#not for replaythroughs but just in general

[ifbench]

Pokemon Firered Retrospective, from the perspective of someone whose primary experience with Kanto was Pokespe

To preface this, I have never seen Kanto outside of Pokespe, and brief clips from stuff like "Beating Pokemon without getting hit" or Pikasprey's softlock videos. I knew the general story of it, but I didn't know the details.

If you'd like to read my other mainline Pokemon retrospectives, you can read Emerald here, and X here.

Pokemon Firered was one of the most mixed quality gaming experiences I've had in recent memory.

It was mostly fun, sure, but I had to take extensive measures in order to make it not unbearable.

I chose Charmander as my starter, named him Burhalla, and caught a Pidgey and Ratatta on Route 1. I named them Linne and Jifa respectively. Jifa would become my HM buddy.

First few routes weren't too bad...until I made it to Brock.

Then everything went downhill.

Brock was brutal. His Onix was 3 levels higher than any I had encountered thus far, including his gym trainer. With both my main Pokemon weak to rock, and all of my attacks NFE against rock, it seemed like my only choice was to grind.

So I activated an infinite rare candy cheat instead, and leveled up Burhalla until he learned Metal Claw.

Even then, that wasn't quite enough. I had to level up him even further until he evolved into a Charmeleon, and then I finally beat Brock.

At this point, I was rather miffed, but I decided to press on. Maybe things would get better soon?

Mount Moon was fine. Not bad, not good, just...fine.

Then was Cerulean City, and Misty, who was my biggest roadblock in the entire run.

Burhalla was right out, leaving only Linne the Pidgey to battle her.

And it took so, so many tries. Even more than Brock.

But eventually, with the right luck, and the right timing of usage of healing items, Linne the Pidgeotto defeated Misty.

That battle tanked my enjoyment of Firered severely. It was frustrating, hard, and I began to start disliking Firered.

But I pressed onwards, up through Nugget Bridge (Which, I gotta say, I did not expect the nugget guy to be a Rocket grunt), to Bill's house.

It was cool seeing stuff from Pokespe in-game, like the stuff with Bill, but backtracking back across Route 25 was annoying.

Then there was the SS Anne.

It was a maze to navigate without a guide, and it got really frustrating.

But I continued pressing onwards, even as much as I was getting tired of Firered.

Surge was thankfully much easier than Misty or Brock, and I pressed onwards through Route 11.

Then I arrived at the sleeping Snorlax, realized I had no idea where to go or what to do from here, and gave up.

For over a month, I didn't touch FIrered again. I played some X, some Sun, some Shield, and some Violet, but Firered was on hold.

After growing a bit bored with my Violet replaythrough, though, I decided to return to Firered. Maybe, with a month's break, it'd be less painful than I remembered.

First order of business was where to go next.

I asked for advice, and apparently I had to backtrack to Cerulean City to get to my next destination.

I made my way through Diglett's Cave to get back there, and caught my third team member: Dirir the Diglett.

And after taking the long way around, I finally went into the house at the top-right corner, and made my way across the northern edge of Kanto, Route 9.

Then was Rock Tunnel.

See, I hadn't gotten Flash. And I had no idea where it was.

So like with Emerald's Victory Road, I had to navigate through Rock Tunnel with extremely limited visibility. And I was going Repel-less as an additional challenge, since I was imagining that my protagonist was a Zorua.

Not an experience I wish to repeat. But eventually, I made it to Lavender Town.

Lavender Town was both unlike and yet exactly like the stories I've heard of it. It was spooky, creepy, and eeire, but I felt safe, and the music felt calming instead of terrifying.

Perhaps it was simply that I had simply outgrown creepypastas? Or maybe it was just that my interests had shifted, or my standards had changed. I did attempt writing a PMD creepypasta once, after all.

Whatever the case was, I didn't spend too much time in Lavender Town. I remembered from a small clip I saw years ago, that I needed a Silph Scope in order to make it up the Pokemon Tower.

So I set out west, towards Celadon City, in search of the Silph Scope, and perhaps a new friend or two.

After passing through yet another underground tunnel that bypassed Saffron City, I was beginning to suspect that perhaps something similar to the manga was happening: A psychic bubble that enveloped Saffron City, preventing anyone from entering.

