#we were given an npc with 10 seconds of screen time

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Deltarune Theory: The True Identity and Importance of “Everyman”

I’ve been away from the Undertale theory scene for a long time. It’s been so long that a whole new-fangled game got announced, and I’ve got some theories on it.

Are these theories about Gaster or Sans or whatever’s going on with Kris? Not exactly. At least, not yet. I’ve got a better character in mind.

Let’s start with Everyman: Undertale’s most obscure character and (I think) one of the most pivotal in Deltarune.

This is a two-part theory: the first part outlines who Everyman is and why I think he’ll be important in Deltarune. The second part? You’ll have to read and find out.

This is a long one and with loads of images, so strap yourselves in.

Sections

Part 1: Introduction to Everyman

Who is Everyman?

“So Everyman’s just an Easter egg, right?”

Everyman’s Importance

Why did Everyman appear in True Lab?

Why Everyman will have a bigger role in Deltarune

Part 2: Everyman is ???

What will Everyman’s role be?

Jevil’s Connection to Everyman

The Spade King’s clue

Additional Evidence

“Seriously?”

The Gaster connection

The “Strange Son”

Who made who?

“Seriously, who is Everyman?”

End

Closing Summary

Final Conclusions

Who is Everyman?

"Everyman” is a special attack that appears during the Reaper Bird amalgamate fight in True Lab.

This same figure appears twice in Deltarune’s first chapter:

Once as graffiti in an alleyway in Hometown...

...and again as a rare bullet attack during Jevil’s fight.

The name “Everyman” only ever appears in-game next to his graffiti portrait in Hometown. Everyman’s sprites are simply titled “strangeman” in Undertale’s game files:

[Image transcript: UTModTool is showing multiple highlighted sprite entries that begin with “spr_strangeman”. On the right is the file “spr_strangeman_walk” opened, showing a picture of Everyman. End image transcript]

Some time after Undertale’s release there was a since-deleted tweet from Toby with a picture of Reaper Bird’s attack that he titled “Everyman,” which is where fans first got the name.

[Image transcript: A tweet from toby fox that says “Everyman”. The first reply says “Is that his name. please thell me thats his obj name.” Toby’s response repeats “Everyman.” The next reply says “everything i aspire to be.” Toby responds again with “’Everyman’ you aspire to be.” Toby then adds another tweet saying “Description. Just a good guy that shows up on occasion.” end image transcript.]

This is a web archive screenshot so the image of Everyman’s bullet sprite wasn’t preserved here. Special thanks to catcat for tracking this one down!

“So Everyman’s just an Easter egg, right?”

I don’t think so. I’d be more inclined to write off Everyman’s role in Deltarune as a mere cameo if he had only shown up once. But it’s odd that Toby felt the need to include Everyman twice in a single chapter. To me this seems less like a one-off cameo and more like foreshadowing for a greater role in the full game.

Let’s compare Everyman’s appearances to instances of character foreshadowing and one-off cameos from Undertale and Deltarune:

Mettaton

[Image transcript: four Undertale screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left screenshot, the narration text box reads “(the machine isn’t working.)” as Frisk stares at Mettaton in Snowdin’s colored tile puzzle room. In the top-right screenshot, the narration textbox is reading a TV announcement in Papyrus’ house: “(It says ‘STAY TUNED FOR A NEW PROGRAM - MTT.’)”. In the bottom-left screenshot, Napstablook’s text box says “there’s a show i like to watch on it... sometimes...” as Frisk looks at their television. In the bottom-right screenshot, Undyne’s text box says “This oven is some top-of-the-line MTT thing.” as Frisk stares at her oven. End image transcript.]

Mettaton is foreshadowed multiple times before he makes his proper introduction in Alphys’ Lab. This includes a direct on-screen appearance of his rectangular form as part of Snowdin’s colored tile puzzle. What’s interesting is that half of these references (including the tile puzzle) only make sense in hindsight to a first-time player. For all we know there could be other, more-cryptic Everyman references already in Deltarune that we don’t have the full context to understand yet.

Rouxls Kaard

Despite his legendary introductory sequence catching many-a-player off-guard, Rouxls Kaard actually is foreshadowed a couple of times before his stunning debut.

[Image transcript: four Deltarune screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left screenshot, Ralsei is reading a message from Rouxls Kaard: “It says... ‘Thoust fools, thou will NEVER figure it out now!’. This is continued in the top-right screenshot: “Then it, um, says, ‘PS - I make my own Rules. - RK’”. In the bottom-left screenshot, a puzzle-master says “ROUXLS KAARD... Lord of the Puzzles... Be careful...!” In the bottom-right screenshot, one of Clover’s heads says “RK came by... What a hunk!” End image transcript.]

I’ve noticed from watching Let’s Plays that many people don’t even realize that these lines were meant to foreshadow him (and I’m pretty sure I didn’t realize it either on my first playthrough).

Ice-E

Now here’s something that’s an example of both a one-off cameo and proper foreshadowing! In Undertale, Ice-E is referenced exactly once in the entire game—as part of Sans’ Monster Kidz Word Search puzzle. No other character mentions Ice-E, Ice-E does not appear in-person, nor does the Ice-E’s restaurant appear... in Undertale. Deltarune is a completely different story.

[image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. in the left screenshot, Kris looks under their sink and the narration text box says: “A can of Ice-E’s Cool Boys Body Spray ‘Spray For The Boys,’ Flamin’ Hot Pizza Flavor.” In the right screenshot, Kris reads a chart in the hospital. The narration text box says: “(It’s a classic 1-to-10 pain scale, using ICE-E as a model.)” End image transcript.]

In Deltarune chapter 1 we find numerous references and bits of foreshadowing for Ice-E and, lo and behold, we see that Ice-E’s restaurant exists in Hometown at the end of chapter 1. And notice how it’s multiple references and not just a one-off like last time.

In every example of foreshadowing listed above we’re given more than one hint of a character’s presence, and so far Everyman fits this same pattern. This makes me feel safe in assuming he will have a bigger role in the full game.

Everyman’s Importance

What’s interesting is that in Chapter 1, Everyman appears in both the light and dark worlds. So far Deltarune has kept the light and dark worlds largely separate from one another, with only Kris and Susie traveling between them (as far as we know).

Everyman’s presence in both worlds implies that either he can travel between both worlds as well, or at least that lightners and darkners are both familiar with him.

Based on what we know, I’d wager that Everyman is a lightner—specifically, a monster.  I say this for two reasons: 1.) so far we’ve only seen lightners (Kris and Susie) travel between both worlds, and 2.) this would explain Everyman’s appearance as one of Reaper Bird’s attacks in Undertale’s True Lab.

Why did Everyman appear in the True Lab?

The worlds of Undertale and Deltarune are connected. Toby has all-but-confirmed this himself.

[Image transcript: A screenshot from the official Deltarune website’s question-and-answer page. The question says “So there’s no connections between the two games?”. The answer says “It’s a different world that might even have different rules. That doesn’t mean there will be no connections at all though.” End image transcript.]

One major connection between Undertale and Deltarune is their largely-shared cast of characters. Many major characters from Undertale make an appearance in Deltarune’s first chapter, and Toby has shown that at least some characters from Deltarune’s universe have counterparts in the Undertale universe as well.

The Undertale Alarm Clock App makes reference to Rudolph Holiday living in the Underground some time prior to the events of Undertale.

[Image transcript: A dialogue box where Asgore says “Rudy... loved the holidays, you know.” End image transcript.]

This dialogue also strongly implies that Undertale’s universe has a counterpart for Noelle.

[Image transcript: Another dialogue box from Asgore. He says: “With a warm slice of fruitcake on the table. His youngest daughter peeking shyly from around the corner...” End image transcript]

Depending on how one interprets the Clamgirl NPC’s dialogue, there may or may not be an Undertale version of Susie (aka “Suzy”) too.

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Clamgirl tells Frisk: “Synchronicity...? My neighbor’s daughter looks about your age.” In the right screenshot her dialogue continues: “Her name is ‘Suzy.’ I feel like you two should be friends.” End image transcript.]

I’d argue that Everyman also had a “counterpart” in Undertale’s universe who lived as a monster in the Underground. Much like Rudy, the Underground’s Everyman likely grew old and eventually “fell down”. But unlike Rudy, Everyman was sent to the True Lab for the royal scientist’s soul experiments and became part of the Reaper Bird amalgamate.

This would fit with the pattern that we see with most other amalgamates, namely that they each seem to be made up of one named/noteworthy monster combined with several other generic monsters. The formula goes like this:

Lemon Bread = Shyra (Shyren’s Sister) + Aaron + Moldbygg

Endogeny = Muttler + various dog enemies

Snowdrake Mother = Crystal (Snowdrake’s Mom) + Vegetoids(?)

Reaper Bird = Everyman + Astigmatism + Whimsalot + Final Froggit

The Memoryheads seem to not “fit” with the other amalgamates, perhaps intentionally, so I’ll leave them out for now.

Long story short: Everyman was most likely a monster since he was part of an amalgamate and (as far as we know) amalgamates can only be made of monsters.

Why Everyman will have a bigger role in Deltarune

We see in Deltarune that three of the monsters who became amalgamates in Undertale have since passed away. This fits a trend I’ve noticed of Toby trying to “explain” the absence of characters who are prominent in one of his games but not the other.

The examples I cited above of Rudy, Noelle, and (possibly) Susie existing in Undertale’s universe also serve as “excuses” for where those characters were and why they were absent from the events of Undertale’s story. Rudy was dead and Noelle and “Suzy” were living with their families (presumably) in parts of the Underground where Frisk never ventured.

Shyra, Muttler, and Crystal are similarly “excused” from Deltarune’s story when the graveyard informs the player of their passing. Gerson is likewise excluded from Deltarune due to having passed away before the events of the game.

Conveniently, Everyman is not listed among the amalgamate monsters who have passed away in Hometown, and the alleyway graffiti implies he’s alive and well.

We know that Deltarune’s timeline and character ages don’t match up perfectly with Undertale’s—Deltarune Asriel is still alive and slightly older than Kris, who’s roughly the same age as DR Monster Kid. Conversely, Undertale Asriel died long before Frisk entered the Underground, yet Frisk is still seemingly in the same age bracket as UT Monster Kid (who’s barely younger than Asriel in Deltarune). Like Rudy, we can assume that Deltarune’s Everyman is younger than the Everyman who “fell down” in the Underground.

What will Everyman’s role be?

Remember when I said this was a two-part theory? Well, here’s the second half of my theory: Everyman is the Knight.

[Image transcript: A text box that says “Yes, you read that correctly.” End image transcript.]

Yes, the same Knight mentioned by Seam, Jevil, and the King of Spades. The same Knight who’s pulling new dark fountains out of the earth and who’s implied to be a major antagonist in the full game.

I could hedge my bets by saying Everyman is merely “connected” to the Knight, but if the Knight is a character we already know of then I think Everyman is the most likely candidate.

Let’s start with the name: Everyman’s sprites are titled “strangeman” in Undertale’s files. The very first mention we get of the Knight in Deltarune is Seam describing a “strange knight” who appeared, complete with red font for emphasis.

[Image transcript: Seam speaking inside of a shop, saying: “But, recently, a strange knight appeared... And three of the kings were locked away.” End image transcript.]

The word “strange” seems to be used selectively and very deliberately in Deltarune’s first chapter. Here’s a breakdown of all the times it’s used:

Seam referring to the knight

Seam referring to the Knight’s “strange son” (more on that later)

Telling Seam about Jevil (”Strange Prisoner”)

Seam referring to the “strange someone” that Jevil met

Seam mentioning the “strange words” Jevil said

Rouxls Kaard referring to Lancer (”a strange and irritating darling!”)

Narration before Kris seals the dark fountain (”You felt something strange.”)

Flavor text during the Jevil fight (”Kris gazed strangely”)

The Devilsknife/Jevilstail appearing in a “strange chest” outside of Jevil’s cell upon defeating him (this may be dummied out or only triggers if your inventory is full of weapons/armors and Jevil can’t give his item to you)

The description of the key to Jevil’s cell (”something feels strange about it”)

With the exception of the line from Rouxls Kaard, every instance of “strange” somehow connects to the Knight or Jevil. If the Knight is indeed the “strange someone” who Jevil met then the list tightens even further, to the point where all but one use of the word “strange” is associated with a single character and his handiwork—a very “strange man”, as it were. Speaking of Jevil...

Jevil’s connection to the Knight and Everyman

Jevil’s fight is one of two places where Everyman appears in Deltarune chapter 1. Not only that, but Everyman’s sprite only appears as a rare event during Jevil’s carousel attack, implying that his appearance is somehow significant.

Interestingly enough, the other two sprites that appear during this attack are one with a head that vaguely resembles Mysteryman (believed to be Gaster) and another with the head of a horse, a.k.a. the same as a knight piece on a chess board. It’s also worth pointing out that it’s rarer for the Everyman sprite to appear than it is for either of the other two sprites to appear.

We can also see the Everyman sprite represented in the official Chaos Revolving Keychain from Fangamer.

Jevil mentions the Knight once you defeat him, showing that he has knowledge of his existence.

[Image transcript: Jevil saying “THE HAND OF THE KNIGHT IS DRIFTING FORWARD.” End image transcript.]

This is interesting since Seam’s dialogue implies that Jevil was imprisoned well before the Knight overthrew the three kings at Card Castle. I can think of three possible explanations for this seeming timeline discrepancy:

Jevil is somehow intrinsically “aware” of things that go on outside of his cell

The Knight or someone else visited Jevil in jail to tell him about what happened with the three kings

The Knight is the same “strange someone” that Jevil met before he was locked up

The first explanation is the least likely, imo, due to Jevil asking who Kris, Ralsei, and Susie are when he first meets them.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Jevil is talking to the fun gang and he says: “BUT LO, THREE VISITORS STANDING INSIDE?” This continues in the right screenshot, where Jevil says: “WHO ARE YOU FEW?” End image transcript.]

If Jevil was aware of the outside world then he’d surely know of the fun gang’s antics by that point.

The second explanation doesn’t seem very likely either. Seam is the only character who acknowledges Jevil’s existence and we never see Seam visit Card Castle, even after the Spade King has been overthrown.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Jack Person tells the fun gang: “By the by, I asked Seam to come here, but...” Continuing onto the right screenshot, where Jack Person finishes by saying “There wasn’t any interest.” End image transcript.]

Jevil’s cell doesn’t seem to have any guards and it’s kept on its own floor, so that would rule out Jevil hearing about the knight from other prisoners.

If someone in the castle brings food to Jevil then he may have overheard it from them, but even that is speculative. Does Jevil even need to eat? He says his body “cannot be killed,” after all.

[Image transcript: Jevil saying “THIS BODY CANNOT BE KILLED!” End image transcript.]

And I’m not sure if the King of Spades would be so accommodating towards a dangerous prisoner.

That just leaves the third explanation, which seems the most likely to me. It’s also the tidiest explanation for how Jevil would be aware of both the Knight and Everyman—they’re the same person.

We can only speculate as to why the “strange someone” caused Jevil to run amok. If that strange someone was the Knight then I would assume that setting Jevil loose may have been his attempt to overthrow or destabilize Card Castle’s leadership. We know that the Knight eventually overthrew the three other kings himself, so that may have been his plan B after Jevil failed or he merely wished to remove Jevil as an obstacle. Either way, the Knight toppled the quadrumvirate and installed the Spade King as the protector of Card Castle’s dark fountain.

The Spade King’s clue

The Spade King is the closest ally of the Knight that we’ve seen so far. The exact nature of their relationship isn’t fully known, but the King’s words imply that he reveres and is loyal to the Knight.

[Image description: Four Deltarune screenshots arranged in a grid. In the top-left, the King of Spades says “By the Knight’s will, I shall shatter your heart to pieces!”. In the top-right, the King says “For the KNIGHT has appeared.” In the bottom-left, the King says “The KNIGHT that pulls the Fountains from the Earth.” In the bottom-right, the King says “My KNIGHT... I shall not fail you...” End image transcript.]

Both characters share an interest in maintaining the existence of dark fountains, given that the Knight has been said to create new fountains by pulling them up from the Earth.

Unlike Jevil, the Spade King’s attacks never make explicit reference to Everyman’s visage, but he does give a possible nod that many players have overlooked. When the Spade King is defeated, he makes a curious gesture by letting his cloak fly away like a butterfly.

While this may be a simple artistic flourish, I always found this moment to be odd and unfitting for a brutish character like the King. It’s also worth pointing out how the King’s cloak is clearly not a part of his body, unlike what’s implied with Lancer’s “clothes”.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the battle narration says: “You tell Lancer you can’t tell the difference between his clothes and his body.” The narration continues in the right screenshot, saying “He seems flattered... His ATTACK POWER went down!” End transcript.]

What if the King didn’t always have that butterfly-shaped cloak? Did someone give it to him? Think of where else we’ve seen butterfly motifs before.

At first blush, this seems obvious—the Reaper Bird is clearly made from the Core mercenaries, including Whimsalot. Whimsalot attacks with butterfly bullets, so that’s where Reaper Bird got them from, right? Case closed. Well, not so fast.

It turns out there are two different sets of butterfly bullets in Undertale’s game files, and Reaper Bird’s are different from Whimsalot’s.

[Image transcript: Two groups of butterfly bullet sprites. The left group is labeled “Whimsun / Whimsalot.” The right group is labeled “Reaper Bird”. End image transcript.]

Notice how Reaper Bird’s butterflies are smaller and have pointier, more symmetrical wings? While those differences could be chalked up to limited pixel resolution, it’s interesting how Toby went out of his way to create an entirely unique set of butterfly bullets for Reaper Bird when it arguably would have made more sense for him to recycle the Whimsun butterflies like he did for Whimsalot.

If you want to compare the sprites for yourself I suggest either looking at the game files directly or looking at an actual playthrough of Undertale. I’ve noticed that Spriter’s Resource mistakenly has Reaper Bird’s butterflies listed under Whimsun’s sprite sheet (which is a completely understandable mix-up).

To drive the point home, notice the string names that are used for these butterflies:

[Image transcript: An UTModTool window showing multiple named strings. Highlighted in red are six strings that each contain “obj_strangeman_butterfly” in their names. End image transcript.]

They’re “strangeman” butterflies. Not “amalgamate” or “Reaper Bird” butterflies (despite Reaper Bird having its own share of dedicated strings and named sprites), and they’re not “Whimsalot” butterflies either. Toby clearly delineates them as belonging to strangeman, a.k.a. Everyman, meaning that Everyman is specifically associated with butterfly imagery. The Spade King also makes use of butterfly imagery immediately after he mentions the Knight in his final turn.

Between the King and Jevil, this makes two characters that can be linked to both Everyman and the Knight.

Additional Evidence

Let’s circle back to Reaper Bird for a second. It’s commonly known that this amalgamate is made from Astigmatism, Final Froggit, and Whimsalot. To wit:

These enemies are part of the mercenary group that Mettaton hires to attack you in the Core. Have you ever noticed how out-of-place they seem? Almost every other set of enemies in the game is somehow themed around their environment — Snowdin enemies are ice creatures, Hotland enemies are fire/lava-themed, etc. These mercenaries are themed around medieval warfare and yet they show up in the Core, the most high-tech area in the entire Underground.

