#it's gonna be so long (for me) i need to maintain some creative stamina

[pantoute]

treating myself by setting up a tag for my current comic wip because i need something i can reference whenever i need to fall in love with a little more, you know what i mean

[carminite-wyrm]

A Genshin Impact Hermitcraft AU Idea, God Help Me

Last year, on September 28, a particular gacha rpg game was released and I, occasionally regrettably, fell straight into playing it. In honour of the fact that this will mean I have lasted nearly a whole year (I got the game a week after bc uni) determinedly not spending any money on Genshin whilst also trying to roll good characters…here’s a bunch of Hermitcraft Genshin AU ideas that I initially came up with at roughly 2.40 am.

The general idea of this AU is that the Hermits end up in a new world that has Genshin-esque mechanics, on top of the usual Minecraft shenanigans. So, Visions and stuff. Also, we’re gonna just…briefly ignore the actual Genshin lore in regards to how Visions and Gnosises (Gnoses?) come about, for this one.

Post-S8, the Hermits are travelling to a new world, ready for another season.

The moment they arrive, it is clear to them all that…something is different. Something is vastly different with this world, for all that it appears much like the previous servers that they have lived in and travelled to. There is something of a…presence to it, in a sense.

When the Something Different doesn’t appear immediately, being the demigods/almost-deities that they are, they go about their days, setting up starter bases, gathering the basic resources and tools, the usual beginnings.

Things change when Doc wakes up one morning after a hard day at work building a new redstone machine, to find a small glowing chess piece lying next to his head, crackling with an ethereal purple light

Upon picking it up, he feels a burst of energy, almost like that one time in the previous world where he and Ren built a lightning-summoning tower

However, the changes it has wrought become apparent later that day when Scar comes out of nowhere with the recording of a creeper’s tell-tale hiss and explosion, and Doc sends him flying backwards with a startled blast of lightning

At first, they chalk it up to ‘Something Funky With Doc’s Current Project’, but after some tests, some experimentation to confirm if it was a one-off reaction…they end up confirming that they may have found out what the Weird Thing about this season’s world is

The duo go to Xisuma with their findings, and, to their collective surprise, X can’t find anything blatantly broken in the server’s code, but he does find a few interesting lines within.

By all appearances, this is not a glitch, but simply an intended feature of the server

Seven lucky hermits, designated as Archons in the server code, will receive a Gnosis, an artefact of elemental power that the server can assign, given to the ‘player who best suits the element’

The server notes speak of how the power granted (and represented through the chess-piece-shaped item) will grant the receiver the capability to shape the land around them

By random chance, other players on the server will also be gifted a Vision, a somewhat lesser artefact that will still grant them a form of elemental power

Given that the Hermits are practically gods in their own right, considering they are already capable of shaping the worlds they arrive in as they see fit…are more curious than worried, at this point

They agree to keep an eye out, to see how chaotic the sudden acquisition of elemental powers will turn out

The next person to receive a Gnosis is Grian, who delights in the bursts of wind he can use to buffer his flight, gliding across the server with naught but the turquoise magic the server has seen fit to grant him

After that, most of the Hermits soon receives some sort of Elemental power from the server

A Summary of Who Gets What (That I can think of so far):

Doc: [Electro Archon]

Can summon lightning, without need for a trident, a thunderstorm, or a machine that can generate an ongoing thunderstorm for as long as its activated

Can also generate an Electro shield, though it does require his active concentration to maintain for longer than a few seconds. This shield appears like a charged creeper’s aura, except purple

Capable of generating a thunderstorm at will, but rarely does it on account of mob spawning dangers

Has found that by channelling a low level of Electro energy, he can in fact power redstone machines just by tapping them/being in close proximity to them

This has proven to both be a blessing and a curse, considering that on occasion, when startled, he has short-circuited some of his machines

Grian: [Anemo Archon]

Generally, uses his powers as a free rocket boost for flying around the server

Upon finding out that he can use the Anemo energy to create pockets of energy that can boost flight, he takes to leaving them all over the server, in convenient locations to make flight that much more efficient

Yes, he absolutely sets up a fancy elytra course that makes use of his flight-boosters to send players rocketing around a course at breakneck paces (poor Scar experiences many instances of kinetic energy)

Bdubs: [Geo Archon]

Suddenly, making mountains and other works of major terraforming is a lot easier

Certainly, he still prefers to sculpt them and detail them by hand, but bringing the basic shape of the mountain forth by brandishing the power of Geo is something that he can do with ease, in this world

A new shop pops up in the shopping district rather quickly after this realisation: Bdub’s Landshaping Service, Now offering quick terraforming at a budget price! (it is, in fact, a service that makes him quite the amount of money)

And when he wants to sleep, without the other hermits breaking his bed? A glowing shield of steadfast golden magic takes care of that.

