#the story seems very intriguing and the npcs are all so developed with their own personalities and stuff

[warlordfelwinter]

there is just So Much worldbuilding going on in palia

[rainofaugustsith]

Mage Age

After learning about the Amaro mount achievement (thanks @cinlat!), and realizing I really want to see All The Stories, I've been having Viri work through some of the other jobs.

My strategy right now is to do them in groups that can share gear, since my Armory Chest is getting pretty packed. So first up have been the mage DPS and healer jobs I've missed, because they could share the generic "Disciple of Magic" gear up to level 50 and then later on just use the gear I already have for Red Mage and Astrologer. Sage and Scholar I'll have to grab later when they can also share the higher level gear.

My two favorite magic classes remain Red Mage and Astrologer. Astrologer really isn't that different on a healing/combat level than White Mage, but it comes with a very wide variety of buffs for yourself and anyone else in your party, all against an interesting backdrop of drawing cards. I also really like that the astrology discipline has changed in every place the WoL has visited. Ishgard uses astrology to track the dragons, but Sharlayan astrology is for knowledge and such. And then you get to Kugane and the astrologer there is responsible for wards that protect the city. It's cool to delve into how each area has related to the stars and developed their own discipline and philosophy about them.

And Red Mage is still IMHO the perfect magic class. It comes with a wide variety of magical skills, there are a number of features like Dual Cast that cut down significantly on casting times; it uses both white and black magic; and it also has a very wide variety of melee DPS sword skills, so you can fight close up without waiting for spells to cast at all, and of course self-heals and a rez ability. I love the Red Mage NPCs and the journeys that they're taking.

As for the new classes:

Summoner: I really like this one. The story is intriguing, and the NPC who guides you is engaging. The new quest giver introduced in level 60 alongside that NPC is a lot of fun, too. As a combat class it does a lot of damage, and you don't have to wait for eons to cast things.

I also feel the Summoner lore can tie into Viri's Reaper job. I always feel that since she is Eorzean and can manipulate aether, she would approach that job differently than a Garlean. Speficially she would not need to make a pact with a voidsent; she could summon others from the beyond to help her. So with that summoning ability confirmed in canon by this job, it works. My headcanon is that as a Reaper she's summoning the egi, not a bound voidsent.

But the book as a weapon! The BOOK. The book annoys the hell out of me. In the middle of battle, you think my WoL is going to stand there saying "yeah hold on, gotta look up/write this spell?!" Or maybe the book is heavy so they can hit someone with it and knock them out. I am looking forward getting to a high enough level that Viri can use one of the many glamour weapons that doesn't look like a book.

White Mage: It's so boring. It's like looking at a plain white wall. There's nothing offensive about this class, it's just boring as hell. It's clearly designed to stand as a support class in group content and doesn't seem to work particularly well as a solo class. It has mostly the same kit as Astrologer - like three attacks and then a host of heals - but without the cards and party buffs. The attacks are "throw rocks, wind, bright flashy light" which is evoking not-so-pleasant memories of Jedi Consular's Sage advanced class. Although my JC Sage had more attacks to throw, which is kind of sad.

I did really appreciate that after reaching level 30 as a Conjurer, the base job, Viri unlocked a very simple quest to help a unicorn and obtain a unicorn mount. Viri now has a white unicorn and a black one, and I think the only horsie she's missing is the Leviathan one.

Black Mage: I previously tried this job and rage quit at level 57 because I couldn't stand it. I'm sorry, this job sucks. You have to plant yourself in one place, every fucking thing takes an hour to cast, Ley Lines really isn't super helpful because the enemies invariably throw an something that requires you to move, and - AND!- you don't even have a self-heal other than Lucid Dreaming, unlike every other mage class. Yeah, yeah, we get that black magic used alone doesn't heal, but FFS come up with some dark healing spell anyway so my damned mage doesn't die.

I truly feel this class was meant for group play and group play only, because unless you have a tank and DPS keeping the enemies off you, you can't just stand there and wait for every spell to cast. And this class still doesn't work great even there. Yeah, the spells do damage but you have to wait so long to cast that the character beside you can still do double the damage because they can hit more frequently. In the Vault for example, the Black Mage could not take out a lot of the Holy Fire because of the long cast times, whereas the other DPS jobs and even my Dark Knight tank make short work of that shit.

The sad thing is that Black Mage has a really intriguing story that ties into the magical DPS Cardinal Virtues mission chain and other stuff. I love the NPCs, and there's something that has come up that I could swear ties into the idea of sundered souls and reflections on other worlds and such. Having said that, without another carrot I would still quit this class on the spot.

The only reason I am continuing this class is for the Amaro, and I expect that the second I get it to 80 I'm dropping it cold unless I need it again for another reward. Which is a shame because the story as I said is good.

[anghraine]

Another thing on the Charr and sticking with GW2 (yes, I know it's been 10 years, anyway):

I've seen quite a few Prophecies players over the years absolutely refuse to play GW2, or try it and nope out, specifically over GW2's attempts to recuperate the Charr enough to make them a playable species. Sometimes it seems like GW2 is trying to convince us that what we personally saw back in GW1 didn't happen the way we saw it, or wasn't as bad as it clearly was, or that the brutality of the Charr conquest in the early game (not just from the theocratic shamans, either) has to be respected as part of their culture or is even a heartwarming tale of reclamation (looking at you, Rytlock).

And it introduces stuff like the Foefire that seems a blatant attempt to #bothsides the situation, even though it's the action of one maddened person opposed by other Ascalonians (similarly, the Orrian priesthood are shown to have reservations about Khilbron before the Cataclysm, even as they're in dread of experiencing the horrors the Ascalonians did). And Adelbern, moreover, seems in pre-Searing GW1 to be a sensible and popular leader, only to be later broken by the invasion and its attendant atrocities.

The conquest of Ascalon, by contrast, was and remains a large-scale action in which the vast majority of Charr are complicit. So I do get the recalcitrance of GW1 players who've heard Ascalonian NPCs talk about how they still hear the screaming years later, or who have visited the abbey turned mental institution for people too traumatized by the invasion to function, or who fulfill various grisly quests like recovering Althea's ashes or re-living Gwen's traumatic history in Eye of the North.

That said, I do find it intriguing that GW2 is actually very erratic about it. If you go to Charr-controlled Ascalon, yeah, most Ascalonians are Separatist terrorists who murder everything that moves and most Charr are friendly regardless of your species. Some Charr will even be like "yeah, some of the ghosts aren't Foefire ghosts, they haunt the place because they were unjustly slaughtered there by the Flame Legion" and you can find the occasional living Ascalonian who is an ally or fairly chill, or like ... the Ascalonian scholar grimly protecting the Searing device as a historical artifact despite his pretty obvious nuclear rage.

And sometimes the full scale of the horror is acknowledged out of nowhere, like when we see the terrified Orrians in the personal story, but also stuff like the brief flavor text that the Ascalonian aqueducts that supplied water before the invasion "ran red with blood after the Searing" and consequently became infused with grisly magical power. Like ... okay!!!!

While that's horrifying, though, it does seem a clear acknowledgment that the invasion really was that bad, just as it's depicted in GW1. I think the basic idea is that the retcons are less literal changes to the continuity and more re-contextualizations that give a bit more nuance to the Charr by showing how they see things as well as how it looks to the Ascalonians (though the Charr remain very edgy RAH RAH, HAIL THE GLORIES OF EMPIRE, VICTORY AT ALL COSTS etc). It just pushes the re-contextualization so far and works so hard to develop sympathy for the original villains that it does feel like the atrocities are being downplayed, when I think the goal is more like "everyone has their own self-serving narrative regardless of what actually happened."

But even in GW2, what actually happened was a concerted and partially successful attempt to eradicate much of humanity on the Tyrian continent, an attempt that in Ascalon continued for 250 years, and only really ended because the Charr were simultaneously fighting Separatists, the Flame Legion, an Elder Dragon and its minions, the Ebonhawke Ascalonians backed by Kryta, and various other threats. On top of that, Queen Jennah's various diplomatic maneuvers led to a cease-fire + a deal that gave them a dignified out from the war with Ebonhawke without requiring them to give up much or acknowledge any wrongdoing.

This is honestly pretty realistic—that their total war approach to all conflict would lead them to stretch themselves too thin, that they'd never politically acknowledge the scale of their atrocities and the game only achieves non-partisan descriptions through (horrifying) flavor text, that the narratives every faction comes up serve to prop up each faction's legitimacy. This is true whether it's Rytlock's reclamation narrative, the Separatists framing their domestic terrorism as reminders of a common purpose, the Krytans complaining about not being welcomed in Ebonhawke while their queen claims sovereignty over it, etc.

It does often feel like a lot of smoke and mirrors to divert attention so that people will play Charr the dynamic doesn't seem so woefully one-sided as it did in Prophecies, and obviously I do have a lot of problems with how all this is executed, like the inability to conceive of a single Charr dissenting from the standard Charr narrative wrt Ascalon (whereas plenty of Ascalonians don't buy the Ascalonian nationalist narrative). But I suspect I'd just be one of the GW1 players who noped out if it weren't for the occasional signals to GW1 players that we can trust our original experience of the game; we weren't seeing everything, but we weren't being tricked, either.

So, you know. Here I am, still.

[rpgmgames]

April’s Featured Game: Nobody's Home

DEVELOPER(S): oates ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Survival Horror SUMMARY: After a night of extreme drinking and partying, you wake up in stranger's bed to discover... Nobody's Home.

Buy the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *oates: Hi, this is oates! I'm a pixel artist and game developer, I've started making games with rpgmaker in 2016 with VX Ace and now currently using MV for recent projects. Previous projects I've worked on were the FNaF-inspired Souls-like One Night at the Steeze, my first rpgmaker game and it's prequel, the FNaF-inspired roguelike No Delivery. Other games I've worked on include the fangames Day Dreaming Derpy, made in VX Ace and Spike's Day Off, made in MV and the latest in a series of previous fangames previously developed on Adobe Flash.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *oates: Nobody's Home is largely based on my experiments to find and apply horrific elements in modern situations or phenomena. The scenario being explored here in Nobody's Home is the aftermath of some crazy party. Sound design is especially important when crafting a horror scenario, so I often look to music to draw inspiration. Much of the atmosphere and house design was inspired by music and imagery associated with '70s yacht rock (a sub-genre of soft rock). Another important note is a lot of the general mood and 'weirdness' was inspired by a band I listen a lot to, Dance Gavin Dance, specifically their "deathstar" album. However they have a tendency in all their albums to switch genres mid-song, often going from their post-hardcore sound to funk, pop, and even rap; aside from that, some of the subject matter covered can range from disturbing to unpleasant to nonsensical, but combined with the amazing music, it creates an experience that pulls the listener in all different directions. It got to the point that I was naming events in the game after some their tracks so I had to be careful not to inadvertently make a fangame haha But there are some easter eggs in Nobody's Home that were intentionally left in, and I'm fairly certain players have identified it already.

How long did you work on your project? *oates: I used much of the same framework left over from my previous project No Delivery for this development cycle, so the hassle for setting up asset pipelines was very much mitigated. I started in earnest, making assets back in January this year so it took roughly 2+ months to finish development for this project.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *oates: Aside from the previous music inspirations, I was really intrigued with the way Resident Evil 7's Beginning Hour demo was able to pick up where Konami's cancelled PT left off in terms of survival horror games to look forward to back in 2017. Prior to later updates, the initial demo really only included a few set pieces, basic item interaction, and almost no puzzles from the full game. It was largely able to pull off scaring players from almost atmosphere alone (if you exclude the Jack Baker and ghost encounters). It was later in the full game that it was able to show off it's metroidvania-esque design to its fullest. After my previous project, I wanted to step away from roguelike design for a bit and focus a little more on an exploration-based experience, so I took a few notes from the way RE7 and RE2: Remake handled map design and progression.

