#i just wish so many games wouldnt do this with their maps

[hyah-through-hyrule]

I think I figured out why I keep coming back to botw. The way it constructs it's open world is honestly brilliant. I've played a lot of other open world games since botw's release; various assassin's creeds, horizon zero dawn/ forbidden west, stuff like that. And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed playing those games too. But I noticed it got tedious and lost my interest after a while. And honestly, a lot of it has to do with how the maps work. In botw, when you unlock a portion of the map, it doesn't show you the location of anything. Not even the stables show up on the map unless you walk in close proximity to one.

Other open worlds neglect to do this. In other games, locations of things like collectables/boss fights/etc is revealed to you on the map. In botw, they use visual cues to get you to go to a location, whether it's the orange glow of a shrine, rocks formed in a specific way, ruins, etc. What I love about it is you can opt in to have help if you want (sheikah shrine sensor, korok mask, etc), rather than having it automatically unlock for you. Being able to put your own map markers is great too, i wish more games would utilize that feature.

Curious to see if anyone feels the same way, or if you have other opinions!

[orcelito]

I'm almost 60 hours into tales of arise and I'm realizing that endgame is. Not that far away, honestly

How am I supposed to go through with this 😭😭😭😭😭 I don't want it to end

[moonsidesong]

ok ive finished puyo chronicle. dont play puyo chronicle. if you want to see puyo chronicle just watch the precise museum video uploads of it and ignore the fact they dont have eyebrows because its in citra. im gonna talk about puyo chronicle now.

absolutely miserable slog of a video game. every single open area is nearly completely empty and full of dead ends. every chest is full of lame rewards that i almost never got use out of and i eventually just stopped opening them so i wouldnt have to fight mimics anymore. you dont want to explore anything because there's hardly any reward for it and your movement speed is so slow there's even less of an incentive to go out of your way to trek to a random corner of the map for 200 coins that you wont use.

the final gauntlet, which is a 15-story tower, comprises of like, three stories where something happens and the rest are completely empty and only occupied by common enemies, which by then you will be tired of fighting and actively be avoiding encountering. the devs made a bunch of maps and said thats enough game design for today<3

and then, at the end of it, you fight a final boss that had literally nothing to do with anything else up until that point. rafisol really had the potential to be an extremely cool antagonist if she had been involved in the plot from the getgo but instead she shows up having not at all been foreshadowed prior, you do the same lame fighting style youve been doing for almost every encounter up until that point, and the only saving grace of it is a really cool battle theme. its pretty bad presentation to just watch this supposedly UBER powerful absorption themed final boss just float there menacingly and occasionally throw a line of nuisance puyo at you. rafisol has a lot of cool animations, i dont know why you'd rob her of the chance to show them off in a dramatic way!!!! aaah!!!! its all really disappointing because she's the only female final boss character besides doppelganger arle and shes stuck attached to this soggy sad nothing burger of a video game. i want my evil women INVOLVED sega

puyo characters have never been the most complicated to figure out but they are NOTICEABLY flatter and more annoying. you can see it the most on sig and ragnus who refuse to talk about literally anything other than "bug!" or "im the hero from videogame world!" respectively. the plot spends all its time being completely aimless other than the vague idea of "if we find these stone pedestals, something will happen questionmark???" up until ally randomly starts getting sick when rafisol starts ready to hatch from her evil egg or whatever. the plot's idea is that satan modified this story because he wanted to go on an adventure with arle. and well chroni writers i have to say you guys arent really doing a good job of conveying that when the only places you see satan are at the very beginning and very end of the game.

hey speaking of characters hanging out with arle. theres. too many. of them. i think they were just trying to make the whole skill battle team thing make sense in universe but i think itd be a lot easier to just focus on like. the A trio and Ally and you only hang out with the other characters in the areas they're actually relevant. and they just go "well arle ill be there to help you if you need me!" but they dont physically come with you and then we just pretend that makes sense.

anyway despite it all i still like ally and i still like rafisol despite both of them having terrible haircuts god bless but i wish they were in a video game that didnt suck absolute egg!!!!!!! like i said earlier rafisol couldve been extremely cool if she was involved early on and wasnt just some unrelated problem girl. ive been playing around with a few re-write(ish??) ideas that ive been sharing with my friends to keep my sanity while trudging through this videogame and i might share some of those some other time.

until then please look at this picture again. my favorite part about this game is when accord holds popoi like this. every time popoi was on screen i briefly forgot how much not fun i was having

[midyearflowers]

i have some Thoughts about totk that i have to get out cause i watched zeltik's review and i agree so hard

obviously major spoilers ahead

so i wanna start by saying i absolutely LOVE totk and its easily my fave zelda game ever, with botw being in second. but i will say both games as incredible as they are definitely suffer from the nintendo treatment in that there are awesome moments that blow everything out of the water, and then there are some bad moments that can really bring them down. case in point for totk specifically, zelda's sacrifice and draconification brings me to tears every time and her final words give me goosebumps. but then the cutscenes after each dungeon are... literally copy and paste. like you play them together and its beat for beat the same ("demon king?? secret stone???" nintendo why....)

like i love the story and think they couldve really had something if they had put more effort in and not only fleshed it out more but delivered it better. the whole "find the memories that can be out of order" thing worked for botw cause you already knew the ending so they were mostly additions rather than the full story. but with totk you dont know the ending, you dont know what its all leading up to. there is a mystery to it all, and being able to basically walk up to the end without any other context just ruins that. its just a weird decision honestly

and this all makes it clear that 90% of the development time went to the gameplay. which isnt entirely a bad thing, the gameplay is fucking AWESOME. the world and the way you interact with it is seamless, they NAILED the atmosphere and sound design for every single thing. like the tense beginning as you get closer to ganondorf, the ancient and solemn sky islands and ruins, the creepy and unknown depths. diving down my first chasm, which wasnt the story one so there were NO lights waiting for me at the bottom, i got CHILLS. Falling further and further, the area getting darker and more gloom infested, to land in endless darkness in all directions and having "the depths" title appear onscreen. *chefs kiss*

tho that brings me to another point in that, like botw, totk suffers from "world too big" and there ends up being many pockets where theres just. nothing. maybe a korok, but those get boring after the first few. but theres so much that is just empty and bare that you wonder if they wouldnt have benefited from a smaller map. like i love open world games, and totk at least added caves to the surface world which helped, but theres really only so many random puzzles you can do before youve seen everything. the depths being an inverted hyrule is SO cool, but they didnt really do anything with it. aside from the camera quest and very brief yiga stuff, there really isnt any real reason to comb the depths, unless you need some zonaite or something. the dlc stuff being treasures you could find was neat, but also nearly every armor being the same as botw except for a couple extras was kinda a let down. the new dragon armors are so cool and unique, i wish they did more

the zonai. merely hinted at in botw through ruins and vague item descriptions. they were so mysterious and literally everyone was theorizing on them. and then we get a game that is going to explore it all! the mystery is going to be solved! .....except it wasnt. id almost argue we know LESS about the zonai than we did before. they supposedly descended from the heavens with magical artifacts and founded the kingdom of hyrule, and then when zelda travels back to this time, theres only 2 zonai left and they barely know anything about their own species??? like what?? its like the timeline between the first mural and the second is like. centuries. why are there only 2, where did the rest go? if they were there before the kingdom of hyrule, what did they do? WHY did they descend from the heavens? it feels like nintendo needed to explain where the new tech was from since it wasnt sheikah, so they just kinda made stuff up as they went to justify it. its as if the story was just built around the gameplay. which id honestly believe cause initially it was just supposed to be dlc for botw but they came up with too many ideas so just made a new game in the same world

which brings me to my next point. why was it marketed as the sequel to botw, when it basically did its hardest to pretend botw didnt even happen. the botw references were basically just that. references. not continuing the story or adding to it. its just "yea that happened and we're rebuilding now". the fact the developers literally just said "eh the sheikah tech just disappeared one day and no one knows why" like come ON. not to mention all of the important characters you directly affected in botw seemingly forgetting link exists within the 2-3 years between the games. the man who you paid to build your house doesnt even recognize you! HESTU doesnt recognize you, and youre one of like 3 people who can see him!! the people of HATENO where link literally LIVES dont recognize him!!!!!!!! WHY

i have more but this is already long. i have something else on ganondorf but ill make a separate post. anyway i do love this game with all my heart but nintendo has me scratching my head more often than not

[lostacelonnie]

Thank you! I kinda just. Realized i pay for all my own stuff & have for years so whats stopping me y'know. Oh we love to hear about the fall of far right leadership i hope that turns out well & you can get your eventual hrt as well. Oh yeah i never wear swimsuits to the beach typically. Always been with people i dont like or too many strangers for my liking. But i like to find seashells & stuff. Oh? English is such a weird language having a partner to learn from who's fluent is like. Required almost. So im glad you had one. I appreciate when people are chill as long as you try its nice & leaves room for mistakes that'll happen inevitably. Got confused for a moment & the concept of having a birthname you dont have listed in your bio lost me like. What do ya mean you had any different name what. Both mine are easy so i dont have that as a first name problem. Where is tromso? I wish you luck in that fall/winter trips are so nice. I especially love to go camping in them because less people so more space. Oh she just gets all the counters wow. Gonna have to focus on her a bit for sure. I dont know if i have enough for guaranteed kafka but i will probably try. Just to see what happens. If nothing else i hope bronya or welt come home for you. Fontaine is one of the regions im most interested in so ill stick through for it but i might squeeze a break in towards natlan honestly. Chasm was. A pain anyways i do not blame you for skipping it honestly. Thats an average day in warsaw? Wild. Ohhh that sounds like it was a blast please pass belated birthday wishes to avery for me. Hair dye is such a fun thing to do congrats on the red! I wanna dye mine again soon. Eyeliner is a thing i wanna teach myself to do too ive just been. Forgetting a lot

