roleplay but haven’t found any communities. I found a single RP guild. The initial meet and greet turned out to have been a judging party with some officers in the unseen background talking shit about my style before saying publicly “We’ve seen enough. Zydrate, do you even care about anyone else?” My main character is a fairly stoic, John Wick-esque figure and generally my RPing style (across many characters) is not the type to regurgitate their entire life stories to people they just met. One character I met was almost too quick to talk about the source of their scars through some Asuran torture. My character emoted in such a way that conveyed that this person was an absolute buzzkill and didn’t really inquire further. Logically, my character doesn’t want to peel back a layer of PTSD and be the cause of someone’s mental breakdown in a market square. In reality, players are just itching to drop a short novel about what their characters are all about. I’m not one of those players. Anyway that one guy who said “Okay I’ve seen enough” is also roleplaying a literal Angel. In a universe where that doesn’t exist. I looked up “Angel” on the guild wars wiki and there’s two results: A named NPC in the first game and a named cat in the second. Angels aren’t really a thing, and the character was very quick to point out he has nothing to do with Dwayna (the universe’s stand-in “goody two shoes, health and love for everyone” type God). Out of character I was like “then what the fuck, then?” In character, my main is dealing with enough of her own shit she doesn’t really care to spend time identifying this humanoid “creature” that someone invented because they have a fourteen year old’s imagination they never grew out of. Listen. My roleplaying style is more akin to what Dungeons and Dragons offers. Everyone meets and an inn, but nobody ever drops their entire baggage when first meeting. No, let’s go run a dungeon, slay some Dragonkind and once my character figures out that the people she’s hanging out with won’t just cut and run then she’ll actually open up a bit about herself. And that is a two way street, when she figures out the people around her aren’t full of shit then she might inquire about who they really are. Or better yet, show her through actions. That’s just the kind of roleplayer I am and it’s now something I’m going to have to make clear to guilds in the future. At least on GW2. Moving on. My MMO batteries soon need recharging and I’ve made some recent purchases including Fable 3 and Sifu. I’ll get Sifu out of the way first. I played about 45 minutes of it, and the first level. I suck at it, even at the lowest difficulty. As usual parrying is a pain in the ass. Every game that has it is like “press this button right before they hit you” but I can never really tell what “counts” as before I am hit. I usually end up hitting the button when the enemy’s arm moves but no, way too early. So I just end up taking the hit anyway. So I try to concentrate towards a weapon swing, and I miss anyway and take a hit. Meanwhile Sifu does not fuck around with mook chivalry, many enemies can and will gang up on you if the pathing allows it. So while I’m trying to concentrate on one guy’s arm movements, there’s still like four bitches with bamboo sticks ready to shove up my ass. So, Fable 3. A 2010 game. A few years ago during my last job I actually tried to buy the CD for it, only to find out that Microsoft had basically shuttered the whole franchise from their store and I long since lost the window that it was on Steam for. I googled and googled and the result was trying to make a Microsoft/Xbox Pass account but that didn’t work either. The game just kind of refused to load, and if memory serves it wouldn’t even install. I had even bought a controller to plug into my PC to use for it, to no avail. So I was about 70 bucks down, but I do think I successfully refunded the CD itself for the ~35 or so it cost. But a couple nights ago the mood struck me once again. Not sure why, maybe it was the discovery that Fable 4 is actually being worked on. There’s almost no information on it, just some teaser with landscapes. Might see it next year, apparently. Anyway it got me to googling again and found out that Amazon just sells Steam keys directly. So I drop 20 bucks and plugged it into Steam, and there it is. Just like that, easy. You DO have to jump through some hoops to get it to run on modern machines but it’s mostly just a matter of downloading some special .dll files and dragging it into the game and boom, the game loads. I played it for several hours. I had forgotten how hilarious the money-making snowballing can be. Since I have the meta knowledge of what you need to do to get the ‘best’ ending (you need ~6 million gold), the minute I was able to do the Blacksmithing job I stopped my youtube recording and spent like an hour on that, gained 300k gold, and bought a couple of the most expensive buildings available at the time. I then put the game in windowed mode to watch youtube or play one of my idle games, generated up enough money to do the same thing with even more businesses. With very little story progression off my Youtube recording, she’s currently making around 120k every five minutes, and after two quests she’s sitting on over two million gold. Long before she becomes queen and is stuck with the “dilemma”. I think she’ll do just fine. Everyone hates her because rent is so high but the in-game morality has her squarely in the middle because I keep taking the “nice” options in quests, mixed with the occasional execution. Why spare a bandit leader who’s been terrorizing and murdering people for years? Warrior’s promise? Fuck off, dude, I don’t know half the atrocities you probably committed. But it’s a lot of fun. Fable 3 still gets a lot of shit for being the “worst” one but to me it’s the most memorable. The leveling mechanic is a downgrade and the fact that the menues are made to be a bunch of rooms you have to walk around in instead of just giving me a simple goddamn menu is a huge step backwards in UI design and user friendliness. That’s about it. I hate the “pause” menu more than the leveling mechanic but ultimately it just takes some getting used to and functions the same. As long as I can change my weapons midfight if I have too, then whatever. Just takes a pointless extra amount of time. So far it’s still the game I loved back in the day. In the future I have my eyes on: Thief Simulator 2, Darkest Dungeon 2, Diablo 4. DD2 is available now but waiting on another payday for it. Also giving the modding community some time to “cook”, as with DD1 I liked to get a few QoL mods that made my gaming life a little easier. Maybe modders will add new characters and classes like last time as well, those are usually fun to play with. Diablo 4′s leveling curve, if the beta is anything to go by, looks a bit slower paced that D3′s so it seems like a game that might demand more of my time on a day to day basis than some of the other things on this post. Might absorb me quite a bit, but I hope to give it a little more breathing room and not rush the endgame as hard. If there really is much of one at all, yet. And Thief Simulator 2 is just more Thief Simulator which I loved, but never really beat because the Rich neighborhood got too hard, but still loved it before that.

