#trying to determine canon choices in an RPG

[anthurak]

So because I’m currently doing a playthrough of Mass Effect again, I thought I’d engage in an interesting thought-experiment regarding the inherently flexible narrative of the RPG plot structure.

Namely, is there actually a way to pin down a ‘canon’ choice for the Virmire survivor between Ashley and Kaidan? Specifically, by trying to eliminate the bias of the player and using aspects of the mission and Shepard’s character that aren’t controlled by the player to determine a most likely scenario for how the events and choices Shepard makes might likely play out.

To that end, let’s look at the Virmire mission leading up to ‘The Big Choice’. If we try to remove the x-factor that is ‘player bias’, thinking of Shepard not as a player-avatar but as an actual character, I think we can actually get a good idea how Virmire actually would have turned out.

To begin with, let’s establish a few qualities that we can assume about Commander Shepard when we ignore possible player biases:

Shepard is an exceptionally capable and experienced soldier and leader, and will thus be making decisions that will give them and their team and allies the best chance at success at this mission.

Shepard cares about their subordinates and allies and will likewise be doing everything they can to get as many people out alive as they can.

Shepard is NOT openly racist towards aliens, nor overtly distrustful or antagonist towards the Council and their agents. Or at least not so much that they would allow such distrust/antagonism to overly interfere with their judgement over the best way to accomplish the mission.

Shepard does in fact care a great deal about BOTH Ashley and Kaidan and does NOT actively want one of them dead.

With all that in mind, let’s look at all of the choices that affect the outcome of the Virmire mission and consider what the most likely choice that Shepard would make is:

First, which squadmate goes with Kirrahe and the STG team, and which one is relegated to bomb duty?

This one’s actually pretty easy when you think about it for more than five seconds. We have Ashley, a hardened frontline soldier with training in all standard alliance weaponry, and we have Kaidan, one of our team’s go-to tech-experts. Heck, Ashley even points out herself that Kaidan should be needed to arm the bomb when volunteering for the mission. Again, when we remove player bias from the equation, I think we can all agree that Shepard would send Ashley to help Kirrahe’s team while having Kaidan work on the bomb.

So with that choice locked in, let’s move to the next big choice: Does Shepard take the necessary steps that allows Kirrahe and much of his team to survive the mission? IE: Completing side-objectives and not diverting security forces towards the Salarians.

Again, removing player-bias from consideration, I think there’s no reason to assume Shepard wouldn’t do everything they could to assist the Salarians. It’s certainly in their best interests to support the Salarians so they can support their team in return. It’s also worth noting that Shepard would have an interest in depriving the Geth of resources by destroying their facilities to make their own task easier. While it may be true that completing the side-objectives doesn’t actually affect the difficulty of Shepard’s own mission, that’s only information that a PLAYER would know, not Shepard themself. And of course, Shepard has one of their own people (Ashley) with the Salarian teams, giving them even MORE reason to assist them. In short, we can assume that Kirrahe and his STG team ARE still alive by the time the bomb is armed.

So with Ashley fighting alongside the still-alive STG team and Kaidan planting the bomb, we now come to the big choice:

Does Shepard press on to the AA Tower and save Ashley or double back to the bomb-site and save Kaidan?

And with everything we’ve established thus far, I wholeheartedly believe the most likely scenario is that Shepard saves ASHLEY.

Because Shepard’s choice isn’t actually between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley’. The choice is between ‘Save Kaidan’ or ‘Save Ashley AND the STG Team’.

Yes, it’s true that in the game if you fulfill the necessary side-objectives, Kirrahe and his team are picked up by the Normandy regardless of your choice to press on to the AA Tower or double back to the bomb-site, but I think we really have to ignore this fact.

First, it is a factor that positively reeks of ‘arbitrary game logic’. As in, Kirrahe and his teams are AT the AA tower, so if Joker picks up Shepard and their squad at the bomb site with only a minute or so before the bomb goes off, how exactly can he also rush over to the tower to pick up the Salarians too?

Worse still, if the Normandy is somehow able to pick up the STG team at the tower, then why can’t they pick up Ashley/Kaidan too?! Seriously, if you choose to go to the AA tower and fulfilled the side objectives, you find Kirrahe and the rest of the STG team fighting alongside the squadmate you sent with them! If Kirrahe and his team manage to survive, why can’t they? Looking back, I really feel like going to the AA Tower SHOULD have been a requirement for saving Kirrahe and his team.

And second, this detail of Kirrahe and his team surviving regardless of Shepard’s choice is entirely IRRELEVANT because there is no way SHEPARD could KNOW that!

Yes, the player might be able to know that this pivotal choice comes down to just ‘Save Ashley’ or ‘Save Kaidan’.

But as far as Commander Shepard knows, standing at that railing, weighing their options in this pivotal moment, this is a choice between going back to the bomb site to save one of their squadmates, and pushing on to the AA Tower to save one of their squadmates AND the Salarian STG team. This isn’t a choice of ‘one life weighed against one life’, this is a choice between ONE life, or about a dozen lives.

And again, if we’re removing as much ‘player bias’ from the equation as we can, I think we have no reason to assume that Shepard wouldn’t choose to save as many lives as they can. And since we established the most likely ‘in-universe’ choices are Ashley going with Kirrahe’s team and Kaidan on bomb-duty, I think it’s pretty clear that all things being equal, it’s ASHLEY who has the much better chance of being the Virmire survivor.

I’d say about the only especially plausible scenario where this doesn’t happen is if Shepard is romancing Kaidan, which might (emphasis on ‘MIGHT’) drive them to make the choice to save his life over those of Ashley and Kirrahe’s team. But again, that is only one specific scenario. In any other instance, I’d say that Shepard choosing Ashley over Kaidan is the most likely option.

And looking forward past ME1, I also can’t help but feel that Ashley works just a bit better than Kaidan in terms of what ME2 and ME3 expect the Virmire Survivor to actually do. Namely, how the narrative expects them to be VERY distrustful of Shepard starting in ME2 and eventually being entirely deceived by Udina in the leadup to the Cerberus Coup in ME3.

Now the thing is, does anyone else feel like this arc doesn’t exactly fit Kaidan all that well? Namely that he seems to be just a bit smarter than this?

Throughout ME1, we see that Kaidan is generally one to keep a cool head, and is well-experienced and savvy to the possible faults of his superiors, and generally one to be more thoughtful about a situation.

So I can’t help but feel like when they reunite on Horizon, Kaidan would be more willing to hear Shepard out and give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than becoming so immediately hostile. While I don’t see Kaidan outright joining Shepard’s team on Horizon, I do think he’d nonetheless be more open to reading between the lines of what’s going on and trusting that Shepard knows what they’re doing.

Now, that’s not to say that a super-distrustful Kaidan is entirely unrealistic. Namely, I think a romanced Kaidan feeling that Shepard has betrayed his trust by seemingly not reaching out to them in the two years and taking it pretty personally is a reasonable reaction. But other than that situation, I get the sense that Kaidan would mostly just be happy one of his closest friends is still alive and while he might have his reservations, is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And given Kaidan’s experience, I simply do not see him getting suckered by Udina THAT easily in Mass Effect 3. Unless Shepard has been deliberately blowing him off and/or antagonizing him, the moment Shepard came out that door with their squad and Udina starting spouting ‘Shepard must be with Cerberus!’, I have to imagine Kaidan would’ve started smelling bullshit and that whole standoff would NOT have happened.

By contrast, basically everything ME2 and ME3 expects of the Virmire Survivor I can ABSOLUTELY see Ashely doing. For good or ill, Ashely is THE hotheaded emotional one of Shepard’s original crew, so her taking Shepard’s disappearance and apparently not getting in touch with her very personally feels pretty in-character. And her being a very loyal and committed Alliance soldier makes her being extremely distrustful of Shepard working with Cerberus feels likewise understandable.

And as for Udina’s shenanigan’s in ME3? Yeah, I’d say Ashely is exactly loyal, unquestioning and gullible enough to fall for his bullshit. Especially after he made her a Spectre.

Finally, going back to the first game, I can’t help but feel that Kaidan making the big heroic sacrifice while Ashley gets saved is altogether a bit more fitting to their respective arcs and the narrative as a whole rather than the reverse.

In ME1, Ashley’s main defining character trait is that she basically has a martyr complex. She’s desperate to ‘redeem’ her family name after the ‘dishonor’ brought on it by her grandfather surrendering Shanxi during the First Contact War. Because of this, she is entirely willing to get herself killed if it would help the mission. She’s looking to throw herself on a sword to redeem her family name. Because of this, I feel like it’s more narratively fitting for Ashley to NOT get the big heroic death she’s partly looking for. Heck, Shepard will flat out call Ashley out on her martyr complex after Virmire if she’s saved. It feels like saving Ashley on Virmire gives her a real arc as a character.

By contrast, Kaidan doesn’t really have much of a character arc in ME1, or at least not one that is furthered by him being the Virmire survivor. Instead, because Kaidan starts the game already friends with Shepard, I’d argue that him being the one to die on Virmire has a bit more of an emotional gut-punch than Ashley’s death does. I mean, think of it like this; Kaidan is the first of your party members in the first game. Out of all their companions by this point of the story, Kaidan has been with Shepard the longest. Sure, Ashley has known Shepard second longest out of their companions, but I’d argue Shepard knowing him before the start of the game gives Kaidan’s death just a BIT more tragic punch.

All in all, after I started noticing all this a number of years back, it’s been one of those things I can’t really ‘unsee’ so to speak. Because my go-to ME1 route is FemShep romancing Liara, I tend to weigh Ashley and Kaidan fairly equally in terms of ‘who I like more’. So because of all this, I now view Ashley as more or less the ‘canon’ Virmire Survivor. Now that’s not to say I think other people who chose Kaidan over Ashley are ‘wrong’ in any way. Just that when we think of Mass Effect as its own self-contained narrative, rather than an interactive experience, it’s Ashley who is just the bit more likely to survive Virmire over Kaidan.

[pianokantzart]

Something I love about the Mario movie is how is basically squashed any kind of ideas of Luigi being jealous of Mario from the get go that fans have come up/theorized throughout the years.

The whole “Luigi is jealous and tired of living in Mario’s shadow” has no leg to stand on when it comes to this movie.

In fact, Luigi is actively the one singing praises towards Mario, he knows that his brother dreams big and has a big heart, he knows his brother is amazing and he loves him for that.

Does he have low self esteem? Absolutely. But there is absolutely not a single bit of jealousy/envy towards Mario, Luigi loves and adores him far too much to ever be jealous and angry at Mario, someone who means the absolute world to him.

Oh don't you get me started.

Too late, I’ve gotten started. YOU ARE SO RIGHT. The movie did to theories that Luigi's “bitter and jealous” what it did to theories that Mario’s an antisocial asshat.

There are two things I can point to that are to blame for the theories that Luigi is bitter and jealous:

The description of his Negative Zone final smash from Super Smash Bros. Brawl:

"Luigi's final smash. As exotic music plays, he performs a dance befitting a sorcerous incantation. A barrier envelopes him, negatively impacting all in his area. Random effects include getting launched, sleeping, moving in slow motion, tripping, fainting, and losing attack power. This technique is a reflection of the dark side he embraced in his brother's shadow."

2. His characterization in Paper Mario

But there’s like… almost 40 years of games to glean from. You can literally pick and choose whatever you want to form any sort of theory (like a certain internet man did when arguing that Mario is an animal abusing sociopath). But 99% of the games show about as much evidence that Luigi is bitter as they do that Mario is a bad person– none at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.

As for Paper Mario, it's the only time Luigi is directly characterized as envious... NOT jealous. He still loves his brother and sees him as worthy of the praise he gets, but he feels bad being stuck at home, and desperately wants to be brought along for the adventure– to have his opportunity in the limelight. But Paper Mario is kind of its own thing, established to be a separate universe from the mainline Mario games. In the Super Mario Brothers RPGs– which delve deeper into the bros character while remaining more aligned with the classic "canon"– the dynamic is quite the opposite! Mario dives headfirst into danger while Luigi desperately avoids it unless there is no other choice. In Super Mario Brothers Superstar Saga he tries his darndest to not be taken along for the adventure, confident that his brother can handle the task.

But one consistent across the Mario games is Luigi being the underdog of all underdogs; unlucky and clumsy, the butt of the joke, and constantly undermined. Naturally this causes people to get defensive of him– get angry for him, and project their feelings onto the character himself.

But tHEN WE HAVE THE MOVIE!!!!

Nintendo is given a chance to craft Mario and Luigi into fully fleshed-out characters with motivations and backstories, not just plucky videogame personalities for people to project themselves into, and boy oh BOY did they knock it out of the park.

While Mario is still a headstrong hero with a never-say-die attitude and a heart of gold, everything he does is for his brother. Mario has insecurities about feeling small and wants to prove himself to his father, but in the end his love for Luigi is his main motivator. Mario can handle being threatened, made fun of, and told he’s crazy, but if you want to truly hurt him, tell him his actions are hurting his brother. Try hurting Luigi directly, and Mario will tear you a new one.

In return, everything Luigi does is for Mario! Lu’s not the willful ball of determination and gusto that his brother is– he has always been nervous, softhearted, and sensitive, which is why he lets his brother lead the way. Luigi’s not living in Mario’s shadow, he’s thriving off of his confidence! He recognizes Mario as his best friend and greatest source of strength, and will follow him absolutely anywhere.

There is no sense of Mario being treated like the beloved star of the show while Luigi gets the short end of the stick. They are both downtrodden, both learning, and both dependent on each other. It's not just Super Mario, it's the Super Mario Brothers, who equally inspire each other to be the best version of themselves.

[mystybelle]

From last night's stream-

I don't think RPGs have anything to do with stats.

I think an RPG, or whether or not a game counts as one, is more about how you can affect it's world or environment beyond just winning or losing.

Like, Skyrim and space Skyrim, for example,are not RPGs. They are a very shoddily made, medieval & sci-fi themed amusement parks.

But neither are any Final Fantasy games, Legend of Zelda games, Shadow of Mordor, the Assassin's Creed series, Genshin Impact, God of War (any of them, even the new ones), Kingdom Hearts (any of them), Diablo, Transistor, or any Pokemon games. These are lovingly crafted roller coasters with various themes, with different additional genres of games therein, unlike most Bethesda games, but not roleplaying games. They're gripping movies, comics, art exhibits, and dioramas with well done and utilitarian world-building.

Or visual novels. And that's not me disparaging these games, just hopefully pushing our evolving language for discussing games in a better direction?

I guess the next question is probably- "What is an RPG by your call then?"

I'd say games like the original Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, Fallout 1&2, Undertale, Pathologic, literally every single Animal Crossing game, Pathfinder/DnD (if your DM has a stable sleep schedule), and Shadow the Hedgehog.

The difference between these two groups is:

group A: Interactive media (games) that are stories, or Games(under the cut), with worlds that only exist to tell their stories or for the player's convenience.

group B: Interactive media that is a world the player is encouraged to interact with as a consistent Character within, or where the player's avatar & actions exists as a character within the world and not just an artifice of design or play.

There is nothing you can do on Final Fantasy VII's Gaea that will impact any part of the rest of the world, besides succeed at a given challenge or die and have another go. Nor in X, IX, or VIII. Locking a world's keyhole in Kingdom Hearts 1 doesn't change the game's state it's the next part of the story and the success state that follows defeating most level's final bosses (or after figuring out a clever puzzle in Traverse Town). Riku can't fail to save Sora at the end of Kingdom Hearts II, you fail to rescue Riku's man, and the game lets you try again until you catch up with canon. Transistor does not care whether you collect certain programs/citizens, the Process [REDACTED] no matter what. Zelda can't not be rescued in any of the series' games where she appears; there are no ways to save the land of Termina except by assisting its citizens in a very specific order. In Pokemon, Team Rocket cannot successfully kidnapp someone's Pokemon on screen, and Team Aqua cannot successfully flood the world.