Did you come across any challenges during development? How did you overcome or work around them? *oates: I was coming off a severe cold last year and it took most of January for me to recover, so it was a little hard to start full-on development immediately like I normally would on top of other career matters. And looking at events today, it's even more imperative that developers practice healthy habits during development.

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *oates: I've had the idea for Nobody's Home as a concept for a while, but filling in those gaps with actual gameplay between centerpieces was a big variable. I went back and forth between the turn-based item combat from the previous project to cutting out combat entirely. While I didn't implement it, I also brainstormed a few concepts for overworld action and combat ala Zelda, but it seemed too complex given the time frame I set for myself. Eventually I settled on a middle ground between full combat and separate encounters, with "enemies" acting as essentially a toll gate. The rest of the game followed suit with various tolls and "mouse traps" for the player to trigger at their own behest. This wasn't necessarily the design I had in mind at first, but it helped to concisely fill a relatively small location with specifically "deadly" content.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *oates: I largely work solo for both development and art, but I do regularly work with a few musicians for an original soundtrack. I first started working with other composers for the fangame Day Dreaming Derpy, where after the initial demo was released, I received emails from a few musicians volunteering to contribute some tracks for the game. In all, the original soundtrack contained 9 tracks in total, with 3 tracks from each composer; each of them doing an amazing job and, in my opinion brought the project back then to a higher degree of quality. This was how I met some of the composers I still work with today and they all have some really great work! TheNGVirus @NGVirusNG1 Kaminakat @thekaminakat dRedder @HornyGremlin

What is the best part of developing a game? *oates: It's a toss up between the initial brainstorming/research and the first run-through when you have your desired maps linked together. For the brainstorming, it's pretty fun to learn about subject matter you want to do justice to as well as stretching your creative muscles for the first time in service to a certain concept. However this obviously wears off when you devote too much time to a particular concept, but it's still enjoyable nevertheless. For making that run-through, it doesn't necessarily mean to have all the events implemented, but to experience your game the way players will experience it for the first time does give a sense of completion/cohesion to what you, as a developer, are trying to accomplish. It essentially puts what you're working on into a different perspective for you.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *oates: I do keep an eye out for what other rpgmaker projects are doing, and to see what others can do with the engine helps get the creative juices flowing; it's also fun to try to mentally reverse engineer how certain mechanics or effects were made. And it's always great to see fellow devs showcase what's possible with the engine.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *oates: Nobody's Home has a relatively small cast of characters, whom you do interact with but never see, this is largely to done to create a sense of "un-relatability", but if I had to pick a character, it'd be "car guy", the guy you find stuck in the car. They have a good line, " ...there'd be a good reason for this, but there isn't..." Story of my life.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *oates: There were a few areas I would have liked to expand on or add, specifically- the attic + roof, the front lawn, behind the walls, and an entire second floor. Unfortunately that meant potentially adding more questlines and NPCs while the first set of questlines were pretty interwoven so it would have been way more complex, also again, given the time frame I set, it would have extended the development cycle way beyond what I had time for. But if I had implemented those extra areas, the game's length would also go way beyond the 30 min - 1 hr it takes to complete the game as it is now.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *oates: I'd like to do both really, each installment of the VCRPG line of games is definitely a stand-alone story, or an isolated incident, but I would love to explore the aftermath of the game's events and how the passage of time ravages and twists the story into urban legend. I like to treat places and environments like characters as well, capable of making memories, being misunderstood, preserved, destroyed, and ultimately capable of change.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *oates: Both the fan reaction and free time honestly speaking. Once the development cycle finishes and the game is published, your work isn't really finished as there's always a chance someone's feedback can apply to immediate changes or patches you can implement, even during the release period. Marketing is also another large step to take into consideration after release, this includes tweeting, sending keys for lets plays, etc. Watching playthroughs is also a really good way to collect data on what parts of your design fall through and what fail to land. But after all that is said and done, some free time really helps the brain recuperate.

Was there something you were afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *oates: Just whether or not I handled the game's subject matter tastefully. Like horror cinema, everything done is in service the the themes and message of the piece as a whole.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *oates: The game engine is essentially a tool, and like any tool you can find plenty of creative ways to get the same result. And don't be afraid to research whatever it is you need help with, it also helps to be specific with what you want.

Question from last month's featured dev @moca-pz: If you can collaborate with any game developer in the world, who would it be? What would be their role(s) and what would be your role(s)? *oates: Game developer I'd like to work with: Hidetaka Miyazaki His role: Story Lead and Director My role: Drinking buddy Game we're working on: SciFi Souls

We mods would like to thank oates for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Nobody's Home if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy Review

Year: 1987 Original Platform: Famicom Also available on: Nintendo (NES), GameBoy Advance (Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls), PlayStation One (Final Fantasy Origins), PSP (Anniversary Edition) Version I played: PSP

Synopsis:

The world is in danger. Four monstrous fiends, each corresponding to an element of nature, have wreaked havoc on the world, causing each of the four elemental orbs (in later remakes, crystals) to turn dark. Four Heroes of Light, each holding their own orb, meet and band together to take on these fiends and restore nature to its proper balance.

Gameplay: The original game introduced the Job System. The six jobs are Warrior, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, White Mage, and Red Mage. Each have their own stats. You are free to name each of your heroes. Later on the game, each job can be upgraded.

We are introduced to a classic setup of turn-based combat. Final Fantasy was notable for being the first video game RPG to show your characters on the right and the enemies on the left; all previous video game RPGs had a first-person view with the enemy directly in front of you.You choose your action between Fight, Magic, Drink, Item or Run. Then the enemy takes their turn.

It’s a simple system that at the time was already well-known. It was really the Job System that intrigued players. Black Mages perform destructive magic, White Mages heal and restore, Warriors are the powerhouses, Monks deal damage without weapons, and Thieves can run from battles successfully (they cannot steal, as later games would introduce that). The game can be quite difficult on the original Famicom and NES. It was made at a time when technology was limited, so developers had to make the game harder so that people spent more time playing it. There’s a gaming term that I’ll be using in many of these Final Fantasy reviews called “grinding”. Grinding is when you end up having to run around and fight monsters for the sake of leveling up your characters. There is a lot of that in this game, as well as the early Final Fantasy games in general. Unlike games today, the direction isn’t fully laid out. You are thrown into the world and wander about from town to town to figure out where to go next. Instead of games like today where other non-playable characters (NPCs for short) tell you what to do in cutscenes and whatever, you actually have to approach the NPCs and find out the information. The overall effect is more open-world. You walk across fields and oceans and deserts. There are caves and other secret places to find more items. From a modern gamer’s perspective, the exploring can be quite bare and – for lack of better word – boring. The remakes, like the PSP version that I played, brightened it up with updated graphics. They also added a couple extra dungeons. I actually spent time in those extra dungeons believing they were part of the story, appalled by how difficult they were, when I later found out they were extras put in for the PSP version. That has happened a lot to me with remakes of old RPGs (Chrono Trigger for the DS, another example). A little more obvious sign would have helped to make me realize that I didn’t need to finish those extra dungeons. The pace is definitely slower than the other Final Fantasy games. Most of your time is spent grinding. Grinding can sometimes be a wary word when talking about video game RPGs. If an RPG is too boring or tedious, grinding is the last thing you want to hear. But even when an RPG is fun, grinding means that you need to spend time battling enemies, and that means hopefully you don’t have a huge backlog of other video games. It's probably why I never got around to finishing the original NES version on an emulator. Once and a while I'd be pumped up about going through with it but then as I played I just. . .got distracted by other video games that I wanted to finish.

You definitely need time and patience. The most aggravating thing about the original version (Famicom/NES) is that if your character is set to attack an enemy but another one of your characters defeats it first, that character attacks nothing but air when it's their turn. It was a very annoying issue that they fixed in all subsequent remakes. When comparing the original to any other version, the original always is the best way to experience the game. It can also be the hardest and most time-consuming. You would need to pay attention to this game entirely and not be distracted by anything else.

The PSP version is watered down. I found it infinitely easier than the NES version. I actually played them side-by-side to figure out at what point the difficulty branched off. Right away when you venture to save Princess Sara, I realized that the PSP version gives more XP per battle than the NES version. Hence, you have to grind more in the original version.

Graphics:

Everybody loves some 8-bits, but let’s be honest here – there’s a whole lot of black empty space going on when you battle.

But hey, that was due to the limitations at the time. Battles may seem more boring to you due to the lack of detail to catch your eye.

The later remakes added a floor or ground where appropriate. The PSP remake did a good job of giving a facelift to the original, as shown below. It has this cute, rounded feel to the characters.

(My favorite battle background was in the final battle.)

The opening FMV sequence is ripped straight from the Playstation One remake. That didn’t age well. It’s awkward as hell. Want to see how awkward it looks? It looks mad awkward. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just look it up. I don’t want to sully this post by posting a screenshot. In my opinion, they should have created a brand new opening FMV sequence for the PSP version.

Story: The first several minutes of the game acts as a prologue. The Four Heroes of Light save a princess - Sara - from the clutches of Garland, and then the King of Coneria allows a bridge to be built for them to enter the world and save it. It’s not until that bridge is built that the game truly starts and the title screen actually displays – much like a late opening title in a movie. In retrospect, saving a princess probably seemed like the most common trope in video games throughout the '80's. Gamers would have been used to it by then. That short prologue acts like a trope-breaker. The average gamer would have probably expected the game to be like Mario or Zelda. Oh yeah, save the princess from some evil fiend, okay, got it. They would have then maybe been perked with interest when they "defeated" Garland so quickly, and then when the King of Coneria lets them pass into the world and the title screen opens up with the theme song, they maybe were like, "Ooooh. NOW it starts." Final Fantasy then plunged them into a wide open world.

The bulk of the story is mostly comprised of self-contained incidents. You run into someone who needs help with a thing so you do that thing and then you’re on your merry way again. You know what would be a great adaptation of this game? A Netflix series. It’s very episodic. First you deal with these pirates led by Bikke, then get a ship to sail across the land and go on a sort of delivery quest for a crown, a crystal eye, an herb, a magic key, until the main story picks up with defeating the Four Fiends and bringing light to the darkened orbs. There's no real huge spoiler other than the time travel paradox at the end, which had me wracking my head a bit. It's quite admirable that a game this early in video game console history produced a higher concept plot involving time travel. Music:

Composer Nobuo Uematsu created a legendary score that immediately became on par with the Mario and Zelda theme songs.  The Prelude/Crystal theme – the harp-like scale that we are all familiar with – was actually composed last. Uematsu had complete the score when Sakaguchi approached him at the last minute realizing they needed music for the game’s introduction. None of them had any idea that the theme would become a staple for Final Fantasy.

Due to the technical limitations at the time, you can imagine that the soundtrack is limited, but even so it was still quite expansive for its time. There are several individual tunes for dungeons, for sailing your ship and for flying your airship. The map theme will have you humming it without realizing it.

Uematsu drew his inspiration from two sources – classic rock and living in Shikoku, an island off Japan. The melodic world map theme in Final Fantasy (and the rest of the series) derives from the picturesque memories he has of the island. The town theme is reminiscent of the sleepy villages – as he was never a city person. Meanwhile, the battle theme has undertones of rock music.

There’s only one battle theme, even when fighting bosses and the final boss, but the amazing thing is that it never gets old.

Final Fantasy games are known for their great battle songs. The opening bassline always gets you in the groove to fight. You’re fighting but want to sing at the same time. Maybe that’s the brilliance of Uematsu; because of the fact that you need to grind many times in these old Final Fantasy games, he created a tune that you wouldn’t get tired of because it’s not so serious or mundane.