[anachrosims]

Features I Wish Were in TS4:

In no particular order, and feel free to rb and add your own:

A separation of saved households/saved sims. I spend a lot of time on my sims, but sometimes I just want to make a carbon copy and tweak them a little for different saves. This would add tons of replayability that TS4 is seriously lacking!

New saves = clean slates, no more jumping through hoops to play the same sim/a similar variant with a fresh start.

More of an open world. I want my sims to feel like they’re actually living in a town, not in some disconnected set piece with an easily-identifiable skybox. Semi-open worlds are fine! I just want things to feel connected and grounded. It’s a life simulator, ffs.

Community lots with rabbitholes that are editable. Bring back rabbitholes that can be used for grocery shopping/going to the theater/etc but let those community lots be editable so people with higher end machines can have the CHOICE to make their game more interactable. I’m sick of the main place my Sim exists at being their house. I used to have tons of fun in the game world in TS3. There is no excuse to not have that choice in TS4.

Stores/shops for buying supplies and other things! No, I don’t mean flea market tables, I mean an actual register and/or venue. Let my sims buy clothes, groceries, pastries! Sure, it’s easier to have your sim get the clothes from nowhere, and the food from the fridge, but why not let us keep those things and also add a layer of fun to it by giving us incentives to explore the local community/earn Simoleons? 

More community lots in general! Graveyards, theaters, musical venues, customizable shops, schools, cafes, etc.

Working cheats that account for bugs/glitches/mishaps in game. I once got up to get a sandwich and came back and one of my sims was dead from a dryer fire. I was trying to play without cheats and it would’ve taken ages to get my witch sim to have EVERY. SINGLE. SKILL. needed to revive the dead sim. I had to reload my save. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with difficulty in gameplay; it’s bad design to restrict players and then not create safety nets in the event that the game glitches out or the game gets fucked up because God forbid anything in game gets proper tuning. Difficulty through restriction/lack of features is bad design.

Have an option where travel between worlds is restricted for NPCs. It breaks immersion to travel so easily between worlds, but I’d be okay with things as they are if the NPCs in each town STAYED in each town--it would make things feel more permanent, like they matter more.

Actual functionality for musical (& other) careers! If I wanted to play let’s pretend, I’d just go to a roleplay forum, not sit and wait at my sim’s home while my sim goes through dialogue prompts during their work shift.

Different types of dancing! Slow dancing, square dancing, etc. I know animation rigs can be difficult, but it’s been in previous games.

Different modes of gameplay! World states you can set per world/per save. Maybe like... “Off the grid” mode for historical gameplay/game challenges, something like that.

Start us out with five traits! And ideally, give us options to unlock more through gameplay rewards.

More activities that aren’t computer/home-based. Why not more sports? Or community festival group activities that aren’t “shopping” and “eating contests.” I want my sims to interact with each other and their local community in meaningful ways! What’s the point in having an Outdoorsy sim if the outdoors are boring as fuck? Let’s have roller rinks, proper ice skating, one on one soccer matches, a n y t h i n g.

More variation/consequences with diseases. It’s so boring to just take a panacea. Have my sim grow ugly boils or turn an ‘unnatural’ skin color--blue, green, purple--have a chance of other sims catching it based on local proximity! Have my sim be required to have an apple a day (a healthier diet) or some specific medicine they can get from the hospital in order to get better, and they have to take a certain amount of doses to get better. And in turn, have cheats that help get around dipshit bugs/glitches. Keep things simple, but make them interesting and above all, functional!

-

There’s probably more but this is what I could think of off the top of my head. Again, feel free to RB and add your own or expand on the above.

[rainofaugustsith]

SWTOR: Women Characters and Betrayal

Something I realized today: With only three exceptions I can identify (Satele Shan, Crysta Markon and Shae Vizla), every single really strong woman with agency in the game that has a pivotal role in the PC's story is depicted as a betrayer or someone who has lied to those who gave them responsibility about major issues. It's as though they had not figured out how to write women without making them either exhibit some treachery, inspire some level of distrust, or have little agency.

SPOILERS FOR EVERY CLASS STORY, SHADOW OF REVAN, KOTFE, KOTET, THE TRAITOR ARC AND OSSUS

Kira Carsen (Jedi Knight): Child of the Emperor. Obviously not her fault and she consciously throws off the Emperor's influence, but they do set her up as "oooh, she's got an evil side!"

Master Yuon (Jedi Consular): Part of the group that abandoned Parkanas Tark on Malachor III. Dread Master Brontes: Turns on the Empire to the point where the Empire sends people to hunt her down and stop her damage. Dread Master Bestia: Turns on the Empire to the point where the Empire sends people to hunt her down and stop her damage. Risha Drayen (smuggler): Some of the NPCs you meet don't ever want to see Risha again because she screwed them over so badly. She does show her loyalty to the smuggler in the confrontation with Nok Drayen, and from then on, but she's still left people like Beryl Thorne in her wake. Raina Temple (Imperial Agent): Raina hasn't lied to the PC, but she's lied to the Sith about being Force sensitive. Kaliyo Djannis (Imperial Agent): Her entire companion storyline is about all the people she's betrayed or reneged on agreements with. She almost does that to the PC, too. They continue this theme in KOTFE by showing her betraying the Overwatch chief, lying to the PC about her true intentions (bombing the city) and getting emails from disgruntled people she's burned. Senya: Does a literal 180 and goes from supporting the Alliance to rescuing the person they're trying to kill and depose. Also lures the PC into an ambushed "trial" with the Scions which damages HK-55. Lana Beniko: Famously, arranges for Theron to be captured by the Revanites during Shadow of Revan. Chancellor Saresh: If you're Imperial, Saresh has reason to kill you already. But if you're a Republic PC in KOTET, Saresh may have worked well along side you - and she tries to kill you and take over the Alliance anyway. Empress Acina: Goes from "the new Sith Empire isn't treacherous, I have no reason to try to betray you" to searching for superweapons on Iokath. Darth Zash (Sith Inquisitor): Literally tries to steal the PC's body. General Garza (Trooper): Havoc Squad 1.0 defected because she left them behind. And the way she treats the hapless victims of Eclipse Squad could be considered betrayal too. DS Jaesa (Sith Warrior): After telling the Sith Warrior "I'll never try to kill you and will always support you," her return involves her slaughtering the PC's troops on Iokath, trying to kill Lana Beniko (who may be the PC's wife or SO at that point) and trying to inflict as much pain as possible on the PC. LS Jaesa (Sith Warrior): Is allowed to stay in Gnost-Dural's sanctuary on Ossus because she sold out the Sith Warrior by telling Gnost-Dural all their secrets. Elara Dorne (trooper): Technically not a betrayal, but if the trooper goes Imperial on Iokath, Dorne says that she wishes they were dead and actively helps Jace Malcom try to kill them. SCORPIO: I don't really need to explain this one, do I? Ashara Zavros (Sith Inquisitor): Calls the Jedi to ambush the PC when they go to meet Zavros's ghost.