But in Shadow the Hedgehog; the president can be spared and his life determines how the rest of the game's story plays out; you can steadily work to destroy the world with the Black Arms and feel the progress of the invasion as you complete more of their missions. In Pathologic, failing to cure a patient doesn't send you to a game over screen, the patient just dies. Sometimes your patient is important to you and their death will have disastrous consequences, sometimes not. In ACNH, everything you can do changes the game's state in a meaningful way, there are almost literally no meaningless actions you can take in that game (or any animal crossing game). In a solid Pathfinder/DnD game, unless your party fights and dies to the last man, failing to kill the Lich or Evil king means that they get to take over that town or city. Some tables don't even run TPKs back, that specific world just gets worse and you either abandon it to its fate or have to make new avatars to re-enter a world that's likely grown more hostile because of the failure. In the original Fallouts, the only real "game over" fail state in those games is dying. Everything else is simply a choice to make, or a consequence to avoid. Likewise in the original Deus Ex, JC Denton's actions decide whether the [REDACTED it's old but go play the game] play out as planned, whether [seriously go play it] live or if the [please, you won't regret it] get their way. Each potential reality in these games, doesn't meaning you just lose, but that you now have to account for new circumstances in the world of your own making.

I don't think a game doesn't become an RPG because it has stats, or levels. Those are just conventions of the media of games as a whole. A game is more or less of an RPG based on how internally consistent and independent of the player its world is. I think our language should reflect that that too, but considering that this genre of game comes from the original pen and paper RPGs, I don't like giving the most faithful successors to their heritage a name that doesn't include the words RPG in it. I'd rather call the first group of games "Immersive Movies" and give the term "RPG" back to the second group. But if we must call both groups kinds of RPGs, I want to suggest replacing WRPG vs JRPG, with RPGs vs "VRPGs" or Virtual Ride Playing Games (or Vibe Role Playing Games), seeing as the first group is more akin to a book/movie/play/amusement park ride that you read or ride through than they are games where you meaningfully play the role of a character.

If that makes sense? Replies/rb as are welcome as comments, I had the thought on stream and I've spent all day working to make it more coherent than the babbling that usually rattles around in my brain, but I couldn't make it any shorter than this. So idk, let me know what you think. I'm eager to hear from other devs, or just players for that matter.

Also, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH, this isn't me shitting on any game I've mentioned except for Skyrim and space Skyrim. I'm not using RPG as a title of prestige, or saying any of these games are worse than the others except for Skyrim; I'm only saying we should probably re categorize them. Roller coasters are good things when they're well made.

[vikingnerd793]

I wish durge players would stop trying to argue that durge is the CaNoN playable character.

Look. Some of us hate that option and wouldn't choose it if paid to do so. Many of us want RPGs to include a character where the back story, moral alignment, choices AND character design are truly up to us, rather than an inserted character into a pre-determined narrative.

And if we could stop the "no, my choice is the true choice" when no one ever said that on the dev team, that'd be great. Tav is valid. The origin characters and their playthroughs are valid.

This feels eerily similar to "Ascended Astarion is GOOD, actually" and Gortash stanning: It works for you, but anyone with eyes can tell you that you're trying to force something to be something it isn't and turning it into an argument that no one expected or wanted to have.

Just enjoy the game and stop making literally everything a superiority contest. K?

[idolapollo]

Dedicated DEV LOG #1

hey!! it's apollo/nyarl!! this'll be a first in a series of posts that are basically indie game development logs filled with a shit ton of rambling

i'll maybe try and post these monthly or bi-monthly, but it's mostly for me to motivate myself to make progress to have something to show off and to archive the process of making a game!

this month's dev log is dedicated to—well—"Dedicated To..."

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(i may keep saying this for future projects and games so bear with me) "Dedicated To..." (abbreviated as DT from now on) originally was an idea i had in middle school!

it was really edgy tho and i'd honestly kms if it ever got leaked to the public but it was essentially an angst piece for when i was discovering my own sexuality as a gay cis man

staying somewhat true to its gay angst origins, this game is a story based psychological horror rpg maker game! maybe you can add it's a story based gay psychological horror rpg maker game lmao

it won't be a long game, and it'll have 4 routes determined by one early game choice and 5 endings!! the 5th one is considered a secret dont tell anyone

i did change the protagonist's name and design bc it was literally just a self insert for me lmao even had clothes i often wore fucking lame

BUT ANYWAYS!!!!! you'll play as tybalt, a college student majoring in english literature or something as he struggles to create a fairy tale as his capstone (don't think about it too much)

here's a preview of his full art and draft of his portrait as thanks for listening to me ramble so far i will continue to ramble!! (i have yet to turn it into pixel art and plan different expressions)

i really wanted to make a gay character with these kinda cat eyes whatever you call em lol

and the man he'll be pinning for is reyn!! i didnt give him a major bc it doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things!!! he's probably a finance major!!!!

also idk why i named him reyn, it was something i kept from the original middle school stories

ig it was because i was watching chugga's lets play of xenoblade lmao

i've taken some time with working with rpg maker mz before since i had the chance to use it in a game dev class (after splurging most of my financial aid on plugins lmao), but unless i can figure out javascript on my own and break the engine, i'll be focusing on using rpg maker vx ace since it has more plugins!

for now, i'm still focusing on the story and full body character art before diving into programming and learning how to make pixel art _(:3」∠)_

btw i forgot to mention that part. yeah i'm an absolute newbie when it comes to pixel art so i have to learn that too cries

even though i'm making it in rpg maker vx ace, i'm aiming to recreate the feel of rpg maker 2000/2003 because i was SUUUUUUPER inspired by end roll, okegom's games, and specifically for this game charon's works!! so now i gotta bust out the pixels

there will be 4 routes with 5 endings! there was another route + ending but i scrapped it because i only had an idea of the ending (more on that in the future) and nothing else lol

so far i've drafted 3 of the 4 routes! even though there is no canon ending, the 4th one is the one that has the 5th ending and can branch off into other works (once again more on that in the future lmao)

i'm starting to write the dialogue for the 1st route and it's going okay!! tbh i wish i worked on it more over summer break while my college classes aren't gonna kill my ass and classes start next week (´；ω；`)

but i spent a majority of summer break testing out medication for my adhd, and i still am!! it was a really rough process and i'm glad i didn't go through mania-like symptoms while classes were going on _(´ཀ`」 ∠)_

i'm better now tho and i say i'm at a semi good spot!! now time to treat my horrid anxiety lol

i'll end it here for now before it gets too long!! sorry and thanks to listening to me ramble! i'll leave you with a snippet of the intro!

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[aortaplatinum]

Bioshock Infinite Review and Analysis

As I'm typing this, I've just completed my second playthrough of Bioshock Infinite. While I initially hated it with a passion upon finishing it for the first time, that hatred mostly stemmed from the ending, and I've actually come around on the game hard in the weeks after finishing it and in my second playthrough. I will say, if you're going into this game expecting Bioshock, you will be disappointed. I enjoy Bioshock 1 and 2 for their player choice, horror elements, toolbox-esque RPG gameplay, and deep-dives into political and sociological philosophy. Bioshock Infinite has next to none of these elements. It's an incredibly fun linear cinematic shooter with simple Halo style mechanics and an arsenal of super powers you can use in combat- but it's a horrendous Bioshock game, and outside of its title and Vigors [the equivalent of Plasmids] shares nothing at all with it's predecessors save for one fanservice scene during the ending sequence of the game.

The rest of this review contains spoilers for Bioshock Infinite's base game.

The removal of the morality system is one of the biggest hits to the game. Due to its story themes, Bioshock Infinite completely removes the binary morality system that Bioshock touched lightly on and Bioshock 2 expanded somewhat. Despite this change, there are still moments throughout the story where the player is given a choice between two outcomes. This seems to be an intentional rug-pull, considering the story's theme of determinism, but when the first two games in the series hinge on choices like this and you present them to the player in a very similar way without at all even implying that these choices don't matter, when the player realizes they DON'T, it's going to feel like an insult. I spent 10 minutes trying to decide between the bird or the cage choker Elizabeth asks you to pick for her because I was so certain one of these choices would lead to a better outcome than the other. You can let the player be a bad person here guys, the first two games had a mechanic where you could choose to murder little girls for personal gain and they rightly punished you for it. Canonically, Booker DeWitt, your player character, IS a bad person, and considering his past as a Pinkerton and at Wounded Knee, a version of him likely would do horrible things like throw the ball at the couple when at the raffle during the opening hour of the game. But all of your choices lead to the same outcome. You can be a dick and shoot innocent rando NPCs and steal during the few events where doing so has consequences, and the ending will be exactly the same as a player who did his best to be a perfect saint, without so much as a different line of dialogue. Individual, small events change immediately after your decisions, but nothing else does. Booker being indecisive at the ticket booth soon after meeting Elizabeth and getting stabbed through the hand has no bearing on the game outside of Elizabeth bandaging it for you and the aesthetic difference of Booker having a bandaged hand for the rest of the game. Mass Effect 3 has more drastically different endings than a Bioshock game, and that's a fucking travesty.

One interesting thing I don't often see in discussion on this game is how Columbia's society slightly differs from the equivalent early 20th century society of the United States of America, and one of the biggest differences I noticed is that the white women of Columbia seem to have the same rights and power in society as the white men do. There are even female soldiers among Comstock's army, roughly 1/3 of the Comstock-allied enemies you fight are women. This very likely stems from Rosalind Lutece and her contribution to both Comstock's life and to Columbian society, as the one who discovered quantum levitation through the use of her Lutece Field, and the one who created [half] of the machine that can open tears in spacetime and between dimensions. Rosalind's work paved the path to a better life for the white women of Columbia, and it makes me wonder about all the timelines where Rosalind was born black or Chinese, and the timelines where she was born male as Robert Lutece. Seeing as how the game explores multiple alternate timelines, it's a shame this concept is left untouched, and in both alternate dimensions Elizabeth opens and goes through with Booker, Rosalind is exactly the same, and Columbian society is identical.

Infinite bears that irritating late 7th gen Western game design trope of "main character who comments on everything", which works fine when Elizabeth joins you, but when it's JUST Booker for the first few hours it gets grating. I'm not at all a fan of the regenerating shield or the two weapon system with conveniently placed weapons in fight arenas. They turned Bioshock into Halo or Call of Duty.

A mark of a Japanese RPG that's made its way into this one is the animations- a lot of them are gorgeous and very detailed, but most of the time during gameplay and less important story scenes, characters will recycle canned animations [possibly mocap], and tween from key pose to key pose with no easing, it looks like a Dreamcast game at times. And they stare through you with their dead, unblinking eyes that don't actually focus on you. This is VERY noticeable with Elizabeth, since she's with you all the time. This face/eye animation problem was already solved in Half-Life 2, hell it was solved in Sonic Adventure, just have automated head and eye tracking so you don't walk up to Elizabeth to see her take on something and she's just staring out at nothing with unblinking eyes. It's uncanny and inconsistent.

With the animations and the lack of choice in mind, this is a Western RPG designed like a Japanese RPG; you're EXPERIENCING this story, not being a part of it.

That said, the well-balanced, engaging gameplay of the first two games is improved upon here, and the PC release itself is VERY well optimized, letting me play at max settings with no frame drops on hardware that would have been considered mid-range when this game released. The new Plasmid replacements, Vigors, are fun to use and, again, balanced.

One thing that's REALLY cool is the dynamic soundtrack- the battle tracks have lead-ins and lead-outs that play seamlessly with the start and end of fights, and a sting that plays when you get a kill, which makes sniper headshots that much more exhilarating.

It is VERY easy, and quite dumbed-down. I've already talked about the 2-weapon limit and the automatically recharging shield making the gameplay feel like Halo, but the lack of manual saving shows just how little faith Irrational Games had in their audience. So of course game journalists loved the game lmao

People complained about Bioshock 2 feeling like an expansion to Bioshock 1 instead of a sequel, and it seems like the development team took those criticisms to heart, making a game so far removed from what "Bioshock" is as a series, that it's more enjoyable as a standalone game that's a spiritual successor. I think I would have enjoyed this game MORE if nothing but the title was different. If it were called Columbia: City in the Sky or if it were called Spacetime Tears, I wouldn't have gone in with Bioshock expectations, so I wouldn't have been disappointed. I'm very glad Ken Levine's next game is titled Judas- even if it sucks, I won't be expecting Bioshock out of it, so I'll be able to judge it on its own merits instead of comparing it to the other three games.

It's a terrible Bioshock game but a really good narrative-focused shooter.

I did spend more time having fun with it than I spent groaning at its story and presentation though. It's a great game wrapped in a confusing and poorly presented story, I like it a lot but after my second playthrough on hard difficulty it seems to me that the further you get into the game the lower the quality is. It starts strong and could END strong but drops the ball.

[iaintyourbro]

Mental Gymnastics and the Sanity Question

I wrote this on June 2, 2020 and put it in my drafts. I don’t think I was brave enough to post this because it states how I really feel about things and at times that can be met with resistance. Almost three months later, after more research, talking to others in the fandom, and putting everything together, I’m going to share it now. I also know how to properly add pictures in a post so I’m gonna do that too.

Obviously, this is my opinion on it. Clearly from a fandom perspective, I love Cloud and Tifa as a couple. However, I’m ultimately a “canon-y” person. I do not ship couples without knowing the whole story. I ship after I know what happens. FFVII’s OG... I wasn’t too invested in, so I didn’t really do anything with fandom. I was online for FFVIII, Xenogears, and Gundam Wing. Anything FFVII related was Vincent related. 

***

Oh shipping, something I learned about recently. As a person who played FFVII at the age of 12 (well, started it) and then actually completed the game at around 13 or 14, the bulk of it went over my head. FFVIII was a clear cut romance, and probably why it was my favorite FF for 20 years. That being said, FFVII does have an ending, and does have a pretty clear relationship build between two of the characters. That’s then followed through in the additional media for the compilation. 

So why is there a fight? I honestly don’t know, and this post isn’t going to answer your questions, probably. I am going to give my opinion on why there is a fight, but I’m not a psychologist. This is how I personally feel about the entire FFVII shipping war and the impact it has on people - especially during the COVID quarantine in many areas. 

I played FF7R and was pleasantly surprised. I actually was scared to play it - scared it would change something I enjoyed as a teen. I was one that hoped for a 1 to 1 remake to keep the story solid. The reality is... the OG story is bare bones, which is why they ended up putting out multiple other pieces in the form of games, books, and movies. This bare bones story seemed to also create a war on who our protagonist loves. You realize how bare bones it is after playing the remake. 

That’s not to say it’s not a good game or good story. The OG is a fantastic game. It’s a fantastic story. It has the same issues every other RPG has where it has major gaps in the plot due to timing, money, whatever. The difference I’d say with FFVII and the others is the story is MUCH MORE COMPLEX and MUCH MORE MATURE. The closest I’d say is Xenogears, which literally was cut short due to time and money. FFVII and Xenogears also share a lot of similar themes, which makes a lot of sense when you know the “scrapped” FFVII ideas were repurposed. 

Most of us were kids or young teens when that game came out. We probably played it and understood about 60% of what was going on. We remember Cloud cross-dressing, we remember Aerith dying, and we remember Sephiroth. (And if you’re me you remember Vincent.)

The first part of the game, you’re given multiple choices on how to respond to things. This ends up being part of a “date mechanic” later on in the game. Feels like you have control, right? You’re the one who is going to determine who Cloud gets to date at the Gold Saucer! Who his life partner is! 