But soon I made it to Celadon City, the home of Kanto's Game Corner.

I had learned my lesson from Emerald: These places were rigged.

So I decided to cheat a little in turn.

You know how I had a ton of rare candies from the infinite rare candy cheat? I decided to sell about a hundred, so I could get one of the Game Corner prizes: A Dratini.

I had read a wonderful fic a long time ago called Dragon Dance, detailing Lance's rise to champion, and I decided to take inspiration from Lance freeing a Dratini from the Game Corner. I named them Darnod.

In flavor, I imagined this as busting up the Game Corner, freeing all the Pokemon, and a Dratini and Eevee follow my protagonist into the Rocket Hideout, becoming part of xyr team.

Yes, an Eevee too. I got the Eevee from the Celadon Department Store, and named them Voivick. I also acquired a water stone, and evolved Voivick into a Vaporeon.

Burhalla, Linne, Dirir, Voivick, Darnod, and Jifa would comprise my final Kanto team.

But before we get there, I had to infiltrate the Team Rocket Hideout.

I had heard of spin tiles before, from reading an Undertale AU sprite comic called Inverted Fate, but actually experiencing them was a fun puzzle! It was also silly watching my character spin around and around and around.

Eventually, I made it through the hideout, to Giovanni.

He was no slouch, and I had a pretty tough time with him! But thanks to my new team members, I pulled through, and acquired the Silph Scope.

After a quick detour to defeat Erika, who was a relatively easy opponent, I made my way back to Lavender Town.

Pokemon Tower was a bit more spooky than Lavender Town itself. It wasn't quite as terrifying as its manga incarnation, but still pretty eerie, especially with the possessed trainers, and the spell tag circle.

Soon, I made it to Marowak's ghost, and put the restless spirit to rest.

And after defeating a few Rocket grunts and rescuing Mr. Fuji, I obtained the pokeflute. Finally, I could bypass the Snorlax that had frustrated me into giving up for a month.

I went south from Lavender Town, across the docks, and battled the Snorlax there. It was a tricky battle, but I eventually won.

The long walk to Fuchsia City was arduous, but before too long, I made it to the home of the Safari Zone.

I originally wasn't planning on going in, until I heard from a friend that I needed to go there to get an HM.

And so I went in, trying to find my way to the fabled house at the end of the Safari Zone.

It was tricky, but I found it, and someone's gold teeth while I was at it!

With my new HM in hand, I challenged Koga for my next badge. It was another tricky battle, but thankfully, none of my team were weak to poison.

Next...I went to Cycling Road, having no idea that I was going the complete wrong way.

Cycling Road, as far as I can tell, is meant to be ridden downhill. I went uphill.

I was very confused at first, but kept making my way up the now-tedious Cycling Road, and eventually came out the other side, now with HM Fly. No more backtracking for me, I could now quickly return to any Pokemon Center I've been to.

Then, finally, with nowhere else to go, it was time to enter Saffron City.

While there was no psychic bubble around the city like in the manga, the city was certainly overrun by Team Rocket.

And so, like Red, Blue, and Green did in the manga, it was finally time for me to storm Silph Co.

Silph Co was a maze. Over 10 different floors, each connected by warp tiles, with no indication of which ones led to the path forward.

It was brutally confusing, and filled to the brim with trainers itching for a battle.

But I eventually found the keycard, and navigated my way to the hidden side of the top floor. It was time to face Giovanni again.

He was just as tough as when I encountered him in the Rocket Hideout, but Voivick pulled through, and I acquired the master ball.

Compared to Giovanni, Sabrina was relatively easy, though still pretty difficult. I had to work for that win, but I got my sixth badge.

Then it was time for me to go Surfing, along the southern edge of Kanto.

The Seafoam Islands were a tricky puzzle to figure out. It took me a few rounds of falling through holes and climbing up ladders to realize that I had to use Strength to push boulders down the holes, and change the flow of the water.

Soon, though, I made it to Cinnabar Island...and was immediately taken from there to Firered and Leafgreen's exclusive sub-region, the reason I decided to play this before Let's Go: the Sevii Islands.

For the Sevii Islands, I had absolutely no idea what the game version was like. I hadn't even seen any snippets of footage about them. My only experience with them was the Firered and Leafgreen arc of Pokemon Adventures.