Like...do they even know how to write women without having them be depicted in some way as untrustworthy?

[trailmixtime]

T&T for 001 :3

oh you beautiful human being i was really hoping someone would ask for thieves and tardises. thank you :D

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: hmmmm. that's a tough one, i like the whole core team

Least Favorite character: that npc lady in 'depths'. i don't remember her name but she was kind of rude and mean and :(

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): doctor/mossy wife, verity/bone tardis, verity/thomas, and i think those are the only romantic ships we have in our game? all others are platonic and i like every single one of the platonic dynamics

Character I find most attractive: i am going to elect to skip this one.

Character I would marry: laughs in aro

Character I would be best friends with: probably verity tbh

a random thought: i keep thinking about what the inside of dissent's tardis may look like. and leela's. love the vibe we've created with companions and their own tardises :)

An unpopular opinion: i have none.

My Canon OTP: doctor/mossy wife. they're so CUTE

My Non-canon OTP: there's not really one? we're not super into romance in this sldkfjsf

Most Badass Character: verity brown. girl can wield a sword!! and she beat up some villagers in minecraft!! and she punched theseus in the face!! u go verity brown!!

Most Epic Villain: easily theseus. he's so fucked up and evil and kitty just played him so well and *chef's kiss* delightful villain

Pairing I am not a fan of: thesus/bone tardis. you get away from her shadow man hiss hiss snarl bite

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): do you want a list of all the pain we've put all the characters through and plan to put them through in the future? :))))))

Favourite Friendship: hmmmmm, that's a tough one. i know i'm biased choosing a friendship with leela but. they just make me happy. so i'm going to pick leela and caryo. it's such a cute little dynamic and it makes me happy :D

Character I most identify with: aside from leela, perhaps verity? she's got some Stuff happening which is pretty relatable.

Character I wish I could be: well i mean. i am leela so i don't think this question has a proper answer slkdfjsf.

ask game

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)

Ultima 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs, and I could not have asked for a better pair of games to ignite a lifelong passion into that genre. There is a real reason why this is still considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

While Ultima 7 is often discussed as a singular entity, it is actually two separate full-length games with one expansion each. For this post I will focus on the first one, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, as well as its expansion: Forge of Virtue.

I recommend playing the game using Exult, which adds some quality of life features (such as a feeding hotkey and a “use all keys” hotkey) as well as the option to use higher quality audio packs, implement bug fixes, and change the font into something easier on the eyes.

Summary

The protagonist of the Ultima series is “the Avatar”, a blank slate isekai protagonist from our world who has previously travelled to the world of Britannia several times and saved it from many threats, also becoming the shining paragon of the virtues meant to guide its people.

In this game, you once again cross the portal to Britannia to save it from a new and mysterious extradimensional threat. As soon as you arrive, you immediately discover two things:

1- A violent ritualistic murder has just taken place.

2- There is suspicious new organization called “The Fellowship” gaining adherents throughout the land.

It is up to you to investigate these developments.

Freedom

In terms of freedom, the Black Gate has plenty overall but there are areas where it is not quite there.

Once you can manage to get the password to get out of the locked-down town of Trinsic you are free to go nearly anywhere in the game right away and have multiple means of transportation to accomplish this, such as moongates or ships.

And there are some very real rewards to exploring like this as well, such as various treasure caches and other interesting findings. 

The world is actually very small by modern standards, especially when settlements occupy so much of it, but both the towns and the wilderness areas are dense with content.

Notably, the game also allows you to perform various activities. From stealing to making a honest living by baking bread (which is something you can do thanks to how interactive the environment is) or gathering eggs at a farm.

Where it falls short is in terms of having multiple possible solutions for quests. Generally there is only one correct option for how to complete them.

That said, there is a bad ending you might be able to find in addition to the canonical good ending.

Character Creation/Customization

This is one of the big minuses of the game. While you can select your name and gender (and with Exult also have a wider selection of portraits) that is about it for character creation.

All characters will start with the same stats and there are no character classes. You can develop your stats through training and specialize through your choice of equipment, but by the end of the Forge of Virtue expansion you will have maxed stats and the best weapon in the game (a sword) regardless, and you will definitely need to cast a few spells to progress the main quest as well.

This can make every playthrough feel much like the last, as there isn’t that much of a way to vary how your character develops or what abilities they’ll end up having. You will always be a master of absolutely everything in the end unless you go out of your way to avoid doing the Forge of Virtue expansion.

Story/Setting

While the game is a bit too obvious and heavy-handed about its villains, there are still many interesting storylines in the game that deal with mature subjects that remain relevant today, such as cults, drug abuse, workplace exploitation, and xenophobia.

However, the setting as a whole is greater than any individual storyline taking place within. With the exception of most guards and bandits, every single NPC in the game is an individual with a name, schedule, living space, and defined personality. This was not the norm in 1992 and even today there’s not many games that really implement this well. The world is also very detailed in terms of things like the services available to you, the general interactivity of the game world, and the sheer amount of things that populate every corner of it.

