#i never REALLY LIKED V THAT MUCH WHEN I WAS WATCHING THE GAMEPLAY BUT READING THE MANGA MADE ME APPRECIATE HIM SO MUCH MORE <333 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ffamranxii · 3 years

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HAIKYUU!! COUPLES HEADCANONS

DAISUGA

-Daichi goes to the gym to work out. Suga goes to the gym to ogle Daichi

-Suga has a massive sweet tooth

-Daichi cooks, Suga cleans

-Suga is a little shit who is not above seducing Daichi in public. He can say the most lewd things without batting an eye while Daichi blushes furiously

-Daichi and Kuroo once hooked up at training camp. They do not talk about it

-Daichi is good friends with Michimiya and Kiyoko. Suga is closer to Asahi

-Daisuga rarely fight and are often asked for relationship advice. Daichi tries to discourage this because “guys I didn’t realize Yui had a crush on me or that Suga was in love with me for three years.”

-Daichi can’t dance, won’t dance, and refuses to acknowledge the time he got trashed and twerked

-Suga dislikes his given name unless it’s said by Daichi, who is the only person allowed to call him Koushi

-Suga is extremely flexible. Daichi is not.

-Daichi or Suga getting hit on makes Daichi uncomfortable. Getting hit on amuses Suga, and Daichi getting hit on makes him horny

-It took all of high school for Daisuga to get together, because Daichi is oblivious and Suga assumed Daichi wasn’t into him. Daichi’s dumbness and their mutual pining becomes a fond, shared joke several years later

-Daichi has no gag reflex.

-Daisuga have a very fat, very orange cat named Ninja. He’s surprisingly fast and agile despite looking like a furry basketball. (Daichi is a dog person and did not even want Ninja at first. He suspects Kuroo had something to do with this. Suga sometimes playfully gets upset because “Ninja likes you better than me, Dai!”)

-Everyone expects Suga to be the dominant one but Suga is more than willing to be submissive for Daichi and has on several occasions

ASANOYA

-Noya gets up before sunrise to run. Asahi would rather die than leave his bed before 8am

-Noya turns the coffee pot on and cooks breakfast to lure Asahi out of bed

-Noya is surprisingly patient, gentle, quiet, and kind when it comes to Asahi and his insecurities

-Noya is the type to bottle his insecurities and fears until they explode. The only one who can calm him back down is Asahi

-Asahi makes bratty faces when he thinks Noya isn’t looking

-Noya and Tanaka spend a lot of time with Daisuga because of the Daichi&Suga&Asahi&Kiyoko friendship. Asahi and Ennoshita become good friends

-Asahi doesn’t understand the distance between Noya and his sisters because Asahi is very close to his

-It is impossible to embarrass Noya

-Asahi gets a lot of inspiration for his fashion designs from traveling with Noya

-Noya knows how to braid hair and likes to play with Asahi’s

-Asahi enjoys physical affection but dislikes overt PDA. Noya would happily climb Asahi like a tree in public if Asahi would let him

-Only Asahi calls Noya by his given name

-Noya knows he likes Asahi early on but Asahi’s panic (“omg someone LIKES me?? NOYA likes me?? My crush??”) at his confession prevent them getting together until after the Date Tech match (after Asahi rejoins the team).

-Noya is affected by wanderlust and that’s why he travels. Sometimes Asahi joins him. They get married in Canada during one of these trips. (I once read a fantastic asanoya fic where a significant event happened in Canada so Canada is my asanoya place now)

-Noya sends Asahi a postcard from every place he’s ever visited. Sometimes he’ll spend over half an hour trying to find the *best* one, only to buy them all and send them as a sort of big long letter. Asahi saves them all in a photo album that lives on the coffee table. (Some people have a coffee table book, Asahi has a photo album.)

-Noya prefers to top. The one thing he’s really uncomfortable with is being on the bottom (physically laying beneath someone and also sex).

KUROKEN

-Kuroken have a black cat and a calico and enjoy naps on the couch with the kitties. Kuroo has SO MANY pictures in his phone of Kenma curled around the kitties.

-Kuroo: “Love you.” Kenma: “Hate you.”

-Kenma CAN cook, but likes that Kuroo likes taking care of him

-Every game Kuroo has ever owned is multiplayer because he only games with Kenma

-Kenma’s favorite games involve critical thinking and puzzles. Kuroo enjoys watching him play

-Kuroo is an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. Kenma is an introvert. They enjoy quiet nights in.

-Kuroo has anxiety. Kenma always knows when Kuroo is anxious and how to fix it

-People make Kenma anxious. Kuroo makes himself anxious.

-Kenma’s nicknames for Kuroo are Kuro and Koroemon. Kuroo calls Kenma Kyanma and kitten

-Kuroo has been in love with Kenma for as long as he can remember, since they were kids. Kenma knows this, but doesn’t understand he feels the same way until Kuroo goes off to college

-Kuroo is the one who discovered Daichi’s lack of gag reflex. He’s delighted to learn that Kenma lacks one as well

-Kenma moves more slowly than Kuroo. He’s not as comfortable with physical affection and sex as Kuroo is. Their relationship progresses slowly, and Kuroo lets Kenma lead.

-After Kenma’s confession, how he feels about Kuroo is one of the very few things Kuroo does not doubt or make himself anxious over.

-Kuroo can, will, and has go(ne) on and on and ON about Kenma until someone shuts him up. It drives Yaku up the fucking wall in high school.

-Kenma does a retro game stream once or twice a month made up of games he and Kuroo used to play as kids. Kuroo actually games with him on those days and Kenma’s followers are quick to notice and speculate because Kenma has literally never gamed with another person in the same room before. Sometimes Kenma can only post the actual gameplay because Kuroo ruined the footage of them by being excessively sappy. (Kuroo is NOT above flirting and dirty talk to get an edge and Kenma doesn’t really think his fans need to know that.)

-Kuroken do not talk about Kuroo’s mom or sister

-The Kozumes love “Tetsu-chan” and Kuroo’s grandparents adore Kenma. Kuroken get along with each other’s families better than they do their own.

-Kuroo is tactile. He’s that ass-slapping friend. Kenma thinks he’s ridiculous

-Kuroo used to be dislike Hinata, because Kenma and Hinata are extremely good friends and Kuroo was afraid Hinata would take Kenma away from him. Kenma has assured him he doesn’t like Hinata like that but Kuroo doesn’t warm up until Hinata starts dating Kageyama

BOKUAKA

-Akaashi is 100% in charge of the house and the financials and his word is law. Not because he’s an asshole but because Bokuto is whipped

-Akaashi is a screamer. Bokuto has a big dick.

-Bokuto is the calmest between him and his sisters. His sisters have formed an Akaashi fanclub

-Bokuaka kiss a lot during sex

-Bokuto fucking loves owls

-Akaashi used to be embarrassed over being a manga editor but Bokuto thinks it’s the coolest job ever, “even better than mine!” When his authors need references, Akaashi sends them pictures of Bokuto. Bokuto takes this responsibility very seriously

-Bokuaka exclusively refer to each other by first name but Akaashi can’t break the habit of using -san

-Akaashi and Kenma are very good friends. Bokuto thinks they might even be better bros than him and Kuroo. (Kenma is one of the few people Akaashi calls by first name, and one of the only people who calls Akaashi by his.)

-Akaashi overthinks as a result of anxiety, but he doesn’t think he has anxiety. He prefers to call it “seeing the issue from all sides”

-Akaashi and Bokuto do yoga together. Bokuto behaves himself surprisingly well around Akaashi in yoga pants

-Akaashi decided to attend Fukurodani after watching Bokuto play and literally for no other reason

-Bokuaka are the embodiment of love at first sight and their relationship has an unreal, almost storybook quality to it because they are literally perfect for each other. Because of this, Bokuto doesn’t understand why other people struggle so much to start and maintain a relationship, no matter how many times Kuroo tells him “just because your relationship is straight out of a movie doesn’t mean the rest of the world works like that”

-Bokuaka have a koi pond in their backyard and have named all the fish. Bokuto always asks about them when he’s away for games

IWAOI

-Iwaizumi cooks and cleans because he’s always been the one taking care of Oikawa, but he refuses to fold the laundry because “I’m not doing everything for you, you fucking freeloader”

-Iwaizumi cooks healthy “old man food.” Oikawa’s sweet tooth suffers

-Oikawa is that guy who puts more cream and sugar and other additives in his coffee than actual coffee. He’s tried all of Starbucks’ seasonal drinks and never gets the same thing twice

-Iwaoi have very heated arguments about if Godzilla can kick King Kong’s ass or not. Iwaizumi of course sides with Godzilla

-Iwaoi once fought about the original purpose of Stonehenge and now no one can mention England without it coming back up

-Oikawa only became comfortable with his glasses because Iwaizumi likes them

-Iwaoi have been friends since they were in diapers. The whole volleyball team took bets on when they’d announce their relationship

-Both the Oikawas and the Iwaizumis respond when either boy calls for mom or dad. Oikawa calls his sister Nee-chan while Iwaizumi says Oneesan

-Iwaizumi’s favorite of Oikawa’s features is his legs. Oikawa is in love with Iwa’s arms

-Neither of them can remember when they started liking each other or how their relationship started

-Iwaoi are shockingly codependent and do NOT do separation (during university in Argentina/California or for away games) well

-Deep down Oikawa is extremely insecure and worries he isn’t enough - in volleyball, in school, in his family, in his relationship. Iwaizumi always knows when he’s putting on a front and how to cheer him back up

-Iwaizumi is secretly so soft and weak for Oikawa

-After the Olympics Iwaizumi moves to Argentina to be with Oikawa and they get married. They move back to Japan after Oikawa retires from volleyball and after gay marriage becomes legal there

-Oikawa keeps various plants around the house and the patio and is extremely proud of them. He paints all their pots and even names some of them (which Iwaizumi thinks is disgustingly cute). His most prized plant is a lucky bamboo he bought on a whim when iwaoi first moved in together.

-Oikawa can’t deepthroat. It makes him so jealous that Iwaizumi can

-Iwaizumi blushes whenever Oikawa gives him a genuine compliment

-Iwaizumi has a praise kink. Oikawa has a “whatever comes out of Iwa’s mouth” kink

-Iwaizumi has dom tendencies.

#haikyuu #headcanons #daisuga #asanoya #kuroken #bokuaka #iwaoi #updated it #sawamura daichi #sugawara koushi #azumane asahi #nishinoya yuu #kozume kenma #kuroo tetsurou #bokuto koutaru #akaashi keiji #iwaizumi hajime #oikawa tooru

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maddgicalgirl · 3 years

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Paracosm Resources <3

Need help bringing your paracosm to life? Try these free resources!

⚠️ Updates always pending! Suggestions always welcome! Feel free to message me any tips or questions <3 ⚠️

(Cont. below cut, or with real time updates on this google doc!)

Art Programs

FireAlpaca - 2D Art Program, Animation. Where I make most of my digital art, and paint the frames for my animations :) It is free to use, and easy to learn and use! It can make basic animations as well, such as gifs. It requires download.

Krita - 2D Art Program. Professional, free digital paint software :) I have not used it before, though I have heard good things.

GIMP - 2D Art Program, Photo Manipulation. It's free to use, but I do not like it/recommend it highly. But! If FireAlpaca and Krita don't float your stoat, try Gimp! For 2D art, but also able to emulate Photoshop to a degree ^^

Inkscape - 2D Art Program. Free to use digital illustration software. Makes 2D art :)

Of course, who can forget classics like good old MS Paint, and the new and exciting 3D MS Paint, which can both be used to create some really neat things! Classic MS Paint is available here in browser form! If you need that. I just think it's neat!

Art AI

Petalica Paint - Coloring Software. An in browser, watercolor manga style coloring software, which can (almost) effortlessly color in any of your line art pieces! I've played around with it for my Thorn illustration style piece, and enjoyed it! It is free to use, and can take user input to make the colorations more precise.

ArtBreeder - 3D Realism Software. Using Artbreeder, you can create lifelike images of your paras, planets, or potentially even fursona, using the intricate AI they let you work with for free! A premium version exists, but most functions are fully usable without - though I recommend donating ^^ You can randomly generate, or prune and shape what you make until its perfect! Slow to use and get the hang of, but very worth it! Artbreeder is also pioneering an intriguing animation software to go alongside their product! Browser based.

3D Software

Blender - 3D Modeling, Animation. The best (in my opinion) free 3D modelling software.

MagicaVoxel - 3D Pixel Art. Free to use! Could be interesting :)

MikuMikuDance - 3D Rigging. Anime style rigging and animation software, free to use, and certified internet artefact! Has stood the test of time, and is still used and loved today. Can support ports of many kinds of assets, including, I believe, those from Blender, and of course those that are downloaded. DA has a bunch of old MMD communities you can raid for assets!

Animaze - Face Rigger. Use 3D models and a webcam to watch your paras talk! Models can be made in Blender, downloaded online, or even from CHARAT V, CHARAT GENESIS sister app!

Character Creators

CHARAT GENESIS - 2D Character Creator. Browser based anime style character creator, with multiple crops and poses, and infinitely customizable options. It is legitimately insane. Has a 3D function called CHARAT V which can apparently convert characters made in CHARAT GENESIS into 3D models compatible with Face Rig and Animaze!

V-Katsu - 3D Character Creator. Free on steam! Anime style, intensive character creator, by the same people who made Koikatsu, and Koikatsu Party, two amazingly detailed 3D hentai makers. While V-Katsu is a SFW VTuber maker, if you're looking for NSFW anime content, you could always spend roughly $70 on the full NSFW versions. V-Katsu requires a translation mod (free online as well) which you have to install, or the ability to read Kanji <3 Works with VR tech.

V-Roid Studios - 3D Character Creator. Free on steam! Anime style, fairly in depth character creator, that allows for some degree of digital 3D hand sculpting, particularly with their amazing hair engine, to get your paras looks perfect!

And, of course, Picrew has thousands of character creators of various styles and quality uploaded by the artists who made them! Also, honestly I think we as a society should embrace making dinky chibis in Gacha Life. IDK why everyone is mean to the gacha kids, like we weren't all cringe at some point,

World Design

HomeStyler - 3D and 2D Room Designer. Make a model of an interior for a home or building, using real 1:1 furniture of IRL brands! Apparently this is free to use, though there is a premium version, and it offers 3D and 2D models.