yeah thats very understandable!!! and thank you!! after a long time i finally feel at least a little hopeful ab this countrys future but well see. yeah i have the exact same thing but at the same time drying a lot of clothes is Annoying [esp on camps since thats the main place i actually go into the water on] so i often just put regular clothes over a swimsuit. win-win situation. seashells ARE fun to find but i always forget to bring sth to carry them sjdjflksjf plus its pretty hard to find actually nice ones, over here at least. YEAH god plus the way english is taught in polish schools does NOT help so honestly if i didnt have additional lessons i probably wouldnt have learned anything despite studying for a looooong time. and yeah its that way with almost anything isnt it. AH I DO THAT EXACT THING SO OFTEN i genuinely forget that people Have birthnames. or even names in general i just treat usernames as first names a lot of the time. tromso is the place in norway i was in!! pretty far up north but very charming. thank you!! ahhh i almost never go camping but perhaps One Day..... yeah clara has been my best friend ever since i got her. shes so fun to use. thankies and good luck to both of us!!! already got 106 pulls ready + the 9 more from the login event + 20 days left to grind so while i defo wont get enough for guarantee i think it might be possible for me to get her. honestly the region im most excited for is snezhnaya and thats gonna be the last one released iirc so. still a while until that happens. but at least when/if i come back im gonna have a lot of stuff to check out so thats fun. i unfortunately suffer from having to see everything thats new Immediately so i often speedrun new versions in 3 days and them im like....... What Now........ until the next update and then the cycle repeats. ah i should play more games that arent released this way. but yeah while the chasm was quite pretty imo and the story was. well. it wasnt STUNNING but it was fun. but the exploration aspect SUCKED good lord i hated how i could never quite tell if im in the region displayed on the map or below it. agh. glad thats over. and well yknow how it is with big cities, at least i live in a fairly peaceful part so we dont really have big stuff like that often. i will!! and thanks!! i agree hair dye IS very fun but unfortunately my hair texture makes it really hard for dye to stick so it washes off quickly :'] but alas. and yeah fair jdjfklg i have the same thing PLUS. its annoying i can never get it even

[tears-of-boredom]

i woke up at fucking 3.30am and have been constantly waking up and falling back asleep since then. fucking horrible dreams. last one was that i got like 32,000 notes on a post where i was like just asking for people to wish me luck for something. i dont remember any of the other ones, and to be honest 6ts probably better that way...except i do remember snippets...and they were all horrible. one was where I was carrying like a toddler around, because they were too tired to walk. and like, it was just a random toddler. i was desperately trying to lose the kid, walking into like every store that had "girly" stuff, so maybe they would want to leave, but no. then I went to some tiny ass factory because i needed to find something. but the head guy there didnt like it when we ditched him while he was giving a tour, and he figured out what we were trying to do, so we had to run away. i ended up on like an equivalent of the corner of a map in a game set in a metropolis. I had someone elde with me and ms marvel found us and begun to try and drop us off the high roof. it was a fucking struggle, ms marvel tried to use her flexibility to throw us off, but we just took advantage of it and grabbed on to her.. but eventually it was over and ms marvel was in a ziplock bag, trying to get out. i was trying to squish her even more, to kill her. the other person switched to like a gun wielding character, and I wanted so bad to click triangle and change them into a more useful character, like hulk or something.. but alas, ms marvel would probably escape, since my character wouldnt keep squishing her if I wasnt controlling them. then she turned into that classic low-poly 3d Mario. he was tiny, and trying to escape the ziplock bag as well. I was trying so hard to crush him. i did eventually lose him, or I just killed him without noticing. he was really fucking tiny.

then switch to me going to the kitchen and telling my mom about this weird dream i had where i was desperately trying to crush mario. its still a dream to be clear. and then I was I think packing for like maybe a train ride. and it was really annoying how many bags i needed. then I realised that my school books are in my bag, and that I can leave them to have more space. then i really made a mess in the kitchen,, I dont know what precisely happened, but everything was covered in purble blobs, of something. i tried to clean it, but I didnt have the time, so I just went to change my shirt, that had also gotten dirty. i changed into a hoodie i do not have irl, because it was made of this fabric, that was the exact same as this pink blanket I do have irl, with like disney princesses on it. I kind of wish i did have that hoodie irl though...and yeah.. something about having to find dog figurines as well...last night was horrible.

[surprisebitch]

my experience playing Arknights for one week

i said i wouldnt pick up another gacha... but i really had to find out i could re-roll for SilverAsh.. and fast forward, it has come to the point i really want to play this game a lot and love it that i have to talk about why it’s so good

GACHA ASPECTS

first, the gacha is generous. you will always get a 5-star from every banner within your first ten rolls. you can also buy a standard 5-star and/or 6-star operator from the shop with in-game currency you either have to farm or save for with yellow certificates. these come when you roll a new operator from the gacha or from a weekly game mode called Annihilation. they dont come easily though but you can save for them

you get to recruit new operators for free too, you just gotta wait every 7 hours and 40 minutes if you want a 3 to 5 star. then if you get a special tag, set it to 9 hours so you can get a guaranteed 4 or 5 star

Annihilation is a mode you can do to get originium, LMD, and battle records depending on how many enemies you kill in a single run. so the game incentivises you to power up your operators so you can roll more since.

the reason why you would probably whale or be made to roll and save is getting copies of the 6-star because the more copies you get, the more they’d be cheaper to deploy. that is not a necessity though. another is sanity/stamina. people buy gacha currency to either play more, farm more, or speed up factory production

every operator is viable including the lower rarity ones. so dont feel that you wasted on one leveling them because they would all be investments especially. dupes can also make them cheaper to deploy so the more copies you get for them, the more they would most likely be in your squad for a while. once you get more than 6 too, they become currency which you can use. also cheap to raise with early to mid-game investment. they also learn a trait which can be a great asset for your RIIC or base! for example a maxed out 2-star can have the best type of base buff

the husbandos albeit few are eye candy. i hope as time goes we get more new sexy male operators. but honestly, the advantage is it will be easier to save for their banners. there’s also no male tax because they arent underwhelming and are really great units. in fact the S+ tier unit to this date (in NA at least) is SilverAsh and he is a catboy husbando who you can re-roll for free. you wouldnt get to experience his full glory though until you’re far enough which is level-gated by a well-leveled arsenal of operators

SO MANY REWARDS and give-aways!!! like this game is so generous. it has a cumulative login, consecutive login, monthly login, weekly login, campaign login, and event login omg. you also get rewards from missions and leveling servants. so many incentives are given to power-up your servants. its so newbie and f2p friendly

GAMEPLAY

when you have to farm experience or materials, there’s the auto-deployment function. so if you perfectly cleared it (3/3 rating) without using a support, you can just start the node with the function and leave it on the background. this may not guarantee 100% success though as sometimes your operators could die from a stray crit but luckily you can take over if an error risk is detected. so you dont have to go through the tedious process of doing it all over again. you can also overwrite that error

the difficulty spike happens not too far into the story that you will be forced to level up your servants and try out different strategies going out your comfort zone. this includes improving your base, leveling specialists, etc. you’d also be encouraged or forced to think outside the box because some maps can make certain specialists shine, so dont underestimate your crowd-control and shift operators as they can make the defense easier.

the game is so flexible. there isnt a fixed strategy, it’s well-balanced where every team could flourish. it really depends either how properly leveled they are and your gameplay.

you cant get carried by an S-tier support and you are forced to be independent. for one, their max level is scaled to your highest level operator. a friend support can only go so far but it’s your whole squad that matters so make sure they’re all properly leveled and youre proactive in activating their skills, withdrawing one, replacing, managing timing, etc. also, clearing without a friend support is what will allow you to auto-farm the node

you can practice any fight! so if the node seems to be difficult, you get 30 free practices per day, so you can assess or simulate if your operators are ready for the challenge. and if by chance you fuck up your official run when you start it officially the first time, you can leave and the game refunds all the sanity/energy you used! it will only start deducting sanity the more you try so use your practice drills wisely

besides the tower defense main gameplay, there are many things you can do to diversify your experience from setting up your base, designing your dormitory in your base with furnitures, etc. managing your operators and maintaining efficiency and workflow. a great base is what will help you generate income and experience to level up your operaots

many materials but nothing too overwhelming. the game gives you a good idea and guides you on where to farm them or how to get them. you can just click the material and it will tell you where to get those if you have completed the map. it will also tell you what node to complete if you havent. so you will never get lost

ART and SOUND

the ART! it’s so pretty omg from the backgrounds to the operator designs. also despite being predominantly filled with waifu operators, their designs are not fanservice. there’s like hardly any tiddy window. their body proportions are realistic. they’re all dressed up practically for battle

the soundtrack is sooooo good! i really love the vibe even the home page. it’s relaxing to hear you can leave it on the background. the battle music is also really nice

STORY

it is really engaging!! it is rather a slow burn and everything seems to set up to a battle every time but it does not feel too repetitive as we learn new things and the game is able to make these encounters realistic and connected to the story. the events are fun and make you learn more operators who are featured too. it’s very thought-out

TL;DR:

there are so many aspects about Arknights that makes it a cleverly designed Tower Defense Game: generous rewards/gacha, interactive gameplay, well balanced operators, farming convenience, aesthetically pleasing art, etc. If you are looking for a game that will get your mind working, Arknights is so worth it. Give it a try cause I wish i joined sooner, but hey, it’s never too late!