The initial murder is not only a strong hook for investigation but also a shocking scene in its own right. The Guardian also proves to have a significant presence as a villain, using a mental link to remotely taunt you based on the context of what is happening. For example, if your companions die he may offer you some exaggerated, mocking pity.

Immersion

There is something very interesting and comfortable about just watching the various inhabitants of a town just go about their daily lives. They work during the day, eat at certain times (either at home or at one of the many taverns in the land), and sleep at night. They don’t just strangely repeat one single action during the day either, they may do things like open windows when the weather is nice or turn candles and streetlamps on at night.

In terms of immersion, Ultima 7 is my primary example of a game that does an excellent job of it even if there’s some weirdness going on with the setting. Even after having played so many more games throughout my life, only a few are on the same level as either part of Ultima 7 when it comes to immersion.

Gameplay

There are three broad aspects to the gameplay here that I want to discuss.

The first is combat. It is actually simple enough that you can call it almost entirely automatic. You simply enable combat mode by pressing C and your party will automatically go and fight nearby hostile enemies based on whatever combat orders you have selected for them (by default, attacking the closest enemy).

This is certainly better than having an outright bad or annoying combat system as the whole process is simple and painless, but I still wish there was more depth to it. Your stats, and especially your equipment, still play a role but other than things like pausing to use items or cast spells the whole process is very uninvolved.

I kind of wish there was more depth to it, but at least the other two areas of the gameplay are reasonably good.

The next aspect of gameplay is dialogue, which uses dialogue trees for the first time in the series. Previously, it required typing in keywords, which are retained but as dialogue options you can just click on rather than remember and type.

While the keywords are not really written as natural language most of the time (requiring some imagination to determine the specifics of your dialogue), the system is very easy to use regardless. It definitely lacks depth compared to something like Fallout: New Vegas, but so do most games.

The third and most notable thing is the way you interact with the world in general. It is both extremely simple and very immersive at the same time.

Ultima 7 is a game that can be played entirely with the mouse (though keyboard hotkeys make everything much more comfortable). You can right click a space to walk there, you can left click something to identify what it is, and you can use double left click to interact.

For example, double left click over an NPC to talk to them (or attack them, if combat mode is enabled), double left click a door to open it, double left click a loaf of bread to feed it to someone, and so on.

But there is more. By holding your click over an item and dragging it, you can move it. This has various applications beyond just being how you pick things up and add them to your inventory. For example, sometimes objects may be hidden beneath other objects, or objects may need to be placed in a specific location.

There are some downsides to this system. Particularly, the issue that keeping your inventory organized can be time-consuming when it has to be done by manually dragging objects around, and this can also make looting relatively slow.

Despite this, I think this kind of interaction system has a lot of potential. It just has some clunky aspects to be ironed out.

Aesthetics

Ultima 7 was very good-looking for its time, and although modern players will not be very impressed by how it looks or sounds, it still remains easily legible in a way that some other old games are not. That, and the ability to identify anything with just a left click, makes this a very easy game to make out at the very least.

Some of the music of this game is very distinctive too, and will likely stay with you after a full playthrough.

In terms of style, the Black Gate does have a bit of an identity while still having a very familiar medieval fantasy setting with things like trolls, animated skeletons, dragons, and liches. While there are aspects that help the setting distinguish itself a bit, they are relatively subtle.

If I had to describe the feeling of playing this, I’d call it “open and laid back”. While the main quest deals with a looming threat to the entire world, the game does not follow this overly closely at first, letting you deal with it at your own pace and without having your exploration options limited by the story.

In fact, when I was young I often just ignored that and went to live in a creepy ruin in the swamp.

(Don’t expect many pictures in these reviews, but have one of my “childhood home.”)

I’d say that Ultima 7′s second part (Serpent Isle) has a much stronger and also darker and more isolating atmosphere overall and that has a lot of appeal to me in particular, but the Black Gate is definitely more open and less linear, and I also appreciate that.

Accessibility

It pleases me to say that Ultima 7 remains extremely easy to pick up and play. Even setting up Exult is not complicated in the least.

The gameplay is intuitive and simple, the UI is minimal, stats are basic (and not even that important), and the combat is automatic. I expect that this is not only the easiest point of entry into the Ultima series as a whole but also likely even easier to get into than many modern RPGs!

It does have some aspects that may be a bit clunky, like all the inventory-related dragging, but it’s definitely not obscure or complicated even to someone who has not read the manual (though I’d still recommend doing that). I literally played this game as a tiny child who could barely read or understand English and still got really into it.

The one thing I’d like to point out is that the game uses a type of copy protection where at a couple of story points (including an extremely early one to leave the first town) you will be asked some questions that require using the manual and external map to answer. You can just google the answers for these.

Conclusion

As I write more of these reviews there will be many games that are interesting, but deeply flawed. Games that are worth trying out but maybe not finishing, as well as games that had interesting ideas but that I can’t entirely recommend due to serious problems that will easily put people off.

But I do not think the Black Gate is such a game. I can easily recommend it with no qualifiers despite the fact that it is almost 30 years old. This is really a game that all RPG fans should at the very least try for a few hours, and not only for its historical significance. It is genuinely a good game worthy of its praise.

I will review its sequel, Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, next.