Gem: [Dendro Archon]

The patch of the server that Gem has claimed for herself quickly springs to life as plants of all varieties grow to surprising proportions, energised by the power that she now can radiate

The effect is most notable in and around her home, of course, but wherever she travels, the plants grow more vibrantly for days afterwards

Adding a forest of birch around her house takes little more than a thought, a fact she uses to prank some of her friends, those who in the last world were rather vocal about their dislike of non-stripped birch

Another power Gem finds herself with is the ability to summon vines even without a surface for them to initially grow upon, and thus it is not uncommon to see Gem building or resting in a hammock of woven vines

Cub: [Cryo] (cannot make up my mind if I think he’d be Archon material or not)

Gathering powdered snow has never been easier, as instead of waiting for a storm to form and last longer than it takes a Hermit to get into the nearest bed, he can simply clap his hands together and a lump of snow shoots out from just above his shoulder.

It does hurt, getting hit by the sudden snow barrage that Cub is now capable of, but except for the occasional snowball fight, his newfound snow-creation ability is used for making increasingly more insane mob farms and snowy building decoration

False: [Pyro]

The magic her Pyro Vision grants her doesn’t become apparent, not for a while, until she visits the Nether for the first time in this world

A mis-swing in a bastion, and suddenly a horde of piglins and hoglins are chasing after her, and there isn’t enough time to pillar away.

She readies her sword and shield, ready to fight, and suddenly her blade crackles to life with bright flames, unlike the fire aspect enchantment in that it actually is on fire.

Every attack she lands, whilst her sword is alight, seems to invigorate her, return strength and stamina that was lost when she had first tried to flee the enraged inhabitants of the bastion

Xisuma:

The admin is one of the few to not receive a Vision or a Gnosis

Quietly, he does admit to being relieved, considering his powers as an admin are already much greater than that of the other Hermits, for all that they are still his equals

And then, one day, whilst X is placing his diamonds to sign up to one of Grian’s newest competitions, he feels a rush of foreign magic, so unlike the familiar ordered pulses of server code

The blast of wind that comes with a swing of his sword, much later whilst he is mob-farming, is greatly surprising, if not unexpected.

The funny thing about all these new powers, granted by the server itself in the form of artefacts that can easily sit in one’s palm, is that for all they are miraculous on their own, the natural capabilities of the Hermits are already enough to rival them

In the hands of an ordinary person, an ordinary player, the powers from this world would bring them close to the near-omnipotence of Creative, could even be the driving force of server-wide conflict.

Powers such as these, while they can build great things, can so easily be used to destroy, to cause war and destruction, and in other realities, they have.

Perhaps whatever trick of fate that caused the server to be capable of granting these powers hoped to create that conflict, to see what would happen when only a few of their number were gifted such strengths.

Later, when the initial surprise and rush to test out the limits of the server’s granted magics dies down, Zedaph approaches Xisuma, one of the few to not possess an artefact of elemental magic, with an observation

Zedaph notes that, from his studies of the Hermits’ new powers, almost all of them are oriented vastly towards combat, whether they be summonable blades of frost, elemental shields, or even the ability to soothe aches and hurts

And even though the Hermits have all found ways to make those powers work in the ways that they wish them to, it does not take away from the fact that the likeliest original purpose of this server’s magic was for fighting

Any other server, any other group, Zedaph quietly says, and there would more than likely have been bloodshed, given the inequality in the range of power granted

At the end of the day however, unexpected gifts of power or not, the Hermits, at their core, are a group that creates and innovates, a band of friends that shape entire worlds with naught but their own ideas and willpower, and regardless of what powers they now possess in this particular realm, that will not change.

[tarakaybee]

Finished Zelda: Breath of the Wild!!!!111

I loved it. It’s easily in my top three of the 3D Zeldas, I have lots of thoughts on it which I’m going to spell out here in my usual uninspired method, with pros and cons.

Spoilers below tho.

