#moments in actual gameplay that happened

[wlkingcontraindication]

“Orym and Gideon: Can You Check My Body Bro? No Homo Tho…”

Just some artwork from my currant campaign… don’t mind me.

[eggbagelz]

gale voice here feel the pulse of the magic in my heart that will eventually be the end of me. im on my knees before you like an animal showing its belly. im in excrutiating pain bc of the contact with the magic in my heart but please dont take your hand away please dont stop touching me

[tlgtw]

MGSV really is *so* misogynistic it is honestly hard to believe. It has ONE named female character, just one. And holy shit, the things they make that single woman do.

I don't know what happened. Or how Kojima thought what we was doing was defensible.

I could just link to the introduction of the SKULL snipers from Mission 28 Code Talker but even that I feel is so unbelievable to see with your own eyes that it would exit the mind as soon as it stopped playing.

Literally every criticism made during that era toward's this game is accurate. Every single one.

It might legit be the WORST example of "male gaze," literally literally ever. Out of everything.

If MGSV had outright no women in it whatsoever it would be better than what this is.

The cutscene for when Big Boss comes to Mother Base after not showering was what sealed it for me.

And the fact that there were people back then who thought they could defend this perhaps makes it even more deranged.

[helmarok]

genuinely so angry about this. you gave us a red-maned man with a big ol nose in the botw tapestry only for it to just have been another little white boy? no ganon? no hero ganon? like i was really hoping he'd have been the chosen hero but demise's curse and all of his previous reincarnation history has doomed him into being seen as evil by the kingdom he saved, and his portrayal as a villain in TOTK would have been his rage after what the people he loved did to him. that would have made a very good story about fate and the harm hatred can do but no that isn't what we're getting. did i expect nintendo to go the classic "ganon is evil!" route? yes. am i happy that they did after 30+ years of "ganon is evil!" formula? no of fucking course. i want more insight on him as a person and his culture. i want more lore on how he feels as a gerudo male and how he feels being born into a curse or being born as someone history has always scorned. but we'll never get it and that kills me

[lemonade-juley]

Oh, I guess one the biggest reasons I managed to enjoy Reborn so much on my second attempt at it was going into it with an OC and themed team in mind?

Like, especially since going in with an OC, being Allyson, let me fully ignore the multiple meta 4th wall breaks (tbf most of those are from Terra and Lin, but you get remarks from Radomus and couple other smaller instances) that directly address that the MC is a quiet husk that is being controlled by a different being that coming from actually plot relevant characters is completely immersion breaking.

And yes, outside of tutorial stuff or the occasional joke from random NPCs or other stuff like that, unless the game is specifically satire I completely despise 4th wall breaks or very obvious meta jokes in games, so going in with an OC lets me just completely ignore them and pretend they were never said by the characters.

[angrybatart]

RIGHT. So I watched the 15 minute demo gameplay for Like a Dragon: Ishin!, and somehow had a super weird dream last night. Not sure how to explain it all, but it was definitely VERY surreal. Especially when it suddenly turned into me playing a point-and-click game, very much like Myst and At Dead of Night, where I was stalked by a figure dressed in black. The figure would hide behind corners and other objects, and gradually get closer and closer, sometimes peeking out, whenever I turned to look back. Up until it was only a few feet away. Then it would pull a Weeping Angel from the Doctor Who series and freeze whenever I was looking at it. Sometimes they just popped outta nowhere, because I'm apparently really bad at having nightmares some nights.

When I woke up and tried to figure out what that was all about, I realized the figure in black was Okada Izo. Pulling something like a Majima Everywhere, but creepier. Or...well...it was creepy until I realized who it was. Lol

[gothamcityneedsme]

listening to the me:a ost for work and tbh it is incredible how much me:a is an improvement on the 'bioware open world game' formula. like i still think its weaker but in comparison to da:i, me:a is infinitely more playable and feels more full of an actual soul.