Not to crap on other great developers, but other video game RPGs at the time of Final Fantasy didn’t quite have memorable battle music. Just look up the battle theme to the first Dragon Quest game (released before Final Fantasy). You can imagine how that simple tune could get old really quick. I could be pulling this out of my ass, but after Final Fantasy, it seemed that battle music in video game RPGs suddenly got better. If you listen to the Dragon Quest IV battle theme, there is a portion that sounds similar to the battle theme of Final Fantasy.

The PSP version adds more tracks, specifically to the boss battles, and I like how they incorporate the original battle motif thrown into the new battle songs. The original battle theme has a guitar and drums added, which is the style that Final Fantasy battle music was known for by then.

There is one last thing to note about the score that I found very interesting for its day and age. You see, in a movie score, you have themes and motifs, just like a video game score. But in a movie score, other tracks reference those themes and motifs. For example, you have The Raider’s March in the Indiana Jones films; that’s the theme for the character Indiana Jones. Then in the movie, whenever Indy does something badass, you hear his theme blare in that instance. Obviously the entire theme doesn’t play, but it is incorporated in snippets throughout.

Uematsu actually does this with the Town Theme. He incorporates it at the ending music in the epilogue. It took me a while to try to understand why. Then it hit me. The epilogue mentions the heroes becoming legends as people talk about them. Legends are told and spread in towns.

It’s a very small detail. It’s such a small detail that it could be nothing but if it is what I think it is, then it’s cool that he was already in the mindset of passing on themes and motifs throughout the game, treating it like a movie.

Notable Theme:

I already posted the main themes in the introduction, but here’s the original battle theme:

Verdict:

A strong debut to the Final Fantasy series. To a modern gamer though, you may be spoiled by the fast-paced, eye-catching video games of today. When console games first hit the market, developers had to create games that took longer than the average arcade game to finish, or else kids would get bored with their games in minutes and gee, wouldn’t that be a waste since they paid way more than a quarter? Thus, that’s another reason why old games are harder. Given the technical limitations at the time, developers couldn’t expand much on the game, so there’s a lot of leveling up and grinding because what else could you do? You know? Ultimately, playing a video game back then was all about honing your skill with that game.

Ideally, you could play through every Final Fantasy game in order of their release, and that would give you a greater sense of the evolution of the gameplay and the series as a whole. However, most people reading this (and me) are probably more modern gamers – and as such, our perspective is biased on what feels “exciting” and “remarkable”. The first Final Fantasy game could feel boring and tedious to you now, but if you put it in the context of when it was made, this was entertainment for hours on end. This is basically like watching one of those silent adventure films starring Douglas Fairbanks. Yeah, you’ve been spoiled with more amazing stuff like The Matrix and Star Wars, but golly – this stuff blew people’s minds back in the day.

Direct Sequel? No. However, there have been multiple remakes, which I have already listed above.

[arysthaeniru]

✨ and 💢 for botw!!

✨ what draws you towards your hyperfixation? what is interesting about it?

I’m constantly intrigued by the themes of legacy and growth that happen over and over again in Breath of the Wild? The main storyline is filled with themes of legacy, especially since all the Champions (except Teba, because the Rito are woefully incomplete as a section) are in the shadow of the former, dead Champions, and a lot of their story is coming to meet the weight of the past that has marked itself physically into the landscape? Rising to meet the memories and idolizations of martyrs and dead people. That’s basically one of the main basis of my research project as a PhD student: the weight of memory in people, but especially how it manifests in physical locations.

I also think that Link having amnesia is such a fascinating look at legacy of the self. I often feel overwhelmed by the expectations my past self had for me, and of course, Link’s journey is different. He’s literally forgotten who he was before, but I feel like a different person every year, and living up to the weight of your past failures is both daunting and freeing all at once, and Link is a fabulous little exploration of that? I constantly think about the joyless, stern Link we see in the flashbacks, and the stupidity of being the player and trying to find joy in the present? It’s a silliness that comes from knowing failure, and that’s fascinating to me.

It’s also just such a soothing, calming world to explore and filled with little secrets and funny NPCs. The music design is wonderful and minimal, and the scenery is consistently pretty. There’s something very beautiful about the world after the apocalypse in Breath of the Wild, and finding life in the ruins and making something new, just because you must, is such a theme that’s near-and-dear to my heart (which is why Diurnal Ending constantly makes me weep.) 

I find the korok secrets some of the most delightful little motivational goals? In terms of game design, the shots of dopamine come frequently and are usually quite fun to wrangle into place, but unlike other collect-a-thon games, the korok seeds are actually useful for later gameplay. It’s a masterpiece not only of world design in general, but game design too. 

The awe of coming across a dragon for the first time is like nothing else. The whole thing you do on Mount Lanayru is a genuinely breathtaking sequence.  

💢 what do you NOT like about your hyperfixation? is there something you would want to change about it?

As they always do in Zelda games, the Gerudo have...weird, almost racist undertones to everything about them. Their outfits are stupid and overly horny, and the whole sequence of Link finding a disguise to get in is dealing with some BAD trans stuff. The fandom has done their best to make Link chill or make it better by making Link non-binary or trans! But it doesn’t change the fact that the person he gets his Gerudo clothing from,Vilia, is a bad trans stereotype. I also think about the fact that every Gerudo you meet who’s looking for love is actually deeply unsatisfied with whoever they find is awful? It’s get that it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s a weird message about settling that’s only applied to the brown women. Even though I LOVE the two main characters we get, Urbosa and Riju, the rest of it is...questionable. 

In terms of bigger structural problems, I think Breath of the Wild’s main plot is....barebones at best? The Rito and the Gorons are not really fleshed out at all. The Rito especially have been shafted, since you end up knowing NOTHING about the current-day champion, Teba, and his problems. You do nothing in the Rito area in the build-up to fighting the Divine Beast, like you do in the other regions. It’s just often very rote and dull when you get to the plot, which is...sad? It means you just want to get the main plot stuff over with, so you can go back to the good gameplay and world design in the rest of it. 

And even when they try very hard with plot, the Zora area is FILLED with boring, stupid dialogue that’s horribly telegraphed? At one point, one of the old Zora that hates you, Muzu, points out that it’s deeply convenient you get back your memories of fish-wife being in love with you when you’re trying to get him to help you with your mission, and I have to say, I 200% agreed with him! My god. None of the Zora section makes sense! They’re very old and stuck in their ways, everybody there hates Hylians, they can breathe in the water and in the air, because they’re amphibians. Why the FUCK do the Zora care about the dam breaking and the Divine Beast flooding Necluda? The only one that should care should be Sidon, and it should be you and Sidon doing your own thing against the express wishes of the rest of the Zora council. That would contribute to the theme of growing to meet the legacy of the Past Champions: doing the right thing even when it’s hard. This is not a difficult thing to realize, but it’s very clear that the development team did not care very much about the plot of this game. 

I think the memories are repetitive and kind of dull too, and if you think about it too long, make absolutely no sense. How the hell did Zelda take a picture of Kara Kara Bazaar that’s completely empty, it seems to be a bustling world in her time too? When did she have time to take a beautifully serene picture of the Bottomless Swamp as they were running for their lives from the Calamity? Why does Impa seem to pretend that these were carefully selected memories that Zelda left for you, instead of random pictures left over from before that might jog your memories? If Zelda knew you were going to have amnesia after your time of slumber, why the hell is everybody else surprised by it???? 

This game is not perfect by any means. But what it does right, it does INCREDIBLY right, so I just seethe about these things I hate, and try to write fic to fix it xD 

[feelieking]

Series 12

A somewhat belated post - I started typing up my thoughts about Series 12 shortly after it ended, but only found the energy for a sustained bout of typing while taking a few days off work.

Season 12 of Doctor Who is now over. Readers may recall that I felt season 11 was pretty lacklustre. Season 12… has been an improvement, but a lot of the issues remain. The cast are great – Jodie Whittaker is fantastic, and I honestly cannot understand the vocal subset of fandom who insist on saying she can’t act – but there are too many regular characters, which means that none of the three companions get a decent share of screen time or character development. There’s been an improvement in the number and development of the guest characters, but many episodes have really suffered from the problem of scooping up all of the NPCs into the TARDIS and carting them along. As a consequence, a lot of episodes really struggle to cultivate a sense of location, and having guest characters in the TARDIS becomes run of the mill.

It’s also very interesting to me that, after making his first series almost entirely continuity-free, Chibnall’s second series is probably the most fanwanky we’ve ever had. Spoilers for all of the episodes follow.

Spyfall is a strong start to the series. The aliens were far scarier and better realised than anything for the preceding series, and part one benefitted from a strong sense of style and place, a slow build of the plot, and a genuinely shocking and tense cliffhanger. Part two floundered a bit by comparison, choosing to rattle through both Ada Lovelace in Victorian England and Noor Inayat Khan in Nazi-occupied Paris. Either one of these pairs of characters and settings would have been strong enough for an episode on their own; smooshed together, neither was really given a chance to develop. Still, the Doctor/Master scene on the Eifel Tower was very well done.

Orphan 55 seemed to go down very badly with my friends when it was transmitted, but I rather enjoyed it. It was a very trad base under siege story with a proper cast of supporting characters and some genuinely tense and scary moments. The “twist” of it being Earth all along, however, fell very flat – it’s a bit of a cliché by now, added nothing to the story, and has been done better before by earlier Doctor Who stories! The Doctor’s moralising speech at the end also made me grind my teeth – as others have said, it’s not that I disagree at all with the moral, but that we were bright enough to work it out from the episode without needing to have the Doctor break the forth wall to address the audience directly. I also question the logic of the Doctor taking the entire supporting cast, including a frail elderly lady and a young child, with her on her monster hunt, rather than leaving a group behind at the more defensible holiday camp.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror was really good, and felt like the most Doctor Who-y story of the Chibnall era by some margin. Great cast, great monsters (despite the usually reliable Anjili Mohnidra hamming it up as the scorpion queen) – all three of the main human guest cast were proper, fleshed-out characters – and a strong sense of location. The thing that struck me afterwards, however, as I rhapsodised about how much I’d enjoyed this episode and that it was the best new Doctor Who story in ages, was that in a Davies or Maffatt season, this would have been a good middle of the road episode, and not the showstopper it was here.

What can I say about Fugitive of the Judoon? The whole episode is one big slight of hand, which is pulled off very well – but as a consequence, it’s difficult to think on the plot as a whole. The Judoon are back as a returning monster at least in part to distract from the surprise reappearance of Captain Jack, which I suspect in turn was at least in part to keep the audience’s mind off of who Ruth could really be. The pay-off to that, when it comes, is a satisfyingly shocking moment that raises a lot of intriguing questions.

Praxaeus, sadly, was a bit of a damp squib. It’s one of the worst offenders for the Chibnall-era trope of gathering all of the guest cast in the TARDIS and setting big chunks of the story there. The idea of the Doctor and her companions investigating a global crisis at different locations around the world had a lot of promise, but because the Doctor was able to just swoop in and scoop them all up in the TARDIS whenever needed, that idea never really came to fruition. Because the guest cast were all thrown onto the ship, a lot of them never really got the chance to shine – and it’s never explained exactly how captured astronaut Adam is able to text his location to grumpy policeman husband Jake – though at least kudos goes to the episode for a really down to earth portrayal of a same-sex marriage.