(cred: artist)

[pestopascal]

While I will absolutely agree that CB2077 isn’t the ONLY game doing all this bullshit, or that other AAA studios don’t deserve the flack CDPR is getting, I have to say that this is absolutely the perfect storm and I think people are FINALLY seeing the problems in modern AAA gaming. CB2077 might be fun to play, may have a good story, but it’s almost impossible to see because of the glaring issues. Which, honestly, is a good thing. I hope games change after this.

under here

AAA studios have been like this and this sort of release has been completely normalised on all accounts by both the businesses themselves and fans because of the inherent reliance on modders (bethesda at the forefront of this), as well as the pushback every time companies actually go ‘uh we need a lil more time’ (although... they just shouldnt announce potential release dates, im even of the camp they shouldnt even start releasing the game until like 6 months out from their official date because they fuck it up every time. borderlands 3 being the only game i know of being in “secret” development and then announcing itself in march for a september release. game itself aside, thats how companies should do it). easily i can remember a lot of 2011 release games which have had the exact same issues as cp77′s release, and then every other game in between since. very rarely do you actually have a game that isn’t a fucked up mess of a pile of pixels. and it is always the customisable character ones that are honestly, genuinely, ugly looking at release. but you can definitely say its been happening looooooong before 2011, with unrealistic expectations, word limits, 11 month time frames, offloading sequels to smaller companies so they can suffer if it fails, etc etc. the entire system has been like this for so long... they dont know any real different nowadays.

i mean look. tlou2 released under crunch conditions this year, and was rewarded. it was ALL over the social media feeds, it was quite the controversy because, surprise surprise, the company promised they wouldnt do it uwu and then. bam ! crunch conditions. literally around that time too, bioware employees came out with a statement saying ‘man we wish dai FAILED so that back in 2014 we couldve proven crunch was a wrong practice’. they say this as well after having to produce da2 in 14 months, which just suffered from fans and journalism for reusing environments, because it was produced in 14 months, and honestly? no one pointed that out back then, bioware themselves pointed it out again this year, 6 years after release, that that game was produced in 14 months. rdr2′s release was hounded by stories of crunch, and they all disappeared into the night because... it was heralded as the best game of all time. that was 2018, 2 years ago.

i think too is that some people get kind of ... morally and ethically concerned. which is understandable. can you consume something when you know it was made under conditions like crunch? and i think one of the most confronting things about it is that 9/10, not only has your favourite company engaged in crunch conditions, they almost actively choose to continue with them. and then that’s a whole other bag of issues blown up over there when it comes to what is able to be consumed what isn’t etc etc

i think also like a mix of marketing, promises and then the expectations of what the game will be like have really had cdpr earn the ire of fans which is just like... you don’t believe what these companies are saying. you never should, esp when it’s their ceo’s saying it who don’t work on the actual floor. bioware itself is the main culprit of doing this to the point they finally came around with all the da4 concept art and teasing to be like ‘ummm but actually dont get invested?’. remember all that qunari lady fanart that bioware management was like ... please dont get attached? yeah. yeah. like at what point as well is there going to be heavy level of apprehension to approach this? and i can’t really talk either, i cracked open the door for mass effect again. i know exactly what kind of shit bioware will pull, i know they are teasing it already on social media, but mass effect is my ride or die series. that’s why people keep opening the door on letting these companies get away with it. and you can’t fault fans entirely either because this is down to a science of how to get money. i mean, fuck, mass effect andromeda’s entire advertising campaign HINGED on the n7 logo. for the nostalgia value. and i see text posts in the same vein of both ‘guys, disney isnt gonna fuck you if you consume every remake for nostalgia value’ and ‘its understandable why people do it’.

so then you have to go ‘well are fans as just to blame’ and then that’s a whole other argument.

i think also like. i personally havent run into aaaannnyyyyyyy of the issues that you see posted online. which is ironic bc 1) i play on ps4 and 2) its an old dusty ps4. in fact a lot of ppl i have spoken to who have had issues have played on pc. does this mean the glitches dont exist? ofc not, the vids and screenshots are right there. but like... ive had a basically unhindered experience so far, and i get where ppl are coming from (i do, i promise) where theyve basically found the game unplayable. is there also a standard of what ppl consider unplayable because ive played most AAA games at launch when they basically rushed to slap the box label on the game and called it a day until they work on patches. when ppl consider unplayable is also just... different per person. some people have a slight blur on the screen when turning too fast even in an MMO and decide the game is horrible and unplayable. some people can have broken quests and npcs not loading and falling through maps and still be fine. there’s no agreed statement of what makes a game unplayable either, which is why you read threads on twitter and someone goes ‘yeah this npc t-posed so i quit in the first hour’ with a dozen replies. everyone has different levels of it.

it’s a mixed bag of issues. im not excusing cdpr, but the ppl who worked on the game are honestly likely not the ones who pushed for a release. you’ve gotta look at sony and microsoft and ceo’s with bonuses coming up and the investors and shareholders and people who sit behind computers and read numbers detailing interest and demand and supply and how every single time they had to delay this game, the loudest (but smallest) bunch of assholes on like reddit and in the twitter threads complained that it was delayed AGAIN even though back in what 2015? they said it’ll come out when it’s ready. and yeah there are times when game delays result in a mismatched half assed sort of story (kh3... p5... ffxv... dai...) and then there are times when, if they need to delay the game... they probably need to delay the game. sometimes delays are bad sometimes theyre good sometimes you are sitting there like whew if you only didn’t try to be like THIS TIME this is the release date.

the ONLY WAY this will stop happening is, quite frankly, unionising. and everyone is allergic to that whole concept so like... this is “the perfect storm” as you put it. but it’s also not. people have been so disappointed over the last 2 years alone for gaming companies, the final product, the attitudes from higher ups, that i think cdpr is receiving a good few years worth of anger. i think theyre also on the receiving end of misdirection from american fans who still don’t fucking get the company isn’t american, because that’s another bag of issues as well. like we’re holding at least 8 bags of groceries out of the back of the car now, and we don’t want to take another trip, because there are so many little bits of this entire situation to look at. there’s so much back and forth.

i think the worst, but most realistic thing is: games won’t change. how they will social media wise will. maybe. assuming bioware gets their heads out their asses but... they’re going to be a lot more careful. i mean, hell, sony offered refunds. that was just a publicity stint. they dont give a fuck if the game was bad. as i said before, if they did, they would make all companies fix trophy problems, starting from like 2010 or whenever the trophy system first came out. they just don’t wanna fall in alongside cdpr being thrown on its sword. but the companies are gonna learn from this, get smarter, still do the same shit to their employees, still pay off journalists, still do media blackouts, etc etc. and we’re gonna be here in another year’s time, with another game, having these same roundabout arguments, and cp77′s issues are gonna fade into just a wikipedia article.

[fernandoswarcrimes]

Ego Season: Rules of the Game (part 2)

(If you get the refrence at the end ⭐️ for you)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Josettè had gotten up the next morning to go on her morning run after lastnight she knew she'd get along with some of the boys, but Trevor?...that was going to be a major challenge. She slipped outside and started her morning jog she made sure to have the adress in her maps just Incase she went far enough she wouldn't remeber her surroundings and how to get back still being new to the area. By the time she got back to the house and showered she made her way back downstairs she saw cole in the kitchen leaning over the island eatin a bowl of cereal "morning Jos" he mumbled in between bites she smiled grabbing a glass of orange juice leaning against the counter.

"So you ready to show all the boys up today at practice?" He asked looking over at her with a smile, he didn't see the problem with them having a girl on the team if she was as good as the scouts thought she was enough to invite her (not to mention looking at her highlights with the Silvertips) then she deserved to be there with them.

Josettè looked up confused she didn't know he knew it was supposed to be kept hush hush. "My mom told me lastnight, said I could give you a lift when I go she has to run some errands today or else she would've taken you" he said as he finished his ceral taking the bowl over to the sink and washing it out. “Gotcha I guess I'll go grab my bag then you look already to go don't want you to be late" Josettè said as she rinsed her cup out setting it on the drying rack before heading upstairs to grab her hockey bag from her room slipping her shoes on as she made her way downstairs meeting cole at the door

"So I take it the coach knows but the boys don't" She asked as they both made their way out to the car putting their bags in the trunk getting in the car "yeah they don't know, I think jack has somewhat of an idea but he hasn't said anything to anyone besides you know..me, he was the one who pointed out how good you were to some of us an then my mom told me you were coming to stay for a while. He kinda guessed something was up." Cole nodded as they drove to the arena for practice they didn't say much for a few minutes before he spoke up again "by the way how was it playing for the Silvertips? You played with uh Hart right? The Flyers new goalie?"

"Yeah, i finished school 2 years early being a foreign exchange student from France. Then got offered a spot there. I played with him for maybe a year or two before he got called up. He was really nice showed me a lot of tricks and stuff hes the only friend I really had or let get close to me since I don't have any siblings. He was so down to earth and just all around nice guy I wish some guys were that nice" Josettè rambled moving her hands about as she spoke about her time in Everett and being friends with the young Goalie. Cole glanced over at her briefly as he drove he was starting to see glimpses of the real Josettè behind the mask she put on infront of everyone he'd hoped the more they got to know eachother she'd trust him like she did Carter. "But yeah I enjoyed it in Everett didn't really want to leave but couldn't really pass this opportunity up plus with carter moving up it just felt right." She spoke as he nodded understanding what she meant.

They arrived at the arena about 10 minutes later both grabbing their respective bags from the trunk and heading inside, "so I'm supposed to meet with Coach John about everything" Josettè said as they walked down the many hallways "I'll take you too him, mom already let him know that I was bringing you in" he said with a smile stopping at a dor labeled coaches and knocked a few times.

The door soon opened and a tall man stepped out "Great! Caufield you're here and you brought Moreaux with you, I'm John Wroblewski Head Coach here. It's a pleasure to have you here I'm sure you will fit right in with the boys from some of the highlights I've seen of your playing style they could probably learn somethin from you in the long run."

Josettè nodded with a smile while he turned to Cole "alright go get changed and head on out on the ice for practice I gotta get her paperwork and stuff ready then we'll meet you boys out there." John said as Cole nodded patting Josettès shoulder before heading off to the lockeroom to get ready.

A little while later after they went over the paperwork and schedules and stuff that would go on John showed Josettè where she could change and then met him at the end of the hall when she was done making sure her braid was tight against her head and wouldnt come lose, and followed behind him as they headed out to the ice where the rest of the team was with the assistant coach.

John cleared his throat getting the boy's attention as they stopped running the drills they were doing "Boys, we usually don't do this and this is a first for us and the league, but we're bringing in a new person to the team. Guys I'd like you to meet Josettè Moreaux, I know a few of you have seen her skills and highlights from her time spent in Everett with the Silvertips. I expect all of you to treat her with the same respect you would any other teammate."

He motioned for Josettè to step onto the ice and join the boys to which she did getting a few odd looks from the ones she didn't recognize but all smiles from Cole, Alex, Spencer and Jack. Trevor on the other hand was aggravated to say the least, how could Wroblewski let this happen let alone agree to having a girl on their boys team.