[caramujotan]

disco elysium text-form #thots:

i finished my first run last friday because i went stupid and played the game for nearly 24h straight. i could literally not drop it. i called it a 10/10 when i was about 2h away from finishing it, finished it and kept that score. it’s a real good game and you can stop here with my endorsement but if you want some more in-depth spoiler-free thoughts on it you can read the rest of this post. it’s big.

due to the content of the game, i talk about mental health topics, suicide, drug use and - obviously - cops 🐷

in a way calling this by numbers feels reductive (scalding hot review take, i know). a 10/10 score doesn’t reflect the awe i felt when gilding through the end-game. it doesn’t say a thing about how viscerally my body reacted to a few pixels and lines of text. it can’t tell you that i spent 2h in bed trying to sleep but couldn’t keep my brain off of it and got up at 8AM to finish it; or how much i’ve been replaying the game in my head, curious about how certain quests or events would have gone if i’d tried a different approach or character build.

i have this funky little medical condition that goes with my autism that makes it difficult for me to identify and process most emotions that i feel. but i can tell you how my body reacted. this game went into my gut. it felt like a leaded fist burrowed through my throat into the pit of my stomach and shredded my insides. it got me fucked up, is what i’m saying.

obviously i can’t go into what caused me to react like that without spoiling the shit out of this game, and since i wish i could gently lobotomize myself in order to experience it again for the first time, i heavily recommend you go through it knowing as little as possible. what i can do, however, is talk about the technical elements of it.

the art is beautiful. the art direction is top-notch and it was definitely of the things that drew me to this game first. the oil painting aesthetic is sublime - gritty and ethereal in equal parts whenever each purpose is called for. finding out that the art team was spearheaded by painting majors from russian fine-art schools made perfect sense - it shows, and the game made peak use of it. the philosophy behind their visual approach is woven into the fabric of the game itself - it’s a perfect compliment to the writing and storytelling, and i’d struggle to imagine this game without it. it permeates and elevates every environment, every interaction, every character build choice - from the character portraits, to the UI, to certain skills and game events. real art cop hours all my homies kin the art cop.

the music by british sea power is subsided and haunting and gives the game that british/european post-industrial melancholic flavor. i’m no music critic sadly. it fits the mood and it stands out beautifully in a few key scenes, but that’s as much as i can say.

the biggest turn off for me was in the voice acting. if you’re interested in playing this game i’m going to assume with 75% certainty you’re in your early 20s to 30s and are politically located to the left side of liberal at a minimum - so i’ll just come out and say it plainly: every second NPC (especially in the late game) is voiced by a leftist podcaster. i’m sure this is a plus for some, and it’s not the kind of thing you’d immediately notice anyway unless you’re a quote unquote dirtbag leftist with terminal irony poisoning twitter brainrot. most of them do competent work, but the sound mixing and general performance is weaker in comparison to the NPCs voiced by actual voice actors. 

it’s not that bad, but it’s there - and the fact that this is probably my biggest complaint about the game should say enough of my opinion on it. either way i was cringing with recognition every time it happened and it took me out on more than one occasion because i kept hearing felix chapotraphouse in one of the game’s big tense climatic scenes.

‘but caramujo!’ you say ‘this doesn’t tell me what this game is about’. hold on, i’m about to blow the ‘i can’t do literary analysis unless things are explained to me in clear cut absolute terms’ gang out of a career and spell the themes of this game out for you in detail:

it’s about loss, and renewal - both personal and interpersonal. it’s about rising from the ruins of something that’s been in motion long before you were even thought of, having little power over it, and soldiering on. it’s about heartbreak and the end of a relationship and how that can warp your mind and infect everything around you. and you won’t get better right away - the end game doesn’t wrap everything up with a little bow and lets you cause systematic upheaval. you can’t revolutionize your way out of this one. shit will, for the time being, continue to suck. 

it’s about waking up in a body that’s fucked up with a heart that aches in a world that’s been torn apart - and still making the decision to try to make it better - because you’re alive, and your heart beats, and there’s other beings in the world that are tethered to you and we all owe it to ourselves to make it better. communism hasn’t worked, baby - but so hasn’t love - and we’re not gonna give up on that. that’s what it’s all about.

it should be pretty clear right now that i did my first run as a bisexual/questioning communist feminist hobo who kinned karl marx. but i can assure you there’s other ways to play this game, and there’s more to it than that because of it. 

the quests (both side quests and a main story) are varied and had me laughing and dropping into existential despair on different occasions. other than trying to be the biggest communism builder, this game is also about:

- having a heart attack because a chair is too uncomfortable, but it’s OK because your buddy cop holds you in his arms like in the buddy cop movies. 

- doing copious amounts of drugs and turning on, tuning in and dropping out, maaaaan. 

- going on an x-files monster of the week episode to track down a curse that’s dooming the local businesses.

- shilling for the free market to come fix it all with its beatific invisible hand while standing in a town so fucked over by economic embargoes and poverty that the local union leader is a corrupt toad with a plan to revitalize the region by gathering the work force into a nationalized worker owned drug enterprise of the legal and illegal varieties - and it still comes off as one of the more levelheaded economic decisions one could make in that situation. 

- trying not to fucking kill yourself even though you have to live with that thought every single day. 

- winning the trust of a 12 year old crackhead with a deadbeat dad by becoming a positive masculine role model. 

- turning into a fascist you so can get buffs from drinking alcohol, and therefore becoming a raging alcoholic and having to walk up to important story events carrying half a liquor store in your inventory so you don’t have a mental breakdown or kill yourself from lack of morale whenever someone calls you out on your ethnonationalist bullshit.

it’s also - and i cannot stress this enough - about making sure you can find a tape to sing karaoke and make kim kitsuragi smile. it slaps. it’s real good writing.

i don’t know what else can say. pretty sure the game is on sale on steam now. anyway please play this absolute masterpiece and stan studio za/um for clear skin. ACAB.

[kazieka]

Day 1: Bound

woooo whumptober is here! let’s kick things off with karliah skyrim! aka my favorite npc in the entire whole game hearteyesemoji

Well, this is embarrassing, Karliah thinks, and spits a mouthful of pink foam into the fire. It sizzles and pops.

The Nords going through her things don’t seem to notice, entranced as they are by her inventory. Karliah can’t blame them. Most people would be hard-pressed to identify half of her kit. But even backwater racists surprise her every once in a while.

“Thieves’ tools, are they?” says the one with the beard.

“Looks that way,” says the one with the cheap iron helmet. “Ought to expect as much from grey-skins.”

The one holding her gear, a broad-shouldered woman with a mace at her belt, says nothing. Instead, she pulls the file out of Karliah’s carefully-curated kit and snaps it in half.