Cons: 

First of all, I feel that for every bad thing they removed from the Zelda formula and replaced with something more interesting, they also replaced something crucial to the Zelda formula and replaced it with something still good, but provably less unique. For example, I like that the map of the game world opens up like in Wind Waker and Link’s Awakening by climbing towers and marking off points of interest manually, but having towers at all makes it feel less unique since every sandbox game nowadays has almost the same mechanic in it like Assassin’s Creed. Same goes for the foraging and crafting aspect, technically speaking I do enjoy it more, and it is and more of a challenge to be constantly scavenging for health but every game in the world has crafting and it makes it feel less like a Zelda game.

The other fairly big example of this are the 120 shrines and the four dungeons. On the one hand, the dungeons aren’t the trivially easy straight paths that many Zelda dungeons are guilty of being, instead utilising fun physics puzzles and manipulating the shape of the dungeon that causes changes that persist across the whole dungeon rather than getting a unique item from the dungeon, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND none of the dungeons have unique looks or puzzles, they all look identical besides layout and the puzzles are usually things introduced in the also identical shrines. 

That make sense? I feel like there was a way to both improve the gameplay and also maintain Zelda’s uniqueness. So the game is in a weird position of having some of the best and most challenging puzzles and combat and overworld design in the 3D Zeldas so far, but the lack of variety in a lot of important places makes them blur together in my memory. 

Pros:

Now for the pros, because I feel like that was too much negativity at once. 

So first of all, it’s been said before by other, more articulate people, but the overworld is amazing. Traversing across this new Hyrule actually feels like you’re on an epic quest and not so much like you’re running across the school football field. The only other game to feel that way in my opinion is Wind Waker, with its similar open world of possibilities, but unlike Wind Waker, exploring is a lot more challenging and exploring every nook and cranny is not only useful, but essential to staying alive, with the Zeldas series usual thing of having hearts in every blade of grass replaced with foraging for food and cooking different combinations to maximise your chances of survival.

Another nice thing in the game is the Shrines, despite my complaints about the lack of variety, the shrines are a lot of fun and a good incentive to explore new areas along with the towers, which are challenges in and of themselves. Exploring in general is just super fun, paragliding lets the game open up a bit and keep up a nice pace, and climbing means that the stamina gauge actually means something rather than being an arbitrary restriction, one could spend hours not even touching the main quests in favour of exploring for towers and shrines, and in fact many frequently do, it’s probably my favorite open world/sandbox game that I personally have played because I never feel motivated to explore in most games.

One thing this game does with the story/gameplay context (or ludonarrative context) that I quite like is doing away with the fantasy babble, in other games, the people or items that you have to collect help the quest in a very unspecific way, but in Breath of the Wild everything is a lot clearer, why do you need the Master Sword? Because it’s enchanted to deal more damage against Ganon and anything spawned from his evil. Why do you need to rescue the four champions? Because they pilot cool giant stone mechs that assist you in the final battle (Admittedly all they end up doing is knocking half of Calamity Ganon’s health off at the start and then disappear. Whereas I was kind of hoping they’d actively assist you in combat throughout the battle like a cross between Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, but I guess even the Nintendo Switch has its limits).

How Does It Stack Up?

Like I said, this game is easily in my top three Zeldas, the other two being Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker, so let’s see how they compare in each individual area.

Overworld: Hard to decide between this and Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild is obviously more challenging to traverse and has a wider range of things that exploring can yield, wheras exploring in Wind Waker was mostly fruitless because money is beyond trivial to find and the dungeons provide you with enough heart containers to never bother with heart pieces. But as I said before, Wind Waker’s ocean is unique in gaming as far as the games I’ve played, and Breath of the Wild has a habit of feeling like a less blocky Minecraft, but then again, this is me thinking as a Zelda fan and not a gamer in general because I should stress that I do really enjoy Breath of the Wild’s overworld.

Dungeons: Up until now, my favorite dungeon puzzles have been Majora’s Mask’s, because as detailed in this episode of the cool webseries Boss Keys, Majora’s Mask, moreso than the 3D Zeldas, takes advantage of the interconnecting 3D space the most, with things like Water Wheels and central columns changing heights and flipping the dungeon upside down and what have you. Breath of the Wild’s dungeons all have the gimmick of the latter, with the unique puzzle of the dungeon being the way you manipulate the environment. 

One dungeon has you controlling a mechanical elephant’s trunk to either be flat enough to walk across or angled enough to activate a water wheel, or the dungeon inside a bird where you rotate the entire bird’s orientation. They’re all great puzzles, though admittedly some are harder than others, but again, they all look the same and feel lacking in uniqueness. I’m not saying that sticking to the same format of grassland, volcano, water level etc would’ve been the most creative thing in the world, but the dungeons all looking the same and drawing from the same pool of puzzle assets make them feel like they were made in a level editor.

