#i will probably make a full playable set eventually

[inhuman-obey-me]

If the devs do this right for once, and we actually make it to the end of NB story-wise, do you think we'll actually get to go back to our real timeline and meet the og brothers again? As much as I love the time travel premise of NB and these past!brothers, I really do miss our dorks from the present and hope MC isn't stuck there permanently. I need emotional closure after getting ripped away from them so suddenly, damn it. At the very least, a hard mode story update on the others would be nice.

Hahaha...if the devs do it right, for once.

(Loooooong rant & ramble under the cut)

That said, we should be returning, yes. If nothing else, the devs did promise in their pre-release AMA that "the story from lesson 80 will eventually continue in Nightbringer" so we're pretty sure that means we will return to the present...eventually being the operative word. Whether that means the current situation will get wrapped up neatly at the end of NB Season 1 haha OM wrapping up a season neatly? and then plop us back to normal time for Season 2 to continue as a figurative "lesson 81", or if it's going to take a full 4 more seasons to get there, who knows! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But eventually they have promised that the story will pick back up, so that should mean that we are not stuck in the past permanently.

Now, there's a few caveats to this -- the biggest of which may be that it's wildly unclear if they're going to follow through on an "alternate universes" approach to the current time travel, where the situation as it left off is untouched, as Nightbringer seemed to imply when he called this time a "world", or if they will do the "time paradox" singular timeline approach as Solomon warned us about. We personally are going to interpret it as the former until proven otherwise, but it's hard to declare it for sure, as both have been mentioned.

That also means two different things for how things could go.

If it's a single timeline, then it seems clear we have already wildly changed the past with our presence, and we may return to find that things in our own time will be a different as a result. We did mention before that Nightbringer seems like a soft reset to the story because they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with Season 4, and they could use this to retcon some of the more immediate directions they took and change course. Or, they could perhaps use it to introduce new problems which would set them up for things to solve in future seasons? And if things are changed, then we may end up with an unsatisfying version of returning where it still feels a bit off from the continuation we've all been waiting for.

That brings us to the other option -- alternate universes. This can just be an entirely different universe and timeline, which will have no impact on our own time, and we could return to things as they were and pick up from there. Now, the devs did emphasize that NB is meant to be welcoming and playable for new players as well as players of the original, which...probably means at least that they would have to explain a lot of things all over again? Though they haven't explained a lot of shit to new players, like the whole MC having the Ring of Light thing, so it's not like they're especially doing a great job of that! BUT, personally we really prefer this explanation.

First off, having them be entirely separate would really help to explain things like, again, Luke's many-millenia-early visit to the Devildom. And more than that, it seems like it could fit really well into where the story conflict is setting up to go: MC being presented a choice of siding with humans vs demons.

Solomon, in Lesson 9-A, is presented with what is later revealed to be a test by Nightbringer, and there's some key wording in that test about what demons offer.

And what has Nightbringer been saying? That they can bring MC to where they will be happy. "A place that will bring you more joy than any other."

We know that he had wanted Solomon to choose his side, and that Solomon opted to reject both angels and demons to choose humans instead. His big question to Solomon, then, is what MC's feelings are -- although Solomon says that MC agrees, Nightbringer questions if he really knows how MC feels.

That brings up the interesting possibility that, if this world represents a demon (Nightbringer) leading a human (MC) to "happiness", then MC's original timeline could be the option that represents "choosing humanity" instead. If so, this could be a big test from Nightbringer to see how MC feels, just like he tested Solomon, and it could all culminate in a big decision where MC might be torn between choosing this world or the original one -- though, technically speaking, it realistically probably can't actually branch the story drastically, just coding-wise. But even so, it's possible that, like Season 2 with the dagger, they could still give us the option, and hey, that'd be some pretty interesting storytelling if that's the case!

However, that's all just guessing and speculation. More than anything, we simply do not know Nightbringer's intentions as of yet.

It seems as though he may genuinely mean it when he says this is "what will bring us happiness," but he also mentioned that having us make the pacts here in past is what he wants as well. What does that mean for what his own goals are? Why does he want that? And considering that the whole reason we even want to make the pacts in this timeline is so that we'll have the ability to return to our time, it's pretty suspicious to use that to say we "want the same thing" as him. So we do not trust Nightbringer right now, but we don't have enough information as of yet and we'll just have to see what direction this is going to go.

As for a hard mode story update on our boys of the original time, though...unfortunately, we wouldn't hold our breath. There's a lot of really big stuff going on thematically in this past time we're currently in, and they likely won't want to distract from that with a jump to the present unless they're trying to make a point. If it does go towards a "MC has to choose between worlds" thing, there might be a slim possibility of it, just to give us a peek at the other option. However, again, the devs have stated that they wanted to make NB accessible to new players as well as fans of the original game, so we think it's pretty unlikely for us to get a story glimpse of them just for us to get to see how the characters as we knew and loved them actually are.

Also, the whole "MC misses their home and needs to make these pacts because they can't see their versions of the characters until they get back" probably hits a little harder if we really actually can't know how they're doing without us but that rests on the basis of narrative design, which Solmare clearly doesn't believe in, with the whole Ruri Tunes theming and all the backgrounds so far. And then there's the whole possibility that the entire concept of time travel means we may get returned just minutes after our disappearance or something, and that time isn't actually passing for them.......time travel is too frickin' complicated, y'all.

Anyway, all this to say, as much as we are totally loving all the new lore and theming and stuff we're getting in Nightbringer, we miss our OG boys too. Hopefully we'll get back to our original time someday.

[thecloudstan]

Thoughts regarding the changes of certain elements of the OG in "Rebirth" (e.g. Cid's personality being changed or Dyne's death)?

This is such a great question!! I'll answer for both of these because I do have thoughts, and the game is so big that I'm already forgetting some things that you guys remind me about. I'll start with Cid.

I'm not entirely convinced that Cid's personality is changed, so much as the...timeframe of his life is being shifted? I'll try to explain.

In the original, you meet Cid and he's already this grizzled asshole who is doing THE MOST, and his hatred of Shinra is so acute that he eventually starts to rival Barret for who hates that company the most. I love Cid, but I guess if anyone from the playable party had the weakest motivation, it would be him. "They stole my dream" is motivation, don't get me wrong, but doesn't it sort of pale in comparison to "they murdered our parents and burned our village; they murdered me and brainwashed the love of my life; they did EXPERIMENTS ON ME." Sorry Cid, but your trauma is a bit...hmnnggh bebi by comparison...

In Rebirth, Shinra hasn't 100% fallen from his good graces yet, at least with regard to him being ambivalent about their misdeeds because he needs to turn a profit. I think the changes to when you meet Cid, how you meet Cid, and how he behaves about Shinra boil down to two things;

1.) Game functionality. It made the most sense to introduce him sooner to give access to the world in an exploratory sense, and the only way to do this in a remotely timely manner would be to introduce him sooner. But then you kinda fuck up the placement and point of Rocket Town, so he needs some other "hook."

2.) I believe they're saving his "fall" for the third part, much like Vincent's background will be saved for the third part. We still need some dramatic flair and some reminders why everyone should hate the fascist overlord, and by then we already know very well why Barret, Tifa, Cloud, Aerith, Red, Yuffie, and even Reeve harbor those feelings.

Long story short, I think he's been set up for his own character development. It was also kinda nice to have the Tiny Bronco around before Cid's wings are totally clipped, so to speak. It was interesting to see that spark of pre-FUCK THIS SHIT Cid. One thing I do find VERY intriguing is the connection to Ifalna!!!!!! I can't wait to see how that pans out...how well did he know her? Did he have FEELINGS for her?! Is he the reason she was able to escape, even though she didn't make it far? Is Aerith walking free because of Cid Highwind?! That would be kind of gaggy, to be quite honest.

So, sure, they did adjust his personality a bit. Like I doubt he's going to verbally abuse Shera and drop F-bombs, but that's fine. They changed a lot of things from the original that just would not play well to an audience nowadays, and I get it.

Dyne stuff under the cut!!!

My husband and I fully disagree on Dyne. I'm not too assed about him not leaping to his death (I mean, he already fell into a gorge which was probably kinda traumatic???? So having him NOT choose to off himself that way could make a bit of sense). What I am most intrigued about is how he goes full fucking Tetsuo from Akira half way through the fight??

In the original game, Dyne is just a man. He's strong, but he's just a broken man. He isn't experimented on by Shinra, we have no canon understanding of him being Mako poisoned or something, he should not be capable of what Rebirth Dyne was doing during that fight with Barret. My husband has chosen to write it off as the dev team just beefing up the battle to make it more modern/difficult/fun.

I don't share this thought process. Hojo is already understanding things (in my opinion) that go above and beyond the original plot. There are already mutations in Rebirth that didn't exist in the original, and I don't know if I'm reading too much into that, but it seems to me that it's kind of an emerging theme...

SOMETHING. Happened to Dyne. Whether he...fell into the gorge and then was Mako poisoned from being too close to the blown up reactor for years...or something else...I don't know for sure. But I wouldn't be surprised if Rebirth is NOT the last we hear about what happened to Dyne. They're REALLY going in on the human experimentation thing...it's going to get quite ugly with Cloud's background (and Aerith's, I'm assuming, if Cid ever spills those beans), and just Red XIII's Trial in the Temple of the Ancients ALONE was bone-chilling. I don't have precise answers or predictions or anything, but I do think it was changed with an intention deeper than "let's make this battle harder/more cinematic."

[dogydayz]

SPOILERS FOR SONIC FRONTIERS AHEAD!!!!