What’s even stranger is that this medieval theme seems to come out of nowhere. Astigmatism, Final Froggit, and Whimsalot act as “upgraded” versions of Loox, Froggit, and Whimsun, respectively. And yet their Ruins counterparts don’t have any medieval theming whatsoever—it was added purely for the mercenaries. For whatever reason they’re all dressed like a bunch of wizards and... knights.

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, a Core NPC says “Why do I look like a black sausage and not a knight or a wizard?” This continues on the right, where it says “Well... Everyone has an angle they look best from.” End image transcript.]

That’s not my interpretation of their designs—the game outright calls them knights.

On the one hand, it’s true that Asgore’s royal guards also dress up like knights, but the Core mercenaries are explicitly not part of the royal guard—they’re mercenaries.

[Image transcript: Battle flavor text that states “Mercenaries emerge from the shadows.” End image transcript.]

Assuming that Asgore has a dress code for his guards or is just old-fashioned in his sensibilities, there’s still no reason why fighters outside of the guard should follow their standard. Even some of the royal sentries don’t follow this theming, as seen with Doggo and Sans (who’s technically a sentry):

With the abundance of knight-themed royal guard and sentry enemies that exist already, Toby could’ve easily designed the Core Mercenaries to more accurately fit with the Core’s futuristic theme. Doesn’t it seem a little too coincidental that Everyman would wind up as part of the same amalgamate as these otherwise out-of-place knights?

When we look at the other amalgamates, we can see that Lemon Bread (a.k.a. Shyren’s sister) is made up of Waterfall enemies. Endogeny is made up entirely of dog-based enemies. These two amalgamates each have a “theme” for their component monsters that fits the “main” named monster they’re each made of, and Reaper Bird has a clear theme of its own. Why would Everyman be paired with a bunch of knights if he was not connected to them in some way?

Even the Undertale artbook groups Everyman’s concept art with the Core Mercenaries, specifically the ones that look the most like knights and wizards in-game. The book also repeats the name “Everyman” and Toby’s cryptic phrase of “Just a good guy who shows up on occasion.”

Perhaps Everyman knew the Core mercenaries when he was alive? Were they his fellow knights? Or did they work for him before he fell down and they had to then lend their services elsewhere?

“The Knight? Seriously?”

Some of you may be shaking your heads dismissively at the idea of Everyman being the Knight (or you more likely clicked over to another tab by now). I mean, just look at the guy:

What part of this design makes you think “knight”, let alone THE Knight? Well, Seam does refer to the Knight as a “strange” knight, and Everyman certainly fits that bill. But more importantly, we haven’t seen an actual overworld sprite for Everyman yet—we’ve only seen some graffiti and a couple of magic bullet attacks, which are always abstract and simplified.

Not pictured: Froggit, Migosp, Temmie, Moldbygg, Tsunderplane, Mettaton, or Endogeny.

Everyman’s “proper” design would almost certainly differ from his Pillsbury Doughboy-esque bullet sprite, especially if he’s wearing a cloak or a suit of armor. And even if his design doesn’t differ that much, so what? It’s not like this series has ever had an opponent that looks goofy or non-threatening, right?

Another little tidbit I noticed: one of Reaper Bird’s attacks consists of Everyman repeatedly removing his own head.

Or maybe it’s not his head? Perhaps it’s a helmet? Like one that a knight would wear? After all, it’s not unheard of for helmets to have beak-like protrusions.

And this is a series where helmets can come in any shape or size to better fit the needs of the wearer.

Just some food for thought.

The Gaster connection

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: “Isn’t Gaster supposed to be the Knight?” If you haven’t heard by now, this is one of the prevailing theories in the fandom. To be honest, if the Knight ends up not being Everyman then Gaster is the next-best candidate, imo, but these two theories don’t have to be mutually-exclusive. I think a case can be made that Everyman and Gaster are connected in some way.

Let me say up front that this section is highly speculative (unlike the previous sections, which clearly aren’t the least bit speculative). We’re dealing with two super-obscure characters who’ve yet to make a proper on-screen appearance in either game. It’s already hard enough to figure out how either of them connect to the broader Undertale universe, let alone to each other, but I’ll give it a shot.

For starters, we can affirm that both Gaster and Everyman are linked to the True Lab. There’s no shortage of fan theories and speculation on Gaster’s prior usage of the True Lab in his own experiments and I won’t get into all that here, but suffice it to say the True Lab has Gaster’s name written all over it.

(Am I the only one who thinks the DT Extractor looks more like Everyman’s head than it does a Gaster Blaster? Forget I said anything.)

We’ve covered how Everyman appears as one of Reaper Bird’s attacks. Interestingly, the amalgamate Memoryhead has an attack that resembles the head of Mysteryman, the figure believed to be Gaster (which I’ll assume here for simplicity’s sake).

If we follow the logic of my prior “Everyman is the named/important monster that makes up Reaper Bird, fitting the pattern of other amalgamates” argument, then Gaster (or pieces of him) could fill the same role for the Memoryheads.

Everyman and Gaster’s sprites both have the suffix of “man” in Undertale’s game files. Here are all the sprites that use this same naming scheme:

strangeman - Everyman

mysteryman - “Gaster”

snowman - gives you the snowman piece

riverman - a.k.a. River Person

darkman - the shadowy overworld sprites used for the Core Mercenaries

watchingman - The spoon-shaped amalgamate that tucks Frisk into bed

The snowman’s inclusion is a bit of a fluke, because what else would you call a snowman without using “man” in the name? If we exclude the snowman, each instance of “man” represents a mysterious figure that ties back to Everyman and/or Gaster.

We’ve already covered the connection between Everyman and the Core Mercenaries, and it’s easy to connect the “watchingman” amalgamate with the True Lab. River Person is also frequently linked to Gaster in fan theories (and they allude to “the man from the other world” and “the man who speaks in hands”), so what we’re left with is a close-knit community of strange, mysterious "man”s.

This naming scheme looks very intentional on Toby’s part, and he seems to be continuing it in Deltarune by referring to the secret unseen NPC who gives you the egg behind the tree in Scarlet Forest as simply “a man.”

[Image transcript: Narration from the secret egg room. The text box states: “(Well, there is a man here.)” End image transcript]

The Knight’s “Strange Son”?

Remember when I said I’d get back to the Knight’s “strange son”? That’s now. I’m a little iffy on this topic because it involves stacking a whole ton of assumptions onto a single line of dialogue that’s phrased in an ambiguous way. But, if it means what I think it means, it could shed a ton of light on Everyman’s possible connection to Gaster and whether either of them are the Knight.

When you ask Seam about the “Kingdom”, Seam says this:

[Image transcript: Three of Seam’s text boxes arranged vertically. In order, they read: “Historically, this land was ruled by the Four Kings, from CARD CASTLE to the East. But, recently, a strange knight appeared... And three of the kings were locked away. The remaining king put him and his strange son into power.” End image transcript]

Let’s focus on that last sentence. On my first playthrough I misread this line as “the knight put the king and his strange son into power” because that sounds a lot closer to the events that happened—the Spade King and his “strange son” Lancer are in power now because the three kings were locked away, presumably by the Knight.

But the actual text states the opposite—the remaining king (Spade King) put him (the Knight) and his strange son (i.e., the Knight’s son) into power. Or does it? The line could also read as—the remaining king (Spade King) put him (the Knight) and his (the King’s) strange son (Lancer) into power. The second way is  awkwardly-structured but technically valid. And this is assuming that Toby didn’t make any grammatical errors when he typed these lines, which he has done on occasion.

[Image transcript: A dialogue box where Dr. Alphys says “I felt so guilty knowing I hadn’t do anything to stop you.” End image transcript.]

Not to be too hard on Toby, but even if Seam’s line is grammatically correct it’s still clunky and murky in its conception—at this point in the game we’ve only just been introduced to Lancer and the fact that his dad is the King, and now this line is potentially introducing yet another father/son duo that is closely connected with Lancer’s dad—is it any wonder that this line is often glossed over by fans?

The second reading, where Lancer is the “strange son,” is also awkward because the Spade King would have little need to put Lancer “into power”. Lancer was already a prince and, presumably, already wielded power in that role. Various NPCs make reference to Lancer bossing them around, and such a thing could’ve easily happened before the three kings were deposed.

If we take Seam’s line with the first reading (where the Knight has a “strange son”) and assume there were no grammatical errors, then this is the only time in chapter 1 that the Knight is ever referred to as having a son. It’s also the only time that the Knight is addressed with pronouns, implying that the Knight is male. If true, this would rule out the theory that Kris (or any potential alter ego that Kris has) is the knight, since Kris is neither male nor do they have a son. This would also rule out Susie, who’s never been a popular contender for being the Knight but is referred to as a “dark knight” on her stats page.

Who made who?

So then, who’s male, widely believed to be the Knight, and is often depicted as having one or more sons?

This (alleged) guy!

“But wait,” you might ask, “isn’t your theory that Everyman is the Knight?” Well, the Knight and his “strange son” seem to be working as a duo in the scenario that Seam outlines, given that the Spade King put both of them “into power.”

Because of Everyman’s connections to the Knight that I’ve laid out, plus the more popular theory that Gaster is the Knight, it’s possible that one may be the Knight and the other may be the Knight’s “strange son.” The way I see it, it doesn’t make a huge difference which one is which.

Now, I don’t think that Gaster and Everyman would be father and son in the strict biological sense. There are a number of reasons for this, but for starters I’m not even sure if Everyman and Gaster are the same species. My inclination is that Everyman is a monster, while Gaster may be a darkner. The latter is mostly my own guess and springboards off of a popular theory that Sans is a darkner, but it’s a whole other can of worms that I won’t get into now.

More importantly, Gaster is strongly implied to have some sort of connection to Sans and Papyrus. All three of them are also connected with special fonts that they each use. As far as I can tell, there’s no widely-used font by the name of “Everyman”, so this would imply that Everyman is not a skeleton and therefore not biologically related to them. However, there’s more than one way to start a family.

Gaster was the royal scientist in Undertale’s universe and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he (or his potential Deltarune counterpart) could find the means to create life forms artificially.

[Image transcript: The vessel creation scene from Deltarune. The on-screen text says “YOU HAVE CREATED A WONDERFUL FORM.” End image transcript.]

Everyman could be a creation of Gaster’s and thus he’d be Gaster’s “son”.

There’s also another possibility: Everyman is Gaster’s creator. We know that the Knight is pulling new dark fountains out of the Earth. I think the Knight, regardless of who they are, must be able to survive without a dark fountain to give their body form, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to venture into areas where new fountains have yet to be pulled up. The Knight is almost certainly a lightner, and I’ve already detailed why I think Everyman is a lightner as well.

We don’t fully understand how dark fountains interact with darkners, but it’s stated multiple times that dark fountains “give form” to the Dark World.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Ralsei’s narration says “Today the FOUNTAIN OF DARKNESS-” and continues into the right screenshot, saying: “The geyser that gives this land form-” End image transcript.]

In the dummied-out manual pages, Ralsei also mentions how his dark fountain gives his body form.

[Image transcript: Ralsei’s manual excerpt, whic says “Dedicated to The unending pillar of darkness that gives my body form.” End image transcript]

Darkners need dark fountains in order to maintain their forms. They may not even be able to survive at all without them. From this point of view, when the Knight creates new dark fountains he’s bringing new darkners to life. If Gaster is a darkner himself, then it’s not unthinkable to imagine that Everyman may have brought him to life in this way and could thus be called his “father”. Seam does refer to lightners as the “creators” of darkners, after all.

[Image transcript: Seam’s dialogue box saying “They were like Gods to us. Our protectors. Our creators. Those who gave us purpose...” End image transcript.]

Ultimately the question of who’s the father and who’s the son is purely speculative. We don’t even know for sure if the Knight has a son, let alone whether it’s Everyman, Gaster, or someone else entirely. It’s very much a “the chicken or the egg?” kind of question.

[Image transcript: Two images. The right is a screenshot of the egg room with narration stating “(You received an Egg)”. End image transcript.]

Hmm...

“Seriously, who is Everyman?”

Let’s bring this home with the question we started with: Who is Everyman? I’ve gone into evidence that he existed as an actual person in Undertale and will likely play a role in Deltarune, but this doesn’t tell us much about the kind of character he is. We don’t even know if “Everyman” is his real name.

If Everyman is indeed a prominent character in Deltarune then there are two possibilities: 1.) he’s a brand new character we’ve never met before, or 2.) he’s someone that we have met before. The first option, while a strong possibility, doesn’t leave us with much to talk about, so let’s look at the second.

Right out the gate I can confidently say that Everyman is not a character that we talked to or had significant interaction with in Undertale. The obvious reason is that he was busy being stuck inside Reaper Bird and he couldn’t have been in two places at once (as far as we know). This means that Everyman would have to be a character introduced in Deltarune chapter 1.

I’ve said before that I believe Everyman is a lightner, so this would rule out any dark world characters. That leaves us with the residents of Hometown who didn’t have direct counterparts in Undertale’s story.

After careful consideration I’ve narrowed the field to two suspects:

Father Alvin

Father Alvin has always struck me as an oddity. He seems like an important member of Hometown’s community, and yet none of the other residents ever talk about him. He’s also conspicuously absent from Undertale’s universe.

The most notable thing about Father Alvin is that his church seems to worship “the Angel”.

[Image transcript: Father Alvin saying “Let the Angel’s power light your way.” End image transcript.]

Ralsei’s prophecy states that the three heroes must seal the dark fountains in order to banish the “Angel’s Heaven.”

[Image transcript: Two Deltaunre screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, Ralsei’s narration says “Only they can seal the fountains.” The right screenshot continues, saying: “And banish the ANGEL’S HEAVEN.” End image transcript.]

This would put the heroes at odds with both the Knight (who’s creating fountains) and whoever is serving this Angel. We can only speculate on the Knight’s motives, but what if he’s acting in service to the Angel?

Something that isn’t brought up much in the fandom is the religious reverence that darkners give to their fountains. The King of Spades refers to the fountains that the Knight creates as “holy” fountains.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the King of Spades says “Holy Fountains, whose shadows are creating a new world...” The right screenshot continues, saying “OUR world.” End image transcript.]

The soundtrack that plays at the Fountain is called “The Holy.�� Dark fountains can seemingly create life, so it’s easy to imagine the Knight viewing his own mission as some sort of holy rite.

As far as evidence goes for Alvin being Everyman/the Knight, the biggest clue is the drawing signed by Alvin that shows up in the supply closet at the end of chapter 1.

Every other object in the closet represents a part of the dark world that Kris and Susie visited, and yet at no point do they encounter a dark world manifestation of this drawing. We know that the Knight visited Card Castle previously, so this drawing could be meant to represent the Knight’s presence in that part of the dark world.

It’s also worth noting how most of the closet’s toys are arranged from left to right in the order that Kris and Susie encountered them on their journey. Alvin’s drawing is on the far right, just past the open cabinet drawer (i.e., Card Castle), implying that Alvin’s drawing was either at the fountain or that it was effectively the “next” thing that Kris and Susie would’ve encountered if they had stayed.

It’s hard to make out what the drawing could be beyond being a “poorly-drawn picture of a green turtle”, as the flavor text explains. Could it be Everyman? Or is it just a reference to Bold and Brash? Both? Neither? The world may never know. Or it may know when the full game comes out.

Can I also add how strange it is that Alvin’s drawing is in the closet to begin with? Alvin looks to be a pretty old dude, so why would his drawing still be in a school that he no longer attends? I don’t have an answer, I just think it’s weird.

Other clues that could point to Alvin being Everyman are that he is, scientifically speaking, old-looking, which would line up with my hypothesis of Undertale’s Everyman being an older monster who fell down before becoming Reaper Bird.

Alvin also vaguely resembles Everyman as far as their proportions are concerned.

It’s by no means a perfect match, especially if we factor in Alvin’s shell, but both characters possess a round head with some sort of beak or proboscis.

If Everyman actually is Father Alvin, then the title “Everyman” could be a reference to The Summoning of Everyman, a 15th-century religious morality play. I won’t get into the specifics here, but the play focuses on a character named Everyman who must prepare for his inevitable death and judgment for his deeds in life. I don’t really know how much that would tie into Deltarune’s themes or if it’s even a deliberate reference to begin with, so make of it what you will.

Father Alvin was the first character that I suspected of being Everyman when I started writing this theory, but there’s one major sticking point that prevents me from fully embracing the idea: the fact that he lacks a character portrait for his dialogue boxes.

This may seem like a minor nitpick, but dialogue portraits indicate when a character is important to the story, and it would be a pretty big oversight on Toby’s part if a (presumably) recurring antagonist wasn’t given a portrait. Even a three-scene wonder like Rouxls Kaard was given a portrait.

It’s true that recurring characters like Napstablook and Monster Kid weren’t given portraits in Undertale...

But Deltarune has greatly expanded the number of characters with portraits this time around, and we can already infer that Noelle (who had a portrait in chapter 1) will be an important character going forward:

Given Alvin’s limited dialogue in chapter 1 and his lack of a portrait, I’m more inclined to believe that he’ll end up being a minor character, in which case he’d almost certainly not be the Knight (and therefore not Everyman). But who knows, maybe Toby will give him a portrait in the full game.

Thankfully, we have another candidate who might be Everyman:

The Ice-E’s Employees

You think I’m joking? Trust me, you’ll know when I’m joking.

I didn’t initially make the connection between Ice-E’s and Everyman until I saw a post from @curioscurio​ that pointed me in that direction.

Let’s go back to the Everyman graffiti that appears in Hometown.

Notice how the drawing right next to it resembles Ice-E’s head? I can’t believe this was staring me in the face the whole time and I never realized the connection.

Another point in favor of the Ice-E’s workers is that we don’t even know what two of them look like. We know that Burgerpants is one, and another is implied to be the Nice Cream Bunny that we met in Undertale.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the Ice-E’s employee says “Psst, can I tell you a mascot secret? I only started working here because...” The right screenshot continues, saying “The logo made me think it was an ice-cream shop...” End image transcript.]

But this still leaves the “purple guy” and “The Warrior”, who remain in full costume for chapter 1, meaning that one of them could resemble Everyman underneath their mask.

Speaking of The Warrior, he certainly fits the bill as being “strange.” His title wouldn’t be out of place among the likes of The Knight, and his dialogue refers to the hospital’s medical staff as “white wizards”, which fits with the medieval theming that’s associated with Everyman’s mercenary cohorts in Undertale.

[Image transcript: Two Deltarune screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, the Warrior says “This castle’s WHITE WIZARDs relegated me to this HEALING CHAMBER...” The right screenshot continues, saying “But my BLOOD is BOILING FOR BATTLE!!!” End image transcript.]

Speaking of the Core Mercenaries, here’s an interesting tidbit:

[Image transcript: Two Undertale screenshots side-by-side. In the left screenshot, a Core NPC says “As a youth, I would sneak out to play by this creepy flaming pit.” The right screenshot continues, saying “Since the CORE is always re-arranging, it was like a game trying to find it.” End image transcript.]

I used to assume that the Core Mercenaries were older monsters who fought in the human-monster war, which would explain their insistence on dressing up as old-timey knights and wizards. However, these lines of dialogue imply that the Mercenaries are far younger—young enough to visit the Core when they were kids.

So why would a bunch of younger monsters dress up like old-school knights and wizards? Simple: they’re LARPers. This would explain why their more casual overworld dialogue doesn’t match their overly-serious battle dialogue whatsoever—the battle is over and, thus, so is the act.