Map to World - 3D Planet Maker. Turn your fantasy world into a 3D model of the planet. Put maps directly on, or design the surface and textures of your world. Takes a lot of getting used to, but it is AMAZING. Free to use, and browser based!

PlanetMaker - 3D Planet Maker. Make a customized 3D planet! Free to use browser site! I have never used this, but I would love to mess around with it sometime! Allows you to add orbital rings, change textures, and more at the click of a mouse.

If on sale, I also recommend snagging a copy of the Sims, particularly 3 or 4, for character creation and world design. Maybe not the best gameplay without mods, but it's also a load of fun, and very easy to add custom content to! Minecraft also. But you just need Minecraft, in general. Beyond its ability to fairly faithfully recreate structures from your paracosms, it's just Good.

Game Creators

Maybe you wanna turn your paracosm into a cool game idk, just thought I'd put these here!

Construct 3 - 2D Game Creator. Beginner level game making :) Drag-and-drop if/then style programming.

GameSalad - Codeless 2D Game Creator. Drag and drop style/no coding, beginner friendly. Free version available!

Solpeo - 2D Game Creator. HTML5 based game engine for 2D and isometric game development. Some programming knowledge needed. Platforms supported: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 9+. Free version available.

Stencyl - Codeless 2D Game Creator. Drag and drop style building/no coding skills needed. Has editable templates!

Scratch - 2D Game Creator. Very easy to use and totally free, though relatively basic!

Unity - 3D, 2D, and VR Game Creator. Make games with 3D software. Import your own assets (Blender compatible) or download free options, or buy the rights to models. Works for 3D and 2D games. Free version available, and now works with VR tech!

Unreal Engine - 3D Game Creator. Extremely advanced 3D game developer. Highly customizable. Free to use!

Twine - Text-based Game Creator. Use a map to make a branching paths text-based story game. Free to use.

Squiffy - Text-based Game Creator. have used Squiffy and it can make some really, truly incredible things. Can take a while to pick up, and learn how to use to its full potential. Free to use! Has an online and offline library of player creations you can get inspiration from!

Quest - Text-based Game Creator. I've never used this, but it seems cool! Use it to make interactive text-based DND game adventures in browser.

Ren'Py - Visual Novel Creator. Visual novel engine, that is well acclaimed, and of course, free to use!

Companion AI

Replika - 3D Companion.

Kajiwoto - Chatbot Companion. Customizable, learning AI you can shape into a personality. Communicates via Discord like chat box.

Organization

Toyhou.se - Character Gallery. A customizable library where you can upload all of your paras and characters for the public to view! Free to use, but requires a premium member to invite you!

Refsheet - Character Gallery. I haven't used it before, but I've heard good things, and that it's a suitable alternative to toyhou.se if you can't get an invite!

Notebook.AI - Character Gallery. I haven't used it before, but I've heard good things, and that it's a suitable alternative to toyhou.se if you can't get an invite!

World Anvil - World Building Toolset. Like character galleries, but for worlds and their lore :)

Scabard - World Building Toolset. Aimed at DnD campaigners, but I reckon it'll be useful for many!

YARPS - World Building Toolset. More focused around story and lore than Scabard or World Anvil, and looks beautiful! Still in its prototype stage, however.

Pinterest - Photo Organizer. Look at, collect, and sort images into boards. Personalizes your feed based on that, and is free to use and join! However, unlike their myriad of wonderful recipes, DIY tutorials, and the likes - a lot of the images are uploaded by second parties and not credited, so be careful reuploading anything you find! Also great for finding outfits and art inspo for your paras!

Generators

Fantasy Name Generator - Name Generators. Does what it says on the tin! Generates fantasy names. Is a lovely website, run by a purportedly lovely woman.

Fantasy Map Generator - Map Generator. Randomly generates a fictional map, which you can view in 2D or 3D.

Donjon RPG Generator - Multiple Generators. Can make maps, weapons, items, etc.

Seventh Sanctum - Multiple Generators. One of my favorites from high school! Does all kinds of things - the standard items, spells, and names - but also prompts, backstories, characters, and even comedy generators!

ShindanMaker - Multiple Generators. User created and uploaded, any kind of generator you can imagine, of varying complexity. And when I say any generator? I mean ANY generator.

Audio

Audacity - Record and Edit Audio. What can't Audacity do? I love Audacity to death. At surface level, it records audio. I've used it to record voices for my paras, and get audio for animations and games I've worked on. I cannot recommend it enough. Comprehensive editing, and with some investigation, it can do so, so much more than just record simple dialogue.

FL Studios - Compose. Compose music with an unlimited free trial. Upgrades available for purchase!

Indie Game Music - Royalty Free Music Library. Free to use Indie Game Music. What it says on the box!

AudioJungle - Royalty Free Music and Audio Library. Thousands of free to use audio clips!

Online Piano - Someone could use this, for recording, or just messing around. I've seen plenty of paras who play piano, this could just be used for fun!

Online Guitar - Same reasons as above, but this site looks kinda sketchy. Use at your own risk or reward! Audio

For real, if you ever need music, sound effects, or really any MP3 clips that can be used without infringing on copyright laws, just search 'royalty free' (music/audio/insert thing here) same applies for photos! Make sure the source is reputable, however.

Tutorials

W3Schools - Coding. Learn the basics of coding, for free, online!

Miscellaneous

Debut Video Capture - Screen Recorder. Record game footage and let's plays for free! Professional and home versions. I see a few of our community members have paras who run YouTube channels, and I thought these might help! It could be a nice way to connect your parames. YouTube quality <3

Pixton - Comic Maker. Comic making website. I have no experience with this at all, but some may find it useful!

Picfont - Image Editor. Puts customizable text on an image. I used these for @paraesthetics paracosm header edits <3 It has a premium version (???) but the free version has all functions, but it crashes regularly (honestly seems timed :/) but once you get it down, it's a very quick process, and you won't have to worry about that at all.

Itch.io - Publishing. You can publish your self made games here :)

Korsakow - ??? Described as, "The Future of Storytelling" and is apparently a way to create interactive films. I *just* found out about this, but thought I should include it for someone who may know how to use and appreciate it! Free? Unknown, at the moment.

Tips and Tricks

Animation Done Easy

Our forefather's of internet animation used MS Paint, Windows Movie Maker, and Audacity. All of these, or their equivalents, are free on standard computers. I, personally, use FireAlpaca - which works just as well, if not better, than MS Paint for animation - but takes longer, and definitely lacks that retro feeling. I also use my trackpad to draw and animate everything, so its doable, but probably not totally comfortable, to animate like this for most people :)

⚠️ Updates always pending! Suggestions always welcome! Feel free to message me any tips or questions <3 ⚠️

#immersive daydreaming #paraportal #paracosm #paracosms #paracosmonaut #madd art #art resources #masterpost #free resources

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piracytheorist · 3 years

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hello! could you please tell me wtf that noise he makes is called at 13:46?? youtube. c o m / watch ? v = pWE8rzGPuKU some special mentions: 38:28 to 38:42 ; Ethan nomming 1:09 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) capcom we didn't need the swallowing sounds but you know what thank u anyways (idc if they are stock sounds, they are on this vid, therefore he made them); when he gets pinned/mauled by the varcolac from 1:17 to 1:46 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°); 17:28 to 17:50 (context: tearing his hands from the hooks) also special mention to the comment section, man so many timestamps holy sh- <3 would mention more but I get distracted by his heavy breathing and adorable Rose-talk

Putting the link of the legendary video for any fellow Ethan Whimpers simps out there to follow with:

youtube

Now, the sound at 13:46, it sounds like an audible exhale, like the opposite of an audible gasp, made in effort and pain as he's standing up while his entire body is suffering. I wouldn't call it a whimper (it's too strong, whimpers are usually low and small and cute), nor a moan either (moans are a bit more forceful, while this just comes out with his breathing). Technically it's not a gasp (his inhales are clear air, his exhales are noisy), but I think I'd just call it "audible gasp". I don't know really, if someone could enlighten me 😁

Dude, I've gone to the 38:28 timestamp so many times I knew what moment it was before I even checked it. I remember freaking the fuck out when I first watched that moment in a gameplay, was like "Okay this is too much for me"... and now I'm here simping for Ethan's screams as he has hooks impaled into his hands. That shaky "wh-what are you- what are you doing?" *clutches chest* Todd Soley has done the lord's work but I hope he never reads that comments section O_O

Speaking of, that video has one of my favourite comments section of all time. I find myself visiting that video sometimes just to see the new comments added by fellow Ethan simps.

That ASMR of Ethan eating, though. I find it hilarious, like... the CRONCH at the beginning, like he's eating some chips or whatthefuck instead of meat and fish. Like idk did the Duke deep fry the meat so much that the crust is hard enough to crunch? And we get the full experience, eating with his mouth open (I understand you're on a mission to save your daughter and actively being attacked by monsters, but manners, Ethan) and a full-on hearty swallowing sound. Like how did they even make that sound. Did they have a microphone directly on Todd's throat. Was that even Todd. I have questions.

Oh, that varcolac attack!! He not only sounds scared and in pain, he also sounds so fucking helpless. He's just pinned on the ground and all he can do is scream (and like!! you know we make sounds when we're in pain as a cry for help, because we're in too much pain to actually say "I'm in pain, please help me" so moans and screams come out instead, and like!! there was no-one around to help Ethan (aside from the Duke which if I'm correct was pretty close to that attack and it's kinda hilarious how he probably heard Ethan screaming his heart out but just sat back like ''He'll survive, he's a tough one'') and he just screams so helplessly and so beautifully <3 And it's such a long attack. It took its time attacking Ethan, the directors took their time having Todd scream and moan in front of the microphone, and we take our time enjoying it. Even that fucker being such an inconvenience to kill (considering you have to save up ammo for Moreau's fight later) doesn't change how outright enjoyable that moment is.

And oh my Goooooooooood that other timestamp!! 17:44 absolutely fave tiny whimper!! Like Ethan's pain sounds are the shit because they feel like, so uncontrollable and deep and raw and real. He's just a guy, terrified out of his shit, being attacked by monsters so out of his league, and he's only armed with a couple of simple guns and determination. Aw, Ethan T_T

And in general, I just... you know, I love how in his first dialogues, his voice sounds so calm, and low, and soft. Well, at least until "Mia" gets shot. You don't hear him like that in the rest of the game, he's always tense, or angry, or scared. Especially in the Miranda fight, he's just done with everything, and he's exhausted and in pain and his voice comes out so strained and angry... homeboy spent the entire day like that, inside a nightmare, without a moment of rest. And all he wanted was a calm, normal life ;_;

But anyways enough feels. I've made an entire Audacity file with timestamps, and here are some of my favourite ones:

3:23 I don't know when that happens, though the "What the hell is this", he says it when he starts hallucinating Mia outside the Beneviento house, so idk maybe it was meant to be said at some point there. In any case it's said with so much terror and pain... ugh!

15:35 WHERE IS HE SUPPOSED TO SAY THAT??? ADSGFADHFDGFFDF

18:22 again, I have no idea when that's supposed to happen. But the way his voice shakes... mmm yes.

22:28 poor Ethan T_T

22:40 absolutely fucking fave. Homeboy's tryna be tough and victorious and I'm here laughing my ass out with his stupid quips.

29:22 idk if it is because we don't hear that in the game, but... idk, I like how he says that.

30:28 oooohhh my boi. He just sounds so tired, I want to wrap him in a blanket...

37:14 waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh T_T

(I've got way more but I haven't checked the entire file, I mean it is 45 minutes long, lol)

#Ethan Winters #Resident Evil #Resident Evil 8 #re misc #whump #anonymous #ask and ye shall receive

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fireemblemtcg · 3 years

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“The Cipher Frontier!” Issue 58: “Cipher Will Never Die!”

"The Cipher Frontier! With Emma, Shade, Yuzu, Randal, Alice, Val, Niamh & Poe" was a regular column on the Fire Emblem Cipher website which summarized upcoming news concerning Cipher and other Fire Emblem materials. It was presented by the eight mascot characters. The following is a full translation of the 58th and final issue of the column, which was originally published on 31 March 2021.

More Fire Emblem Cipher translations!

Hello, everybody!!!!!!!!

It's been over five years since Cipher launched - and, for that matter, The Cipher Frontier! itself...

And today... we bring you the last one!

Sniff... So this is really it...

Aye, it certainly is a bitter occasion.

With the moment upon us, I find myself overcome with emotion. Yet at the same time, I cannot help but sorely wish that this day had never come at all.

Well, it... It doesn't bother m-m-me... Not... one...

BWAAAAAAAAAAAH! I C-C-CAN'T TAKE THIS!

E-easy, milady! You swore before we began that you would not cry!

I, too, owe very, very much to all of you, so... I am very sad.

Where there is a beginning, so too shall there be an end... It is an inevitability.

Still, one might argue that as long as there are still decks to play with and opponents to challenge... Cipher may be played for eternity. So think not on this as the end, for this is but a milestone of life.

Sniff... So this isn't farewell?

Not in the least! All of our players can still continue to get together to play Cipher. So as sad as you might be now to see the game end, the feeling won't last! And I, for one, would like to close out our final day with a smile.

To that end, I propose that we all share some parting words. You first, Emma!

Alrighty! Well, I've been here since the beginning, but... Back then, I was an absolute noob, wasn't I? I didn't have the faintest idea what a "Tea See Gee" even was!

But then I learned so much from Shade, and I presented news, participated in Tryout and Gathering events, and watched Live Broadcasts - and all of that gave me the chance to grow so much.

And then as the days went by, we got to meet Yuzu and Randal, Alice and Valjean, and Niamh and Poe, and we all always had a riot of a time playing Cipher together... It's all been like something out of a dream!

Lastly, I just want to say thank you...

To all of you who've been reading our column to date, thank you tho thuch!

Ha! Is that a slip of the tongue I hear?

Why, I do believe it was... And of all the words to flub, at that.

H-heh heh heh! I guess I am still just a kid after all... But mark my words, I'll be working even harder to become a mature, full-fledged knight! Okay, let's try this again... Thank you all!

Well, I'm next! I was primarily tasked with hosting this column and presenting news.

But the work introduced me to more and more friends, and to a constant stream of announcements that were news to me myself... To lose it is like I've also lost my reason to exist, but at least I am left with fond memories of it all.

My desire to convey the appeal of Cipher to others hasn't wavered in the slightest, but... this is the last time it will ever happen here. Alas. Still, I will always be rooting for all of you, even if we don't see each other.

