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Fun Find in The Star Wars: Outlaws DLC

As a gamer, a Star Wars fan, and a fan of pirate and sailor media - especially sea shanties - just popping out of return of Star Wars: Outlaws playthrough for a second.

The latest DLC Pirate's Fortune has a fun segment where you can infiltrate a pirate crew and explore around. If you stick around their tavern a longwhile, you can hear a pretty amazing sea shanty pop up from the crew. One of those slow, somber ones, a la General Taylor / Walk Him Along, Johnny. Dope to hear just happen during my playthrough. Too bad you can't get Kay or Hondo to sing along.

After Skeleton Crew gave us just the smallest taste of one - and being a huge fan of Twin Suns Entertainment (now the Bardfather) - I've been hoping to see more and more original sea shanties in Star Wars stuff if they give us more pirate content. Not disappointed on that front.

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These Windblume events are a godsend (no pun intended) for the early Mondstadt cast, since for most - though not all - of them, they're the most characterization they ever get. The earliest (and I mean earliest - later Mondstadt characters don't generally have this problem) characters tend stay in a kind of bubble where they're still pretty one note anime-style character types without much more to them, with only some managing to continue on to have more to them, while the later characters are still character-typey but nearly all try to at least have a few things a story can do with them. Especially with recent stuff like the Anecdotes event, the difference in how the early cast is written is really noticeable. Venti's the standout exception from this crop who continues to have more to him, but the rest are struggling. Heck, for some of them (like Barbara and debatably Lisa) this particular event years ago is arguably the most characterization they've ever gotten.

Just watched the 1.4 event "Invitation of Windblume".

This is a pretty good limited-time event, in that it's interesting but missable. It's the story of Mondstadt's holiday Windblume which is basically Teyvat's Valentine's Day, with small stories featuring various Mondstadt characters. There's also a larger overarching mystery concerning the true nature of the titular "Windblume", a special flower in the mythos of the holiday but that no one really agrees on which flower it is.

Thoughts:

Tone-deaf bard lives up to his fucking name. Barbara's stalkers leave her traumatically threatening clickbait to force her out into the woods where she'll discover their stupid-ass present, and Venti takes their side and starts talking shit about how it's the gesture that counts.

She literally thought they killed her sister. Fuck those guys.

Bennett dumbasses himself into a new best friend. Not only does he misidentify the location we need to go to, but he still goes to the wrong place after the right location has been stated in the same conversation. But now he gets to hang out with Razor so that's cool.

No idea what Rosaria's deal is. Rosaria is a character who I've seen around a few times but have been waiting for the event where we properly meet her and find out what her deal is. The 1.4 update added her to the game so I thought this would be her formal introduction but nope, she's still flitting around the edges of the plot acting like we've known her all along.

Amber and Noelle have a Meet Cute. Venti's waxing poetic about Valentines relationships and shit and brings up chance encounters right as we see Amber nearly land on Noelle from a glide gone bad. You know what, I'm here for it. The Knights of Favonius proper don't appreciate Noelle. Let her become an Outrider.

Jean and Lisa hang out. Honestly, this is my favorite part of the event. We see very little of it but Jean and Lisa buddy up and trade barbs off each other and it's great.

Meanwhile Barbara's crying in the church thinking that her stalkers buried Jean in a shallow grave across the lake and her god's like "Yeah but have you thought about how much they must like you to do something like that?" I would tell Venti to go jump off a cliff but he'd do it and then soar away to freedom or some shit.

Kaeya pranks himself and I do not understand why. He smooth-talks Venti into accepting him as a poetry student with that "Ahahaha I am 47 moves ahead of you in this 4-D chess match you didn't even know we were playing" voice and then just does the assignment fair and square.

Um. Huh. I hope you got what you were looking for out of this? I dunno, maybe Kaeya just doesn't know how not to sound like he's engaging in spy shit. Maybe he was being entirely sincere, and Cryptic Fuck is just his default tone.

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This is goofy and I cannot stress enough that I have no gd idea what i was doing. But. Since I think iv abandoned this:

Turles and crew tryin to convince gohan to join them via musical number :]

(Song is 'professional pirate' from muppet treasure island)

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Turnabout Time Traveler: On Larry

I don't think there's a single character in this franchise that I have as much a swing opinion of than Larry Butz. I'm not especially fond of him in large doses, but I love him in small doses.

The way he's not just extremely unhelpful when he's trying to be helpful, but when he's trying to be unhelpful he's also extremely bad at that too, somehow making things worse for both us and him at once until Phoenix has to make the court suffer through Larry facing the music, can all be extremely funny. The guy can become force of chaos just from standing in a room doing nothing. He pairs especially well with Edgeworth, who could use a little chaos here and then.

I remember not liking him sometimes in the original trio of games, where he could feel a tad overused with diminishing impact returns. If he's appearing in multiple cases a game, the ways he derails the story can get tired quick, but in a situation like Time Traveler where we haven't seen him for a while and he just drops into Phoenix' life and goes and throws the whole thing into disarray is gold.

Phoenix and Edgeworth's shared understanding and resignation that Larry Butz' involvement means they are in for a frustrating and unfulfilling time is one of the best running "defense and prosecution on the same page" gags in the series (as is Edgeworth generally visceral reaction to realizing he's present), to boot. Like: Larry: Don't you believe me? Edgeworth: No. Larry: Niiiiick... Phoenix: Nope.

Keep being Larry, Larry.