Wrong. 

Yeah, you make choices and it does determine who you go on a date with. However, you find out much later in the game that Cloud isn’t really Cloud. There are multiple hints early in the game that something isn’t right. It builds up until you literally see a ghostly figure of child Cloud standing there as Cloud beats the crap out of Aerith and gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth. Cloud hears voices during multiple scenes in the game, but meh, whatever. Seeing his child form, though, you’re like UM OKAY. 

So, you build up your relationship with Aerith. You say all the right things. You get the date with her, she says she wants to meet you. Then you go to the Temple of the Ancients, a cute little part with Cait Sith giving a fortune that you and her are meant to be... and about 10 minutes later you beat the living shit out of her and hand over the Black Materia to the enemy. 

At this point, you realize something is seriously wrong. Aerith disappears. The next time you see her, she dies. 

Then the focus is only on getting Sephiroth. Not just because of Aerith, but Cloud is being summoned by him - you just don’t know that until you get there. Cloud realizes that he wasn’t pursuing Sephiroth, he was being pulled to him. I mean, Aerith dies and isn’t mentioned for quite some time. There isn’t any point after she floats down that they really mourn. They go snowboarding and go after Sephiroth. 

Then Cloud completely breaks... when TIFA questions what she remembers and can’t give Cloud a clear answer. And this may come as a shock to somebody who was trying to woo Aerith. Why does Tifa matter so much? Cloud didn’t break due to Aerith dying, Cloud broke because Tifa didn’t know how to tell him that he wasn’t in Nibelheim 5 years ago (that she knew of). 

They don’t really build the relationship up between Cloud and Tifa until pretty much after this point. They talk about the Promise, they talk about some other quirks, they infer that Tifa has a crush on Cloud. 

You really aren’t aware that Cloud has a crush on Tifa until The Lifestream, when IT ALL COMES OUT. To be fair, Cloud didn’t show romantic interest to either girl in OG prior to the Northern Crater, honestly. More so until the Lifestream.

The Crisis of Losing Control 

You also lose the ability to make choices at this point in the game. 

During the first part, you are acting almost as Cloud’s false persona. The cool SOLDIER Cloud that makes nice or nasty choices towards other characters. You determine, to an extent, how Cloud is. But it’s an illusion. 

And Aerith tells us this in the Remake - that whatever you’re feeling now isn’t real. This isn’t a love confession, this is a warning. If you played the OG, you know she’s referring to his false persona.

The reason I think this gets so heated is because of the loss of control, the feeling of betrayal that the one you thought was supposed to be the one is gone, and all along Cloud held deep feelings for Tifa. You’re also probably young and inexperienced when this happens. The romantic notion of Romeo and Juliet, if you will. 

I think it also depends on how you deal with Aerith’s death. Personally, it wasn’t a huge deal to me. I was like damn did that just happen? I wouldn’t say I was sad, though, or upset. More shocked? Sadly at this point in my life, I’d already lost family members, and moving on is very important. I also didn’t notice Cloud doing ANYTHING romantic in the OG. It felt one sided all around until much, much later on. So I didn’t see it as Cloud losing the love of his life. I actually had no idea why he was upset except they were friends. 

There’s a clear end to the potential romance between Cloud and Aerith - she dies. Now in the world of FFVII, Aerith is a Cetra and has the ability to communicate with the planet and apparently those that are still living once she dies. However, that doesn’t mean that Cloud is going to pursue a relationship with her... that is... crazy, right? 

Apparently.. Not? 

This is where I start having an issue with shipping. The story clearly shows that Aerith dies. The story clearly shows that Cloud harbors deep feelings for Tifa during the Lifestream scene. Both of these events are set - there are no alternatives, no optional scenes. At no point during the Lifestream is anybody else mentioned as a romantic interest. Tifa dominates this guy’s subconscious. But to some, there does seem to be an alternative.

The most extreme I’ve seen is that Cloud should kill himself to be with Aerith. This is disturbing on so many levels, so I’m not going to talk about it much. This not only misses the point of one of the big themes in FFVII, but also just shows how desperate people are to get what they want.

The other is that Cloud actually only loves Aerith and Tifa was his living rebound. The story doesn’t support this. Watch the Lifestream scene and it’s obvious. Once again, we have no mention of anybody else during this. 

The mental gymnastics it takes to put Cloud and Aerith together as the canon couple blows my mind. 

***

And that’s where I stopped. I had noticed at the time there was major pushback on anybody who denied romance between Cloud and Aerith. I guess I just wasn’t ready to deal with it nor did I have the confidence I suppose. Now I’m confident in that after three months of observing, learning, and contemplating.

So I’ll finish with a few thoughts because apparently in fandom land three months is a long time.

COVID-19 Quarantine

The majority of the world went under quarantine earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personally, the last time I saw my cubicle was March 9. Not that I’m sad, because I do enjoy working remotely. But it’s not just my cubicle, restaurants, zoos, everything was shut down and is slowly opening up but I’m not exactly keen on going somewhere unless I absolutely have to. 

This gave me a ton of time to do other things. FFVII Remake came out, so I played that and, yeah, I got really obsessed and went into this depressed void of what the fuck am I going to do until the next part comes out? Hello, online fandom. Hello, insanity. 

I’ve learned that the FFVII online fandom - specifically the shipping fandom - is crazy in good and bad ways. This, of course, was reignited by the Remake’s release, but most likely really amplified due to people being under quarantine. This is an escape from reality for a while. An escape from the constant depressing news cycle.

Before I discovered fandom I was obsessed with COVID-19 information. I watched all kinds of new broadcasts, Dr. Fauci, random people on YouTube, and it was overwhelming after a while. Remake saved me from that. I played Remake before I went into fandom. I played it as a non-shipper. I was slammed in the face with how amazing they portrayed Cloud and Tifa. 

Self Insertion

The other piece that seems to be apparent in angry shippers is the idea of self insertion. This simply means that you put yourself in the place of the character, so you begin to take things personally. If a person self inserts as Cloud, and their personal preference is Aerith, they become angry when Aerith dies and we find out who Cloud TRULY loves. If somebody self inserts as Aerith, they’re upset that they were never a real love interest. 

Most people go “oh okay, I see.” and move on and/or move to fanon if they truly wanted those two together. 

Then there’s the people who, for 20+ years, spread false information, attack, stalk, and go ballistic anytime there’s any type of evidence that they were wrong. 

The Big Ego

Nobody likes being wrong. FFVII has a major twist in it that causes you to go into a daze, and I do think they do a great job with that. Aerith isn’t it. Her death isn’t the big twist. It’s Cloud that’s the big twist. Going through the Lifestream (and even prior at the Northern Crater) reveals like ohhh shiitttt everything you know about Cloud is a lie.

And he even tells us it’s an illusion. Imagine that?

I am very strongly swayed by evidence from official resources. I suppose I take a scientific approach to this. I cannot find canon evidence that Cloud ever held any romantic feelings towards Aerith. Therefore, to me, Cloud never held any romantic feelings for anyone but Tifa because that’s what the game and resources tell us. 

Luckily, the Remake is making things clear. The devs are being more direct when answering questions. 

There was never supposed to be ambiguity or “player choice”. The fact that you lose player choice at one point and there are fixed events in the game (The Lifestream) that cannot be changed should have been evidence enough. The fact that there are not multiple endings should have been a clue. 

With all of this being said, it shouldn’t matter what I say if you want to ship a fanon ship. I do not see any romance between Cloud and Aerith and I never have. There is no supporting evidence of it. I generally am boring - I don’t try to fanon too much stuff that I have other evidence for. I’ll do it in jest. 

My opinion on Cloud and Aerith in general is I don’t think they work or ever could work. That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the ship. You cannot claim canon on a ship though unless there’s evidence. There’s way too much twisting, lying, and deletion to justify certain ships. This is one of them.

[joannerowlingfans]

do you know how much input JKR had in Hogwarts Legacy? bc idk if I want to buy it if it was made by "fans" who'll add whatever the fuck they want and try to screw over canon. same with the other games like Hogwarts Mystery and Wizards Unite. is the lore introduced in them actually canon?

Hello :) , here’s some stuff from this link: 

https://hogwartslegacy.warnerbrosgames.com/faq

Q: What is J.K. Rowling’s involvement with the game? Is this a new story from J.K. Rowling?

A: J.K. Rowling is not directly involved in the creation of the game, however, her extraordinary body of writing is the foundation of all projects in the Wizarding World.

This is not a new story from J.K. Rowling.

Q: How does Hogwarts Legacy fit into the Harry Potter Wizarding World?

A: While Portkey Games are not direct adaptations of the books and films, the games are firmly rooted in the Harry Potter universe. While remaining true to J.K. Rowling’s original work, Portkey game developers chart new territory by creating fresh ways for fans to immerse themselves in the wizarding world.

Q: Is Hogwarts Legacy an original story?

A: Hogwarts Legacy is an open-world, single-player, action role-playing videogame (RPG) set in the 1800s wizarding world. The story has players experiencing life as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry like never before, as they live the unwritten and embark on a dangerous journey to uncover a hidden truth of the wizarding world.

Q: What is the original story of Hogwarts Legacy?

A: Players will experience life as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the 1800s as they embark on a dangerous journey to uncover a hidden truth of the wizarding world. They will grow their magical abilities by mastering spells, brewing potions and taming fantastic beasts.

Q: How do you play Hogwarts Legacy?

A: Hogwarts Legacy is filled with immersive magic, putting players at the center of their adventure to become the witch or wizard they choose to be. They will grow their character’s abilities as they master powerful spells, hone combat skills and select companions to help them face off against deadly enemies. Players will also encounter missions and scenarios that will pose difficult choices and determine what they stand for.

Q: Can players choose and switch their Hogwarts house in Hogwarts Legacy?A: Players can choose their Hogwarts house at the start of Hogwarts Legacy. We’ll have more details to share at a later time.

Q: Will you see Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley in the game?

A: No, Hogwarts Legacy is set in the 1800s, before the time period of J.K. Rowling’s original stories.

Q: Will Hogwarts Legacy adhere to Wizarding World lore?

A: Yes. While Hogwarts Legacy is not a direct adaptation of the books and films, the games are anchored in Wizarding World lore. Avalanche is creating a unique gaming experience that is inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, in which players will find new and unexpected locations, characters and story elements.

Q: Does the game take place only in Hogwarts Castle?

A: Hogwarts Legacy takes players beyond Hogwarts to new and familiar locations including the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade Village.

Q: Are Portkey Games created with J.K. Rowling’s approval?

A: Each experience offered under Portkey Games will take place in the Wizarding World and will be authentic to the Wizarding World. J.K. Rowling is supportive of Portkey Games and has entrusted the design and creation of the games to WB Games and the developers involved.

[corvidry]

All About RP Icons For Beginners by Birdy

Hi OP, I’m not sure how experienced you are with all the nonsense surrounding the making and using of RP icons, so I’m gonna come at it as though you don’t have any experience with it at all and I’m sorry if that’s too simplified for you, but also if I’m gonna write many paragraphs about one topic I may as well make it accessible for as many people as possible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This post goes into what tools are out there for the popular methods of finding/making RP icons in the first half and my personal methodology for choosing and using them in my RP for the second half. This is a very surface level answer to the question and is not meant to be an in depth tutorial for the more labor intensive aspects of the process, but if you guys want more information and can’t find it elsewhere, please ask and I'll know what I should be talking about next. 

Also I’m also contractually obligated to mention to the masses that I do take commissions both for the drawing of RP icons and the service of capping, cutting, recoloring, and framing canon icons. Sometimes I even post batches of canon character icons for free on this blog so like,,,,, hit me up if you want. But!! You don’t need me, you can absolutely do all of it yourself!!  I go into the broad strokes below.

Question 1: “How do you get icons?” 

This is kind of a broad question and the answer depends on what your needs are. The right answer for you is gonna live in one of two camps 

Find some that already exist that are free to use

Make them yourself / commission somebody else to make them for you. 

What you'll choose is gonna depend a lot on your character first and foremost.  The big determining factor in most cases is whether or not the face you want has been in anything you can take pictures of. 

If you have a canon character who exists in visible media--

--you're in luck! The chances of you finding some resources that exist already is higher when you have a canon character who is in at least a few pieces of media. OP asked about Pearl from Steven Universe, and she's a great example of a character with a lot of resources. Searching for rp icons of a popular character will often yield packs of icons on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Livejournal, etc. Most of these will be completely free to use or have very reasonable conditions for use (like credit the person who made them for example.)  It's often a good first step to see what preexisting resources are available to you even if you still plan on making your own icons. 

If you have an OC or a character that's not all that popular--

--you're gonna fall into the second camp. If you want icons, you have to have them made. So what are your options?

Help! My character appears in no media! What are my options?

If your character appears in no media you're in a tough spot. Different people approach this problem in different ways. 

Face Claims

One option you have is to choose a face claim to represent your character. In roleplay a face claim or ‘FC’ is a person or character whose appearance you use for the physical description of your character. I personally am not big on doing this, I prefer drawn icons and I tend to RP as animated characters, but some people really like using celebrities and stuff to represent their characters.  When I was playing Angus McDonald he hadn't appeared in any visual media yet, so I sometimes used Bryce Clyde Jenkins as the face claim for certain types of threads.  

If you're somebody who likes to use face claims there are loads of resources out there for finding the perfect one, including here on tumblr. Try searching up RP Faceclaim Directory and playing around with some of the ones that pop up.

DIY RP Icons

The other option you have is to create those icons from scratch. Draw them yourself based on icons you like or commission an artist to draw some for you.   If you can't draw yourself, I've seen some people get really creative with this. Some people create their character in the sims, dollmakers, or their favorite RPG and then take screenshots of that to use for icons.  There's also no law that says every icon you use has to be your character's face. When I was writing a trashy mermaid AU I got a lot of mileage out of icons that depicted harbor and oceanic scenes with no actual faces. Get creative, go nuts, have fun.

Icons Aren’t That Important

The other thing to remember that icons are not a must in many RP circles. It's perfectly possible to have a great time and write cool stuff without any pictures at all. Depending on your platform of choice there are probably also other interesting ways you can make your posts unique to you by formatting the text or using symbols or emojis or otherwise denoting your personal style in text.

Help! My character appears in lots of media! How do I make icons?

Again, there are a million and one answers to this question and it really depends on what tools are available to you and what your preferences are. This section is not a tutorial but it will outline some of the options you can look into.

The icon making process is typically in 2 stages-- stage 1: get all your images of your character, and stage 2: edit all of those images into icons.  

If you have access to the source material, any version of Photoshop, and software that automates the collection screencaps from video (KM Player, VLC, etc) you're pretty much gucci. You're gonna have no problem getting loads of nice icons in a reasonably short amount of time and there are a million different tutorials on how to use those things whichever way you prefer. 

If you don't have access to those things you still have options. 

You can still screencap things manually, and you can screencap in batches by holding down the windows key and pressing PrtSc any time you want to save an image. They should be saving to >pictures>screenshots unless you’ve set things up differently. It’s a good way to take a lot of screenshots without stopping in between.

( EDIT / UPDATE: to say that if you use automation for taking screencaps remember to turn that shit off when you’re not using because it oh mylanta it WILL continue to take images without you realizing. Figured out where all my disk space has been going with this rookie mistake, thanks OP)

Additionally, PhotoScape X is a really great little tool for windows and mac that I've never seen anybody talk about, but I use it sometimes and it's totally free with the exception of a few paid features I’ve never once needed or wanted. This program is not as efficient as using Photoshop but it has presets for cropping images easily as well as batch editing options for some basic borders and color retouching.  While it’s not as powerful as Photoshop, you can get a lot done with it reasonably quickly compared to other choices. You can also take and edit snips of anything on your screen with it, which is really really useful if you don’t have access to the video or image files you would need on your hard drive for other version of this process.  The program looks like this:

Also, not to be like a minimalist about it, but you can also just fucken use Microsoft Paint or whatever you have. Like, whatever, there’s no law. You graphics dont have to be comlpex or deep fried. Half of my icons have been made or edited in paint at some point. It wont be as fast as some of these other methods but a lot of us aren't out here making icons in batches of 100 at a time. 