But this time, there were no repossessed pokedexes, or "three Team Rocket beasts". Instead, I simply had to go on a variety of fetch quests.

It wasn't anything too special, but I'm glad it was there. It was fun! And I look forward to returning here in the postgame someday, once I find the drive to catch enough Pokemon for the Rainbow Pass.

But that's for later. For now, having defeated a biker gang, I returned to Cinnabar Island. Before I could face the gym, though, I had to traverse through the decrepit Pokemon Mansion.

Pokemon Mansion was like Silph Co, only much smaller, but the random encounters, statue puzzles, and eerie atmosphere made it feel just as long.

This was where Team Rocket conducted many of their experiments. It was where Mewtwo was created. And it lived up to that atmosphere.

Although some of the journal entries clearly had some of the dubiously canon stuff from Pokemon's very early days, such as references to real-life locations.

Still very neat, though.

Blaine wasn't as difficult as Misty, but was much more difficult than Erika. He specialized in the same type as my starter: Fire.

But with help from Voivick, I defeated him, and got my seventh badge.

I had just one stop left before Victory Road: The very first gym I encountered, whose gym leader was absent for so long.

Viridian City's gym leader had finally returned, and I was going to take him on.

The gym puzzle was my favorite yet of Kanto's, with the combination of spin tiles and trainers creating a genuinely neat maze.

And then I made it to Giovanni, for our final battle...until Soulsilver, Ultra Moon, and Let's Go Eevee, at least.

This battle with him was the trickiest against him yet. It took several tries for me to win.

But win I did, and Team Rocket, supposedly, was no more.

With all eight Kanto badges under my belt, it was time to go to Victory Road.

Before that, though, another battle with Blue. It was another tough one, but then again, all the major battles at this point were tough.

The badge check gates were really cool! The only comparable one I had seen so far was in Kalos, as Hoenn didn't have any. And Kalos' was more just inscriptions of the badges on the walls. Still cool, but not like Kanto's.

And then it was time for Kanto's Victory Road, my third Victory Road.

It was tricky, but in a different way from Hoenn and Kalos'.

Hoenn's was a test of navigation. How well could I navigate this maze in near-complete darkness?

Kalos' was a test of strength. So many powerful trainers, with nowhere in between to heal besides usage of items.

Kanto's was much shorter than both, fully lit, and its trainers weren't as tough as Kalos', but what it lacked in navigation and strength, it made up for in puzzles and endurance.

There were boulders scattered around, and I had to maneuver them sokoban-style onto switches in order to progress.

Oh, and the entire thing was filled with random encounters. At this point, I gave up on the "no repels" rule, and bought a bunch of max repels for this.

It was tough. It was confusing. It was my final test before the Indigo Plateau.

And eventually, I passed the test, making it out.

All that was left, was five battles. The Elite Four, and the Champion. The toughest the Kanto region had to offer.

At this point, all my Pokemon were fully evolved, save for my HM buddy Jifa. I was functionally going into this gauntlet with five Pokemon.

But I had conquered Hoenn in a similar way. Five battlers, and an HM buddy. I had hope that I could do this.

Healing up, and stocking up on healing items, I proceeded towards my first of my final battles, against Lorelei.

It's been a while, so I don't quite remember how these battles went. I do remember, though, that even Burhalla's fire wasn't enough to melt her ice. Linne, Dirir, and especially Darnod were weak to ice, so it was tricky.

But I pulled through, and next up was Bruno, fighting-type master.

Linne was vital here. Her Fly was invaluable in avoiding moves while still dealing damage. But a Hitmonlee knocked her out, leaving Voivick, Darnod, Dirir, and Burhalla to take on the rest.

Next was Agatha, and her ghost-types were no joke...even if she was more of a poison specialist. All my normal-type moves were out of the question. But with patience and strategy, I did it.

And last of Kanto's Elite Four was Lance, who had influenced this journey in his own way, back at the Celadon Game Corner. Darnod helped me a lot here. It was dragon vs dragons, and Darnod's Dragon Claw took many of them down. But the same went in reverse, and Darnod fell, leaving Voivick to finish things off with their Aurora Beam.

One battle left. Healing up my team, I progressed into the champion's chamber, to face Blue one final time.

This was by far the most difficult late-game battle I had. All the others had specialized in one or two types. But Blue was like me, with a rounded team.