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Turnabout Time Traveler: On Flowers

Phoenix: "Let it go, Edgeworth. You clearly don't know much about flowers. It's not like you have anyone you'd actually give them to, after all."

Damn, Phoenix! And I just got finished talking about how Apollo was meaner than you are!

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Turnabout Revolution: Go Apollo!

"The plaintiff will sit down and be quiet!", says Apollo, to Phoenix!

Holy crap.

Between this and Apollo giving Nahyuta the business for having the gall to claim the moral high ground while continuing to try to condemn a child despite it being increasingly obvious at that point that she wasn't guilty, Apollo's comeback game is on point.

Both Phoenix and Athena get some good comebacks and barbs over the last few games, but I swear Apollo can get meaner than either of them and has some edge to him they don't.

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During Turnabout Revolution...

Welp, we have another contender for "most traumatized kid in Spirit of Justice." Which is proving to be a surprisingly populated category. Sarge / Armie Buff developing crippling agoraphobia, pyrophobia and regressing into a fantasy, then legit having a massive panic attack in court after losing both of her parents and having to relive the memory of her father to the point that Athena has to coach her back to lucidity and remind her who she's speaking to) is really something.

The bonus dialogue you get when you present the photo of Apollo's father to her a second time, where she breaks character and timidly asks Apollo to come visit her from time to time, is one of the sweetest, saddest dialogues in the entire franchise imo. Is there some way the next game could have Phoenix adopt both Ahlbi and Armie, somehow? If Blackquill can set a hawk on people during trial, surely the defense could have a drone or two.

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On Nahyuta...

I may have to made a ranking list of Ace Attorney's opposing prosecutors, going over their strengths and weaknesses both as characters and as antagonists and how they all come together, because I may feel the need to explain why I wasn't especially fond of Simon Blackquill, and why I - currently almost finished with of The Rite of Turnabout - so far might be liking Nahyuta even less.

I thought we left this sort of "anti-logic guy just says whatever and refuses to budge" antagonist writing behind after the second game. I'm sure he'll grow into a better adversary eventually, but I do hope it's during the game and not at some point after it like what happened with Edgeworth.

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More Spirit of Justice Thoughts

Ahlbi Ur'gaid is fast becoming my favorite new character in this game. C'mon, Phoenix adopts a lot of kids, what's one more? All he needs to do is find some weird superpower Ahlbi has that has some vague application towards lawyering, puzzle minigames, and long-winded generational family drama. The Wright Anything Agency is basically the "Traumatized Kids With Superpowers" law firm, after all.

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Next Contender For Best "Joke" In Spirit of Justice

Phoenix saying "in my country, suspects are innocent until proven guilty." Look Phoenix, I love you, you're a virtuous idealist who fights tirelessly for justice and all, but I just got finished playing through a ton of your games and that definitely ain't true. If it was, your life would be a whole lot easier.

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"The defense would like to contend that it was magic."

Welp, found the best joke in Spirit of Justice already. That was fast.

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Spirit of Justice - A First Thought I Couldn't Ignore

For the last few weeks I've been playing through the Apollo Justice Trilogy. I've been slowly playing through the Ace Attorney Collections the last year and a half or so, as the only game I'd played when I was younger was the very first. Now Spirit of Justice will be the last of the regular games for me to play (I did TGAA way back, far before the Apollo collection), though I do still have the Investigations series left after this. As a huge mystery fan and a person who loves series with wide endearing casts, it's been a delight (albeit with some hiccups). Maybe I'll post an overview of my opinions on the series (with photos!), which both differ and fall in line with stuff you might have already heard here and there, depending. But anywho, I'm here because of my first two reactions to Spirit of Justice: First, this game is visually delightful. I liked the 3D visuals of Dual Destinies well enough, but I played it after the Great Ace Attorney, whose visuals were a clear improvement, and Spirit's visuals are even better than that. Second, the vaguely foreign setting is going to allow for some truly wonderful puns, isn't it? Ahlbi Urgaid? Holy, frick. It's going to be, like, Aladdin: The Series levels of punnery, isn't it?

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Meanwhile, In Genshin's Story...

Aaaand, we're adding Mausau / Xbalanque to my list of NPCs I'd like to see someday become playable characters, alongside Ruu, Nechca, Jeht, Timmie and Rana. Make him a hero version of Chris from KOF.

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Sonic 3!

Saw it just the other day. Deeply enjoyed, maybe not as much as the second film (the pacing is weird) but it's one of my favorite films in of the year.

Shadow is straight up - and by far - the most engaging character of the film series, which is saying something given that I've always been kind of meh on Game! Shadow even back when playing SA2 Battle as a kid. It helps that we actually see more of his range and personality in the movie vs how the games tend to portray him.

Loving that this film uses more of the games' soundtrack in its score. Not as noticeably as the Mario movie does, of course, but I caught the Modern Eggman theme as the theme of the ARK, or Live and Learn as Shadow's theme, plus the few cameo tracks like E.G.G.M.A.N. and the stage clear theme popping up for a few seconds. Hoping that continues into Movie 4, since - no spoilers - the game it seems to be intending to pull from has one (two, to be real) of the best soundtracks in the franchise's history.

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Raise Your Hands If You Were Expecting The Latest Genshin Event Minigame to Be...

Literal Psychonauts. Mostly just said that for the running gag. It was legit the thing I instantly thought of when they explained the minigame, though. Also, can we have the Traveler's Sabzeruz Festival drip as an alternate costume, pretty please?

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Sparring Partner

It's Knuckles (and Amy) appreciation week now.

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Wait a second, am I tripping balls?