They had a whole woman's team just for that reason. He huffed turning to Jack "Are we seriously letting a girl on the team? That's what womens hockeys for Jack not our development team, why aren't you objecting to this shit? She's going to ruin our whole team dynamic she's toxic and a bitch can't you see that!? Am I the only one who's seeing this?" He whisper shouted.

Jack gave Trevor an exasperated deadpanned look "Trevor we've known her not even twenty four hours. I don't think you have the resources and facts to back up those last two statements. As for the first one yes, we are letting a girl on the team. If coach didn't think this was a good idea he would've had her be on the woman's team ever think she may be too good for them and we could actually learn some things from her? Just let it go you're making an ass out of yourself. Coles parents wouldn't let her stay if she was anything like that." He pointed out as Josettè crossed her arms and looked over at Trevor

"You know, for whispering you're extremly loud, so I'm sorry? Is you're precious pride and ego scared that you'll get outshown by a girl? Because let's be honest honeybun, you don't have a lot going for you. Except that you're meh semi okay at hockey. And trust me, I've delt with guys like you back in Everett didn't end well for them obviously since I'm here and they're not. Tragic, isn't it?" She said with a smirk just as coach John started talking again

"Alright guys, were gonna start with a one v one to test and see what we need to work on, with knight in the net and then we'll go from there. First up, Caufield and Turcotte the rest take the bench." John said as Josettè and the rest made their way to take their seats on the bench to watch the two go head to head Josettè sat down on the end of the bench only to have Trevor plop down next to her without a care glancing from his two friends on the ice over to Jossettè.

"You know Josie Posie if we get paired up you're gonna lose badly. It's gonna be embarrassing and I'm going to enjoy every minute of it." He said with a smirk Josettè chuckled shaking her head keeping her eyes on the two on the ice as they went head to head "You know, I make cold calculations about difficult situations, and I do not take on anything I know I won't win. And i know I will win this. You can bet on that Sweetheart"

Trevor huffed at the mocking sweetheart nickname. "Yeah right that's like trying to use a croissant as a fucking dildo. It doesn't do the job and it makes a fucking mess. So cut the shit Posie it's not happening. You won't beat me one on one" he said rolling his eyes as John conviently called her and Trevor up next.

Josettè stood up patting his cheek "don't cry when I wipe the floor with you then, like I said...you'd eat those words Zegras." She said grabbing her stick stepping on the ice she could here him muttering behind her as they both got in position in center ice as John dropped the puck Josettè was quick to win the face off taking the puck darting around Trevor and off towards Spencer.

She could hear Trevor coming up behind her and quickly moved to the right backtracking with the puck as Trevor had turned around and was coming towards her to try and get the puck away from her, she quickly looked between him and Spencer before aiming and winding up for her signature one timer before sending the puck straight through Trevor's legs & right through Spencer's as well leading to a perfect five hole goal.

She smirked at Trevor and smiled sheepishly at Spencer "sorry had to make a point to Zegras here." Spencer waved her off he was a bit shocked himself that she was able to make that goal so easily, Trevor looked at her and over to Spencer with a questioning look as if to ask his friend if he let the goal in purposely.

Spencer who shook his head in denial making Trevor turn back to Josettè a bit shocked but quickly covering it up with an aggravated questioning tone making a bigger deal out of it than needed be "Are you kidding me? You just made that five hole goal on Spencer of all people."

"What? Like it's hard?"

Josettè said with a shrug as she heard the boys whooping and hollering as she winked at Trevor skating backwards towards the bench fist bumping a few of the guys as they all started excitedly talking about what just happened.

Trevor was puzzled to say the least. He knew he'd get her to break or so he tbought he just had to find what made her tick and hit the nail on the head with it.

[somnilogical]

modular "ethics":

a wrong and two rights make a right

<<I've been known to cause outrage by suggesting that people who really care about something shouldn't have romantic relationships. Think what would happen if I dared to suggest that those people should also seriously consider getting castrated. That would be crazy! And who am I to suggest that basically everyone claiming to be doing good is faking it? Then people would feel bad about themselves. We can't have that!>>

https://squirrelinhell.blogspot.com/2018/02/men-have-women-are.html

previously i talked about an infohazard about altruism that seemed to fuck with grognor. it feels useful to pass by the dead and look at their lives and choices.

i dont think that castrating yourself is a good intervention for doing stuff you care about, like this is patchwork constraints for an unaligned optimizer. if you arent altruistically aligned from core values, castrating yourself wont make you more aligned.

the "altruists" having babies thing is actual insane and pasek is right about that. pretty much all of society will try and gaslight you about this the way sometimes people are gaslit about "i need to have sex with lots of attractive fems to keep up my moral so i can do super good stuff afterwards.". like if people want to do good for the world it will flow out as a continuous expression of value not some brent dill kind of deal that institutions like CFAR accepted until there was too much social pressure for them to maintain this facade.

the entire premise that morality is this modular thing and you can help set the utility function of an FAI while being a terrible person, is wrong. yet organizations like CFAR keep thinking it will work out for them:

<<We believe that Brent is fundamentally oriented towards helping people grow to be the best versions of themselves. In this way he is aligned with CFAR’s goals and strategy and should be seen as an ally.

  In particular, Brent is quite good at breaking out of standard social frames and making use of unconventional techniques and strategies. This includes things that have Chesterton’s fences attached, such as drug use, weird storytelling, etc. A lot of his aesthetic is dark, and this sometimes makes him come across as evil or machiavellian.

  Brent also embodies a rare kind of agency and sense of heroic responsibility. This has caused him to take the lead in certain events and be an important community hub and driver. The flip side of this is that because Brent is deeply insecure, he has to constantly fight urges to seize power and protect himself. It often takes costly signalling for him to trust that someone is an ally, and even then it’s shaky.

  Brent is a controversial figure, and disliked by many. This has led to him being attacked by many and held to a higher standard than most. In these ways his feelings of insecurity are justified. He also has had a hard life, including a traumatic childhood. Much of the reason people don’t like him comes from a kind of intuition or aesthetic feeling, rather than his actions per se.

  Brent’s attraction to women (in the opinion of the council) sometimes interferes with his good judgement. Brent knows that his judgement is sometimes flawed, and has often sought the help of others to check his actions. Whether or not this kind of social binding is successful is not obvious.>>

https://pastebin.com/fzwYfDNq

<<AnnaSalamon 2/6/09, 5:54 AM

Aleksei, I don’t know what you think about the current existential risks situation, but that situation changed me in the direction of your comment. I used to think that to have a good impact on the world, you had to be an intrinsically good person. I used to think that the day to day manner in which I treated the people around me, the details of my motives and self-knowledge, etc. just naturally served as an indicator for the positive impact I did or didn’t have on global goodness.

(It was a dumb thing to think, maintained by an elaborate network of rationalizations that I thought of as virtuous, much the way many people think of their political “beliefs”/clothes as virtuous. My beliefs were also maintained by not bothering to take an actually careful look either at global catastrophic risks or even at the details of e.g. global poverty. But my impression is that it’s fairly common to just suppose that our intuitive moral self-evaluations (or others’ evaluations of how good of people we are) map tolerably well onto actual good consequences.)

Anyhow: now, it looks to me as though most of those “good people”, living intrinsically worthwhile lives, aren’t contributing squat to global goodness compared to what they could contribute if they spent even a small fraction of their time/money on a serious attempt to shut up and multiply. The network of moral intuitions I grew up in is… not exactly worthless; it does help with intrinsically worthwhile lives, and, more to the point, with the details of how to actually build the kinds of reasonable human relationships that you need for parts of the “shut up and multiply”-motivated efforts to work… but, for most people, it’s basically not very connected to how much good they do or don’t do in the world. If you like, this is good news: for a ridiculously small sum of effort (e.g., a $500 donation to SIAI; the earning power of seven ten-thousandths of your life if you earn the US minimum wage), you can do more expected-good than perhaps 99.9% of Earth’s population. (You may be able to do still more expected-good by taking that time and thinking carefully about what most impacts global goodness and whether anyone’s doing it.)>>

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/4pov2tL6SEC23wrkq/epilogue-atonement-8-8

like opposing this isnt self-denying moral aestheticism or a signalling game of how good you can look (credibly signalling virtue is actually a good thing, i wish more people did it by for instance demonstrating how they win in a way that wouldnt work if they werent aligned. whose power seeded from their alignment.). its like... the alternative where people do things that it makes no sense for an altruist to do and then say that when they go to their day jobs they are super duper altruistic they swear; compartmentalizing in this way ...doesnt actually work.

people who want to obscure what altruism looks like will claim that this is moving around a social schelling point for who is to be ostracized. and that altruism as a characteristic of a brain isnt a cluster-in-reality that you can talk about. because it will be coopted by malicious actors as a laser to unjustly zap people with. these people are wrong.

both EA and CFAR are premised on some sort of CDT modular morality working. it is actually pretending to do CDT optimization because like with brent at each timestep they are pretending to think "how can we optimize utility moving forward?" (really i suspect they are just straight up mindcontrolled by brent, finding ways to serve their master because they used force and the people at CFAR were bad at decision theory) instead of seeking to be agents such that brent when brents plans to predate on people ran through them, he would model it as more trouble than it was worth and wouldnt do this in the first place.

CFAR and EA will do things like allowing someone to predate on women because they are "insightful" or creating a social reality where people with genetic biases who personally devote massive amounts of time and money to babies who happen to be genetically related to them and then in their day job act "altruistically". as long as it all adds up to net positive, its okay right?

but thats not how it works and structures built off of this are utterly insufficient to bring eutopia to sentient life. in just the same way that "scientists" who when they arent at their day jobs are theists are an utterly insufficient to bring eutopia to sentient life.