What does this have to do with Ice-E’s? Simple. The Warrior is also a LARPer. But he takes it a step further and never lets the act slip. According to Burgerpants, he terrorizes customers with war chants during his day job, and we see him keeping up the act while he’s injured in the hospital. It’s clear that he’s living in a fantasy world, and someone like that would have every reason to spend time in a strange dark world that “seems like” fantasy.

[Image transcript: Lyrics from Deltarune’s credits theme. It says: “And the places that you know seem like fantasy”. End image transcript.]

Someone like him could grow attached to such a place and want to see it spread as far and wide as possible, with no regard for how it would affect the boring “real world”. All he’d need to do is create new dark fountains to sustain this fantasy world.

I also find it interesting that The Warrior is in the hospital during chapter 1. Burgerpants claims that this is the result of “pizza-related injuries.”

[Image transcript: Two dialogue boxes from Burgerpants. Read from top to bottom, it says “The Warrior - Thankfully absent due to pizza-related injuries. Constantly terrorizing customers with war chants.” End image transcript.]

But what if there was another reason? We can see signs of “some kind of struggle” in the King of Spade’s throne room, complete with tattered wall banners.

[Image transcript: Narration in the Spade King’s throne room. The text box says “(Wall banners. They seem to have been through some kind of struggle...)” End image transcript.]

What if the Knight sustained injuries when he overthrew the three kings and had to go to the hospital afterwards? A “struggle” implies that there was some resistance involved.

Another interesting coincidence is that the previews for Deltarune Chapter 2 strongly imply that it will take place in a dark world that forms in the hospital.

Earlier previews have also implied that Noelle will have a larger role in Chapter 2, and she’d have every reason to be in the hospital visiting her father when things hit the fan.

It feels awfully convenient that a new dark world springs up right in the spot where the Warrior is. I wouldn’t be surprised if chapter 2 gives us our first glimpse of the Knight in person, and what better way than a surprise run-in with the Warrior?

Some of you may be asking why I’d suggest a minor character like The Warrior might be the Knight when he has a single line of dialogue and no dialogue portrait? Simple: characters tend not to have portraits when their face is hidden from view. We see this with Undyne in Undertale:

She doesn’t gain a dialogue portrait until after she removes her helmet. This is also true of Burgerpants in Deltarune.

So, unlike Father Alvin, The Warrior has an excuse for not having a dialogue portrait yet. While Father Alvin has some compelling evidence supporting him being the Knight/Everyman, The Warrior has no major counter-argument that I can think of (unlike Father “no portrait” Alvin), so I give The Warrior the edge as far as Everyman suspects go.

I’d also like point out that if Gaster ends up not being the Knight or the Knight’s “Strange Son,” then we could get a two-for-one deal of Father Alvin as the Knight and The Warrior as his strange son. Definitely not the most likely outcome, but technically possible! I’d imagine those two would have a hilariously awkward dynamic if they were related.

Closing Summary

Wow, this post went on for a while! Let’s summarize what we’ve learned today.

Everyman (in Undertale)

Was likely a monster who “fell down”

Became part of the Reaper Bird Amalgamate

Likely knew the Core Mercenaries

Is connected to butterfly imagery

Described as “strange”

May or may not have looked like his bullet sprite

May or may not have been connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not have been connected to the River Person

Everyman (in Deltarune)

Is alive and active

Is known to both lightners and darkners

Can most likely travel between the light and dark worlds

Is known of by Jevil

May or may not resemble his Undertale bullet sprite

May or may not be connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not be Father Alvin

May or may not be an Ice-E’s employee

May or may not be the Knight or the Knight’s “strange son”

The Knight

Described as “strange”

Is pulling up new dark fountains from the Earth

Has been to the dark world

Is possibly a lightner/monster

Is connected to the Spade King, who uses butterfly imagery

Overthrew the other three kings at Card Castle

Is known of by Jevil and Seam

May or may not be Everyman

May or may not be “mysteryman”/Gaster

May or may not be the “strange someone” who changed Jevil

Likely male

Likely has a “strange son”

Everyman and the Knight (similarities)

Both are likely monsters

Both are alive and active in Deltarune’s world

Both are (presumably) male

Both have a presence in the dark world

Both are known by Jevil and may have met him previously

Both are associated with butterfly imagery to some degree

Both are connected to knight imagery

Both are described as “strange”

Both may be connected to “mysteryman”/Gaster

Both are foreshadowed in Deltarune chapter 1

Final Conclusions

So what do I really think? I’m reminded of Undertale’s original Kickstarter demo and how much of the full game’s story was left out of it. Right now we’re in a similar situation with Deltarune. I can’t view any of my theories with certainty because at the end of the day I have no idea what Toby’s going to write for the full game, but I can guess.

If I had to put a number to it, I’d say the odds of Everyman making further appearances in Deltarune is 95% and the odds of him being the Knight is about 66%. There’s always the possibility that Gaster will usurp the title of Knight and leave Everyman as the Knight’s “strange son” or as the far less illustrious role of “no one particularly important”.

If Everyman is in the game, I’d give 50/50 odds that he’s one of the Ice-E’s employees, mainly due to the Warrior’s situation lining up well with Chapter 2′s (likely) setting. I’d then give a 25% chance it’s Father Alvin and the remaining 25% as “anyone else”.

Thanks for reading all of this (or skipping to the end). I’ve seen hardly anyone talk about our favorite strange little man and I just wanted to get the word about him out there. Even if you don’t agree with my conclusions, I’m happy to (hopefully) ignite further discussion over this often-overlooked character.

For now I’ve said all that I can say on the topic. All we can do is wait and see what happens. Fingers crossed.

Special thanks to @curioscurio​ for inspiring me to make this post in the first place.

Date published: December 10th, 2020

[sage-nebula]

Game Review — Blue Fire

One of my all-time favorite game series is The Legend of Zelda. My favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And my second favorite game of all time is Hollow Knight. So it would make sense, then, to think that a combination of the two would be the most amazing thing the world had to offer me.

Overall Score: 7/10

Well . . . it could have been better. It also could have been worse, absolutely, but it also could have been better. For more detailed thoughts, jump below the cut (and view on blog due to formatting).

The Pros:

The graphics and animation are beautiful. The specific Zelda game the graphics brought to mine (despite the color palette, which was clearly more Hollow Knight inspired) was The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Whatever reason the developers had for going the cel shaded route (maybe they had an artistic vision in mind, or maybe it was easier somehow) it was a good one to make. In particular, all of the glowing and flame effects were lovely, the shadows all fell in the right places, the characters were charming to look at, et cetera. Everything worked well with the acrobatics as well. Visually, the game is beautiful.

For the most part, the platforming is fair and even platforming challenges are doable with enough practice. This is particularly true for the overworld / main dungeons, rather than the Voids, which are more extra dungeons that you don’t have to complete to beat the game (although doing so certainly makes the game easier given that each completed Void gives you another life heart). While there were some areas where the game lagged for whatever reason and threw off crucial timing, as well as some Voids that were definitely more Platform Hell than simply platforming, the platforming puzzles were very well put together for the most part and were enjoyable to play.

The fast travel system, when unlocked, is incredibly convenient and takes a lot of the headache out of traveling around the world, particularly given that you use the shrines for a number of things (fast travel, saving, char—spirit equips) and there aren’t any maps present in this game whatsoever. It does take some time to unlock fast travel and you’re not exactly pointed in the direction to get it (in fact I had to look up to figure out where I was supposed to go to get it), but once you have it it’s a well-developed system that took a lot of pain out of playing that would have otherwise been there.

A minor thing that I liked, but (just like in Hollow Knight) when you die, your spirit or soul is left behind. Also like in Hollow Knight, it keeps all of the money you had on you when you died. Essentially, it is the exact same thing as the Shade from Hollow Knight, but white instead of black. Anyway, the minor thing I liked about this is that if you die in a boss fight, your spirit waits for you directly outside the boss arena, meaning that you don’t have to try to reclaim it while the boss is trying to kill you. It was a nice bone the developers threw the player.

While no tracks in particular standout, and while the OST doesn’t live up to the OSTs of the inspirations behind this game, there were times when the music was very nice, which is always a plus.

While the main quest is very short, there are numerous sidequests you can do even apart from the Voids that give you things to do in each area, making them feel a little less small and giving you a bit more time with the game, as well as unlockables as rewards (mainly in the form of new costumes, but still). There are lots of little secrets hidden around in each area too, which is nice to discover if you’re someone like me who loves exploring in games. 

The Neutrals:

The story. The story is . . . how do I put this . . . okay. So, it’s clear the developers wanted to write a story with the aesthetic of Hollow Knight (ruined kingdom, lots of shadow / light dichotomy, fallen kingdom, et cetera), but with an overt storytelling style like The Legend of Zelda. So you get a lot of exposition about what happened in the past, and what you as the main character are supposed to do now . . . but the thing about the exposition is that not only is the same thing repeated about fifteen different times (such as the constant harping on about how the main character contains both light and shadow within them), but also there are huge chunks of seemingly important detail that are just left unexplained. Like for instance: we know that the Fire Guardians from the Fire Keep were one of the last strongholds against the Shadow (who was also the sixth god and has also corrupted the queen yadda yadda). And we can extrapolate that the Fire Guardians were specifically trying to create a warrior that was both light and shadow based on the fact that the game starts with the main character breaking out of a test tube with a bunch of corpses that look just like the player scattered around, seeming to be failed experiments (i.e. just like how the Pale King created the Hollow Knight in Hollow Knight). But the only Fire Guard that we see around is Von. I think he mentions briefly once that the Fire Guards were trying to make the warrior, or had made the warrior, or something like that, but we’re never told why, exactly. We don’t know what processes led to that. We don’t know who was in charge. We don’t know why this specific type of warrior was needed except “since you have both you may be the answer.” And the fact that there were apparently a bunch of failed experiments is never really touched upon either. Furthermore, we’re told that the five gods had lifted Penumbra (the world) into the sky to protect it from the Shadow (a la Hylia raising Skyloft to protect the people from Demise), but that it didn’t work and the Shadow ultimately got to them anyway. So allegedly this is a post-apocalyptic land. But the only thing to really be ravaged is the Temple of Gods, where apparently the corrupted queen sleeps. Everyone else seems mostly fine as long as they avoid the monsters? It’s like they were going for what Hollow Knight did, but didn’t quite want to go the full route of having corpses literally everywhere on-screen at all times. Although weirdly enough, there is also a distinct lack of NPCs which makes the world feel more empty than Hallownest despite the circumstances . . . What I’m getting at here is that there definitely is a story, but it was told in a way that was pretty sloppy. It’s not so sloppy that it detracts from the overall experience, but it’s like too much was piled on in some areas and not enough was explained in other areas. Or like they took some things they liked from other games (e.g. making the creation of the “warrior of light and shadow” reminiscent of the creation of the Hollow Knight) without following through on what made those things work. Like it wasn’t just that there were a lot of failed Knights and that their corpses were tossed into the abyss and that The Knight had to try to claw his way out (as did Broken Vessel and others) while the “successful” Hollow Knight was raised by the Pale King. It was also that we know that the entire reason why the Hollow Knight was created in the first place was to contain the Radiance / the Plague. It was also that these hundreds or thousands of corpses were the Pale King’s children. It was also that the Pale King has a monologue over that segment saying, “no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering” as requirements for the Hollow Knight to be considered successful. The horror didn’t come just from the corpses being tossed down the pit around you as you had to climb up in an attempt to get out, but also at all of the surrounding context, which was left entirely out of Blue Fire’s version with the warrior of light and shadow. Not that they should have copied it (although if they had it really wouldn’t have been surprising), but it’s clear what they were trying to do and where they failed because they didn’t have the follow through to go with it. I feel like the above paragraph is so critical I should move it to The Cons, but I do want to say that I don’t think the story itself was terrible. It borrows so much from both Zelda and Hollow Knight that it really isn’t original and it doesn’t follow through on things that made those stories work, but overall it doesn’t ruin the experience, even if all of the repetition gets old pretty quickly. Although as a final note, I’ll also add another thing that bugged me, which is that we never learn what the people of Penumbra are. Like we know the Shadow is bad, but they all look like Shadow people. We know there are creatures called “onops” but we don’t know what they are, or if everyone is an onop. Whereas in Hollow Knight we know that all the characters are bugs. It’s just another little thing that wasn’t explained but probably should have been.

On a less long note, the combat is also pretty mediocre. Again, it’s not bad. There is a parry system that, if you learn to time it right to actually pull off the parry, is pretty cool. But although you are given magic, which is useful for killing long-distance enemies, the magic can’t do a single thing for you in boss battles no matter how many times you upgrade your mana. Additionally, it is very much a “mash Y to win” type of game, where Y is the button you use to attack and you just mash that while jumping around. There’s no complexity to the combat at all or any strategy that is really required. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s nothing to write home about either.

The charms in this game are called spirits, and while you can buy a majority of them from shopkeepers, you can also “capture” your own by coming across the spirit of a dead person and trapping it to use its power for yourself. This is made apparent when you go back to a young child who is dead the second time you go to see them, and capture their spirit for use. Also when you literally murder an NPC for a sidequest and then later capture their spirit to use for your own use. And aside from the sidequest giver being horrified you killed the NPC and telling you to keep it hush-hush (without even knowing that you can and will capture the spirit of that murder victim for your own use) this . . . is never really remarked upon. Ever. And the thing is, it creates a sort of dissonance, because your character is treated as a hero in this game. No one seems horrified by you, there’s never any question of whether your existence is moral or not, nor any reason to think that your character would be amoral. In Hollow Knight, the Knights were created to be soulless husks who were there to be vessels for the Radiance / infection. Hornet in particular calls out your cursed existence and how she does not like you because of it. But although you can learn “emotes” from statues (which is teaching your character either actions or emotions, it’s unclear), no such deal is made here. So this aspect of the game is strange, even if I can at least appreciate that they tried to make their spirits a tiny bit different from Hollow Knight’s charms. Though with that said . . .

The Cons:

It’s one thing to be inspired by other games, but the sheer amount that this game cops from The Legend of Zelda and Hollow Knight is, at least to me, incredibly distracting. Just a handful of examples off the top of my head: — In Hollow Knight, you have a Shade that lingers where you last died and keeps all of your money from when you died. In Blue Fire, you have a spirit / soul (again, it’s unnamed) that lingers where you died and keeps all of your money from when you died. You have to retrieve them before you die again to get your money back. — In Hollow Knight, you have different circular charms that each have a different design, name, and grant you different abilities. You can only have a certain amount equipped at a time (though you can increase how many you can equip at once) and you can only equip them at save points. In Blue Fire you have different spirits that are contained in circles that each have a different design, name, and grant you different abilities. You can only have a certain amount equipped at a time (though you can increase how many you can equip at once) and you can only equip them at save points. — Everything I explained above about how the main character breaking out of a test tube at the beginning, surrounded by corpses just like them, felt like an echo of the Knight’s creation in Hollow Knight (but again, not as effective for reasons outlined above).  — The default tunic has a hat that is exactly like Link’s from The Legend of Zelda. This is made even more obvious with the dyed green tunics. — The story segment detailing how the five gods created Penumbra was copped from how the golden goddesses created Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. To compare the dialogue: Ocarina of Time: “Din. With her flaming arms, cultivated the land and created the red earth.” Blue Fire: “Dina, God of Land. With her mighty body of stone, Dina carved mountains, deserts, and landforms in the earth.” It’s in the exact same cadence, to the point where I half expected the artifact they created at the end of the story to be the Triforce (instead it was called the Oath of Sarana).  — In Hollow Knight, the titular Hollow Knight is housed inside the Temple of the Black Egg, and is in fact locked inside that Black Egg to seal the Radiance / infection. There are three locks on the egg, and each one will only be broken when one of the three Dreamers dies. You have to break all three locks to face him, a corrupted “final” boss. In Blue Fire, the corrupted queen is housed inside the Temple of the Gods. There are three locks on her door, and each one will only be broken when one of the three Shadow Lords dies. You have to break all three locks to face her, the corrupted final boss. — It’s implied that, especially in places like the Temple Gardens, that the humanoid enemies that attack you are not monsters, but are people who were once completely normal and even forces of good who were corrupted by the Shadow. This is exactly like how all of the enemies you face in Hollow Knight (with the exception of, say, Hornet) were also once normal bugs before they were turned into zombies by the infection. I could go on. The point is, it’s perfectly fine to be inspired by something. Hell, it would be hard to find an action/adventure game that wasn’t inspired by The Legend of Zelda at this point. But it’s one thing to be inspired by something, and another thing to completely rip-off your inspiration to the point where the similarities are distracting to your audience. And it’s not just me; when I was looking up the exact dialogue for the story of the gods from Blue Fire, I found others who were pointing out just how similar everything was to Hollow Knight in particular, including someone who, like me, realized that the Temple of the Gods was essentially the Temple of the Black Egg. When things are this blatant, it feels a whole lot less like inspiration and a whole lot more like plagiarism.

The Voids all have a star rating to indicate how difficult they are. These star ratings are completely meaningless. Granted, partly it’s because everyone is going to have different abilities and so it will be hard to create an overall difficulty scoring that will be accurate for every player, but it’s also telling when a four-star course is miles easier than a two-star course, which I found to be the case on more than one occasion due to level design that was, at times, kind of bullshit. 

Although there are NPCs, there are none who are memorable or standout, despite the fact that most of Penumbra’s populace is (maybe?) still alive. Unlike in Hollow Knight, where there were characters like Elderbug, the Last Stag, Hornet, Quirrel, and so forth that were memorable and lovable, all of the NPCs in Blue Fire feel rather the same and are pretty easily forgettable.

The world itself is incredibly small. While the fact there are no maps makes this kind of a good thing, on the other hand it’s a bit disappointing that there are a total of two towns and then a few small connecting areas. It doesn’t really make it feel like the kingdom that it’s supposed to be. 

On that note, why aren’t there maps? The fact that there is fast travel is really more of a necessity than mere convenience because there are no maps to help lead you around. If you put down the game for a while and then go back to it, you might not remember how to get to different areas in the game, and if you haven’t unlocked fast travel yet (since it is something you have to unlock) you’re going to be pretty much boned due to the lack of a feature that is in basically every other game. 

Overall, while this is not a game I think I would ever go back to, it also isn’t one that I regretted purchasing and playing. It could definitely have been better, but it also could have been worse. My only hope is that the next game this studio makes is more original, rather than copying so much from other, more successful titles. (Or at the very least, that they study why certain things worked in more successful titles, instead of just copying at the surface level and calling it a day.)

[alphapockets]

Discord: New Message Infodump

Yes this is not getting put in the widofjord tag because I don’t like filling up others’ searches with something that is not “directly” linked. *jazz hands* anxiety. BUT here is all I could think of and a sprinkling of things I have seen asked about or mentioned in the comments! May this and the last chapter hold you over <3

Q: Why a text fic?

A: Honestly? I have only ever seen one from VM (there may be others, but I don’t read many fics out of my niche sections?) that was between Grog/Vax (I don’t ship it but when it’s a bar shift #3 in a row that’s 14 hours long, you need entertainment). I had read also Call Me, Beep Me from the VLD fandom as well as Misuse of Stark Technology and thought that it was a strong platform for conversation and storytelling that shows multiple perspectives at once without the constant POV whiplash that can happen otherwise. And with the strong and chaotic personalities of TM9 and the diverse ways the NPCs interacted fit in, I hoped it wouldn’t be that hard to pull off.