Can You Hear Me? was hugely frustrating – this could have been a gem of an episode, but as it is it sinks like a lead balloon. The problem is that the writer has thrown far too many ideas at the story in the hope of seeing what sticks. A mental hospital in Fourteenth Century Aleppo being terrorised by monsters from the nightmares of one of the patients would have been a really good episode. The Doctor’s companions and their friends being trapped in their dreams in modern day Sheffield would have been a really good episode. A ship full of experiments orbiting two colliding planets would have been a reasonably decent episode – but by trying to do all three at once in fifty minutes, nothing is given any chance to breathe and develop. Again, supporting characters are just thrown into the TARDIS and moved from arbitrary location to arbitrary location, and then the monster is defeated by… the dialogue saying that they’ve been defeated. It’s such a shame, because there’s so much good stuff here – Ian Gelder is superb as Zellin, and could have easily been a great recurring villain if they’d chosen to make more than one episode from these ideas – but sadly the whole thing is so much less than the sum of its parts.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati, by contrast, is superb – one location, really well developed and realised, a strong, well-drawn cast of supporting characters (and some very handsome gentlemen as well!) and no TARDIS scenes. The early parts of the episode are fantastically tense and creepy, with the horror of being trapped in a moebius strip of a house very effectively portrayed. Like any haunted house story, it loses some interest once the reason for the “haunting” is revealed, but the second half remains strong not least because Ashad the emotional Cyberman is superbly well portrayed.

Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children is very much a game of two halves. Part one is pretty effective – Ashad continues to be an excellent villain (his big virtual confrontation with the Doctor is superb) and the grim reality of the Cyber Wars is very well conveyed. Showing the potency of the Cybermen by having them effortlessly destroy all the Doctor’s clever gadgets and scatter her companions is an excellent touch, and Graham and Yaz’s fight for survival is compelling and convincing. The wheels very much come off in part two, however – I like Dhawan’s Master (more on him later) but the fact that he perfunctorily kills off the far more interesting Ashad is a mistake, as is halting the episode for what feels like half an hour of tedious Gallifreyan story time. The “Cyber Lords” are a bad fan fic idea, look derisible and do absolutely nothing before they’re dispatched. The actual Cybermen, terrifying in small numbers last week, are unable to hit a single human with dyspraxia running away from them in their dozens this week. The big questions of the episode – why is there a magic portal to Gallifrey? How did the Master destroy the entirety of his own race singlehandedly? – are never even asked, let alone answered. And as for the awful deus ex “death particle” suddenly jumping out of the plot with no set-up – eugh! Pretty much the only thing this episode has going for it are the excellent Graham/Yaz scenes.

The two things this series is likely to be remembered for are the new incarnation of the Master, and the revelations about the Doctor. Sacha Dhawan is great in the role – his Master feels genuinely unhinged and properly dangerous, with a real predatory cunning – but given how perfect Missy’s arc and final scenes were, I’m genuinely a little disappointed to see the character back, especially in full-on villain mode. However, I will concede that jealousy over discovering that the Doctor really is “special” is a very in-character motivation for him to renew his vendetta.

As for the shock revelations – the idea of a secret incarnation that the Doctor herself does not remember is intriguing, and Jo Martin really makes the role her own. There was a lot of speculation at the time that she’s the “Season 6B” Doctor, between Troughton and Pertwee, and that’s still the idea that I like, and seems ripe for development. If she’s pre-Hartnell, then why does she call herself the Doctor, and why is her TARDIS a police box?

The whole “Timeless Child” nonsense however – why on Earth did anyone think that a protracted subplot to explain away a moment from the Brain of Morbius (transmitted forty-four years previously!) was a good idea? How alienating must this have been for casual viewers? As an idea, I think it stinks, not out of a slavish insistence that the Hartnell incarnation must have been the first but for the fact that the Doctor only really became the Doctor – the hero – as the series was starting. Chibnall tries to have his cake and eat it by erasing the Doctor’s knowledge of her previous lives, and reminding us on screen that the interesting thing about the Doctor is not her origins, but who she is now – but as that’s the case, why are we supposed to care about her Timeless Child incarnations? What was the point of it? Even if you subscribe to the idea that “who is the Doctor?” is an interesting and worthwhile mystery, the Timeless Child isn’t a mystery answered, just a mystery deferred. If I had to sum up my feelings in one word, it would be “meh.”

[liminal-storage]

Looking for Connections- Eva Ballard

A former member of a traveling troupe known as Monarch, Eva is the charming, fiery-haired half-Elezen proprietress of the Laughing Magpie tavern. Trained in the arts of distillation and perfumery by her parents, Eva and her establishment are known in darker circles for being more than they appear. Located on the very edge of the Black Shroud, the Laughing Magpie serves as neutral ground where people from all walks of life can meet. As to Eva herself, she’s usually one to look the other way, but might be willing to trade information for the right price. 

RP Hooks: 

Information Broker- While the tavern might be a neutral ground and Eva doesn’t go out of her way to rat anybody out for their activities, she hears and sees everything within the walls of her establishment. Prone to developing fixations on certain ideals, concepts, or particularly unique situations, odds are she’s willing to sell you good information if her interest is piqued. 

Former Performer- Maybe your character knew Eva or heard of her during her days in Monarch. Maybe your character is a particularly harsh critic of the group. Maybe your character had a brief stint in the troupe themselves! Feel free to pursue any threads stemming from this that you like, just discuss it with me ooc first. 

Patchouli and Poison- Nowadays, Eva is perhaps best known for the cocktails on the laughing Magpie’s ‘secret’ menu. Fine distilled spirits mingle with minuscule amounts of poison to give patrons an experience “like a drug without the messy stuff.” If her mother knew what she’d used her knowledge of perfumery for, it’s likely she’d be rolling in her grave. She’ll make actual perfumes time to time, but by and large she relies upon the skills she was taught to distill ingredients for her poisons.

I’m looking for:

Crime, intrigue, destructive hedonism, the works! While currently teetering on the edge of the moral and immoral, Eva isn’t what I’d call a good person. Tending to mind her own business for the most part, she’d be easily swayed to someone else’s cause with the right amount of intrigue. Charming, but bitter, Eva seems to feel that the world owes her a favor. She certainly lends herself well to general rp, but she’s unlikely to be happy to help you say, save someone out of the kindness of her heart. 

Characters who may be fellow perfumers or distillers. For all her wicked ways, Eva has the pride of an artisan and is happy to support other “craftsmen,” even if their goods don’t fit into normal categories. Chemists, painters, and curators of the indulgent have all come under her lens of admiration. 

Rivals, lovers, antagonists, partners in crime, collaborators, you name it. I’ve been slowly developing Eva over time and I’m looking to really build her some solid contacts now that I’m feeling confident enough to regularly play her. 

I’m NOT looking for:

Eva to play the villainous centerpiece in your heroic tale, or to be reduced to an NPC in another’s plot. RP is meant to be collaborative, not people trying to outshine others or use them as stage props. 

Mindless erp unfitting of the character or her story. While she’s flirtatious and might be willing to entertain the idea of a one night stand, she’d prefer to know her partners a bit first.

Assumptions that I support and endorse the actions of my character, and subsequent mistreatment of me as her player. That said, if something happens that you aren’t comfortable with, please say something so that I can avoid that in the future or we can discuss a solution. I can’t read minds, so I hope for a decent level of communication with rp partners. 

I neglected to mention it on my other looking for connections post for Okuni, but I won’t tolerate metagaming. Handwaving small details is one thing, but no, you’re not going to know all there is to know. 

I also won’t play out any sort of character death. Injury and major consequences are for me to decide upon or for us to discuss. Really, just talk to me. Communication is key. 

OOC Stuff:

Due to the nature of the character, I ask that you and your own character be 18+

I live in the Mountain time zone and am typically on in the evenings after about 6pm my time. I’m available on most weekends. 

I prefer to at least start rp in game, but I’m okay with Discord if for whatever reason our schedules don’t mesh or we need to continue a scene beyond allotted time in game. 

How to contact: Either here on tumblr, in game on my main if I’m not on Eva (Okuni Tomioka), or via discord (#Ritz6652). 

My home server is Mateus but I’m more than happy to world visit for rp.

[dysphoric-affect]

The Tricky Art Of Character Investment VS Gameplay Benefits

          I’ve been a fan of Gears of War since the series inception and as with any such person, am naturally looking forward to the fifth installment’s release two weeks from now. Among the various new elements to look forward to in the newest title, one that sticks out to me is the newfound implementation of Ultimate abilities for each character you can play as in the games waves survival-based Horde mode. Ultimate abilities are certainly not an innovation in a broader sense within video games, just specifically for the series. However, beneath the surface of what is superficially a cool-looking and tactically satisfying thing to do in Gears 5 is something rather profound.

          This comes from the fact that characters you can play as in Gears of War aren’t passive entities whose beauty is literally skin deep, with their avatars being interesting and awesome to look at, but with nothing further to draw you to them beyond that. These are characters who express themselves and often, with very distinct personalities and accordingly unique tones and pitches of voice, levels of bravado and reserve and various quirks in their word choice in how they present themselves, both generally and in reaction to specific situations. This has already presented players with a more difficult choice in which character to play as in the first instance in prior entries in the series, as the characters who look the most awesome or appeal on whatever other level visually might not necessarily be that interesting to a given player personality-wise, while others who are badass or hilarious might not be the most badass or hilarious in their visual representation. This puts players in the quandary of deciding, essentially, between the quality of writing and acting on one hand and the quality of art design on another. Where the ostensible goal for most gamers in any game with different choices for appearance is to acquire and use the most awesome appearance visually, this actually presents a fairly dynamic - and at times rather difficult - choice to contend with.

          That is an interesting dilemma of its own accord, but what is interesting with the Ultimate abilities in Gears 5 is that it presents a further layer of complexity into character choice, given the specific nuance that each of the various Ultimate abilities is unique to one of the various characters. If you like a given Ultimate ability, you’ll only ever enjoy it while playing as the one character that has it. This presents an updated and even more difficult quandary than before, because now even if one settles on the various characters they like best in all forms of their presentation, they may not prefer the specific advantages those characters possess with their Ultimates over others. Greater thought, inevitably, will now have to go into character choice than before where not enough overlap of satisfaction is found between both the presentation and gameplay of the characters. Do you go with the character or two that has your favorite Ultimates and learn to love them more personality and appearance-wise in the process? Or do you stick with which characters endear themselves most to you in their personality and just learn how to make the best use of what they bring to the table with their Ultimate? Or does the choice lie somewhere in between?

          I say this is a profound thing because when all these aspects are done well in general in video games, players can be made to have difficulty in choosing because of adoration for a character’s personality, or more directly the writing for that character. At the end of the day, it is a video game you are playing. Those two words matter a great deal in what should seem to be important to the experience. With the “video” part comes that natural desire for the most visually compelling thing, while with the fact it is a “game,” plenty of precedence being given to what the characters can actually do as part of the gameplay experience is going to be given. There is something I think that is inherently intriguing when the narrative aspects of a game rise up and are strong enough standing next to the other aspects of the game that you, whether you intend to or not, give them as much consideration as appearance or gameplay in what you choose to proceed focusing on.

          Narrative is a deceptively complex element that can be present within games, and while the reflexive tendency can be to associate the term with the events and themes of a story mode, the characters you play as also represent a facet of the overall gem that is the whole of the narrative elements in a game and characters aren’t necessarily bound to inclusion exclusively in the context of a story being told, given the unique nature of video games and their alternate modes allowing possibilities for representation elsewhere. What is occurring with Gears 5 present a very current and salient example of this. Even where it is exclusive to a story-mode in theory with other games, though, this concept of pitting preference for the narratives of characters over gameplay benefits tied to characters is a dynamic one worth greater and more extensive exploration. in the future.