So i was playing Frontiers for a few hours today- okay most of the day actually. But like, i nearly fucking cried already??? And im not even at the end??????? Im at the last island though. It physically pained me seeing his idle animations slowly start to show him more and more tired, and how he looks in cutscenes too. The whole Tails quests have left me REALLY hoping we might get a Tails game, like one literally just based on him and his own independent adventures and shit like that. That'd be such a neat way to build off of what Frontiers has set up for him! The brotherly relationship between Tails and Sonic makes me so fucking happy too man,,, Like god fucking damn it, SONIC CALLS HIM "LITTLE BRO" LIKE THEY'RE ACTUALLY JUST BROTHERS,,, I played a lot of the fishing minigame stuff with Big and it made me really want a post-game DLC where you can keep the fish you catch if you wanna and like.... put em in a fishtank or smthn, like a really BIG fishtank that you can decorate and shit, and you could buy decor and details + space for it with the tokens you get (because infortunately it seems that Big's fishing spot stuff has little purpose after the story is finished). On the fourth island, Rhea Island, I nearly started to fuckin cry i was hit with so many emotions. The Ancients having to leave then being destroyed in the end, Sonic's idle animations showing the worst of his condition, the corruption taking over him more and more each tower.... AND GOD. FUCKING. DAMN IT. You start off the island before the first tower and are in a MASSIVE FUCKING FIELD OF LAVENDERS. Afaik that's one of the only places in the game with a lavender field???? So now im just begging SEGA to make the Twitter Takeover stuff about Shadow liking lavenders canon by referencing him in that area, like.... if you go back there after the story (since having Sonic randomly mention Shadow while he's about to fuckin keel over would probably ruin the moment entirely lmao). LIKE COME ON. It's SUCH a pretty spot too you better fuckin believe I'm gonna draw art of Sonic bringing Shadow to the Starfall Isles post-story and shit like that just to show him the fields and the sights. You absolutely know I am. The game overall just has such good fucking MUSIC!!! I'm like 90% certain that every mini-boss (big crazy battle enemy) has its own entire battle theme, which is ABSURD. There's none of the eventual monotony that BotW unfortunately ended up having, the enemies on every island differ AND they have features to them that actively prepare you for what you'll have to do in the future with the bosses and Titans. The game design, sound design, controls, designs.... It's all just so fucking amazing I can't even explain it properly. Every goddamn time I ran into another boss I'd be like "the fuck is this thing" and have to learn "new" mechanics that had ALWAYS been there, yet I'd just never used before. The world is INTERESTING, it's FULL and FUN to explore! That was one of the fanbase's biggest fears when the game was first announced, that the world would be empty and boring due to how Sonic needs space to go fast properly, but holy FUCK they nailed it!! They actually did it!! There are so many small locations that are just so beautiful. I really am excited for that future photo mode update, that's gonna be such a blast auuughh!!! I really hope they continue to add more through DLCs as time goes on. While I'd KILL for a "Dark Expansion" DLC that adds in Rouge and Shadow (or even Omega as a secret borderline OP playable character lol), I know it probably wouldn't be able to work into the story so I doubt it'd happen? Would be fun though, to get to explore as different characters during the post-game, hell maybe even have some characters explore together and interact in various locations somehow.... I wonder if someone would end up modding that or some shit lol. But yeah, the game is fantastic and I'm going crazy over it, I just hope we do get some good stuff for the post-game, even if in the future.

[ghostcat3]

TW:Rape, Racism, War, Possible others I might have missed.

Arcanum and a direct take of Racism

May! An actual post from me. Never thought I would see it. Figure it was time. Never used tumblr to post something so sorry if the formatting it wrong. I am sure my one mutual can murder me for that.

Arcanum, a game made by the late Troika games who made such a classic as Vampire: the Masquerade bloodlines (Most likely gonna make a post about that game) and shovel ware such as the temple of elemental evil, which was good, but not really a narrative breakthrough in gaming now is it. They probably made other games, I know they were gonna make a fallout game but got outbid by Bethesda who made The Elder Scrolls Games (Definitely gonna make a post about that one). Troika games was rendered defunct as of February 24, 2004.

Arcanum which full name is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, but only losers on Reddit use the full name. I would like to take this time to do the polite thing and give my hopes and prayers out to the people of Ukraine, mainly because a person known online as Drog Black-Tooth is currently living there and is going through the war. (The patch is basically required to play the game smh)

Arcanum is a setting which is a blend of classic Tolkien-like fantasy and cool steampunk science (The science is better for the purposes of guns ((and the fantasy equivalent of racial supremacy)) ). The setting is completely based around this concept (sort of to the detriment to the actual characters of the game which I find are good ideas but due to needing to release the game on time often reach conclusions in judgement or skip parts of character arcs), the setting generally pulls from the time period of the industrial revolution.

Phew! We can finally actually talk about the topic in large text at the top! I mainly have two main ideas. Body paragraphs? Whatever’s to talk about. Starting with

Orcish Classism

In Arcanum, you can enter and come across factories. Walk in and out of enough of them you will notice something. Most if not all of the works... Are half-orcs. Instead of describing how the player does stuff to find out why, I will just skip straight to what is happening. The Half-Orcs are treated as the lowest class or people, thought of as too stupid or violent for anything else. You can even help then rebel which may eventually turn violent and people will blame your character for inciting what they will call the event “The Orc Riots”. The citizens viewpoint on the Half-Orcs are actually unfounded, as you can play a Half-Orc and be pretty smart... Time for point two.

The Half-Ogre Conspiracy, or how I learned that systemic racism is the best racism.

Time for the lore point that all the people who played Arcanum was screaming at me about. There exists Half-Ogres in the game, playable as a character preset, the rising amount of Half-Ogres is described as odd as even if a normal ogre forced themselves onto a woman, the ogre would then most likely just... Kill and eat the woman. Which makes the large amount being born so strange along with the fact that they seem to always be around gnomes. You get a quest to investigate this by some guy whose name I forgot until you arrive at Half-Ogre Island where you find blood, cages and a journal describing what they were doing. See the gnomes being as smart as they are... Are small. So the other races starting stealing inventions or violently beating them up until the gnomes worked for them. Being tired of being mistreated they discovered they tried enslaving ogres for breeding purposes. It did not work. The ogres were to aggressive and could not understand most commands. Then they realized they can breed humans and ogres and make Half-Ogres. Originally half-ogre births caused deaths for the mother, as the process began to be more refined, multiple births became possible. They began kidnapping female royal family members and putting them through process. When you learn of this you can go to a reporter and give him the journal to report this. He never does. Some people on the forums believe that he was a plant for the conspiracy, I personally find that hard to believe due to the fact that he is human. I believe the conspiracy killed him, as he is never found again in game and the island is cleared out of all proof of the conspiracy. Leaving you and the people involved in the conspiracy the only ones in the know. You can talk to a member of the conspiracy, he admits you the player could stop this plot, but it would require total dismantling and destruction of the government, their plot runs too deep, and you don’t have the time to do that needing to save the world and all. I will leave this section with a quote from the conspiracy member. “The queen birthed three until she died”

It is now time to connect this post to my second statement in my title “and a direct take of racism”. As I play games, I find that most racial topics in other games are ultimately hidden under the veil of allegory and metaphor, and when used right this could be even more powerful then just outright talking about it, but most don’t use this to its advantage. For example, a personal favorite dragon age. Tell me how the hell the mage circle makes sense. What are the sub-factions (Fraternities as they are called in the game) in the circle such as Loyalists, etc (Watch someone who understands the lore read this post a response clearly and concisely and invalidates this example). Arcanum is refreshing because it talks about the innate classism of races, a systemic prejudice of race. Other buzzwords. That is why I chose to talk about this. (Arcanum isn’t even my favorite game, Oblivion better)

[nazmazh]

Okay, so, I had some random, interconnected Dead by Daylight ideas - And full disclosure, I haven't combed the depths of their lore to see if it's specifically been done already in some form.

Alright - So:

In the archive lore snippets, there's been mention of a group of friends + family of the survivors having come together to search for their missing loved ones. They've managed to figure out that the disappearances are connected and have some idea about The Entity/another dimension - Some sort of cosmic fuckery going on.

In at least some instances (universes within the mutilverse), they apparently managed to cross into The Entity's Realm.

Idea the first, and probably the most obvious one, is that they could be fun ideas for playable survivors themselves. Or, if nothing else, character reskins for their associated survivors - Eg: Replace Jake with his father (Sam, apparently. Also, apparently Jake's grandfather/Sam's dad also disappeared into the fog, so he could be an option too), Dwight with his mom(?) (Elaine has the surname Fairfield but it's never actually specified how she's related to Dwight, it would seem).

I can see Bhvr being hesitant to do original lore-based reskins, though, because even if they are available for iri shards and not just auric cells, I don't know how willing people would be to buy and use the skins, and they'll require a relatively higher amount of effort to make compared to usual outfits.

I mean, heck, I can see them being hesitant about even introducing new playable survivors connected to previous characters/lore - Sable seems to have worked out well, but she wasn't really directly mentioned in Mikaela's lore (weirdly sidestepped if you consider a Watsonion explanation, rather than the actual Doylist reason - ie: They hadn't come up with/written her yet). But I would love for characters like Benedict Baker, Saku Nakano the Redcrane, Alex Damaro, Cliff Barra, Candice Maddock, Mahan Singh, Surin Rivera, and Jayden/Jordan Rois (with a Haley reskin for Haddie for funsies) to get made into actual survivors.

Otto Stamper would be an interesting idea - Sure, you could make the dickbag into a killer, but what if he was a survivor? A truly heinous person - an outright evil bastard compared to Yun-Jin's selfish, cutthroat personality, but he refuses to give his will over to The Entity. Something like that. He helps the others because it betters his chances at survival, not because he actually cares about their fates - You don't throw away good tools unnecessarily, after all. The other survs might not know about his history/nature (he puts on a charming enough face, after all) - Hell, he might even be claiming he's a good variant - That cult leader/mad scientist? "He's a monster, but that was only one set of universes!". Either way, they're stuck with him in trials, and it's not like he'll truly die if sacrificed anyway. Might as well put him to work on generators.

- Given the lore entries, I'm genuinely hoping Candice or Jordan/Jaden comes in a full chapter with the Mist Vampire mentioned in their stories. Given that Castlevania's bringing old Drac himself though, I'm guessing it'll be a while before they do that killer, if ever.

*****

Idea the second - Part one is fairly straightforward - Use this group of friends and family and their ongoing story to tease a new survivor:

- One of the members of the group is looking for someone whose name we don't recognize

- Eventually, we do meet their missing relative in a new original chapter

Part two of this notion is mostly a storytelling hook playing with this:

- What if one of the members of this group, again, was looking for someone we didn't recognize -

And they turned out to just be wrong about what happened.

- Their missing loved one was not taken by The Entity, they aren't somewhere in The Fog. They either died/disappeared due to some other tragedy, or maybe they didn't want this person to find them, and/or it was a huge misunderstanding of some sort and they're happy elsewhere and just out of contact with this person (Does this loved one genuinely not know what happened or are they very in denial about the situation, whatever it might be?)

- So now, this person has joined up with the group, including venturing into The Fog, and they're not going to find their answers here. And they're going through all this Fog-related misery unnecessarily.

- Actually - Good time for a plot twist! They're actually the new playable survivor themselves!

- Of anything I mention here, this one might be something Bhvr's plausibly already got in the works

*****

Idea the third - Iterating again on this friends & family group - What if someone who joined was instead a relative of a killer?

- This would have to be a limited list of potential candidates:

- Contemporary - It just doesn't quite hit the same to have a descendant of the Quinn family investigating the disappearance of Caleb from Hellshire (and besides - Zarina already has that angle kind of covered :p)

- Has a relative who would care enough to look for them

- That relative isn't too much of a bastard themselves

- The best bet here might be someone connected to The Legion. Sure, they're not implied to have great home lives, any of them, if they ended up becoming part of the murder-teen squad, but maybe, after they disappear, one of their parents who was more neglectful than directly/purposefully abusive feels guilty and tries to find them - For Julie, Joey, or Susie, anyway. Or maybe Frank has a long-lost sibling or foster sibling who genuinely wants to find him, either not knowing or having rose-tinted glasses about what he was like.