There will always be a bond between us - always. Remember that whenever you play Cipher and see our cards. On this, you have my word! This has been Shade, shepherd of wayward lambs, saying farewell!

Alright, then. You're next, Yuzu!

...

Huh? Yuzu! What's gotten into you? Would you just get out here?

Er, forgive me. When everybody's gaze turned upon me, I could not help but immediately seek shelter...

Oh, yeah. You never did like public speaking, did you, Yuzu?

Of course! We had a devil of a time convincing you to come out at all for your very first column.

E-enough! That was many years ago: a d-d-difficulty that I have long since moved past!

Hrr-hrr-hrr... heh-HEM! L-l-let us, er, begin anew.

I am Yuzu. My contribution to this column was to introduce cards that afforded new styles of play... only to let a haze of utter passion promptly consume me and hence spend my every waking hour crafting decks from them and trialling them in matches.

You always were one to cry, "I must test these cards at once!" and throw yourself into obsessive research.

As such, I have acquired an eye for strategy, forged in the fires of Cipher, to incorporate into my prior mastery of the martial arts - and with that, at long last, I have come to an understanding of the very heart of warcraft.

Further, as a consequence I may declare with confidence that, should I ever find my brother, I shall be able to hold my head high for all that I have grown in his absence. For that, you have my most heartfelt gratitude. So end my parting words!

Thank you, Yuzu. Right, it's your turn, Randal!

Huh? Oh, right then!

I've got a motto: always take your games deathly serious, and always make your own fun on the job… And, well, this has been my chance to prove those words true.

I mean yeah, I'm a wanderer at heart; I might've stuck around a bit too long... but that's just because this was all a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh, I agree... It was a HELL of a lot of fun!

GAH! It's... It's you!

Well, well. We have a stranger among us!

Pah! "Stranger," indeed. This hair, this face, this ribbon... None of this ring a bell?

Eh? Do you... do you mean Randal?

Indeed! I am...

...His son, no? It is nice to meet you!

OI!

What are you on about?! I AM Randal, just from the past - younger than the one you know!

It's happening again! The exact same argument!

This really must be the end, if HE'S here...

This is how you treat me? I have to hear that the last column is happening at the eleventh hour and make a mad dash to make it in time?! Bloody hell...

What is this? A being under the thrall of the Boundless Chaos? How intriguing. I must conduct a thorough examination at once...

H-hey! What are you doing, Niamh?! You look deathly serious... Oi, that's enough! Stay back! I... I've got a sword!

Well, er, I'm just about all out of time, but I just want to say it was a hoot being on the Frontier. Hope I see you all again someday. Adios!

He vanished?! Still more intriguing...

Sigh... What a pain in the arse, if I do say so myself. Although... I must admit, we do agree on one thing: I'd also be glad to see you all again.

This might be one farewell, but here's hoping we cross paths once more! And if we do, hey, why not play a match with this old fart? And that's all she wrote from ol' Randal!

Thank you. Next, let's hear from Alice and Valjean!

Heh heh! At last! Shall we, Val?

Yes, milady.

The two of us made our debut circa Series 10, and ever since that day, the Frontier never failed to be a most thrilling time. Would you agree, Val?

Yes, milady.

My objective in making this journey was simple: to experience much in my travels, such that I might someday return home and become a great ruler indeed. But instead, I first became a most superior, most brilliant Cipher player! Utterly invincible! Favored by fortune! And whatnot. Didn't I, Val?

Yes, milady.

I remember... that every time a Cipher release day came, I would be up all night from their eve, crafting decks and playing matches with the others. Oh, it was such fun! Wasn't it, Val?

...Yes, mi... mi... milady! Sniff...

V-Val?! What is the matter with you?

I am most moved. That my most capricious liegelady could at last find in Cipher such an engaging hobby, such good company, and such a source of training - and that she could grow so greatly as a woman.

Val...

We have been truly blessed to have had all of this: all of you, who welcomed us so warmly into the Frontier fold, and all of the Cipher players out in the world. I wish to offer you my gratitude for everything.

To be honest... I have something to say on that matter myself. Thank you, truly, for everything. I will never, ever, ever, EVER forget even a single day that we spent here together!

Nor shall I!

...Having said that, milady, I fear that you are still yet unready for the throne! From today onward, we must redouble your original leadership training efforts! I fully intend to prepare for you an intensive study regimen.

I-I-I beg your pardon?! You will not speak to me so! If I see even a single incorrect mark, you would do well to prepare yourself, for I will work you to the very bone for the rest of your days!

By all means, do it. But be prepared, for I have a lifetime's worth of admonishments at the ready.

Heh... Best of luck to the two of you!

Your turn, Niamh!

I was present from the 37th column onward... To be precise, it was in the "Love and Bonds Special Talk CD" audio drama that came as a set with an artbook, sold at Comiket 93.

My inquiry and research into the miscellaneous phenomena of this world, and the Boundless Chaos in particular, shall continue, but...

...

Well?! Don't tell me that's all you have to say!

...No. To me, my inquiry into Cipher represented the introducton of a new, major challenge into my life. Cipher decks... Gameplay... Which solution is correct, and which is optimal... As yet, I still have found no answers. As such, it is vital that going forward, I collaborate with a broad sample of Cipher players and find an answer...

So what you're saying is, you enjoyed playing Cipher with everyone, and you're gonna keep playing forever!

That, er... Ahem! That's pretty much it.

Cryptic remarks if I ever heard them, but certainly Niamh-ish.

Right, let's keep this going with Poe!

Only a year and a half has passed since I was welcomed to this column, and sadly, in the end our association has been brief. But I was able to have a very fulfilling time with you.

Attending that Winter Comiket thing with all of you, playing the "Recite and Play: Heroes Iroha" card game being sold there... They were very happy days.

And in all of that, I have always been monitoring Niamh...

...

Hee hee... You have been a good girl here, have you not? I do nothing to good girls.

If one of you becomes wicked, at that time I shall... Heh... Heh heh heh heh heh...

So, I pray that we never have an unpleasant reunion, and end my speech. Thank you. This has been Poe!

Heh... Let's keep that warning in mind.

...With that, have all of us spoken?

Tsk tsk... We aren't actually finished just yet! Since this is our last column, allow me to call upon a special guest!

...A guest? Wait, you don't mean...

Ta-daaaaa! Here he is!

Hello, everyone! I am Kawade, the producer of Fire Emblem Cipher.

K-K-KawadeP!

My, what a surprise!

The publication of the final Frontier coincides with, at last, the end-of-March termination of event support for Cipher. So I thought I would share a message for all of our readers and Cipher players.

If you count from when Cipher was first announced, roughly six years have passed. That's a long time, yet it's just flown by... These have been very busy years, but also wonderful ones, absolutely full of memories and events.

In that time we've constantly taken on new challenges - not just the production of Cipher itself, but Twitter content, live broadcasts, and staging events all around Japan.

And through all of that, we've had the chance to meet so many fans of Fire Emblem and Cipher... That was not only the most fun part of all, but a part that made us happy.

Although, we were unfortunately unable to hold any of our planned events for our final year, and for that I am truly sorry to all of you.

Still, we staff stuck with it to the very end, and as a result were able to complete Cipher as a fantastic game that can be played for years and years to come. For that, we are proud of ourselves.

It was thanks to all of you, who kept on supporting us, that we could continue our work to this standard all the way to the final series. I am overcome with gratitude to you all!

Production might have come to an end, but Fire Emblem Cipher will never die! It would make me happy if, every now and then, you might bring your cards out and play with them. Thank you all, truly, for everything!

And that concludes KawadeP's remarks!

Whew!

That, I believe, is everything that we wished to share.

Aye, I've got nothing to add.

So I suppose this is it: the end of the Cipher Frontier's long run.

Er... Shade? Can I say one last thing?

Hm? What is it, Emma?

Thank you for taking the lead in hosting this last one... And thank you so much for all the things you've taught me!

(Emma...)

H-hey! That's enough of that! You're about to make me cry, and that wouldn't be ending this day with a smile, would it?

Heh. I guess not!

So hey, let's give them one last, enthusiastic That Thing before Shade bursts into tears!

Very well, then. That Thing it is! This has been The Cipher Frontier!

With Emma...

Shade...

Yuzu...

Randal...

Alice...

Val...

Niamh...

...and Poe.

Now, then...

Let's do it, everyone!

One...

Two...

CIPHER!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!

...

FIRE EMBLEM CIPHER The Cipher Frontier! With Emma, Shade, Yuzu, Randal, Alice, Val, Niamh & Poe

Emma Emma continues to train in order to become a full-fledged pegasus knight. Her tireless Cipher training also continues, but she has yet to show much improvement at the game.

Shade Veteran mage that she is, Shade continues to teach the next generation. Many seeking to become almighty Cipher players have come to her, only to struggle bitterly under her tutelage - yet at the same time, to Emma and the others, she remains a nurturing guiding hand.

Yuzu Yuzu embarked on a journey of martial training, all the while following whispers of her brother's whereabouts... although evidently, she does return from her travels from time to time, bearing souvenirs, to partake in Cipher matches with all of her friends.

Randal Randal made a truly once-in-a-lifetime wager, only to go into hiding thereafter. Some rumors attest that he won, and that with that windfall he secured for himself a carefree life of quiet leisure in some southern land - others, that he met with a catastrophic loss, and was hence forced into labor in someplace.

Alice Alice's travels continue, as she seeks all the experience that she needs to become a true leader. Although at first she struggled, she grew to thoroughly enjoy it, and so she will persist in her journey without ever taking a break to return home... Or so she tells herself, at least.

Valjean Valjean continues to travel all across the land with his liegelady. Witnessing Alice grow ever stronger and wiser by the day, he cannot help but feel conflicting feelings of joy and loneliness beneath the privacy of his helm.

Niamh Even as she continues in her pursuit of wisdom, Niamh silently carries out research into Cipher. Her seminal monograph, "A Compendium of Cipher Decks," is over 100 volumes in length, and by all accounts is still in print to this day.

Poe Poe vanished in her hunt for evil, and her whereabouts remain unknown. However, according to the afterword of "A Compendium of Cipher Decks," she and Niamh have since fought to the death on many an occasion.

The End...???

#fire emblem #the cipher frontier!

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planesofduality · 3 years

Text

Full Transcript edition:

“The Story Behind Solas with Dragon Age Lead Writer Patrick Weekes” by Dialogue Wheel/Video Game Sophistry

Reblog of one of my first posts ever. I didn’t understand how tumblr worked back then really, and long story short, I split the transcript of this interview into 3 parts :) I’d probably do things differently now. Reblogging it as a single transcript for my own convenience, as I still refer to some of the things Weekes said here from time to time!

Interview is from before Trespasser DLC; posted to YouTube 12/20/2019

Note: pseudo-reblog

“Interview with lead writer for Dragon Age Patrick Weekes years ago about how the enigmatic character Solas was created, here is what that magic elf could have up his sleeve for us in Dragon Age 4.” Not my interview, just wrote transcript of questions and answers for reference.

Full video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFx1nCdZFjw&t=1s

Time: 2:54

Solas, tell us about little old Solas. Talking about your other characters you created we always start at the beginning. Pen to paper - How did the idea of Solas first start? What was that first iteration?

So actually Dave and Mike both, you know, we - everyone knew who Solas was - everyone knew what the ending was going to be with him. And, you know, Dave and Mike said, “Well Dave is writing a ton of the crit path, the main part of the game. Dave really wants to do Dorian, that’s very important to him, and are you comfortable writing this guy? Are you comfortable writing someone who is going to be, in some respects, deceiving the Inquisitor for the entirety of the game?” And, honestly, how do you turn that down?

Time: 4:02

So really it was that simple then - from there, in the way you described it, they already had some ideas and some concepts about what Solas needed to bring?

Oh, yeah. Originally, one of the most difficult parts of writing him - and, you know, I said Iron Bull was the one closest to how I originally planned him - Solas and Cole are probably tied for least like how I originally wrote them. And, really, it was getting past the secret. It was getting past Fen’Harel.

Iron Bull: badass former spy, the opposite of Sten.

Blackwall: awesome Grey Warden who is not actually a Grey Warden.

Solas: He’s Fen’Harel…

Okay, can he tell you he’s Fen’Harel? No.

Okay, well what are we going to talk about?

[Pretending to be Solas:] “Hey Inquisitor, I’m still not Fen’Harel, do you have any questions?”, “I will not take any questions about whether I am Fen’Harel.” That was the big stumbling block of writing him.

I remember the first draft… the first draft all we talked about was elves. It was elves all the time. Every conversation went “Elves, elves… Elves were awesome back in the old days.. Everything was great with the elves.” And then you’d go, “You really like elves huh?” “No, shut up - I’m not Fen’Harel.” And we all kind of looked at that and went, that’s not really much of a character hook. You cannot have a character hook built on something that you only reveal after the play has watched the credits. That is how we got to Fade expert. That is something where, if something had gone terribly wrong, if we were six months from shipped and we decided not to do anything with elves in the future, we could have taken the Dread Wolf out of the equation entirely and a mage named Solas who loves the Fade, is an apostate but without all of the fear and anger that you think of when you think of an apostate, but is just this guy who wants to travel through dreams and find mysteries and explore… that was a good enough character to stand by itself. That is what it took us a couple of drafts to get to.

Time: 7:04

You mentioned the first two phases of Solas - share with us a little more of that journey, when you finally go to this character that could stand on its own. If you don’t mind, a little more of that journey- was it just those first two and now everything’s cool?

First draft was “ ‘Elves, elves’ but ‘I don’t like elves’”. Second draft was about how much to tell. I think in the next draft it was significantly closer. Anyone who looked at that draft - and, you know, I apologize to anyone who looked at that draft - but, anyone who looked at that draft you would find places where “Oh okay that’s the Solas I know and love. There he is. He likes the Fade.” That’s something that’s actually interesting. But, he lied a lot more. And it actually really weakened his character. We played it so close with both Blackwall and Solas - both characters are the liars who don’t actually lie. They will tell you almost truths. With Blackwall - he never actually flat-out says “I am a Grey Warden.” If you ask him what it’s like being a Grey Warden he will say "Well a warden embodies this and a warden embodies that… I’ve been blessed in my travels.” You know, he never actually quite says “I’m a Warden.” With Solas it’s the same way with the hand wave of ‘in the Fade’. I would start putting ‘in the Fade’ at the end of a lot of sentences. “Yeah turns out that all of the stuff you thought was true in history was wrong… because I saw it…. in the Fade.”