          We’ve seen various forms of this before. BioShock for me stood out by forcing the choice between characters in the narrative and more immediate gameplay benefits, though the choice in these characters’ case - the Little Sisters - didn’t have so much to do with an affection born from investing in the characters’ personalities as it did with the sense of moral content to what either choice represented. That kind of depth was powerful in its own way, and I would certainly invite more such choice based on morality elements in the narrative too, but I would also enjoy seeing more choice worked into gaming experiences that revolve around characters who I’ve invested in as fleshed out personalities against the benefits I could derive from each.

          Speaking of BioShock, the director for that game narratively, Ken Levine, touched on this very subject in a talk he did discussing the macro-concepts him and his team are wanting to explore in their next project, something I’ve mentioned before as it happens. More specifically, he presented the idea that in a game with multiple narrative-driven NPC’s who also yield gameplay benefits and where the player has to make choices between who to favor given the mutually exclusive nature of the benefits derived from doing so, the possibility would exist of running into the very dilemma we’ve been considering: maybe the gameplay rewards from certain characters would be more generally desirable or at least more specifically desirable given the player’s goals or the class of character they are playing, yet with strong enough narrative presentation the player doesn’t find it easy to dismiss other characters who they simply like talking to and being around more, characters they end up actually choosing instead. It will be exciting to see what form exploring that takes for their team, but in general I’d be excited to see others take on the challenge of doing their own take on this concept.

          The question that remains, however, is how to balance these two concepts against each other. That is, creating a situation in gaming where the player has to miss out on either compelling characters or satisfying gameplay elements without feeling frustrated at the game - and developers by extension - for forcing them to do so. The answer, at the risk of grossly oversimplifying the matter, is simply to do the job on both these aspects of a given game well. If the characters are engaging but the gameplay perks tied to them are negligible, uninteresting or poorly executed, then narrative will always win the day. If the gameplay perks are dynamic, fascinating and well executed but the characters are bland, annoying or feel inauthentic, then gameplay will always be preferred. If both are done well, though, then the conflict in making a choice between these two elements arises.

          And is this difficulty in what choice players should make a desirable state to put them in? Yes, I believe. Because the only way to resolve this conflict for any given player is to expose themselves to more of the game, to play more different characters and get the sense of them narratively, as well as play around at length with those gameplay benefits and after reflection on both, come to a conclusion. What on the surface conceptually could seem to potentially be a frustrating conundrum can in practice incentivize greater exploration of the whole breadth of a game’s content and deepen the replay value, all of which are things gamers enjoy. Even if the fact that this is what is occurring isn’t consciously identified as such, the sense of satisfaction derived from it will be there nonetheless, and I think can always serve to not only offset any frustration, but actually make such choices a valued part of a game’s experience that features them.

          So while the Ultimates in Gears 5 might be a fun, bombastic but simple thing in one sense, there’s a principle at work with its inclusion which can serve to make games more enjoyable that the larger video game industry will hopefully incorporate more in the other work coming out of it. I should note again that I’m not claiming Gears 5 invented the wheel on this dynamic: other games have featured it or elements of it, such as Overwatch. I’m thinking about the concept in association with Gears simply because the imminent release of Gears with this new feature is giving more contemporary relevance to the subject and bringing it to my mind. To those other games who’ve already pioneered work in regard to this concept, kudos to all of you. Hopefully the collective of all of them and Gears only represent the infancy of what this concept can achieve in the future as more games take notice of the importance narrative elements can have toward creating a more compelling and satisfying video game experience.

[dmsden]

Worldbuilding 5 – Race to the Finish

Hullo, Gentle Readers. Once again, I’m here to continue work on the Beyond the Borderlands campaign for D&D 5E. After looking at the traditional four races in my last article, I want to look in the section about Unusual Races. There are some old favorites in there, as well as some races that’ve become more prevalent in more recent editions. Let’s take a look and find a home for them. Bear in mind that an earlier version of this article was written when 5E was still the playtest for D&D Next, so some of my choices to outline here might seem curious.

Dragonborn have a very different origin story in 5E, if the playtest package is any indication. They are the children of dragons, literally, when the draconic deities did not give their blessing. For people who prefer 4E dragonborn, there’s a mention that, on some worlds, they breed true as a separate race. 

My first instinct is to adopt the 4E model, but then I think about the potential of dragonborn as the children of true dragons. They can resemble their parent dragons, physically…but would they have similar personalities, as well? Imagine the prejudice leveled at someone who was born a red dragonborn or a blue dragonborn but who’s trying to be a good person. Also, I can see this as a great way to introduce a dragon parent NPC as a mentor figure to the group, or as a ruthless manipulator. 

Drow have held a fascination to many players for ages, and the popularity of Drizzt Do’Urden makes it clear there will be a place for dark elves in D&D for a long time. The 5E drow are clearly the same drow we’ve always known. They have a problem with sunlight, most of the elven racial abilities, and a reference to Lolth in their powers. Given all this, I don’t see the point in messing with a proven formula, so I’ll go with a lot of the classic feel of drow. 

Gnomes are divided into two subspecies – Forest Gnomes (who seem to specialize in illusion) and Rock Gnomes (who seem to be tinkers and artificers.) I had a lot of ideas in 4E about gnomes having been servants to the eladrin in the Feywild and then seeking liberation in the Normal World. I want to do something really different. 

I’m thinking that gnomes might be the “hidden people” of this campaign, sort of analogous to the Picts in England. This gives me some interesting ideas around gnomes being very secretive (hence the illusions) but I’m having trouble meshing this with the Rock Gnomes and their technology. Perhaps the Gnomes wandered here from “somewhere else” (such as the Feywild). The ones that settled in the woods befriended the elves and became more like them, while the Rock Gnomes settled near the dwarves and took on more of their qualities. This could certainly explain the disparity between this race’s two sides. 

The latest version of them game gives us Half-Elves and Half-Orcs. These two races have been staples of D&D for many years, both having evolved from their Tolkien roots.  

Half-Elves are intriguing because they have a bonus to Charisma. That suggests that both humans and elves find the average Half-Elf generally more compelling than average members of even their own races. I will conjecture that each race sees in Half-Elves something that they are not – perhaps elves are attracted to the vitality of the young human race, and humans are attracted to the refinement of the ancient elves. This suggests that Half-Elves can still fulfill the role of natural diplomats, especially between their parent races. It also makes them seem different than previous versions, when they are often shunned by elves.

Half-Orcs are incredibly strong and very menacing. Since they’re more likely to be around their human parents and other civilized races when they’re adventurers, this suggests that humans and others find them very scary. While I’ve done some pretty unique takes on Half-Orcs in the past, I’m thinking I might want to take them back to their roots as a rare and frightening outsider among humankind and its allies. I don’t want to go back to Tolkien’s “race created by a wizard” roots, but it’s sort of intriguing to ponder as a possibility. 

The phrase “the Forsaken People” was what inspired one of 4E’s conceptual artists in reference to the Tieflings. I was happy to see that Tieflings would continue as a part of D&D 5E, as they definitely found a place in my heart. I think I want to take things back to that evocative phrase, reimagining the Tieflings as a people on the bad end of a bargain with Devils. Perhaps they bargained for power but were somehow betrayed.  

From this idea, I come up with a tale about a Warlock-King who wanted the legacy of his kingdom to never be forgotten. He made a deal with Asmodeus and turned himself and his people into the ancestors of Tieflings. In honor for what he had done, the Gods turned their backs on him and his people, who embraced their new Infernal nature. Although the kingdom is all but forgotten (perhaps destroyed by a cataclysm, borrowing a bit from Dragonlance?), its legacy remains stamped on the features of its descendants. 

Glancing at some of the Unearthed Arcana articles, one race jumps out at me as something I want to include. I adore the Eberron setting, and one of the things that setting gave us that stands as an iconic and exciting example of how you can really do something different in D&D is the Warforged, a race that I really love.

I’m thinking that the Warforged were made to protect the Civilized Lands against the dangers of the Borderlands. They represent a combination of the arts of the various civilized folk: dwarven metalwork, gnomish tinkering, elven magic, human imagination, and more. Perhaps at first, they were more primitive, but they’ve been perfected and improved, and then, slowly, they became alive. I also think it might be interesting to have this development have occurred within very recent time – perhaps it’s only just happening now. 

I think this offers and exciting roleplaying possibility, as some of the first Warforged to be self-aware. People might react nervously to them. Are they malfunctioning? Possessed? There’s a lot of meat in this possibility, and I know I’d respond positively as a player.  

All of these races offer some intriguing possibilities, and they’re beginning to suggest elements of my setting’s history. Next time, I’ll begin to look at the classes and how they might offer their own insights.

[dawnthecreator]

An Open Letter to Beemoov

This is my letter to Beemoov. It’s very long, but I just couldn’t stop thinking of things to add to it and it took me three days to compose it.

Dear Beemoov,

Before I start, I want to thank you for all of your hard work and everything you and your game have done for us. Without you, we wouldn't have My Candy Love and all of the wonderful things that came with it. I know that in this letter I'm going to come across very angry, but it's only because I care so much about it.

I am a loyal fan who has been playing since my registration back in 2012. I found your game back when I was just discovering what otome games were and My Candy Love was the most intriguing. With it's in-depth customization of Candy and the illustrations she appeared in along with a steady build up to relationships with the NPCs, I was hooked almost immediately. You set the bar very high for what an otome game should offer.

I loved the characters, even if I struggled to get most of them to love me back in the beginning. I wanted to get to know them, I wanted to help them with their problems, and I loved seeing my accomplishments reflected in the illustrations.

This game has done a lot for me. It's given me inspiration for new art styles, it's allowed me to meet new people and become part of the fandom, it inspired me to to create blogs dedicated to the different aspects of the game like Fandom Confessions, Outfit Guides, and Illustration Guides. Your game got me through some tougher times as well. When the real world was getting to be too much for me, I could go to this game and find an escape.

So much time and money has been invested into this game, not just by me, but countless other players, some who've surely poured more money into this than I have. We were teased that this would be a continuation of the characters and that our relationships would continue on into this new season, but it's not, and we were never given a reason to believe that we would be separated from them, especially after reaching one of the biggest milestones possible in a relationship.

The fandom is a mess after ChiNoMiko announced that out of all five boys only Castiel would be returning to the game, and none of her responses to the fans' questions and complaints have been helpful or reassuring – some of them coming off as rude and unprofessional. The fans feel hurt, like you don't actually care about how much this effects us, how much these characters you made mean to us. Your own way of handling the situation hasn't been much better, with dropping only one answer a week, and addressing the insignificant questions over the most important ones until much later when everyone pretty much already knows this information. Your responses to the fandom thus far have been rude and unprofessional as well, and it's not right for you to treat your clients like this.

You want us to trust you, trust that you know what you're doing and that everything will be okay if we wait and see. But the thing is I don't trust you, not anymore, and I'm certainly not alone in feeling that way. You rushed the last several episodes and character arcs, giving us little to no breathing room, you ended the “First Season” with an underwhelming conclusion and jumped right into one of the biggest and worst timeskips we've ever had, and we've been forced to break up with our boyfriends without an option to do so. You got us excited to continue the story in the next season thinking we'd be doing so with our boyfriend and closest friends, but you lied.

I'm a Beta Tester and I have to say that I don't trust you to handle this new season well either. Through just a few lines of dialogue we're told we broke up with our boyfriend, which from the player's perspective is coming right off the heels of us finally giving ourselves to the boy we love most, which is such a huge deal even in real life.

The reasons for the break up are ridiculous as well, saying that it was the distance that ultimately made them end it, even though in this day and age, technology has done wonders to bring people closer together from all parts of the globe and long distance relationships are not only possible, they're becoming increasingly common. Not to mention the personalities you made for these characters and the dynamic of the relationships being so strong that Candy and her boy would've done whatever it took to stay in touch, no matter how difficult.