I’ll be honest, I was not sure if it would work out or catch on as it is not the most popular form of storytelling. As many people said in the comments of chapters 1-5, people generally don’t enjoy texting fics and skip past them. I am glad I took the risk and that everyone has with me.

 Q: Is it true you have not watched past Ep. 40?

A: Yes. Campaign 2 came out just before I started school, and I decided school deserved my full attention. I was also not as attached at large with the cast as an ensemble as I was with VM. This combined with having anxiety and needing something to be finished before I can enjoy made it difficult to get back into C2. I was lucky that I started Campaign 1 a few weeks before that ended. I will probably watch it when everything is over, but I mostly follow through spoilers and Arsequeef’s gifs.

 Q: What are some of your influences for this?

A: I have seen a lot of people loving the realism of the conversations. I don’t watch TV or movies, but I watch streamers mostly, especially group streamers. Because of this, I tend to hear nothing but natural conversations. I also have been in group chats since the old AIM days and was a bartender for 6 years, so I have pulled from interactions that I have experienced around me. Often when something perfect happens in a chat with my friends I screen shot it for use later (the look spam and how do you uwu are both examples).

 Q: Why that area?

A: I like to use locations I know well if there is a lot of real-world interactions. I am from Massachusetts and I had used Savannah, Ga., for Here’s To Us, where I lived for 4 years.

 Q: Will the chat be renamed to The Mighty Nein or something similar?

A: No. The chat existed before Caleb as that and was set up originally by Fjord and Beau with Molly, Bryce, Darrow, and Yasha. It’s been the Game Hoes for too long in their life to change. There will be some side chats that appear and disappear.

  Q: Didn’t Veth work with Caleb?

A: Originally that was the plan, but halfway through the first chapter, I decided to space everyone out better and missed her name in one paragraph at the beginning of the chapter. I wanted them to know each other but avoid the trope of “direct connection” with strangers to lovers and text fics.

  Q: How tall is Fjord (and the rest of them by proxy)

A: I changed the heights because Caleb is canon “Average height” which in DnD is different than the US. So, he was given a few extra inches to put him at 5’10”. Fjord was scaled up because we love height differences to 6’3” because of that. By order of height:

Veth- 4’11, Kiri- 5’, Keg and Yeza- 5’3, Jester and Rissa- 5’4, Astrid- 5’5, Bryce, Beau, and Wulf- 5’9, Beau, Caleb, Molly, and Ava- 5’10, Yasha- 5’11, Darrow and Essek- 6’, Fjord and Gunther- 6’3, Cad and Enzo- 6’5.

I’m probably forgetting some people.

  Q: Why did Enzo’s arc allegedly end that way?

A: I’m not sure I’m done with him just yet, but the reason it had to be let go like that is simple: legality. Real world consequences to acts would have kind of thrown a wrench in how this all unfolds. And Molly was the character who I felt could bounce back the best from getting a solid ass kicking.

  Q: Why was Astrid faster at accepting than Wulf, and why is he so possessive?

A: Wulf was Caleb’s first real friend and that meant he was the redhead’s world. Astrid came second and she realized how quickly jealousy can sour something. Wulf’s jealousy fed into the break-up. So, despite the awkwardness, she wanted to show Caleb that she meant it when she said they could still be friends.

Wulf was Caleb’s first friend, and he has that sense of seniority in his mind and has a hard time accepting he is not being replaced when new people come around. And as a more dominant person, it was hard for him to have the normally docile friend speak out against him. He is still immature and needed to grow, but has a hard time seeing that is okay right now.

  Q: Where does everyone attend?

A: Amherst College- Astrid, Caleb, Essek, Wulf. Boston College- Cad. Emerson- Beau, Gunther, Enzo, Fjord, Keg, Molly, Rissa, and Yasha. Princeton- Bryce. Hofstra- Jester and Kiri. UConn- Yeza (Graduated). UMass/Boston University/Tufts- NPCs not brought in yet.

**Caleb has stated Jester lives in the City early on because Jester has all her locations on social set to NYC

 Q: Any reason why you picked those schools?

A: I’m a BC fan (and Providence College), my childhood friend went to Emerson, and I was accepted to Hoftstra before I joined the military instead. Amherst was a perfect “nearby” city that was another college town/I am maybe looking at Amherst for a PhD. Program.

 Q: Where is Darrow stationed when not crashing Bryce’s life or deployed? What does he do?

A: Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was attached to the 26th MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) that goes through the Mediterranean. He currently is on hospital duty as a temporary “relaxation period” for people who are deployed often. As he is a paladin, I thought it’d be a nice touch to have him as an FMF Corpsman.

  Q: Where is everyone from? The holidays showed people all over and it’s mentioned some people were not born in the US or where they were located.

A: This is where that spreadsheet I made comes in handy. Most of the people either grew up in or intend to stay in Massachusetts for a long while. As there are some of the major schools in that area, obviously people would be out of state.

Boston TM9 Party

The Clay Family is in Jamaica Plains, which is just outside of Boston proper. They are from there, minus Toya who is adopted as well and from Maine.

Molly was the godson of Cad’s mother, who is from England and his father had been stationed in England for some time, so when he was essentially orphaned and given up by the indirect family, she put through the paperwork to take him in. Fjord and Yasha stayed with them.

Fjord is originally from Texas, outside of El Paso. After he joined the Navy, he never intended to move home as he hated it there. He fell in love with New England when he was sent TAD (Temporary Assignment of Duty) to the naval base in Newport. He stayed and continued his education at Emerson.

Yasha is from Jamaica Plains as well and went to school with Molly and Ornna, who is the same age as them. Her dad is from South Carolina and her mother is from Okinawa. They moved up north for her dad’s work.

Beau is from Kentucky and her family is unreasonably wealthy. She decided to go to school someplace as un-Kentucky as she could fathom and was stuck between Berkley and Emerson but chose the former because the weather meant her mother would never visit.

The Amherst Crew (Astrid and Wulf) are all from the area except for:

Caleb, was born in Poland to a Polish/German family. They moved and when his family died in a fire (he was at a sleepover at the time) his grandparents took him in. Wulf was still there with his large family and

Essek had returned home to California for the break.

Astrid and her family spent 10 days in Key West for the holidays, which is why she missed the New York trip. Wulf stayed locally for winter break.

The Conn/NY/NJ Groups are pretty straightforward.

The Brenattos stayed in New Haven, where they moved when Luc was born from Amherst. They had moved so Veth could start fresh.

Jester was surprised by a visit from her mother on Christmas Day and spent it with her. It was the first time her mom came from the Ukraine, as Jester’s dad is the one who she moved with. She lives on Long Island not far from her school.

Kiri is from upstate New York and was home for the Holidays.

Bryce drove down to Louisiana. They and Darrow are from Marietta, but they were at their grandmother’s place in Lafourche Parish. Darrow returned to Jacksonville NC.

Others Keg and Gunther were in Rhode Island but separately, where they are both from, Rissa is from Maine and went home, and Enzo was in jail (he is from Lynn, Ma).

  Q: How old is everyone?

A: 5- Luc. 19- Kiri, 20- Jester, Rissa, Keg, and Enzo, 21- Beau, Molly, Yasha, Essek, and Astrid, 22- Caleb, Cali, Reani, and Wulf. 24- Cad, 25- Fjord and Bryce. 27- Veth and Darrow. 28- Yeza.

  Q: If Fjord has the GI Bill why does he live on campus or have a job?

A: For those who don’t know how the GI Bill works, the government pays for education and sends some money based on housing in the zip code of the school. Boston is insanely expensive and student living is easier. Essentially, he wanted the “college experience” and it was cheaper. He needs the job more because he knows better than to let himself get idle. If he does, he won’t focus on school. Like Travis, my Fjord has ADHD.

  Q: How did Veth and Caleb meet?

A: In a Juvenile’s in-patient program for at-risk teenagers and those suffering from mental health issues. Caleb’s depression and anxiety following the death of his parents and the constant bullying for numerous things and previous attempts or ideations had him labeled “at risk” for self-harm. He was in for 3 weeks. Veth was in for her kleptomania and possible signs of disruptive BPD or other developing personality disorders but aged out of the youth section when she turned 18. As most diagnoses cannot be done for those until adulthood, she was being watched for early onset signs.

  Q: How did Jester/Veth get into the group?

A: Jester met Beau, Yasha and Molly at NYCC two years’ prior in line for a panel. They met again at Anime Boston after exchanging Twitter handles a few months later. Jester had worked NYCC a year ago and helped Veth to a quiet room for Luc, who was fussing, then stayed with her as she was on break soon. She invited Veth to play a few games of Don’t Starve Together with her and Yasha before she was brought into the main group.

  Q: This is a really diverse cast. What is everyone and why?

A: Some were obvious choices such as Caleb being from Germany, Jester being from Eastern Europe (Ukrainian), and Molly as Irish (and English).

Others I did to flush out to make a group in a major city make more sense. Wulf and Astrid both have French/ Germanic backgrounds because in canon, they were raised in a similar way. Astrid is Jewish along with Caleb to hint at why it may have been easier for them to date if her family was stricter than his.

Fjord and Yasha faced some racial issues early on in the show (Yasha from where she was from and Fjord for being a half orc), so I wanted them to be people of color. Yasha is half Japanese because of her name and because US troops often marry someone from Japan when they are single and stationed there. Her father is Jamaican in decent. Fjord’s dad he figures is Black but they’ve never met, as his mother’s side are Mexican. I chose that because I wanted to keep the Texan because a lot of people in the service are from Texas. Also, as previously stated, I had too many naturalized or foreign students already and needed to not stress over how they would be around for the breaks.

Cad is English, Norwegian, and Swedish because Cad is a god, who why not make him a Norse god? Veth is half Cambodian partially because there is a decent population size in Massachusetts. Beau is the not white-passing cousin of her family which will come in later because rich families have secrets, yo. Her family has some Cajun/Creole in her like Darrow but it shouldn’t be there according to her family lineage. 

Essek is Persian, Rissa is Puerto Rican, Bryce and Keg are “Confused American Mixes” of everything. Cali I have not decided yet, but will probably have some English in her, Reani I have decided on Moroccan. Kiri is Korean. 

Enzo is an asshole (he’s also mix of random European heritage.) I feel like I missed someone.

  Q: Is Widofjord the only pairing we will see?

A: There are some others forming, including BeauYasha, which was one of the possibilities when I started. Molly/Essek/Astrid were a shock and some others I won’t spoil just yet are starting to bud as hopefuls.

  Q: Do you have an end game in sight?

A: Honestly, as this whole fic has taken on a life of its own, not entirely. It was originally mapped out to be 12 chapters long and have much of this condensed down with all the side characters removed, no Enzo or hockey games, and the extra fluff cut out. As I wrote it, I found I enjoyed that almost more than the Widofjord specifics. So, this has really evolved away from a Widofjord ONLY fic, I am aware. Endgame wise, when I feel the story is told, I will wind it down, but there are more elements evolving with every chapter and I want these characters to get the moments they’re aiming toward. I also don’t want it to drag on too long, so I know that this will eventually come to an end.

 Q: Did anything change relationship wise while writing?

A: 100%. Beau and Jester were originally who I expected to pan out, but my Jes couldn’t seem to devote to that because she had developed more attraction to Molly and Fjord than I expected. Beau and Yasha just clicked better. Molly was the next option for Jester, but then I decided to make Essek and Astrid actual friends with the TM9 and we see how that went.

 Q: Is Jester going to find something happier? It kind of sucked seeing her so down and withdrawn these last few chapters. And where is Nott’s role now?

A: I am trying with Jessy. I am. Here’s to hoping she behaves? As for Nott, she is shining as the mom friend, but her coming into the fray more means bad things are happening. And yes, that is on the way.

 Q: You keep hinting at something in both Caleb and Fjord’s pasts. Are we ever going to see that?

A: Yes. I am trying to space out the angst as much as possible. This was never meant to be a hurt/comfort type story, but people have mental health issues and those because pivotal to the story more than I intended. Maybe the curse of having complete access to everyone’s conversations? But they will be coming out.

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who Hiatusbreaker Update 2

Although the premiere of Doctor Who Series 13 is still a while off, let alone the announcement of a premiere date, there are a few things I’d like to talk about before that time comes. Let’s get right into it.

Filler series plans to talk about Series 1-10

Some time ago, I had plans to make a ten-part series talking about Series 1-10 in detail, but because I had a lot of stuff going on, those plans were reduced to something I call Doctor Who 10 for 10 - 10 Things for 10 Series, which was to state ten things about each series with at least 4 to 6 of these things being my opinions on each series. This was intended to be a filler series to bide the time before Series 13 comes out, but that may have to come at another time. I’m also continuing with Kisekae Insights if anyone wants to check it out.

The post-Series 13 forecast

Since Series 13 would be Jodie Whittaker’s third series as the Doctor, signs are pointing to this being her final series. There are also rumours stating that there will be two specials in 2022 that would serve as her final episodes. If this is the case, then it means that Jodie Whittaker would have been the Doctor for five years; a five-year-long ordeal of pain because series seem to be released pretty much every other year as a result of the almost-year-long gaps between them, not to mention the fact that less episodes are being produced as time goes on. Whether Chris Chibnall will be remaining on is still unknown at this time. Frankly, I’ll be glad when this is all over because I (and many other fans) have been kept hanging for so long. I just hope the Timeless Child payoff will be worth it.

At this point, the only reason why I’m still watching the series is mainly because I want to know how the Timeless Child arc plays out. The initial shocks have come and gone, but now this is where we wait and see if the aftershocks are as worse.

When I started my Thirteenth Doctor Reviews, I made a pact that I would cut off all ties with the series going forward if the Fourteenth Doctor was another female. Given the Timeless Child arc and the rumours that Olly Alexander would replace Jodie Whittaker (which would make him the first gay actor to play the Doctor) that came and went because his agent stated that he was focusing on music for the time being, I’ve honestly stopped giving a shit at this point. I’ll probably continue being a casual fan of Doctor Who, watching episodes as they come out, but regardless, all that this series will be to me is like what the Koei Warriors series has degraded itself to over the past decade. I’ll still be grateful for all the inspiration and opportunities it has provided me with over the years, but I’ll probably accept that the series has gone on a downward spiral with seemingly no way of coming back up. But hey, all will be revealed in due time, so the forecast isn’t that bleak for now.

The first look into Series 13 (added 26 July 2021)

So just today, two days after I originally published this post, the teaser trailer for Doctor Who Series 13 was released following the 2021 San Diego Comic Con@Home. Aside from the Doctor, Yaz and Dan, the only other character we see is Vinder, a recurring character throughout the series who will be played by Jacob Anderson. Recurring character, you say, and that’s because Series 13 will apparently be a single serialised story. This brings callbacks to The Trial of a Time Lord or more loosely, the multiple two-parters of Series 9. We still don’t get an exact premiere date, only that it will premiere “later this year”, but given that Series 11 and 12 took about 10 months to film, we can predict that filming of Series 13 will likely be wrapping up in the next month. Whether there will be a shorter run of five or six episodes (thereby reserving two of those episodes for the 2022 specials, assuming they won’t be filmed separately to Series 13) is unknown, but regardless, I’m looking forward to watching and reviewing the series for myself.

Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall leave Doctor Who (added 30 July 2021) 

In news that will surprise no one, Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall have announced that they will be leaving the series in 2022. Technically, the news isn’t much of a surprise in terms of Whittaker than it is for Chibnall, as Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have been showrunner for two Doctors each. But hey, with this, it means that my Thirteenth Doctor Reviews will also be a review of Chibnall’s run as showrunner.

My initial thoughts on this, which may or may not change coming up to Whittaker’s final episode - it was an okay run while it lasted, but honestly, good riddance. How’s that five year plan of yours going, Chibnall? If your plan was to divide the fanbase and leave them hanging with gaps between series, then you’ve really done it.

On top of this, Series 13 will be six episodes long, with the remaining two episodes to be broadcast as specials in 2022. The first of them will be a New Year’s Special (surprise surprise) and the second will follow in Spring 2022 (Northern Hemisphere). The Thirteenth Doctor’s final episode will premiere in Autumn 2022 (Northern Hemisphere) as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations. Some tentative dates I’m predicting are 18 October 2022, the 100th anniversary of the BBC, 23 November 2022, the 59th anniversary of Doctor Who, or 1 January 2023, which would make it another New Year’s Special (I’m not discounting 25 December 2022, I just think it’s less likely given how this era has been).

With this, the Fourteenth Doctor is expected to debut in 2023, the 60th anniversary year of Doctor Who. I just hope the new production team doesn’t disappoint the fans with that.

In terms of statistics, Jodie Whittaker has played the Doctor for 31 episodes, making her run the second shortest behind Christopher Eccleston. Peter Capaldi played the Doctor for 40 episodes, Matt Smith for 44 episodes and David Tennant for 47.

My hopes for Whittaker and Chibnall’s final episodes haven’t changed; I want to see what happens with the Timeless Child arc (and also Ruth). Whether the Fourteenth Doctor will be male or female (or played by a non-binary or trans actor), I have a few basic preliminary hopes for the next run; make each series 13 episodes again with a Christmas Special each year and put the series back on Saturday nights, like it was before Whittaker and Chibnall. Also, can we go back to filming in the 16:9 ratio? I can never get over how weird it looks on my screen (at full screen, it doesn’t look so weird when I have it playing on half screen, which is what I usually do when I write my reviews).

Jay Exci - The Fall of Doctor Who

Yes, it has been a while and I know I could have told everyone about this earlier, but better late than never I suppose. A couple of months ago, Jay Exci did a 5-hour long critique of the Chibnall era in his video, The Fall of Doctor Who. For some reason, there are those who see it as controversial because they’re NPCs who don’t want to hear criticism of the Chibnall era or they’re spergs who aren’t mature enough to sit through a 5-hour video they can watch in chunks, but hey, it’s pretty good. This is more in-depth than the reviews that people like Bowlestrek or Nerdrotic make, which essentially put Jay on their level in the eyes of the NPCs despite denying that they are on their level and being a sperg about how they’re better than them. Welcome to the party, Jay, you can check out anytime but you can never leave. 

Anyway, you can check out the video below. Even if you don’t feel like watching the whole video, I highly suggest that you watch section 4.2 onwards (timestamped link here) as it does resonate with my feelings on the Timeless Child arc. I swear, this is just like Dynasty Warriors 9 all over again. I know the feeling.

Cancel culture comes for Noel Clarke and John Barrowman

The thing about cancel culture is that people can be petty about things other people have done or said years ago and they can justify it with the excuse that they’re doing it to hold those people accountable. Depending on the context, it can expose the fact that that person is a major piece of shit or it can be an overreaction to something, which in the minds of today’s society is normally the latter.

Around the time that Noel Clarke was nominated for a Bafta at the end of March, allegations emerged of abuse and sexual misconduct against him. 20 women came forward with their stories and as a result, the final episode of Viewpoint was pulled from broadcast (but still released on Blu-ray and DVD) and Bulletproof was cancelled before filming on the fourth series would begin.