In revision 2, he lied a lot more. On the one hand it worked, on the other hand it made him less tragic, more of jerk when we got to the reveal. So that is how we got to what we made him into: this character who is intelligent, wise… Solas will think very carefully before he tells you anything and anything he tells you is exactly as much as he wants you to know. That actually led to one of the funny little game moments - one of the last things we do is add the places where characters will approve or disapprove. I think what I want Solas to approve us is you actually asking questions . He’s kind of unique in that regard - What Solas approves us is people who are interested in finding out knowledge. Whether they are finding it out from him or they’re talking with other people, Solas wants people to explore, he wants people to find information, he wants people to learn. What he disapproves of, honestly, more than what you do, is in many ways how you do it. You can do the thing that he wants you to do, but if you do it in a knee-jerk way, Solas hates that. He wants to know that you are carefully considering your options and taking a measured approach.

Time: 12:16

When it comes the characterization of a character that you’ve already been give at least some sort of name to. We know that this character is some sort of trickster god - when you were trying to develop and make him some a stand-alone character, did you ever have to rely on what the mythos already established of this particular kind of eighth-seat god that maybe a lot people hadn’t heard a lot about?

Well, I think, like we talked about before, one of the great things about the Dragon Age universe is everything that you learn in a codex entry is something that someone else heard in a story and wrote it down somewhere and you’re reading half of the book. So the good news on that is anything we wanted to do with Fen’Harel, there was so little and what was in there was already so sketchy that we had all the freedom we needed to play with him.

That turned out to be a nice thing because I think if we had someone that was completely by-the-books, already established, their character already given, it would feel like more of a letdown to write that as a character or you would have to play against type, you’d have to do something completely different to show he wasn’t just what the stories wrote about him. And, you know, in some ways that is both liberating but also disappointing to people who might have liked the original stories. This was a fun experience of getting to fill in some of the gaps.

The only thing I think we had to struggle against is that anyone who hears “trickster” or anyone who hears “oh, he’s chaotic and unpredictable” it feels like there is a natural urge to go to “He’s Loki in the Avengers. He’s the guy who’s gonna make large grand-standing plans.” Or, you know, “He’s the Riddler, who’s gonna leave clues to test you.” We had to get away from that: “Let’s tone that back a little bit, let’s not have him be the Jack Nicholson Joker version of the Dread Wolf.”

That’s quite a quote.

You got Dorian as a large, grandiose , extravagant figure and it would have been easy to have him go that way. It was fortunate that we had Dorian as the mage who had the larger-than-life persona already to make Solas be the quiet one.

Time: 15:21

Was there ever an instance where you were really pushed with giving some indicators to the player that Solas may have some connection to this going through the gameplay? Because you do see a lot statues of Fen’Harel. There’s many instances of where you’re discussing it, you’re traveling through those lands. Where do you walk that line, how do you walk that line, or do you just completely disregard it whatsoever?

The goal we had is we wanted the very careful players, the very sensitive players, who were playing attention and watching every scene with Solas to know that something was up and to want more answers and then go to “OH MAN” as soon as the stinger after the credits rolled. But we wanted most players to just go “Oh, okay, he’s like ‘Fade nerd.’ He’s like ‘hippie guy.’”

The other thing we wanted was everyone on their second playthrough, as soon as they talked to Solas to be like “Oh, man, he’s just saying it. He just flat-out said it right there and I missed it completely the first time!” I think we called it the “inevitable in retrospect”- or the “slap the forehead on the second playthrough” style of writing, where we wanted people to see that the most interesting thing about the trickster god is he’s not actually that great of a liar - He is almost telling you a lot of the time. And, you know, some of the tragedy is it that you never had the chance to actually ask, “Wait -are you Fen’harel?”

Time: 17:13

We talked about leaving breadcrumbs, what that meant. Now the big turn, the big scene at the ending: How did this come about, were you really involved in that sort of process and are you happy with it?

Oh, I’m absolutely happy with it. It went through several iterations,. Mike was hugely involved. The writing was definitely done by Dave; it was a huge crit path moment. He had me give a look at the Solas voice, I think I looked at it, I don’t think I actually changed a single word in the final one.

We had versions where after the main plot it was actually going to be a full plot where you the player went and were actually present when Solas confronts Mythal. We had a part where we said, “Wow that’s too big, a lot of players are gonna miss that, we’ll make it a DLC.” So it was gonna be a separate DLC where that happened. At one point we said “No, this is too big, we actually - let’s cut it and address it next game.” So it was going to be this thing that we pushed off into some future content.

I am really happy with what we went with, because, I think, you know, for my money, that short, little Marvel-style, after-the-credits stinger is what we needed. We needed something so that everyone who was paying attention and everyone who was really invested could go “oh my god!” And go, “Okay, so, just in case you were wondering, we’re not done, we have more stories to tell, and we are confident enough in what we are doing that we are willing to throw that ball.” That stinger is essentially us throwing a football to future us, trusting that we are going to catch it. Because, you know, at the end, we had that level of confidence. We felt that we had that level of confidence, we felt we made a really good game. Dave led an amazing team of writers, and I’m really touched that he has the confidence to believe that I’ll be able to carry that on for him.

Time: 19:49

When we spoke to Dave, one of the big moments that he mentioned, was when he created kind of a long-term idea for what’s going to happen in the Dragon Age universe. And to hear him say it, he mentioned that what he originally wanted for Dragon Age: Inquisition couldn’t happen - it was far too big - it wouldn’t work. And you guys had talked about taking that concept, finishing Inquisition somewhere in the middle of that concept arc, and then using at least an influence or something like that to affect the franchise going forward. Speaking with you now, as someone who has taken up the reins, do you know what I’m talking about? Am I talking crazy? Where do you see it going?

Um…

Reasonably - of what you can say on this.

So here’s the last scene of the next game… (laughs). I think there’s an extent to which no plan really survives contact with the audience when it comes to video games. We look at how fans react, we look at what hit, what rang true with everyone. You know, it’s funny, having people react angrily actually isn’t as bad as having people ignore things sometimes. Having people react angrily means they were definitely emotionally engaged, so you know you hit something there. Whereas having fans go, “I don’t know, fine, I guess, whatever” and move on means, “Okay, I don’t know if that’s what we want to go back to. We didn’t actually get anything from them there, they didn’t actually remember that later.” So that’s a phase that comes after every game we ship. We look at what hit, what missed, and where we want to go from there.

Now that said, Dave’s future plan is, I think, fantastic, epic, and heartbreaking. Our plan is to use that as our starting point. To look at where we want to go, what we want to do, and it will not be - and I, you know, Dave and I have talked about this - it will not be the story that Dave would tell if he were still here as lead writer. Because it could never be that. We can get into that when we talk about Cole a little bit, but if I tried to do that I would just be doing a bad impersonation of Dave Gaider and no one is ever going to be as good at that as Dave is. My goal going forward is to, as lead, put my own spin on that process, put my own spin on the plots going forward, on the thematic elements, while keeping those same thematic elements that we had. Because, I think, what Dave has set in motion in three games, countless DLCs and expansions, is something that can endure: The idea that no choice is ever really that easy and that the great events always stem from human-understandable motivations.

So, that is where I think where we are going to go, as vaguely as I can say.

Time: 23:30

Speaking of specifically to Solas: His continuation of the story. Adding that little “Marvel moment” at the end - what do you think that did for the crit path and the overall arc of the story that players experienced in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Do you think they would have been more satisfied if there was a DLC or is that just us gamers complaining because we can’t get everything we want right away?

Well, I think you want to leave people wanting more. “Man I wish you guys had done more” is a better problem to have than “Man I wish you guys had done less.” So, I think, looking at it from inside the studio, we didn’t have the resources to do much more than we did. So it was never going to be the big moment right then anyway. From my perspective, the reason I’m really happy we have it is, like I said, I thought it was a vote of confidence. The team is still the Dragon Age team and it is still the writers and designers who did everything else, who made such wonderful characters and were responsible for such fantastic plots.

Time 25:10

Well, again, looking at that in its completion, it’s good to see that even a character that needed to give you a stinger in your estimation didn’t take away, I guess, from the overall story you were trying to tell.

Well, thank you. Yeah it was obviously the moment we were building toward, but again, the goal was even if we didn’t have that stringer, he was still an interesting enough character that people would have not felt cheated that he was in the party.

Time: 25:35

One of the most beautiful scenes I think in Dragon Age Inquisition is the scene that you get with Solas if you play as a female elf Inquisitor. Talk a little bit about that choice to have this romance option very, very specific. It’s race- and gender- specific. Why that scene - what that scene meant and a lot of the subtext, because it is a very rich sequence of scenes, not just one. And, I think it’s really one of the most interesting romances in the game.

I love that scene because that scene for me shows how far we’ve gone past - not the make myself irrelevant anymore - but how far we’ve gone with the digital acting. Jonathan Epp the cine-designer for that scene put it together and when you take everything that Gareth David Lloyd - the voice actor - everything he did on his lines. And just putting so much tragedy, and making it clear in every line that he wants to say more than he can. And with Jon Epp the cine-designer, just in the wordless scenes: showing the tragedy, showing the heartbreak, showing how much he does genuinely care against his better judgement, and how he finally forces himself to step away.,

You know how I said when we were talking about the Iron Bull - everything, every major moment we do, is there for a specific type of player fantasy fulfillment. And you know, not all types of fantasies are the happy ones. There’s a reason why The Phantom of the Opera was on Broadway for so many years and it’s not because it has a happy ending.

The Phantom of the Opera isn’t exactly the theme for the romance - the razor was something closer to almost professor and student in some ways. He definitely comes across as a mentor in some ways. When he finally steps back it is him beating himself up, not you, saying “Wow what I have done here is actually really unfair to you, and you, player, at the time don’t know that I’m beating myself up because I’m actually 1000s of years old and not the person you think I am and it’s disrespectful to you for me to continue this relationship.” So it’s a very moral perspective for our ancient, quasi-evil, trickster god to come with.

Time: 28:41

And it’s amazing because it’s another instance of content that so few players would actually get an opportunity to see. When it comes to making it that specific, I guess, why was that choice made? Because usually a lot of your content - most of the Dragon Age content - it’s very easy to get really rich, wonderful characters right in your face and have those wonderful “eat-em-up” experiences, why for this one was it such a steep price to get in?

You know, I won’t lie, a lot of it came from some of our designers. Some of the women in the design department really, really loving his voice and saying, “You are absolutely fools if you do not make him romance-able in some capacity.” And, really, his story overall is - and, you know, I think we’ve only hinted at that but I think we have hinted at it enough that I can at least say this part of it - his story isn’t a happy one. His story is one, where, if you look at him and Mythal, there is clearly some grief, there is clearly some tragedy. And, adding in the option - even for players who don’t take it - on my end as a writer, knowing that some players will have this as a star-crossed, forbidden romance, you know, it makes him more sympathetic. It’s important to me as a writer because when you’re writing about someone who, according to Flemeth, is at least somewhat responsible for the bad guy getting the magical item that he used to blow up half a mountain in the prologue, it’s important to have something in there that you can always have, as a writer, look at as your touchstone and go “This is a real person. This is someone who experiences sadness. This is someone who falls in love.” Even if he doesn’t do it with that Inquisitor on that playthrough, this is always someone who can be like that.

Time: 30:58

Where do you see a character like Solas ending up?

(Big sigh) Musical theater.

(laughs) Right when we reach those beautiful moments, Patrick!

I think that it is fantastic that people have emotionally engaged with Solas and I hope we get a chance to explore that in some future content.

Alright and that’s the most that we’re getting right now.

Time: 31:37

Oh, and here’s a little tie in: Here Lies the Abyss, the demon that spoke to Solas - what was all that about, what was that going on?

Oh yes - the demon who speaks perfect Elven!

Yes perfectly to him, and if you remember any of that - did you have anything to do with that?

Yes, Here Lies the Abyss was mine. It was a fun plot. It was a terrifyingly difficult plot, because - I’m not sure how clear this is to players that have one done one playthrough or with one import state - but your key characters throughout the events at Adamant Fortress and then the events of the Fade, it’s a customizable Hawke. Which means it could be a male Hawke or a female Hawke and within that, Hawke from Dragon Age 2 is characterized by one of three different attitudes: friendly, grim, or sarcastic. So, that’s three attitudes times two genders, that’s six different Hawkes and three different possible Grey Wardens: Alistair, Loghain, or Stroud. So, the process of going through Adamant Fortress and then going through the Fade was a crazy juggling act of trying to keep track of “Okay, now one of these five people, these five Schrodinger’s cat quantum people, will say this line, and then another of these five Schrodinger’s cat quantum people will respond with this line.”

It’s important to remember that as we went through everything in Adamant Fortress and the Fade was taking place in that contest. There was a long period time when we were looking at that really going, “Okay, I just have to hope this actually makes sense when it’s nothing but Alistair and my sarcastic female Hawke.”

But, to actually answer your question. As I recall, the Nightmare, who as a friendly, chipper guy was basically - I do basically two types of villains: I do the villain who thinks he or she is the hero, and is misguided and has opposed goals, and is kind of tragic and tortured in that way. And then I do the mean-girl villain who says snotty high school insults.

That’s it - that’s the gambit.

Well, just about, yes. I’m looking forward to see who writes the villain in the future Dragon Age games - so get ready for either tragic pathos or really, really good high school mean-girl zingers.

As I recall, he was speaking Elven to Solas and if I remember right, he said, “Your pride is responsible for everything that has gone wrong” and I think he said “You will die alone.” And then Solas said something that translates to either “Nothing is known for certain” or “Not necessarily.”

And what does all that mean?

Well I think it’s fascinating that people are emotionally engaged, and I hope we have the chance -

It was a very asked question - it was a question that was asked a lot. Specific to that.

Oh, I’m not surprised, and I hope one day that we can tell you. But, obviously, that demon knows that Solas is hurting and Solas feels guilty about some stuff and really wanted to dig in there, and Solas was shouting back.

Literally just describing what happened (laughs). All right, so something that will clearly be talked about in other games.

TIme: 36:22

Dealing with this particular quest I really think that this was one opportunity to involve the Grey Wardens in a story, and a world, that kind of progressingly, after the first game had less and less of a need to exist - let alone in the world - but in the main characters arc. Talking to David I remember initially there was some idea for this particular mission they would just fall into the hole and be hanging out in the Deep Roads, and having out with the dwarves, so tell us a little bit about this creation.