<<Maybe we can beat the proverb—be rational in our personal lives, not just our professional lives. We shouldn’t let a mere proverb stop us: “A witty saying proves nothing,” as Voltaire said. Maybe we can do better, if we study enough probability theory to know why the rules work, and enough experimental psychology to see how they apply in real-world cases—if we can learn to look at the water. An ambition like that lacks the comfortable modesty of being able to confess that, outside your specialty, you’re no better than anyone else. But if our theories of rationality don’t generalize to everyday life, we’re doing something wrong. It’s not a different universe inside and outside the laboratory.>>

--

to save the world it doesnt help to castrate yourself and make extra super sure not to have babies. people's values are already what they are, their choices have already been made. these sort of ad-hoc patches are what wrangling an unaligned agent looks like. and the output of an unaligned agent with a bunch of patches, isnt worth much. would you delegate important tasks to an unaligned AI that was patched up after each time it gave a bad output?

it does mean that if after they know about the world and what they can do, people still say that they specifically should have babies, i mark them as having a kind of damage and route around them.

someone not having babies doesnt automatically mark them as someone id pour optimization energy into expecting it to combine towards good ends. the metrics i use are cryptographically secure from being goodharted. so i can talk openly about traits i use to discern between people without worrying about people reading about this and using it to gum up my epistemics.

[randomliven]

WARNING LONG POST HEAVY SPOILERS

Episode4. Play back rewatch

*Open scene Montrose

*Drinking. Going through the memories of his mind

He drinks and still he remembers it all

*God Smites Eve

*2:12 "Give this to tic protect our family" GEORGE

*The Order of the ancient dawn

*You might be all Tic has left

*"Smells like Tulsa

*Bitcx better have my money

*Christina glides through cars

* Black arrow (nods it off)

*leti was ready

*Bitcx tried to walk in like she own the place

*the protection spell works 'akirum

She seemed impressed and snide

*your money (leti realizes where the money came from

**L: "You want something in this house. Something to. do with Atticus"

**Ct: "Dont let the men fool you into thinking its Always about them. "

**His blood may have power but thats only because itus spelled it that way. Hes Not Special. Not really

Christina is a Snitch

*"If he keeps operating like this hes going to get you killed "Again"

(she looks sincere) (im telling yall xtina did this before)

* "I dont want that. Or this house. I just want the orrery"

(To discover a world of first) (chritina dont lie withold yes)

You can get the Fuck up off my Porch

Call me

*Hippolyta calls her daddy... She has the Orrery

She smart as hell

*The new comic diana drawing..outta this universe

Moves and predicts the relative position of planets

*leti tells tic about tina paying for house

*Tic with holds information from leti

*knows tina used tic to kill father

tic was go kill her then just leave

Lil boy with Coke bottle glasses ( just like tic but not tic

*two sets of pages still exist

*the orrery is the key

(using the orrery to go into another world to find his pages)

Titus kept it hidden

*Casting spells to protect

*ask ya daddy " i dont want yall involved"

(Sound like his daddy when they saved him)

They in the back

Every time i tell you to do something yo do the opposite

*" how you kno its 34 lodges"

*"I cant help you kill yourself. You cant see this game she is setting up for you to play"

(Montrose and Christina have done this before.. I cant wait till the final. I need to kno)

*"Looking for answers you already have"

Boston

*"I know where to find that dame vault"

Christina plays hide and seek for the first time

Christina screaming "Im safe."

The police arrive for her to take her to ...

Lancaster

*She didnt mention leti being in the house specie or tic

Says convince "hyrum"

*she knows there is someone in the closet right away

*xtina says time machine

* " let "negros" move in..(vs niggers) cocky

Take my lodges

*did i miss your initiation into the order..

No cunts allowed

The silent fight

Let go. You told me to let go

Hyp suspicious

It so happens to be at a astrology museum

Tree

Ruby walks into Marshal fields

"Work like kobe just to shine like Russel"

Sees Tamara

"Yes yesterday"

"I applied on a whim"

Boston

Lights of the universe

Leti's face watching rose go with the guard

*"u kno y they call me tree"

"Shouldnt i already kno that since we fuc in highschool simore" rolls eye at that liar

True story: Harriet chariot

*MY MAMA NAMED THAT COMET

*Many artefacts Titus was giving in exchange for striping away everything they knew

(Stolen after killing, probably raping and enslaving the native people)

*tree hints at Montrose being gay to tic

Tic questions how mon knows the guard

The vault

*Christina pulls up goes around the gate

(William comes out 30seconds later, yes we kno the skin change happens in seconds seeing ruby change, BUT HOW IN THE HELL did xtina put on a whole suite down to the tie that quick)

Do they not kno william cuz then lancaster wouldnt have known it wasnt xtina when he dies.

She kick they ass

*William says i have a Date

Find a way to open it

Montrose finds the moonlight

How old is this museum

*"This is some journey to the center of the earth type shit"(name of book coke bottle kid in library was reading)

3tunnels

Ever the tide shall rise

Map of titus voyage's..

No telling Letitia fuc N lewis No

Dont help me

Yellow

*Based on adventure novels the tunnels should be based on the map.

*How you know he raided Diana

"I read a damn book

*1810 it was built

Established the sons of Adam 3yrs later

*Whats down the other tunnel?

The lantern being there

Ruby drowning her blues away to a half empty bar

Is copper considered a yellow

Voluptuousness

*I cant afford another one

Blues eyes got ya tab tonight

*A nod. A gulp

*"May i join you?" They dont sit

Keep my glass full"...

*Yall white boys dont come to the dark side for modesty (demanding woman

* i can buy my own drinks ( pride)

Take a bit more to impress me White Boy

*Never insult you to make you a kept woman

* promise me the world to lay with me

*a promise i can keep

(All she needs is the orrery & she literally can give Ruby Many worlds)

The way they look at Ruby

*20min of walking

Walking the plank

Tic brave

Tf me 1st

Learned how to lie

*juneteenth

* "FREEMEN WERE NEVER SLAVES"

She out there

Spider senses

Tic has training

Booby trap

Big fucking deal

The bored starts to disappear

Jump pop

Better catch me Boy. (I got ya kid)

Now they can run shuffle

Montrose knows the combination

Jessie owens

*The tide rising.. Less than an hr

Ruby "got there 1st, shoulda been me but i let Leti distract me"

They sat there all night

*"Whoes leti"

(i dont think Christina knew leti Nd Ruby were sisters before that moment based on willtinas expression

*"my half sister" (willtina Gulps (becoming a signature

* if i was in your skin i wouldnt even have to run"

*what to do about it?

William with them eyes.

*"Better stop looking at me like that, It Aint happening

White Boy"

I Put a Spell on You plays

Ruby want it

(Im more than sure this is Willtinas 1st time, also wonder if so as a woman. Possible leti was a virgin)

Willtina looked confused by the blood. Primal reaction

Ruby in control

William excited, whoa lip biting

The mark of Cain. Big Dic Energy

*" How you kno so much about the sons of adam?"

* george gave me the bylaws i burned it

My brother said protect the family. His dying wish

(Was to give Tic the book, but you cant tell Montrose what to do with his son)

Closing Pandoras box once Nd for good

You wont stop

*Leti finds the neighbors body who went missing

*Chicago to Boston 14hr drive

(They walk 20min to the plank maybe another 20 to yahima)

*sees elevator come down, looks familiar

*Epistien was apart of the order prob chasing the pages... He was missing an arm

This might get dangerous

*he was kidnapped. I Died.

*"not the center of the fucking universe"

Leti can swim too

*Fatherly advice

Ya mama was complicated too

*all that fussing is loving

*Epstein day look like he was missing an arm and like a drowned victim

I don't think Christina knew about the tunnels or at least she knew that she couldn't open them

Black folk dont watch bones come alive & just stare

*reaches. (Back the fuc up

* they have the same symbol on their stomach. The Regeneration spell

*yahima Woman man two spirit

*had no reason to distrust him

ALWAYS HUNGRY

*he killed them all (stole they shii) enslaved

Tic look like Will Smith as a fish in shark tail

*she dont know my spirit

Montrose Takes pages anyway (i think knowing booby trap)

. Grabs yama

*montrose drops the pages purposefully

Like damn leti. Grabbing for her

The kiss. The scream. The knockout

*how did they get back without woodie

*is that your dad's atlas

*devon county circled. Ardum reaper. Hyp makes a detour

*siren. Ill figure out how to help her talk

*"You were brave boy. Grew to be a good man spite me"

*he already had the plan

Damn montrose

[oursidae]

long ass rant abt bl3

just, so many spoilers under the readmore, things i thought the game did poorly and things i wish were changed

I should have expected it to be not great being that, borderlands was NEVER fantastic with its writing and character development. Ive been spoiled by tales from the borderlands tbh. I think borderlands three tho was like… fantastically underwhelming.

I had a blast with the beginning of the game up through the end of the first vault, where the excitement peetered off. 

Firstly, i wholly believe Maya was done horribly. Compare her death to say, Roland. Even if you hadn’t played BL1, you had almost the entirety of 2 to get to know him and his character and his place in the world of borderlands. Maya’s death was INCREDIBLY early in comparison. And not only that, the characters dont get to mourn aside from a few offhand voicelines. Mordecai mourned for bloodwing in a more substantial way - you get two full side quests about it. Zer0 says one offhand voiceline for maya. They were her friend goddamn it, i wanted MORE. 

ava is a good character but the fridging of maya just makes her into… what, a brat who accidentally got her killed and now has her powers? it would have been more interesting for them to develop alongside each other through the game and if maya died near the end, youd have cared a lot more about ava too. she’s just really one note right now.