Like. I have 100%-ed both games. I will NEVER 100% da:i again, and honestly im not sure if i would even *play* it again. meanwhile i, 1000%, would replay me:a, and i could even see myself doing everything in it again. The grind isnt unbearable, gives you time to hear other party convos, and lots of the sidequests have memorable characters and concepts

[gemsalive]

re: that HEFTY siffrin sweep on id5’s isat favourite blorbos poll — this might sound silly but i do actually think it’s kinda fascinating that isat, as a game so inseparably steeped in (for lack of a better way to describe it) queer fandom culture, managed to so completely sidestep the common Fandom Phenomenon that i suspect was behind the poll in the first place by creating a main character that is also overwhelmingly the fan favourite character for once.

obviously there are any number of factors we could point at to explain the extent to which siffrin nomiddlenames nolastnames manages to grab people and absolutely not let go, but personally i think one of the most interesting ones to consider is the one specific to the medium — that is, how siffrin subverts the “silent blank slate video game protagonist” archetype in such a way that happens to be primo brainrot breeding grounds.

like, when a video game dev makes a silent protagonist it’s usually a bid to maximize immersion by closing the aesthetic distance between player and character as much as possible, right? which is especially true of rpg video games — players find connection in the generic, as that is what gives you the freedom of motion to insert yourself into the story in whatever unique shape suits you best. you are your character and your character is you.

(as ever, post ran long. yall know the drill. tossin in a quick header pic before thoughts on blank slates & blorboification continue under the cut)

and then you’ve got siffrin, who is expressly pointed out to be the taciturn type; who when initially giving the player exposition about their journey so far doesn’t seem to hint at a life or history or even really any motivations outside the journey; whose every thought and action is narrated in second person so as to keep tracing and re-tracing the connection between him and you.

even their design — all darkless and shapeless, bundled up in that big cloak, as if an invitation for you to fill it in with whatever lets you relate to them most! at this point they are their own character for sure, but they also have enough very clear parallels going on with the silent protagonist archetype to feel more than accidental.

of course, as you keep playing you start to recognize that his blankness is much, much more than just a grab at immersion; his apparent lack of backstory, itself a fundamental piece of backstory. this is where he flips dramatically in the player’s perception from “generic vessel for story delivery” to “thoroughly multidimensional character trapped within endless torment nexus custom-built to target and exacerbate all his very specific worst traits rooted in very specific traumas”.

yknow, the good stuff !

but by then you have also been playing enough to be feeling the effects of the thing isat’s design does best of all. i’m talkin bout that ludonarrative lockstep baby. every piece of isat’s gameplay is designed to make you feel what siffrin is feeling — you understand by now that he is not a stand-in for you, but all the same you share in his frustration, his grief, his rare moments of joy and the subsequent heart-in-your-shoes devastation when that joy is inevitably poisoned — and through it all, the desperate grasping for anything new — all as if they were every bit your own.

so in this way the connection is maintained, even if you were someone for whom siffrin’s particular traits & struggles might not otherwise cause you relate to them at all if you had encountered them elsewhere, in a setting where you weren’t actively controlling them as a player. siffrin still gets to carry all the “just like me fr” impact of the blank slate protagonist in the tropes he embodies and in the game mechanics’ design, while totally free to evolve completely into his own character and keep you relating to closely them all the same. now toss back in the fact that said traits & struggles very much ARE of a flavour that a great many people Would Tend To Relate To and just like that you’ve got a perfect storm cookin.

too individual and compellingly written to be an empty vessel for plot delivery. too closely connected with the player’s emotional state to be a story observed impassively from the outside. he has 92 mental illnesses and for the low low price of free u can give him yours to carry too. nobody is doin it like him. congratulations on your well-deserved nose sniffrin nomiddlenames nolastnames <3

[inbarfink]

I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas…  Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale.  Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue. 

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him. 

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman… 

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head. 

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?  

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter. 

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.) 

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence. 

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

[thydungeongal]

I genuinely don't understand what y'all mean by "ok to kill enemies." Everytime it comes up I feel less and less confident I am following the conversation.