A lot of the process of writing these large plots, like I talked about the razor, you figure out what the core concept is, you always start with a lot of things, and in most cases what you then end up having to do is cut. And if you’re not someone in the studio, talking about having to cut things sounds like you’re losing awesome content, you’re ruining what would have been clearly the best part of the plot. Inside the studio though, most cases what you’re cutting is the stuff that didn’t actually help tell the story you wanted to tell.

So yes in the original version, in a very early draft, actually this was before I was actually on the plot - this predates me - there was, yes, going into the Deep Roads, and when you fell in instead of ending up in the Fade you ended up down in the dark. And finding out what the Grey Wardens in this version of the story had been involved with the Architect from Dragon Age: Awakening. It was an interesting direction, and it was, I think, a very cool direction, but it did not help tell the story of the Inquisition. It was more a story of “Hey, if we wanted to do more with the Hero of Fereldan, here is an interesting place we could go” and it did not help tell the story of “What is the Inquisition doing?” “What is Corypheus doing?”, “How do these two organizations bounce off each other and who’s caught in the middle?” So trying to come to terms with the Grey Wardens in this game not being the protagonists, not being the group that is in the center of the action but being the group that is caught in the middle of this power struggle was something that led to us having to eventually do the re-jiggering that got us to the plot you saw.

#i remember this took forever to transcribe lol #much respect to the people and computers who do this for a living #dragon age #patrick weekes #solas #reblog

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kuiperblog · 3 years

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DRPGs: function over form

I have an odd affection for DRPGs, or “Dungeon-crawling Role-Playing Games,” which are sometimes referred to as “Wizardly clones” in the same way that early FPS games were called “Doom Clones.”

Legend of Grimrock is an indie game that I’ve found is closest to actually emulating the feel of the original Wizardry games from an aesthetic perspective while updating them for modern graphics; most of the examples from recent history are Japanese and feature anime-style character designs, with Etrian Odyssey being perhaps the best-known (and best-selling).

I describe my affection for DRPGs as “odd,” because few other games have the ability to thoroughly captivate me for the time I’m playing, only for me to completely forget everything about them when I’m done playing them.

For example, I recently noticed that Demon Gaze 2 was on sale for 75% off in the Playstation store. I’m keen to try it out, since I enjoyed the first Demon Gaze game so much that I took the time to 100% (I earned the “platinum trophy” so that anyone on my Playstation Network friends list can see the evidence of my achievement). This is a task that reportedly takes around 50 hours. I say “reportedly” because it’s based on other people’s reports of how long it took for them to “platinum” the game; I can’t really recall from memory how much time I spent playing that game, or really anything else about it for that matter.

I cannot express how weird it is for me to not have a memory of have any specific memories of playing a video game, especially one that I spent that amount of time playing. I can still vividly remember a specific game of Dota 2 that I played over half a decade ago. I could talk for paragraphs about an indie puzzle game that I played for 2 hours in 2012. You could ask me to talk about any of the N64 games I played as a middle schooler and I could probably recall many specific memories from the time I spent with those games.

And yet, when it comes to Demon Gaze, I remember nothing. Not the characters, not the plot, not any of the specific milieus or setpieces. And, truthfully, it’s probably because caring about any of these things is never really something that the game asked of me in the first place. I earnestly tried to remember anything I could about Demon Gaze, and here is a full, comprehensive list of what I came up with:

There’s an NPC whose character trait is that she’s always sleepy. I think she lived in the basement of...something. I think your “home base” was an inn, and she lived in the inn’s basement, and you would sometimes have to talk to her to do certain things or something.

One of the levels had plants and was mostly green. Maybe multiple levels, actually. I want to assume this meant there was a hedge maze, but I’m not actually remembering a hedge maze; I’m just assuming that a dungeon-crawling game plus a green area must mean there was a hedge maze.

One of the levels involved climbing a tall tower, or maybe descending into a deep pit. There was definitely verticality involved, and the map was cylindrical.

I think the main character used swords. But maybe they didn’t. I’m pretty sure that you could dual-wield at a certain point in the game. (I think part of what made the main character so strong was the fact that they could equip an artifact that let them dual-wield?)

That is truthfully and honestly the full extent of what I remembered about the game before I started writing this post and digging up screenshots which reminded me of the main character’s heterochromia. When grabbing screenshots for this post, I found one that showed a character’s class as being “Paladin,” and my reaction was not, “Oh yeah, Paladin was totally a character class in this game,” but “Oh yeah, Paladin totally sounds like a character class that could plausibly be in this game.”

Normally, I’d have memories of specific boss battles, or setpieces, or characters, or story moments. But in place of those, I have memories of looking at Google Sheets that people had made to list all of the items that dropped from certain areas, and ranked them to let you know which items were the best. I could more vividly tell you the decor of the room I was in when I unlocked the platinum trophy than the final boss I beat (or item I obtained) to unlock it. (Being a game for a portable system like the Vita, I actually have memories of many locations and “setpieces” associated with that game; just not locations in the game.)

DRPGs are, maybe more than any genre, a game that is experienced through a layer of abstraction, and I think this is best illustrated by the Etrian Odyssey, which lives in the DS family of systems, which are notable for having two screens (as is suggested by the name “Dual Screen”). Here’s a screenshot that shows what the game displays on both screens when you’re dungeon crawling:

On the top screen, you see the environment you’re exploring in all its 3D-rendered detail. On the bottom screen, you have a map of the area you’re navigating, with the arrow in the middle indicating your current position and orientation. And for the vast, vast majority of dungeon crawling, my attention is focused solely on the bottom screen.

This is, I gather, how most people play DRPGs. Etrian Odyssey puts even more of the focus on the bottom screen by forcing you to draw the map as you walk (hence the bevy of icons and paintbrushes it offers you when filling in the grid). If you try to play by looking at the environment, you’ll quickly realize how much of the area is just copy-pasted assets that are difficult to navigate by. The map isn’t just a “guide;” the game feels less like a first-person dungeon crawler and more like game with a top-down POV where your avatar is represented by that arrow on the map. If you watch gameplay videos and only pay attention to the top screen, you’ll be blown away by how fast it seems like people are moving, but it makes a lot more sense when you realize that people are only paying attention to the map: people will see, “okay, I want to walk north 5 tiles, turn 90 degrees left, then walk west 2 tiles,” and then just input that series of actions faster than the walking animation can actually play out on screen.

I’m half convinced that the reason Etrian Odyssey took off more than any other DRPG is that, due to being on the DS, it has an entire screen dedicated to the map, whereas in a game like Demon Gaze, your screen is mostly taken up with what amounts to decorative filler while the part of your brain that’s focused on gameplay has to focus on a mini-map in the corner of the screen:

So, perhaps you can understand how it is that I played this game for 50 hours, yet have no recollection of the scene/location depicted in this screenshot. It’s because close to 100% of my focus was on the mini-map. I experienced most of this game as an abstraction.

There’s a real sense in which DRPG players (I’m talking about myself here) want everything in the game to be an abstraction. The ideal length for a combat animation is “as long as it takes for me to read how much damage the attack did, so please just advance the battle as fast as I’m pressing the X button.”

Video games are inherently abstractions of real things, like the way that adding the pyramids to my build queue in Civilization V is an abstraction of what it’s actually like to build the pyramids in ancient Egypt, or left clicking in Counter-Strike is an abstraction of what it’s like to fire a gun, but they usually try to call back to the things that they’re abstractions of. Civilization gives you an inspiring quote from some historian describing the pyramids, and Counter-Strike tries to have animations and sounds that somewhat reflect the behavior of real guns. But in DRPGs, I don’t want the combat to be the simulation of my character swinging a sword on an enemy. All I care about is watching the numbers flash on screen, and the reward isn’t “you’ve triumphed over this vile forest-dwelling enemy,” it’s “the number on your exp meter went up.”

While games like World of Warcraft eventually become like this for a lot of people (a game with a hundred buttons that is all about managing cooldowns), you at least start from a place of walking your avatar around the world and performing actions that make your wizard look as though you’re casting a spell. But most DRPGs start from the position of “all you care about is the numbers, right?” The game is an abstraction unto itself. It is a game that is made for people who like looking at spreadsheets (and I most definitely spent a decent chunk of time looking at spreadsheets).

Maybe that’s why they can get away with having character designs often clash with the art style of the environment and enemies, and sometimes with the art style of other party members. Several of the character portraits in the above screenshot seem like they were drawn by different people, and there are some moments that, when you look at them in a screenshot gallery, make you think that the characters just don’t belong in the world they’re inhabiting. And while the game is sometimes visually non-cohesive in a way that becomes really obvious if you pay attention, the truth is that when you’re actually playing the game, you’re not really paying attention to all that.

For another example of this, I like to turn to Stranger of Sword City, which has a really cool aesthetic that hits you from the moment you pick up the box (or look at the title screen):

The original release of the game, on Xbox 360, was remarkably consistent with this specific style. But the Playstation Vita version of the game (which was later ported to PC) gives you an updated character creator and your options include, well, a variety of options drawn in a variety of different styles.

I just looked at the screenshots on the Steam store page for the Stranger of Sword City and, well:

Yes, that is a Prinny in the bottom left corner. Yes, Nippon Ichi did publish this game, why do you ask?

I think one of the reasons I don’t tremendously mind the aesthetic choice (or is it a lack of choice?) in a lot of DRPGs like this to randomly have anime-style characters (even when they might be dissonant with the rest of what’s on screen) that I don’t necessarily need my paladin’s look to really communicate that they’re a holy warrior or whatever; I really just want them to be eye candy that I can appreciate in the moments when I’m distracted from the numbers. But in the end, it doesn’t actually matter that much, because, well...

DRPGs feel like they are all about function over form. (The “looking at the mini-map and not the 3D environment” is a microcosm of a playstyle that’s encouraged by a design philosophy that seems to apply to nearly everything in a “good” DRPG.) This puts them in stark contrast to, say, Persona, which involves a ton of dungeon crawling, but relies heavily on the style (which includes the battle music, the stylish combat animations, and the quips that your characters make in battle) to make that part of the game interesting.

When you down all of the enemies in Persona, part of the “reward” for that comes from getting to deal a bunch of damage to all of the enemies, but a huge part of the reward also comes from the feeling of visceral pleasure that comes in the moment when Akihiko senpai says “I’ve been waiting for this!” and you smile and agree and say, “Me too, Aki. Now give me that shot that’s so iconic it became a meme template.”

I probably would not have made it through dozens of hours of crawling through Tartarus in Persona 3 if Mass Destruction weren’t such a banger of a battle theme. But I spent just as much (if not more) time dungeon crawling in Demon Gaze despite not having Lotus Juice’s rap verses soothing my ears during those battles, which I guess maybe stands as a testament to how good Demon Gaze was at making the game fun?

Ultimately, the abstraction that every RPG leveling system gets toward is “your character gets stronger.” Maybe DRPGs are better than any other genre at removing any abstractions that would serve as a barrier between you and that goal. And the best DRPGs also give you formidable challenges that give you ample reason to want to become stronger: games like Etrian Odyssey are notorious for their difficulty. I feel the difficulty is a bit overhyped; much like my feelings on Dark Souls, Etrian Odyssey only really feels “hard” when compared with other games where the player is never put plausibly close to a failure state whereas Dark Souls and EO actually punish the player for making mistakes, and EO also has the “X-factor” of having enough variance (due to things like random crits) that you actually do want to give yourself a decent margin for error. Which is to say, EO is one of the RPGs where you actually care a lot about having a team that’s strong enough to kill a boss in 8 turns instead of 10 turns, since that’s 20% fewer chances for an unfortunate event to send you back to home base. Powering up your team in EO feels important and significant way more than it does in a lot of other JRPGs.

There is a very real sense in which the entire point of the obligatory spreadsheet companion is to aid you in your quest to become the strongest you can be by breaking the game somehow. The thing I do remember about Demon Gaze (not concretely, but in the abstract) was that there were some item/class combinations that were wildly better than the alternatives. Some might deride this as poor balance, but in my eyes, “breaking” a game in that way is really more akin to “solving” it, in the same way that one might “solve” a puzzle. I did it: I found right combination of skills and items to trivialize the game’s difficulty! Huzzah! In a “well-balanced” game where all items and classes were all carefully tuned to be equally viable, such a thing would not be possible. Thus, what others might consider “poor balance” in some DRPGs is actually an essential and core part of what compels me to spend time with those games.

I feel like these factors and more make DRPGs somewhat unique in a way that probably contributes to them reviewing poorly. For example, if you look among discussions on DRPG forums about recommended games, there seems to be universal consensus that Stranger of Sword City is a great game (with many praising it as the best DRPG they’ve ever played), but on OpenCritic, only 45% of critics recommend it, and I think all of this is perfectly encapsulated by a 6/10 review from TheSixthAxis:

Stranger of Sword City excels at one thing, and really flounders at the others. It’s a rewarding experience if you’re a fan of challenging RPGs and gameplay depth. If you’re a fan of well-written dialogue, engaging music or proper difficulty curves though…well….there are a lot of other video games out there that may suit you better.

And that’s the kind of thing that makes me want to locate a guide, crack open a spreadsheet, and start a new save file.

Anyway, the Stranger of Sword City is on sale for 80% on Steam right now. That’s $4, for a game that I paid $40 for when it first came out on Vita! I’m tempted to buy it again, just for the convenience of being able to play it on my monitor without having to dig around to locate my old Vita TV.