It’s a close call, but I’m gonna go for Majora’s Mask. The dungeons are a lot more varied and unique on top of actually being some of the more challenging dungeons in the series, whereas the dungeons and the shrines in Breath of the Wild are challenging, but fairly interchangeable otherwise.

Combat: This is a bit harder to critique because the combat is deliberately very different to the other Zeldas, focusing on finishing enemies quicker before they can lay any hard hits on you rather than the flashier swordplay of the other games. On top of that though, the bosses of the game adopt the game’s theme of ‘more challenge, less uniqueness’ more than anything else in the game. And since the game is designed without unique dungeon items to do in any order, the result is that the game’s main quest bosses, Waterblight, Windblight, Fireblight, Thunderblight and Calamity Ganon are all extremely similar bosses, they all look the same and they’re all weak to arrows in the eyes and sword blows when they’re stunned, they have different attacks and they’re fun to fight sure, with Calamity Ganon being Dark Souls-esque in its difficulty. But as I’ve been repeating, they’re just not unique. 

That’s another thing I’ve heard a lot which I think I agree with, that the increased enemy strength, the weapon degradation and the bosses being weak to any damage you can deal as long as you can dodge their attacks makes the combat very Dark Souls reminiscent. And I only wish that they’d gone further, because Dark Souls has every boss all fought in the same way, but no two are the same, and I feel Breath of the Wild could’ve done that without sacrificing its open feel.

Challenge: Breath of the Wild. Calamity Ganon and Dark Beast Ganon are great and challenging final bosses, the shrines are very clever in their puzzle solutions, the dungeon puzzles are very challenging, even at their easiest, and navigating to and up the towers are puzzles in and of themselves depending on environmental hazards. Easy choice. Other games have harder elements but Breath of the Wild is more challenging across the board.

Story + Characters: Ooh it’s very close. I like Majora’s Mask’s grim atmosphere that gets nicely juxtaposed by moments of levity and its straightforward lack of ‘fantasy babble’ and I like Wind Waker’s emphasis on characterising Link and the game world more than usual and how heavily it veers away from the incredibly boring ‘chosen one’ routine that Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword veered very much into and then some. I feel like Breath of the Wild starts off very strongly with a nice intrigue, but then we find out the twist at the end of the tutorial and then there’s no mystery or plot for the rest of the game. I like the game mechanic of plot being given to us as Link has flashbacks to memories he’d lost, that flesh out his relationship with Zelda and the four champions, but it doesn’t develop the main plot or give us a lot of additional context. 

Example, in Wind Waker, Link sets off on his journey to rescue his sister, who he has an established relationship with, and Majora’s Mask likewise starts with Link’s developing relationship with the Skull Kid and the two fairies, which then escalates and encompasses the rest of the world. Breath of the Wild tries to avoid frontloading the game with exposition, but ends up having to verbally explain Links relationships with a series of characters we don’t meet for a while anyway, rendering that story decision a bit pointless. Where I think I would’ve preferred to have context for rescuing the four champions before I’d set off to do so rather than during and after. I know the idea was to start Link with amnesia so the player’s understanding of the world would develop along with him, but not having a connection to anybody makes the game feel a little bit emotionally dead in places, not helped by the fact that this Link doesn’t emote in any way.

The characterisation of Link is very confusing overall, unlike the other Zeldas, we don’t get to name Link and he has an extensive backstory and history with other characters, and his dialogue options suggest he has a very specific personality of “Bitter on the outside, heart of gold in the inside”, but also he’s a silent protagonist who doesn’t emote, which makes me think we’re supposed to project ourselves onto him regardless.

Zelda is a good character though as always, the flashback cutscenes give her a very interesting character arc that pays off in the game’s climax, I only wish that that quest was a little bit less optional.

Conclusion

Well I think I’ve reached a fairly definite conclusion, the game based on its individual merits, it’s far far far better than it has any right to be, but as an addition to the Zelda canon, it eschews the classic Zelda uniqueness in favour of taking inspiration from things like modern sandbox games and Minecraft-esque things and sacrifices a lot of things that makes a Zelda game a Zelda game. But still, I’m glad that the Zelda franchise is making every attempt to evolve though and I’m excited to see where they go next.

Sorry for the wall of text, if you read to the end, then much appreciated.