- At any rate, wouldn't that be a hell of a reunion in the fog?

- You could also build up to it, like - The parent even sees Frank as a Killer and goes "Aha! I knew that bastard was no good! What have you done with my [Julie/Joey/Susie]?!

- Then, with the hope that maybe their kid got pulled in here as a victim of Frank's, they find them. As a Killer - There's maybe a pause as the pang of recognition hits [Julie/Joey/Susie], but they're fully in the fog (heh) of the Entity's grip and compelled to kill

- Does the parent keep trying to reach their kid? (I mean, assuming it's the same-universe-version as them. I feel like The Entity would twist the knife like that - They manage to get through to one, but it wasn't their version). Do they let themselves die again and again without trying to fight back? Do they fight with all their might, trying to reach their kid, deep down, somewhere in there? Do they just shutdown and refuse to acknowledge the situation or engage?

- You could combine this with Idea #2 - The relative comes looking for their missing loved one, finds out they're a killer, and they themselves are the playable survivor for the chapter.

- Something on a more-equal footing for the relationship than the neglectful parent of a very-young (if legally adult) killer might also feel less-uncomfortable. Even as I was writing stuff out it was like "They feel bad for having harmed their kid, yet they're willing to smack 'em with pallets or whatever? Hrmm..."

- If it was more like, siblings, partners, friends, cousins or such, the tragedy could still be there without it necessarily hitting too close to home or having more-uncomfortable power dynamics

Anyway, this kind of ties into something I've really wanted in the game for a while - Alternate universe versions of the Killers, where they were taken as survivors.

I don't think that would necessarily mean, like, a new set of perks for each human killer-as-survivor. Maybe like one base survivor with a whole spate of alternate skins. And like one set of perks themed around a twist of fate/for want of a nail-type stuff

[senstless]

My thoughts on the Common Neutral Cards from a Bronze Perspective

New Cards Released

What an amazing day. The full set was released and they are playable. For me that means that I am massively overwhelmed and need to break this down into digestible chunks. Part of the problem it looks like right now is just getting you know real feel for what cards are going to be a priority for me in bronze versus which ones can wait. Well I'm sure the legendary and epics will be a must and a priority no matter what level you're at some of these other cards will be used much less but still be required for me to complete my collection for future changes that may make them more powerful card.

To break this down I'm going to just take a look at the common cards in the neutral splinter since they're probably going to be available in most games and could be heavily used. I think I'll continue to go through this process and work my way through the splinters, and then to rares, move on to epics and legendaries.

GRIMBARDUN FIGHTER

This looks like an amazing card to be used in melee only matches, or matches that have lost magic. At level 3 this will be a fairly well-rounded card with three melee damage with two base speed. It's one armor and seven health are adequate, but the real benefits come from its abilities. It will get Shield which reduces health by 50%, and the addition to corrosive Ward at level 3. This will help eliminate monsters armor when it is attacked, and it reduces its Max armor as well. Very similar to thorns but might actually be better as it will eventually negate the repairability and remove the armor all together.

It's 9 mana cost is going to force it to be used in only higher level matches, but if you're able to add this behind a splinter that allows for tank healing, or repair it's looking much better. It could also be used is a rear tank for the sneak heavy matches to help eliminate those especially if you play triage.

Overall I can see this being a fairly common card in a lineup for me. Given the handful of rule set it will be strong in and hopefully I get high enough man to matches where it makes sense to play

NIMBLEDOOK RANGER

It's been a while since I've seen a double strike snipe card. I feel like there was one a few additions ago that was especially damaging. The ranger is a mixed card for me it's fairly expensive at 7 mana, will only have one base damage with three speed and five health at level three. If played with general Sloan then it will get a boost to two damage, and a double strike means it'll do four damage per round. The real benefit is that this is a snipe attack and can really eliminate the back row cards that are supporting the tank and turn the battle. This could become especially powerful if you can find a way to boost it with martyr.

Overall I really like this combination of snipe and double strike, but I'm not sure how much it would be used outside of playing it with life and general Sloan, I'll have to wait and see if there's something I'm not considering.

ULUNDIN OVERSEER

Overseer is an absolute tank. This is the classic tank you're looking for, six armor and 13 health at level 3. This will absorb absolute ton of punishment and could be even more if you select a summoner that gives it an additional boost like void. It also comes with a flank ability, if this is in first position then email a card in second position will get reach. This could be played very nicely with fire and a card with natural weapons training and reachability. Giving it a two melee attack from weapons training with these stats could really help boost it. You could also be a good one to use with other weapons trainings cards that have magic as long as it's followed up by a tank healer it could be really bothersome to get through.

CHAOS LACKEY

I know I only reviewed for cards today. But honestly most of my time has been spent playing matches and seen what cards I am facing the most. I have money set aside in DEC and ready to spend I'm just waiting to figure out my priorities and continue to dig through these cards and abilities. Right now it hasn't been crucial for me to own any cards, but I have started to rent a few for a few days just to get experience. Those dual splinter summoners have been interesting, and there's a few other cards that I look forward to playing the rentals while I wait to buy.

[discountalien-pancake]

Bite and Sting tile blanks! The dried clay makes the most satisfy click-clack sounds when you tap the tiles on a hard surface (including each other!) and I’m so pleased. Sooo worth the effort of making actual tiles and not just cutting out cards.

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

which KR toylines would you recommend? LVUR seems fun all around, Ooo they love replicating the originals gimmick, and Revice i think they did a neat way of making it so you still get full characters with the side packs, and the originals just function as upgrades

Been sitting on this one for a bit because I'm really not sure how to answer it since there are so many toylines out there and I think you've gotten a bit confused looking through a bunch of them and as such there's some stuff to untangle. So I'll break it down into 5 particular things:-

Gimmick Figures which you seem to be looking at that ran from W through Build. These are 6' (standard action figure scale these days) and all incorporate the series' gimmicks and as such are usually mix-and-match figures like OOO and Build or 'armour' figures like Gaim and Ex-Aid. An exception lies in Wizard, who for the most part has no gimmick, so he just has a button that lights up his head (it is a surprisingly bright light btw!). They're very solidly built figures with dense, good feeling plastic and are pretty well articulated for what they are; and if you're interested they are mostly pretty cheap on the aftermarket too. As long as you go in not expecting a lot from them you should enjoy them! After Build however, these were replaced by...

Rider Kick Figures, which started with Zi-O and are still ongoing today with Revice. Earlier on they also covered some legend rider series with Build, Ex-Aid, Decade and W but then uh just, stopped doing that. These are much much more focused on being good action figures than the gimmick figures and as such feature higher articulation and swappable hands (which sometimes include fun stuff like the Saber ones including a Ridebook-holding hand), and some also dive into gimmicks; like Zi-O having armour sets, Revice doing the Genome combinations and a few select figures like Ark-Zero, Calibur and Saikou coming with alternate parts to recreate their other forms. They're also smaller at about 4 and a half inches... and a lot of the time do not feature as many paint apps as they should for what they're trying. I've gotten Calibur recently and I really don't like him; his plastic does not feel great, he can't hold his sword (????) and the hand connections are way too hard. I wouldn't really recommend these, and especially due to the scale; would instead suggest...

SO-DO/SHODO! These are the 4' candy toy lines which are absurdly cheap at about 500 yen per figure and go extremely all-out in covering as many things as possible. You won't find much in the way of direct playable gimmicks but they do replicate form changing as much as they can; having done so with Build, Saber and OOO. SO-DO improves every single year in articulation and hiding joints and paint apps and don't have that many stickers if they can help it, and later waves include additional really fun accessories for a lot of different characters. They also take requests and feedback from customers so end up including fan-favourite things eventually too, which has resulted in things like doing Decade Complete and the stage show form Ark-Zero-One in Saber's fifth wave! SHODO is a bit different as they don't require any building or stickers and are much more like mini-SHFs. They put a larger focus on doing past series and cover a very wide, best-of variety of characters from anything they cover.

S.H. Figuarts is probably the one you'll see around the most; at 6' they are the standard high quality, collector-aimed lines that feature intense articulation and a hefty amount of detail. Certain recent lines have gone all out in replicating gimmicks where they can such as OOO's Combo Change but in general what you are looking at here is a very simple but very well-executed action figure of your favourite character. They used to come with a lot more accessories than they do these days but ~usually~ they come with the basic stuff you want. The main hurdle however is the price; unless you earn a lot of money or are just looking to get a couple to represent your absolute favourites (like me) I do not recommend this line, it will cost you a lot of money especially since almost everything they release is webshop exclusive. If you're looking for a much cheaper alternative for 6' main riders, however...

Figure-Rise Standard is by far my favourite Kamen Rider action figure line! This is a model kit line that you build yourself and results in a 6' very well-articulated figure of a given Kamen Rider. Right now they're on their 'Heisei Riders BEGINNING' project which aims to cover all 20 main Heisei Riders and they only have 5 left to do, and have even started dipping into Showa with an upcoming figure of BLACK! Webshop exclusives also cover repaints (such as Genm, Faiz Accel and Joker) and recently have started dipping into other things like Kuuga and Den-O's alternate forms and OOO's Tajador. These typically run you around ~3500 yen each and try to include as much as they possibly can from Kabuto's Masked Form pieces to Den-O, OOO and W's form changing to Decade's series-wide compatible Decadriver to Ryuki coming with Dragreder, and are about as detailed as you could possibly want. If model kits don't scare you off and you're mostly looking for well-detailed, well-articulated 6' main riders with all the accessories you could want and a reasonable amount of gimmicks, this line is what I recommend

[satoshi-mochida]

Some thoughts on my last Gamefly rental, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.

*Though most people are familiar with DBZ, especially the three main Sagas in this game, given how often they’re played out in games, I’ll put a spoiler warning here just in case. Also, I didn’t try out the DLC stories, yet, so this will just be about the base PS4 game with it’s current updates. I may buy the game and try those out in the future. I also say a lot about the game.

The game spans from the Saiyan Saga to the end of the Buu Saga(not counting DLC). Pretty much every important scene is played through, though a few parts are skimmed over or skipped, like:

Goku traveling Snake Way, his brief fall into Hell, and training with King Kai(shown a bit and mentioned but not playable) 

Piccolo using Hellzone Grenade against Android 17(you can have him learn the move and do it yourself, though).

Future Trunks’ battle with Cell where he found out the speed-loss disadvantages of Super Saiyan Third Grade(that moment isn’t shown or mentioned, though he does still fight Cell in that form)

Vegito still attacking Super Buu after being turned into candy(which means we don’t get to see him beating Super Buu up as a high-speed jawbreaker). Also, Goku and Vegeta freeing everyone trapped inside Super Buu happens offscreen.