#drpg #stranger of sword city #video games #nippon ichi #jrpg #atlus #persona #demon gaze #wizardry

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alexis-dot-com · 3 years

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Template nicked from someone else who didn’t give credit to OP

Quick reasons for each pick: Persona 3 is the perfect mix of JRPG, visual novel, hope and despair. It's my favourite game in a fantastic series. The story, characters, music and gameplay are all top-notch. You gotta play this game. Yakuza 0 is probably my favourite game in the series from a story stand-point. There's drama, intrigue highs and lows. One of the best stories in gaming. Muramasa The Demon Blade's art is just gorgeous. All hand painted with some vibrant colours that bring the Edo period of Japan to life. Atlus has a killer music team. Everything they touch is gold. Their soundtracks for the SMT series, Persona, Catherine, are all incredible. From jazz, to rock, rap to pop, it's all amazing. Castlevania is a difficult series at the best of times, but the third game on the NES is rough. The platforming, enemy placement, and stiff controls make for a frustrating mix. Definitely worth a play, though. The Jackbox games are all fantastic ways to spend an evening with friends. Whiplash, Drawful, Tee KO are personal highlights. Resident Evil 6 wasn't too well received by many, but I loved every second of it. Main issues people had with it were the focus on action over horror, and the over-use of Quick-TIme-Events, but it's a big, dumb action game that's a ton of fun to play. I don't have the energy to rant about Fortnite. It's just so mediocre. The World Ends With You is easily one of the best DS games. The story, music, gameplay are all fantastic. Absolutely underrated, and I can't wait for the sequel. Mortal Kombat is just okay. The amount of praised lumped on it is just not justified. Warner Bros. spent so much money on the latest entry and it does not show. The animations are stiff, which leads to limp feeling attacks. I highly recommend a series by SugarPunchDesignWorks on Youtube that go in depth on all the issues surrounding the bad animation in that series. The Last of Us is my pick for Best Voice acting for this one scene alone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Csw8G6yruE And while Resident Evil 1 has some absolute stinkers looking back, It's amazing to see (or hear) just how far acting in gaming has come. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbNvS1LYD8 Zagreus from Hades is such a great protagonist. The way he speaks to people is so chummy, calling everyone "mate". His voice lines also act as tutorials for the game, and with thousands of unique lines of dialogue, you really get to know his personality over the hours. Juri Han is a bastard but she's my bastard. She's one of the villains from Super Street Fighter IV, and she just chews the scenery. Her gameplay reflects her toying personality, with counters and a keepaway play style. Link is a silent protagonist so you might be wondering how he's my favourite one? His animations are top-notch. He's a complete dumb-ass, from happily eating rocks, to punching treasure chests open, he's an absolute idiot, but he's also the saviour of Hyrule. Sephiroth is similar to Juri in that he likes to toy with the heroes. He crops up everywhere through Final Fantasy VII just to mess with Cloud. He's menacing when he needs to be though, and terrifying as the story goes on. Ellie (from the Last of Us Part 2 specifically) suuucks. She went from my favourite character in the first game to the one character I couldn't stand in the sequel. She's so hell-bent on revenge that she's blind to everything else. She just makes the most idiotic decisions throughout the entire run-time. I remember playing Super Mario World at a cousin's house when I was around 4? It was a ton of fun and it really opened my eyes to a whole new medium of entertainment. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the developer of the Yakuza franchise deserve more recognition, and I'm happy to see them get it in recent years. The Yakuza series is (mostly) focused on one character, Kiryu, who was a member of the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), but just wants a quiet life. Needless to say things don't go his way as he's roped back in with every new game. Rockstar games make highly produced games, sure, but I feel their attention to detail takes away from other aspects (like if the game's even fun to play). Red Dead Redemption's horses have balls that shrink in cold areas! But the game's an absolute chore to get through, with slow animations for everything from picking up ammunition to looting enemy bodies. I'd love to see them focus their attention to actual fun gameplay than horse nuts. The Walking Dead is depressing. The visual novels, the TV series, and the game. The latter is probably the most depressing however, as you control characters who are forced to make decisions nobody should ever have to. I've not even finished all of the series because I need to take a year-or-two break between them. There are a million horror games that could have taken the place of "creepy" but Bioshock has such a unique environment that it has to be here. The world of Rapture, being at the bottom of the ocean is terrifying because you can't exactly escape. It's oddly beautiful at times, however, with whales swimming by among the skyline, and schools of fish visible through apartment windows. Katamari Damacy is always there to liven things up though! In Katamari, you play as the Prince of All Cosmos who needs to roll up objects to make an even bigger ball to create stars for the universe. It's an odd, funny, and addictive game that never ceases to cheer me up. I don't spoil the ending to Metal Gear Solid 3, but I will say it was pretty cool to see one of the final frames of the game be used as its box-art. Kojima's Metal Gear series is too long to summarise here so I won't even try. The salute Big Boss gives at the end of the game, though was the perfect send off to a hugely enjoyable game. This is how you make a game packed with details and fun gameplay, Rockstar. If you read all of this, jesus, get a life.

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waiting-for-ciena-ree · 4 years

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"Parasite" Force Bond Theory

How does the Exile survive Kreia's death at the end of KotOR 2? Throughout the game, the story reinforces the idea that Kreia and the Exile's force bond is so strong that if one of them dies, then so will the other. Astonishingly, after being able to ask each Jedi Master about this problem, the player doesn't even have the option to bring it up to Kreia at the end, when it finally matters. How do we make sense of Kreia's death and the Exile's survival?

I have a personal theory, which comes from trying to understand another of Kreia's deaths: how did Kreia survive being a corpse in a morgue at the beginning of KotOR 2?

This overlooked "death" provides the key to my theory, which is that Kreia functionally died at the beginning of the game when Darth Sion attacked the Ebon Hawk, but she "survived" by attaching her soul to the Exile's. Essentially, Kreia became a parasite, and the Exile became her host. To me, this explains why Kreia and the Exile's force bond is uniquely strong; they are sharing one soul. It also explains why the Exile survives in the end; instead of killing Kreia with a final blow, the Exile simply commands her to "rest now" or "die now," and then Kreia dies of her own volition. Ultimately, all that needed to happen was for Kreia to let go. As a parasite clutching to the Exile's soul, Kreia could not possibly live without that bond, but she could choose to free her host. As the host, the Exile could not forcibly remove the bond, but they could survive losing it.

I'm fond of this theory because I think it's a natural reading of what the game shows us, and because it fits perfectly with how I view Kreia's character and the story's themes. By all rights, Kreia ought to be dead from the start. Both T3-M4 and the Exile identify her as a dead body. But through sheer stubborn will, Kreia clings to life for the sake of teaching the Exile. Furthermore, introducing Kreia as somebody "left for dead" parallels the reading that Kreia was Arren Kae, one of many victims that Revan and the Exile left for dead on Malachor V. Based on that reading, there was already a natural connection between the Exile as a perpetrator and Kreia as a victim. This makes their literal bond symbolically meaningful. Considering that the Exile cut themselves off from the Force to block out the pain of Malachor's victims, it is fitting that one of those victims would return to reawaken the Force in the Exile, in order to make the Exile finally come to grips with the suffering they caused. Another way I'd describe their bond is to liken Kreia to a ghost of Malachor V who is haunting the Exile, and the Exile can't be free of this ghost until they make peace with her. I'm proud of this theory because it ties the game together really well for me.

Why I don't believe Kreia is lying about the Force Bond

Before I go any further, I'd like to address the theory that Kreia was simply lying about the strength of the Force Bond in order to make the Exile do what she wants. This theory is tempting because of its simplicity. Kreia lies about many things to achieve her goals, so wouldn't it make sense for her to lie to you in the beginning that when one of you dies, so will the other? I can't deny that Kreia is a liar, so much so that it is difficult to believe or understand anything she says, even when her words feel true.

However, I don't believe that Kreia is lying about the strength of the bond because both the story and gameplay show that the bond is uniquely and dangerously strong. Near the beginning of the story, the Exile feels the loss of Kreia's hand on Peragus II, and near the end of the story, a dark-sided Exile feels Kreia stab herself on Dantooine. Meanwhile, a light-sided Exile will listen to Kreia describe the Exile's own feelings on Malachor V in loving detail to the Jedi Council, at the story's emotional climax. Both Enclave scenes showcase how powerful the bond is. As you travel, the game mechanics also reinforce the bond's strength in a positive way; Kreia's unique "force chain" ability makes her one of the most useful companions.

There's also the matter that the game's narrative actually makes effort to disprove one of Kreia’s statements: specifically, the Dantooine Enclave scenes prove that the Jedi Council did NOT cut off the Force from the Exile in the past, even though Kreia said at the beginning that they did. Instead, Kreia's statement about the Jedi Council at the beginning becomes a half-truth, or even a kind of prophecy for the Enclave scene, since we learn that the Jedi Council would still cut off the Force from the Exile once they get the chance.

Notably, while the Enclave scene disproves Kreia's earlier statement about the Jedi Council, it reinforces her statement about the strength of their bond, especially if the Exile is dark-sided and Kreia stabs herself. Anyway, my reading is that since the narrative doesn't disprove Kreia's words about the Force Bond, and instead offers clues for its strength, this complicates the simple answer that Kreia was lying about the bond. That's why I take the danger of the Force Bond seriously, and I prefer the simple answer that she's telling the truth.

How the game describes Kreia and death

The game's language about Kreia and death is fascinating to me. I love that both T3-M4 and the Exile identify her as a dead body when they first meet her, and that the Exile even meets her in a morgue. I love that Kreia's first words to the player are, "Find what you are looking for amongst the dead?" When the Exile tells Kreia that they thought she was dead, Kreia answers, "Close to death, yes, closer than I'd like." Just how close to death did she come?

Kreia's introduction of herself is also noteworthy: "I am Kreia, and I am your rescuer -- as you are mine." We already know that Kreia rescued the Exile from the Harbinger, but how did the Exile rescue Kreia? It could be that Kreia is simply referring to how the Exile has found Kreia in the morgue and can help her escape. (It's also a reference to how Luke announces his intention to rescue Leia, Kreia's namesake.) However, it makes more sense to me if Kreia is saying that the formation of the bond literally saved Kreia's life, and that she would be dead without it.

Kreia's annoyance at the Exile looting bodies is mentioned again at Korriban, when she warns the Exile not to disturb the dead lest the Exile provokes the invisible Hssiss guardians into fights. Naturally, respecting the dead is a sensitive subject for Kreia!

Another detail I love about Kreia is her ability to cloak herself from others, to make herself so small in the Force that people like Sion, Mical, Atris, and Jedi Council members can't see her. This ability feels ghost-like to me; we expect ghosts to be able to turn invisible.

Finally, I'd like to talk about two parallel lines from Kreia about her own alleged death.

When Master Kavar sees Kreia in the Enclave, he exclaims in a shocked voice that he thought she died in the Mandalorian Wars. Kreia replies, "Died? No. Grow stronger, yes!"

During the final boss fight on Malachor V, the Exile can ask, "Are you ready to die, old woman?" And Kreia will answer, "I died long ago -- and now the circle is complete. Strike me down, and at last, end this."

These lines from Kreia are two of my favorites in the game because of how they contradict each other. In each case, Kreia takes the opposite position in order to prove her opponent wrong. To say to them, "You thought." To Kavar, who claims that she's supposed to be dead, Kreia insists that she never died; she only grew stronger! To the Exile, who threatens to kill her, Kreia instead counters that she died a long time ago, and so the Exile can't harm her any worse. Kreia's words to the Exile make me emotional because she's in a much more vulnerable position here than when she was speaking to Kavar--here, she is about to die--and yet she still speaks proudly.

They're also brilliant lines for the way they connect Kreia's story to Obi-Wan and Anakin. Like Obi-Wan, Kreia proclaims to grow stronger after death. Like both men acted as though Anakin was dead, Kreia acts as though Arren Kae is dead. Kreia also borrow's Vader's words that "the circle is complete" to describe her relationship with her student.

When Kreia says, "the circle is complete," it's meaningful that both Arren Kae and Traya were also killed in this same spot by their students. Arren Kae was "betrayed and murdered" by Revan, and Traya was "betrayed and murdered" by Nihilus and Sion. Now as Kreia, she turns the tables by betraying the Exile, but instead of killing the Exile, she forces the Exile to kill her on Malachor a final time, on Kreia's own terms. This completes the "circle" of Kreia's deaths.

But I think we can also apply "the circle is complete" to the structure of the game itself. Kreia begins the game as a corpse in a morgue, who then comes to life through her bond with the Exile. At the end of the game, Kreia returns to death, and her bond with the Exile also ends, leaving behind a wound in the Exile's soul.

Final thoughts inspired by Parasite (2019 film)

As I wrap up, I wanted to share how I thought up the name, "Parasite Theory." I had previously called my ideas the "Kreia Is Dead Theory," but I wanted to come up with a better metaphor. Then I started thinking about Parasite directed by Bong Joon-ho.

In this section, I won't talk about any important plot spoilers from Parasite, but I will reference the movie's premise and themes. If you've heard anything about Parasite, you've probably already heard about the movie's themes and the central premise, so I don't think reading this would hurt your experience watching the film. But I'll give a vague spoiler warning for Parasite anyway, in case you want to be extra careful.

Parasite asks, What does it mean to be a parasite? Specifically, it deals with how poor people and rich people develop parasitic behavior in a capitalistic society. At first, it looks as though the movie's central poor family is parasitically conning a rich family in order to survive. But later, when the movie takes a broader look at society, it's clear that a few rich families are parasites that hoard resources away from the many poor families, while also relying on their labor to fund their extravagant lifestyles.

Obviously KotOR 2 doesn't take a deep dive into capitalism, but it does explore the aftermath of war in a thoughtful way which is rare for Star Wars. Even though the central sci-fi conceit of A New Hope is the invention of a planet-killing weapon, the movie doesn't dwell on Leia's reaction to Alderaan's destruction any longer than necessary. The spectacle of war and space explosions usually take priority in Star Wars movies, since they're blockbusters. In contrast, KotOR 2 doesn't even show the initial destruction of Malachor V, and the story is all about the suffering left in its wake. It also makes the stunning decision to have the protagonist be the person who ordered the planet's destruction. In this way, while Parasite explores the parasitic relationships between the rich and the poor, I think KotOR 2 explores parasitic relationships between the perpetrators and victims in a war.

And this gets at why I feel so much sympathy for Kreia, even though she is a manipulator who does horrible things. And it is easy to characterize her as a parasite who is feeding off of the Exile's soul in order to survive. Because when you get down to it, Arren Kae was a victim of planetary destruction caused by the Exile. In their own way, the Exile was also a parasite who relied on the destruction of countless lives in order to end the Mandalorian War. Like the rich family in Parasite, the Exile fed on people's suffering, even if that suffering was so harmful to the Exile that they cut themselves off from the Force.

When Kreia re-awakens the Force in the Exile, she also forces the Exile to confront their parasitic effect on the galaxy, even at the cost of becoming a parasite herself. And the surprising aspect of this is that Kreia still loves the Exile and finds hope in them in spite of the harm they've caused, even to herself. I'd say that the central question of KotOR 2 is something like, "What does it mean to love and honor the people we kill?" A light-side run of KotOR 2 finds hopeful answers to this question, as the Exile's actions help the galaxy heal and the Jedi Order rebuild. Essentially, to love people hurt in the galaxy means putting in the hard work to help them, rather than turning away from them in apathy.