Anything that you can use to make smallish images of your characters face will work to make icons.

If you want more information about any of these methods of icon creation let me know and I’ll talk about them.

Question 2: “How do you make your icons ‘work’ in posts?”

I'm a little confused on what you mean by "make them work" so I'm gonna cover my bases here. I'm assuming what you're getting at is a sort of sense of cohesion in the icons I use, or having the "right" expression for the scene I'm writing. Either that or them not stretching and looking weird thanks to tumblr. I’ll get to both of those.

And before I go into my own rationale for icon choices I feel I should point out that a lot of people who aren't me do successfully manufacture cohesion out of their images by doing fun stylistic things like recoloring their images all the same way or putting cute borders and stuff around them or making them fun shapes, and that's totally something you can learn how to do if it interests you.  I do this for icons commissioned by other people and I’m not against talking about how to do those things, but I don’t really bother with them for my own icons all that much. That stuff is all fun and it’s a neat thing you could get into that can make your icons all look really nice together.

BUT ANYWAY --

Since the character you asked about is Pearl, I’m going to focus on her. Nearly all of my Pearl icons are completely unedited and a lot of the credit I would have to give regarding icon quality goes to Pearl herself and the consistently good lighting that the show uses. I don’t have a huge need for editing or color retouching beyond making memes or whatever other goofy things I might be getting up to. Pearl is extremely expressive compared to other characters I have written and since she's in nearly every episode, I've managed to collect…

...oh god, that’s too many icons.

Pearl is a main character and I've been RPing as her for over 6 years now so I have a fuckload of images to choose from and I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't help when I wanna “make things work”. She gives me a lot of options.

That said, you absolutely don't need 3000 images to make a good post. The way I've collected and organized these images may be of use to you even if you dont have as many icons. I've done a lot with my setup to make finding the right icon very easy. 

For starters, a minor subset of my Pearl icons are grouped by a particular defining feature. I have one large Pearly folder full of icons and then a few smaller folders inside for icons I thought worth grouping separately. For example, all icons of SUF Pearl in her new jacket are in the same folder. All icons of Pearl in short term alternate outfits are in the same folder. Anything I sourced from Attack the Light is in its own folder. I do this with anything that has a very specific use, such as writing AU content or flashbacks to specific time periods. If I can picture an icon in my head, I usually know where in my ridiculous hell collection to go to find it. 

This folder was originally just for her pre-canon outfit but now all of her outfits that only appeared temporarily are in there.

Perhaps more important for the sake of cohesion is that nearly all of my icons that aren’t squirreled away in some smaller folder are loosely arranged by episode. What that means is that most of the time I have icons from the same scene right next to one another. It makes it incredibly easy to make my RP replies appear as though it's all one cohesive scene even if I use more than one icon. When you do it this way it becomes very easy to choose icons that have the same lighting or that appear to lead from one expression seamlessly into another. Exhibit A:

While the vast majority of my icons are numbered, I do take the time to name ones I find myself using a lot or that have particularly unique expressions. Usually I'll choose names that I'll find descriptive or easy to remember based on the context of the icon. You can have a lot of fun with that and never lose your favorites.

Also don't be afraid to lean on icons you got from weird places if you like them.  The icons of Pearl from the official comics run don’t look like most of what I have. I think them being different would turn a lot of RPers off, but I use them a lot because I like the style and I almost never see other Pearl RPers using them.  It either makes me stand out or it makes me tacky, one of the two, haven’t figured out which, but also I’m not stopping.

And just to reiterate, you can use icons that aren’t your character if they’re thematically relevant or vague enough to look like them. When I’m capping I’ve started saving a folder of miscellaneous environments of interests, hands, and other everyday types of scenery that appear in the thing I’m taking screencaps of.

You can use any size you want for RP icons but the most common is 100x100 or 150x150 pixels.  Any smaller than that and the image gets to be difficult to read and work with in my opinion. That doesn’t stop people, of course, but I’m elderly and need glasses now, so no tiny icons for me.  On that note, I rarely see RP icons larger than 300x300. Any larger than that it tends to get bulky and be in the way of other people’s comfortable internet browsing experience, especially on mobile.  Of course, these are just my suggestions. What you choose will ultimately be up to you, but somewhere in that 100 to 300 px range is pretty safe.

A very tumblr specific thing to know is that any image that is wider than 300 pixels will be stretched to hell, so you probably want to keep it smaller than that.

Thanks, Tumblr, I hate it!

Also, don’t be afraid to make trash images for fun if you’re so inclined. People love that, or at least I do. Not having the right icon can be fun and lead to a very silly solution. Lean into being a shitposter if that’s what you’re called to do. 

So yeah, that’s basically what my suggestions are. Collect your images in a way that helps cohesion and ease of use. Keep them a good size. Don’t be afraid to get unconventional with your choices or make memes or whatever. It’s all for a fun time.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of right now, but more info on any of this can be obtained at the price of one ask, I know it was a lot of different moving parts.

[yurimother]

WLW Games in Steam Summer Sale

The Steam Summer Sale is going on now so I put together a list of some of the bets Yuri and WLW games you can get on sale now!

Kindred Spirits on the Roof - 45% off

Might as well start off with this best. Kindred Spirits is my favorite visual novel of all time. You work alongside two lesbian ghosts to make Kokonotsuboshi Girls’ Academy a “yuritopia.” There are a ton of couples with excellent stories, great characters, and tastefully adult scenes.

Flowers - Le volume sur printemps - 30% off

The first of four games in the all-ages Flowers series, Printemps follows Suoh Shirahane as she works to unravel the mysterious disappearance of her fellow students and grows ever closer to her female classmates and comes to terms with her love of women. The second game, Été, is also on sale for 20% off

Heart of the Woods - 20% off

One of my favorite visual novels of the past year, Heart of the Woods follows vloggers Maddie and Tara travel to a mysterious town at the behest of their quiet but determined host Morgan. Soon they find themselves caught in a mystery involving a centuries-old curse, ancient fairies and spirits, and one very gay ghost. There are optional adult scenes and canonical transgender representation in this game as well. I rated as a 9/10 on my review on Okazu.

Heaven Will Be Mine - 25% off

Heaven Will Be Mine is one of the best and most complex explorations of being LGBTQ. This masterpiece includes some of the greatest and deepest writing you will find in gaming. Oh, and the protagonists can romance each other.

Lilycle Rainbow Stage!!! - 20% off

If you are a fan of anime you will likely recognize a lot of the amazing voice talent behind Lilycle, if not you can still marvel at its adorable characters and numerous cute couples as you go through their daily lives. This all-ages VN will leave you smiling for days. I awarded it an 8/10 score in my review.

Fatal Twelve - 25% off

Protagonist Shishimai Rinka ends up in a ritual alongside eleven others to undo her own death. However, she is horrified to discover that her friend Rinka is among the dead 12. She works to discover the truth behind her death and soon discovers how far people will go to live on. This visual novel has excellent writing and artwork, as well as an incredible and suspenseful (gay) plot.

Lingua Fleur: Lily - 10% off

Lingua Fleur is a gentle and bittersweet story about a girl coming to terms with her own identity and past while forming a close platonic bond with another student, bringing her out of her shell. This is not a romance but an honest and gentle tale of friendship and healing. Read my review for more details. 

A Little Lily Princess -60% off

This sapphic retelling of the literary classic A Little Princess has a load of romantic choices and a fun story set in a boarding school in Victorian England. The art style is cute and the writting fun, making it enjoyable for bibliophiles and gamers alike.

Highway Blossoms -60% off

Follow cynical and cold Amber alongside bright and cheerful Marina as they go drive across the country in search of treasure. It features some excellent voice acting, funny writting, and incredibly engaging romance (and optional adult content). It will make you laugh and cry along the way.

The Fruitless Flower 雾雨中的徒花  -51% off

A hybrid visual novel and RPG, Fruitless Flower is surprisingly deep and very enjoyable. This hidden gem of a game is a steal for less than 1 dollar, however, the translation is a bit shoddy so go slowly. 

SeaBed - 33% off

This mystery visual novel follows three girls in three sperate worlds as they try to determine the cause of their hallucinations and discover what is really going on.  While a bit confusing at first, if you stick with it you will find an excellent story with romance and heartache that explores loss. I highly recommend.

There are a ton more games I did not even touch upon but you will definitely want to check out the ones on this list. Enjoy and happy Ga(y)ming!

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

so inspired by artists who do like an “art of 2019″ thing at the end of December, I really wanted to do a “writing of 2019″ thing for myself! it’s mostly fanfiction/dnd focused since that’s what i talk about on this blog, but i’m going to mention other things i did too! this is an incredibly self-indulgent post but...i do what i want. but it got very long so i will put it under a cut lol

top 5 fics i wrote:

1. My "long” (it’s only 15k, but that’s long for me, lol) NADDPOD fic “can i try again, and again, and again?” is not only the best fanfic i’ve written, I also think it has some of the best lines and moments i’ve ever written. plus i like, enjoyed every second of writing it, which is wild. my love for alanis and for naddpod: endless. my love for everyone who left a comment on that story or said nice things in the tags when they reblogged it: ALSO endless. 

2. i’m also super proud of how “there’s something about the second watch” came out. Fjord and Beau are not only my favorite characters from Critical Role, they’re some of my favorite characters ever, and I love their friendship so much, and even though this is a short little piece, it has a lot of heart in it and I’m glad I wrote it and I’m even more glad that it resonated with other people the way it did with me. 

3. Some of my absolute favorite scenes to write and read are the ones that take place the night before a big, possibly fatal battle, when everyone is making final preparations and saying all the things they want to make sure they say. “Heroes’ Feast” is exactly that, and it also let me explore some of my favorite relationships in the podcast. Also it made people cry which is always my goal. 

4. I worked on “where the love-light gleams” off-and-on for over a month, and I’m really happy with how it came out. It was nice to get inside Adaine’s head and to explore her relationship with each of her friends, and since season 2 has been non-stop intensity I liked writing the Bad Kids just getting to take a break and have fun together. 

5. I published the first three chapters of “Woe and Weal” back in January, right before the last episode of Fantasy High season 1 came out, when there were only two or three other Dimension 20 fics on ao3. There are definitely things I would change about it or do better, but it has been so much fun to watch how much the fandom community has grown in the time since, and every time someone new discovers the fic and likes it it makes me so so so happy. I’m definitely going to write more chapters in 2020 (once I decide which one i want to write next, lol), and i’m so thankful for everyone who’s read it and left a comment or messaged me, you all are what keeps me going <3

top 5 other projects i did in 2019:

1. wrote a 40,000 word magical realism novella for my thesis project, which was good enough to get me to graduate with departmental honors (and also like, graduated college with a creative writing degree!!)

2. wrote and published a DnD One-Shot which has now been purchased by over 50 people, and which has been played by people I don’t even know, which is completely wild to me

3. worked with some of my friends to write an interactive fiction game over the course of a weekend for a Game Jam

4. started TWO new DnD campaigns, one of which introduced a whole bunch of people who’d never played DnD before to the game, and several of them are now so obsessed with it that they talk about it all the time and spontaneously played a one-shot by themselves and texted me for advice in the middle, and the other of which is being recorded for a podcast hopefully coming sometime in the next couple of months. 

5. FINISHED a campaign I was DMing, wrapping it up with a satisfying but bittersweet ending where Strahd was defeated and all the characters got an ending that suited the choices they made.

top 5 fanfic projects/goals for the new year

1. I’ve got this post-canon, gentle-healing-over-the-course-of-many-years Allshine fic that I started and got like 1500 words into but haven’t had time to finish yet, but I’m determined to finish it!!! this will probably be my first project whenever i get time to work on fic again.

2. I also have at least four different Hardshine fics that I’ve started but never finished, but i’m GOING to finish one and actually publish it if it KILLS me.

3. I’ve never written a 5+1 fic before but I have a really great idea for one that’s “five times the Legendary Heroes stood their ground and the one time they ran” wherein the ‘one time’ is after they killed Asmodeus but left Ilsed. it’s gonna be great. it’s gonna have two chapters from each perspective. it’s gonna be a good excuse for me to work on writing combat, which i’m not very good at but would like to be better at. it’s gonna break all your hearts. I’m gonna get to it eventually. 

4. I’ve been holding onto this idea since Fantasy High season 1 ended, but consider: extremely fancy elven party/ball/wedding. The Bad Kids need to have someone on the scene to get some information, but Adaine is the only one with an actual invitation and it’s pretty dangerous for her to go alone. Fortunately, she gets a plus one, and the logical choice is for her to bring Fig, with her high charisma and her disguise self and the fact that she’s half-elf as well as being a tiefling. but of COURSE, so no one is suspicious, Adaine and Fig will have to act like they’re dating all night. we’re talking fancy clothes. we’re talking clandestine conversations while dancing. we’re talking mutal pining. we’re talking fancy elven bullshit. we’re talking the rest of the bad kids crammed into a van outside stressing themselves out about their friends. the world of fantasy high is RIPE for fake dating AUs and i WILL write this in 2020 even IF it ends up having to just pretend that season 2 doesn’t exist!!!!!

5. i fell in love with the “the mighty nein are all con artists in different crews trying to con each other” idea the second I saw this post, and I still would really love to write something like it--maybe not the exact idea the OP of that post had (I might throw a little Leverage AU flair in there) but just something light-hearted and funny and found family. plus it would be a good excuse to flex some writing muscles that I don’t work on very often. 

top 5 other projects and goals:

1. do a second draft of my novella to make it a little longer, and then try to get an agent so i can get it published!

2. write another DnD one-shot! I might try to do it in July for the RPG Writers Workshop again, or I might just do it on my own, but it was a really fun (if really hard) experience that I'd like to try my hand at again.

3. start publishing episodes of our podcast!

4. become a better DM, every chance I get.

5. get a full time job that’ll be stable enough to support myself SO i have the time and mental freedom for all these writing projects. that’s important, too. 

[wildfluffyappeared]

This is one of the closest things to my heart that I've posted in a long time. If you're going through anything rough right now, i encourage you to read this even though its definitely cheesy and kinda long.

I dont always know the best words to say to encourage people I care about who are struggling. I love all my friends but when I see you having a hard time i dont know what to say beyond just "hang in there, i believe in you." And i know that isnt enough. So instead I'm gonna try to share something that helps me a lot with keeping myself afloat with my mental health, while also infodumping about something I love (because why wouldnt I do that lmao). I'm gonna tell yall a little story about why Undertale is my favorite game. (Or I guess technically I should say has my favorite narrative in a game. Persona 5 is probably my favorite as a game overall. Hell, its narrative comes in close second as my favorite, although that has more to do with my politics than with my personal life [specifically my belief that change sometimes must be achieved outside what's considered legal or even sometimes moral, and that fighting injustice trumps everything else including law])

This may come as a surprise to yall but I have the occasional bout of struggling with mental illness. (For the record that was a joke. I'm pretty open about my struggles xD) There are times when I feel like I'm powerless against *insert struggle here*, and those times are often. But as cheesy as it sounds, something about this little indie RPG has made a big difference in my life.