And possibly a few smaller moments. They aren’t too important in the long run, though, plus some were probably for better pacing or something.

There was some added stuff, too:

Several times, you’ll be able to meet, and occasionally do sidequests for, several older Dragon Ball characters, like Nam, Eighter and Launch.

A new fight for Goku against Kid Buu to end the main story before he launches the Super Spirit Bomb at him.

There's a fairly small amount of playable characters(who can also be put in a party as Support Members): 

Goku

Gohan

Vegeta

Piccolo

Future Trunks(Android/Cell Saga and Epilogue, only)

Gotenks(only in two battles against Super Buu)

Vegito(in one battle against Super Buu, which, considering how powerful Vegito is, is more of an epic beatdown than a fight)

And a few characters that are support only:

Krillin

Tien

Yamcha

Chiaotzu

Goten

Kid Trunks

Android 18

All characters, Main and Support Only, have a ‘Super Attack Skill Tree’ that you can use Z Orbs that you find/earn to give them new skills and attacks. What you can get increases based on the character’s level and story progress(example, you can’t get Super Saiyan 2 for Gohan until he unlocks it during the fight with Perfect Cell).

Throughout the game, you’ll collect ‘Soul Emblems’ to place onto several ‘Community Boards’ to increase various ingame bonuses, like more EXP or cooking benefits. You get Soul Emblems both from the main story and side quests. They can be leveled up with Gifts to increase the Community Level, giving more bonuses. This seems to be the best setup for all of the emblems that I found.

At campfires and at Goku’s House, you can make food from items/materials you have to give yourself a stat boost. And Chi-Chi can be asked to make the party Full Course Meals at her home, which also increase the Base Stats of whoever eats them.

A certain filler episode from the original series where Goku and Piccolo are forced to get a Driver's License also happens in this game(though unfortunately without the outfits they wore in said episode). After doing so, you unlock the ability to make cars and battle walkers from Bulma, as well as Time Attacks for both types of vehicles(which I didn’t do much of).

Like the first Budokai game, this one has story’s events shown in cutscenes, which the later ones just had them happen in dialogue to speed things along, probably. And they did a really good job of animated said scenes, matching the look and feel of the series VERY closely.

The flying also feels well done, and true to the series. Aside from flying normally, which is fairly slow, you can hit L3 to start flying faster, at the cost of your Ki slowly going down and not being able to sense Ki with R1. This is the best way to travel the the large maps. Goku and Gohan can also use the Flying Nimbus, though you can’t pick up items that you need to hit Circle while doing so. Also, ramming into weaker enemies while flying will defeat them instantly and give you EXP. It’s a bit hard to aim yourself at enemies correctly, sometimes, though. 

Going underwater functions the same as flying, except with an air meter to keep an eye on. If it runs out, you get kicked back above where you entered the water as the only penalty. Take a peek down under whatever bodies of water you find; there’s always stuff to see and collect, depending on the map, especially on maps with oceans.

You can also dash on the ground by hitting L3, and unlike when flying, you can still sense Ki while doing so. 

I feel like this game’s flying controls are about what it should feel like for a Superman game. Probably might need a few tweaks to fit more with that series, but this feels like a good base for that kind of game.

The game’s many maps are pretty large, with lots to see and explore, including towns, caves that you need to be a certain level to enter, materials to gather, fishing spots, and more. They include plenty of well known DBZ locations, insulting Kame House(and the ocean around it), West City and Capsule Corp., Korin’s Tower and Kami’s Lookout, and so on.

Floating around these maps are enemies you can fight. They grow in strength as you do/the story progresses. If you’re strong enough and are fast-flying when running into an enemy, you’ll defeat it and gain EXP right away.

Speaking of Korin’s Tower, you can eventually unlock the ability to grow Senzu Beans there, which fully heal you. Once they’re unlocked, they will gradually grow and can be collected from Korin, with a Senzu Bean icon appearing next to it on the World Map if there’s any available. He will hold up to 9 at once, so check back once in a while.

Fishing is pretty easy to do; just hit one of the face buttons(X, Triangle, Square and Circle) when the marker is in a marked area, then hot one again when the closing circle is within another marked circle(this might make more sense when you see it yourself). You’ll get items for cooking from fishing, and some sidequests need them, or just certain types of fish, to clear. An amusing detail when fishing is that Goku and Gohan, even when he’s a teenager, use a fake tail as a lure while Vegeta and Piccolo fish like normal people(I forgot to check and see what Future Trunks does, but probably the latter).

After clearing the Frieza Saga, you can collect the Dragon Balls on Earth during Intermissions. They give off a small orange slow when sensing for Ki, and you’ll hear a low humming sound when you’re close to one. You can get several different wishes from them, with three of them always being for Z Orbs, Zeni or Rare Material Items. Other wishes are reviving certain dead characters to fight them again, and can only be done once, unlike the three listed above. At first, you can only make 1 wish at a time, but as the game goes on, it gets upgraded to 2 then 3 wishes at once. After making a wish(s), you ‘ll need to wait 20 ingame minutes before the Dragon Balls can be found and used again. They seems to have a couple set locations on whatever map they end up on(two locations are west of Orange/Satan City, for example).

Speaking of Mr. Satan...I know that his actually Japanese stage name, but I always end up calling him Hercule due to hearing that for so many years(and just liking how that sounds better). Also, ‘Satan City’ just sounds really funny. XD

You probably won’t need to really grind in the base game; you should get enough experience from doing sidequests and story events to get by. Gohan especially; he ended up quite a few more levels than everyone else just from the story EXP alone, and his Unleashed Potential ‘form’ from Elder Kai makes him do quite a lot more damage. Also, gained experience is shared among all party members, even those not currently set to fight.

One of the sidequests you can do throughout the game is defeating ‘Villainous Enemies’, who are fairly strong, and are covered in a red aura. You should at least be at or around their level before fighting them, since you can’t run from fights in this game. It may be best to do them during Intermissions when you can select your party members, and bringing someone who can stun with Solar Flare(like Krillin), can be really helpful. 

In the epilogue/postgame, in addition to being able to play as Future Trunks(talk to him outside of Capsule Corp.), you can also use his time machine to redo Boss fights, and do any sidequests you may have missed.

The game’s opening has the old opening for the show, ‘Cha-La-Head-Cha-La”, and this is the first time I really listened to it. It’s really good, and kind of reminds me of the opening to Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, too, for some reason.

There’s a few parts where there’s some nice attention to the series’ details:

At several story points when Saiyan characters are healed, like with Senzu Beans or the healing pod on Namek, they gain experience, while others, like Krillin, don’t get that bonus, which does make them, admittedly accurately, start lagging behind in strength.

If you use Ki Sense on Androids, and a certain researcher in Capsule Corp., you won’t see anything emitting from them.

If you have Piccolo and/or Android 18 in your party while eating a Full Course Meal from Chi-Chi, they won’t eat any of it. Saiyan characters(again, forgot to check Future Trunks) eat it ravenously(even Vegeta), while human party members eat normally.

Only Goku and Gohan can use the Flying Numbus.

These aren’t really important observations, but some events in the game made me think:

Did Piccolo destroying the Moon to stop Gohan’s Great Ape form have any effects on Earth? Or did nothing really happen?

How in the world did Supreme Kai and Babidi survive being so close to Majin Vegeta when he used Final Explosion while Piccolo and Krillin hightailed it out of there with Goten and Kid Trunks? 

I noticed a possible(intentional) goof at the end. In the cutscene after beating Kid Buu and going back to Kami’s Lookout to reunite with everyone, Dende is a kid again for some reason. Apparently, both the original anime and manga made this goof too, so maybe it’s a nod to that? It is kind of jarring, though. XD

A couple technical issues I found were that sometimes when loading a map, and in some battles later on, the game would hang for a couple seconds, and one time it crashed while it was loading into an area after traveling to another. Thank goodness for autosave. Also, be careful using the stronger version of Goku’s Spirit Bomb attacks; it caused major lag for me a couple times.

This ended up being one of my favorite DBZ games that I’ve played, close runners up including 

Budokai 3

Budokai Tenkaichi 2(mainly for just how many characters that one has, including most of the movies from around that time, outmatched by Budokai Tenkaichi 3, which I didn’t play)

Legacy of Goku 2(I didn’t get the chance to play Buu’s Fury back then)

Next game being sent is: Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel

[glowyjellyfish]

Progress report:

I downloaded many medieval things from many sites. Still need to install most of them. The big problem was attempting to download literally everything from Almighty Hat--I was planning to mainly just go for objects at this point, but there was so. much. hair. and medieval undergarments! different ones from the other Almighty Hat ones I already had! ...so eventually I bookmarked the hair pages I thought I didn’t have, and promised myself to do a hair run later. That means it feels like I only have PBK left to scour for objects, without counting things like GOS gift sets as I don’t even know how to begin searching through that without literally looking at everything.

The CEP seemed to solve the blue on the medieval wood set... until I loaded a lot where I had already placed them. Then the blue was back, would not depart, and any new attempts at placing also came with blue. This is after emptying my cache AND clearing all the thumbnails, you understand. I guess placing the blue objects was a bad idea as now the lots have re-cursed the objects with blue? Should I just sell and replace the cursed objects with different ones, or do I need to do another re-download, or what? I will have to see.

Anyway, today I built a beekeeping farm for the Patels that turned out pretty great. Try as I might, I could not make the lot be worth $35,000 as yeoman lots should be, but it’s fine. There’s only so much decor I could cram in there anyway.

I forgot to position the camera correctly to see the ceiling, but trust me it has one. Oh, probably I left the game set on an upper floor after taking the outside picture. Mea culpa!

Bush clipping in from outside, might have to deal with that. I found I like clustering the fridge, sink, and tub next to each other in my medieval kitchens in an effort to imply that they are sharing a small water supply rather than having the whole house full of plumbing wherever.

Second floor! I have finally figured out to put roof walls above interior walls. This room is currently a vague nursery, and has loads of space for more children as needed. 

The bed looks a little overly fancy, but it wasn’t expensive. I’m just going to pretend a relative carved it all nice for them.

The yard! Little outhouse, five beehives ready to be filled, a honey press, four apple trees and one each pear and persimmon for variety, and a row of blackberry bushes.

Rows of herbs and berry bushes, and in the distance a slightly overgrown cluster of shrubs and wildflowers for the bees to enjoy!

Looking back at the house from within a patch of wildflowers.