Karliah doesn’t wince, but she does want to. That was a good file. New, too. She tries to focus around the blood in her mouth.

It’s humiliating, being caught like this. Not by the Dark Brotherhood, or by Mercer Frey, or by the Emperor himself after having caught her scent. Just by a band of unwashed Nords who came up from downwind while she was trying to have a piss in the bushes. Oh, Brynjolf would never let her hear the end of it. The coarse goathair rope cuts into the skin of her arms. They’d hogtied her, wrists to ankles, the rope winding all the way up to her shoulders, and she can’t quite get enough slack together to slip her fingers through. She tries to inch towards the fire while Tamriel’s shittiest bandits rifle through her things; but the instant her knee shifts in the snow, the Nord with the beard swings the butt end of his warhammer into her temple. The pain is immediate and blinding.

“I told you not to move!” he bellows as Karliah hits the snow face-first. Her awkwardly-bound left shoulder hits a rock and pops out of its socket. She doesn’t scream. It’s out of spite as much as it is from her training. She breathes slow and deep, snow catching her lashes as she blinks at the ground in a daze. There is blood on the frozen wind.

The broad-shouldered woman is still looking through Karliah’s kit. She hasn’t even looked up. “Kent,” she says. “What d’you make of its armor?”

The Nord with the shoddy iron helm — Kent, apparently — offers up a shrug. “Dunno. It’s leather.”

“I can see that, oaf. Is it worth carrying?”

Kent shrugs again. “Prob’ly not. ‘S dyed dark, clearly for thief work. It’d be hard to sell. Could get us suspicion.”

The Nord with the beard cuts in. “We can just tell ‘em we took it off some grey-skin who tried to rob us. Might get a bounty from the Jarl, even.”

The woman with the mace seems to give that some thought. Karliah knows that when talk turns to bounties — and the wagonloads of gold that accompany them — people get stupid. They’ll talk themselves into killing her if they think it’ll get them a single rusty septim. She has to get out of here. She gives her dislocated shoulder an experimental wriggle. It howls in pain. The goathair rope doesn’t slacken an inch.

An armored boot connects with her hip. “Stop fucking moving!” roars the man with the beard. “You dirty fucking thief!”

Kent looks nervously between his companions. “Should we kill her and be done with it?” he asks the broad-shouldered woman. “I don’t need no knife in my back from a grey-skin ‘cos you dithered about the dirty work.”

“Do I look like I’m dithering?” snaps the woman, flinging the remnants of Karliah’s kit into the snow and whipping out her mace with a quick and fluid movement that Karliah was not expecting. Oh, she’s fucked now. “Go dig a hole in a snowbank, then, and be quick. We don’t want the body visible from the road.”

Karliah does her best to launch herself into the paltry campfire. Better the burns than a crushed skull, she decides, and if she’s going to have a chance to escape, she needs the ropes off, and goathair rope snaps in heat. But her dislocated shoulder shifts in a way that makes her vision go grey, and then the armored boot kicks her again. This time it hits the soft flesh between her hip and ribcage, and then she’s facedown in the snow again.

The Nords are arguing, but Karliah can’t hear them over the shrieking pain in her side and shoulder. Blood trickles into her eye — probably from where the bearded one had hit her with the hammer. Dazed, Karliah can only think that she’s going to die in a snowdrift like a panicked rabbit; she won’t die wealthy and fat and old, like she’d always told Gallus. She won’t die in a heist of legend, like she told Brynjolf. No. She was going to die in the arse-end of Skyrim at the hands of some illiterate Nords with garbage iron armor, stripped of her only possessions, trussed like a hog, and dumped under the bush she’d pissed in a few minutes ago.

Karliah is weighing the odds of calling upon Nocturnal when the first arrow hits the bearded man in the eye.

There’s a split second of absurdity, where the Nords and Karliah stare in disbelief at the fletching sticking out of the bearded man’s face, as his vitreous humor oozes down his cheek, before they snap into action.

The woman shouts a wordless cry and leaps for the treeline with her mace held high. Kent staggers backwards, fumbling with the bow slung across his back. The man with the beard topples to the side. Karliah wriggles towards the fire with all the speed her broken, hogtied body can muster. It’s not much. She moves in little aborted flops and scoots like a dying salmon. By the time she finds the fire (by planting her thumb in an ember), the woman’s shouts have stopped, and Kent is screaming.

The goathair rope finally touches flame and goes up like a haystack. Her hands and ankles now free, Karliah snaps her shoulder back into place with a rough twist, whips the little dagger out of her belt, and spins around to put a tree between her and wherever the arrow came from.

Kent finally stops screaming with a gurgle that Karliah knows without looking means he’s gotten an arrow in the trachea. She ignores him and looks for the archer, dagger in hand, her wrecked shoulder still screaming in protest.

“There’s no need for all that,” says a rough and familiar voice. Iria swaggers out of the woods, heavy boots plowing a trail through the snow, her bow gleaming violet in the waning sun.

The flood of relief makes Karliah dizzy. She doesn’t drop the dagger, but she does sway a little and sit down, hard, beside the scattered coals of the fire. They hiss from where she’d knocked them into the snow in her wild dive.

Iria puts her bow away and gestures at Karliah. “You look like shit. You want healing?”

Karliah’s lips are suddenly numb and uncooperative, so she nods. Iria sits in the snow in front of her and places warm grey hands on her own. The rush of magic is breathtaking. Karliah watches the rope burns on her arms fade under the golden light.

“Thank you,” she says softly.

Iria kisses her forehead. “Shadows preserve you,” she says, and then she rises, draws her bow, and strides back to the trees. Karliah will not see her for weeks.

[eternalfarnham]

Hell to Play Introduction

As of a few weeks ago, I’m running a game of diabolical contracts, music puns and battles of the bands in Valor, a system which literally used to be called “Shounen.” I’ve got five players, a Roll20 setup and a frankly unnecessary number of NPC character sheets in my vaults, and was encouraged to do recaps/postmortems of the sessions I’ve already completed.