I've never been a big believer in the whole "That band/artist/person/book/whatever saved my life!!!" cliche. Whatever that thing was, didnt save your life unless you mean that the thing, in a literal sense, physically prevented you from death. You found inspiration to keep living from the source material, and then YOU saved your life. But I guess that's kind of pedantic, and in the colloquial sense it makes sense to say that thing "saved your life." If we're applying that definition, then I think it's safe to say that Undertale at least played a part of saving my life.

I'm not going to go into too much detail here because a) yall didnt come here to read the whole plot of Undertale, and b) spoilers. But basically Undertale is a story about this (canonically gender nonbinary, fun fact) 8 year old kid. (For the sake of this post I'm assuming Pacifist run as canon.) This kid climbed a mountain that it was said no one would return from. What they were running away from, who knows. But they fell into a chasm and found themself in a magically sealed underground full of monsters, many of whom wanted them dead (because a human soul was necessary for them to escape the Underground). But through a seemingly ordinary human feature-- determination-- the child was able to change the fate of the Underground forever. They befriended monsters who fully intended to kill them. They journeyed through a treacherous landscape. And at the end of it all, their determination even managed to save every monster in the Underground.

Their determination allowed them to do all this. Now that's a message that resonates with me. Simple human determination can do so much. I mean sure in a fictional video game it can allow a character to literally defy death, control time, and reshape the world as they see fit. But even in the real world, determination holds so much power. Think about it. Some people think of it as prayer. Some think of it as witchcraft, manifesting your will on the world through magic. Some might even say that human thought and brain wave patterns can have effects on morphic energy fields that cover the planet and can be scientifically observed to influence random number generators. But all these things hold one thing in common: your determination. In prayer you're determined to appeal to the highest power you know to fulfill what you've asked for. In the other two, you're determined to exert your will upon the world in some way or another.

Your determination can get you through so much. I keep myself afloat these days by reminding myself to stay determined. Because my determination will see me through and give me the strength I need to grow, to improve myself, to make smarter choices, to do things that I didnt think I had the courage to do. And I believe in all of you too. Please do me a favor and learn a lesson from a silly little indie game. Stay determined, for me.

[maychorian]

Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #49

I’m so freaking behind on my comments and recs that it’s kind of ridiculous. If you wrote a gen fic recently and it’s usually up my alley and I haven’t commented yet, it’s probably in one of my open tabs, mocking me. I will catch up eventually. I was distracted this weekend playing RPG for twelve hours on Saturday and then watching Stranger Things 2 on Sunday, so that cut into my fandom time, but really I have no excuse.

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. Also follow @maychorianrecs for individually tagged posts, the easier to search and reblog. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

Forming Bonds by Eastofthemoon Words: 34,054 Author’s Summary: When Keith is told by his father he is going work along side with a young Altean named Shiro in order to protect Princess Allura he is less than thrilled. However, over time, Keith finds himself becoming more and more protective of his new friends, especially with the threat of Zarkon looming over their heads. My Comments: I love it when fics treat the development and strengthening of platonic relationships with the care and finesse that you usually only see with romantic relationships. This is a great AU in which Keith, Shiro, and Allura have to both want to form bonds with each other and work on making their relationship develop, and it’s very satisfying to read.

Invisible Bonds by Cecilia_Dreamurr for MuseofWriting Words: 9,835 Author’s Summary: Alone and forgotten, trying to make the pain stop. Yet how could he when he couldn’t even touch something, let alone try anything.He was still there right? Right? Inspired by MuseofWriting’s In the Darkness between the Stars My Comments: A spell makes Lance insubstantial and unremembered by the rest of the crew. Painful and angsty despite the cracky premise. Great comfort at the end.

Digging a Black Hole by Qpenguin98 Words: 4,049 Author’s Summary: Were he given the choice to die or be useless, he would gladly take the first. My Comments: Great exploration of Keith’s mindset before, during, and after that decision he made in the finale of Season 4.

Allura’s Never Seen Star Wars by Awseomness Words: 1,853 Author’s Summary: Pidge comes to the realization that she has an opportunity no Earthling has ever had: an opportunity to observe the impact of the storytelling of Star Wars on a person whose cultural background is not inescapably infused with Star Wars references. Someone who does not know Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Someone who does not know Leia is Luke’s sister. Someone without the cultural context necessary to recognize the admittedly poor dialogue of the prequel trilogy. Someone like Princess Allura. My Comments: Adorable. I love Pidge and Allura bonding, and the fact that it’s through Star Wars just makes it better.

Late Breakfast by GRexCarolinii Words: 1,586 Author’s Summary: “Be that as it may, you and Matt have a lot in common,”“Like what?” “Well…” Hunk paused for a long moment, choosing his words carefully, “you are both… excellent brothers,” he said with a decisive nod. — In which Lance gets jealous My Comments: Super cute. I would love this development for Matt and Lance.

Tick Tick Jump by Spazzcat Words: 2,484 Author’s Summary: Lotor does not shoot out Haggar’s weapon. Everything ends in fire, and only Matt and Coran are left to pick up the pieces. But Matt is a Holt, and Holts will go to the ends of the universe and beyond in order to save their loved ones. My Comments: Great concept, very well executed. Matt’s determination to save everyone in the face of continuous loss was amazing. He deserves his happy ending.

No Tomb Left Empty by ImpendingExodus Words: 1,646 Author’s Summary: “I dreamed you were dead.” Looking straight ahead, out at the darkness of the room, Pidge continued, “I dreamed I was back at the graveyard planet, bringing flowers to put on your tombstone. That place is gonna stick with me for a while, I think.” “Katie.” Pidge looked up again, at where Matt’s face had gone pale in the cold blue light. He was shaking his head slightly as his face crumpled and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Katie.” My Comments: Ouch, so painful. They did need to talk about this though.

War isn’t Pretty by SteamPowered514 Words: 2,340 Author’s Summary: A lot of injuries happened in space, most of them small little nicks and bumps. Little easy things to cover up and kiss better, the simple wear and tear of life around them and something that everyone on board was used to. A stubbed toe here, a jammed finger there. A paper cut, a scab, a scratch, a bruise, bumps, lumps, and scrapes. Lance hits his forearm on a hot metal pipe when fixing the castle with Coran, Shiro accidentally closes the oven door on his hand, Keith cuts himself when handling his own sword, Pidge trips down the stairs, Hunk catches his finger in a science experiment. The ship goes on. The humans on it learning that Alteans couldn’t get paper cuts, and had no funny bone in their elbows, couldn’t get brain-freezes, but one solid hit to a point on their hip and both legs would collapse underneath them, if you tugged on their ears it was extremely ticklish, their fingers could not jam they’d just break. Injuries in a war were much more severe, a lot more damaging. My Comments: Realistic and painful look at the kinds of severe injuries that the paladins could end up taking in the course of war. Made me feel a lot.

old familiar places by astrolesbian Words: 6,191 Author’s Summary: five birthdays hunk had at home, and one he had in space (not necessarily in that order) My Comments: Hance. This is such a sweet fic. Hunk deserves so much love.

home isn’t a place by ashinan Words: 2,493 Author’s Summary: Loneliness isn’t something new to Keith. But the pain of missing his team, his family, is soothed by their reassurance. My Comments: All of the care package items and gifts the team sends to Keith are perfect and thoughtful and sweet. A lovely birthday fic for a boy who deserves all the love.

Just the Same by DarkScales Words: 2,912 Author’s Summary: Keith’s only half Galra. He never thought his other half was all that important, given that his mother described his father’s planet as “a backwater hunk of rock literally named Planet Dirt,” until he finds out that his fellow paladins are human. Keith isn’t quite sure what to do with that. My Comments: Golly, this is adorable. I love how eager everyone is to share with Keith once they realize what his other half is. What a cute little AU.

Sacrifices by Forthediehards Words: 1,274 Author’s Summary: Matt confronts Keith after the difficult decision he made at the end of S4E6. Sometimes a little validation is all you need. My Comments: Another perspective on that decision, and quite a good one. I’m grateful for Matt here being so supportive and understanding.

Aftermath by GriffinRose Words: 1,478 Author’s Summary: SEASON 4 SPOILERS “Keith, man, talk to me,” Lance said. “What’s happening?” “I…” Keith started. He was still struggling to breathe, still struggling to wrap his mind over what almost happened, over the fact that he had to tell them what almost happened. He didn’t want to tell Lance, but Lance was here and Keith was going to lose it in a minute and at least Lance could go get Shiro or Kolivan or something. “I was going to…” “Yeah?” All at once, just like a bandaid. He could do this. “I was going to die.” My Comments: We’re probably not gonna get any sort of emotional resolution in canon for this horrible choice Keith made, so I’m very grateful for fandom giving Keith lots of hugs and comfort and heartfelt discussions in fic and art. This is a good one.

The Cost of a Cause by stayingwhelmed Words: 2,710 Author’s Summary: Matt shook his head. “Look at us.” Pidge turned to him, melancholy morphing into confusion at the grin spreading across his face. “Two of the biggest nerds from Earth, defending the universe.” Pidge returned his smile, and let out a soft giggle. Matt’s heart felt full enough to burst. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed his little sister’s laugh. (Pidge and Matt’s reunion and other unseen moments, told from Matt’s POV) My Comments: This so cute, you guys. So cute. I love these sweet science siblings. They love each other so much.

One Day for the Breaking, One More to Heal by pinstripedJackalope Words: 6,301 Author’s Summary: Keith did something drastic when he was trying to save Voltron in that last battle. He didn’t quite go through with it, though. A week later, his mind catches up to just what happened. My Comments: Holy wow, what a great aftermath fic. Everything just kind of sneaks up on Keith after the fact, which is how it works sometimes. I’m very, very glad Matt was there for him. And everyone else, too. This was immensely satisfying to read.

Brain Freeze by CondensationOnGlass Words: 2,027 Author’s Summary: Tumblr prompt fic! “taylor-tut said: YASS prompt time! How about some feverish Lance who has ridiculous chills and is complaining all through debriefing, irritating everyone else. As soon as debriefing is over, Pidge goes back to her room. Lance knocks on her door shivering and delirious outside her room, hoping that she might have a heated blanket. ” What the prompt says, the title- well I don’t know why either. My Comments: Holy frick, what a good sickfic. (Hey, that rhymes.) It just hits the spot, so good, gah, I love it. I just wish it was longer. Can never get enough Lance-centric sickfic. Not when you’re me.

proximity by bobtheacorn Words: 1,591 Author’s Summary: “Do you want to talk about your bad dream?” Pidge fires back with, “You want to talk about yours?” and Shiro has to relent. “…Fair enough.” //Shiro can’t sleep. Pidge is two steps ahead of him. My Comments: So sweet and achey.

Let the Rain (Come Down) by a_fearsome_thing Words: 2,541 Author’s Summary: In the midst of a thunderstorm, Lance and Shiro’s clone forge some new ground. It’s not what Lance expected. aka Lance makes a new friend and the clone gets a name My Comments: This is so sweet and achy and unexpectedly beautiful. I love the concept of Lance being the first to reach out to “Kuron” and make a connection on a human level, and this is a great example.

colors don’t fade by buttered_onions for yet_intrepid Words: 2,625 Author’s Summary: Commander Holt comes back, and Shiro doesn’t. Keith can get through this, too. A remix of Engine Won’t Turn, by yet_intrepid. My Comments: I’ve recced the fic this is based on because it’s amazing, and this is fantastic too. I wanted it to be longer, even though I’d already read the resolution from a different perspective. Keith’s loss is heartbreaking, and all the differences from canon are fascinating. I truly do love major canon-divergence AUs that just take a huge aspect of canon and flip it on its head.

The WMD by A_Zap Words: 3,081 Author’s Summary: Captured on a planet, the Paladins seem to have no way to escape. Luckily, Hunk decides to have Lance unleash their deadliest weapon. Keith doesn’t really know how to handle it. My Comments: So adorable and hilarious, omg. I believe it, too. Ambiguous Klance, but everyone is kind of attracted to Lance in this, so it barely counts.

Dishonest Mistake by ImpendingExodus Words: 2,346 Author’s Summary: Shiro’s got some walls up. When Pidge comes across a recording meant to be viewed in the event of his death, she has to confront her own feelings about the matter. My Comments: This was rough, but I loved that they were able to talk about it and come to an understanding.

The Voltron Aftershow by squirenonny for kakunamatatoes Words: 3,879 Author’s Summary: “This is the sort of work Voltron does?” Kolivan asked, cocking his head to the side. Keith hunched his shoulders, second-hand embarrassment making him want to curl up in a ball on the floor as his friends and teammates stuck cardboard boxes on their heads and… “formed” “Voltron.” “I swear we never did this when I was a paladin.” OR Keith gets to see the Voltron Show and has a little talk with the other paladins. My Comments: This is SO adorable. I love Keith getting to see his family and getting all kinds of love and having fun for this short interlude. Absolutely perfect missing scene from an episode that I enjoyed more in theory than in actuality.

A Little Unsteady by yet_intrepid Words: 2,759 Author’s Summary: When Shiro gets sick, Matt starts avoiding him. Not that it works that well. After all, their shared cell isn’t very big. Shiro tries his best to keep to his own corner, though, coughing into his elbow to prevent the germs from spreading. My Comments: This is hurt with not a lot of comfort, and it aches pretty bad, but it’s so well-written. Every time I see this author I know it’s gonna hurt and I still read it because it’s always good.

Previously Recced Fics That Updated:

Shadows of Stars (43517 words) Taking One For The Team (34003 words) Why it sucks to be a snake in space(38090 words) As Color Fades Away (190851 words) I'm not the Lance You think I am (74346 words) The Ones Who Were Left Behind (65972 words)

[thedeadflag]

Is it just me or there are no gay playable characters in open world rpgs or story-driven games, like The Last of Us? I honestly can't think of any. Like, there's plenty of bi, where you can romance any gender and some pan, like skyrim, where you can romance even other species (with the exception of Khajits, which is frustrating for me, 'cause I always play as a Khajit), but actually homossexual there aren't any, which makes me sad 😔

Isn’t Ellie from The Last of Us a lesbian? Or did they go in a different direction with her in the new game?

But I mean, I do understand the frustration, I just don’t really see it as something a lot of studios would go for, given the benefit of providing a wider range of access over a more limited scope (of course, cishets will always get one or two exclusively het options, but I’m not sure that’s very avoidable these days, sadly). 

FWIW I’m partial to the approach bioware took in Dragon Age 2, with basically everyone open to anyone without being explicit about it, because it lets players set up headcanons about characters, and gives everyone a shot at compatibility.  player driven storytelling means nothing is canon and players determine what is true by their choices, like in the elder scrolls games…so just because romanceable characters in, say, Skyrim, can be technically romanced by everyone, if you make a woman character and you romance another woman, you’d be in the right to consider the romanced woman NPC explicitly gay if you want, since it’s your story and that’s how devs designed it to be

But my view on that preference is also influenced by the fact that most gay/lesbian characters in RPGs of any sort are written as supremely cissexist and I’d never be able to get over that enough to romance or even enjoy/like any of them (it’s why I could never romance or even like Sera in DA:I, for instance), so I generally prefer the option that provides the least odds of cissexism over an explicitly gay/lesbian coding, unless of course the rare instance when the explicitly gay/lesbian character’s not cissexist (which…I guess there’s Traynor in ME3, maybe, potentially, sort of, but that’s about it in terms of options). 

I do think there needs to be more explicitly gay/lesbian characters, for sure. I’m just not sure there’s a developer out there that makes those big AAA sort of RPGs or story based games that I could trust to do it right (meaning, without dipping deep into cissexism to prove their being gay/lesbian)

I know some can look past cissexism as just a writing flaw to be ignored and forgotten rather than in intrinsic part of the character (many do this with Sera, Dorian, etc.), and embrace the explicitly gay/lesbian characters out there, but I just can’t do that. I have a harder time shaking canon, so when things are left a little up in the air, I’m much more comfy implementing headcanons to steer things in ways I prefer than trying to will myself to forget canon.