And a small market stand out front to sell their herbs, fruit, and honey. Maybe someday, they’ll add a fully indoor home store to sell out of, but right now I love this house too much to change it. It’s that glamorous yellow plaster-and-timber exterior, I am sure. I’m a little concerned I made it too nice for yeomen, but it has the correct number of rooms and furniture (plus some decor and one extra side table for the scroll phone), and they didn’t even fill out the standard pre-garden yeomen budget of $35,000, so it’s probably fine.

And I am getting very close to finishing the makeovers of Desiderata Valley, after which will be everyone’s favorite, Pleasantview!

The second yeoman family of Desiderata Valley, after the Ottomases, is the Jocque family.

Sophia Jocque. I try to match the colors of each sim’s original outfit unless I find something else I like better, and I made a point of giving her long, soft hair to counteract her very square jaw. I think she came out looking really nice!

Marcel Jocque. Nothing special, but I’ve been trying that hair on lots of men and am pleased I finally found one for whom it worked!

Violet Jocque, now with one long braid instead of two short ones!

Next we have the Bells, the only merchant family of Desiderata Valley.

Hannah Bell. Although I usually vaguely aim in the direction of whatever texture a sim’s original hair is, in this case I didn’t think it was particularly sensible to give Hannah and Sharon straight hair. No straighteners in the medieval megahood! Besides, she looks much nicer with those braids.

...and Sharon looks amazing with this short curly mop. She’s a tad rebellious anyway, and I didn’t want to repeat my longer curly hairs this early.

Isaac Bell. It was kinda tough finding him an outfit that reflected his colors without being too high or low class, and without simply repeating what I’ve put on other yeomen. As you can see, I didn’t quite nail it (his original outfit is pink and grey), but this works; he looks like he’s got a bucket of charisma.

And Daniel Bell, sneaking in one last use of the TV before everything goes full medieval.

Finally, the gentry of Desiderata Valley, Lady Natasha Una.

...she’s still obsessed with grilled cheese. I might change that, but then again I might not. She’s one of the highest ranking available adult women, so she probably won’t stay single for long. Her best prospects are currently Duke Armand DeBateau, Lord Nervous Subject/Specter (I’ll probably change his last name to Specter, Subject is his... hostage name), or, failing either of those, Lord Geoff Rutherford, Lord Connor Weir, Lord Kent Capp, or Lord Frances J. Worthington III. Kent Capp is less likely, as I want to prioritize him for ladies that need to keep their names and positions, but he’s definitely an option, and they have hit it off before in other, non-medieval megahoods I’ve played. 

I just have to makeover the Aspir family, and then I’ll be on to the peasants of Pleasantview. Also, I have decided that I need to finish making over all the playable sims (including the college sims) before I can start actually playing, in addition to completing all lot construction and remodeling in Belladonna Cove. I... am not sure yet whether it’s a great or terrible idea to start actually playing before I finish Everything, but it at least makes a nice smaller goal to shoot for.

[radramblog]

More Inevitable Hot Takes- MTG Announcement Day edition

I only have myself to blame for this one. I forgot this was upcoming, and I went and blathered about dumb preview cards from most of a month ago anyway. Well, now I’ve got to spend two posts in one week talking about Magic cards. Woe is me?

Once a year, WoTC has a big day where they announce, like, everything for the next year’s releases. And with the picking up speed of set releases, there’s a lot there, and thereby I have a lot to talk about.

To be clear, I’ve deliberately avoided Magic Twitter and Magic Reddit for these announcements. Tis a silly pair of places.

Standard Sets 2022

In order:

Kamigawa Neon Dynasty is very concerning, as one of the people who’s a genuine big fan of the original Kamigawa block. The thing is, I like Kamigawa, with it’s spirits and artwork and samurai and the like. I like cyberpunk, with the aesthetic and the themes and the music. I’m not sure I’m going to like the two combined. We better see some fucking weird-ass spirits, and I’ll only be slightly annoyed if they’re cyber-ghosts or whatnot as long as they maintain that bomb-ass art design.

We have a new plane and a set to go with it, which is cool and nice. Urban Fantasy is a thing Ravnica already did, to be honest, but if I had to guess, Streets of New Capenna is going to be a much more low-fantasy, noir-y take on the genre. I think I saw something about Azra returning, which is cool. That one on the key art looks…very Ob Nixilis-y, though.

And then we’re going back to Dominaria and actually doing The Brother’s War, again? I think Urza block was about that arc, though the Dominaria United set might be like, before all that nonsense. They might have given details, I wouldn’t have seen them, I’m going based on someone’s TL;DR. I’m excited to finally have a Mishra card that isn’t the Time Spiral one, though I’m concerned about how they’re going to make an Urza and a Mishra that are both powerful enough for the iconic characters but not so powerful as to be dominant in the Standard they’ll be legal in.

So, so much Universes Beyond

I think the four Warhammer 40k precon decks is kind of exactly what I was hoping we were going to get for that particular crossover. Just enough to get fans happy and make some fun new cards, not enough that there’s a ridiculous influx of Tyranids into Magic’s annals. I’d be interested to see what regular Magic cards translate well into these decks, seeing as they’ll have to be 40k-ified.

I feel similarly about the Baldur’s gate Commander draft set. I remember fans of that particular D&D spinoff were frustrated with the lack of representation in AFR (I think Minsk was like the only thing they got), so now they have a whole set to work with. Ultimately, D&D is now already, and interminably a part of Magic’s multiverse, and more from those particular realms isn’t going to make anything super fucky. Also, Commander Legends was cool as hell, and this is going to be another one of those, so that’s a plus.

And…a Lord of the Rings set? Like, a full set? I’m assuming whatever got them 40K also got them rights to tabletop LOTR, seeing as Games Workshop has run the LOTR tabletop game for a while. Like with D&D, the medium-high fantasy of LOTR crosses over pretty well into Magic, so I’m not worried about that kind of cockup making things Feel Weird. I’m a little confused about the legality of the set, though, seeing as it’s in Arena, but not Standard legal, but it is Modern legal? What and why and what about Pioneer or Historic?

Secret Lairs

Few hits, few misses, though I remember seeing spoilers from a few that aren’t on this list. Presumably, the Art Series: Johannes Voss, Thomas M. Baxa, and Purrfection and Math is for Blockers were announced separately? Anyway.

Hits: The Kamigawa Ink cards look drop-dead gorgeous, holy shit. Add in the fact that I already play two of those cards and that the others are all cards I like? Might have to get that one. Math is for Blockers is a fun lineup though I don’t…really get the theme? Both Artist Series look incredible, though I’m not huge on the card lineups.

Misses: PURRFECTION would be great if it wasn’t apparently a convention exclusive and also if the art of cats were on cat cards. It’s cute as fuck, but eh. The old-format walkers are frustrating, but I’m not as against them as a lot of people are- like they’re ugly, but not worth throwing a fucking fit over. I weep for any new player staring one of these down, especially if they barely understand planeswalkers in the first place and/or haven’t seen one of these particular ones before. Also, the art is kinda just ugly.

And then there’s the Universes Beyond ones. Fortnite and Street Fighter, both with new cards that will eventually have regular versions (which leads me to wonder if TWD will do the same). There’s a clear attempt here to hit the zoomers and the boomers in the community, though the former probably won’t have the money to afford the Secret Lair if they’re burning all their cash on V-Bucks. It’s…not a great look? Like I’m not opposed to cartoony art styles (the Goblins Kaboom SL looked great!) but Fortnite’s in particular looks like dogshit in my eyes and I’m not looking forward to seeing it in a Magic frame. Street Fighter I’m more excited for, because I like Street Fighter, and because they confirmed Chun-Li is going to have multikicker which is kind of perfect. Obviously we’re going to have to see the cards, but in one case I’m dreading that, and in the other I’m welcoming it.

Other Cards

We have more Challenger Decks, for Pioneer this time. The decklists are already out, and they look pretty solid! The Challenger Decks have been pretty cool previously, a really solid set of lists that only needed a bit of tweaking to be FNM-viable, but they were held back by the fact that they were often released not long before rotation. With Pioneer being a non-rotating format, this is going to be great for getting people into the format.

Another Double Masters set is…egh. It’s another thing that’s not for me, I can’t afford to whale on that shit. With shipping and conversion those packs end up ludicrously expensive in Perth, and I’m pretty sure I only got to play with one the first time. Also, this one is going to have all the collectable nonsense of 2020/21 Magic, which is going to be A Lot.

And another Jumpstart. Eh. Don’t cock the shipping on this one up and it’ll probably be okay.

Commander Collection Black is here, and the list is already out. The Green one ended up way overpriced, but at least in this case the cards are all super playable. Actually, they were for Green too, I think, but hey there’s a Deluge reprint and a flip Lilli, so. I kinda miss the Signature Spellbook series already, though.

Finally, Unfinity. Another Un-Set. Unstable was a fucking incredible set, both on a comedic level and as one of the sickest draft formats in a long time, so I’m excited to see that one followed up. On the other hand, Unsanctioned kind of landed with a dull thud. Apparently though, they got some of the folks from LRR (among others) to help write names and flavour text for this set, and I love those guys to death, so I can at least guarantee the comedy element will be present for this one.

Other stuff?

Well we have a date for the Netflix series. I have a hard time believing it’s actually happening. When I first started playing was around when rumours and announcements were still happening regarding a full-on movie, and that basically didn’t go anywhere. So it’s a little surprising to have a solid, actual time frame for Magic Story Content in Video Form. I haven’t kept with the story for a fair bit at this point (since Dominaria, tbh), so I’ve got no idea if it’s been any good, and as to whether this will be any good. Considering apparently Gideon’s in the lead, my hopes aren’t huge.

The only other thing is Pins. I like Pins. I have a bunch of them on my bag. I would like to get more Magic pins. So this is good.

And that, I think, is the sum total of it. These announcements always end up with a combination of excitement, trepidation, and dread, but I think this is leading more on the positive end of that spectrum. There’s still way too many fucking sets, but I think that is largely at Hasbro’s feet. The money machine must keep churning, after all. Maybe someday Magic and WoTC as a whole will be able to unshackle themselves from that particular constraint, but I am not holding my breath.

[88y53]

My GOD OF WAR predictions

[Quick disclaimer, these are my educated guesses mixed with some fan-theories that I found on other sites.]

It's all but stated that this God of War series will be a trilogy centered on the Norse pantheon. So, what can we expect in the next two installments?

Well, GoW2 will most likely take place after a three year time-skip [I’m not too sure about this as the last game stated that they'd only meet Thor after "many years"]. The last few months of Fimbulwinter are coming to an end, and Atreus is a young man now. The trio - Kratos, Atreus, and Mimir - have been trying to keep their heads down during the intervening years, but Odin is well aware of their existence, and he's not happy at Kratos' ability to alter the dynamics of Ragnarok [he killed Magni and Modi, despite the fact that they were predicted to survive past ragnarok, and the killing of Baldur happened centuries ahead of schedule], and Odin's control-freak tendencies wouldn't allow his presence to potential screw up his plans.