D&D kind of has, as part of its DNA, the idea that combat will eventually happen in the game. To that end, throughout the history of the game there have been many different types of guy that in the text of the game have been presented as like almost self-evidently okay to kill simply because. While different editions of the game have tried to move away from some of the more overtly problematic portrayals of this (basically saying that certain types of humanoids are okay to kill because they look funny and live in caves is kinda fucked up), the truth is that pretty much every attempt to look for a suitable Boogeyman that player characters can kill without any iffy ethics about it is going to end up really weird.

Anyway this is why people will often look for types of guy to present as enemies where characters can engage in no-thoughts-head-empty lethal sports with them without anyone needing to have a "wait a minute, are we the baddies?" moment. Demons and the undead are pretty easy to go for here.

My personal favorite approach is to just accept the fact that D&D kinda sucks with black-and-white morality and instead of making the conflict in the world about clear good and evil teams make it about different groups of people with different goals. Orcs can be present but they're no longer "the evil guys it's always morally okay to kill because of biotruths" but instead just some guys who might sometimes have violent disagreements with other people.

Anyway a lot of this stuff doesn't mean anything and as said not engaging with games as texts on this level isn't really necessary to enjoy them. But for me at least it can often elevate gameplay. When bandits aren't just some guys who decided to become evil criminals some day but actual people whose banditry is a response to something going on in the world and their lives, it suddenly makes the conflicts in the world a lot more real and grounded (and sometimes killing those bandits can be the right thing to do, but sometimes negotiating with them or even cooperating them can be the right thing to do. Basically, once you start thinking about all the different types of Guy that inhabit the worlds of D&D not just as game tokens that player characters can hit to make XP come out [although that is also fine and dandy as a playstyle] but as living thinking creatures with actual goals, the types of narratives the game starts to produce also expands a hundredfold.)

Anyway I'm not sure if that answers your question because I went on like a bunch of tangents. But it was also kind of a vague question.

[directdogman]

Hi, I hope you're having a decent day! I'm sorry if this is an invasive set of questions - feel free not to answer - but do you still actively like DSaF as your own creation, or is it more of a "it was fun while it lasted but i outgrew it and it's for the best to leave it behind" kind of project? Do you ever regret making the games? If you knew they would get so popular, is there anything you would have changed about them? Is there anywhere I could read more of your writing.

It fluctuates a bit. These last couple of years, I've really just been sorta nostalgic for it. I've seen a lot of people discuss those games being a source of comfort during bad times in their lives, people talking about how much the characters mean to them and it's hard not to smile when you see that.

It's a funny thing for close friends of yours to see people WITH fanmade DSaF merch out in the wild, or to watch a random youtube video and being hit with a DSaF reference outta nowhere. It happens from time to time, even today. On a few occasions, I've even had a person reference my work to me in real life and not realize who they were talking to, believe it or not. It's really fun to play dumb and get someone to explain your work to you like you don't know what it is.

I certainly didn't think any of that would happen when I first made the series, or even during development. I think the normal assumption would be to look at DSaF as it exists now and assume its release was a peak for it, but believe it or not, the official discord only had 30 people in it shortly before 3 dropped! The archive listing of the series (reposted to a single page after the series ended) is now sitting at over 1.1 MILLION downloads.

People kinda assume the true heyday of something is when it's new, when it's fresh and novel. For instance, some people look back at when FNaF itself was new and see that time as its peak because it had a lot of internet cultural relevance as big new indie thing on the block. But, raw numbers don't lie. The series has been continually growing since its conception and that growth has similarly bled over to its fan projects. This explains why DSaF, despite not having a new series release in almost 6 years, seems to be inexplicably growing.

Just recently, I saw someone post footage of a scene from DSaF 2 on Twitter, which got over 16k likes. People praised its writing and largely celebrated the scene. The ironic thing about that particular scene is that I remembered being unsure if it was good or not, so I showed it off in one of the FNaF community hubs. The response was broadly lukewarm to negative. Now, it's held up as one of the best scenes in those games. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make, my thoughts on the series have certainly changed with everyone's else with years of hindsight.