[meliwen]

An Asgore Analysis

I wanted to get a better feel for Asgore’s character, so I began to write up my own interpretation of his character. In general, this is just an analysis of Asgore’s actions and why he did what he did, and less so of an argument on whether he was right or wrong, although I do talk about that a little bit.

TL;DR: Asgore did not believe that humans and monsters could peacefully coexist. This is the reason he chose to kill any human who fell and why he upheld his promise of war; because if they did ever go free, in his eyes war and the destruction of humanity would be the only way to save his people. He did not kill the humans because of a fear of revolt or because of a need to keep up hope. He did not kill the humans because he enjoyed it, but because his sense of duty overrides his own personal desires. It isn’t until he meets Frisk that he and his kingdom regain hope that humans and monsters could live together in peace.

There is no evidence in the game to say that Asgore absolutely killed all six humans or that all the humans were children. However, I think that what few hints we do get from the game all point to it being true; that Asgore killed six children before Frisk came.

ALL THE HUMANS WERE CHILDREN

A quote from Toby for Escapist Magazine:

“The story will be revealed when the full game is released. Though I think we know more than that. Here's some info from the demo, summarized (spoilers): A long time ago, monsters were sealed underground by the humans. Several human children have climbed the mountain, fallen down, left the RUINS, and were assumedly killed by monsters. One monster, "Asgore" is seeking the souls of these human children.”

This interview was done in 2013, so it would seem that Toby intended for there to be some children who fell when first developing the game. While things may have been changed since then, I think there are still clues from within the finished game that show that all the humans were children.

Toriel: "Pathetic, is it not? I cannot save even a single child."

Toriel makes a remark that can be read in two ways. The first is that she is only talking about saving Frisk, the other is that she is talking about being unable to save any of the ones who fell. Personally, I feel that it’s the latter, but of course this seems up to interpretation.

(A box of kids' shoes in a disparity of sizes.)

Not only do we see that the shoes that Toriel has are all kids shoes, but near the end of the game we can see all the coffins are the same size as the first one that was built to house the body of a human child. And with a toy knife and ribbon, we can at least say that the cyan soul was most definitely a child.

Frisk is noted in game to wear all the items they pick up, even when it wouldn’t make much sense for them to do so, as with the cloudy glasses. In order for Frisk to wear these items comfortably the original owners would have to have been children. While Frisk could definitely have worn items a few sizes too big, I think it makes sense for these items to have been intended to be for Frisk’s size. Mainly because I can’t imagine Frisk barely keeping large glasses from falling off their face, or for Frisk to awkwardly shuffle around in ballet shoes that threaten to fall off with each step.

At any rate, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the game that definitely hints towards one of the humans being a teen or adult. An argument could be made for the empty gun, but it isn’t at all impossible for a child to get their hands on one, either in the real world or in a world set in a rpg.

ASGORE KILLED ALL SIX HUMANS

I don’t think we can state that Asgore without a doubt canonically killed all the humans, (because there’s not quite enough hard evidence in the game for that) but based on what we can see from the game, I think that’s the most likely answer.

The last human fell into the Underground a long time ago.

Inn Keeper Bunny: “Hiya! Welcome to Snowdin! I can't remember the last time I saw a fresh face around here.”

Toriel: “I pass through this place every day to see if anyone has fallen down. You are the first human to come here in a long time.”

The last humans who fell predated Flowey, and seem to predate the main characters as well.

Undyne: “What the hell are humans made out of!?

Anyone else would be DEAD by now!

Alphys told me humans were determined...

I see now what she meant by that!”

From this, we can tell that Undyne at least, has never fought a human.

Undyne: “There's normally a pair of old shoes in that seagrass.

Strangely, they're made for someone without fins or claws.

What kind of monster is like that...?”

Another thing we can say about Undyne, is that she never even considers that a human may have died or left the ballet shoes behind, or that if a human died around these parts to put two and two together. It’s possible that she wasn’t even around when the blue soul died, or that the blue soul ever even died in Waterfall.

Undyne: “You see, Alphys showed me these animations about...

Uhhh, humans? So I can learn their weaknesses?”

All Undyne’s knowledge of humans comes from Alphys’ comic books and anime. Had a human fallen within Undyne’s life, or especially during her time in the Royal Guard, we could expect her knowledge of humans to at least be a bit more based in reality.

Opinions may vary, but I think the last human who fell predates Undyne entirely, and if that’s the case, then other characters like Sans, Papyrus, Alphys and Mettaton are unlikely to have met a human before either.

Do we know where the humans may have died? Do the placement of the human’s items mean anything? If so, does that mean that they never made it to Asgore?

Monsterkid: “We had a school project where we had to take care of a flower. The king - we had to call him "Mr. Dreemurr" - volunteered to donate his own flowers. He ended up coming to school and teaching the class about responsibility and stuff.”

It's a bureau. There's a Santa Claus outfit inside. (Implying Asgore goes around as Santa, specifically to Snowdin.)

Napstablook: “this place used to get a lot of business...

but our main customer disappeared one day...

now it's just some hairy guy that shows up once a month…”

Gerson: "King Fluffybuns? He's a friendly, happy-go-lucky kind of guy... If you keep walking around long enough, you'll probably meet him."

It’s entirely possible that if the humans died all over the Underground, Asgore still would have had the opportunity to kill them. But, the placement of their items doesn’t mean that they died at that specific place, although it’s very possible some did.

The items that were left behind, that despite being part of a set, were all dropped in different places (eg. The ribbon and toy knife were found in separate areas), suggesting that the humans have either thrown them away, lost them, or that over time monsters themselves moved them about. If it’s possible for the humans to leave behind one item, it’s also possible that they could have left behind both and continued on with other, better ones; the same thing that we do in the game.

The order in which the items are found may indicate the order in which the children fell, and perhaps that’s how Toby intended for us to read it, but we have no real way of knowing. They could have fallen in any order. The yellow soul, for instance, may have been the last to fall if we look at how their items were the last ones we come across. If we look at the check on their gun however:

An antique revolver. It has no ammo. Must be used precisely, or damage will be low.

It’s antique. While they may have set out with an old gun to begin with, they could just as well have set out with a gun that was modern for their time. In this case, they could be one of the first humans to fall, as we would then need a good amount of time to pass for their gun to be seen as antique to Frisk.

Perhaps the children fell in the order the coffins are laid out in Asgore’s basement. Although considering how the colours of the souls are all arranged as if in a rainbow, it may also just be a design choice.

At any rate, I don’t think the Cyan Soul, even if they did die in the Ruins, would just stop there. The game indicates that all, or some of the humans, were able to reset like Frisk. Toriel mentions a familiar feeling with the humans.

Toriel: "When humans fall down here, strangely... I...

I often feel like I already know them.

Truthfully, when I first saw you, I felt...

...like I was seeing an old friend for the first time."

Asgore is not at all surprised to realize that he’s already killed you.

You tell ASGORE that he's killed you.

He nods sadly.

So it’s extremely likely that they all were able to make their way until they hit something they could just not defeat, regardless of how many times they tried, which in this case would be the strongest monster in the Underground: Asgore.

So I think that all the children were able to survive in the Underground long enough to either meet him along the way to his castle, or make it to the castle itself. The game itself gives us at least one clue that Asgore has definitely killed at least one human.

Undyne: “But even if you could beat me... / But even if I spared YOU...

No human has EVER made it past ASGORE!

Honestly, killing you now is an act of mercy...! / Honestly, I'm doing you a favor...”

Undyne says that no human that met Asgore made it past him, although it doesn’t specify the number. Undyne’s statement makes no sense if no human ever actually met Asgore, so we know at least one has.

You could argue that Undyne is trying to say that even if a human died before meeting Asgore, that their body and soul were collected by him and went no farther. But I believe that Undyne is mentioning Asgore’s name here as a threat, not as some passive barrier that no other children had encountered. I think this makes sense considering how she mentions that even if we were to beat her, there would still be another obstacle for us to face, Asgore, and that killing us now would be mercy compared to him. This would imply that he is a force to be reckoned with and the reason that we should have no hope of escaping.

Undyne is in the middle of trying to kill us, to intimidate us, to make us lose hope. Mentioning a monster who had no part in the deaths of any other humans, but was the last point their already dead bodies reached so technically speaking none made it past him, isn’t really the type of boast she’ll be making in this situation.

Another point in the game we can tell that Asgore did indeed meet at least one human...

You stare deep into the eyes of the Lost Soul.

He remembers the gaze of humans past...

Here it’s implied that he’s met humans before, and with the wording and the situation this is taking place (lost soul), it seems it’s referring to other humans that were in the same situation as Frisk.

Sans: “the human souls the king gathered... seem to have disappeared. so, uh, that plan ain't happening any time soon.”

Although to be fair with what Sans says, we don’t know for sure if gathering means that he killed them, or just collected them from the Royal Guard.

Outside of the game however, there is a tweet made by Toby regarding the issue.

Toby: “past asgore not to asgore”

undhell: “oooohhhhh rip”

Toby: “rip six times”

And another soon after...

undhell: “OK FINE I love the m u r d e r e r

Toby: “That’s the ticket.”

I don’t want to cite this as definite proof, not because his tweets aren’t canon, but because this tweet has been deleted. However, this just shows that at one point after the game came out, Toby considered Asgore to have been the one to kill them all.

ASGORE NEVER WANTED TO FREE THE UNDERGROUND

Gerson and Asgore, prior to Chara’s fall, both agreed on how to handle their circumstances.

Gerson: "Long ago, ASGORE and I agreed that escaping would be pointless...

Since once we left, humans would just kill us.

I felt a little betrayed when he eventually changed his mind.

But now, I think... Maybe he was right to.

'Cause after all, even though we never escaped...

A human's killing us anyway, ain't that right?"

Which, of course, makes sense with what Toriel accused Asgore of when they reunited.

Toriel: "You pathetic whelp.

If you really wanted to free our kind...

You could have gone through the barrier after you got ONE SOUL...

...taken six SOULs from the humans, then come back and freed everyone peacefully.

But instead, you made everyone live in despair...

Because you would rather wait here, meekly hoping another human never comes."

And we can see that Asgore never truly changed his mind about leaving the Underground. Or rather, he did when he was filled with the need for vengeance, but as that fell away so did his desire to return to the surface, and he agrees with Toriel’s viewpoint of him.

Asgore declared war in a fit of rage. As his rage subsided and stopped clouding his judgment, Asgore was left with four choices.

Go through the barrier with one soul, absorb six others, and lead a war.

Retract his declaration of war, take one soul when it becomes available through peaceful means, and attempt peace with humanity.

Kill all humans who fell, and then break the barrier and lead a war.

Befriend all humans who fall, and whenever time comes that enough souls have been collected through peaceful means, break the barrier and make peace with humanity.

There are four different outcomes for four different options. One has war as soon as it becomes available, another has attempting peace as soon as the option becomes available, and the other two are stall tactics, albeit with widely different outcomes.

If Asgore was serious about freeing his people, he would have chosen option one or option two. As it stands, Asgore changed his mind about changing his mind from his earlier agreement with Gerson. He did not want to free the Underground.

ALPHYS AND HER EXPERIMENTS

You might ask: what about Alphys? Asgore told her to find a way to break the barrier, so isn’t he actively trying to free everyone here, rather than hoping the barrier never needs to break? I think that Asgore never thought or hoped that Alphys would actually succeed in her research and experiments.

Asgore did not go out and search for alternative ways to break the barrier of his own accord. Once again he was content to wait until it came to him and he could not ignore it. Alphys came to him with her robot with a soul, and since even Bratty and Catty knew how important this would have been to Asgore personally, he had no option to turn it down without raising suspicion.Though of course, after Gaster’s disappearance, Asgore may very well have been waiting for someone to be near the same level of brilliance of Gaster.

But what really leads me to believe that he never truly hoped Alphys would succeed is how he handled it compared to how Toriel does in one of the endings.

Alphys: "I'm trying to figure a way for us to get out of here!

B-but I kinda have no idea what I'm doing.

I'll figure it out eventually, though.

The queen is a lot different from ASGORE...

She actually checks to see if I'm doing anything.

She's really turned this whole place around!"

Toriel is not only keeping tabs on things and showing an active interest in the process, but she is trying to make things work. In contrast, Asgore never once makes an attempt to look in on Alphys, and in fact leaves the position of Royal Scientist unfilled for a long length of time. Even Alphys herself notes how unhelpful Asgore is.

ENTRY NUMBER 20

ASGORE left me five messages today.

four about everyone being angry

one about this cute teacup he found that looks like me

thanks asgore.

Not out of malice, since of course he doesn’t want Alphys to suffer in any way, but because he doesn’t want to help improve conditions because he doesn’t want it to succeed. If Asgore really wanted to free everyone without having to kill more humans than necessary, he would have definitely taken a bigger interest in Alphys and her experiments, especially once he knew that people were starting to get angry at her and that she may be having some issues. But he didn’t.

WHY DIDN’T TORIEL CROSS THE BARRIER?

But what about Toriel? Why didn’t she cross the barrier with only one soul and then attempt to make peace with humanity that way? If she was unwilling to do that, yet accuses Asgore of not doing the same thing, is she not hypocritical?

If Toriel was serious about her plan, she wasn't suggesting that they kill for those six other souls. That would go against everything she has stood for and against everything she had said only moments earlier.

Toriel: “It is not right to sacrifice someone simply to let someone leave here. Is that not what I have been trying to prevent this whole time?”

Toriel: "You could have gone through the barrier after you got ONE SOUL...

...taken six SOULs from the humans, then come back and freed everyone peacefully.”

She mentions that Asgore could have done it peacefully, so I find it very doubtful that she was suggesting that Asgore should have killed in order to collect the other souls.

I don’t think Toriel was even serious to begin with.

Toriel: “If you really wanted to free our kind... “

“If” being the keyword here.

Toriel is saying that if Asgore truly wanted to free everyone, he would have done this and this. Since he didn’t, Asgore’s statements that he wanted to free everyone was a lie. Toriel is only pointing out Asgore’s own hypocrisy, and not making a serious suggestion for a plan.

At any rate, Toriel cannot cross the barrier if Asgore doesn’t allow it. Not only does he seem to be the only one with access to the souls, but if he doesn’t change his mind about freeing everyone Toriel’s only option would be to get it by force, and would not only have to go against Asgore, but the whole Underground as well. And if she did have to go against everyone, destroying the barrier would be counterproductive to stopping the war, since this would allow the monsters the ability truly begin the war with humanity.

Of course, then the question becomes whether or not Toriel could slowly convince Asgore to stop the war if she had just stayed. Toriel only stayed after Asgore’s declaration of war for the amount of time it took for the golden flower to bloom that the children had brought back from the surface.

ENTRY NUMBER 8

I've chosen a candidate.

I haven't told ASGORE yet, because I want to surprise him with it...

In the center of his garden, there's something special.

The first golden flower, that grew before all the others.

The flower from the outside world.

It appeared just before the queen left.

While we don’t know how long it takes for a golden flower to sprout, we can tell that Toriel did not leave as soon as Asgore made his speech (assuming his speech was made very soon after Asriel’s death), but she also did not stay very long either.

Asgore himself is even more vague on the timeline around Toriel’s departure.

Asgore: “In a fit of anger, I declared war.

I said that I would destroy any human that came here.

I would use their souls to become godlike...

...and free us from this terrible prison.

Then, I would destroy humanity...

And let monsters rule the surface, in peace.

Soon, the people's hopes returned.