Which brings us to Thor.

Thor in this story is Odin's best attack-dog, and he's set him loose on the trio. Thor is basically Kratos from the first few games -- a brutal and vindictive butcher that viciously slaughters anyone for the smallest of slights. The only difference is that Thor is completely loyal to his pantheon, and, more importantly, he's not a critical thinker; he's content to be a blunt instrument for his father as long as he gets the excuse to kill anyone and anything he likes.

And along with Thor will be his step-son, the archer Ullr, who will be an evil counterpart to Atreus.

This attack will more-or-less set the game into motion as the trio have to out-run their foes. They don't have the goal of spreading ashes anymore, they're on the defensive. This is a very "actionized" sequel, that trades the slower, somber moments with a fight for survival. Thor will likely be too powerful for Kratos to fight, even with the foreign magic of the Chaos Blades. So they have to essentially run to different realms (possibly ones we haven't seen yet), to try and lose their perusers.

Meanwhile, Atreus is still getting a grips on his god-powers, with his inherited Spartan Rage giving him problems. Though, he has discovered that he can turn into animals [this could be a new gameplay mechanic, but it's just as likely to not be there at all].

Along the way, the trio find that the stories of Kratos and Atreus have spread to other realms, emboldening factions that are against the Aesir. One of the factions is led by a young woman named Angrboda [This I'm not totally sure of, but I wouldn't be surprised; she may even be a Fire Giant like Surtr].

Angrboda is a passionate revolutionary who wants to take the fight to the Aesir, but Kratos wants to run and hide. Atreus follows his father, but his natural morality compels him towards fighting the gods and potentially ending their reign. Kratos being Kratos knows that no good can come from destroying a pantheon, even one as monstrous as the Norse.

Here is where we truly understand the length Odin will go to avert ragnarok by altering the natural balance of the Nine Realms:

He purposefully imprisoned the Valkyries to upset the flow of souls going into the various afterlives; ragnarok doesn’t happen unless all the realms are working properly.

This is when I think we'll get closure on the Light Elf/Dark Elf war -- the Light of Alfheim is a mass-brainwashing device that has lulled the Light Elves into a passivity [I think if you enter the Light it shows you your heart's desire, and the happiness you receive from it makes you part of the hive mind]. The Dark Elves want to contain it to continue powering their world, but know of its danger.

And this is when I think Freya will return, having allied herself with Odin again so she can have her revenge on Kratos.

Eventually the trio are defeated by Thor and Ullr, but they aren't killed. Instead, they're taken prisoner by Odin. The Allfather has a habit of keeping instrumental keys to ragnarok in captivity [like Skoll and Hati], and he's very interested in the Greek magic of the Chaos Blades -- Greek magic being a lost art, and all.

Odin probably plans on killing Kratos as he’s already served his purpose in the Jötunnar prophecy as "Fárbauti" -- the "cruel striker" and father of Loki. For Atrues, he’ll lock up in the deepest, darkest dungeon. If Atreus can’t do anything, then Loki can’t come to be.

While he’s awaiting his execution, Kratos meets Tyr, who had been imprisoned all these years rather than killed, as was believed.

Somehow, the duo escape and save Atreus, but they get separated from Tyr as they try to save Mimir.

But in their escape, Kratos is killed [possibly by Heimdall, just as they’re about to exit Asgard, as cruel knife-twist], and Atreus takes up his father weapons and swears vengeance on the Aesir. Fully adopting the name of “Loki.”

Which ends GoW2.

Starting with GoW3, Kratos is rescued form Helheim by Tyr (who loses his hand to Garm, the watchdog of Helheim, doing it), and discovers that years have passed, and the realms are in ruin with ragnarok in full-swing.

From here, Kratos has to find his son and piece together what happened since he died.

With a full-scale war happening, the forces of the Aesir, Vanir, and Jötunnar are killing each other at every turn and Kratos (now without his axe or blades) will be caught in the crossfire.

He’ll learn that Atreus has gone down a dark path and become completely consumed by vengeance. As well as fathering with Angrboda his children Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Hela. The latter two inheriting his shapeshifting powers.

And it’s revealed that Surtr’s sword isn’t enough to truly destroy the Nine Realms, as his fire is Norse magic, and it requires the Greek fire of the Chaos Blades.

It all culminates in a massive battle at the heart of Asgard, with Kratos desperately trying to talk sense to his son, to no avail.

Atreus/Loki will kill Heimdall, but be mortally wounded.

Fenrir will kill Odin.

Tyr will kill/be killed by Garm, but not before giving Kratos one last piece advice about how the gods must be good.

Thor’s battle against Jormungandr will splinter Yggdrasil as the Nine Realms burn with Chaos Fire, creating tears through time. The Serpent falls in, only for an older, stronger version to appear and kill the thunder god.

The world starts tearing apart at the seams.

This is when Atreus finally dies in his father’s arms.

Kratos will awaken in a new Midgard that has no trace of the other Eight Realms or Norse magic. Overcome with grief, Kratos, again, tries to take his own life, but remembers Tyr’s last words.

“Only when gods are good can the world know peace.”

Gaining strength from this, Kratos resolves to find the other remaining pantheons in the world. Not as a destroyer, but as a peacemaker. [Cory Barlog has said that Kratos is the only playable character in the God of War series, and since the series is a hot IP again, I doubt they’ll stop with the Norse gods.]

Thus ends the Norse Cycle.

What happens next, I can only guess. Most likely, the next pantheon that has the bad luck of meeting Kratos will be the Egyptian gods, but the Japanese or Mesoamerican gods are just as likely.

[There are some theories that state Kratos is actually Tyr and the next installments will have time-travel involved, but I seriously doubt it. That creates way too many complications to the story.]

[victorluvsalice]

Hey, you know how I tried to restart Fallout 4 properly around my birthday with a new Victor save? Yeah, uh, ran into a few issues with crashes and whatnot and had to start again! Fortunately, after much fiddling and poking and whatnot, I seem to have finally gotten myself a save that’s at least somewhat stable, so this here should be my final Victor Sole Survivor to go through the game with. Allow me to go through some of the pertinent points of my playthrough with you:

Appearance: Yeah, I had to redo him again -- at least this time I’m a bit happier with the eye spacing. He’s always going to look rather weird simply because I’m trying to translate a Tim Burton character into flesh, but I think I did a pretty good job under the circumstances!

...As for his fashion sense, he found the chestpiece and whatnot in a suitcase by Sanctuary, and the hat gives him +1 Intelligence and thus is giving me a bit more experience for his early quests. He’s not here to look good, he’s here to level up.

Stats: I ended up having to tweak his SPECIAL, mostly because I forgot just how many points you get at the beginning, and because I wanted to pivot slightly with how I designed his build. Here’s what he started out with:

Strength: 3

Perception: 3

Endurance: 7

Charisma: 2

Intelligence: 7

Agility: 4

Luck: 2

He’s still a high Endurance/Intelligence build, but I’ve decided that Agility is probably going to be his third “main” stat, because perks like “Moving Target” (harder to hit when you’re sprinting) make sense for him. (I mean, dodging like crazy was how he survived so long against Barkis!) I’ve already boosted it twice -- once with the You’re SPECIAL! book that you can find in Shaun’s room, and once through a level-up. I’ve also boosted his Perception thanks to the bobblehead in the Museum of Freedom. As for perks, he’s currently level 5, so I have the following:

Scrapper Level 1 (scavenge more uncommon components from scrapping things)

Gun Nut Level 1 (basic gun mods)

Armorer Level 1 (basic armor mods)

Given Victor’s whole “thing” in this universe is that he’s something of a tinkerer and good at modding things, this felt appropriate. :p

Mods: Because it’s not recommended to play without them! Certainly not without the fixes. . . Anyway, my complete mod list as of now is below, if you’re curious. I did try to vaguely group them into “these mods are part of the same category and/or go together,” but it’s not perfect. Still, if you see anything you find interesting, feel free to go to the link and check it out!

Fallout 4 Script Extender (https://f4se.silverlock.org/): Allows for script changes, enables certain other mods and serves as my game launcher through Vortex

Achievements Mod Enabler (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15639): Enables achievements in a modded game; requires manual install (extract files into Fallout 4 folder)

Mod Configuration Menu (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21497/): Adds a menu for configuring compatible mods; uses F4SE

Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4598): General bugfixes and small improvements

Crafting Highlight Fix (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/27479): Removes the crafting “highlights” overlay so you can actually see your items while crafting; uses F4SE and requires MCM (to adjust things like how power armor pieces are highlighted)

Elevator Buttons Fix (Contraptions) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20664): Fixes floating elevator buttons from Contraptions (buttons can appear miles from the actual control panel)

Rusty Face Fix (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/31028): Fixes the rusty face glitch that may occur with the PC and NPCs (turning faces brown)

Nuka-World Bottle Scenery Fix (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/17853): Fixes the giant bottles that can sometimes spawn in Nuka World instead of the regular-sized models, completely obscuring the game world

No Aggro Impact Landing (Power Armor) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9019): Stops friendly characters getting aggroed if you jump from a great height and land near them in Power Armor

Vault 81 Molerat Disease Immunity with Power Armor and Hazmat (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5646): Stops you getting infected with the Molerat Disease if you're wearing full power armor (chance of infection goes up with each missing piece of armor), or if your companion gets bit; lesser chance of infection if you're wearing a hazmat suit

CryoFreez Fix (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10000): Fixes the bug where, if an enemy dies as a result of the Cryolater or other cryo-based weapons, they will respawn in a weird “dead” state with no AI

Cattle Feeders Immersively Filled (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11998): Two files; first adds a filled water trough for brahmin to use, second fills the vanilla feed trough with plants

Worthwhile Caps Stashes (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23464): Increases the amount of caps in stash and have them contain other junk items; also makes the stash tin itself a junk item

Piper Interview Restored (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21829): Restores some cut questions post Piper’s interview about your pre-war life

Dumpster Diving (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33474): Adds new containers to open dumpsters with new and amusing junk to collect

More Grind-Free Game Settings (from Thuggyfied – A Fallout 4 Mod List) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41435): Removes the need to get “Local Leader” Rank 2 to make crafting benches; quest markers display from five times further away; followers no longer auto-attack non-hostile Radstags; settlers run to the summoning bell; Jet doesn’t show up in pre-War coolers and containers (just Vault 95); pipe weapons no longer show up in Pre-War safes or trunks; ability to craft a “Jetpack Ring” at the chem station (I mainly got this for the first two items)

Useful Pulse and Cryo Explosives 1.1b (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/24848): Tweaks the cryo grenade’s damage output and fixes the “dead enemy AI respawn bug” for cryo grenades; tweaks how the pulse grenade works, making it affect robots and turrets more strongly and removing damage to organic enemies (though the explosion can still stagger them); also changes the crafting recipes