Heh. I'm not sure if I've talked about this in a long time, but y'know, the very first scene I implemented in-game was actually the very first Phone Guy scene in DSaF 1, more or less exactly how it appears in-game today. This was before I'd even written the bulk of the game. I was pretty unfamiliar with visual novels as a whole, pretty unsure if something like this would be palatable to a fandom that was really just used to sit 'n' survive stuff that were far more gameplay than text. I mean, there wasn't any FNaF fangames really LIKE DSaF before that point. Closest was FNaFb, a jokey turn based RPG made in the same engine.

The engine I made the game in is also not exactly fit for VNs out of the box either, and I wasn't 100% sure the idea would actually work. But, the very first time I added the image of the prize corner, Phone Guy, the audio of that iconic cheesy stock track and booted up a test screen, I had a little moment where I said "Oh. I think I'm onto something interesting here." I kinda remembering instantly realizing in that single moment how much potential the idea had. Over 8 years later, I still remember that moment like it was yesterday.

I think lately, that's the sort of stuff I think of when I see people coming to me and asking about the series. Yes, it's really rough around the edges, yes, there's jokes that've aged poorly. But, it is a source of comfort for people and entertains tens of thousands of people each month. And that's gotta count for something, right?

[bogleech]

Mortasheen: The Tabletop RPG slowly releasing as of right now

If you backed the Mortasheen kickstarter 3 years ago, check your emails, because I just put up version 0.1 of the first initial digital-only edition; it contains the entire gameplay system by Morgan Mullins, pages and pages of monster abilities, dozens of setting locations including NPC characters and even some non-monster (but still not normal) wildlife, plus over 100 monsters with playable stats. If you aren't a kickstarter backer you'll have to wait until later this year for the general public release. First there will be a free update of this digital version adding several more monsters, one additional chapter of various other tweaks, then work can begin on the final public version for both digital and physical.

I spent about 15 years of my life waiting to be able to put this out. It outlasted my 20's and now outlasted my 30's. For 99% of that development I was left out of the loop on what was even happening with it while I hoped it would come out any year now to maybe possibly make me a little bit of money while being poor the entire time. I almost feel like it kind of took half my life away?

In the time this RPG has been in development, the entire "Adventure Time" franchise debuted as a Nickelodeon short, got picked up as a Cartoon Network series, redefined the animation industry, revealed several plot points coincidentally almost identical to many major reveals of the Mortasheen setting, ended, and has now returned as a spinoff.

I can't wait til I can show it to everybody else but for now it's for all those backers who waited two years longer than the time frame I expected. Here's some of my more recent artwork for it without any context:

I wish I was making this post on some kind of actually special day or something and not just a random friday in january but I basically uploaded a passable book the very moment I had a passable book.

[felassan]

David Gaider on Twitter: "Exciting! Some (completely uninformed) thoughts: A closer alignment with Mass Effect's style was inevitable, I suppose, but means both teams in Edmonton are working from the same premise. Which likely means good things for gameplay, I suppose. It probably also means a more action-y style where you control your PC but don't directly control your two chosen companions. You maybe do "shouts" to direct them in a very general sense. Which I'm less enthused about, personally, but... meh, I guess we'll see. Insofar as the new name goes it's fine, I guess, if the intent is to put less focus on Solas? Which maybe it is. So long as fans don't settle on DAVG as the acronym it's all good. The writing team will knock it out of the park, regardless. That much, at least, is guaranteed. :)" [source, two, three] --- DG: "Patrick and Sheryl remain, yeah, and both Mary and Luke still participated prior to the layoff. So DAV isn't going to hurt, insofar as its writing goes. The old gang was mostly all still assembled." [source] --- DG: "I earnestly believe that Patrick would rather die horribly than not write party banter. It is literally the most fun you can have as a Bio writer." [source] --- Twitter user: "The banters are some of my favourite moments in Dragon Age. So I hope so. I've seen fans saying we'll get less banter due to only have two companions in your team but I don't think that'll be the case." DG: "Less *variety* of banter while out running around, sure. Less *interaction* with the 7 companions? Well, that depends on what happens at your home base. If ME is the template, there was no shortage of companion interactions on the ship." [source] --- DG: "In my experience, EA always favored Mass Effect's style and believed it's inherently more marketable - actual sales numbers of DA or any other more traditional RPG be damned, honestly." [source]

[ranna-alga]

I just realised something from the TLOU gameplay that made me so depressed that I needed to share with you all.