Speaking of side quests, there were very few. They were sparse and honestly i dont think they added much to the plot of the game or the world.

in borderlands 2, side quests, at least in my eyes, were what forced you to explore the map. in borderlands 3 they forgo a lot of side quests in favor of the crew challenges, which were far less rewarding imo. like, build claptrap a gf with parts from dead claptraps in the world. disable COV radio towers for moxxi, kill fauna for hammerlock, people for zer0, etc, but except for zer0 and hammerlock you just get very similar voice lines in return. as well as xp. they dont add to the plot or worldbuilding or characters in any way. 

the lack of side quests i think really hurt my enjoyment of the game, because in bl2 it was the sidequests that got you to know the main cast and see that they were working behind the scenes. like brick and his slabs, moxxi asking you to sabotage opportunity, ellie and scooters more jokey side quests even!! it made them feel real with motives outside the main quest. bl3 didnt really have any of that past the first vault (i say this because lorelai gave some good sidequests.) in 3, moxxi and hammerlock only give u one side quest each. marcus (who gave u a lot on bl2) didnt give you any. he was literally just there to run the ammo shop. 

some of the more hyped characters dont really do shit. the b-team, mordecai/brick/tina dont really do…anything, they bust hammerlock out of jail, and then give you one side quest per person. thats really it. i hoped that, considering their roles in bl2 and their relationship to lilith, theyd have big roles here too. they didnt. they were truly forgettable. 

aurelia showed up to fill a villain slot and died. maybe im a sucker for redemption, but i hoped theyd had more in store for her. and they just…didnt. just like, a whole mission of wainwright calling her a harpy while hammerlock really wants to convince her to not be evil only to get fucking shot by her, like,,,,

vaughn is a joke. they did him truly dirty. his character development tanked into a “haha look at him hes strange and naked” joke. tftbl ending vaughn would NEVER. i wish theyd acknowledge the events of tales from the borderlands AT ALL. or had vaughn and rhys SPEAK TO EACH OTHER.

rhys is another thing, i rly dislike the relationship theyre pushing w him and sasha even tho sasha literally didnt show up in the game. apparently theres echo logs of him obsessing over and searching for her (i didnt find these in my own game but like, i believe it) and her picture on his desk and god DAMN it just let it rest,

BALEX was bland and so immediately misogynistic that i hated him on principle.

so then theres this character Typhon Daleon. he is the first vault hunter, but to my knowledge the only mentions of him occur in bl3. in fact, i dont think he’s mentioned in a main quest until after you kill troy and meet him in person, you only hear of him in the typhon logs which are optional. Then in the final quest you learn troy and tyreen are his kids, then he dies. i had no attachment to this character! he should have at least been built up in borderlands 2, if not in all of the previous games to get me to at least go “huh neat!” when its revealed hes alive, his kids are the villains, etc. 

tannis… they handled her being a siren poorly, my gripe isnt that i called it, its that it isnt really explained how she got her powers. i was pissed for like a good while after she reveals that she has ANGELS powers because i assumed somehow she stole or manufactured them. theres an eridian recording that KIND OF explains it, but again, those are OPTIONAL. idk if i just blanked out when she went, oh, by the way, heres why,  but to my knowledge its never explained to the player in a main or side mission, at least until you see ava get mayas powers. its infuriating.

worldbuilding wise, this is a much smaller issue, but i wish there were nonhostile fauna on the other planets. pandoras whole thing, the big meme the big laff, is that everything wants to kill u there. so it wouldve been nice to like, see some fauna thats docile. runs away from the player, is chased around by the carnivorous fauna or bandits or something. maybe a hammerlocks challenge could be to use stealth to kill a docile animal or something, it just would have been nice,

i also didnt think the ending made sense, lilith,.. punched the moon and disappeared? died? also brick and mordecai DIDNT GET TO BE THERE FOR HER OR WITH HER AT ALL. after all of bl2 where its SHOWN they’re good friends who care about each other, youd think theyd get to witness her death/disappearance. on top of that it felt like the whole game was building to something with lilith and the climax was so underwhelming. 

i just want to beat randy bitchford with a rolled up newspaper until he stops being a piece of human shit and borderlands can develop the characters and world.

the good parts of the game were…the graphics and the bossfights. the boss fights were all unique and interesting and FUN. katagawa jr, troy, the second vault monster, and tyreen were my faves in that order. hammerlock and wainwrights relationship was adorable and i liked the credits art of wainwright proposing. clay was a fun character but like all the others, didnt have development.

i also had a lot of glitches. my game would crash if i navigated menus too quickly, i had an issue with effects from shields staying on my screen even tho they should have ended, as well as a lot of glitching after cutscenes, most notably falling through the floor after the troy bossfight. a lot of my quest objectives glitched and wouldnt activate until i reloaded, which was frustrating.

i DID like the game. but i dont know if ill do a replay past promethea. i was just wishing itd be a whole game on the level of the Commander Lilith DLC.

TLDR i wouldn’t have minded the game being so lilith centric if the other characters got to matter at ALL.

[parkeraul]

below zero

shawn mendes x reader words: 1.670 warning: fluffy. today’s mood is angelic mood. a/n: anon requested me! if you also have a request, disk me.

“It’s not that bad, eh?” Shawn asked as you both got back to the car after a walk on the Beachfront Park. The sun up in the sky made a fool out of you when you thought that a bright day meant a warm day. Obviously winter kicked in and you could tell by the snow covering the grass and the trees beautifully, but the wind practically cutting your face made you clench your teeth for them to stop banging against each other as your whole body started trembling. “No!” You responded. The sound of your voice came out stifled by the scarf covering your mouth as you started sinking your face more and more onto it. “It’s cozy. It’s lovely!” Those phrases sounded more like a whine, making Shawn glance at you and grab the tip of your rosy nose with his index and middle finger, curling them to softly pinch the pink skin. “What do you think about a nice cup of cappuccino before we go home?” He smiled at the vision of you being swallowed by your cap and scarf, blowing some hot air to ease the hardness taking over your fingers that was turning them into a cold stone. “For the love of God, please!” You quickly agreed as he started the car, laughing at your desperation and turning on the heater. Pickering was gorgeous… Inside of the car with a comfortable temperature embracing your body. You didn’t want him to think that you were dying to leave his hometown. You know how much it means to him that you can enjoy the city as much as he does. And it is an amazing place. Beautiful streets showing you the charming houses, the nice stores and the decorated restaurants, giving you a better impression of this new ambient around you. As the car moved, Shawn made sure he talked about every point. The neighborhoods, his favorite places to go, indicating them and proudly describing how they were like. He kept one hand on the wheel and his other hand met your thigh, rubbing it with his thumb as his palm covered every inch it could reach. Making a quick stop at the Starbucks, you both ordered your preferred hot drinks and some muffins to go due to the snow falling in a bigger amount this time. He unlocked the door to his condo, opening some space for you to walk in first so he could follow you right after, closing the door behind him and locking it once again. The sunset started to take over the large view that his window provided you. You stopped in front of it, admiring some single snowflakes hitting the glass and the city covered in white. It was breathtaking. You couldn’t even deny. Shawn came across, taking the drink off your hand and placing it on the center table between the enormous sofa and the TV. Heading over to where you were standing, he covered your back with his body, resting his chin on the curve of your neck and wrapping his arms around your middle tightly. “Do you miss being in here all the time? Like you used to be before?” You broke the silence, unable to avoid the nostalgic feeling in the air. “More than I’d like to,” He clicked his tongue and then used it to lick his lips before moving on. “It’s hard but it’s incredible to come over after a long time away.” He finished and you could sense the passion on every word as you felt his heart beating faster against your skin. “Choose something for us to watch and unbox the muffins. I’ll be right back, babe.” He broke the contact by kissing you on the cheek rapidly, bringing your heavy coat down your arms and then he left the living room. You enjoyed the opportunity to take off your shoes. Walking to the kitchen, you grabbed a plate and you sat down on the couch to open the bag, arranging the four muffins on it. After putting them together, you stepped to your shared bedroom to get into your pajamas but ran into Shawn in the middle of your action. He had a big blanket hanging on his right arm and a box of your favorite chocolates in his hand. His other arm held two pillows against his chest and his left hand was holding your pajamas. “Looking for these?” Shawn asked, smiling and already in his grey sweatpants and a comfortable sweater. You mumbled a ‘thank you’ and continued your way to the bedroom, taking the clothes with you. When you came back, he was closing the curtains. The living room was now illuminated only by the TV screen. He looked back at you and made his way to get under the cover. “C’mere.” He invited, fluffing your pillow as you got closer. He lifted up the blanket for you to join him, promptly widening his arm for you to cuddle him and lay your head on his chest. You felt everything inside of you floating in pure joy and peace. Your hand drawing circles along his torso as his lungs worked slowly to take a deep breath. Day by day, you two were discovering more and more things about each other and developing trust, partnership… Love. A love so intense and magnificent that you couldn’t think about any single day away from him anymore. And he felt the same. Every moment beside you turned out to be something to write about. From your first date to a freezing walk on a park ending up with the so-called Netflix and chill. These memories came all of a sudden on his mind, reliving them like they were happening all over again right in front of his eyes. Nothing can compare to the way he feels lost in happiness when he’s with you. It just fits right. Waking up next to you and having the chance to gaze at your serene face lightened by the sunlight; making a big mess in the kitchen whenever he joined you to make some pancakes to breakfast; listening to the sweet sound of your voice telling him how much he means to you; the scent of you stuck on his clothes, bringing your presence next to him somehow when you were away… All of these episodes were priceless, making him wish he’d never miss it from now on. “Babe?” You brought him back to reality. “Yes?” “Is everything okay? What’s going on?” “Nothing…” Shawn answered. “Just thinking about a few things.” “Can I ask you what’s on your mind?” You got up from his body. “Sure.” He guided your body to get on top of his. Your faces millimeters away from each other now with your upper half down on his and legs touching his sides. “I… I was picturing something.” “A new song?” Curious, you questioned. “Not this time.” He caressed your tender skin, making you close your eyes and exhale softly. Putting your hair behind your ear, he admired you for a while before speaking again. “Just the thought of you by my side during all this time and how much I want this to last as long as possible.” “I’ll stay by your side forever.” Still with your eyes closed, your tone came out low but clear enough for him to listen. His heart started missing the beats and found itself immersed in relief, in love… Totally in love. Your hands quickly met his neck and then stroked the hair above it. “Do you also picture us in a big house? Like… In a few years…” Shawn asked, praying to all the gods for you answer to be ‘yes’. “A big house with a big garden…” Your closed eyes were giving you the sight of the scenario. “Oh, and a big pool!” ‘Thank God!’ He thought to himself. “Where our dogs can run around the space…” You started. “And the kids can throw the ball to them.” And he finished. You opened your eyes. Meeting his greenish iris, you couldn’t help but smile. You were sharing the same daydreams and never really talked about it. “Kids, huh?” He nodded in affirmation. “How many kids?” This time, he turned it into a game to see if your minds were still connected. “Let’s answer together?” Shawn suggested, holding your waist and breathing more intensely in anticipation. “Twins!” You both talked at the same time, smiling from ear to ear in surprise and he squeezed your body in order to express his gladness somehow. “How is this even possible?” You questioned more to yourself then directly to him. “Are they a boy and a girl?” Once again, he answered the exact same words with you. He hurriedly grabbed your lips with his in excitement, adding a considerable pressure but, when your tongues touched, you two slowed it down. They were dancing, savoring each other calmly as your mouths were opening to get more of this. You tasted the chocolate from the muffin on his tongue and he tasted the vanilla from your drink on yours. This must be heaven. The kisses matching perfectly, the lips working with a light suction, experiencing the sensation of being around each other craving for more. Your head spinning in pleasure as his hands held you like you were the most delicate thing he would ever touch, mapping every inch of your back and rib bones. “God, Y/N!” He whispered. Was he still dreaming? Literally everything he asked for lying on top of him. He could touch it; he could feel it and give all of him in return. “And where would we live at?” Interested, he saved this question for last. You had shut your eyes close this time. “Canada!” He shouted. “On my warm country where winter takes it easy on me!” You rushed your words, hoping he wouldn’t be able to understand the whole phrase. His red lips formed a thin line and he clicked his tongue again. “Almost!”

yay, you came all the way over here <3 thank you for reading. any tips? requests? feedbacks? confessions? wanna talk? leave me a message, gurl.