It was tough. It was arduous. It took every member of my team, even Jifa, to win.

But win I did, and I had become champion of Kanto.

I had completed Pokemon Firered.

While my thoughts on this one are more mixed than Emerald or X, I did truly enjoy it, especially once it hit its stride around Lavender Town.

It has its flaws. Extreme difficulty in the earlygame, lots of grinding necessary, and much confusion on where to go next.

But I had fun, despite it all. I cherish this victory all the same.

[stillwinterair]

Upon my recent replaythrough of Dragon Age Inquisition I've decided to actually... order the maps from my favorite to my least favorite

The Western Approach

Crestwood

The Hissing Wastes (yes, I know I'm crazy for having this one so high)

Storm Coast

The Fallow Mire

The Emerald Graves

Emprise du Lion

Exalted Plains

Forbidden Oasis

The Hinterlands

Not currently including DLC locations because I haven't played them in a few years.

The top 5 are really, really high above the bottom 5, like there's a pretty steep drop off after the Fallow Mire that becomes exponential as you go down the list. The top 5 are all generally excellent experiences for me, the Emerald Graves is okay, the next two are forgettable, the Oasis is aggravating, and the Hinterlands is miserable

Storm Coast and the Hissing Wastes are very much... Designed For Me maps in aesthetic and tone, but the rest of the top five really are what I think BioWare should be leaning into for future open world sections of their games. The Western Approach, Fallow Mire, and Crestwood are very tightly-paced, well-crafted experiences that all work very differently from each other

The Western Approach is a mostly linear level masquerading as an open world, designed to be engaged with over time. It's essentially a big circle, although you can only move through about half of it at first, clockwise. Part one involves capturing a keep, one of the best quests in the game imo, and then you're pretty much locked off until you complete a war table operation. So you leave, handle other stuff, and come back eventually with another piece of the map unlocked to explore, ultimately get another war table operation, and leave again. When you return for the third time you're a lot more familiar with the map, and there's a nice dungeon to do as you work toward completing the map's full circle. There's a really nice sense of progression over time, I do just wish there was more content in the middle stage, and that the operations to progress through took actual in-game time to simulate this feeling better.

The Fallow Mire is just straight up a really tightly paced map without too much side content (and the content that's there is mostly well written and rewarding). This is the most classic Dragon Age quest in the game, and although the tone of it is kind of miserable (bog zombies...... eugh), it's honestly a pleasure to have a throwback to some very Origins-esque quest design

Crestwood is by far the most responsive to quest progression. The map very physically changes, twice, over the course of its main quest -- first, when the lake is drained, and again when the main quest is over, and morning comes. There's some genuinely good writing here, the quest design is nicely varied, and overall it just feels like the best crafted area Inquisition has.

As for the other two in my top 5, well...

Storm Coast: Honestly, I just want to live here... the constant stormy weather, the waves crashing on the shore... absolutely gorgeous

Hissing Wastes: Big desert... under stars... it is simply Relaxing and Beautiful

[shellheadtmarc]

actually, because i really need to finish my new theme and need new verse blurbs, here’s a more in depth look at my current/in-use verses, with links to full writeups as available.

mcu:  this is boilerplate.  i’m a canon tony, this is a canon verse.  follows the events from iron man through infinity war for the moment, including the tie-in comics iron man 2: public identity, iron man 2: agents of shield, iron man: the coming of the melter, iron man 3 prelude, marvel’s avengers: age of ultron prelude - the scepter’d isle, marvel’s captain america: civil war prelude infinite, marvel’s avengers: infinity war prelude, and marvel’s avengers: endgame prelude.  also includes the post-iron man 3 short about the mandarin.  everything not covered/discussed in mcu canon is plugged with 616 continuity canon.

616:  what it says on the tin.  covers most of the runs from about 2008-present, including the new tony stark: iron man, against my greater judgment, though that may change in the future if it keeps tanking in story. in reality, this actually covers everything post-heroes reborn, but to make it simple we’ll say it’s wibbly wobbly because comics.  also includes heavy snippets still in play from classic invincible iron man.

classic:  from his first appearances in tales of suspense up to the inception of heroes reborn.  or, if you prefer, original flavor tony stark, the cool suave businessman with the aloof nature, party boy ways, and injured heart, reliant on his rechargeable chest piece, as he also has a double identity as the golden avenger known as iron man.  poses as his own bodyguard.  jetsetter.  people love or hate him, but most want to be him.  if only they knew how much his bum ticker isolated him.  a ton of fridged girlfriends.  later physical ailments include:  paralysis from the waist down.  degenerative nervous system.  a cranky ticker more than you can shake a stick at.  literally dying and being cryogenically frozen.