Rewind back to the prologue where Sarah is dying, and we see Joel look away from her a total of two times before she dies: the first time is at the same moment the camera pans to solely Tommy, of whom Joel is looking at (first image). Before he is out of shot, Joel can just be seen looking to Sarah again, until the camera turns back to him where he looks away a second time towards Tommy again (second image).

Now, if you go and listen to the audio of the actual scene itself, you'll notice that the second time he looks away is when Sarah draws her last breath and passes away. She's already dead now.

And Joel missed it by looking away for only a second.

The second time he looks away and then looks back at Sarah, she is already gone. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't look into her eyes, still filled with life (albeit hanging on a thread) anymore before becoming absolutely soulless because he missed it. He didn't see the light leave her, he didn’t see her succumb to the bullet wound where she would move on to no longer feel anymore pain in death. He missed it almost instantly. His last good look of her is after the second time he looked away, when she's already passed on.

But then we fast-forward to the very near end of the game where Joel is trying to perform CPR on Ellie after she almost drowned. He's becoming mentally and emotionally frantic because he cannot lose another one and projects this by trying to resuscitate her. He is back to where he was twenty years prior trying to save Sarah. And then the Fireflies appear.

Joel looks away from Ellie one time. He probably doesn’t even realise that these are Fireflies (they could have been Hunters or even FEDRA for all he cared). The look on his face in the second image is heart-breaking, but it only lasts for a second before he immediately looks down to Ellie.

He only looks up at them once. He doesn’t look up a second time.

Again, if you watch the original scene with audio enabled, you can hear the shakiness in Joel's voice, almost tearfully and very much coming from a place of fear. He's literally pleading for Ellie to wake up, all the while keeping his eyes on her - not looking up again - not even with one of the Firefly soldiers approaching him with an armed weapon.

He can't look away a second time because the last time he did, he lost Sarah immediately. He fears that will happen again, but he cannot let that occur. He won't. Not with Ellie: his second chance, his new reason to live, his new love. Joel refuses to tear his eyes away from her, even for another second, if it risks her life suddenly slipping away before he could even realise it.

He cannot afford to have another daughter lay lifeless in his arms and have her drift off to a place where he cannot follow and protect her anymore, even if it means placing his own life on the line.

[kromeihl]

BSD MEN PLAYING HORROR GAMES (MIMIC)

Headcanons!

↣Dazai Osamu, Nakahara Chuuya, Nakajima Atsushi, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Doppo Kunikida, Edogawa Ranpo, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Tetcho Suehiro, Saigiku Jono

↝Requests are open!

Osamu Dazai

> He would definetly be confident. You'd go up to him and be like: 'Samu let's play Mimic!

> He never heard of that game but he's hella interested.

> Both of you started playing and then he gets lost the moment you appear.

> Don't tell me this guy does not kill himself everytime.

> Definetly screams when there are jumpscares and would freeze for a second so you laugh at him

> Surprisingly good at the game and finishes it. (When he doesn't waste half of his time dying.)

Chuuya Nakahara

> Horror game? LET'S GO!

> Regrets it instantly because he forgot there are jumpscares.

> Would definetly flinch so hard and say "What? I'm not scared."

> When you scream, he screams.

> He'd be the type to disappear and get lost and you're just looking for him everywhere.

> He'd be the type to see something and say "I found the exit!" And it was actually the entrance..

> He'd curse at the character that'll jumpscare him.

> Shhh, he's a rage quiter.

Atsushi Nakajima

> MY BABYYYYY<3

> Once you tell him you want to play a horror game with him, he'd instantly freeze and hesitate before accepting.