[endwalkr]

this is an ask based thingy but im really in the mood to infodump so im just gonna answer them all under the cut !

Favorite video game?

starting off with the absolute hardest question huh? i can’t possibly name ONE favorite game of mine because i adore my favorites for many different reasons. my overall favorite video game is ffxv or botw. ffxv because it has brought me so much joy for such a long time, and because i have such a connection with the characters. botw because i was actually in the fandom when it first got announced in 2016 so i got to be there when the hype was at an all time high– and finally being able to play the game after waiting for so long was an unforgettable experience. i have more favorite games but ill talk more about them in the ‘’special place in ur heart’’ question.

First console you owned?

my first console wasn’t a console. my friend and i used to play on her nintendo dsi all the time and at one point tiny little me reeeally wanted one of my own so i saved up and got one in [redacted] when i was 7. my first actual console was a wii though, we got that around the same time.

A game that holds a special place in your heart?

ffxv and botw mean the absolute world to me, but super mario galaxy and skyward sword are very important to me too. skyward sword is the game that got me into zelda which got me into anime which got me into final fantasy etc etc etc.  super mario galaxy was the first non-mini game collection and more adventure story-ish game i played. i was so proud when i beat it for the first time and mario was my first ever ‘’fandom’’ :’) 

Favorite video game character?

bro. i cant pick just one so i’ll choose one per game : prompto, ryuji and link. they were all my comfort characters at some point and i projected like crazy onto them. this doesnt mean that i wouldnt absolutely die for noct or zelda. 

Least favorite video game character?

i dont think theres anyone i distinctly dislike? i always talk about hating ardyn but that’s because he’s just a salty bitch. as a character i think he’s a great villain and i rly love him. i honestly always end up liking everyone somehow, maybe there is someone i just forgot about but i cant remember at all. 

Favorite genre?

adventure games, or action rpgs. 

Video game character you’ve had a crush on?

every character ever, but i distinctly remember the moment i fell in love with prompto sjghfkshd i was watching a playthrough of xv in december 2016 because i didnt have a ps4, and the guy got to the scene in galdin quay where the bros learn insomnia fell. i had watched about 6 hours of the game by that time and wasn’t particularly interested in the characters but not uninterested enough to drop it. i hadnt even gotten a good look at the characters faces yet, so when the camera zoomed in on prompto when he said ‘’might not be save for us here!’’ i noticed he had freckles. oh god. oh fuck. oh my god hes fucking cute. oh my god better watch 30 hours of this game now

First video game you remember playing?

wayyy before i got my own gaming systems, my then-best friend had a gamecube in her attic. i was around 5 or 6 at the time. whenever i was over at her house and we didnt know what to do, she’d sometimes propose to play ‘’mario kart’’. important is that we are dutch, and i was a literal child. i thought mario KART meant it was a fucking card game, so i always declined whenever she asked. on one fateful day, i finally gave in and was pleasantly surprised it was in fact not a card game, but a viddy game. so we played mario kart double dash. (…i had never played a video game in my life besides browser flash games and was Very Very bad)

Age you started gaming?

so i played my first video game that i didnt own when i was about 5 or 6. then i got my first supply of games at age 7/8, but i dont really consider that time to be when i started ‘’gaming’’. i’d say that was when i started mario galaxy, so i’ve been playing video games for real (ie. story adventure games with boss battles) for about 6 years now.

Hardest video game you’ve played?

this is gonna sound stupid, but the witcher 3. there’s like 7 difficulties and i played on the EASIEST and still had a hard time, i just couldnt get used to the combat. i had the same problem with assassin’s creed syndicate, but after about 10 hours i actually knew what i was doing, and ive played the witcher longer than that and still am clueless. this is kind of an unpopular opinion but i dont particularly like that game

Video game you’ve spent the most time on?

i guess i am what you’d call a casual gamer; i really like video games but during a normal school week i only game for like 2-6 hours. most of the time i dont play for like 2 weeks if im busy. gaming has kind of taken over my life not because i play so much but because i get so emotionally invested lol i’m currently on summer break and even now im not playing a lot because of exhaustion and executive dysfunction. this derailed slightly but the game i’ve played the most despite my casual gamer status is …. … …. ffxv. surprise, right? the runner up is botw, but xv wins by a landslide. 630+ hours. botw is 350. my main save in ffxv is almost 200 hours i think. damn. i really managed to keep myself entertained with that game… (………i was thinking recently, since the loading screens in xv are so long, how much of this total amount was spent watching screens. i imagine it’s several hours, especially if you fast travel a lot.)

Most embarrassing gaming moment?

many moments in my gaming experience are embarrassing, but a more recent one: i was in xv’s postgame, beating some dungeons on my new save file. i had just finished daurell caverns and hadn’t saved in about 2 hours. (uh oh) i was driving around in the regalia type d and got to the big cliff near lestallum, and remembered someone made a gif of jumping in there so i wanted to try it too. i imagined the game would just put me back on the road, like it does when you crash into something. except it didnt. i got a game over. where was my last save? 2 hours back all the way in hammerhead. yippee.

Scariest video game you’ve played?

i never play horror games, cuz for me games are supposed to be relaxing experiences. no hate towards horror games of course, they just stress me out. the only time ive played horror is when friday the 13th was for free on ps+, and my friends really wanted to play it. (theyre kinda addicted to it now. huh) they had already gotten over the initial fear of having jason chase you, but i was still terrified. i can play the game without getting scared now tho. the horror sound effects just rly freaked me out at first jhsdkghsd

Most memorable gaming moment?

playing breath of the wild for the first time, or beating it for the first time. both experiences were filled to the brim with excitement and nostalgia. seeing botw as a blank slate, a world for you to explore, having no idea where you’re going… that was pretty incredible. now i know every nook and cranny of the map, so i wish i could play it for the first time again. i was so incredibly immersed. beating it was insane. i cried for 30 minutes and the end wasnt even sad, i was just so amazed at the fact that i was really here, playing breath of the wild, it was really real. the fucking main theme in the background (which i cannot for the life of me listen to without crying) didnt help with my emotions sgkdjh

Video game character you wish you could meet in real life?

…………..its prompto again. maybe 2017 me …. was .. kind of a kinnie

PC, Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo?

i dont care about console wars at all, but i think hardware-wise, pc is the best, because if you have a good pc you can basically do anything. i however do not, so i just play on consoles. ive never particularly liked xbox, so i only play ps4 and nintendo. not the switch though. its kinda petty, but my best friend and i really dont like the switch djghks

Gaming company you’re most loyal to?

none. i used to call myself a nintendo nerd (oh my god…. i m. gonna die) in like 2015 but since the switch came out and since i got a ps4 they kinda lost me. i still like their game series of course, but as a company i don’t care for them. the only reason i see square enix as one of ‘’my’’ gaming companies is because ffxv took up like 70% of my gaming experience, but besides final fantasy i don’t really love them too much either.

If you could only play one video game for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

atm i’m really into ffxiv because theres just so much to do, but that’s just a new, possibly temporary interest. if i had to choose, i’d say botw. maybe i’d say ffxv, but i feel like running around doing nothing in that game isnt very fun, because the world is sorta empty after completing every quest and getting to level 120. in botw, just fucking around on your horse is still really relaxing and nice. 

Do you use strategy guides?

yup. in certain games i try to avoid them but i usually end up stuck or in need of advice. i couldn’t have gotten so many p5 trophies if not for the internet lol

How often do you use cheats?

never, simply because the games i play often do not have cheats. unless im playing the sims and are in need of a motherlode, i dont use them.

Competitive or single player?

single player. im bad at video games and like to do stuff at my own pace. online multiplayer can be fun every now and then in games like mario kart 8 or splatoon, and i also like teamwork stuff like ffxiv or comrades. but ultimately, i prefer playing on my own.

Video game character you want to/have cosplayed?

have never cosplayed, dont have plans to either, but it would be fun to cosplay link. omg. i just remembered i have that fucking chocomoogle shirt… sorry link im gonna slap on some sasuke hair, black jeans and ugly sneakers 

Ever go to a video game convention?

i have not, i have however gone to three (3) video game concerts which is basically the same thing. 

Hardest boss fight you’ve been in?

the hardest bosses for me are usually the ones with a gimmick. you have to use a certain item or tactic to beat them or something. other hard fights for me are when you fight someone with a similar skill set. (in ffxv, this happens twice, once with the iggy-noct sparring match and once against ardyn. somehow, the final boss was easier than getting the prince to eat vegetables.) i don’t know an actual example of THE hardest boss fight ive been in though. at the time, the first bowser battle in mario galaxy was the hardest thing in the universe and i got stuck for like a month. currently, i’m having trouble with the riku-ansem fight in kh1. 

Video game you wish you could burn from your memory?

the zelda cdi games? no, i dont really know. i dont hate a game so much that i’d want to forget about it altogether, but i dont exactly love ocarina of time that much. it hasnt aged well and playing it on the gamecube for the first time in 2015 wasnt a good idea. im sure it was revolutionary at the time, but i cant handle the outdated controls gsdgksjs 

Favorite gaming series?

see, i love ffxv itself more than the entirety of the zelda series, but i dont love ff as a SERIES more than the zelda games. so if were talking series, zelda for sure. i fucking love those games and they mean a lot to me. 