616 meets mcu:  this covers any time comicverse tony is thrown at mcu versions of the people he knows.  things to note include being taller.  he has blue eyes.  his tech is more advanced.  his speech patterns differ heavily.  recovering alcoholic, coffee is fine no matter how shitty it is.  he has more years as a superhero under his belt at this point.  his fears and points of stress differ from mcu tony’s quite a bit, and his reactions are different.  he and pepper are barely on speaking terms (generously speaking). he’s different, and it’s obvious he’s different.

broke:  mcu-based verse that includes corporate espionage and tony stark having to keep his head down and learning to live under the table paycheck to under the table paycheck until he can muster what he needs to make a frontal assault on regaining what’s rightly his.  a verse where tony’s at his absolute lowest, still determined to retain the phoenix metaphor and rise from the ashes of the misfortune thrust upon him.

superior iron man:  hiding the fact that he’s still under the scarlet witch’s inversion spell, tony goes full tilt diva, his main concerns being money, power, and fame.  he starts drinking again.  he makes san francisco his own personal big brother state, where he watches the city like a hawk by day while shilling extremis as a beauty enhancer, and parties like it’s 1999 at his new home on alcatraz island by night.  is still iron man, as long as there’s something in it for him.  will partially be at fault for the destruction of the 616 universe (it gets better).

hypervelocity:  tony’s attacked in his own lab by the mind-emulationware mechs known as “beautiful garbage”, and his newest iteration of the iron man suit forced an upload or a copy of his brain patterns to get him out of there.  the wetware is damaged, and the suit dumps it before it bleeds out in the suit cavity, and thus that suit, with the ability to walk, talk, and think exactly like tony stark (albeit full of bugs) is born, to unravel the mystery of the attack and attempt to stop the emulation program that caused it.

ai:  after being punched into a literal coma during a battle with captain marvel/carol danvers over the fate of miles morales and concerning an inhuman by the name of odysseus’s increasingly violent visions of the future, and with even hank mccoy being afraid to even draw blood on tony after seeing what tony’s been doing to himself over the years, tony’s ai comes online, as a mentor to riri williams/ironheart and to help against the clone captain america with those of the mount.  he’s twice as sassy with quadruple the processing speed, and he’s got some weird feelings about being the recreated consciousness of a living person suddenly finding itself with no physical body.

noir:  a businessman who likes to play adventurer for a men’s magazine, along with his best friend james rhodes and their new reporter pepper potts, writing under a male pseudonym, tony stark on the surface has it all in the late 1930s.  beautiful women, exciting adventures, and loads of money.  but all it does is hide his desperate search for a cure for his dying heart, as he’s forced to wear a metal chest piece that has to be charged frequently to even keep himself alive.  

director of shield:  mcu-based version of tony’s time as the director of shield.  after everything that occurs after captain america: the winter soldier, and the fall of shield, an attempt is made to resurrect it with tony stark at the helm as fury’s replacement (hand-picked).  he stresses transparency, he stresses equality, and most of all, he just wants to find a way to balance being iron man with having to deal with the day-to-day bullshit of international bureaucracy.

sorcerer supreme:  based on the 90s “what if?” one shot comic.  tony was the cause of the accident that injured stephen strange’s hands, and, feeling supremely guilty about the entire thing, searches for ways to give stephen his dexterity and life back.  it leads him to becoming the sorcerer supreme, despite that inherent dislike of magic he has, and he combines the iron man technology with the mystical forces he gains a hold over in that quest for a cure.

guardians of the galaxy:  mcu flavor for tony’s time as an active gotg.  after civil war, on a break with pepper, and feeling about as great about things as someone laying facedown in a gutter possibly can, tony puts his mobile armory into space, tinkers together a suit for deep space exploration, and takes off, losing himself for a while among the stars.  threat is going to come from there, sure, but there’s going to be opportunity, as well.  it’s a useful thing to find out who’s friend, and who’s foe, and see what there is to see in the black expanses of space.