> It's you, of course he'd agree.

> Poor guy would be shaking once there are crazy ahh sound effects.

> Horrified, one loud sound, one scream, one jumpscare, he'd flinch immediately.

> Bros the type to throw his phone/himself across the room.

> Actually really good at mazes! Just starts panicking when something chases him HELP.

> Never will play again.

Ryuunosuke Akutagawa

> Bro thinks he's so good at it.

> You tell him you want to play and he just says "ok."

> Bro is secretly scared but the whole time you look at him he's just •_•

> Those jumpscares out of nowhere makes his eyes widen or he makes a small little sound and when you look at him he accidentally actives Rashomon-

> I feel like he'd say he knows the way and gets lost and get jumpscared.

> Bro doesn't run and you just tell him to use the running button, and he's just like "no."

> Bro wants to solo and leaves you alone and you're like: "Ryuu where are you??" "I found a spirit."

> Doesn't want to play ever again.

Kunikida Doppo

> Automatically will not play once you do all your reports.

> Says he's too busy for those childhood games but he can't resist you so he fits the gameplay in his schedule!

> Does this dude even get jumpscared..?

> The whole time he's just instructing you in what to do-

> He's good at making ways to escape and distracts the ghost for you.

> If you play with him repeatedly and have game nights he'd definetly memorize when the jumpscare will happen.

Ranpo Edogawa

> Bro...Once you ask him you already see the place set up for your gameplay.

> One word: You'll finish the game in a few minutes only.

> He knows every crook and crany around the game.

> Knows the whole backstory and tells you about it so you just shut him up with candy.

> You play by yourself now because he knows everything and spoils the fun. RIP..

Nikolai Gogol

> He'd definetly be interested in the game.

> He'll be the type to scare you if it's suddenly quiet and you slap the shit out of him on accident.

> Would throw the phone at your face when he gets jumpscared.

> Bro is the type to play hide and seek with you mid-game.

> He'd definetly die a ton of times while trying to show you how he can "dodge" the ghost's attack/running at him.

> He fails misreably..

> He'd be the type to have the ghost chase after him and go to you so you both end up dying and go back to square 1.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

> You force him to play because he has no comment about it all.

> Jumpscares happen and he's just, •_•

> He'd be the type to find everything in just a few minutes and you'd be so confused like ???

> You'd give him the side eye for being to quiet while playing the game. You're screaming and flinching meanwhile he passes everything so quickly.

> He'd be the type to let you follow.

> Like did he play this game before???

> If you're too scared to go through a maze or get something, he'd be the one to distract the enemy

> Scary smart man...

Tetcho Suehiro

> Bro is hella confused. Like what are you supposed to do in the horror game??

> He'd definetly scream and just stare at you for a few moments..

> Help this poor man, he'd definetly quit mid game and just let you play it by yourself while you're watching.

> You'd definetly scream and it'll make him alerted.

> You both decide to restart the game and he thinks that he can kill the ghost and eventually dies..

> Please teach him the basic of horror games.

Jono Saigiku

> So like...

> Okay but he can hear things well so he eventually just listens to you while you play.

> Don't hurt his ear drums you might hit ariana grande notes while getting jumpscared or chased.

> He'd be the type to know when the ghost is approaching and warn you, he has good sense of hearing of course.

> That's why you're like ??? "How did you know when the ghost will come :O"

> He can literally hear one milisecond of the starting of the chasing music and you'd already be hiding.

> Man is a life saver.

> He'd definetly stare at you like ^^ if you apologize for screaming.

[todorokis-girl]

All on up Stream - Kenma Kosume

Part of my Haikyuu confession series!

Masterlist

Kenma's fingers moved with practiced ease across the keyboard, navigating his character through the intricate virtual world of his latest streaming session. The soft glow of his monitor illuminated his focused expression, a stark contrast to the chaos of the chat scrolling endlessly beside the gameplay footage. His audience was lively tonight, sending a constant stream of comments and questions that he occasionally glanced at between intense moments in the game.