With more dialogue, we're even told what's happened to the boys, and I have to say it sounds like you've butchered Nathaniel's character. Whatever character development he had in the last game seems to have been thrown out the window for a more self-destructive character for whatever reason, to the point that none of his old friends like him anymore.

As for Kentin, as it was pointed out to me by one of his fans, you already had him and Candy break up once before near the end of the game and now you're forcing them to break up again. I can't understand why you'd make such a cruel decision like that to make Kentin fans suffer more.

The most heartbreaking of them all is Lysander, though. On his route, Candy said that she would be there for him as his father was dying, but now she's left him even though both of his parents have passed away and he had to move onto their farm. He would need Candy more than ever, but because she left him in his time of need, that makes her such a horrible person.

It's been hinted at by Chino that at the very least, the boys will be mentioned, but no cameos are currently planned. But the game hints that we'll see them again in passing. But I don't want to see them in passing, I wanted them to still be with us and go to college with us. Looking back at all the illustrations I've gathered over the past six years, remembering all the tender moments my Candy shared with her boyfriend, I have to wonder what it was all for if we're just going to break up with them and only hear about them from our friends? What was it all for if you're just going to make it all null and void in the second season? Why not just make a new game entirely?

It may sound stupid, but I've cried over this. Many of my friends have been crying and still are with each new bit of information we receive. We've been playing this game for so long, and now it feels like you're tossing your old customers aside for new ones that haven't even discovered your game yet. I can't even begin to understand how that's a good business move. The fandom is in flames, the “silent players” are actually coming out to voice how much they dislike these decisions. In all of the six years I've been playing this game, I've never seen this fandom overwhelmingly reject something you've done with this game. Even the complaining about Nathaniel's awful bird shirt doesn't compare. And it feels like you're ignoring us. It feels like you're ignoring the complaints, the fans who say they're leaving, and the mods that are resigning. I have been loyal for six years, even when you stumbled with your stories, I still played the game. But now I have no reason to continue into this second season if you're just going to take away everything I worked hard for.

Also, please for the love of God, change the AP system back to how it was. It was fine the way it was. Not perfect, but far better than what you've done to it. It's bad enough that dialogue costs AP now, but the cap on AP has made it so much worse. The Beta episode alone was just under the 1000AP cap and it's not even finished. It's going to be even more difficult to play just the current episodes, it would be even more difficult to try and do any replays. It'll discourage people from doing replays, and it'll discourage loyal players from logging in everyday to get their free AP and money. Players are going to lose momentum and interest very fast and it could make them quit altogether just out of frustration with having to stop so frequently in episodes. Please, just change it back, or if you're feeling generous, change it back, but leave the new daily 20AP.

The reason for this new AP system is transparent, it's to get more money. Maybe you weren't making a lot before, but this isn't the way to do it. You should invest in your merchandise, put faith in it. Most of My Candy Love products are only available in France, with a whole manga series that hasn't been translated in more than two other languages as far as I'm aware. It's so difficult for fans outside of Europe to get a hold of the merchandise. Try investing in easy-to-make items, like calendars and posters of varying sizes. I know so many people, including myself, would eat that up like candy, paying real money to get our hands on it, but you'd have to make it available everywhere, not just a few countries. I've seen people shell out $20 or more for posters, there's no reason you couldn't jump on that opportunity.

I don't want you to fail or be shut down. I want you to consider harder that the decisions you're making are the wrong ones, probably the worst ones you've ever made and need to be changed. We want you to succeed, but we also want you to deliver the best possible product My Candy Love can be, and this isn't it. Thank you for being so patient to read my lengthy letter all the way to the end.

Sincerely,

-  A Long Time Player of My Candy Love

[thedeadflag]

Hey, I'm creating a campaign for a couple of friends, and it's my first time DMing, so I was wondering if you have any tips for me :))) P.S.: I loved this chapter of your fic so much, I really missed your writing :)))

Yay! That sounds like a lot of fun, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun :D

I’ll leave some links below to some great videos/articles with advice (because there’s honestly so much to say that I could go on for ages and ages), but for now…

* Two-Way Communication is Critical

This is arguably the second most important piece of advice, and one that ties into almost every piece of advice I could theoretically offer. Pen and paper roleplaying (whether there’s actual paper or not, of course) is a form of interactive storytelling with player created narratives. It’s not a top-down hierarchy where a DM designs and plots out everything, and the players follow along all wide-eyed and obedient with no agency of their own.

You are all playing a game together, even if your roles are different. Collaboration is key. That requires communication both ways.

This is especially vital when creating a new campaign, regardless of scale, because it’s immensely important to start with the right foundation. What kind of game do your players want to play? What are they looking for in the game, what do they want to get out of it, what interests them about roleplaying, what are their expectations? 

From there, you can establish a basic idea of what sort of campaign to set up, what dynamic(s) to focus on, etc., because if you’re designing a campaign purely around what you want, your players might not be able to get on the same page. At the same time, you need to make sure you’ve got what you want in there as well, because you need to have fun as well.

After that, it’s best to approach players about character creation. One major newbie GM/DM mistake is letting players completely create characters in a vacuum. This is less than ideal because without a setting/context, (A) players tend to shift focus and invest in what they can get details on, generally the mechanical aspects of the game. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but you don’t want players branching off in wildly different directions and investing in those possibilities heavily mechanically to where you can’t really find a workable middle ground. Think a character who is out to be the biggest min-max munchkin wizard or cleric, contrasting with a character who is designed to be useless in combat but excellent socially and in skills, contrasting with a character who is built virtually entirely around being one cog in a phalanx wall who is also a vampire that cannot travel during daylight, contrasting with a character who has a lot of skills and feats invested in their profession as a farmer.  Lots of directions there, and not necessarily one way to get everyone what they want.

So it’s best to head them off at the pass, introduce them to the working concept of the campaigns as you’re developing it. Brainstorm collectively as a group what kind of place you all would like to have in that world, what kind of adventure seems like it could be fun, and from there, come up with an opening scene for the players to build their characters into. Again, collaboration is great, bounce ideas back and forth with them, have them bounce ideas off each other, find a way for character creation to mesh with all of your goals as a group and then you won’t get caught so easily in the traps of players getting invested in being the single star in their own show rather than an ensemble cast. Get them excited to buy into the group dynamic and the adventure ahead of them.

And when you get into having sessions, talk to players between breaks, after sessions, keep tabs. Ask them what they liked and didn’t, ask them how they felt about the session, what’s exciting to them. Understand that character behaviour and decisions are manifestations of play intrigue and excitement, so use that line of communication to your advantage

Use that feedback and shape your campaign to it. One example of my own I sometimes bring up was a World of Darkness campaign I ran set in the late 1800s. My best friend grew heavily suspicious of an NPC in town that honestly was pretty unimportant and largely a placeholder. After two and a half sessions of him keying in on the NPC and his character investigating him and all sorts of sneaky shenanigans, I decided to flesh the NPC out and work him into the narrative more. I didn’t make him the big bad villain my best friend predicted he was, but I made him worthy of my best friend’s suspicions and paranoia if with a twist or two my best friend didn’t expect.  While we never got to fully get through that narrative arc due to schedules conflicting too much to keep on with that campaign, it was an enjoyable narrative turn that rewarded his efforts in-character and his excitement outside of character.

If you have a player that’s excited and invested, play on that. Make the most of that. There’s nothing better as a DM than winding down a session and players spending the next while geeking out about how much fun they’re having and where they think things are heading. An open ear and open lines of communication are more more important than any notion of sticking to a set plan.

Related video (x)

* Do Your Research, But Don’t Buy In Too hard

Not much to say here. Research what you need, but don’t over-prepare. THis is the DM’s version of “Kill your darlings” more or less, because you’re going to have to toss away cool ideas that your players just aren’t biting on. That’s okay. Don’t spend tens of hours writing all this intricate backstory for items, or NPCs, because chances are it’s not going to be as great for the players as it was for you during brainstorming that. Give yourself the tools to create your world, get the basics, have a key pieces that can be malleable and dynamic in their ability to adjust to player actions/decisions, let your player’s characters be the center of your story, and build your world around them as they go. I mean, fi you want to go all out on worldbuilding and lore, then go for it, but just understand that all fo that needs to be supplementary to the campaign. It’s used to set the stage, not steer the ship, that’s the job for the characters

It’s the same for creating characters. Have a backstory, but don’t have 6 pages of backstory. It’s not necessary, it can hamper the ability for their character to grow and experience meaningful development/experiences in your campaign, and that can hinder the group dynamic and the immersion of the group and individual player into the game.

One note-taking bit that some DMs do is create session recaps, or something similar (see here for example/breakdown, maybe watch the full video for some great advice at encouraging roleplaying and engagement, and the importance of notetaking). In one of my old ones, I photoshopped an old newspaper with a variety of stories, some involving their escapades, some involving clues about important NPCs, some providing hooks for upcoming possible narrative plots. That worked well in the campaign I ran around a single city area, but that sort of thing can help increase excitement and indulge your urges for creation without railroading players. Sometimes I’ll start a session asking players to recap collectively what they’ve done recently before providing my recap from the perspective of the world they impacted. That can help with investment, getting them to see how their characters are perceived, the impact and consequences of their decisions, etc. The latter of which is something I write up directly after each session while things are fresh in my mind. All the major involved/affected NPCs have a perspective developed on what happened, and I use that and player commentary/character behaviour to help guide the campaign forward. Cause and effect is a simple and helpful way to think about ongoing conflict in campaigns.

And a recap can help with bookkeeping, so players aren’t constantly interrupting asking if they received X item last session, who X NPC is, etc.

In which case note-taking is important (x)(x). Having a strong platform for notetaking is important too if you’re going digital. Google Docs, Scrivener, notebook.ai, liquid story binder, etc. There’s a boatload of great tools out there, so find one that works well for you whether in-session or post/pre-session

Related video on research: (x at 6:48, but the whole video is excellent)

and the most important advice of all

Have Fun

Seriously. Pen and Paper roleplaying is meant to be fun. If you’re not having fun, change things up in the direction of what IS fun, screwing the consequences and previously well crafted plans. 

As said here, Fun > Story > Rules. 

Past that, getting your feet wet in one-shots is probably a good way to understand how to do things and give yourself and your players a trial run before kicking off a larger campaign. That way, you can work out some kinks, develop chemistry and learn to read the players, get comfortable with improv, etc.

Those are some basics to really work on accepting and exhibiting, and it will take time so be patient with yourself and your players. 

Also, check these videos for some help because they are very good and informative, and provide a lot of A+ quality information on how to run a great campaign and get started

I know that’s a lot of videos, but they all have value. Some address the same things as other videos, but sometimes slightly different perspectives on the same points can help really fill out an understanding of certain topics, issues, concepts, etc. And a lot of those videos linked have other videos on their channels that are really informative and useful, too

Anywho, feel free to hit me up with questions if you’re struggling with anything, I’d be happy to help however I can!

[faebelina]

Why I Like and Accept the Void Elves

So I’ve taken some time lately to look at some of the positive things about seemingly negative parts of BfA but each time I’ve been on the negative side looking at the bright side. Today I’m going to flip that and show you guys some reasons why I’m so excited about one of the allied races when there’s so much negativity toward them from players of both factions. Let’s go! :D

1. The Factions Are So Much More Alike Than They Seem

Gonna start with my weakest point as usual! You guys are probably tired of me saying this by now, but one of my favorite parts of BfA is how it’s showing us that the citizens of Azeroth are so much more alike than they think. The void elves were kicked out long before Alleria visited Silvermoon-and the subsequent incident. It’s very interesting to me, and shocking to me, that Lor’themar would have such a specific problem with the void, when he still allows shadow priests in his city as well as wielders of fel magic. Especially after the Kael’thas and Kil’jaeden thing with the Sunwell. One of the things I like most about the Sin’dorei is their open-mindedness and ability to see things for what they could be, and in this one case, they couldn’t. One of their defining cultural aspects is their history of being outcasts for wanting to continue to study and practice magic because they saw the good in it. And yet here they are doing exactly what Malfurion did. While a little part of my heart was sad at that because I love that about them, this was actually really refreshing. Both night elves and blood elves have a long way to go to be more understanding, and it reminds me that they’re all more similar than they’d like to admit. (Which is a good thing!)