In May, video emerged of Clarke at Chicago TARDIS in 2014 talking about how John Barrowman would expose his genitals and slap it on people and things. This led to allegations about Barrowman surfacing, resulting in him apologising for his actions even though he had already been reprimanded for them over a decade ago and apologised in November 2008. Despite this, his contribution to the immersive theatrical event Doctor Who: Time Fracture was pulled and Big Finish have decided to shelf the release of Torchwood: Absent Friends, which would have featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

Now, I don’t care about Noel Clarke by any means, but this situation is honestly sad for John Barrowman because it shows that cancel culture spares no victims and leaves no fossil undiscovered. These PR stunts have clearly shown that the spineless people involved with those productions are so concerned with saving face that they are unable to just overlook these transgressions for the sake of fans who actually wanted to see him reprise his role as Captain Jack Harkness. But hey, what do I know? I don’t really care for anything other than the TV series, but it really shows how shameless corporations can be.

Once again, we don’t exactly know when Doctor Who Series 13 will premiere, but if you ask me, I predict that it will premiere in October or November. I’ll see you all again around that time.

[lewa358]

Game Retrospective: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Note: this post contains vague spoilers.

Screw it, I love horror games now.

I was always a bit of a coward growing up. I remember refusing to watch the first Harry Potter flick because the three-headed doggo in the trailer scared me too much. But I’m much older now, and with that age came maturity--at least, enough maturity to slap on a VR headset t creep through a dilapidated old house filled with people and monsters that want to do god knows what to me.

So I’ve beaten this. My second RE game after 4 (third if you count Leon A as beating REmake 2), though I played quite a bit of the first Revelations before the final boss decided to be obnoxious, and that shitty version of RE1. But that doesn’t really go into how brave I’ve become, at least when it comes to experiencing horror media.

See, most RE games are silly nonsense. Gory, dark, and powerfully atmospheric, sure—but also remorselessly goofy. Be it the hokey FMVs and voice acting of the first game, Claire’s silly outfit in the third, the demon Napoleon Bonaparte in the fourth, or the gonzo action gameplay and frenetic pacing of Revelations, this franchise has only rarely be truly horrifying. Don’t misunderstand: these games can absolutely be scary as hell when they want to. But the tone of the series as a whole has veered more towards the silly than the scary, especially after 4.

Which is why 7 felt so radically different. Damn near all of the earlier games’ inherent goofiness suddenly vanished, and instead we have a story of a guy trapped in a house with insane, seemingly cannibalistic freaks that refuse to die. The rooms ooze with grotesque detail, and the story is told in cutscenes that are as serious and polished in their animation and delivery as any western game. The whole thing is in first-person as well!

The gameplay is a nice change as well. What I really liked about RE2’s remake is that, in terms of level design, it felt halfway between an adventure game and a Metroidvania. You had to explore and backtrack across a cramped, claustrophobic environment to collect items that are used in other rooms to solve puzzles and explore more of the environment. Unlike an adventure game, these “puzzles” are usually relatively simple, but unlike a Metroidvania, the items rarely granted you extra abilities. And unlike in either genre, you had to carefully manage inventory space, ensuring that you had enough room for both key items and gameplay stuff like ammunition, weapons, and healing items.

And there’s also the enemies. Strong, brutal enemies, but the most reliable way to kill them is to use your incredibly limited ammunition, so simply running from them is a legitimate strategy.

I like that general design, and it’s here in RE7—mostly.

See, RE7 barely has normal enemies. For the first 6-ish hours of the game, your only opponents (with like 2 exceptions) are the Bakers--fully fleshed-out NPCs who are either completely unkillable or tied to a boss fight. This honestly works very well—it ensures that the enemies you fight are genuinely intimidating. That first house is horribly creepy, with fantastic detail crammed everywhere, and quite a lot of fiendishly creative tricks played on our woeful protagonist.

But after a while the game gleefully reconstructs the previous games’ approach, and honestly I liked that too. The game is great at both slow-paced, spooky exploration and relatively linear gunslinging, so I welcomed the change, especially given how hard the first half of the game was, and how satisfying the guns were to fire. And those boss fights are brilliant! Chainsaw duel! Running a guy over with a car in his own garage! Whatever the hell Jack was, with the upside-down head!

Now all this is great on a flat screen…but in VR, it’s a completely different beast. Being able to look around the Baker mansion and its related areas by moving your actual neck, and seeing it all in stereoscopic 3D, is wonderfully and disturbingly immersive. Being able to aim by looking at enemies is also a blast. It fully confirmed that VR is my favorite way to play games like this…even if the implementation here is drowning in caveats:

The resolution and other graphical capabilities of PSVR are extremely limited. This isn’t a problem in graphically simple games like SUPERHOT VR or games designed from the ground up for the platform like Astro Bot (which is still my favorite VR game)—but in a game as intricately detailed as RE7, you run into a lot of problems. All the character models look janky, with jagged edges and other limited details. Still incredibly immersive, but the issues are there.

As mentioned, you aim with your neck (or, in other words, moving the headset) rather than pointing a controller. The former is fine, but the latter would be much more immersive, and allow me to shoot without looking at these hideous beasts. There is, of course, no support for the Move or Aim controllers. Playing with the standard PS4 controller works perfectly fine, and aiming with my neck is definitely better than aiming with the control stick (or, dare I say it, a mouse), but it’s an odd choice that few VR games make.

Many times, the game switches from in-engine cinematics to pre-rendered ones. The former work in VR…but the latter do not. This is intended to be a subtle switch, but it’s jarringly obvious in VR, since it suddenly goes from a full immersive environment to a flat screen. This has the effect of lessening the impact of some twists and scripted sequences, especially in the final boss fight. 

Despite how seriously the game takes itself, I was never truly horrified like I was with, say, SOMA. The game never really dives into any deep, thematically resonant territory—at least, not themes so simplistic, or maybe just subtle, that I dismissed them outright. It’s just Spooky House With Kooky Killers, The Game. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but I honestly feel like it should be more. The game is so damn good at being a Spooky House game, and does it so artfully, that I feel that something deeper should be easy for the game’s writers.

Like, what is there? Parental abandonment? You can’t really claim that’s a theme when the “parent” is an evil creator and manager of B.O.W.s and the “child” is an explicitly insane eldritch abomination. Those things completely ruin any chance of the story working as an allegory.

But still a great game besides that.

Game notes:

Developer/Publisher: Capcom

Time to beat: about 10 hours

Got Ending 1, normal difficulty, playing mostly in VR

Header image from the game’s Steam page; other images are screenshots from the game’s PC “Beginning Hour” Demo (and thus are not representative of how the game looked when I played it, especially in VR).

[motheatenscarf]

Wanted to take a couple days to parse my thoughts, but I am now ready to give my Opinions on DOS2.

The long and short of it is, I do recommend it! 

The combat was FUN, the story was engaging and compelling, the side-quests were all either heart wrenching or hilarious, and the music was beautiful and so were all of the locations and the music always SUITED the location which isn’t always easy to achieve. And the characters were all interesting, too, by which I mostly mean NPCs, and I only got to run around thoroughly with 3 companions but some of them were genuinely amazing for their development and growth. I got way more attached than I was expecting to for some of these characters.

If you’re familiar with turn-based RPGs, it’s one of the best ones I’ve ever played! If you’re not, it should be okay, but I’d recommend watching a couple tutorials or reading some tips/and tricks before going in because this game is DENSE.

I do have a few minor complaints, and if you’ve been following me shrieking about this game for the last month, none of this is new, but I will put it under a read more;

The second act all along the Reaper’s Coast really dragged imo, and that’s for two reasons; one, the rate of acquisition of new quests vs. the rate of completion on old quests is like 5 to 1 and it quickly gets overwhelming and things quickly start to blur together, and two, companions are too quiet during Act 2 and need to be chattier to break up the monotony. 

I will grant you having too many things to do in an RPG is never a problem, and it’s nice to have a lot of different quests lead to the same location, especially if that’s an important area that has a lot of Plot Shit in it, that’s just called good level design. But I always like hearing companions comment on things not only because it makes them feel more developed and the experience more immersive and impactful, but also because, fuck dude, their comments help me keep track of why we’re even here in the first place. Was this for a main quest or a side quest? I don’t fucking remember! I have The Dumb! Your fleshed out, well developed questgivers who are important stand out, or sufficiently tragic shit like “Look, the Magisters are burning down this village!” stand out, but Dwarf #12 with Dwarf Problems asking me to look into his Missing Dwarf while Magister #4 also asks me to look for Dwarf but I’ve already decided to declare open season on Magisters and now there’s no one interesting left to remind me about what I’m supposed to be doing without checking my journal is just... woof, bro, I am NOT gonna remember this shit. 

At the very least, this slog could stop blending together so much if the flag markers that automatically pop up for quests were fucking LABELED. Yeah, there are like 6 flags in this place, but what quests are they for? Fuck if I know, and there are like 40 in my journal and I don’t have time to read through them all, I guess we’ll find out when we get there.

And again, companions should just talk more in general. Not just at the end of quests, but during them. I grant you they won’t have an opinion on EVERY little thing, but given that they supposedly have special character flag dialogue for when I tell them to go talk to Magister #8 on patrol so they’re distracted and I can sneak this guy past their patrol, they clearly have unique responses to things! Let’s see that! And they should have banter and talk to each other! They can’t all just be attached to me! It’s about the FOUND FAMILY! That means they have to form bonds amongst each other! That’s why DA2 will always be the best Dragon Age game!

Anyway, other than the Act 2 slog, my biggest complaint is with the abruptness of the ending. I know the point of the game is to get TO where the Source is being kept, but the whole “And then the war with the Godking happened off-screen,” thing felt kinda... underwhelming. It’s important to stick the landing, and it wasn’t a BAD ending, but it was a little disappointing. I mean, we already killed the other gods, would it really have been such a big step to have, at the end, the Godking push through and nearly win, and THEN we got to choose what to do with the Source?

Like, if you want to be evil and side with the Godking or that demon doctor guy, you can beat him in combat first and then say “Now that you’re beaten, I’m calling the shots!” and enter into a tenuous partnership with them were betrayal is imminent. And if you want to release the Source or seal it all away by repairing the veil, maybe have us not kill the Godking outright but just defeat him so that he retreats. Then it can be to either seal him away while he’s weak, because it’s a one time opportunity even if it will mean turning into a silent monk, or to take the chance and release Source to the world and let people choose from there to fight what remains of the Voidwoken. 

Idk, maybe they’ve got more they want to do with the Godking in later games or something, but for fuck’s sake, if you’re gonna kill all the gods by the end of like, fucking Act 1, you’ve got to let me at least take my shot at the fucker who calls himself the Godking. I am a scrappy little chihuahua with a scythe, high on rage, and I’ve already killed at minimum 4 gods, just lemme aim for this fucker too.

Still a good game, and a decent enough ending, I TECHNICALLY got to do what I wanted with releasing Source to the world. I’ve said before that there are exactly two things I want to do in any RPG and that is make friends and kill god, in that order. And I got to make friends. And I technically got to kill the sickly leftovers of what was left of the gods after the Godking got to ‘em. But I really. REALLY wish I’d gotten to at least fuck up the Godking a little bit if not outright kill him. 

But I did get to make friends with my companions who survived Act 1 and shut specifically Rhalic up forever, so I guess that’s enough.

Oh, also, literally all of the armor is ugly except for late late LATE game wizard armor which looks like something out of Vampire Hunter D., throw a scythe onto that shit and you’ve got an AESTHETIC, but short of that, it’s crap, especially if you’re playing a woman, but ESPECIALLY if you’re playing an elf. This game does elves dirty with its armor. 

But other than all that, all in all. 8/10. Recommend it.

[bomberqueen17]

what the fuck, roach

Last night’s Witcher 3-ing was-- well, to start off with, it was slightly delayed because Dr. F’s true gaming passion is a weird Kickstartered FPS game called WarFrame, and there was a time-sensitive mission he wanted to run, so he booted that up first and the loading screen featured various warframes standing there in their idle animations-- I guess they’re like, cyborg suits, maybe remote-controlled? anyway, he always plays as this weird dude with a fan for a head, but on the idle screen there was one that was decidedly feminine-looking and featured some fluttering detached bits that came and landed on its hips, and when I pointed it out he was like “oh those are robot butterflies” and so MM and I became so enamored of the “Ass Butterflies” that he loaded that warframe and played as it, and sure enough, the ass butterflies came off and brutally savaged an opponent at one point, and the warframe also had a flying malignant sprite aspect, and anyway we were drinking Manhattans so it became “Ass Fairies” and that was a whole thing.

He finished that in remarkably fast time and booted up Witcher 3 for us, though; I’d been worried he was going to stay with Warframe, but as he said, “It’s kind of boring to watch, I know. Just a lot of automatic gunfire and shing noises.” 

“And space glitter,” I said, as things tend to explode into glittery dust when shot a lot. 

But then it was Witcher time, and we came back to find Geralt standing around in the rain just before sunrise near the bridge over the Pontar. 

The first thing that happened was that as we were riding along following quest markers, we came upon a crossroads crowded with NPCs, near a roadside shrine, but all the NPCs were crammed into circles around the bases of trees. We investigated for a bit, but none of them could have a conversation, they all just had single lines about irrelevant stuff. One of them mentioned the rain, though, and we deduced that NPCs must stand under shelter when it rains? Why there were so many of them in the middle of nowhere was unanswerable. 

In the next town, as Geralt sat perfectly still atop Roach while looking at the map, two children NPC’s ran straight into Roach within a couple of seconds of one another, bounced off, and complained about the horse. Like, bro, we weren’t moving. Your collision detection needs work.

We hunted a “monster” and were introduced to the concept of the Scoia’tel, which DF immediately was like “oh it’s the elves, gotcha, let’s be nice to them and Not Get Involved”, and chose to lie to the garrison commander and tell them he couldn’t find the monster and not get a reward, because he was that convinced that this was the correct answer to What Would Geralt Do. (It’s fine, we already Axii’d a pass across the Pontar from a Shady Merchant so we didn’t need the reward.)

Had to chase peasants around the small village to ask about a witch only there were two quests leading from that village, so we kept getting info about the wrong supernatural being, which was a lvl 10 quest (called Jenny O’ The Woods, about which MM kept singing Jenny From The Block, you’re welcome) and not the lvl 5 we were attempting. (We’re still lvl 4, argh.) (A bit later, we ran bravely away from some high-level enemies. “He’s only wee,” DF said, referring to Geralt. I immediately responded with a nickname his in-laws had given his son. “Wee precious Geralt,” I said. MM chimed in with the rest of the title the boy (he is seven now and really neither of those things-- though a lovely sunshine creature, he is more of a high-intensity Personality Bludgeon with +1 Unintentional Maiming nowadays) had gotten, one summer day when he was like, three, and playing with dandelions. “Wee precious Geralt, the Flower Prince.” As DF had just stopped Geralt’s headlong flight in order to pick some flowers, this was especially apt, and we referred to Geralt as Wee Precious Geralt or the Flower Prince for much of the rest of the evening. During a try-on of some new (looted) trousers, this got lengthened to Wee Precious Flower Prince Geralt of the Shapely Thighs, to get a sort of Homeric spin on the matter [uh but also truthful, dang you guys].)

We set out from a village and encountered some bandits. Geralt really can’t fight from horseback for shit, though other bandits seem to be able to do it just fine, annoyingly. At any rate, having dismounted to fight some bandits, Roach was in the thick of the fight and she’ll annoyingly startle but never run away, and is just kind of a pain to work around if you didn’t get a chance to dismount her and then run away from her. But at some point during this fight, Roach decided the thing to do was to climb a tree. 

I’d gone to get a drink, but the yelling brought me back into the room and I beheld, sure enough, Roach halfway up a tree and apparently stuck, and the bandits dead. “How the fuck do I get her down,” DF asked, baffled, and we all watched Geralt run around for a moment. Then he hit on the idea of just... getting onto her. Fortunately she was near enough to the ground that this worked, and then he could just... steer her out of the tree. I did not get a photo but it was weird as fuck. 

(Apparently the way to handle any inconvenient Roach placement is just to stand some distance away and whistle, as that summons her.)

We also stole a dead bandit’s horse at one point and rode it for a while. It had apparently identical stats to Roach, and behaved just like her. When we discarded it, and then summoned Roach, Roach showed up immediately with no jealousy. Weird. 

At some point Not So Wee Or Precious Real Boy came downstairs complaining of a tummy ache an hour after bed, and DF set the controller aside to actually palpate his organs, which was unsettling but probably, well, actually useful, as he is an actual medical doctor and was able to say with some certainty that it wasn’t appendicitis or acute gas and probably would be resolved with a good night’s sleep. (As I write this, Neither Wee Nor Precious Actual Boy is playing Legos and singing me songs, so clearly he did survive the night. He and I are early risers, and the best thing I can do for this household is to sit in the room so he sings to me and not to the rest of the house of not-so-early risers.)

Not So Wee Or Precious’s sister kept coming down too, so there was a lot of quickly-go-to-the-inventory-screen Dad reflexes going on. IDK, any tips for how to get a 5-year-old to stay in her goddamned bed and get some actual sleep for once? Each of the three of us had to go up with her and put her back into bed. I get that attention-seeking is really support-seeking and neglect or repression is not the answer but there’s also a point where you’re just rewarding the thing you don’t want without resolving the underlying problem that’s causing it and it’s generally unhelpful all around and just makes everyone cranky.

We did discover the witch in the village, though, and it turned out to be the noted sorceress Kiera Metz, who in person turns out to look like a Botoxed Barbie doll who cusses a lot. And when you follow her through her weird portal, she is in there topless for some reason, so like, I appreciated the heads-up from @akilah12902 on that as there were a lot of little feet pattering around at the time and it was good to uh maybe put the bunnies back into their beds before we attempted that. I Had Not Realized there were actual tits in this game but oh boy there are. (Also: Sorceresses can step out of a bath and magically put clothes on immediately, and also this game can explicitly depict rabbits having sex, so-- I wonder how much other explicit animal sex it will include?) Don’t worry though, at no time does Kiera ever fully put her tits away, in case you were wondering whether men made this game. 

(I mean, there also was a scene with Geralt in a bare-knuckles shirtless Fight Club game, there are at least nods made to the kind of equal-opportunity ogling the Netflix series did so well. Oh, DF in continuation of his Geralt Is A Good Dude philosophy behind this playthrough had Geralt refuse to throw a fight, but then give the guy he’d beaten the prize purse afterward since the guy had told him he was only fighting because his family was starving and he needed the money. Geralt got XP for winning, but no reward for giving away the money-- still, he hadn’t bet much so it wasn’t a lot of money to give away.)

We followed Kiera accidentally into a much higher-level bit of quest than we’d strictly prepared for, and while wandering around some dank caves discovered a new kind of enemy. It killed us like uhh three or four times, and finally DF was like “OK, I have to actually think about this.” So we looked up foglets, which was what it was, and he made a point of saving, and figured out what blade oil to use. This occasioned some references to the GREASE ME UP, WOMAN bit from the Simpsons, which became another theme for the evening. (His other comment on repeatedly getting killed at the same spot and finally taking countermeasures was, “Fool me five times, shame on me.”) (Also: “I got complacent and forgot the first four rules of dodgeball!”)

There was various weird bits of loot in the cave. The one that really took the cake for me was... you’d find skeletons, clearly of long-dead other explorers of this cave, and they’d invariably have food items on them, which Geralt would take. One had, like, a jar of olives, what the fuck. Another had dried fruit, and as I was being incredulous about it, MM very drolly commented “Well of course it’s dried now.”