Wasteland Survival Guide 5 - More Map Markers (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26367): Changes Wasteland Survival Guide #5 (available in Gorski Cabin) to mark not only Diamond City, but also Goodneighbor, the Glowing Sea, Boston Airport, and Quincy

Strong Back Improved – Weightless Equipped Apparel (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/17361): Improves the “Strong Back” perk to first halve the weight of worn apparel, then make it entirely weightless, and give more carry capacity out of Power Armor

Diamond City Plus (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/19293): Updates Diamond City with new shacks and interiors to the lower stands (including an arcade and a laundry!), along with new NPCs to populate them; also adds a proper farm with brahmin and chickens by the mutfuit plants

Commonwealth Wilderness Overhaul (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41008): Adds lots of little scenes, objects, and creatures (including rad rabbits, rad chickens, and wolves) to the Commonwealth Wilderness to fill it out and make it more interesting

Nuka World Open Season Extend II -- Assignable Factions - Recruitable NPCs (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47209): Allows you, post- the “Open Season” quest, to attract settlers to Nuka-World who can then be sent to regular settlements, and populate the parks and main market area with more traders, or various faction NPCs! (So if you really want the Minutemen to hold Nuka World after you gun everybody down, you can use this – though if you want them to come and HELP you gun everybody down, you need a different mod)

Flashy(JoeR) - Advanced Needs 2 - Customizable Survival Mode (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/40440): A customizable “survival mode” that allows you to play with a character who needs to eat, drink, and sleep periodically without necessarily dealing with some of Survival Mode’s other stuff (namely, the lack of fast travel in my case). Comes with expansions for being a playable ghoul, food spoilage, and other activities if you’re into that, and a patch for “Campsite – Simple Wasteland Camping” so you can use the two together.

Sunshine Tidings – No Ghoul and No Corpse (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47044): Will eventually remove ghoul and human corpses from Sunshine; assigns Professor Goodfeels protected status if he hasn't already been disabled

Croup Manor Waterfront Extended (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/47144): Adds another chunk to Croup Manor's building area so you can actually access the water on the nearby beach for purifiers and whatnot

CWSS Redux V4 – Craftable Working Showers Sinks Baths Toilets Urinals Kitchens Etc (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/14326): Adds craftable, usable bathroom equipment and some kitchen equipment in a separate workshop menu so the Sole Survivor, companions, and settlers can go to the toilet, shower, and have pretty kitchens

Vault-Tec Workshop Overhaul Redux (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/43643): Fixes some errors with the Vault-Tec DLC items for Vault 88 and adds newer, better versions for some other items (e.g., better lights, in three variations depending on computer specs)

Wearable Backpacks and Pouches (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3258): Adds a backpack workbench and a variety of upgradable backpacks to the game (three files – standard, ballistic weave addon, power armor capacity addon)

Campsite – Simple Wasteland Camping (and HD Sleeping Bags) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11734): Adds a book to Sanctuary (the root cellar) that allows you to make camping gear at the chem station and set up camp in the Commonwealth whenever you want

The Mobile Mechanic – Portable Workbenches and Junk Scrapping (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18262/): Allows you to make a portable, customizable workbench for scrapping junk and in-game crafting anywhere

Atelier – Paint and sculpt (Unsupported) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/36485): Allows you to make and mix paint, paint pictures (for the "Well Rested" XP bonus), and work on a sculpture; also has settler-ready versions to increase happiness in settlements. Unsupported and glitchy ("Well Rested" perk sound will play incessantly if you try to paint, with the animation popping up when you disengage from the easel – keeping this mainly for the look of the thing for Victor’s house)

Fallout Instrument Pack (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46604): Adds four playable instruments to the game, along with a small (and unfortunately bit glitchy) quest to unlock the ability to craft them; also has two new instrument-themed weapons

New Recipes (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12276): 60-ish new recipes added into the standard categories, with unique effects and healing (like new teas under Beverages)

Fine Dining (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33128): Adds a “Fine Dining” section to the cooking menu with six new recipes, with strong effects that require a (reusable) steel plate as well as the food; also adds milk and cheese as items to be found in the world

Culinary Masterpieces – Useful Food (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/16055): Adds a “Culinary Masterpieces” section to the cooking menu with new recipes, and the ability to plant tarberries, hubflower, bloodleaf, and rice (after buying it from the Abernathys)

Apple Trees 3.2 (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/40388): Adds an apple and pear orchard to the game near Vault 111, and a “Fruit Recipes” section to the cooking menu for apple and pear-based food; also you can grow apples and pears for food in settlements

Tales From The Commonwealth (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8704): Extended quests and companions mod – features new characters, new locations, and new quests across the Commonwealth, along with three new companions (contains additional file for DLC commentary from the new companions)

Tales From The Commonwealth Visual Fixes (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/43974): Patch to fix some of the broken precombines and visual bugs from TFTC

Tales From The Commonwealth – FaceGen Data (For PhysOp or Vanilla) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/45148): Patch to help provide face generation data for TFTC; vanilla file used

We Are The Minutemen (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6443): Overhauls the Minutemen, giving Preston a new outfit, making patrols more common and more powerful as you level up, giving you a command table to make Minutemen, and cools down the frequency of radiant quests

Better Companions – No Conflicts (Accuracy Version) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/24233): Improves companions – in particular, making them more accurate and better at sneaking

Settler and Companion Dialogue Overhaul (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/41785): Increases the variety of companion lines while adventuring; gives certain companions their own radiant quests; gives settlers more variety in what they say to you while visiting settlements (acknowledging you as Minutemen General, complaining less)

Realistic Conversations Fallout 4 (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/32514): Makes conversations between NPCs more realistic, adds variety

Settlers Of The Commonwealth (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8704): Adds unique new settlers to the Commonwealth that you can recruit

Level 4 Merchants Improved (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/40747): Puts all the level 4 merchants you can find and recruit in the Dugout Inn for easier location; also assigns protected status to certain ones that might otherwise easily die (like the Vault-Tec Rep)

Squirrels of the Commonwealth (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20027): Adds a variety of (surprisingly tough) squirrels; using the “docile” version that adds Garbage Squirrels but makes most squirrels run away if you shoot them

True Storms – Wasteland Edition (Thunder-Rain-Weather Redone) (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4472): Improved weather, with more intense thunderstorms and whatnot; also has files for earlier sunsets, compatibility with Far Harbor and Nuka World, and (if you want, I didn’t) more dangerous Far Harbor fogs and Glowing Sea

Atomic Radio (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8704): New radio station with original radio shows and commercials

Where I Am In The Game: Given Victor’s only level five, you’ve probably guessed I’ve only just started -- and you’d be right! Victor’s about five days into his adventures in the Commonwealth, and has spent that time mainly cleaning up Sanctuary and the Red Rocket, meeting Dogmeat and Preston, killing raiders, and molotoving and machine-gunning a Deathclaw to death. I’ve completed Out of Time and When Freedom Calls for quests, and I’m currently working on Sanctuary before moving onto The First Step. Next playsession, Victor and Codsworth are going to go visit the apple orchard on the other side of Vault 111 and get some apples for everyone! And probably fight a bear! :D What, the gang needs food, and I want to give them more variety than gourds and melons.

What Comes Next: While I hope to actually start the main plot a lot sooner than I did in my original attempt at playing, we’re definitely doing some Minutemen stuff first, plus exploring the general area around Sanctuary so I can pick up that “double meat” magazine. Think of it as Victor getting his hand in as he tries to figure out how to survive in this brave new world.

[slade-neko]

Took a quick break of Pokemon Sword and Shield to finally test out The Sims 4 University DLC.

I literally know next to nothing about this pack. Just what I saw in the two preview trailers. I got it thinking it’s gonna be so much fun, right?!  Well... we’ll see... I’m inserting a “keep reading” because its a looong post.

First off I wasn’t sure who to send to Uni. Ended up playing it as my main OC. 

Bought him a new University laptop and enrolled him into the Fox-trot University (or something like that.) Had to wait a full day or two before he got accepted. That’s a pretty long wait with MCCC cutting my game time to half-speed... Maybe you can do it instantly somehow, but I missed out on that if you can. Turns out you can, with TestingCheats True and shift-clicking to bypass the wait time. Good ol’ cheat codes savin’ the day, hahaha! Only wish I knew that sooner...

Anyways, he arrived at the University eventually. I easily got distracted looking around at all the sims walking around and one of his many classes crept up on him and he was late. Like really late, made it to class with only 3 minutes left for the session. That’s off to a wonderful 1st day.

Turns out it didn’t matter as they were actually just off-screen rabbit holes. Joyful fun, that is. I had signed him up for a buttload of computer-related classes thinking they’d be fun/ playable? Kinda regretting that now. What do the devs expect the player to in a single person household during a rabbit hole event? Are you supposed to just wait there in real life? Stare at the walk-bys? (Y’know I’ll admit the walk-bys were mildly entertaining...)

I even spotted Danny from NSP as the new “Health” teacher, I presume? Just look at those “painted on abs.” Go, Danny!

The classes are only a couple of hours too, so its not a terribly bad wait.

After that disappointing 1st class. I noticed my sim had a bunch of career tasks to do. 

a final exam 

term papers x2 

give presentation 

and homework x4

I misunderstood thinking he had to do it all at once, so I sent him to the study hall to spend the rest of the day doing “career tasks.” Luckily he had a cool study partner.

Finally sent my sim to his dorm to meet his roommates, but before he could do that, I noticed somehow he had got thrown into the E-Sports career and had to do some team gaming? I think I accidentally set him up with a gaming scholarship. I’m not really fond of “competitive gaming” though. Probably should’ve read through the scholarships a bit better.

Several more hours later, I ended up just sending him to sleep because it was incredibly late. Dawn of the 2nd day came and then he finally got to meet his “very epic” roommates! Probably the thing I was most excited for seeing in this expansion.

A Nature-loving hippie boy, a space bounty hunter girl, a space alien girl, and an edgy little jackal...? Oh, boy this will be interesting...

Then well that’s uhh, that’s honestly as far as I got in my playthrough...

The last few days I have been doing more extensive University play testing on my brother’s game and discovered a bunch of annoying things about University. Like how households are ripped apart and individual sims are thrown into single households for the schooling system. I completed an entire term and sims were not re-merged into their original households. Maybe I needed to wait more time after the term is over or something, but if it doesn’t actually re-merge my households that’s reallllly annoying. I don’t want to have to spend time moving sims around to get them back in their rightful households after a term at a University. 

Another annoying thing I’ve noticed is that it would seem my roommates in Uni were creating their own University outfits that were REPLACING my outfits I made for them. 