“We no longer fear exile for the pursuit of knowledge.” --Silvermoon Scholar, Telogrus Rift

2. Blizzard Made Them Just Because They’re Cool

This is one of the biggest arguments against them I’ve seen, but it’s actually one of my favorite parts about them! I don’t want to be confined by things that occurred in Warcraft I, II, and III forever! I want to see what the developers make that they’re passionate about, even if it’s new and strange at first. The void elves bring with them not only one of my new favorite transmog sets in their heritage armor, but also a fantastic mount and a wicked hub. Seriously, go spend some time in Telogrus Rift. The music and the atmosphere are so calming and enjoyable and bathed in gorgeous colors! These guys are undeniably cool, and I thank Blizzard for that. 

3. They Have No Established Lore

Another negative aspect people claim that I see as a positive. This is the first time in the history of the game we’re getting to see the birth of a brand new playable race. Pandaren were similar in that not much was known about them, but they were still there in the lore in part. And that’s exciting to me! It adds to their mystery. Their story is yet to be written. A vast cosmos of possibilities lies before them and they aren’t bound into having to fit in with any past narrative or racial societal structures. They’re truly NEW and can make their own rules.

“A path long denied to us is open at last.” --High Elf Wayfarer, Telogrus Rift

4. They Have Connections With Ethereals

Oh guys, you have no idea how excited I am at the possibilities of this! Ditch the fact that I hope Ethereals become playable one day, I’m just happy that this might mean we get to see more Ethereal npcs and stories! And Locus-Walker, to me, is one of the most intriguing new characters in Legion to me. I can’t wait to see if his story continues. 

“It is all about perspective.” --Locus-Walker

5. “Question Everything”

This, this is where it gets good for me. They’re inquisitive, skeptical, and don’t take “because” for an answer. They want to understand the mysteries of the universe, and since we only just learned of some vast game-changers in Legion, I think we’re in need of some folks who are willing to chase those unsolved and hidden things. 

“Power is to be wielded, not feared.” 

“The universe if full of mystery.”

6. “Walk your own path.”

I give you guys my strongest, and admittedly most personal, point. I LOVE their attitude. I love their willingness after seeing such horror and devastation in their lives, before and after becoming Ren’dorei, that they’re still (as a collective) trying to do what they can for both the good of people and the pursuit of knowledge. That they value being oneself and asking the hard questions. Yes, they’re a little silly at times--and emo, and whatever you’d like to call them. They’re weirdos. Gorgeous, outcast, beautiful, brilliant, inquisitive weirdos. They don’t throw things out or close doors simply because they’re potentially scary. And I really connect with that! 

“We fight for a new future.” --Umbral Ranger

[tojohq]

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life Review

The end of Kiryu’s story. As ominous as it sounds, that’s one of the biggest selling points of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. The character that has been leading the series since its very first game finally has an ending chapter to its saga. As an old-time fan, that made me worried and intrigued: How do they plan to end its story? What’s the series going to do moving forward? And, more importantly, how does the game compares to its predecessors, with all the changes made to its engine?

The following review aims to be as spoiler-free as possible, but be advised some spoilers may occur for previous games of the series, like Yakuza 5. Read at your own discretion.

Kiryu Kazuma, the series’ main character, spent several years in prison following the events of Yakuza 5. He is released only to find out that Haruka is in a coma after having been hit by a car. She also had a kid, Haruto, who is at risk of being taken to an orphanage. Kiryu must fight for and maintain custody of Haruto, while investigating the strange mysteries surrounding Haruka’s accident. The stage is set as we initially enter Kamurocho once again, and after he begins his investigation, the trail leads to Onomichi: a peaceful town that is more than it seems.

The new Dragon Engine was introduced in Yakuza 6, bringing several innovations to the series. For starters, the graphics got a revamp compared to the older engine (used from Yakuza 5 to Yakuza Kiwami), being the first game developed exclusively to PS4. The level of detail in textures, character models, and the world itself, is outstanding. A common complaint about Yakuza 6 is the presence of screen tearing on the game, but I must say I wasn’t able to notice said issue. It’s worth noting that the game runs at 30fps, compared to 60fps on Yakuza Zero and Kiwami. New physics were added, both to the open world exploration and the battles. Exploration-wise, Kiryu can now jump over things, climb stairs, and even fall down from certain buildings. The inventory has also changed. You don’t need to send items to a hideout-like place, like in previous games. Your inventory can store as many items as you like; however, you can only hold 5 of each health/heat restore items, or 10 of each food/beverage items.

Things have changed - the year is 2016 and even Kiryu has a smartphone now, which acts as the game’s menu. Through it, you can find your current tasks and missions; access your inventory; check your stats and mail; check your completion list; change settings; and even take photos or selfies.

With the new graphics engine, Kamurocho has been completely reworked. We have new explorable areas, like Millenium Tower’s rooftop gardens and the Kamuro Theater. We can enter and explore several random buildings, making the city more alive than ever before. We have the same number of taxi stops as before, but more destinations as a whole. It’s worth it to note that certain portions of the map have completely changed. Little Asia is a primary example, and some underwent… peculiar changes, like Pink Street, which is in a diagonal orientation now. However, not everything is good news: some explorable areas that have been around since the first game have been removed, like the Champion District and the Kamurocho Hills/West Park area. We also have fewer stores than before (Kotoburi Drugs, for example, is gone).

Onomichi is considerably smaller when compared to Kamurocho, and has less shops, restaurants and entertainment spots. This more accurately reflects the cities’ real-life counterparts. It’s a port town based on a Hiroshima city that goes by the same name. Here you can access the spearfishing and baseball mini-games, as well as the Snackbar Gaudi. Snack bars are, on that note, popular places on Onomichi to hang out, considering the city doesn’t have Cabaret Clubs. You can also find a few restaurantes, a temple, and a pawn shop.

We have quite a few new minigames compared to previous games, like the Live Chat, which - more than just being sexy - manages to be funny and quirky due to Kiryu’s reactions; full ports of SEGA games, like VF5FS and Puyo Puyo; and classic arcade games from the 80s, like Space Harrier.

The RAAP Gym features a series of minigames where the player should press the buttons accordingly to make Kazuma exercise. After a session, the trainer recommends a dish you should eat, which impacts the evaluation you receive. Before you attempt to train again, you need to engage in a random encounter in the city.

There’s also a baseball team management minigame.  You can recruit new members through substories or around the city and train them. On a match, you can manage your players and sometimes control the hitter. It’s a bit confusing, and, honestly, I didn’t manage to find it too enjoyable.

The Gaudi Snack Bar - unlocked during the baseball team quest line - is actually one of the most fun addictions to Yakuza 6, mini-game wise. For it, Kiryu is invited to a small and familiar bar in Onomichi. In the minigame, you speak with NPCs about their problems, enjoy a few drinks with them, and can even play darts or sing Karaoke. All these things help you develop your friendship with them. Each NPC has its own story, and each one of them is enjoyable, and some of them are tough nuts to crack - you will will need to be persistent with these. I’ve gotten so invested in this specific portion of the game I started to think about the NPCs as close friends of Kiryu, and it made me like Onomichi itself a lot more, since some of these characters are shop owners. It’s a simple yet great addition that gave even more life to the city.

The Clan Creator is another minigame first introduced in Yakuza 6. It involves recruiting NPCs to your very own Kiryu Clan and using them in battles - but Kazuma himself doesn’t fight, he just commands them like in a strategy game. You can set your hierarchy: Captain, Lieutenants and so on. There’s also an online mode available, where you can fight other player’s Clans. You can, also, add new members to your Clan by entering codes, made available at several different places and through the Yakuza Experience website.

Another feature is the opportunity to help a Cat Cafe that… happens to have no cats, since its owner doesn’t do well with the animals and they all ran away. It’s up to Kazuma to find new cats in Kamurocho or Onomichi for the shop by giving them food and earning their trust. After you max out the trust gauge of a cat, someone will go get the felline, which you can always see in the Cafe from then on.

The spearfishing minigame is basically a shooter with a fishing theme. You can earn money from the fishes you catch, and there’s a spearfishing level: the higher your level, the higher your HP in this minigame. You have different spears to choose from and three different areas to fish in - both selections make an impact on the mini-game difficulty.

Some classic mini-games have been removed, like bowling, pool, UFO catchers, and gambling. Changes have been made to Karaoke and its song list: they are all new this time around. The batting cage minigame has also changed slightly. The Cabaret Club minigame has also been reworked, with a new card-based system that has made it more enjoyable.

Yakuza 6 has 52 substories in total, from which a considerable amount is tied to mini-games like the Snack Bar Gaudi, the Clan Creator, and the Baseball team. We also have 40 different Trouble Missions. Trouble missions are picked through the app ‘Troublr’ on Kiryu’s phone. They usually require the player to battle against an enemy or a group of enemies who’s causing - as the name implies - trouble in Kamurocho or Onomichi. Trouble Missions usually spawn nearby you, are time restricted, generally under 5 minutes, and are considered failed if you engage in another event  (like a cutscene or a minigame).

The soundtrack and effects of the game are once again memorable. Differently from previous games, there’s no opening theme this time. On the other hand... some of the songs really stand out, like Joon-gi Han’s theme, several battle themes, and some of the karaoke songs (prime examples would be ‘Hands’ and ‘Today is a Diamond’).

With the new graphical engine and physics also came a new combat system. The very core of it - characteristic to the series - remains the same: fight, do combos, use heat actions. However, the changes run deeper. It was reworked from the ground, with completely new combos, actions and Heat Actions. Unfortunately, Heat Actions are one of the biggest flaws of Yakuza 6 in that there are very few of them. That said, the new physics also make the combat both hilarious and satisfying at times: it’s not rare to see objects being destroyed simply by running through them, or enemies being thrown far from you by doing a combo finished with a kick.

In Yakuza 6 - once again - we see a new leveling system. We have five different experience points: Strength, Agility, Spirit, Technique and Charm. Different activities award different amounts and different kinds of experience. For example, you will get more Strength and Agility by fighting than by doing entertainment activities. You can spend experience points on basic stats (Health, Attack, Defense, Evasion, and Heat Gauge), battle skills, heat actions, and other skills.

We also have an in-depth buff system this time, like increased experience gain, increased money drops, increased stats, and so on. They can be achieved through different means (such as temple blessings, statue offerings, food buffs, and machine drinks) and last a set amount of time or battles.

What was played:

A full playthrough of the main story, 40 substories, and all minigames at least once. Around 60 hours of game time.

Pros:

Graphics are gorgeous and detailed

Great OST

The cities seem alive and as detailed as ever

Several new minigame addictions are fun and rewarding

Good story with likeable characters - both on the substories and the main plot

Cons:

Certain classic mini-games were removed

Areas that have been accessible in Kamurocho since the first game, like the Champion District and the West Park/Kamurocho Hills area are off limits now

Combat seems simplified compared to Zero/Kiwami: less combos, less heat actions

No system to craft weapons, or even to carry then

Verdict: A fitting end to Kiryu’s story, with great graphics, OST, and side content, but not without a few hiccups. Fewer heat actions and the removal of certain minigames detract from it, when compared to previous games of the series.