Blundering around this cave, we had cause to wonder if we could just... leave. But we kept occasionally hearing Kiera screaming somewhere, so clearly she was in a spot of trouble, and if we just left we’d be leaving her suck there. So we eventually found her and freed her from... where... she was afraid of some... rats? IDK. But then we found an exit and left the cave. And while we’d wondered if Kiera would just follow us around for the rest of the game, she helpfully said “I’ll wait for you here” as we left, which was awfully nice of her. Possibly she’d noticed we were still Wee and Precious and had little hope of defeating whatever boss creatures presumably lurked in this main plotline quest she’d kind of dragged us into. 

Of course, the cave exit was a fair distance from the village where we’d started, and the entire area was full of much higher-level enemies than we had any hope of defeating. (This is when we learned: if a critter appears and instead of a level number it has a question mark and a 💀skull symbol you gotta run.) So we got Roach and just made a run for it and still died like three or four times. There was a fast travel signpost nearby but it was entirely surrounded by high-level ghouls. So we kept running, and the fight music kept coming on, and we kept running. It was intense.

But we got the fuck outta there, eventually. Phew. 

Then we discovered our first alghoul. And again, DF tried to just fight it, and got killed, and was like. Sigh. Gotta prepare for this. GREASE ME UP, WOMAN. (And I looked up what you do for alghouls.) Which eventually worked. Those fuckers can heal themselves, which is a pain in the ass. 

Also if you get to a town at 4am and barge into the blacksmith’s house, he will Not wake up and help you out. You have to pass the time for at least three hours. This is the only time Geralt gets to rest, like, ever...

We’re only a bit of thread away from being able to level up another gambeson instead of the hideous olive schlubfest we’ve been stuck in for like, a week of game time, but we’re not there yet. Geralt remains Unattractive, tragically. But, soon, soon we’ll get to wear a ridiculous stripy one. 

[juicemitio]

Alright I went to Louisville Galaxycon and saw Travis and Clint twice, for their worldbuilding workshop and their Q&A. Here's some interesting stuff I learned (I didn't include stuff they talked about that's pretty common knowledge or they talked about on the last ttazz)

Graduation 

Fitzroy was originally going to be a jock that was weak bc he no longer had a team, Travis told Griffin that that didn't really work for the world so they reframed it as him training to be a hero, was great academically and behaviorally, but had a problem no one had seen before and no one felt like dealing with. It specifically wasn't "barbarian fails bc he can't keep his rage in check," it was that no one was willing to deal with his magic so they shipped him off

Someone asked Travis to explain fitzroy's magic, so from the DM's mouth- he's a barbarian subtype with elemental magic which has a random effect while raging, which we haven't seen yet (path of the wild soul if you want to look it up and see what he can do) and he took a feat which gives him the ability to cast 3 cantrips of his choosing. What I thought was interesting was that Travis described Fitz's magic using the word "elemental" twice, even though that isn't specifically stated in the path of the wild soul entry

Travis knows Argo's secret and is very excited about it 

Clint has a pirate fiction book he reads every night before they record to get into the headspace to play Argo, he told us the name but I forgot it 

There is one small little concept that made the whole of graduation make sense to Travis and is what the arc will be about, and he only figured it out a few days before recording. Obviously he didn't tell us what it was

Originally it was going to start with everyone starting at age 11 and slowly killing the other kids off, but Justin didn't feel comfortable playing a game surrounded by kids dying 

The accounting scene is already one of Travis' all time favorite taz scenes

The pegasus scene informed Travis on exactly how he was going to treat the firbolg

Also Travis referred to Justin's character exclusively as "the firbolg," which means "master firbolg" is solely a thing going on with the npcs in the game which I find hilarious. They just all decided to give him a dope title bc he deserves it, meanwhile no one will call Fitzroy "sir"

To Fitzroy, social threats are an extremely real and serious thing, like the Biggest thing to him (we were talking about what characters found threatening in the workshop, for context)  

There's some big concept/idea that comes up in the next episode that travis almost let spill and had to quickly stop himself from saying it

Someone mentioned eating breakfast in their question in the workshop and Travis goofed on it for a second, then said "cereal world" suddenly, and Clint had to pick up the question bc Travis had to take a second to make a note of it in his phone 

Travis started brainstorming graduation in March and they recorded the first episode in October, and his main job in that time was working on graduation 

Before Buckminster was adapted for graduation he could not fight at all, if he got into a fight he would die, he poured everything into charisma and could talk his way out of any fight (even the big bad of the game he crit 20d his check and the big bad walked away from the fight) 

Travis is really into psychology and how if you assign a label to someone they're going to act more like it (ie you tell a kid they're amazing and smart and talented and they become more like that, you tell a kid they're annoying and dumb and a problem they become more like that), and how that was a major contributor to play into hero/villain/sidekick/henchperson dynamics, you get assigned this arbitrary title of good/evil/subservient and you become like that to fit the role, and then the inevitable pushing against that mold

Travis is fully aware of his story being compared to harry potter and he doesn't care bc it's apt (people in a school arbitrarily divided into four groups and one of them is the Bad One), also he knows people describe it as "sky high meets Harry Potter meets my hero academia" and he actually finds that really flattering bc he thinks that sounds cool and like something he'd want to watch 

On that note, Travis is a self-identified Slytherin and he's always upheld that the reason Slytherin is depicted in a bad light is bc Rowling decided she didn't like them, and he's always sympathized with the idea of a first year Slytherin working their ass off following the rules and doing their work and getting points, and Dumbledore rewards three idiots for breaking like every rule and pulls the trophy away from you. This was a big inspiration for graduation, of one group getting a bad rep and being portrayed as evil for literally no reason 

Amnesty

Clint & Travis's favorite scene they've ever done together was Ned & Aubrey's final scene together 

Aubrey and Dani do move in with each other at the end of amnesty

Balance

Travis' main emotion around taz is pride and he's most proud of the scene in stolen century with the spirits in the robots, bc they had to record it a second time bc it got way too dark and ended in a really grim way and about 20 min after they finished they all decided that they weren't happy with it, that it didn't fit the tone, he's really proud they didn't just leave it be and they took the second pass at it to make it right

I'm pretty sure he's talked about wanting to kill Magnus off at the beginning before but he mentioned that it was only at the end of petals to the metal he actually realized he wanted Magnus to live, bc Hurley had to sacrifice herself to save Magnus bc Magnus had been so reckless, that hit Travis really hard. Travis realized that Magnus' recklessness was getting people hurt and so Magnus did too, so Magnus become a bit more cautious and took up rogue training to try not to get anyone killed again 

Dust

Dust wasn't designed to be anything more than a one off and the workload was completely unsustainable, the document of notes for dust was about 100 pages and only about 10% of it got used

The reason Travis loved it so much was bc it was a mystery and he found it really fun

Commitment

Clint would love to revisit commitment, but probably not in podcast form bc he didn't find himself really being in the moment as much bc of all the different things he had to keep track of, he'd like to see a comic adaptation/continuation if possible

It was based of a comic he wrote that never got published bc the company producing it failed (he still cashed his paycheck) so he reused it bc he still liked it a lot, it was about how America was founded as a monarchy instead of a democracy and what that changed in the usa's (united sovereignty of america's) history, and how people now were fighting to establish a democracy. Also there were cowboys and spaceships and other cool stuff he put in there bc he liked it

General adventure zone

The reason why they're are able to do romantic relationships w/o being weirded out by it (they joke about it but they don't actually care) is bc it's never done in an explicit or sexual way and since it's the decision the characters would make to pursue the relationship then that's the decision they make. He reframed it as it wouldn't be weird if a family were writing a script together and there was a romance and one person wrote lines for one character and the other wrote lines for the other. He did mention that two siblings playing characters in a relationship as actors on screen wouldn't be cool though

They sometimes get comments that some of the stuff they do is "fanservice," but they feel that they owe their success to their fans and they owe some to them 

They are both aware of and proud that Justin is the best at character creation, Clint specifically really was talking about how Justin's strong suit is definitely character creation and characterization

General mcelroy stuff

They walked pretty close to me when they entered the stage room for the q&a and like… they're short, like shorter than you think

Travis referred to his unborn child as "baby dod" (I'm not 100% certain but I'm pretty sure) which I looked up and is a nickname for George, and given with their older kid being named Barbera and nicknamed BeBe and Travis talking before about how he and his wife like classic names with cool nicknames it makes sense

Travis had an earing in his right ear, I didn't get to see his left ear and I couldn't tell if it was an actual piercing or a fake, it looked really good though. Also his tinted glasses look a lot cooler irl than they do in pictures

Clint told the teenage mutant Ninja turtle story with the signatures that griffin told on mbmbam, but Clint remembered it as happening at King's Island, not Disney. This story was prompted by the question of the biggest lie he ever told his kids, and he only came clean about this a few months ago

Travis told a story about how he finished a videogame when he was younger and was so excited that he picked up a plastic knife, yelled "throwing knife!" threw it directly at Griffin who dodged it and it hit and shattered a window

[lgcmanager]

SEASON 001, PART 002

** please note that if anyone drops from here on, they will not be removed from the show, simply considered npc **

On NOVEMBER 18, contestants are brought back in the studio for the first time since the first day of filming. they are instructed to sit in their initial ranking chairs. shortly after everybody is seated, bae siwoo makes his entrance. just like on october 7, he takes the time to converse with the trainees a bit before cameras officially start rolling. this time, he is accompanied by the coaches who have been teaching and monitoring the progress of the trainees during the past weeks.

after a short introduction for the camera, he moves on to the reason why everybody is gathered here; solos and positions. “we will begin with the girls!” he announces. “the choice wasn’t easy and some of you have surprised us while others have disappointed us.” those heavy words are marked by a short pause. “before we continue, do you want to hear the song?” he waits for the trainees’ reply before cuing the music and revealing the GIRL’S SOLO. after the short 30 seconds snippet, siwoo speaks again; “let’s reveal our top 3 girls...” the face of JUNG MISO appears on a wide screen; “first; number 6, jung miso. our child actress chanel jung, who’s catched the attention with her strong expression and visuals. next...” the screen splits and appears HUANG XIYU “second; number 9, huang xiyu. also known as alice, she’s the strongest dancer in the group and shows versatility with talent in singing and rapping. and last but not least...“ a third face appears on the face with them; KANG JINA. “third is kang jina. the only third year trainee of the lot. she’s definitely one of our strongest singers on the girl’s side. so who gets it? let’s see the result.” he points to the screen again and after a short moment of suspense, jung miso and huang xiyu disappear, leaving only KANG JINA. “Congratulations to kang jina! kim youngim and the trainers have noted that your skills match the solo very well. you might find a bit of challenge in the rap part, but we’ll look forward to the result.”

he gives everyone a chance to react to the announcement before all attention turns to the male trainees. “and now for the boys! before i proceed with the results, let’s make you wait a little longer by presenting the song…” he smiles mysteriously and the studio falls silent except for the 30 second preview of the BOY’S SOLO. “who will be the top three contenders?” right as he pauses, everyone can see KANG JUN’s face appear on the screens. “first; number 9, kang jun! a young trainee no doubt, but still a well-rounded competitor with high skill in singing, dancing and rapping. next is…” siwoo begins, letting the trainees see KANG YONGHWA appear on the screen with kang jun. “number 7, kang yonghwa! he’s no doubt one of the strongest dancers in this competition, but has been able to impress with his singing and performing skills. and finally…” attention is brought to the screen again, and right in the middle appears AHN JAESUN. “number 2, ahn jaesun. he’s trained the longest among everyone here and has been able to show the trainers it wasn’t in vain. a charismatic performer indeed, skilled in both singing and dancing. and now...” while everyone expects siwoo to announce the winner, a fourth face appears on the screen, shocking everyone. it’s LEE JIHO. “yes, number 10, lee jiho. trainers were supposed to choose only three contenders, but this young trainee impressed a lot as both a singer and performer. not to be underestimated. sadly, there’s no one else! while you four impressed these past weeks, only one of you can get this solo. the winner is…” there’s a deafening silence during which all eyes are glued to the screen showing the three boys. and suddenly, ahn jaesun, lee jiho and kang jun disappear. “KANG YONGHWA! congratulations. the trainers thought your image and skills fit the concept of the song very well. they hope this vocal challenge will push your limits even further. work hard, and we’ll see the results very soon.”

“while those results might be heaven for some of you and hell for others, this is not over. in a short moment you will receive lyrics distributions for the songs you’ve been practicing until now. we will reveal right away some crucial positions and final lineup. for the boys. AHN JAESUN  is named overall leader of the LEGACY BOYS and GEUM DANBI of LEGACY GIRLS. we will trust you with overseeing rehearsals and making sure every performance is up to standard. TSAI KING is named face and center of the LEGACY BOYS and HIT while YAMADA HIMEKO will be the same of LEGACY GIRLS and ADIOS. your position doesn’t end with a song; you will be front and center of promotion materials for the group. For HIT, JI HANEUL is the main vocal and AIKA WREN will have that position for ADIOS." the host then moves on to the other tracks. official groups go as follow;

MOVIE STAR

AHN JAESUN (Center and Leader)

PARK JACOB (Main Vocal)

PARK SEOJIN

TSAI KING

YOON DOWON

SIDE EFFECTS

AHN SEUNGMIN (Leader)

IM HYUNJIN (Main Vocal)

KANG YONGHWA

PARK DOHYUN (Center)

PARK VIGGO

BOOM

AHN DOHWAN (Leader)

CHOI JINYOUNG

JI HANEUL (Main Vocal)

KANG JUN

LEE JIHO (Center)

LATATA

GEUM DANBI (Leader)

JUNG MISO (Center)

LEE HARIN

PARK KYUNGA

RYU YERIN (Main Vocal)

SONG YEJIN

YAMADA HIMEKO

DALLA DALLA

AIKA WREN (Main Vocal)

BAE CHAEWON

HANG XIYU (Leader & Center)

KANG JINA

SONG AHYEON

due to the lineup changes and LINE DISTRIBUTION (BOYS & GIRLS) finally revealed, trainees are given the rest of the week to adjust. they will then head to the recording booth and film mvs for all songs. finally, on DECEMBER 22 the trainees will hold a mini concert in front of an audience of 750 people where they will perform all 7 songs. the songs will be released on DECEMBER 27 digitally and DECEMBER 30 physically. trainees will promote both main songs (HIT and ADIOS) on tv shows for a week and KANG JINA and KANG YONGHWA will each promote their respective songs the following week. we will reveal details concerning post future dreams promotions at a later date.

SCHEDULE

WEEK 1: PRACTICE

WEEK 2: RECORDING (boys from monday to thursday and girls from friday to sunday)

WEEK 3: RECORDING OF BEEP BEEP & BIRD + PRACTICE

WEEK 4: MV filming (one mv per day following this order; Hit, Adios, Movie Star, Latata, Side Effects, Dalla Dalla, Boom)

WEEK 5: Final rehearsals + Mv Filming for BEEP BEEP (Monday) and Bird (Tuesday)

DECEMBER 22: Concert @ 7PM

CONCERT SETLIST

MC 1 (Bae Siwoo)

Boom

Dalla Dalla

Side Effects

Merry & Happy (Trainee Girls)

MC 2 (Bae Siwoo)

Movie Star

Latata

Bird

Miracles In December (Trainee Boys)

MC 3 (Bae Siwoo)

BEEP BEEP

Adios

HIT

MC 4 (Bae Siwoo + All Future Dreams) - End

REQUIREMENTS

IMPORTANT: in order for your requirements to be valid, for each first post/solo posted, a READ MORE with a small INTERVIEW must be added. the interview can be just one question/answer, most likely about the thoughts or feelings of the trainee at that moment. For a thread, the interview section can also be done just once. This part has no minimum word requirement, but the number of words written in this part isn’t counted with the rest of your post (i.e; if you write a 300 words solo + 125 words for the interview, we only count 300 words). Make sure to usesthe hashtag lgc:futuredreams for everything related to this event.

PREPARATION PROCESS 2: Write a 300+ words solo or a 4 replies (minimum 8 lines) thread with another same gender trainee about a moment that could’ve been caught on camera during these upcoming 5 weeks (STARTING FROM NOVEMBER 18). REWARD: +5 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE ANYWHERE, +4 NOTORIETY !

CONCERT: Write a 300+ words solo or a 4 replies (minimum 8 lines) thread with another same gender trainee about a moment that could’ve been caught on camera during the concert or backstage of it. REWARD: +5 POINTS TO DISTRIBUTE ANYWHERE, +5 NOTORIETY !

NOTE: this preparation process requirement is not the same as part 1! if you’ve already submitted your preparation process for part 1, you only have to pay attention to the requirements written in this post. if you haven’t, you may include the two preparation process in your submit for part 2. if you’re unsure, please contact us before submitting anything!

to validate your skill points and collect your notoriety points, please submit the following form ONCE on the points blog before DECEMBER 29, 11:59EST.

TITLE: MUSE NAME ∙ FUTURE DREAMS 001 PART 2

- PREPARATION PROCESS 2: +5 ( skill points distribution ) + 4 notoriety [ LINK ] - CONCERT: +5 ( skill points distribution ) + 5 notoriety [ LINK ]

[mechadress]

Saw a literary challenge to write about one of your average days in quarantine. They picked Tuesday May 12th. Since all of my days keep blending together, I thought it would help me set a benchmark for how I handled quarantine. So here it is-

May 12th 2020,

My alarm goes off at 7am. I roll over to turn it off and promptly go back to sleep. This was a normal practice even before the world shut down. I don't have set hours at work, but I prefer to start around 8am. Since my work computer is only across the apartment, the motivation to wake up before I absolutely have to is extremely low.

8am rolls around and I can't bring myself to leave the bed yet. It all seems so pointless as no one seems to care what hours I keep and I don't have any early morning meetings. I scroll through Facebook and Tumblr on my phone, I check my email more times than I really need to, and pet whichever cat is closest, usually Sierra. I find a post from a page that I follow that talks about Victorian parlor games and I share it to the Steampunk group I administer. There hasn't been much content in the group for awhile. I wonder if it's because steampunk isn't as popular as it once was or if no one has anything to say. It gets a few likes and one 'Care' emoji. I think it's because it indicates that people miss hanging out together.

Around 8:15 I need to use the toilet, which is enough to get me out of bed and sign into my work computer. CY yells out from his work station at the living room table to remind me to buy the camper table and a spray bottle he wanted for grilling. I order them from Amazon and feel guilty about getting nonessential items in the middle of a pandemic. I spend the first few hours of work scrolling through FB or Tumblr and knitting. While I knit I watch an hour and half long youtube video from ContraPoints about different types of second-hand embarrassment or 'cringe'. I identify a lot with what she says.

I am knitting a pair of socks simply because I have the yarn and I've never done it before. I tested out the gauge to make sure I had the right sized needles and I do. They are long dpns that were given to me by CY's mother once she realized I enjoyed knitting. Apparently she used to knit as well, but it would hurt her hands so she gave up on it. I had tried to use the dpns as intended, even looking up a video and practicing a few times, but I kept dropping stitches and getting annoyed with them. I eventually decided to order a circular needle from Amazon to use instead. I felt very guilty about this since there's all sorts of post-people and delivery people out there who are at risk moving all these boxes around, and here I'm ordering a stupid pair of needles that are a duplicate size to ones I own, but I just don't want to use. The circular needles are extremely nice and easy to work with and it is a pleasure to knit the socks. I still use the dpns as a stitch holder while I knit the heel. Today I'm connecting the insole and knitting along the foot. It's easy and enjoyable work especially after already completing the first sock.