My wife, however, became disgusted with my actions.

She left this place, never to be seen again.”

Could she have changed his mind if she had stayed longer? Did she stay away out of pure stubbornness? Did she truly believe that she wouldn’t be able to change Asgore’s mind? Did she truly believe that finding the humans first was the best option? Was her anger at Asgore clouding her judgement? Did she do her best to convince him to stop his plan before she gave up and left or did she leave without confronting him on his new plan? Was her leaving and staying away meant to be an ultimatum to Asgore, that it was either her or his plan?  Would she even be able to change Asgore’s mind without the burden of what he’s done being as heavy as it is in the game’s ending? We can’t say for certain, and whether or not she would be successful in changing Asgore’s mind would be up to interpretation as the game doesn’t give us an answer on what could have been.

All I can say is that while her decision was probably made under extreme emotions as Asgore was when he made his promise, Toriel, like him, did not end up changing her mind. Toriel only left the Ruins to return when she realized that the human would have to kill in order to leave, and she didn’t want that. (Which also to me, suggests that Frisk was the first human Toriel allowed to pass into the rest of the Underground, whereas the other humans would have snuck out.)

While Asgore seems like he feels safer staying in the Underground forever, if the ability to break the barrier came to him he cannot refuse to free everyone. They will eventually have to leave, and while Asgore is content to stay in the Underground, I’m sure he knows this as well. His choices are whether this exodus is in peace, or in war.

IS ASGORE AFRAID OF REVOLT?

Asgore chooses to remain with his plan of murder and eventually war. We know that by the end he does not truly want to hurt anyone, so why does he decide to stay with war rather than peace?  

Is Asgore afraid of revolt? He has a kingdom excited for war, so is he afraid that they’ll turn on him like they’ve turned on Toriel in some of the neutral endings?

While this does happen in some of the neutral routes, it’s also important to notice that some neutral routes continue on just fine.

Toriel is able to bring peace to the Underground and stop the war mentality even if she hasn’t been seen in a hundred years, if the king is killed, if freedom ripped from their very grasps, if hope is lost, and if up to nine monsters are killed (not Papyrus or Undyne). Undyne will be very clearly angered by this, but she will not overthrow the queen.

Even in endings where Papyrus, Alphys, or Mettaton take over and the goal of killing humans and preparing for war is dropped, the monsters do not revolt.

If it is possible to bring peace to the Underground in those situations, is it too farfetched to think that Asgore could eventuality convince the monsters to abandon war in a case where two royal children are killed and hope is lost, in a place where they still have their original monarch that they respect?

When we finally reach Asgore, he gives us many chances to turn back, but at no point does he seems worried about what the kingdom would think when they find out that he’s giving the human a chance to live instead of killing them. Nor does he seem to be concerned with what his kingdom may think when he offers Frisk a home after Frisk spares him. And yet despite this he still attempts to kill Frisk, which is one reason why I think his reasons for following through on killing the humans is not related to a fear of revolt.

Never once does Asgore, or anyone else, allude to revolt or mass unrest as a reason for his choices, so while it may not be easy and may take time to calm down the people, I don’t believe that this is a factor into why Asgore chooses to keep the war mentality alive.

DOES ASGORE NEED HOPE FOR THE KINGDOM?

Did Asgore kill them because he needed hope? Was he too afraid to take back what he said in fear that his kingdom would lose hope? Asgore does allude to this.

Asgore: "Truthfully...

I do not want power. I do not want to hurt anyone.

I just wanted everyone to have hope...

I cannot take this any longer."

He says he wanted everyone to have hope. And sometimes the foundation of this theory relies on the headcanon that without hope, monsters will die, because HP itself means hope. But I disagree with this theory.

(It's a book labelled Monster History Part 6.) Read it Do not

Unfortunately, monsters are not experienced with illness.

However, when monsters are about to expire of age, they lie down, immobile.

We call this state "Fallen Down."

A person who has Fallen Down will soon perish.

In a way, this confusing situation was all too familiar.

Monsters fall down because of old age according to a text that doesn’t make it into the final game. This can’t be considered canon because of that, but this is the closest explanation to what causes monsters to fall down anywhere in or outside the game.

Love, hope, compassion... This is what people say monster SOULs are made of.

But the absolute nature of "SOUL" is unknown.

After all, humans have proven their SOULs don't need these things to exist.

Here it lists hope as being a thing for monster souls, and from there we can guess that that’s where the explanation for HP lies. But look at the wording used here.

‘This is what people say’ and ‘the absolute nature of SOUL is unknown.’ This sounds more like a dig at humans rather than a reliable source of information about souls. And even if this was to be taken at face value, (which it might, after all, Asriel talks about compassion and love during and after his escapades without a soul) it does not state that HP specifically stands for hope. I don’t think this theory has any evidence beyond the fact that hope has the letters ‘h’ and ‘p’ in it.

Hope does not seem to be anymore vital to monster survival than it would be for a human.

Asgore says that he just wanted everyone to have hope, but is war the only way to achieve that? In the neutral endings, it’s true that everyone seems to struggle in order to hold on to hope.

Toriel is Queen

Sans: "but even though people are heartbroken over the king...

...and things are looking grim for our freedom...

the queen's trying her best not to let us give up hope.

so, uh, hey...

if we're not giving up down here...

don't give up wherever you are, ok?

who knows how long it will take...

but we will get out of here.

that's a promise."

Toriel Overthrown

Sans: "everyone's trying to live life like they always have...

but it's not really easy, you know?

when all of your hope has pretty much been thrown away..."

Papyrus is King

Papyrus: "DON'T TELL MY BROTHER, BUT...

DESPITE THE IMPROVEMENTS WE'VE MADE...

SOMETIMES THIS JOB IS KIND OF HARD.

SINCE THE KING WENT AWAY...

LOTS OF PEOPLE JUST WANT TO GIVE UP.

SOMETIMES, EVEN MY BEST ENCOURAGEMENT...

DOESN'T WORK."

Sans: "everyone considered a leader disappeared overnight.

it's gotten so quiet.

there's a bad feeling hanging over everyone.

like everyone's just going to die here, trapped in the dark..."

While they do struggle, at no point do they sound in danger of imminent death because of a direct loss of hope, nor does it sound like the above couldn’t also apply to humans in the same scenario. Things are tough, sometimes very tough, but with a good leader they are able to move onward. In the end, I don’t think hope was the core reason he chose to kill the humans. It was just a benefit that arose from it.  

But why would Asgore choose to give his people hope through killing? It would be more in character for him, since of course he does not want to kill, if he could find hope in a different way. If Chara could give hope, why not another child?

It wouldn’t be easy, of course, but is staying with an easy way to bring hope to his people enough justification to murder seven children rather than attempting a different way, even if it’s more difficult? This really makes Asgore comes across as weak and cruel, as even in the best possible Neutral ending with Toriel as queen, life is tough, but the kingdom still seems determined to try their best.

Asgore did not want to hurt anyone, and so he wouldn’t have done so unless he truly felt that he had no other choice. Since I don’t think revolt was an issue and a loss of hope is not a death sentence, these do not come across to me as good enough reasons to drive Asgore to do the unthinkable.

It was his fear of the surface and what he thought would be the eventual war and death that would come from breaking the barrier. Asgore killed the humans and upheld his proclamation of war because he believed in it.

I know plenty of people may say that Asgore couldn’t possibly actually want war, he’s too kind for that. He couldn’t possibly go through with it, it’s not in his nature. If he never actually intended to go through with the war, why not drop the whole thing, especially if revolt or hope aren’t the reasons he upholds it? What does he really gain from promising war if he never intended to go through with it?

WOULD ASGORE UPHOLD HIS PROMISE?

My answer is yes. Ultimately, I feel that the reason Asgore did not want to free everyone was because he was afraid of the humans. He remembers the war and both Gerson and he think that going to the surface is dangerous. But if he was given the ability to break the barrier, he cannot choose to keep everyone Underground. Asgore is too afraid to attempt peace, so if the time came, he would start a war.

Living in the Underground is not paradise.

Asgore: "After everything I have done to hurt you...

You would rather stay down here and suffer...

Than live happily on the surface?"

Scarf Mouse: "Everyone is always laughing and cracking jokes, trying to forget our modern crises...

Dreariness. Crowding. Lack of sunlight."

What makes him keep everyone down there is that the reality of an open barrier scares him more than what they go through down there. What terrible things that could happen on the surface is what drives him to do things he hates. It would be safer for the Underground for them to meet any human who fell with peace, but Asgore would rather take the risk that comes with greeting the fallen humans with violence, despite knowing how much stronger they are than monsters, because of what he thinks the surface holds for them.

Gerson: "Long ago, ASGORE and I agreed that escaping would be pointless...

Since once we left, humans would just kill us."

Asgore does not truly want to hurt anyone, yet he’s killed six. What he wants is different from what he’ll do, and this leads to what I think is a key point to Asgore’s character. His sense of duty. Look at what he says as a lost soul:

Asgore: "Forgive me for this."

Asgore: "This is my duty."

Duty is what drives him. In Asgore’s mind, war is the best path for his kingdom, so regardless of his own personal feelings about it, for them that is what he’ll do. Even if it kills him inside, and even if he will have to bear the burden forever. For a king, this is an admirable quality.

We may think that Asgore would never destroy humanity based on what we’ve learned of him in the game. If that were true, then it’s a bit strange then that those who know Asgore better than anyone else are convinced he’ll follow through with his promise.

No one should know Asgore better than Toriel, but despite all the time she has spent in the ruins to think things over, she seems to truly believe that he will do as he says.

Toriel: "ASGORE... Do not let ASGORE take your soul.

His plan cannot be allowed to succeed."

Undyne, who spends a lot of time with Asgore, notes that he probably doesn’t want to fight you, which is true.

Undyne: "It seems that you and ASGORE are fated to fight.

But knowing him...

He probably doesn't want to.

Talk to him.

I'm sure you can persuade him to let you go home."

Even though she knows that Asgore isn’t having fun with all the killing and may let you go, she still initially believes that he’ll go through with his plan.

Undyne: "With the power of seven human souls, our king...

King ASGORE Dreemurr...

...will become a god.

With that power, ASGORE can finally shatter the barrier.

He will finally take the surface back from humanity...

And give them back the suffering and pain that we have endured."

Mettaton is pretty straight forward with his views.

Mettaton: "LISTEN, DARLING. I'VE SEEN YOU FIGHT.

YOU'RE WEAK.

IF YOU CONTINUE FORWARD, ASGORE WILL TAKE YOUR SOUL.

AND WITH YOUR SOUL, ASGORE WILL DESTROY HUMANITY.

BUT IF I GET YOUR SOUL, I CAN STOP ASGORE'S PLAN!

I CAN SAVE HUMANITY FROM DESTRUCTION!"

Mettaton: "Are YOU the star?

Can you really protect humanity!?"

Mettaton: "YOU'VE PROVEN TO BE VERY STRONG.

PERHAPS... EVEN STRONG ENOUGH TO GET PAST ASGORE.

I'M SURE YOU'LL BE ABLE TO PROTECT HUMANITY."

And Sans, one of the most intuitive characters, believes that Asgore would destroy humanity.

Sans: "your actions here...

will determine the fate of the entire world.

if you refuse to fight...

asgore will take your soul and destroy humanity."

Quite frankly, Sans’ final speech here and our upcoming choice lose their punch if we go on the assumption that Asgore would never dream of actually destroying humanity. All of Toriel’s efforts and her personal exile was all for naught.  Asgore essentially paints himself into a corner and suffers for no reason. The humans are killed for no reason if the ultimate goal for their deaths was a lie all along.

After we beat Asgore, he tells us that he is through with the war. In the end it became too much for him.

Asgore: "I cannot take this any longer.

I just want to see my wife.

I just want to see my child.

Please... Young one...

This war has gone on long enough.

You have the power...

Take my soul, and leave this cursed place."

And of course, if we choose mercy he immediately tells us that he will take care of us, which is a big contrast to his actions thus far. Is this evidence that he never would have gone through with the war? I think that no, it’s not evidence for that, but instead it’s evidence that it was Frisk themselves who ended up changing his mind.

Giving him hope again that humans and monsters could live with each other, that change of mind could not have happened without Frisk. Frisk has helped the other monsters with their problems, and this was Asgore’s problem that he needed help with from Frisk.

Asgore as a lost soul is a good example of this. All the lost souls provide a look into the characters psyche before they met Frisk, and after their memories flood back it shows how Frisk has been able to help them. Undyne was against all humans until Frisk showed them that not all were bad, Sans had given up until Frisk gave him hope, Alphys thought she was on her own and that everyone would hate her until Frisk showed her that she could lean on her friends for support, and Asgore thought he was bound to his role...

Asgore: “Forgive me for this.” Asgore: “This is my duty.”  Asgore: “... “

...until Frisk gave him hope for a possible future again.

Asgore: “You are our future!”

When Asgore talks to Frisk before he kills himself he mentions it too.

Asgore: "I'm reminded of the human that fell here long ago...

You have the same feeling of hope in your eyes.

There is an ancient prophecy among our people...

One day, a savior will come from the heavens.

...I believe the one that was prophecied was you.

Somewhere in the world outside...

There must be a way to free us from our prison.

It pains me to give you this responsiblity, but...

Please. Take my soul... and seek the truth.

Ha... ha...

I'm sorry...

I couldn't give you a simple, happy ending...

But I believe your freedom...

...is what my son...

...what ASRIEL would have wanted."

Without Frisk, Asgore doesn’t gain the confidence that peace is possible, and if he doesn’t think peace is possible and would only lead to getting them killed, then war is the only answer for him.

You may ask about the Pacifist ending. Here Asgore meets Frisk for only a few seconds, never fights them and is interrupted by Toriel instead. I don’t think that ultimately it was Toriel who, in this instance, made him stop and change his mind. Toriel, and everyone else, not the least of whom included the captain of the Royal Guard, didn’t change his mind, they only supported the idea that peace was the answer, which was the idea Asgore had come to by himself because of Frisk and the past humans..

In the Lost Soul battle, Asgore believes he is bound to his duties. His memories come back because of Frisk. You tell him that you’ll save everyone, that you won’t hurt him no matter what. Your gaze reminds him of humans past. He remembers you by this, his aggression fades, and the familiarity comes rushing back. Only because of the promise and hope that Frisk and the other humans gave him, does Asgore have hope for the future, and it’s this hope that allows him to drop the war.

Was he right in fearing the surface? In the pacifist ending monsters seem to have found peace with the humans, even if Frisk is not their ambassador, so it seems that his fears were in some way unfounded. That being said, his hesitancy was not a bad thing, considering the strength of humans and how allowing time for both sides to calm down was a good thing, but his fears would have led to an unnecessary war.

Asgore compromised his morals, while Toriel could not see hers bend. Toriel ultimately failed in trying to stop the humans before they reached Asgore and accomplished nothing in the Ruins, and while the six souls Asgore collected were useful, in the end his dogma of war wasn’t actually needed.

[ciathyzareposts]

Journey: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The winning screen you’ve been desperately anticipating for 8 years.

            Journey

United States

Infocom (developer and publisher)

Released in 1989 for DOS, Amiga, Apple II, and Macintosh

Date Started: 20 March 2011

Date Finished: 21 May 2019

Total Hours: 23 (including 9 in 2011) Difficulty: Hard (4/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)               

Yeah, this one requires some explanation.            

I was sitting around the other night trying to decide what game to play with the couple hours I had available. I had made some progress with Kingdom of Syree but wasn’t loving it (it’s another Ultima clone), and I was holding out hope I could dispense with it in a single entry. The self-imposed deadline for my next entry was looming and it didn’t look like I’d be able to win that fast. At the same time, I wasn’t keen to start on a complicated game like Darklands. So I did a quick scan of all the games I’d skipped and abandoned over the years to see if I could find a quick win. House of Usher (1980) looked promising, then The Amulet (1983), but both ended up as “NP” (and on my “Missing and Mysterious” list) when I couldn’t get them to emulate.