Score: 8.5/10

Disclaimer: Reviewed on a standard PS4 model using a review code provided by the publisher.

[aion-rsa]

Why Now Is the Right Time for a Dark City TV Series

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This article contains spoilers for Dark City (1998).

Back in the late 90s, UK cinemas were still running an annual promotion where you got to see as many recently-released films as you liked for the tidy sum of £1 each. The promotion was usually only set up for one day, so movie buffs used to plan that day with extreme dedication. You had to line up the screening times just right to make sure no film overlapped, but if you had nerves of steel and a butt lining to match? Yeah, you could squeak through five major releases for £5 and feel insufferably smug about it.

Alex Proyas’ Dark City was one of the movies caught in the net of that promotion in 1998, and I remember being bowled over by how surprisingly weird it was. Clearly influenced by Metropolis, Brazil, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s The City of Lost Children, the neo-noir science fiction film arrived to positive reviews, but audiences weren’t really ready for it’s strangeness and it subsequently chalked up a disappointing box office result.

Maybe I didn’t help matters with my £1, and I’m truly sorry about that, which is why I was excited to learn that over two decades later I might have a fresh chance to fully get behind Dark City, as Proyas has now confirmed that a TV series based on the film is in the works.

“Dark City right now is really an intriguing one to me because we’re developing a series, a Dark City series, which we’re in the very early stages [of] but I’m having to re-analyze in order to construct a new story,” Proyas said (via Bloody Disgusting). “I’m having to go back and kind of jog my memory as to what we actually did and what I think worked and what I think didn’t work and re-evaluate my own film, so that’s been a very interesting experience as well which I’ve not done before.”

There are currently no details on what the series would entail, but its development is pretty intriguing considering Dark City’s legacy is kinda square in the realm of just being a small, beloved project that influenced other, often more successful, projects. Christopher Nolan was partly inspired by the film when he wrote Inception. Equilibrium, eXistenZ, and Requiem for a Dream all appear to owe some shading to Proyas’ sci-fi-experiment, and its weird tendrils still feel wrapped around the career of Dark City writer David S. Goyer.

If the movie had emerged further along the cinematic timeline, it might have had a much different fate than its “cult classic” brand – a year later the Wachowskis unleashed their sleeper hit The Matrix, which was filmed at the same studio as Dark City and even used some of Dark City’s sets. To be clear: The Matrix doesn’t just “look a bit like Dark City“, it also has a fairly similar vibe and plot to the blockbuster sci-fi action franchise that would go on to score a massive $3 billion in revenue.

In the stylish but gloomy tale, a confused man called John Murdoch wakes up to a phone call from a mysterious doctor, who tells him that a group of ominous men called “the Strangers” are pursuing him, and one of these Strangers in particular then becomes hyper focused on tracking him. A noir tale ensues as Murdoch pieces together his real identity and the true nature of the city he lives in, which is completely controlled by the Strangers. He also develops the power of psychokinesis and uses it to manipulate reality, overthrowing the Strangers’ control. In an incredible Twilight Zone-esque climax, the city itself is revealed as a deep space habitat covered by a force field.

A fair amount of this plot probably sounds familiar, but at the time it was fairly wild stuff. And now? It seems like the kind of project that would slide right into any prestige TV schedule like a knife through butter. Since Dark City was released, its themes of identity exploration and feeling trapped in what may or may not be a bleak simulation have become major viewing fodder.

Lost ran for six seasons on ABC. Wayward Pines became TV’s most-watched show during the summer of its release. Mr. Robot kicked Sam Esmail and Rami Malek’s careers into high gear. Westworld became HBO’s pricey flagship sci-fi series. I could go on listing examples for a while, as virtually every network or streamer has sought at least one serialized dark mystery hit at some point in the last twenty years.

Even on the film side, the genre shows no sign of slowing down. Warner Bros. has just gambled a huge wad of money to get a fourth big screen Matrix offering ready in the same year that Free Guy, a film about an NPC who becomes self-aware and tries to save the day, is released.

Clearly the well has not run dry, and Dark City could now be in an ideal place to take advantage of the viewing public’s hunger for the genre, but there’s another reason that a series set in the film’s universe would work better now than it did in the ’90s – humanity has felt increasingly trapped by invisible enemies, and continues to be instilled with the post-Matrix realization that even if an individual broke free of the “concept” of reality, there would be nowhere left to go.

As the march of capitalism destroys the climate of our humble rock and emerging viruses alter the way we live forever while billionaires spend their wealth encroaching space, is there a better time to explore new stories of people determined to seize some power back and live their authentic lives in the face of certain doom?

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Bookshelf Briefs 7/22/21

A Certain Scientific Accelerator, Vol. 12 | By Kazuma Kamachi and Arata Yamaji | Seven Seas – I was surprised that this is the final volume. It wraps things up pretty well, tying things off as well as tying into the eighth Index novel, showing us Accelerator’s side of his walking up to Awaki and punching her suitcase full of badness into tiny bits. It works well as a capper for the whole series, which is filled with what Accelerator does best: saving the day while thinking to himself Touma could have done it better. We also get to see Yomikawa once again show she is the only sensible goddamn person in the entire City, and also the only one trying to help the kids grow up to not be monsters. Good luck with that; Railgun shows it’s not going well. – Sean Gaffney

Fist of the North Star, Vol. 1 | By Buronson and Tetsuo Hara | Viz Media – It’s hard to get a good read on this series, because it’s become so influential and referenced that you feel like you’ve already read it before you have. The author’s name could also be “Bronson,” as in Charles, and that tells you about the sort of story we get here. Kenshiro walks across an apocalyptic waste, finds injustice being done and innocents being killed, and starts exploding folks and saying things like “You Are Already Dead.” The humor is almost zero, it’s tremendously violent, and yet it’s also really compelling and readable. You can see why it became an ’80s classic. Don’t read this unless you know what you’re getting, but if you do, it’s essential. – Sean Gaffney

Kageki Shojo!!, Vol. 1 | By Kumiko Saiki | Seven Seas – The series had moved from Shueisha’s Jump Kai to Hakusensha’s Melody with this volume, so, despite the renumbering, I was expecting a bit of a reintroduction to everyone. Nope. You’d better have read the omnibus or you’ll be wondering what the heck happened. This seems to be several months after the omnibus, and shows that Ai in particular has mellowed out a lot. Fans of the anime running this summer will note that several scenes from this volume were folded in with the adaptation of the omnibus, but they work well here too. Especially the cliffhanger ending, where Sarasa does an absolutely brilliant acting job in class… and the teacher explains if she continues to do it that way, she’ll never be a star. Fantastic. – Sean Gaffney

Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 13 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – Last time we were introduced to a young girl who’s staying with Komi’s family who has communication issues herself, though not the same as Komi’s. The majority of this book is her fighting with and bonding with Komi, who not only proves to be a sweetie pie but can also rally the entire town, Hinamizawa-style, when there’s a crisis. Meanwhile, she’s been improving so much lately that she hasn’t been needing Tadano… which upsets both of them. Then we get some of the class teaming up for a night out… which includes a test of courage, where Tadano is paired with first Komi and then Manbagi. Who is trying hard to push Tadano away, and it’s just not working. We’re headed for a crisis soon. – Sean Gaffney

New Game!, Vol. 11 | By Shotaro Tokuno | Seven Seas – After a fanservice-laden start that reminds you that, while the series may not have any men in it, the reader is definitely meant to be a man, we’re back to business as usual in New Game!. Hotarui returns to France, finding that it’s the best place for her art to grow. We see how difficult it can be to communicate the issue when something is just slightly off in the game designs and you’re not sure why. The big development, though, is that the team decides to make every NPC more playable than usual, meaning they all need unique designs and attention. The designs end up looking very much like our New Game! cast… with the exception of Rin, who wants to avoid her yuri crush becoming canon elsewhere. Cute as always. – Sean Gaffney

Sword Art Online: Girls’ Ops, Vol. 7 | By Neko Nekobyou and Reki Kawahara | Yen Press I’m not entirely certain how horrified the reader is supposed to be here, but certainly “the souls of those who died in Sword Art Online are being used to inhabit NPCs in the new game” is creepy as hell to me. And to Luz, who of course has someone dear to her that has now shown up again. There’s also a lot of clever fights here, and we get to see Luz use her Kirito-copy mod in order to fight as well. I also laughed at Argo trying her best to help everyone out… but nothing worked, so she ran off. And of course this whole arc ties in to one of Kawahara’s biggest themes, “what defines an NPC.” This ends with the next volume, and I hope the girls all get something cool to do. Even Leafa, the Zoidberg of SAO. – Sean Gaffney

Takane & Hana, Vol. 17 | By Yuki Shiwasu | Viz Media – OK, that turned out to be far less dramatic than I expected, and indeed less dramatic than Hana and her family expected as well. Turns out everything is fine… well, at least once Takane actually confronts his grandfather and admits what’s been obvious all along. There’s even time for a ski trip with a dramatic death-defying cliffhanger… well, it would be death defying if it were not the world’s tiniest cliff. Takane & Hana, despite the occasional dramatic turn, knows what its readers are here for, and that’s laughs and sentimentality. We get plenty of both here, and we even end with a wedding… well, with a marriage license, I assume the wedding will come in volume eighteen, which is the final one. Recommended for fans of snarky girls mocking jerky guys. – Sean Gaffney

Tales of Wedding Rings, Vol. 9 | By Maybe | Yen Press – Thankfully, after a break of over a year, this volume of the series has precisely zero “are they going to bone?” scenes in it, mostly as the hero and heroine are separated for most of the book. Satou is still trying to gain a few advantages in fighting, and seeing that legendary swords are not all they’re cracked up to be, while Hime struggles in trying to learn magic that seems to come easily to everyone else. Luckily, she’s helped out by what, to her, seems like a kindly woman who is very similar to her late mother. Unfortunately, to everyone else, it appears she’s talking to a black cloud of pure evil, and it’s no great surprise that everyone else is correct here. This was a stronger volume than previous ones, mostly due to the lack of “will they get it on?” to the plot. – Sean Gaffney

Those Not-So-Sweet Boys, Vol. 3 | By Yoko Nogiri | Kodansha Comics – Although Midori Nanami originally only became involved with a trio of truant boys to preserve her own scholarship, they’ve genuinely become friends. The more Midori has gotten to know Rei Ichijo, the thoughtful and lonely son of a rich, negligent father, the more she has fallen for him. By the end of this volume, it would appear her feelings are reciprocated. On paper, this series looks like pretty formulaic shoujo romance, but Yoko Nogiri has a way of imbuing her stories with realism and intriguing complications. Here, the main obstacle is Rei’s friend Yuki, who objects to Midori and Rei getting closer, but encourages his other bestie, Chihiro, to go after her. Does Yuki have feelings for Rei, or is he just deeply dependent on him? I’m really enjoying this series so far and am especially looking forward to further exploration of Yuki’s motivations. – Michelle Smith

We’re New at This, Vol. 7 | By Ren Kawahara | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Having achieved stability in their relationship, our favorite cute and sexy couple decide to get a bigger place. There’s some nice discussion about finances and give-and-take, and I like that it shows that constant communication is what makes this couple work so well, and when they don’t communicate well things tend to go badly. This ends up leading to the next major problem, which is that Ikuma’s client he was working for goes under, meaning money he had assumed was coming in is now most definitely NOT coming in. He manages to find a quick solution, but doesn’t talk to Sumika about it first, which does not go over well. Can the marriage survive salaryman Ikuma over contracter Ikuma? Dunno, but I bet it’ll be cute and sweet. – Sean Gaffney

By: Sean Gaffney