supernatural:  the other family business.  being a founder of shield and everything he took to his grave wasn’t the only secret he was keeping, and this was one maria was in on as well.  too bad tony doesn’t stumble across it until after he’s already become iron man, where saving the world is so tied into his moral code he can’t look away.  if he goes missing for a few days, it’s fine, it’s chill.  he’s just taking a breather, not poking around at things he only still half-believes in even when he’s seen them with his own two eyes.  the biggest skeptic hunter you’ll ever meet.

fallout prewar:  mcu continuity up to the beginning of iron man 3, against fallout’s prewar as a backdrop.  tony stark is who he is, he does what he does, but he also is someone certain government agencies would love to tear down, because he’s a rabble rouser against the war, and has no problem hogging the iron man technology for himself instead of sharing with the military.  he also has no problem sharing the dirty secrets he finds out with the press.  full write up can be found here.

fallout new vegas:  tony as the infamous courier six.  left in stasis in a vault in california, tony comes to years and years after the devastation of the bombs to a world vastly changed from the one he remembers, and in a vault full of ghouls.  once topside, and once reoriented into the world, he ends up something of a jack of all trades until he takes that fateful job with the mojave express, and gets two to the head for his trouble.  independent path with the yes-man aligned ending, details of choices and all dlcs available as needed until i get off my ass and do a full replaythrough and write up.  keeps the spine from big mt, but his heart and brain are back where they belong.  locked elijah in the vault.  nuke launch stopped (ed-e repaired after).  evacuated the sorrows.  

fallout 4 sole survivor:  still needs a full write up, but tony as the sole survivor.  does not take the shock at the change in the world well at first.  eventually pulls his shit together enough to get shit done, but can’t touch a suit, can’t think about the suit, will take some time to even toy with the idea of possibly touching a suit again before he actually can.  minutemen and railroad aligned, destroys the bos and institute.  peaceful ending with all far harbor factions.  spares the mechanist.  destroys the raiders at nuka world and turns the parks over to the minutemen.  question information as needed until i get a full write up done.

fallout 4 companion:  tony’s been in new york since the bombs dropped.  there are huge chunks of it that are still uninhabitable, much like boston’s glowing sea, but the parts that are?  he’s started on a grand rebuilding project, because he’s got nothing but time:  the arc reactor’s kept his heart pumping well past its expiration date.  when the bos slow rolls past new york, he follows them into boston, mostly because he’s paranoid and cagey (with good reason in the wasteland) and partially out of curiosity.  available as a companion for sole survivors, some restrictions apply, please see this write up for more details.

fallout 76 dweller:  locked up with a bunch of other big brains after the bombs, tony’s that guy.  you know.  the one you read about in the terminal.  the one that kept hacking things.  once topside again, he sheds that vault tec blue and yellow as quickly as he can and sees about setting things right.  a member of the responders.  a mole in [redacted].  fire breather.  rebuilding the world has to start somewhere, so it might as well be west virginia.

dwemer:  the last surviving dwemer, finally peeking his head out of his lab in its pocket plane of oblivion to find the nords are at it again, dragons are still doing their thing, his people have just flat out vanished, and that skyrim is still cold as balls.  often gets mistaken as a very tall bosmer.  still calls the dunmer the chimer out of sheer smartassedness.  swung on rolf in windhelm and ends up in jail more times than you can shake a stick at.

single parent au:  handed off a baby under some shady as hell circumstances, unable to find out anything and secretly glad he can’t find out anything about her in the end, tony pulls some strings and sophie stark ends up hitting the jackpot as far as adoptive parents go.  tony had thought just being iron man was hard, but now he’s balancing ballet practice and pta meetings with saving the world.

[gaileon]

ALM: Damn!! Just a bit more... -> CELICA: Alm... How could you fall before our dreams are accomplished...

living vicariously through my friend’s replaythrough of gaiden and really thinking about how alm’s death quote is generic (still clearly gets his character across tho) but celica’s inclusion..... chef’s fingers........

in almost all scenarios, celica physically isn’t there. for the record, alm doesn’t fill this slot in for when celica dies. instead it’s mycen.