My eyes then fell on Journey, an adventure game that I blogged about in 2011. By the time I was a few hours into it, I realized it wasn’t even really an RPG (and MobyGames has since removed that designation). But I’d numbered and rated it anyway, so its loss was counting against my statistics. I began to wonder what the problem was. How hard is it to win a freaking adventure game? Why would I have abandoned it? Was I too proud to get a hint? How long could it possibly take to turn this loss around? That last question was particularly important because, as often happens, at this point I had spent longer trying to find a “quick win” than it would have taken me to just play a regular game.

           Infocom called this a “role-play chronicle.” What does that even mean?

            I read my first and second entries from 2011 and began to remember the title, as well as the core problem: you have to reach the endgame with a sufficient number of reagents still in your possession, or you can’t cast the final spells necessary to win. Since there are a fixed number of reagents to find during the game and plenty of opportunities to use them, you can put yourself in a “walking dead” situation as early as the first 5 minutes and not know until you reach the end, two or three hours later. I was apparently so disgusted with that prospect that I refused to re-start and took the loss. I was more willing to do that in 2011 than I am now.

So I restarted Journey with a willingness to play it through a couple of times if necessary, and it wasn’t long before my “quick win” had taken over not just my few allotted hours but rather the entire afternoon, evening, and night until about 03:00. During this time, I restarted not once or twice but about 30 times, filled pages with notes about cause and effect, broke down and consulted two walkthroughs and still couldn’t win because the walkthroughs were wrong, and finally–14 hours after I started–ended up with the set of actions necessary to get a party from the beginning to the end. And make no mistake–there really is only one.

            In case you forgot, Journey is the game that canonically establishes that orcs and grues are the same thing.

           By the end, I had a much clearer picture of the game than I did in 2011, and I reached an obvious conclusion that I’m surprised I missed back then: this is the worst adventure game ever made.            

Journey hides this fact with nice graphics and typical Infocom-quality prose, but the game’s approach is all wrong–fundamentally an insult to anyone who cut his teeth on both text adventures like Zork and graphical adventures like King’s Quest. Every option it suggests is a complete sham, every hint of an RPG influence a complete farce. And its story isn’t even that original–so much is lifted from Tolkien that he ought to have a co-author credit.

            I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before . . .

          Journey (whose subtitle of The Quest Begins exists only on the box, not the game screens) tells the story of a ragtag band of village peasants who set off on a quest to determine why their crops have failed and their water has gone foul. A better-equipped, better-qualified band, led by the village blacksmith, Garlimon, left the same village the previous year and was never heard from again. This new effort is headed by the village carpenter, Bergon, and includes a wizard named Praxix, a physician named Esher, and a young apprentice food merchant named Tag. The game is mostly told from Tag’s perspective, and the game lets you rename him in its one nod to RPG-like “character creation.”

             The party later finds Garlimon insane and living as a hermit.

              The title differs from previous Infocom outings in that you do not type any of the commands. Instead, you select them with the arrow keys from an interface that distinguishes between high-level party commands (most of which move you to a new place or situation) and micro-level individual commands, aspected to the skills and abilities of each character. Thus, the party leader, Bergon, can almost always “Ask for Advice.” Praxix has a perpetual “Cast” option, and Tag has most of the inventory options. I find the interface inoffensive, but not as revolutionary as the developers were clearly intending.

             Some of the options in dealing with a party of orcs.

          The party’s initial quest is simply to find their way to a powerful wizard named Astrix who lives on Sunrise Mountain. Once they arrive, Astrix explains that the land is being threatened by the return of the Dread Lord, and he gives the party a quest to find seven magical stones. They must first find four (Nymph, Wizard, Dwarf, and Elf), which will lead them two others, which will lead to the final one, called the Anvil. Astrix believes that the stones are the key to defeating the Dread Lord. In their quest to find them, the party has to negotiate with dwarves, befriend elves, defeat bands of orcs, and explore ancient tombs. In these adventures, they make use of the special skills of several NPCs that swap in and out of the party.

              Astrix gives the party its final quest.

           If they recover the first six stones, Astrix tells them to seek the Anvil on the Misty Isle. The party must travel to the port city of Zan, dodge agents of the Dread Lord, and convince a captain to take them to the Misty Isle. Praxix has to cast some spells to help the ship navigate. Eventually, the ship crashes on the island and the Dread Lord attacks. Praxix is knocked unconscious, and Tag must figure out how to mix the right reagents to call a lightning bolt and smite the Dread Lord.

              Tag saves the party in the final combat.

          Just about every episode has some Tolkien source, though mercifully not in the same order as The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. There’s a dwarven mine that recalls Moria and an escape that not only feels but also looks like the bridge at Khazad-dûm. Another moment recalls the discovery of Balin’s tomb. A ranger named Minar joins the party early on in an Aragornesque episode. There are echoes of Gandalf in Astrix and of Bilbo in the initially-hapless but ultimately-competent Tag. There’s an episode that mirrors the Fellowship hiding from evil crows, and a tense episode in a tavern at the end that recalls the hobbits in the inn at Bree (the solution even involves turning one of them invisible). There’s a Tom Bombadil-like figure named Umber whose nature remains a mystery until the end. The Dread Lord is, of course, an exact analogue of Sauron, and the stones are the game’s equivalent of rings.

              Crebain from Dunland!

Tag, just like Frodo, freaks out when he sees some suspicious characters in the Prancing Pony. If they stay at the inn tonight, the party will be killed.

            The whole thing is reasonably well-written and would make a serviceable young adult novel, but as a game, it’s nothing but endless frustration. Here is a small list of its sins:

1. It is completely linear. The one saving grace of difficult adventure games is that they are rarely linear. Usually, you can move back and forth between locations and solve puzzles in a variety of orders, taking the time to figure out what must be done in each place. Journey subverts this tradition entirely. You have to choose the right options the first time you arrive in a new location or you cannot return. For instance, there’s one castle where you have the option to go to a left room or a right room. If you go to the right room, you see a chest full of jewels. If you’re not exactly sure what to do there and leave the room, you can never enter it again. This happens repeatedly throughout the game.          

The second screen invites you to enter a tavern or “Proceed” down the street. In any other adventure game you’ve ever played, if you proceed down the street, you can later turn around and go back to the tavern. Not here. Hit “Proceed,” and you’re out of town and on your way. It’s pretty easy to hit some of these options accidentally, by the way; one too many ENTERs while scrolling through text will accidentally activate the default option on the next screen. An “undo” option could have helped a lot.

2. A “Back” option doesn’t really take you “back.” Most screens have a “back” option, and sometimes this returns you to a previous screen so you can choose a different direction. But much of the time, it serves as simply another way to go, usually one-way.

          A simple choice to go left or right has enormous consequences for the rest of the game.

       3. You’re almost always walking dead. As I previously mentioned, if you don’t reach the end of the game with the right number of spell reagents, you can’t win. It is very easy to miss some of the reagents that you might otherwise pick up along the way, and also very easy to accidentally burn too many reagents casting spells. One of the options that burns too many reagents, by the way, is asking the wizard to “Tell the Legends” of magic. Usually, the “Tell Legends” option produces some useful lore about the game world, but if you ask him about magic, he does a little magic demonstration as part of his tale, which wastes necessary reagents.            

The reagents are the most egregious example, but there are plenty of others. Fail to purchase a map early in the game–a map that the shopkeeper himself encourages you not to purchase–and you can’t find your way to Astrix. Fail to ask a dwarf companion about some elf legends at the right time, and you don’t have the right words to speak to an elf woman and thus miss your chance to get the Elf Stone. Fail to do a number of things just right in an early encounter with a nymph and you miss the Nymph Stone. Fail to accept a suspicious character into the party early in the game, and you miss later encounters because you don’t have his scouting skill.

          The shopkeeper tells you that a required inventory item won’t help you.

           Not only does the game give you no warning when something like this happens, but lots of other things happen that seem like they might be mistakes. In particular, party members disappear, get lost, get wounded, and even die on occasion, and you feel like you need to reload–only to discover, 20 turns later, that you can find or heal them in a different location.          

4. Some of the walking dead criteria make no sense. Except in a single place where the dwarf Hurth has to “die” (or seem to die) only to be found alive again later, no character can die in a successful game, even if that character is no longer needed. This particularly bit me towards the end, in the city of Zan. If you don’t do the exact sequence of events correctly in several locations, the Dread Lord’s thugs are able to find your party and kill Hurth before the rest of the party members can escape. Even though Hurth’s skills are no longer needed for the rest of the game, his death prevents you from winning.        

5. Not only do you get no notifications of walking dead situations, a lot of text is wasted in such situations. It feels like fully half of the game’s text would never be seen by a party destined to win because such text only appears when the party is already walking dead. There are entire areas of the game that, if you enter and experience any of the adventures to be had there, you’ve already gone the wrong way and cannot win.

           A lot of text and programming–not to mention the graphics–went into a battle you’re not even supposed to fight. You’re meant to take a different path.

          6. A lot of the options are completely nonsensical. Basically, on every screen, at every option, and at every encounter, you have to try every potential option and note the result–keeping in mind that its implications might not be fully realized for several scenes–and then try to assemble the “best” list of options in the right order. Some of the “successful” options you’d never hit upon by logic alone. Most involve the use of spells. For instance, Praxix encounters a stump on the ground in his explorations. If he casts “Tremor,” the stump splits and reveals a passage into the Earth. It’s both nonsensical to assume (without any other evidence) that such a passage would be revealed, and that “Tremor” would be the spell to reveal it. Later, you have to use the “Wind” spell in a random cave to reveal a hidden rune. Other encounters force you to discern at the outset whether you can cast a regular spell or need the extra “oomph” that comes from mixing the regular spell with grey powder, only the game has given you no gauge to determine the normal strength of spells.

7. The game randomizes some variables. Even if you can make an exhaustive list of the “right” options in the “right” orders, you’ll still lose the game because each new session randomizes some of the variables. The most obvious is early in the game, when you’re trying to navigate the paths to get to Asterix’s tower. There are six choices of left or right, or 64 possible total paths, and you don’t know if you’ve chosen right or wrong until you arrive. Each new game generates a different combination of correct paths. Now, technically you can bypass this navigation by casting a “Glow” spell on the map you hopefully purchased in the first town, but after a few sessions of this game, you’re so paranoid about conserving reagents that you’re more likely to sigh and start working your way through all 64 possible combinations.

            The name of the boat captain you need to ask for at the end of the game is also randomized.

            One of the things that the game randomizes is the color of the reagents that correspond with the different “essences”: wind, fire, water, earth, and so forth. At the end of the game, Tag has to figure out what reagents to mix, and only a throw-away line in an earlier scene about brushing some color of powder from his hands keeps him from, again, having to reload multiple times and work through dozens of possibilities. 

            Failing to note the “fine orange residue” early in the game makes it nearly impossible to cast the final spell.

          The one nod the game makes to its own difficulty is by letting you view Tag’s “musings” once you’ve lost the game. This screen lets you go one-by-one through all the things you did wrong, but only those things that led to your particular demise, and even then it’s maddeningly vague with advice like “conserve reagents,” not “you used reagents when you didn’t have to in this specific place.”

               Tag muses on the many things the party did wrong.

          Given all I’ve described, I have to highlight this particular paragraph from the game manual:

              Your Journey will provide you with many hours of enjoyment and many hundreds of difficult decisions. But unlike other games you may have played, there are virtually no dead ends. Any action you take will advance the story toward one of its many endings. But there is only one ending that is the best.

           I’ve never read such a blatant lie in a game manual before. There are no “alternate” endings–every single ending except the victory screen above has the main character reflecting on the literal destruction of the world. And the only way it can say that “there are virtually no dead ends” is because the damned game lets you keep on playing as long as possible even when you’re in an unwinnable situation. That’s not a virtue!

           “Not a dead end.”

         These various failings are why it took me ultimately 23 hours to win a game that only lasts about 1 hour if you hit all the right options. And that’s with using walkthroughs to help in some areas. With Journey, what you basically have is a cruel Choose Your Own Adventure book that you have to read 25 times, each time getting maybe an extra paragraph. It’s barely a “computer” game, and of course certainly not an RPG. It has no character development, hardly any inventory, and the combats are all scripted.

           The most frustrating part is, I’m the only one who sees how bad this is! In the June 1989 Computer Gaming World, Roe Adams–Roe &@&$*# Adams!–practically wets himself, calling it “the best effort to date of any game designer struggling to find a new way for the game to interface with the player,” although he does caution about the use of reagents and mentions some of the more illogical puzzles. He seems to have been seduced by the interface–which is innovative but not all that great–and the plenitude of the graphics. European Amiga magazines gave it in the 80s and 90s.        

Only more modern reviewers have failed to be lured in by its promises. In 1998, All Game Guide rated it a 40, called it “shallow,” rejected its RPG credentials, and said that “it fails to take advantage of what a reactive computer can do that a non-reactive book cannot.”

            When I got done typing all of this and started searching for other modern takes on the game, I was delighted to see that Jimmy Maher (“The Digital Antiquarian”) had covered it in 2016. As I read his piece, he at first scared the bejesus out of me by calling his initial reactions “a unique and very pleasant experience.” But his opinion evolves as he plays, and eventually we get to the good stuff:

         [T]here inevitably comes a point when you realize that everything Infocom has been saying about their game and everything the game has been implying about itself is a lie. Far from being the more easy-going sort of text adventure that it’s purported to be, Journey is a minefield of the very dead ends it decries, a cruel betrayal of everything it supposedly stands for. It turns out that there is exactly one correct path through the dozens of significant choices you make in playing the game to completion. Make one wrong choice and it’s all over. Worse–far worse–more often than not you are given no clue about the irrecoverable blunder you’ve just made. You might play on for hours before being brought up short.

         When I rated it in 2011, I gave it a 23 without even bothering to explain the GIMLET. I don’t know what I was thinking with some of the ratings. I gave it 2 points for “character creation and development” when it deserves 0 and 4 points for “magic and combat” when it deserves maybe 2 (some of the uses of magic to solve puzzles are at least well-described). A revision brings the score down to 17. It does best in the “game world” (3) despite being derivative, and in the graphics, which are credited to Donald Langosy. I agree with Adams that they’re well-composed, and the game didn’t skimp on them: practically every scene has a different set. 

           Evocative graphics are one of the game’s few positives.

           The most surprising thing about Journey is that it was written by Infocom-founder Marc Blank, author of the original Zork series as well as the Enchanter series and several other Infocom titles. It certainly has his quality of prose, but it’s hard to believe that he didn’t understand why the basic approach was so much worse than the open-world games for which he was famous. Maher’s account of the game’s development suggests that the developers were in love with the interface: “an experiment to find out whether you could play an interactive story without having to type.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t explain why the interface had to so relentlessly drive the player forward, to punish him so severely for minor mistakes, and to waste so much of his time in unwinnable scenarios. Fortunately, it didn’t begin a trend. I like to think that Blank himself was dissatisfied with the result, which is why we saw no more games in the “Golden Age Trilogy,” as the secondary title screen has it. 

                 I like to think that the next two would have been Destination and Return.

            So there it is. In an attempt to get a “quick win,” I managed to waste a lot of time and get myself highly frustrated on a non-RPG, for no benefit except to increase my “win” percentage by 0.31%. This does not bode well for an eventual return visit to, say, Wizardry IV, but we’ll see.

         source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/journey-won-with-summary-and-rating/