I eat a prepackaged ube cake while I drink my tea and appreciate the nice pairing of flavors.

I feel bad about not getting more of my actual work done. However, I can't bring myself to concentrate on anything related to work. I keep moving my mouse around every 10 or so minutes so it looks like I'm active.

An old D&D friend of mine named Sam posts on FB about how he is proud of his company for continuing to let people work from home despite Ohio loosening some of the Stay at Home restrictions. I reply "We were told to expect to work from home until at least August. I'm grateful since it's one less thing to think about." Sam and I go back a forth a bit more, expressing gratitude and an interest in meeting up again once its safe. It's the first I've interacted with him in about 5 years and it makes me glad to hear from him.

I start lunch early because I don't have anything better to do. For lunch I make myself and CY a sandwich. We have some really good Italian bread we got from the grocery store that we can make into a decent replica of a Philadelphia style hoagie. I already chopped up the veggies so I can just take them out of the fridge and start layering them on. CY likes his sandwich with mayo and turkey. I don't like handling either of those things, but it's easy enough. I make his first then make a veggie version for myself. We use the new hoagie oil which isn't as bad as I had originally feared, but it isn't as good as the name brand one we had before. Pity they were out of it at the store when we went.

My 2019 tax refund from Ohio lands into my investment account. I plan to use it to invest in assorted stocks I feel will bounce back once the economy recovers.

After lunch I watch a few more youtube videos while I knit. One is a career review of the one-hit wonder band 'Living in a Box' and another is a recording of 'the world's worst singer' Florence Foster Jenkins. I had found an article that talked about people who had a medical condition which made them unable to percieve how poorly they performed a skill. In her case, she was a renowned as a very poor singer who believed she was very good and people would come to watch her ironically. I try to watch a congressional hearing where they discuss the health crisis with Dr. Fauci, but it's too depressing so I stop.

My anxiety related to work continues to grow. I figure that I'm not able to bring myself to do any investigation on my own, but I'm still able to ask people questions. I reach out through Skype to a colleague who I believe had worked with this business group before. I am surprised by how helpful she is and how quickly she is to respond. We get on a call and she shows me some reporting she did that is similar and directs me towards a table she thinks would have the values I'm looking for. She recommends another colleague to talk to and I schedule a meeting with him for the next day since he was busying for the rest of today. I feel instantly better. My anxiety about my work plummets and I find the energy and motivation to start investigating another task I've been given. I quickly find 1) the task was way easier than I initially estimated and 2) the data I want isn't available where I thought it would be. I even find out a new way to pull code out of Tableau and I excitedly share my discovery with another colleague. Around this time it's getting close to 4pm, my usual time to stop working and just become available for questions, should anyone need to reach out to me. I feel better about myself and allow myself to take more pleasure in my activities.

I start to prepare for the online D&D game I host each week, Tuesdays at 7:30pm. One of my favorite things about quarantine is that it's given me the time and ability to play again. I've missed having a regular D&D game badly. We had a very good game the previous week and I'm excited to make new material for this new game. I decide to include a villain who is a Banksia Man, one of the anatognists from the Australian fairy-tale Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. CY had helped me over the weekend come up with a cool backstory for him. I take notes and save some pictures so I can display them to my players through screen share.

A group of our friends are doing a Plank Challenge while we try to stay in shape while in quarantine. Colette set up a FB group with a list of exercises to do for 13 days. Each day, you do your assigned exercise then you post to the group to indicate you completed your day's tasks. CY and I made a point to work out for a bit each day after work and were already doing a fair amount of planks so the challenge as it was written was too easy for us. We tend to double the amount of time for each exercise or we double up the reps. My tasks for today are 30 seconds each of planks, rocking planks, hip dips, and up downs. I do all the exercises straight through twice with a short break in between sets then post to FB in the group.

After doing planks, CY and I go out to a nearby park to walk for a bit. We go for about 2.5 miles. It's a nice day, nearly 60 degrees. I am happy to see wild flowers starting to sprout up and the leaves coming back to the trees. Most people in the park are polite and keep their distance. It's rare to see people wearing masks while they are walking or running, so it almost feels normal.

We make it back with enough time for me to start getting my notes ready for game. CY offers to make me food and asks what I'd like to eat. We had just gone to Trader Joe's the weekend before and gotten a truly ridiculous amount of frozen food. He insists I pick something from the freezer to eat. In the end we decide he'll cut up the jackfruit crab cakes and make them into 'seafood tacos'. He even makes some sriracha ranch to go with it. The crab cake is surprisingly greasy, but it's very tasty and filling. Not sure I'd get it again though.

I go into the gaming group call and we quickly realize that only Gene and Aaron are going to be able to join game. We don't think it will be enough to continue the campaign I prepared for so I offer to do a one-shot just for them. I show them a cute rpg I found awhile ago called 'Fuck! It's Dracula' and we give it a shot. We have fun but I feel a bit unprepared since I have to ab lib most of the plot and come up with secret plans on the fly so they can be betrayed by their NPCs. The game is much shorter than I initially anticipated and we finish up around 9:30pm, much earlier than normal. I don't feel like Aaron and Gene enjoyed this game as much as they would have enjoyed the larger campaign I made, but at least we got to play together for a bit. I appreciate the social contact at the very least.

We dismiss ourselves from game and I join CY on the couch. He is watching some cooking tutorial videos, trying to teach himself how to smoke brisket properly. I go back and forth between different apps on my phone, not really paying attention to the TV. I try to read for a bit, but we eventually settle down to sleep before I get very far. I feel good about how the day went and I'm proud of myself for getting work done on the sock and researching my projects. I feel better about my life than I did when I first woke up this morning.

[kittymaverick]

It’s that time of the year again! MCF Moths to a Flame commentary-- Wait, MCF 20 is also in the works????!!!!

Once again, I’m relying on Pazu for the content, so excuse anything I miss in the process. Spoilers below the cut!

1. From the title alone I feel like the MD is... well... taking a certain leap of faith here that they’ll survive. 2. Dang, that elevator ride... if this is the MD agency headquarters, can I say you guys are in desperate need of a full-office renovation? MD: Ever wondered why I drive a buggy? It’s because they don’t have the funds for that, let alone pay me enough for my suffering. 3. “Not a secret passage”. OPEN IT. MD: No. It doesn’t have a lock! OPEN-- MD: How about... this spooky looking archive instead? .....This where they put all your reports of shame? MD: ...Yes. *sobs* 4. Hey, hey guy? Not smoking in the archives is sort of a common sense rule! MD: Hush, our line of work is stressful, alright? 5. I like how you guys just scribble out the FAIL stamps with pencil. Also, did you put up that cut out of the news clipping about Ravenhearst destroyed? MD: My proudest accomplishment... *wipes a tear* Huh, and also mentions of Huxley boarding house-- MD: I’m so sad I didn’t get to burn that place down. 6. ...This wall looks a bit creepy... You happen to have a stalker coworker, MD? MD: I already work with creepy clients and adversaries. Please don’t make my life already harder than it is. Huh, more blueprints... What is it with you and guys that love to make blueprints, huh? MD: ...I attract a certain type-- *NEON LETTERS OF YOU WILL ALL PAY SHOW UP* *ME SCREECHING* 7. Hey MD, just making sure... that guy wasn’t you, right? MD:.... ....Master Detective?.... MD: I can neither confirm nor deny such a speculation. Guys, I TOLD you that MD needed a therapy dog! 8. I swear, television head mannequin has turned into the new MCF mascot. MD: They grow on you after a while, like mold. 9. Omg, there’s an entire cabinet of your cases. MD: Every time I look at that bookcase, I feel like I need another holiday-- So you can get assigned an overseas case! :D MD: ...What has my life come to... 10. ...Wait, only NOW are we getting the intro? Also, ehehe, I see you still got crows following you. MD: A murder is forever following my footsteps, great. 11. “Several top secret files have gone missing from the agency--” MD: Oh, OH... NO ONE ROBS US AND GETS AWAY WITH IT. “To keep a low-profile, we’re sending you alone.” MD: Wait, that’s not... how... I’m getting no back up? RIP Master Detective, you will be sorely missed. :) MD: Is this because we’re not making enough money to pay for two?! LOOK I’LL TAKE THIS PRO BONO LET ME HAVE A PARTNER TO WATCH MY BACK OKAY-- 12. “We have reliable information that the files at are the Zenith Museum of Oddities--” MD: Okay, first, if you know where the files are going, WHY ARE YOU NOT CALLING THE POLICE THAT IS PROBABLY IN CAHOOTS WITH US AND WILL JUST HAND THEM BACK TO US ANYWAY? Second, IT’S A MUSEUM OF ODDITIES AND YOU THINK SENDING ME IS A GREAT IDEA? Third, if it’s some of our top secret files that might be related to oddities, HOW LIKELY IS IT THAT THIS HEIST MIGHT HAVE BEEN ENTIRELY DONE TO DRAW ME TO THE MUSEUM, AND I’M LITERALLY WALKING INTO A DEATH TRAP? ...MD, you keep up that paranoia, and we’re not gonna get a game. MD: I JUST WANT MY SANITY, OKAY. MY HEALTH INSURANCE DOESN’T COVER THAT MUCH THERAPY. 13. “...The museum is abandoned--” Really? MD: Are you sure? Are you absolutely absolutely sure? MD: If the files are there, HOW can it be abandoned? “...You want to lose your badge, detective, cause you’re this darn close.” MD: ............. “The Queen sure do love reading your reports.” MD: I will remember this, director....... *shakes fists* 14. “It’s okay, we’re going to give you a MAC, reserved for the very best--” MD: You’re getting me a Macbook?! 8D “No... it means Mechanical automated companion.” MD: ...But, Mac, Book... It’s okay, MD, it’s okay. Trust me, you don’t want Macs on an important mission where they could just break... That said, I swear, Elf from Mystery Trackers had like a basket of puppies, why couldn’t we have gotten one?! “Can Elf do this?” *Badge transformer* MD: !!!!!!!! ...Okay, you know what, THIS? WAY COOLER. 15. MD: It found something! This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship-- Ah yes, they gave you a companion cube JUST SO THEY CAN TAKE IT AWAY LATER. >8D MD: Can’t you let me have my happiness for just one, bloody, second?! 16. Hm, a car in the ravine. MAC can’t get inside. If we aim a rock carefully, maybe we can pop the trunk open-- MD: *chucks rock at back window, shattering it* UM, REALLY? MD: Vandalism, a step down from arson, but just as cathartic. 17. Hm, a bike. MD: *eyes shining* Um, MD???? MD: *vibrating on spot* UM. NO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO COMMIT GRAND THEFT AUTO. MD: dammit. 18. One Chloe Waston... ring any bells? MD: Nope. Right, filing down one NPC as a possible rescue target, if not a body, if not an adversary. MD: The three categories of people I meet on my cases... 19. A place for all great but misunderstood things. MD: Sounds like something a certain family would say about themselves. Mmhmm... 20. Puzzles so far in the first 15 minutes don’t look sketchy. I almost miss the nonsensical ones that scream “Hi, I was built by a madman!” MD: I’m not sure if I should feel safer, or less safe about having an adversary that might actually be sane for once. 21. MD: Place could use a garderner. Victor was a pretty good garderner-- MD: Can you not please Sorry, force of habit. 22. Pazu: Can you see the robot television man? Really? Oh boy that doesn’t bode well-- *Another robot falls from the above* AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH MD: WHERE IS MY BUGGY LET ME OUT OF HERE. 23. TV head: Welcome to the Zenith Museum-- MD: WHY DO YOU SOUND LIKE THE TV MAN FROM ALL THE OTHER PLACES??? Maybe they mass produce them-- MD: YOU TELLING ME CHARLES HAS A FACTORY FOR BUILDING THEM SOMEWHERE??? If so, hey at least that’s one more place for you to indulge in being a pyromaniac. 24. I just realized, all those people probably came here for the missing case files. If so, um, MD, you guys honestly have got to have the worst kept secret files ever in history. MD: I mean, when entire buildings are burning down, it’s hard to keep people from talking... 25. This letter to open the door screams TRAP, MD. MD: Look, if I quit now, my pension’s done for, so I might as well die trying. ...You have a pension? MD: ...No, I’m just making up excuses for why I’m entering the building of a murderer... You could just say you have a murderer to stop... 26. Ah, found the files, obvious in a mysterious box-- Um, MD. MD: ..... They... those three were also.... Master Detectives....... MD: *cracks knuckles* Ohhhhhhhhhh fuck they’ve done it, they’ve really pissed the MD off... 27. MD: That outline, it’s like the letter I got from the Queen-- *FOOL* MD: ....................................... Wow, I mean, it’s refreshing that someone just outright calls you an idiot for once. Um, please tell me you brought your immortality feather. MD: Oh bloody hell no, this is mortal combat, just you and me, pal! ...maybe the insult MIGHT be right in some ways... 28. MD: Hey MAC, what’s up? *RED ALERT, TV HEAD ATTACK* MD: I KNEW YOU GUYS WOULD TURN ON ME ONE DAY. TV head: Hey, maybe I can help you. Two heads is better than one! MD: Given that you JUST attacked me, how about GO GET GUILLOTINED BY THE DOOR. 29. MD: *picks up head* You, TALK. TV head: I don’t know what happened! MD: Oh, REALLY? If you want to punch the screen out, I’m not against it, for once. 30. Um, MD, I have to point out... MD: What? ...Mac disappeared. Like, YOUR BADGE literally disappeared. MD: ...NOOOOOOOOOOOOO I’m sure you’ll find it later, when you need it the most-- MD: HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO STAB A HOROCRUX WITH SILVER IF I DON’T HAVE MY BADGE. If it’s any consolation, at least you have the other badges, though they are a bit fused together, and huh, this statue here says badges only-- *Contraptions swallows up badge* *Spits out.... Dalimar portrait chain.* ... MD: ... MD: *TURNS TO BANG ON DOOR FUTILELY* LET US OUT OF HERE, EIPEX WE WANT OFF THIS RIDE LET US OUT PLEASE MD: I FORGOT MY FEATHER PLEASE LET ME GO GET IT AT LEAST SO I CAN CHEAT MY WAY OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!

[To be continued in part two...]

[utilitycaster]

Lucretia’s D&D Class

Please see my evidence for why Lucretia is a druid with 2 levels of paladin. Spoilers for literally all of TAZ: Balance.

1. Her school of magic per the relics, as well as the one spell she casts in canon (Shield of Faith), are both abjuration spells. Druids don’t specialize in any school of magic, but they are protectors of nature and have a good number of abjuration spells.

2. In the finale, she is still alive when Magnus dies. Canonically, she and Magnus are both humans and she is about 20 years older than he is (having given up 20 years of her life in Wonderland, she appears to be in her 50s at the time of the main series and Magnus is in his early 30s) Magnus is stated to live a long life. It’s definitely possible she just lives to be in her 90s or older, but if she were a L18 druid by that time she would age 1 year for every 10 years of life per Timeless Body and would easily outlive Magnus. She’s obviously a primary caster and no other casting class has a similar agelessness - only Oath of the Ancients paladins and mystics (if you include those) do. However…

3. Shield of Faith is a first level spell available to clerics, paladins, and artificers. Because she has to be able to take 18 levels in druid she can be no more than 2 levels in another class. She can’t therefore multiclass into artificer as they don’t have any spells until L3. She also has stated she puts no trust into the gods and so I don’t think cleric is a good fit. Hence, paladins: they can believe in the gods, or they can swear an oath to a concept, and a L2 Paladin has first level spells. Given Lucretia’s dedication to duty above all and willingness to suffer terribly for it, a few levels of paladin aren’t surprising. Now, you may ask why she’s not just a L15+ Oath of the Ancients Paladin, who cannot die of old age and would definitely have this spell (and whose directive is to nurture the light). However, she shows virtually no physical combat skills and is able to cast an unnamed extremely strong shielding spell, and so she is unlikely to be solely a paladin, as they are a mixed fighting/casting class.

4. She makes a wooden staff as her item. Druids don’t use metal armor or shields and are proficient with clubs and staffs.

5. Her spell in the finale isn’t anything in the player’s handbook, but druids have access to a lot of shielding and planar spells such that this is a feasible extrapolation for the sake of narrative fiction and the power of the staff, which is already, as a relic, able to do things beyond the abilities of the creators (eg: Magnus’s relic can do magic and he can’t).

6. The fandom jokes about the lack of party balance for the Starblaster’s crew, but most of the NPC classes are never stated explicitly and they don’t necessarily need to be wizards. Therefore:

Magnus is a fighter, Merle is a cleric, Taako is a wizard (canonical PCs)

Lup and Barry are probably wizards given their abilities and the fact that they were able to become liches, though Barry either multiclassed into fighter or his amnesiac Faerun self became a fighter but his true lich self is a wizard.

Davenport does illusion magic, which could be any of the casters, or an arcane trickster. His stats are never stated nor can I find a specific spell he cast online (I haven’t relistened to the series in full while writing this).

Therefore: if Davenport were a high level arcane trickster he could serve as a battler along with Magnus as needed, or he could be a bard and serve as a backup healer. If Lucretia were a druid, we still have a wizard-heavy party but it’s nowhere near as bad:

3 wizards of different skillsets (transmutation, evocation, necromancy). Note that a necromancer would probably know Vampiric Touch which lets them heal by draining the life of others, evocation lets you do ridiculous amounts of damage, and Taako has a high dex modifier and is good with acrobatics so he can probably stay out of the way of a lot of damage, especially if Lup has spell-shaping to begin with.

A cleric

A fighter

An arcane trickster or college of glamour bard (both high-utility characters; also if Davenport were a bard this adds some great additional narrative reasons for Lucretia taking away most of his ability to speak)

A druid, perhaps one who took the paladin levels as part of her character arc (maybe during the year she was alone, or as part of her ultimate decision to protect the light?)

This is a much more balanced party with at least one and maybe two additional healers, which would also explain why Merle is unused to being the sole healer of the party (though obviously any weirdness before the second voidfish incident can be chalked up to the induced amnesia).

Addressing potential counterarguments:

1. She’s an NPC and not subject to class requirements: true, at which point this whole argument and all arguments about Lucretia’s class are moot. Like, this does not impact your ability to appreciate the story but some of us like to come up with complicated mechanical explanations for D&D stories that fit in the rules, even though the whole point of having a DM is allowing exceptions for the sake of story. We are nerds. Just...bear with us.

2. The wiki says wizard. Whatever. Not stated in canon. Next.

3. She never uses Wild Shape, a major hallmark of the druid. However, it is worth noting that she doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time during which she’s not being the director and therefore needs to be reachable and able to communicate, which many animals cannot, and if she doesn’t reach L18 in druid until post-story (ie, in between the Day of Story and Song and Magnus’s death) she would be unable to cast in Wild Shape form and hence may avoid it unless absolutely necessary. Based on her pre-Stolen Century nature she seems more of a Circle of the Land spellcasting-focused druid than a Circle of the Moon wild shape-focused druid. Having access to wild shape would actually help explain a few items, notably how she could survive for a year in hiding on her own, how she made it through Wonderland, and how she could personally gather information before having the whole Bureau set up. Also the real reason she doesn’t want dogs on the moon so that no one will smell the cat in her office from when she wild shapes into a cat and hides in a drawer for some goddamn peace and quiet.