Do you skip tutorials, or find them useful?

i often skip them because i cant pay attention, but then find that i need them anyway. so i usually do skim through them. 

Best online gaming experience?

one really good one happened a few days ago in ffxiv, some guy and i exchanged emotes for like 30 minutes and it ended with us becoming friends on psn :’) ppl dont usually emote back at me in that game so this was really wholesome and nice gjshksdj 

Worst online gaming experience?

i dont really have a worst? theyre more annoying. think try harders in gta online killing you 15 times in a row because they want to show you how good they are or something. magically, online gaming hasnt been too hard on me (mainly because i dont game online that much)

Why do you game?

it brings me joy. it’s a fun way of relaxing, while being stimulated at the same time. games have meant a great deal to me the past 6 years and i wouldnt want to lose them for the world.

[tumblunni]

Miscellaneous thoughts for the 'dark pokemon' game

* it could be cool as an actual hack of firered or something, but it seems that would require more coding knowledge than using apps like rpgmaker. Also there's that kit to make pokemon games in rpgmaker but it only worked for the really old rpgmakers and now its got copyright claimed by nintendo so its not really an option. Itd be easier to make this game in the latest rpgmaker cos its not really an outright pokemon fangame but more of a general mons genre thing that could have different gameplay if i wanted it to.

* or would it work better as an actual pokemon prequel thing? Like 'kanto was actually all dark like this back in ye ancient times' and have a bunch of prehistoric/caveman/400AD/whatever time period forms of pokemon or something? But thatd give me less creative freedom with the idea, yeah

* Not sure if your mons should talk or not? One of the initial inspirations i had for this was the underrated gem Swordcraft Story where your four starter monsters are more like a choice of sidekick! They dont actually fight, they just provide a huge different set of dialogue commenting on everythibg that happens, and its fab! But then the game kinda woukdnt have the collectable aspect and i feel that the long journeys between towns would get boring if theres no incentive to battle enemies. And long journeys between towns is kinda a big plot point and thematic aspect of this idea.

* Also i kinda wanna do Cute Pet Game Gameplay as a fun way of stepping away from the pure pokemon formula. And that'd perhaps be a bit weird if your pet can talk? I dunno? Well maybe itd be more like those baby raising games. But i had a separate idea for literally a monster baby raising game so itd be good to not overlap, lol. Wish i knew how to actually do touchscreen petting type stuff in rpgmaker, i mean its on pc so theoretically you should be able to do an equivalent with the mouse? Maybe try and cheat my way into it with my minimal programming knowledge by basically making a "map" where all the tiles are pieces of this one image of a monster, and then you walk over it to select where to pet...? I dunno lol! Anyway bonding with your mons is VITALLY IMPORTANT TO THE EVERYTHING so i need to DEEPLY THINK ABOUT IT. deeply deeply contemplate huggin some babbu

* maybe the game's title could be something like dark walk/journey/stroll/whatever's a good synonym? Cos the whole 'monster tamers are cursed and must walk the earth forever in search of somewhere to belong'

* i'm not sure how to handle the beginning? Cos of the whole aspect of starting off looking like a cliche poke-clone and then slowly revealing the deep dark lore during the tutorial segments. So we'd sorta have to skip/abridge the day of our hero leaving their village, in order to not spoil it. And have a flashback later on at the most dramatic moment! But that means itd be awkward to give you the selection of starter monster? So i dunno maybe do like kingdom hearts and have a surreal dreamworld opening segment? The protagonist is having a nightmare about that day they had to leave their family behind, and everything can be just as vague and confusing as the plot needs it to be. You cpuld be some sort of vague faceless shadow until you decide your gender, and etc? (Protagonist: wait why did i dream i couldnt remember i was a dude)

* oh and maybe you can choose a custom gemstone for your monster summoning pendant thing! Cos if its gonna be one singular thing instead of consumeable pokeballs, itd kinda suck if you had no choice which one thing youre stuck with for the whole game. Or maybe it could change but itd be more like it evolves as well as the monsters? Start off with one design and it has multiple final forms depending on your moral choices during your playthrough. Oh, or if you choose it at the beginning, maybe it somehow affects your starter mon? Like the simplest idea would just be that each starter mon has its own pendant to live in. But what if the pendant choices were elements and then the starter mon is like a vessel to imbue with it? Like you get three designs that are..i dunno, attack defense and speed? And they each have a fire water or grass form, for a total of 9 unique mon options! That way i could keep it limited to three personalities to write, if i go with the idea of the mons being able to talk. But still have a lot more free choice! Oh or maybe its not even 3 elements but 9 elements? Like the three options change depending on the base mon. Attack mon can be fire, electric or darkness but defense mon can be something entirely else. Or maybe have overlap so there's at least two choices for each element but nobody has the same entire three elements? Im bad at math tho so i cant figure outhow to arrange that to make it work...how many elements wpuld i need...?

* maybe you could choose your rival's gender as well as the protagonist? Thatd be neat if they also looked different in every playthrough. I mean the variety of starters would encourage replays so we wanna have some other stuff that changes too. And if you could choose rival gender then it wouldnt be limited to the "always the opposite gend so thus heterosexuality" sort of thing. Oh and maybe what if other characters had potential smaller changes? Like your family members having similar skin and hair colours, or you have a single parent but whether theyre a mum or a dad depends on what you picked? Or if i cpuld figure out some other more gameplayish things that i could give replay value to? Like maybe you actually have a choice of what town to go to at each point in the story, and you cant revisit the other one without replaying that chapter? And your team options would be wildly different depending on which journey you took, so itd be a nicely large difference! Tho maybe make it so that most mons are still all available on each playthru, its just that some would appear early if you made a certain choice but be at the very end of the game if you chose differently. Oh and maybe the champion would be different depending on your choices!!! Like if you complete certain sidequests you might have just added a new candidate to the potential final boss roster! Itll be whoever's your bestest bestie by the end! Tho i mean with this different setting there isnt really a league or a champion so id just have to think of some other climactic ending thing, lol.

[conglomo]

this is a totally personal rant btw bc i have nothing better to do rn

I hate a lot of more recent video games. Theyre so focused on making 'ultra 4K realistic graphics biggest open world in existence' that the story, character development, humour, actual enternainment is totally lacking. Im only focusing on Dragon Age in this rant bc i have a lot to say about it.

Dragon Age Origins is one of my favourite games; it has humour, fantastic character development, great storylines etc. and the graphics, they are pretty shit compared to stuff nowadays. And your MC doesnt have a VA. But its so fun! I love the beginning scenes a lot; how theres so many backgrounds to choose from n each has a super unique story! I enjoy the dialogue choices too. You can choose for yourself who you want your character to be, n theres options to encompass it all really! The combat system sucks. Its slow and boring. But overall, this game has a special place in my heart. It was a fabulous introduction to the world of choice based RPGs and what really got me into them! I do wish I could go back and experience it for the first time all over again.

Dragon Age 2.... yknow i find it pretty fun. The combat system in 2 was a big step up from origins; its really fluid and, unlike in many other games, i tend to enjoy the fights and engaging in them feels rewarding. I find the character development in 2 pretty great as well. Each romance is pretty rewarding and the friends/enemies system works well for the most part. Same with the dialogue; I like how your choices shape your character's personality. I wouldnt say its an 'improvement' from Origins; as I said I like the system in that game; but i think its a just as good alternative. Some things i dislike about 2. Some parts of the story really dont add up imo but i wont get into that bc i cba. And the repetition. Like... a lot of the quests are 'go to this cave/warehouse - it looks exactly like that other cave/warehouse you went to on the last quest but its a different one i promise' shit like that. Also that there wasnt the choice of different races & bgs - it was just human. I can see why they did that though and i dont see it as too big a flaw. Overall though I do enjoy it a lot! The characters are iconic, Hawke is such a fucking beauty of a MC.

Alright. Dragon Age Inquisition.... Right. Okay. Well I guess I should start with the good things anyway. The graphics - wow! theyre great honestly! And the character creation is pretty detailed n the whole different races & bgs thing is back - not as innovative as Origins but its there. I do like a good bit of the story line. The wicked eyes and wicked hearts quests is one of my favourites in all of the games. and i love the mage/templar questlines, which depend on which side you pick. Theyre really well done n the fact they made the choices so different is something new! Now onto the bad things. The graphics. As wonderful as they are. The game is slow as shit on my computer because it just cant handle that shit. At times its been actually unplayable because of the immense lag. Ofc that is just a personal issue - im not rich enough to afford a gaming computer so. And the map. So big. Wow. No. Bad. Its so boring. I dont want to be traversing all over the hinterlands for hours on end looking for some bullshit rat ass for this random i met in the woods. Ok. That reminds me- FETCH QUESTS. fucking shit dude these are the most boring fetch quests ive ever suffered thru. And its not like you can just ignore them either - You HAVE to do them because you need to obtain 'power' before you continue with the main quest. Fetch quests in 2 were done great imo. They normally involve fighting and so theyre enjoyable there; as i mentioned I love 2s fight system. Inquisition tho - the maps are so fuckin big, and the fighting is so slow and boring I cant stand them. Combine these with the insufferable lag - no thanks never in a million years. Get this. The main character is so fucking boring. whichever race and class you play, no matter what dialogue options you choose - theyre boring, character development where? Other characters. Eh. Theyre better than the MC i suppose. But the majority of the development was still pretty shoddy. Cole, Sera, (i cant even remmeber the other characters omg they were so unmemorable - theres prob a couple others..) they have good development if you establish friendships w them / romance them. The rest kinda suck. DAI really makes me sad. That the game went from something I adorded, something I hold with deep love and nostalgia - to this shit tip.

In conclusion TLDR: DAO is beautiful despite the graphics, DA2 also so, DAI is unredeemable pile of shit even with the 'amazing beautiful HD graphics'. graphics dont make a game. If I want aesthetics Id just make an aesthetic tumblr blog.