When it comes to Kreia and the Exile's parasitic relationship, one of the messiest and most complex fictional relationships I've ever seen, the Exile can bring a kind of peace of mind to Kreia, but they cannot escape the burden of killing her. In Kreia's view, this is because she "died long ago" and all there is left to do is for the Exile to finish what they started. To kill Arren Kae again, once more, but this time looking her in the eyes. For Kreia, that is the only honor from you that she wants.

#Kreia #kotor #kotor 2 #jedi exile #knights of the old republic #mine #meta #arren kae #This got very long I'm sorry aaahhh

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elizabethbathoryofficial · 4 years

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Thoughts on Fate/Extra: Last Encore - Part 2

Hi, I’m elizabethbathoryofficial. We’ve laughed a lot today here on tumblr.com, but there’s one topic that’s never funny: Fate/Extra Last Encore.

For those of you who know me, you know I care about the Fate/Extra series more than it’s healthy. And a couple of weeks ago I made a post talking about how confusing I found its anime “adaptation”, F/E:LE. On that post I got some responses that I haven’t had time to acknowledge, and I’ve also had more time to think since then, so here are my final thoughts on FELE, and then I’ll shut up about this topic.

In the original post I was kerfuffled more than anything. My thesis for the post was mainly that since FELE was the Fate/Extra adaptation, it had to be treated as a replacement rather than an extension of the story, and that angered and confused me. But if what @derritter says it’s true, then it makes SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more sense. FELE is, at its core, a “What if the protagonist lost in Extra” story. It makes no sense whatsoever to release that as a standalone thing, but if it had been released simultaneously with the game’s remake, then count me in!! That definitely sounds like a plan to revive the series and introduce it to a new audience, as well as bringing back fans of the original with brand new content.

This is all just a theory until proven otherwise, but I imagine at some point they decided that they weren’t happy with how the remake was going and decided to delay it, but because of contracts with Netflix and stuff, they had to release the anime within the timeframe anyway. And now we’re in this situation.

@pk-smokey also has a perspective I hadn’t considered, and that I like a lot. When all is said and done, a proper Fate/Extra anime adaptation would inevitably cut stuff out. The story’s pretty long, so if it was confined to 12 episodes, either the introduction or battles themselves would be summarized a little too much, perhaps even rushed through. And I think that would do more irreparable damage to the franchise than an anime that does its own thing.

There’s still something that upsets me though, and it’s explained pretty well by @press-red-to-make-it-dead

This. The fact that it accidentally made it all the more difficult for people to get into this series. And it’s a pretty fantastic series, but the game’s a psp-exclusive whose gameplay is extremely unfriendly, and the one thing that’s easier to get into, the anime, will make absolutely no sense unless you’ve already played Extra from start to finish. Not even, like, being aware of its setting and what it’s about, but to have finished it in its entirety. And that.... bums me out :( Fate/Extra is fun, and you don’t even need to be into the rest of the Fate series to enjoy it. It would serve as a fantastic introduction to the whole Fate universe if it was easier to get into, but...... sigh.

Alright, time for a conclusion, because I’ve talked more about this anime than any human ever should:

Fate/Extra: Last Encore is a good anime. It has good animation, good soundtrack, great character moments, exciting battles, and it’s even gorgeous at times. The OP slaps hard. But it was never meant to be the main representative of the Fate/Extra series, and I feel like it would’ve been infinitely better received if it had been released alongside the remake. I wish more people would watch it, because although it is flawed (I still don’t like the protagonist) it definitely still is a very entertaining and interesting addition to the Fate franchise. SHAFT’s animation style is suuuuuuuper different from ufotable’s, and I like seeing wadarco’s designs animated. Visually speaking, it stands out a lot.

I also feel like its existence will be much better received after the remake is out. If my friends end up playing Fate/Extra Record and they like it, I’ll definitely be like “hey, glad you liked it! That clown woman was super fucked up, wasn’t she? Hey, maybe check out Last Encore if you want, it’s a v fun “what if” scenario!” But until that happens, it will have to wait as this confusing, but very unique thing. I am really looking forward to the day of the remake’s release. I hope it can introduce more people to this spinoff series, the way FELE intended.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read these posts and interacts with them, I’m sorry I take so long to reply sometimes ❤️

#fate extra #Fate Extra Last Encore #there - final rant #i said everything i needed to say

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gennarenee · 4 years

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My Devil May Cry Game Ratings

Alright so I finally finished playing all the Devil May Cry games (barring DMC2 and DmC), so I wanted to write out my thoughts and reviews of the games in order of my favorite to least favorite. I played the games in the order of 5, 4, 3, then 1.

#1: Devil May Cry 5

DMC5 was my introduction to the series. I first watched a whole play-through of the game as background while I was working on a research project, but it looked so fun that I bought it on the steam summer sale and I loved it as much as I thought I would. The combat is intricate and fun, and I’m still discovering new tricks and play-styles (I think I’m on my third play-through of the game??). I love V’s character, but on my first play-through I didn’t know the story of the DMC universe, so I was disappointed when he turned back into Vergil. Now that I’ve played through all the games though, I love the story even more and I understand now how V is an important step in Vergil coming to terms with his humanity (also I love Vergil too now). Having played the other games too I can now see all the references this game makes to the previous games as well which is really cool.

Overall 10/10 this is my new favorite game and has beat out Bayonetta as being my favorite game of all time.

#2: Devil May Cry 4

As previously stated, I’m a huge Bayonetta fan, so you can imagine my excitement at all the parallels between this game and Bayonetta (aesethically, story-wise, etc.). However, DMC4 is definitely not a finished game, so I’m actually glad that Bayonetta basically stole the concepts of DMC4 and made them better.

The start of this game is my favorite out of all the DMC games. I love the scene of Kyrie’s performance in the church while Nero battles demons in the street, and I think this does a really good job of setting the scene for the game. Fortuna is aesthetically beautiful, and the game’s music is fantastic (I’ve had “Out of Darkness”, “The Idol of Time and Space”, and “Shall Never Surrender” on repeat for the past few weeks). Having finished DMC1, I can see now too that Fortuna, Fortuna castle, and the enemies take a lot of inspiration from Mallet Island in DMC1.

Combat wise, I loved playing as both Nero and Dante. After playing DMC5, Nero’s combat felt a bit lacking, but nevertheless I had fun smacking demons around with the buster arm. I adored playing as Dante, and I enjoyed his combat style more than Nero’s. HOWEVER, this brings me to the game’s biggest flaw: while Dante is super fun to play as, his levels are absolutely awful. Instead of creating a new area for Dante to explore while trying to save Nero, the entire 2nd half of the game is spent backtracking through all of the Nero levels. Like seriously Capcom?? I was aware of the backtracking before playing this game but having basically half of the game backtrack through the first half is ridiculous. The areas themselves also felt disconnected. Fortuna, Fortuna Castle, and the jungle all were interesting areas on their own, but it doesn’t make sense going basically from Italy, to a frozen mountaintop, to a jungle, all on a single island.

All in all though, I’d give this game a 7.5/10. While repeated sections were annoying, the combat was fun and I love the aesthetic of the game and its soundtrack. Also Nero and Kyrie’s relationship is adorable.

#3: Devil May Cry 1

This might come as a surprise, but I enjoyed DMC1 more than DMC3 (but I’ll get to this more in the next section).

First, I’m glad I played all the DMC games in reverse order. When I first picked up DMC1 after completing DMC5, I was shocked with how awful the camera system and general gameplay was, so I put down DMC1 to replay DMC5. However, when I came back to DMC1 after playing all the other games, I had become adjusted to the lack of features in each game, so I no longer felt as annoyed with the camera and gameplay. In fact, I enjoyed the gameplay a lot more than I thought I would. I imagined that the game wouldn’t live up to today’s gaming standards, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the combat. I missed having access to the different playstyles of future games, but this Dante’s gameplay almost felt like a mix between trickster and gunslinger, so his combat style was not as empty as I thought it would be.

Much like DMC4, I also really enjoyed the aesthetic of this game. Having played DMC4 before DMC1, I almost had “reverse nostalgia” for the scarecrow enemies and the castle aesthetic. I also really liked the level designs. While the levels in DMC4 felt disconnected, I could see the areas (castle, canyon, coliseum, pirate ship, etc.) all existing on one island together. In terms of bosses, I wish that there had not been repeat fights. While I loved seeing V’s familiars having a role in this game (again, “reverse nostalgia”), I could’ve done with a couple less Nightmare and Nelo Angelo fights.

In the end, my biggest complaint about this game is that it’s too short. I started this game at 5pm yesterday, and I’ve completed it in under 5 hours. While the game is short, it felt like there was almost no plot until the very end of the game when you fight Nelo Angelo Vergil. I wish they would’ve expanded upon the story and included more information on Sparda and Eva and Dante and Vergil’s childhoods, but I understand that this game was the first in the series and made in 2001.

Overall, I’ll give the game a 7/10. While I can’t imagine myself replaying this game (especially since there’s no other playable characters besides Dante), I had an overall pleasant time playing this game.

#4: Devil May Cry 3

First, while DMC3 is the last game on this list, I want to clarify that I enjoyed all 4 games, and this game is almost tied with DMC1. However, there are just some choices in the game that made this game a less enjoyable experience for me.

Combat wise, while it took me some time to adjust to only having one style at once, DMC3 has my favorite weapon set out of all the games. I loved played with Cerberus in DMC5, so I was excited to have the opportunity to use this weapon again in DMC3, and the same goes for Beowulf and Kalina Ann. While I didn’t use it that much, I also adored the Nevan weapon, and it seems like a perfect weapon addition to the game series (if only we could’ve seen something similar in DMC5!). I also enjoyed the story of this game. It was nice getting more of a backstory on Dante and Vergil, and Dante definitely grew as a character by the end of the game. It was also nice finally seeing Lady’s backstory. Arkham/Jester annoyed me, and one of my favorite parts of the game is when Vergil basically goes from “I need to begin the all important ritual” to “Okay we need to get rid of this clown ASAP”.

But, what this game makes up for in storytelling, it lacks in general gameplay and aesthetic. The game’s aesthetics almost felt bland, and many areas in Temen-ni-gru were just brown/grey stone. I also wish the early enemy design went outside of the “grim reaper” aesthetic. While I know others have different opinions on the matter, I feel that DMC3′s aesthetic was very one note, and suffers from the opposite problem of DMC4. In terms of gameplay, I felt that most of the item quests did not make sense and were unnecessary. For example, many of the doors require orichalcum to open, but randomly finding a piece of orichalcum on the ground doesn’t make sense story wise. I remember a level specifically where you have to drop down to the library to find a key item, but the library is even before the start of the level.

Compared to this, the item quests and backtracking in DMC1 made sense. For example, finding a key in a room in a castle to use on another door in a castle makes sense. Even weirder item quests, such as finding the trident to open the door, make more sense than DMC3 missions. While I do not know what orichalcum does or what it is, in one of the rooms in DMC1 there is an item with 3 holes in it, and it makes sense that the trident item gained later on would go in this space.

Finally, one of my biggest complaints about this game is the boss battles. Now I might just suck at video games, but it took me way too long to defeat some of the bosses on Devil Hunter. For example, it took me longer to figure out the Vergil fights than it did for me to complete DMC1. Bosses like Beowulf also sucked due to relying on the smaller eye hitbox. In contrast to DMC1 as well, these bosses were at the end of a level, as compared to being a separate mission, so if I wanted to leave and come back later, I’d have to replay the entire mission first.

Overall, I’ll give the game 6/10. Will I replay it? Possibly, I know I can play as Vergil, so it would be fun learning his moveset. However, a game’s aesthetic is almost more important to me than gameplay (that’s just a me thing), so I’m not sure that I would enjoy playing through the levels again due to their lackluster design.

Ending Thoughts

And that’s my rating on (almost) all the DMC games! While some of the gameplay in the earlier games was annoying, I definitely love this series, and I plan on reading the extra novels/mangas outside the game (I’ve already watched the anime). Hell, I’ll probably read some William Blake and the Divine Comedy itself.

Let me know what your ratings are! I’d love to hear everyone else’s lists.

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thephantomporg84 · 4 years

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As much as I love the trope of characters that hide that they have a lot of negative feelings by putting on an act, I really wish it was made more obvious Dante's cuhrayzee wahoo pizza man act is partly a front, since it kinda seems like people don't notice? Sure there was DMC2 but DMC2 is treated as barely canon by most, and Dante's characterization was one of many big complaints about it.

Oh god I totally feel this Anon. 1,000% agree, as someone who love love loves this trope, too. Lol. It’s why I devour a good DMC story on AO3, especially if the writer knocks this trope out of the park.

But yeah. That was sort of one of my bigger nitpicks about DMC5 as a whole. Like. While I do appreciate that the game (and series, really) can be played and the story does mostly work if you’re not invested in it and taking it at face value / just want a good action game — which is a super helpful tactic to bring new people in with such a gap between titles — I hate how it ruins the context of a lot of stuff.

Vergil (as V) all but looks directly at the camera and says ‘I’m a bastard and did what I did because I was afraid/wanted to be loved and protected’ but Dante’s internal conflict is wayyyy more subtle and it’s cheapened if you really have to spell it out, imo — because I feel like the ‘negative feelings behind a goofy exterior’ thing is easy to portray hard to give real depth to. As in, it’s easy to make Dante be cuhrayzee and swing his chainsaw motorcycle around, but hard to show that it’s an act to fool others (as well as himself, probably to some degree). Unfortunately, on top of all that, lot of people aren’t gonna wanna bend over backwards like you, me, and others have done to discuss and pick Dante’s (or any character from any series, really) personality apart.

That said: I don’t think there are nearly enough contextual clues present in any of the games to make this more apparent, either. I remember some guy made a pretty good video a few years back about how the anime proves Dante is actually depressed on YT, and that video blew up and got nearly 100-150k views (which is a lot, esp. when you consider how dead this series was ‘till E3 2018), and a lot of people were ‘shocked’ and ‘never noticed xyz indicator’ before.

Like... If you give me a scene and have given me all the clues I need, but they’re super vague and I miss it? That’s on me, and totally my bad — another reason to replay the game with a more watchful eye. But I feel like DMC has left way, wayyyy too much out about how Dante feels to even do that, now.