4. Wizards have access to Modify Memory. Obviously it’s not perfect and has limitations (opportunities to resist, can’t be cast on a wide net) but never does Lucretia even consider using Modify Memory for small things. It’s voidfishes all the way down.

5. Wizards cast with intelligence. Druids cast with wisdom. Is it wise to do what Lucretia did? I would argue that she truly believed she was doing the right but hard thing and was acting based on that. The knowledge of the planes and the impact of her shielding spell is more of an arcana element that the wizards of the party can understand but perhaps a wise but not as intelligent character would not. Wisdom is also considered to be akin to resilience, willpower, and resolve - all things Lucretia demonstrates. Her trait in the beginning of the Stolen Century is perception - she’s the journal keeper. Later, she knows what she’s doing is deeply controversial and her insight shows her that the hunger will devour all if she doesn’t stop it…but she doesn’t quite have the intelligence to know how. Contrast her quiet determination and forging ahead with her plan vs. the intelligent wizards, who endlessly search for solutions but don’t take the same kind of definitive but painful action.

[finnstagamer]

Finnstagamer Score - 10/10

Red Dead Redemption 2

239 hours into playing RDR2 I triggered a cutscene signalling my 100% completion of the game...and I did not resent a second of it. My obsessive pursuit of this accolade had inadvertently railroaded me into exploring every avenue of this masterpiece. It’s like being restrained, eyes pried open and forcefully made to witness the most glorious thing you’ll ever see, afterwards being grateful you hadn’t fought against it too hard.

Every task completed and every box ticked off brought the relief of visible progress but also a bittersweet feeling that I would probably never have the time to revisit these features again. The 100% checklist gives a taster of everything that the game has to offer but there is so much more out there and it would probably be easier to compile a list of features that aren’t in the game (think real life minus a few minor details). The main characters hair grows, animal carcasses decompose down to bones rather than despawning when you’re far enough away, every NPC is interactable and will remember you picking a fight with their friend in the saloon 3 weeks ago.

Somewhere in the region of 20% of Red Dead players have completed the story (as of time of writing) which leaves a massive number of players that will never fully appreciate why this game is so highly rated. Admittedly, it is a slog up to chapter 6 but when you arrive “boah” is it worth it. Chapter 6 (and beyond) is some of the most engaging character development I've come across in any game and while we already know the fate of the characters in this prequel, it's an emotional rollercoaster learning how they got there.

Beyond the story, stranger missions and side missions there is a living, breathing world with every inch of it functioning in its own ecosystem until you discover it. From a hillbilly that will drug you and leave you in the woods to a cult that ‘drank the kool aid’ waiting for a UFO to arrive, every person and every building has a story. Not only must there be thousands of mechanics at play keeping this world turning, but every blade of grass, every ripple in water and every speck of mud on your face is photo realistic, making even other modern games feel like you're playing ‘pong’.

If I were to find a negative in Red Dead Redemption 2 it would be that (as in life) the daunting scale and endless distractions mean that 99% of its player base will never see anywhere near enough of the content to really appreciate the extent of the detail put into the games world.  Many have already given up on the story mode and only engage in the online section of the Red Dead. The same beautiful landscape exists here but the functioning world has been largely stripped away and while still easily a 10/10 game in its own right, is like only playing the skill games on the loading screen of Fifa rather than the full game of the story mode.

[burnouts3s3]

Bully, a game review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 14.99 USD How much I paid: 36 USD (10 for the PS3 version and 15 for the Steam Version and 11 for the PS4 version while it was on sale). Rated: T for Teen How long I played: 10 Hours on PC while 2 hours on the PS4 version. Microtransactions: None! What I played on: PS3, PS4 and PC Performance Issues: Bully might be one of my favorite games and it might be one of the WORST PORTS EVER! Holy Shit! If the PS3 version isn’t bogged down with glacial framerates, it has pixelated graphics which are not done service on HD. (The PS3/PS4 versions are merely upscaled and have not been updated). The PS4 version runs much better with no crashes, but has been upscaled rather than remastered. The PC version, while looking better, constantly crashes and will inevitably result in lost progress as you must save manually at specific locations. And of course, that cursed plague returns, as Bully’s PC version is locked at 30 frames per second. My Personal Biases: Bully was one of my favorite games growing up during the PS2 era. So, I’ll probably be biased toward this game. CAVEAT: Bully comes in 2 versions: The original game and the Scholarship edition. The Scholarship edition contains all the content from the original game and adds features such as additional classes/mini-games, more outfits and extra story missions not found in the base game. I believe the anniversary edition is the same as the Scholarship edition only it’s released for mobile phones. (I could be wrong) Please be aware which version you’re getting. My Verdict: There’s no denying that Bully is at times juvenile, immature, naughty and that favorite word, problematic. But, if you can look past the surface, you can see, much like the protagonist Jimmy Hopkins, there’s much more underneath the surface. Buy it! Bully, a game review

"So here I am, at probably the worst school in the country, whose alumni are nothing but arms dealers, serial killers, and corporate lawyers. Real scum. And that old creep thinks he can tame me? We shall see, my friend. I only give people what they have coming to them." — Jimmy Hopkins I don’t know how I can describe Bully in a way that fascinates me and makes it so near and dear in my heart. I was never really a Grand Theft Auto fan. Even, when I was old enough to legally play the game, I always felt detached from the main characters. It wasn’t until GTA IV came out that I really fell in love with the story, only for GTA V to come out and make things go back the way they were. Bully was released during a controversial period in the United States. When Jack Thompson was legislating heavily against game developers and video games violence, Rockstar was releasing Bully, a kid version of Grand Theft Auto. Early footage shown at E3 showed the protagonist doing heinous crimes like giving other kids wedgies, putting a kid’s head in the toilet and defying authority. Parent groups were outraged and a debate occurred whether the game went too far. The end result? Probably one of my favorite games of all time. Jimmy Hopkins is a 15 year old delinquent being sent away by his cold-hearted, gold digging mother and her fifth husband. Jimmy, having been expelled from multiple schools faces his last chance at the boarding school of Bullworth Academy. After he’s dropped off, he soon meets Gary Smith, an intelligent student who might not have the best of intentions, and Pete Kowalski, a shy boy who can’t even make friends with the geeks. Jimmy plans to get the bullies off his back and rule the school by taking out the Bullworth Cliques, the nerds, the Preps, the Greasers and the Jocks. But as Jimmy helps his fellow students (and a dysfunctional staff member or two), he learns that Gary doesn’t have his best interests in mind. What’s interesting about Bully is that Jimmy, unless dictated by the player, isn’t usually inclined to cause harm. Rather, he attempts to get payback from the various cliques who do cross his paths. (There’s been a long standing rumor that says that Bully changed its story and premise after the reaction from E3, changing Jimmy from a villain protagonist to more of an anti-hero). A lot of the criticism the game received was how small the world was and how limited Jimmy’s actions are, compared to the ground breaking Grand Theft Auto 3. Jimmy won’t be able to steal cars or kill any NPC’s. Instead, he can commit petty crimes such as shooting people with his slingshot, tagging on walls or pranking people he comes across. The delinquency meter shows the various amounts of trouble Jimmy can get into. Should he commit minor crimes such as being out of uniform or ditching class, he’ll be in minor trouble. But, violence against students, disrespecting authority or trespassing into the girl’s dormitory will send the local authorities (Prefects and teachers while in school, police officers out of school) after him. If Jimmy gets caught, he’ll be sent to the Principal’s office. Detention consists of mini-games such as using the school mower to mow lawns. But, there’s a benefit to attending class. Should you go to class, you’ll be treated to a mini-game. Completing a course will earn you benefits in the outside game world. For example, passing chemistry class allows you to make have a chem set in your room where you can create ‘weapons’ such as firecrackers, while going to English Class helps you apologize to authority figures for committing various crimes. My favorite is Art Class, where in the bonus is being able to get an extra bar of health when kissing girls. Should Jimmy complete all of his coursework (that is to say, finish all 5 difficulty levels of the mini-games), he’ll be excused from class be given free time. But it’s not all schoolwork and Frenching cheerleaders. There’s a variety of mini-games in the world such as Boxing, bike races, Carnival Games and of course, a huge number of collectables found throughout the game. If Jimmy’s strapped for cash, he can always take up a paper route. The strangest thing about Bully is that it’s a very small game. Even games like Grand Theft Auto III had a variety of environments and locations to explore with its small size. But Bullworth Acadmey and the town of Bullworth are small to explore. It creates a sense of intimacy. I can’t get lost in the world of Bullworth but I can become so intimate that the NPCs become familiar to me. That’s something special a lot of games don’t do. I’d rather have the familiarity of Bully over the vastness and at times emptiness of the Grand Theft Auto games, especially the modern ones. I should mention that the composer for the game, Shawn Lee, gave some of the most memorable music I’ve heard this side of some of the best soundtracks. Where Grand Theft Auto had licensed songs from various artists, Bully only has an original soundtrack, but it’s so alive and varied that I caught myself listening to it again and again.

Tying it all together is Gerry Rosenthal as Jimmy. While it’s great to hear familiar voice actors, such as Martin Mull as the Headmaster, Rosenthal’s performance just manages to combine that weird teenage angst that makes the main character so relatable. Kudos to him. What really sold me was the story. I surprisingly found myself relating to Jimmy’s struggle to get through his school days and how he acts and reacts to the world around him. While Jimmy is no saint or perfect student, it does show that the world Jimmy inhabits is a flawed, corrupt and outright dirty society. All the cliques that Jimmy faces, whether it’d be the classist preppies, the posturing Greasers or the testosterone-filled Jocks, are shown to be bullies but in different ways. Meanwhile most of the adults and authority figures are two faced hypocrites. When Jimmy sees his gym teacher trying to sneak dirty magazines out of a pornography store, it becomes apparent why Jimmy doesn’t have any respect for authority. At the same time, I found certain NPCs not only memorable but also rather likable. There’s something about Jimmy helping out the strange homeless man in the Junkyard or spitting food with Edna, the lunch lady, that brings a smile to my face. So while the game holds up in terms of mechanic and I still find the characters and story charming, it pains me to say this has some of the worst ports to date. The PC version constantly crashes. I don’t know who was responsible for it, but given the number of crashes I experienced (as well as the frustration having to save your progress manually), I nearly broke my screen in frustration. Worse yet, Bully is locked at 30 Frames Per Second. The PS4 remastered version is more playable, but only features the vanilla version of the game. Closing thoughts: There’s a lot to say about bullying, the role of bullies and how our society now views bullies. And while I can’t comment on Jimmy’s reactions to the various groups of the schools will look like 50 years from now, I will say I had a blast firing my slingshot, riding my bike and getting into as much trouble with Jimmy Hopkins. It’s not what a game is about, it’s how it’s about it. Verdict: As long as you don’t get the PC Version, go buy it!

[aion-rsa]

15 Best Video Game NPCs Ever

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Free Guy follows a video game NPC who becomes aware of the circumstances of their existence and uses that newfound awareness to become the star of a game that they were only ever supposed to be a bit player in. It’s ultimately a look at the little people in video games and how easy it is to ignore them.

Of course, most gamers know that NPCs can be so much more than non-playable characters. While there are some NPCs that are little more than seat fillers in some of the largest and most elaborate video game worlds ever, others have used their supporting roles to steal the show and establish themselves as legends in their own right.

From mistranslated villagers and merchants to dogs and knights, these are some of the absolute best video game NPCs ever.

15. Error – Zelda II: The Adventures of Link

With the immortal introductory line “I am Error,” this humble NPC from Link’s bizarre second adventure found a home in the memories of a generation of gamers that wondered what the story behind this seemingly glitched character was. 

It turns out that Error’s bizarre dialog can be attributed to good old-fashioned translation issues, but this is a prime example of a seemingly meaningless NPC’s ability to work their way into our hearts despite being given almost no time to shine.

14. The Merchant – Resident Evil 4

For anyone who played the Resident Evil games up until the release of Resident Evil 4, the joy of encountering “The Merchant” cannot be overstated. Just when you thought you were about to have to battle yet another insane villager in a Wicker Man setting, the Merchant speaks cryptically, opens their coat, and offers you a very surprising helping hand. 

The Merchant’s sporadic appearances and unique role made them an instant favorite among franchise fans, but it’s the character’s mysterious nature that makes them so compelling all these years later. We still don’t know a lot about the Merchant, and that’s the way it arguably should be.

13. Jeff “Joker” Moreau – Mass Effect Trilogy

There’s no shortage of incredible characters in the Mass Effect franchise, but since we’ve already shown a lot of love to the game’s best squad companions, let’s talk about one of Mass Effect’s best NPCs that can’t join your away team: Joker.

Along with being one of the best pilots in the Alliance fleet, Joker is one of Mass Effect’s most consistently funniest characters. BioWare did a brilliant job of growing Joker’s story arc in future games, but he always remained a source of strength was always there to help make the Normandy feel like a home.

12. Elizabeth – BioShock Infinite

It’s fascinating to see how divisive BioShock Infinite remains eight years after its release, but one of the things that the game absolutely got right was Elizabeth’s role as an NPC companion. 

At a time when it was still fairly common to have to babysit your companions (even though there had obviously been tremendous advances in that area by this point), Elizabeth proved to be a more than capable partner who not only used her unique abilities to help you out of tight spots but would even occasionally toss you ammo and health. Elizabeth is an incredible character in her own right, but few games have ever made an A.I. partner feel so invaluable. 

11. The Narrator – Stanley Parable

It feels strange calling Stanley Parable’s narrator an NPC given that they’re the main reason that this game is one of the best of the last decade, but this disembodied voice certainly meets the technical requirements for that role.

The narrator’s determination to get you to follow The Stanley Parable’s most obvious path forward is bested only by the dry, witty frustration he exhibits whenever you start to veer off-course. He’s the real star at this look at the relationship between choice and storytelling in gaming. 

10. Cortana – Halo (Franchise)

Cortana is absolutely a strong character in her own right, but the thing that makes her stand out among the best NPCs ever is the nature of her relationship with Master Chief and you as the player. 

Cortana is the voice in your head that manages to guide you along the path while making the world feel a little more interesting along the way. At a time when gamers grit their teeth at the mere mention of the words “Hey listen,” Cortana proved that it was possible to make such a character feel like an irreplaceable part of what is ultimately the player’s journey. 

9. Dogmeat – Fallout (Franchise)

Truth be told, you could fill a list of the best NPCs in gaming history with Fallout characters and it would be difficult to argue with you. However, it’s hard not to ultimately give the nod to Dogmeat. Not only is this companion one of the most consistent sights in the Fallout universe, but their status as the absolute goodest boy/girl is undeniable.

In a series filled with moral ambiguity and complex characters with unique agendas, Dogmeat is…well…a dog. They’re loyal, loving, and willing to help you in any way that they can. They’re as perfect of a companion as you could ever ask for, and they make the wasteland feel just a little less hostile. 

8. Phillip “The Bloody Baron” Strenger – The Witcher 3

In a game that’s arguably best known for a collection of side quests and side characters that are better than most of the main stories and main characters seen in other games, it’s telling that “The Bloody Baron” is regularly referred to as the highlight of this epic adventure. 

The Bloody Baron may get more screen time than the average NPC, but it honestly doesn’t take long for this morally complex and utterly fascinating character to simply steal the show. He’s one of the best examples of why you should take the time to get to know the various inhabitants of RPG worlds. 

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7. Sans – Undertale

While it sometimes feels like blasphemy to rank one Undertale character over another given how well-rounded and important so many of the game’s NPCs end up being, it’s hard to talk about the game’s best characters for long without the conversation turning to Sans. 

This apathetic skeleton’s most tragically relatable quality is his tendency to pivot between whether or not the futility of his existence is a reason to do nothing or if it’s all the more reason to relax and have fun. He practically embodies this game’s complex morality and wicked sense of humor. 

6. Hal “Otacon” Emmerich – Metal Gear Solid (Franchise)

Granted, Otacon doesn’t exactly make a great first impression (he wets his pants the first time you meet him), but this quirky scientist has to be one of gaming’s best examples of how an NPC can grow on you over time. 

While it’s easy to champion the way that Otacon becomes slightly more badass over the course of this series, his most enduring qualities are the two things that never really change: his weirdness and commitment to going above and beyond to try to help. He’s one of the most “pure’ Kojima characters. 

5. Tom Nook – Animal Crossing (Franchise)

The debate over whether Tom Nook is the quiet hero of Animal Crossing or little more than a loan shark who introduces this quaint world to the joys of capitalism will rage on, but nobody walks away from Animal Crossing without some kind of thoughts about this true icon.

Tom Nook helps you get started in the world of Animal Crossing and is often the character you need to go to whenever you want to move on to the next part of your adventure. He’s kind of a gatekeeper in that sense, but he’s also the thing that keeps the Animal Crossing experience consistently compelling. 

4. HK-47 – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

You do technically have the ability to control HK-47 during combat sequence, which means that their presence on this list could be considered a bit of a cheat. However, I dare you to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and let that technicality get in the way of giving this character the love they deserve. 

While KOTOR’s morality system helped distinguish it from so many other console RPGs of its era, there’s always been something undeniably compelling about HK-47’s wonderfully uncomplicated moral code. He sees every human as a “meatbag” and struggles to understand why you wouldn’t just blast your way out of a situation. 

3. Solaire of Astora – Dark Souls

Solaire of Astora is everything that you’re not expecting to find in Dark Souls. He’s optimistic, friendly, and, if you play your cards right, helpful.

While it’s possible for Solaire to succumb to insanity if you make the wrong choices along the way, he’s best remembered for his unusual commitment to the idea that there is hope and good in the game’s overwhelmingly dark world. His viewpoint may be idealistic, but you cannot deny the purity of his spirit and intentions. “Praise the sun” indeed. 

2. Cave Johnson – Portal 2

It’s impossible to ignore that GLaDOS is indeed the most famous NPC in the Portal franchise as well as arguably one of the most memorable characters in video game history. Long after “the cake is a lie” became one of gaming’s most overused memes, though, it’s Cave Johnson that stands apart as one of this franchise’s greatest creations.

Cave Johnson is the former CEO of Aperture Science who apparently reached Mr. Burns levels of evilness before he died from moon rock poisoning. His incredible dialog (which, it must be said, is expertly delivered by the irreplaceable J.K. Simmons) includes some of Portal’s best jokes, but it’s when you start to spot the tragedy and world-building in-between his jokes that you really appreciate how much this character accomplishes.

1. M’aiq the Liar – The Elder Scrolls (Franchise)

I love an NPC who practically becomes the star of the show, but my heart goes out to the NPCs who occupy a small part of a game’s world but a large part of our hearts. So far as that goes, M’aiq the Liar may just stand alone. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

As the name implies, M’aiq the Liar isn’t always entirely truthful. While those lies are often hilarious and clever, M’aiq is best known as a kind of unofficial developers’ commentary track. He often addresses meta subjects regarding missing features and misunderstood pieces of lore but does it in ways that make it difficult to separate the world-building from the Easter eggs. He’s the perfect reminder of the ways that the best video game NPCs can surprise you. 

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