Amidst the flurry of interactions, a familiar username caught his eye: "LoveStruckFan123". A donation accompanied the message: "Hey Kenma, do you have a special someone in your life? 😏"

Kenma's cheeks flushed faintly, his fingers momentarily faltering on the keys. He wasn't used to such direct inquiries about his personal life during streams. He chuckled nervously, trying to deflect the question while keeping his composure. "Uh, well, that's a pretty personal question," he muttered, refocusing on the game to distract himself.

But the chat was relentless, and more curious comments flooded in, pushing him to address the topic. "Okay, okay, I'll answer. But just this once," he relented with a soft sigh, his voice barely audible over the game's soundtrack.

"There's... someone I've liked for a really long time," Kenma admitted, his tone softening with introspection. He glanced briefly at the chat, seeing the flood of emoticons and excited messages. "Since we were kids, actually."

The chat exploded with curiosity and excitement, words scrolling so quickly that Kenma struggled to keep up. Despite his initial discomfort, he found himself smiling faintly as he thought about Y/N. They had been a constant presence in his life, a source of comfort and understanding that went beyond mere friendship.

"They've always been there for me, you know?" Kenma continued, his voice growing more contemplative. "Through everything. They're amazing, and I've... I've been in love with y/n the entire time"

The confession hung in the air, the weight of his words sinking in as he realized what he had just revealed to thousands of viewers.

The before the realization settled he saw the screen of his phone light up, notifications had been muted for stream. ‘Y/n 🥰’ the only thing he could see. When the screen when dark, it happened again, and one last time.

Panic surged through him like an electric shock, and he instinctively reached for the mouse, fingers trembling as he struggled to regain control of the situation.

"Uh, I—I think that's enough for today," Kenma muttered hurriedly, his voice betraying his anxiety. "Thanks for watching, everyone. See you next time."

With a quick, frantic click, he ended the stream, the screen fading to black. Kenma slumped back in his chair, his heart pounding in his chest as he stared blankly at the now-dark monitor. He couldn't believe he had let slip such a personal revelation in such a public forum.

Moments later, his phone buzzed yet again with a notification. He glanced down, feeling a jolt of nerves as he saw a message from Y/N.

‘Ken’

‘Ken, are you serious?’

‘Ken’

‘Please… can we talk…?’

He swallowed hard, his fingers hovering over the screen before typing a shaky reply. "Sure. When?"

‘Now… 5 minutes’

A few minutes later, Kenma found himself standing outside in the cool evening air, his thoughts racing faster than his footsteps could carry him. When Y/N arrived, their presence was a grounding force amidst the whirlwind of emotions.

"Kenma," Y/N began softly, her voice filled with a mixture of concern and curiosity as they stepped closer. "Did you really mean what you said? Was it an accident?”

He nodded slowly, unable to meet their gaze at first. "Yeah. I did, it was an accident, yeah, but I mean it.” he admitted quietly, a mix of embarrassment and relief coloring his tone. "I'm sorry you had to find out like that."

To his surprise, the reaction he got was not the one he expected. He felt her warmth all over his body and he could feel her lips against his neck, pulling herself even closer to him, tightening the hug. “Me too dummy”

Kenma's breath caught in his throat, disbelief mingling with a joy so profound it left him momentarily speechless. He wrapped his hands around her, and angled himself to attempt and make eye contact, you allowed her pulling her face away, meeting Y/N's eyes, seeing the sincerity and affection reflected back at him.

"Really?" he managed to ask, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Really," Y/N confirmed with a nod,

Lacking restraint he grabbed both sides of her face and stared into her eyes, giving her a second to pull away if she needed; when she didn’t, he pulled her closer crashing his lips into hers; years of love present in the interaction, escaping through every nook and cranny of their souls as if a flood had opened.

As they stood together under the fading light of the evening sky, Kenma felt a weight lift off his shoulders. This unexpected turn of events had brought them closer together in a way he hadn't dared to hope for. It was the ending of their friendship, but the start of their future.