I think one of the best examples of that lack of any kind of solid clues about Dante’s personality is in DMC5: In game, Patty calls to invite him to her birthday, and is loud and chatty and kind of annoying. Dante just seems to cringe and brush it off/hang up. If you weren’t familiar with the anime, then you might just brush it off as a gag, or see it as a brief throwback/cameo if you were. Either way, you could chalk it up to ‘oh wow wrong number / what an annoying girl haha.’ But then if you look in Before the Nightmare, which isn’t even available in any language except Japanese, we see that Dante is incredibly uncomfortable at the idea of being around ‘normal’ people, and I believe it even mentions that he plans to make it up to her.

This ties back into my complaints about putting so much meat from the story in the side material, and then not even making the side material available with the game or even easy to access. I feel like putting that kind of interesting characterization in side material is almost criminal lol. Because that makes the whole scene have so much more weight — especially because it sets up that this man is clearly uncomfortable with what he is, possibly now more than ever, and is about to be asked to kill his brother, again... because of what they both are. You also lose that family dynamic of Nero experiencing the same type of isolation as Dante without even fully understanding why.

And if that wasn’t enough, you also lose some AMAZING bits of characterization if you never read Before the Nightmare like:

Dante still sending Grue’s (from the DMC1 novel) two living daughters / their other caretaker (Morrison looks after them, too) money. Dante also had to mercy kill Grue’s oldest daughter. He sends it to them from using money out of his own savings.

The former patrons of Bobby’s Cellar (re-named Grue’s Cellar) and those in the mercenary world immensely disliking Dante, and fully blaming him for the deaths in that bar, Grue’s death, Nell Goldstein’s death, and the hospital invasion/massacre that happened in the DMC1 novel. So, Dante is even hated in the mercenary world, and shoulders the blame for a lot of stuff that he didn’t do / has probably lost a lot of work because of this — and a lot of it is stuff that Gliver (👀) did or instigated.

The caretaker of Grue’s girls absolutely hating Dante, even though the sisters defend him, and he most likely knows and just says nothing. The caretaker even remarks that she thinks he’s a bad omen and she ‘Hopes he’s dead’ and that ‘If he’s alive, I’d love to stick a shotgun up his ass’.

Lady noticing that the qliphoth is growing in Redgrave City, and then noticing the name on Dante’s guns later — then wondering what the connection was there — indicating how little even people like Lady really know about him.

Like, holy shit that’s just a few things and it already adds so much depth to Dante’s character that’s not there in the games alone. I know I’ve said a million times not to take the series that seriously or in realistic terms, but... I mean... even ridiculously goofy stuff like JoJo’s has really well developed, layered characters that will surprise you / break your heart in the blink of an eye. So it’s not impossible for something like DMC to make some stuff a little more apparent.

Oh, and as for DMC2 — if it hadn’t followed the trend at the time of randomly making your protagonist into a dark/angsty/edgelord version of themselves, and had given the angsty turn some logical explanation, then I don’t think it would have been quite so hated (at least, janky gameplay and rushed design aside). Itsuno said that’s the one he’d remake if given a choice to do a remake, and I can’t help but think he wouldn’t say thay without having some ideas on what he’d do differently.

(SORRY I KNOW THIS IS SUPER LONG. But it’s something that really irks me a lot because it could be SO GOOD if handled a little better lol.)

#long post #dmc meta #anonymous #replies #dmc #devil may cry #before the nightmare #dmc before the nightmare #dmc5 #devil may cry 5 #dante #dmc dante #dante sparda

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catflowerqueen · 3 years

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Still not quite finished with Gates, but I’m nearing the finish line for the main game? I think? So I have some more structured thoughts below.

(Apologies for the length, but... well, that’s part of why I’m putting it under the cut)

Most of the mechanics I think are an improvement on Explorers—and definitely on Rescue Team, since Explorers introduced a lot of improvements (like the way healing items are handled—in Rescue team you had to throw them at your allies, and only the hero could eat them directly from the bag). I like how Gates handles experience for allies left at home, and the way that you can level up individual moves and share them among everyone rather than using a ginseng on a single move for a single pokemon (that I don’t think retains that level up if you forget it but then go and remember it again? I can’t recall that part), and some of the team skills are useful… but the problem is that they are really luck-based in terms of actually acquiring them. I’ve only gotten two so far. Comparatively, IQ skills were very much based on the individual, but also a lot easier to get, allowing for a sort of customization aspect? It allowed more care and a better sense of victory, at least.

The V-wave thing is pretty cool, though, especially when paired with how exp works, even as annoying as I find Victini.

Getting rid of the hunger mechanic is I think positive overall? It does free up some inventory space, which is nice, but it also removes a bit of the puzzle and challenge for some of the longer dungeons—and I can’t help but wonder if the reason they did so is just because of how many dungeon layouts in Gates were comprised of many, many sprawling hallways with tons of intersections and small, unnecessary turns and corners, but only, like, three rooms—meaning that everyone would starve to death if the hunger system was involved. I know Explorers had some of those, too, but those were mainly for later stage dungeons, where bigger challenges were expected. It also makes a lot of the dungeons… really boring and repetitive? Like, the graphics are great, but there isn’t really too much variety of the non-plot dungeons beyond differences in color schemes? And while the puzzles involved are excellent, there aren’t really a lot of them, and so far Inflora Forest is the only one where the puzzle is still relevant after making it through the first time—the other ones seem to keep the bridges and stairs you make the first time around, leaving those sections rather superfluous.

And while I like how Companion mode lets me have more of a casual sort of playstyle, and I can build up Paradise and do mini-games without interference from the plot… It kind of makes Post Town really unnecessary beyond specified plot scenes? Like… I don’t have to wait to open any Treasure boxes. Once a dungeon ends I get instant gratification of finding out what’s in them (assuming I have enough money). Same thing with the gold bars. And since Quagsire operates as a shop as well, there is really no need for Kecleon (in Post Town—the ones in the dungeon are still extremely useful) beyond maybe him having some rarer items on occasion—but even then, getting certain shops in Paradise also makes him even more redundant.

(Though, speaking of Paradise shops: Elite boutique—not worth it. Maybe if all shops operated that way—were only around for a specific period of time before inevitably closing—it would be less grating… but there was no warning that that shop would only be run for a few days before closing forever, in addition to the fact that I have to watch Gurdurr’s sad face and laments about destroying the place [after a big part of his backstory involved someone deliberately destroying his work, mind you!] when they could have easily solved it as running more like the travelling salesmon in post town—you never know who or when someone will show up, or how long they’ll stay, but the possibility is at least there that someone will show up again.)

I also don’t like how you can’t stack missions—it really takes the emphasis off of the actual “exploring dungeons” part of the game, and puts it more on trying to build up Paradise. Which is fine, but it just doesn’t feel like traditional gameplay for a PMD game, you know?

As far as characterizations goes… It’s honestly kind of a mixed bag for me in comparison with some of the other games? Like… I do think that, overall, your immediate team and allies had better characterization visible in story, following the plot. As in, they came right out and showed you in the cutscenes, and didn’t depend on you going and talking to them individually in town, reading their diaries, and playing special episodes. I don’t think that the partner is the absolute best-characterized one writing-wise, but they were very, very well-done and do show good growth throughout (Rescue Team is the worst, mostly because of how bland they actually are—especially in the Post Game, where they are completely optional, and no longer follow you around or really talk to you at all like an individual character, rather than just another pokemon you recruit from dungeons [and on that note—I’m kind of sad that Gates got rid of the feature that actually let you talk to your team in the dungeons themselves. Sure, most of what got said was the same ten or so bland lines for everyone, but… I still liked having that option to just turn around and discuss things, especially since at some points it was unique based on where in the plot you were!)

But at the same time… that does take a little mystery out of it? Like… it makes your own (the actual, physical player’s) relationship with them a bit… less rewarding? You aren’t actually working at forming them, this way, the way you would be if you were exploring the town, happened across someone from the guild, and then decided to talk with them. That way, learning all these cool little hints and quirks was almost like a puzzle itself, something you had to work for, something that really embraced the idea of exploring and immersion.

Which is also kind of why I’m of two minds about the fact that the hero does actually have scripted lines, beyond just their thoughts and the little “running motion” indicative of things being said, but not actually described. There aren’t as many dialogue trees, you don’t really get to make that many choices, and the lack of space left up to the imagination… well, it doesn’t make me resonate with the hero as much as in other cases? I don’t really feel like they’re “me,” or could be “me,” so while they do feel in-character for the “character” of the hero… it just doesn’t feel like I’m actually the hero. It doesn’t leave space for that option the way that the other games do.

As for other characters… honestly, it’s kind of hit and miss for them as far as characterization goes, and I think a lot of that has to do with my earlier remarks about how unnecessary Post Town feels most of the time. I feel like they were really over-ambitious with their ensemble cast? Because, sure, some of them like Leaveanny, Swadloon, Lillipup, and Herdier I thought were well done… most of the others were rather forgettable? There were some travelers like Trubbish, Mienfoo and Dwebble that I really like, but I think that most of the others just don’t get enough characterization. Sure, it’s nice that a lot of them care about the player and greet them as their own individual, clearly trying to convey that relationships are being formed… but I just don’t care that much for the town as a whole? The others don’t really grab me, or add that much to the plot at all? Especially since half the time bigger plot discussions only really happen with the group in Paradise?

Like… Explorers had a lot of people, but the fact that they did travel in and out of town, and would sometimes go missing for days, but clearly had their own little stories and plots they were following was really interesting! Same with Rescue Team—the Pokémon Square was small, but it actually felt like a lived-in town? And I’m pretty sure the main towns of PSMD that you were actually using as a hub had that too—Serene Village definitely did. But Gates… I just don’t really see it. They were too ambitious, and they fell flat. I feel like maybe they could have fixed this if you were allowed to visit it in Companion Mode, too—or if they just didn’t let you visit any non-Paradise shops and only allowed Quagsire to edit your party—or if they shrunk it down so that the only thing there was Swanna’s place and the hill, and had the individual characters visit on a basis similar to Explorers, but… yeah.

As far as plot/story goes… well, some of that is hard to determine, just because of how much is involved in a good story. Characterization, like I said, is fine overall, but the story does seem really… low stakes? For the most part? Especially when compared to Rescue Team or Explorers. I think it has good progression over all—especially when compared to the mess that was PSMD!—but there isn’t quite as much of an overall… driving force? I think?

Like… okay, I know I’ve said before that it is a little weird that the hero in Explorers—and I guess also in Rescue Team—spends so much time focusing on other stuff rather than figuring out exactly what happened to them, why they turned into a pokemon, why they have amnesia, etc. (especially since that is part of their stated reason for joining the Guild in Explorers), but in all fairness… what else are they really supposed to do? They have amnesia, they have no clues as to a starting place to even look, it makes sense that they would want and need a safe place and routine figured out so that they can even start looking. And there are some hints pretty early on about their backstory/the state of the world (in dreams and dimensional screams). But the Gates hero… well they actually do have something of a starting place, and they have far more reason to really care about figuring all that out. For one thing, they do not have amnesia. The game makes that pretty clear, and the partner even makes comments on that—asking about friends and family, etc.

So why aren’t they making more of an effort to figure out how to get back home so they can actually reunite with those loved ones?? Or at least commenting on why they might not be concerned about that?? And since the hero doesn’t have amnesia, they also clearly remember the fact that they were called to the pokemon world specifically because someone was asking them for help—and they had a visual description of who they assumed that someone to be. They have a starting point. Why are they not asking around about that?? Why did they wait for more dreams to happen first? And, while it did get brough up in game a little bit, with them commenting on how maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea for them to be taking one of the spots on that initial Great Glacier Expedition because they do, actually, have some responsibility they’re supposed to fulfill, and they don’t know if they’ll have more dreams on the way… they still go on that expedition! Without bringing any of that up verbally, or to the partner who has by that point already agreed that they will go with the hero to save that pokemon as soon as their dreams clear up more.

But… like… they shouldn’t just be being so passive about this??? There are things they could all be doing to prepare! And maybe that is getting into some different facets of the partner’s personality, and showing how really dependent they are on the player—like, having their reluctance to do more be because of how much they really don’t want them to leave after (which does get brought up a little bit)… but I don’t think that’s quite what the game was going for—and if it was, then that needed to be made clearer.

So I guess over all… I think that Explorers is a better game to play if you do want something more story/plot driven, and want to, well, explore things a bit, while Gates is better for a more casual sort of play. Like… the actual plot almost seems like the side story or Special Episode in the face of building up Paradise.

Though, that probably does say more about an individual’s playstyle over the game itself, huh?

I guess… if you’re more into direct characterization via cutscenes, Gates is better (though there are times I wish it showed more of the visuals—like for some of the party scenes, or the housebuilding scene). But if you want a more integrated plot, Explorers is better—or Rescue Team, but it doesn’t have as good of a post-game).

And PSMD… well, I still stand by my earlier statements that I think the first part of the game was great, and the partner was the best-explored/characterized of them all… but it quickly lost plot cohesion and most of the adult characters are terrible people who should not be allowed around children—and the player character really got screwed over by basically everyone and never got closure for any it.

(Also, I can’t actually say anything about DX, since I don’t have a Switch, but from what I’ve seen it’s basically just Rescue Team with some improvements to gameplay mechanics? The story seemed to be pretty much the same from what little I saw.

Oh, and also Ekans’ sprite looks very, very weird.)

...I think that’s everything I had to say for now.

#pokemon mystery dungeon #explorers of sky #explorers of time/darkness #red/blue rescue team #gates to infinity #super #dx #spoilers

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planesofduality · 4 years

Text

The Story Behind Solas with Dragon Age Lead Writer Patrick Weekes - Dialogue Wheel (Part 2 of 3)

Full video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFx1nCdZFjw&t=1s

Part one here

Time: 12:16

That’s quite a quote.

Time: 15:21

Time: 17:13

Time: 19:49

Um…

Reasonably - of what you can say on this.

So, that is where I think where we are going to go, as vaguely as I can say.

Time: 23:30

Time 25:10

Part 3

#solas #patrick weekes #patrick weekes interview #dragon age #dragon age: in #dragon age lore #da4 #dragon age 4 #dread wolf rises #dread wolf #the dread wolf rises #fen'harel #solas x lavellan #part two

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