CELICA: I'm no good after all. I'm sorry, everyone... -> MYCEN: Celica. You must not give up. There are still things you cannot          leave undone.

this directly puts celica and mycen as parallels to each other. they’re the guiding figures. by not having alm be the one to reach out to celica when she dies, it implies alm’s naivete and inexperience. he’s not the one guiding someone back to life. he can’t be a figure of wisdom. but celica can.

additionally, it really exemplifies how much celica is almost coddling alm. keeping in mind she got upset because she’s coming out to find mila so that alm doesn’t have to go under emotional trauma yet alm still wants to fight, she’s feeling upset here in her lines because alm really proved to be as reckless as she worried he would be. she also clearly still cherishes him even if she’s upset because she still holds values in the dreams they had— as vague as they are in gaiden.

celica constantly puts herself in a role of responsibility. she wishes to take the burdens for everyone. her death quote being an apology while alm’s is an angry lament to want to do more once more highlights their differences. alm is still too focused on the feelings of frustration of being prevented to do something (something he’s felt as a result of both mycen and celica thinking he’s in over his head, which he is) while celica is focused on softening the blow for everyone. celica is through and through the more mature out of them.

[stillwinterair]

My recent replaythrough of Mass Effect has sorta helped me see a lot of things more clearly, and has SERIOUSLY helped me with building my own science fiction universe because I’ve been able to lay down my priorities much more cleanly

I also was really able to lay down all the reasons of exactly why ME3 did not vibe with me, and it basically comes down to my dislike for military sci-fi. In ME1 and ME2 it’s a HELL of a lot easier to ignore, because in ME1 you’re a part of the military, but you’re also a Spectre on a secret mission. You do a lot of military operations across the galaxy, but they’re there to flesh out the universe and give you problems to solve. In ME2, you get to blend yourself into the galactic underworld, see it from a completely different lens, and explore a lot more intricate world building.

And then ME3 has its head so far up its ass chasing military sci-fi that you can’t even see the stars anymore. In the first two games, I was able to safely ignore the military aspect of the story, and of Shepard’s own background, because it was rarely important to current events. But ME3 makes it important always, at all times. ME had restrictive dialogue options before, but they’ve never quite been as oppressive as in ME3, where it will give you a Paragon option that’s downright militaristic, and a Renegade option that’s just stupendously mean-spirited. It is constantly selling the message that military action = the only way to solve a major threat. Paragon Shepard demanding that people lay down their lives and sacrifice themselves and their men for the sake of honor and duty is just horrifying.

In the first two games, Commander Shepard is an explorer first, special agent second, soldier a distant third. In the grand finale, Shepard is military through and through.

Another thing that stuck out: I was also able to safely ignore the human-first narrative of the first two games because it doesn’t really come up that often. ME2 has those really awkward lines in Mordin’s loyalty mission about “human genetic diversity” being a lot greater than any other species, which is just absurd (given how we have a pretty low genetic diversity among species on our own damn planet), and then that end-game conversation with TIM who says something like “we could have secured human dominance for the galaxy!” to which the Paragon option is: “Human dominance? Or just Cerberus?” What, Shepard? You draw the line at Cerberus dominating the galaxy, but humanity sticking their boot on everybody’s necks is fine?

Anyway, ME3 just expands on this by making humans Special and framing the entire struggle around Earth and giving the Earth Systems Alliance a simply ridiculous amount of galactic territory, like a full fifth of the galaxy despite being on the scene for 30 years. They certainly say “every species needs to come together to fix this,” but they make it feel like “humans have to fix eons worth of other species’ problems so we can all focus on saving Earth,” which never sat well with me.

So in my own sci-fi setting, my heroes are not fucking soldiers and generals. There are militaries, but they operate in the background. Instead, my heroes are scientists and explorers and couriers and ex-soldiers who want peace and mercenaries or smugglers or other forms of criminals with hearts of gold.

I don’t want to tell stories about humans flying out into space and saving the day by putting a bullet in the brains of enemy combatants and big monsters. I want to tell stories about hard-won victories through the means of cooperation and discovery and exploration. Militarization has a very real chance of preventing us from ever reaching the stars, and to then take that and glorify it and frame it as the great deliverer... it’s just ugly, and I hate that about Mass Effect, and sci-fi in general.