Hell to Play is, well, I think my pitch explains it pretty well:

If you’ve got real music in your soul, not simple rhythm but talent, you can visit the crossroads and sign to the only label that matters. The devil takes care of his own, they say; in exchange for your signature in blood and the soul out of your chest he’ll guarantee you fame, success, any number of esoteric delights. He’ll make you immortal like old Faustus, conquer death, unwind time, anything you like, as long as you agree that one day you’ll go on tour in Hell, and play in his band. 

They say every starlet and pop star and modern Beethoven has their own deal in Hell’s archives, proof positive of Satan’s dominion over the industry, with Las Pleiades — sin/song capital of the world — as his throne and office. And you’ve got that proof, yourself. After all, you’re one of the lucky few with enough talent to make a wish. You visited the crossroads and traded away your musical soul for your heart’s desire, and you got it, no ironic reversals, no loopholes, no bullshit. The devil doesn’t go back on his word.

Well, until he did. 

A week ago, your soul — that little weight you’d almost forgotten — slammed back into your chest cavity. Your contract burst into flames, and all the benefits it afforded you — fame, immortality, what-have-you — evaporated, leaving you with the dregs of whatever occult energies went into granting your heart’s desire. The same happened to everyone, every single signatory to Hell’s label, collapsing the music industry overnight. It was days of confusion and panic before the messenger demons came to let you know the score.

See, the boss — they said — isn’t happy with your work. He who scorned the Celestial Chorus cannot be satisfied with the crap you’re pushing nowadays. The time has come, says he, to thin the herd, to find what worth there may be in the sea of nobodies signed to his label. So you’re invited down to good old Las Pleiades, dead center of the Ixcalan desert, for a musical festival to end all music festivals, a brimstone-scented Burning Man, a battle of the bands where sabotage is fair game and death is always on the table.

And the last remaining band will get another chance to exchange their souls — and not just for their own wishes. Every wish ever made — the wages of sin paid out to every last serious sinner there is — will be theirs to take for the same measly price they were already willing to pay.

Ready to play?

I’ve got five PCs:

Oniko Akane, a popular Vtuber who identified enough with her succubus Live3D avatar to permanently rework her actual body to match, complete with infernal dance moves;

Brigitte Bubblegummi Stone, likewise a YouTuber, who wished for fame and attention for their “Playing Hard Metal in Frilly Lolita Outfits” YT channel;

Sid Robins, an actual-factual demon and adept necromancer, who hollowed out a dead musician like a suit to live his dreams of becoming a goth prog rocker;

Jonny O’Georgie (@itsbenedict), of “Devil Went Down to Georgia” fame, immortal, as large as a mid-sized sedan, and looking for a rematch with the Old Man;

and Solfege.io (@drazelic), an ensouled, conscious composer app made manifest as a Vocaloid with laser violin bows instead of legs, trying to save her first user’s life.

Next post I’ll be recapping Episode 1, Out of the Frying Land. After a long trip through the desert, our heroes reach Las Pleiades. Number of busses ridden: 1. Number of busses set on fire: 1. Don’t miss it!

[dragonkeeper19600]

Let’s talk about Fawful’s stress.

I feel like it’s a character trait that isn’t talked about as often as some of others Fawful has displayed. Yes, he’s manic, highly intelligent, obsessed with food, and full of fury, but beneath all that quirkiness is a surprisingly human take on world domination. Of all things.

As YouTuber Fawful’s Minion has discussed on his own channel, Fawful is very much a self-made villain. He had to obtain all the power he gains throughout the games through his own effort. His rise to power is most clearly illustrated when you compare his state in Partners in Time to his triumph in Bowser’s Inside Story. This is not a guy who was born into power, this is a guy who had to adjust to his status each time it grew. And he’s not used to it. With each victory, he treads further into unfamiliar territory, and it makes him as uneasy as any new situation would.

Go back and look at his last scene in Superstar Saga. It’s a scene we all know. Fawful realizes Cackletta needs him more than he needs her, he’s a dangerous force in his own right, he might be able to become his own boss, but look at his exact reaction.

He’s nervous. Contemplating his future independence freaks him out. It’s a reaction I find to be surprisingly identifiable. What he’s feeling isn’t exactly dread. It might be more comparable to what a teenager feels when contemplating the day they’ll move out or attend college. Can I really make it on my own? The future is both exciting and scary.

We’re used to portrayals of villains that throw themselves wholeheartedly into their schemes but not villains who are wracked with nerves while doing so. Being a leader is a heavy responsibility, leading a war is an even bigger responsibility, and during a world domination campaign, there are a million things that could go wrong. Battle plans, weapon development, military training, dealing with insubordination (I see you, BFF!), not to mention the populace you’ve conquered now needs to be fed. Fawful’s working under a lot of pressure, and he, unlike other villains, isn’t content to let all his lackeys do the worrying for him. 

Several lines of dialogue both from Fawful and NPCs (like the one above) mention how hard he works.

All throughout both Bowser’s Inside Story and Superstar Saga, Fawful is constantly busy. His line about “overtime” is no joke; I can’t think of a single moment in either game where Fawful has any down time. Even Cackletta or Bowser get to sit in a chair every once in a while. Fawful is constantly on his feet. He had ambition, but Fawful is no idle dreamer. He threw every bit of himself into his campaign. That kind of pressure would get to anyone. 

It’s a character trait the games use for comedy more often than not. The idea that the manic bean obsessed with mustard would suffer from work anxiety is funny in how unexpected it is. But, I find it to be bizarrely endearing. Applying the same fears and worries every overachieving person experiences to a super villain makes the character, if not more sympathetic, at least more approachable, and it’s definitely one of the more grounded aspects of Fawful’s character.