Why are these not Situational outfits? They straight up replace the Everydays I created. I can’t tell if that’s a bug or maybe an outdated mod. Seems to only affect my active sim’s roommates though, but jeez I can’t have my sims losing outfits. I spend way too much time making nice outfits on them to have my game go deleting them.

Other than those two big annoyances, the DLC is pretty fun to play. As it is now, I don’t really want to go to a University with all the headache of the cleanup duty I’d have after each term. Those two problems go a long way for me. On the positives, I really like the roommates system. It’s funny to enroll into a university and see which random sims get assigned to my dorm. As for the world, Britechester, I love it and the Universities’ designs! I personally prefer the old gothic Garreg Mach looking school way more than the modern design of the Fox-burrow university. 

[jimmyandthepulsatingmass]

A Look Back at Old Jimmy

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is one year old today!  To celebrate, I thought I’d share some stuff about what Jimmy looked like in its original incarnation.  Spoilers: not as good!  But, fans will probably find it interesting, so check it out after the break if you want a super long, super informative post about a version of Jimmy that was never meant to be!

When I originally conceived of Jimmy, it wasn’t meant to be a huge game with a focus on exploration.  Instead, it was meant to be around 8-10 hours and mostly linear.  It wasn’t going to be a commercial game; instead, it was going to be a game that I posted on rpgmaker.net, like many of my other earlier games, and a means for me to show everyone that my game design had matured.  The game was broken up into four segments, each representing a different character.  Each segment was its own game.  For example, Lars’s segment was going to be a first-person dungeon exploring game (called Dark Dungeon), Andrew’s segment was going to be a visual novel about going to school, etc.  I forget if Helga or Buck had the more straightforward RPG segment, and I can’t remember what the fourth segment was going to be.  Of these, I’d only been working on the RPG segment, and I’d finished all the battle designs and locations, so, at the point that I stopped development, this section was almost complete.  So, naturally, that’s what most of this post will focus on.

In the frame story, the house was uncolored, and by completing each segment of the game, you’d gradually color in the house and make your family happy.  When you had colored everything in, you would leave the house and then the ending was very similar to the ending that eventually made it into the game.  Everything was drawn with crayons (by which I mean the crayon tool in MS Paint, haha) other than the sprites.  Also, looks like this screen showed off Jimmy’s old sprite.  Yikes, right?

Here’s the whole family.  This isn’t a scene or anything (none of the dialogue was in at this point--other than some battle dialogue), but I just wanted to show off all the sprites.  Let’s just pull that band-aid off quickly.  The setting is a castle that gets destroyed by the Pulsating Mass.  The entire RPG section takes place in a faux medieval section.  I pulled some ideas about the videogamey aspect of that world into the Everchip segment (mainly how dialogue is delivered), but nothing too important story-wise.

This was Jimmy’s room inside of the RPG world.  If it looks familiar, that’s because the opening of this segment of the game was going to be a shot-for-shot remake of the opening scene in Chrono Trigger, just drawn way worse.  Helga would have delivered Chrono’s mother’s dialogue, but, like I said, I hadn’t done the dialogue yet, so I’m just manually opening the curtains.

Here’s a look at the world map.  The little dragon aspect of the map could also breathe fire; he moves randomly, so I didn’t happen to catch it when I made the gif.  The gif quality kind of sucks, so here are the area names: Hazeleye, Stoney Craw, Bursa Pass, Marrowick, Eastern Brow, Legs of the Ancient Giant, and Pulsating Mass. 

Here’s a little effect that I thought turned out alright.  The areas in dungeons were short and the paths were narrow.  Enemies were designed to be at chokepoints, so there were fixed encounters.  You didn’t get any experience or money from them--you just got to progress.  I’ll get into that more, later, but here are some other shots of maps I thought didn’t look totally terrible:

The entrance to Bursa Pass, a mountainous area.  You’ll probably recognize the bird effect in the background from Lars’s beach scene.  This is actually where you would have first found Lars; he would have been sitting in front of the sign and carried off by a giant bird similar to Grimclaw, but its name was Throbbing Feathers; you can see how I cannibalized a lot of that stuff and used it in different ways in the final game.

This was Throbbing Feathers’s nest.  He was the second boss.

Another shot of Bursa Pass.

This is a little reflection effect I liked in Marrowick, a forest area where you encounter the Rotting Jack-o’-Lantern, among other things.

This is a short area called Eastern Brow.  It was meant to be an observatory, but it also kind of looked like a cannon, so I ended up planning for Jimmy and the family to go there and fire themselves out of it to get to the top of Legs of the Ancient Giant.

Here’s a typical part of the Pulsating Mass.  It was very pink.

Equipment was fixed.  You couldn’t buy equipment or items, and you only gained levels after beating bosses.  Like I said earlier, the game was super linear.  Battles were built more like puzzles since you couldn’t power level to get around them.  Here’s what every other character had equipped for the curious:

My favorite part about looking through the equipment was that I forgot that Lars could only equip a Tommy Bahama Shirt on his upper body.

Here’s a weird part of the battle system that didn’t make it into the full game.  In addition to their normal skill sets, characters had a “Moxie” set of skills.  These four skills were the same for every character.  In addition to HP and MP (SP here), battles utilized RPG Maker’s TP system.  You would gain a set amount of TP each turn, and you could get double by guarding.  TP allowed you to use these Moxie skills, which were basically surrogates for items.

Here are a few skill sets, starting with Helga’s.  There’s a lot of overlap with the full version of Jimmy.  Helga apparently was a cheerleader in Jr. High.

This is just to show that some of these skills that you’re familiar with didn’t operate the same way.  Also, the characters’ HP and SP would normally be full, as you get full recovers after each fight, but I had artificially leveled him, so the numbers are wonky.

Here’s Jimmy’s complete list of transformations.  He had a few extras that didn’t make it into the full game, as you can see.  The final four were optional ones you could get for fighting new monsters that replaced the bosses in each area.  “Imagine Face” lets you transform into a monster called “Giant Face,” which was the tank role; the Revolting Blob was more of a status inflicter.  “Imagine Tree” is the “Tree of Life,” which took over the Phoenix’s big healing role (the Phoenix focused a bit more on offense), and “Imagine Guardian” was a monster called “Ancienter Guardian” (A harder version of the Ancient Guardian you could fight earlier in the game).  It had an offensive role and the ability to interrupt, kind of like a more powerful Red-Billed Squawker with a group attack.

By the way, transformations could only be used inside a battle.  There wasn’t a point of transforming in the field because of the linear level design.  They also took a turn to use; a lot of the combat was slower and built around utilizing each turn correctly.

Speaking of battles, here’s what one would look like.  As you can see, Mortimer made the transition from Old Jimmy to new Jimmy, but his design is a bit different.  The battle backgrounds were stationary.  The TP I was talking about earlier is shown here (as MP--Moxie Points).

Here’s Mortimer getting wrecked by Andrew.  Some of the battle animations look pretty cool as crayons, but there just aren’t a lot of them.  This is because anything that was used on players didn’t have an animation because of how VX Ace’s default battle system works.  Note the end message says “Jimmy’s Family;” HItomi, Jonathon Bear, and Punch Tanaka weren’t playable characters in this version.  Of these, only Punch shows up in the game at all.  Jonathon Bear is just referenced via Jimmy’s shirt, and Hitomi wasn’t planned at this point.  Jonathon Bear’s history with Jimmy wasn’t even conceived at this point.

Since I showed off Mortimer, here are a few more friendly faces:

You’ll notice their designs are basically the same as in normal Jimmy.  There were only a few monsters that I kept, design wise.  These two operated a bit differently in battle, though.  The Elder Mr. Asp was invincible, and he would berate his son every turn.  Then, at the end of each turn, the message, “The Elder Mr. Asp is ravaged by age!” would appear.  After a few turns he died of natural causes.  Here’s how it played out:

Apparently the Elder Mr. Asp was originally kind of a creep in addition to being a jerk.  Also, I kind of wish I would have gotten a gif of him coughing, because I was using timing tags so that the cough and hack were instant, then the wheeze was drawn out really slowly.

The last thing I’d like to share is a bunch of monsters.  There were a LOT, so I grabbed some I thought people would find interesting:

50′s Style Vampire’s original design.

This guy’s name was Albert Hands.  Just kind of liked that.

Bad Weather’s original design.  None of the other cloud people existed yet.

Elegant Ice Swan was an enemy rather than a piece of furniture.  There was a mechanic where you could use elements--like fire--and they would have adverse effects on some enemies.  Elegant Ice Swan would just melt if you hit it with a fireball.

Flesh Orb’s old design.

Here’s the Giant Face I mentioned earlier.

Grumble Bear’s design is the same for the most part.

Happy Little Sunflower’s original design.

This is a superboss named Karma.

Luna and Sol’s old designs.  Sol looked okay.  But, uh, Luna...

This guy’s name was Mumbles.

Here’s what Buck looked like when he got taken over by the Mass.

This is a dude named OctoCarl.  I think he’s a cool dude.

Overweight Dinosaur was an early monster.

Early Phoenix design.  You can still see this reflected in the Phoenix’s sprite in the full version.

There’s Punch Tanaka; he was too cool to have an action pose.

Here’s the Red-Billed Squawker’s early design.

...and Revolting Blob’s.

This is a monster called Bad Lunch.  It tries to trick you into eating it.

Rotten Jack-O’-Lantern’s early design.

Here’s a monster called “Seeing Lips” that operated the same as Lingering Eyes.  It also had a mechanic like Balanced Equations where if you didn’t kill both before the end of the turn after killing one, they would revive (and get a full heal).

This is a monster called The Amazing Residue. I wish I would have been able to include him in the full version.  All he does is show off every turn and beg for people to pay attention to him, and the way to beat him was to use Andrew’s “Boring Lecture” ability to put each party member to sleep.  Afterwards, he sulked off.

Here’s Throbbing Feathers, aka proto-Grimclaw.  In this battle, you didn’t ride on his back, but Lars was in his claws, so you had to keep Lars healed while beating Throbbing Feathers in order to win.

This is the Tree Man that you didn’t get.  He looks terrible, but if you set him on fire...

...this happens.  It changed his move set and made him lose HP each turn.

This is a monster called Water Spirit.  The way you beat it was by alternating freezing and melting it.  Each of its forms had different abilities, so you had to switch the forms smartly in order to win.

Wubbly was one of the few unchanged designs.  He had way more health, though, since there wasn’t an artificial “last 8 turns” challenge to draw the battle out.

Well, that’s about all I think I want to share.  Old Jimmy was a way different game, and there was way more planning and A HELL OF A LOT more work between what you see here and what Jimmy eventually became.  I hope y’all enjoyed seeing the little ideas that germinated into something more in the final product and all of the weird evolutionary dead-ends that never made it out of Old Jimmy’s bizarre, crayon-colored world.