[metalgearkong]

Darkwood - Review (Switch)

12/8/19

Developed by Acid Wizard Studio, released August 2017

Darkwood looked exactly like the kind of game I love: dark and disturbing. This game advertises itself not only to be unforgiving, but also struts the fact that it contains no jump-scares. Darkwood seemed to be a promising game, and after buying and downloading it, I have a lot of thoughts about it. I want to say right away I didn’t quite finish the game. This game certainly isn’t shy about saying how challenging it is, and I agree, mainly in its opening and final hours. What sold me the most about this game was its top-down perspective, and I saw a quick video online of the light bending through the trees as the character walked through a thick patch of woods. It looked like a unique enough game, and if it could fill me with dread without any jump-scares, I was all in. Darkwood was developed by a Polish company, Acid Wizard Studio, which I believe is their first commercial game to date.

You may be able to see around you due to the game’s perspective, but can only see objects, items, and characters if they fall into you beam of light. This means things can still surprise you, and you need to look around just as you would in a normal 3rd person action game. It also means monsters can still sneak up on you because if there’s something in the way of your flashlight beam, or they approach from the side, you won’t see it until they’re right in front of you. This is the closest the game comes to having jump-scares, but its more of a emergent gaming moment because none of that is necessarily designed, and is a byproduct of the AI. We play as some guy who is stuck in a portion of the woods where all routes have been overgrown, rendering them impassible. The main objective of the game is for the protagonist to find a man who has stolen a key from you, leading to the only way out of the woods.

The gameplay cycle of Darkwood is to scavenge for supplies during the day, and defend yourself in a hideout at night. The environments are mostly open world, and each time you start a new game, the map is somewhat randomized. I found this out with my numerous attempts to start the game over again when I feel like I learned more about the mechanics, and wanted to start off on a better foot. Darkwood is definitely what I’d call a “survival” style game, where the action and adventuring takes a backseat to the meticulous collection of items and crafting. The protagonist can only run briefly as your stamina meter runs out quickly. It also refills quickly, but it means you have to take measured sprints with frequent breaks. This comes into play especially when being chased by a mad dog or monster. It also affects how quickly you can get back to your hideout as the sun sets and night takes over. Nighttime is far more dangerous than the day time, and it reminds me of the difference between the fog world and Otherworld of the Silent Hill games.

The mechanics have a high learning curve, which lead to a lot of frustration at the beginning of the game. Learning through trial and error what items are important and which are junk is just part of the process. You then have to learn how to best make your hideout as safe as possible, as it becomes your safe bunker while the night takes over. In real world time, the sun is up for about 20 minutes, while night is only about 5 minutes. It also reminds me of Dying Light, where the nighttime is the most dangerous, and even though its shorter than the day time, it can feel much longer due to the tension and focus you need to survive. The more days that go on, the more the threats slowly get greater and greater. I recommend buying a watch as soon as possible because being able to tell the exact in-game time is crucial for planning your day (and knowing how much longer nighttime lasts each night).

One of the most important things you can do is collect gasoline and wood. Keeping the lights on means keeping the generator gassed up, and you need wood in order to barricade windows. However, nearly everything is important in some way. For example, scrap metal can be crafted into bear traps and other defenses. Bottles and rags can be combined with gas or alcohol to make Molotov cocktails. There’s a use for almost everything, which makes the day time so important to find as many things as possible. During the day is the time to complete quests as well. One of my favorite parts about the game are the sentient visitors you’ll get to interact with. Eventually a mutated trader visits you in your hideout each morning, and he becomes your best friend quickly. When the trader visits, you get unlimited in-game time to trade and build new items. This is a godsend in a game like this where time is your biggest resource. Once you’re ready, and you leave the hideout, normal time resumes.

The art on these characters is dark and disturbing. Not a single NPC is a normal person, and few of them are any better than ambiguously malicious. I loved encountering new NPCs to talk to just to see the art that brings them to life, and learn about their personality. Occasionally you will find an opportunity to help one character or another, which can affect how things proceed in the future. For example, if you go against the Wolfman he will no longer serve as a vendor, but the Musician may have an advantage worth the sacrifice. None of this is explicitly told to you and I loved inching my way forward, wary of everything I did and how it might affect me. When you survive each night you earn an amount of “reputation.” Reputation is your currency in this post-apocalypse, and it’s what you use to trade with. Selling items to a vendor earns you reputation, while buying things costs reputation. It’s important to be extremely frugal, you gain reputation from surviving a night in your hideout. If you die during the night, no new reputation for you the next day.

Sound design is crucial for any horror game to establish the oppressive atmosphere and dread. Darkwood, while not graphically impressive as a top-down Unity game, knocks it out of the park with its audio. This is doubly true for the nighttime segments. I loved dragging both lamps in the hideout to the room I’ve hunkered down in, and just listening to the noises around me. It also helps in identifying monsters or threats in the environments even if they don’t cross your beam of light. Eventually monsters and savages will outright break into your hideout, and you need to defend yourself with any means possible. Building nail boards and shovels make for decent melee weapons in the beginning, but both tools have a long wind up animation, and don’t deliver much damage. Furthermore every item degrades when used, so nothing lasts forever. Eventually you will gain enough reputation to start purchasing gun parts and ammunition. I can’t tell you how good it feels to finally build something like a pistol, and have one or two extra mags of ammunition. 

This is truly a grim game with an overbearing sense of dread and hopelessness, and if you enjoy that kind of atmosphere, Darkwood will satisfy that curiosity. This is also one of the more difficult games I’ve ever played, mainly in its early hours experimental phase, where I restarted the game at least 5 times until I felt like I got the hang of the mechanics. This front end frustration nearly turned me off from the game altogether, but I kept trying, and eventually made it to nearly the end of the story. I enjoyed Darkwood the most in its middle portions, when you get into a rhythm of scavenging, crafting, defending, and accomplishing missions. I rage-quit when I was maybe a few quests from the end of the game, when the ammo I had saved up for so long, instantly was all gone when I cam across a shed full of monsters and had to use waste every single bullet I had labored so hard for. It can feel like a set back quite a bit if you make one or two mistakes, and that frustration kept me from being inspired to push through till the very end. But, I do see myself coming back to this game in the future, and conquering the dark nightmare armed with the new knowledge I have on how to succeed.

8/10