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lairofdragonagelore · 1 year

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The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Deep Roads; Overlook and Excavated Caves

This particular section of the Deep Roads seems to have been abandoned. It connects to a former lyrium mining site of unknown origin, which contains statues of Mythal, Fen'Harel, and of an unknown creature. Unlike dwarven constructions, this location lacks the usual lightning and heating produced by moulting rock, turning it unusually dark. There is no trace of darkspawn activity either.

This place is divided into

Overlook

Excavated Caves

Lower Walkways

Unknown Ruin

[This is part of the series “Playing DA like an archaeologist”]

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

Overlook

The first thing we notice in this strange Deep Roads is the mixture of unequivocally dwarven and elvhenan architecture. The rocks also have a slight blue hue that the rest of the Deep Roads we explored before do not have [but this may be a trick of the light due to the presence of lyrium]. Unlike the other explorations of the Deep Roads, its lack of lights stands out: we don’t see the usual lava-based illumination system. In fact, most of the light comes from the depleted lyrium veins. This makes me suspect a certain resemblance with the Uncharted Abyss of The descendant [The Uncharted Abyss, Forgotten Caverns, and Bastion of the Pure].

The eluvian we have just used is flanked by two Howling Fen'Harel statues.

In the distance we can identify a massive statue of a Humanoid Mythal. This statue will be recognised by any modern elf. As well as the statues of Fen'Harel.

We can see in the distance several structures, a bridge, and a big vein of lyrium over a gigantic Mythal statue.

With the first steps into this area, Cole says something that will be mysterious all along the DLC but also, will give us vague links to concepts I will develop later: here, when he is saying that songs are screaming far away, we cannot understand him much, but we assume, later, that he referred to all the coffins we found in the inner temple of the Lower Walkways: a group of elvhen in Uthenera. In the same sentence Cole uses an “it” to describe something that wants to wake up but forgot how to do it. “It” is the way that Cole usually uses to refer to a titan in general. So, we can understand this as a titan: A titan is sleeping, and can’t awake despite wanting to.

As we explore and walk deeper into the Deep Roads, we see the operation that the qunari are leading here.

We find a lot of Howling Fen'Harel statues, in pairs, flanking the corridors, protecting and guarding the building in its original purpose.

There is a blocked path that will be available once we have the ability to destroy objects with the discharge power. This leads to a small room with an eluvian that will transport us to an unknown ruin where we find the mural of the titan’s death. Details of this part can be found in “The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Deep Roads; Unknown Ruin”.

As we head to the Qunari operation, we find a corridor with a strange statue. Back watched by Howling Fen'Harel statues, this one is what I called it Moon-head creature.

Its style is the same one as the Sun-head creature that we found in “The Crossroads [DLC Trespasser]: Entrance“. It is placed in the centre of a big yellow elvhen mosaics with the asterisk symbol. The base of the statue is a rock, similar to the sun-version. Its body is fused with the rock, and has the same body and wings that the sun-version, but the difference is in the shape of its head.

Of course this is a statue that represents one of the imminent dangers in DA:D, as the mural of Solas showed in the trailer. Personally, I think this is one of the lasting Archdemons, which shows that they [or the original Myth that evolved later into the Archdemons] were also part of the Elvhen religious system in a way we can’t explain in detail yet. This statue is flanked by Fen’Harel as well, protecting it.

If we keep in mind the concept art about the sea-creature shared recently, and the codex about The Ascension of Ghilan'nain [explained in Temple of Mythal], where Solas stopped Ghilan’nain from destroying the sea creatures that lived deep into the waters, one has the suspicion that this is one of those creatures, and Solas has always protected it [as the Fen’Harel statues watching on its back seem to imply].

At the base of the statue there is a bedroll with the scroll Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 1. The information of the codex can be summarised as:

The author is a clan-less dalish elf who survived the Blight that took his clan, and went to Kirkwall, embracing the Qun after the ruin of the city. Now the Qun sent him to the Deep Roads as if they were an expert in elven lore.

This is very important: the author is telling us they are not an expert in the statues we see and what represents. They are already stating they are not reliable. They have some degree of Dalish knowledge to recognise the Myhtal statues [in humanoid form] and of Fen'Harel, who is perceived still as a creature of negative connotations. However, this person makes no reference about the Moon-head creature, beyond the fact that it's well preserved like all the rest of the statues.

They recognise that Fen'Harel statues are always placed in positions of guarding. Fen'Harel as a protector conflicts with their Dalish basic knowledge.

Mythal is placed in "honoured" ways.

This codex is basically telling us that despite this person has a good degree of understanding of the representation of the placement of statues, his lore is not deep, and it’s mostly Dalish, hence fragmented.

This place is also filled with deepstalkers.

Excavated caves

As we enter this zone, Cole adds some extra comment: he uses the "it" once more, meaning the Titan is singing where no one can hear. Could this mean that the titan is singing in a part of the Deep Roads where there are no one to connect to it as Valta did with the titan below the Storm Coast? Does “It” still represent a Titan? How does this comment relate to the final chamber we visit? This is not clear to me.

This place is filled with more deepstalkers. We also find a human ex-templar from Kirkwall who has recently embraced the Qun and shares some information about the operation happening here:

There is a high-rank inside the Ben-Hassrath called Viddasala, specialised in Magic: how to find it, study it, and stop it.

This part of the Deep Roads is a lyrium mine and a centre of lyrium processing. Given the amount of statues and the presence of an elvhenan large structure here, maybe this could have been a centre of elvhenan mining long time ago, maybe the same one which is referred to in the mural of the Titan’s Death.

Saarebas are presented as mages of more power. This makes sense if the theory/suspicion that the Qunari are a race made out of Dragon blood turns out to be true. We know that dragon blood is even more powerful than the elvhen blood for blood magic.

As we know via lore, mining lyrium kills the miners, unless they are dwarven, since they can endure it with their natural resistance. The first Qunari in mining the lyrium here died, but then started to solve the situation using gatlok and making the excavations explode. Quite a reckless decision if we keep in mind that sand lyrium can have explosive properties as well [as we are reminded by Dworkin Glavonak in Awakening].

This place is close to a "lyrium spring".

The human guesses that the presence of eluvians here may be explained because the elves mined these veins too.

#dlc #dai trespasser #playing DA like an archaeologist #song related #Humanoid Mythal statue #Howling Fen'Harel statue #moon head creature #lyrium #deep roads #asterisk symbol #dwarven design #elvhen design #codex focused

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gamebunny-advance · 2 years

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So I’m Not The Only One

@pkbeamgamma

I thought it was just me, but Encore Edition really does feel a lot worse to play.

At first I thought that I had just gotten used to the Switch version, and that Encore Edition was “better” and I just needed to relearn it. Because I could reliably beat every boss’s crazy mode and parry mode on Switch, and I could even get pretty far in at least perfect parry DJSS and 1010, but in Encore Edition I feel lucky to even pass the Hard mode for most bosses. It really feels like the cues for attacking don’t match up to the music anymore, which is a death sentence for a rhythm game. But I played basically on release day, so I dunno if maybe they’ve patched it since then to improve the timing.

Since we’re on this Encore Edition rant anyways (sorry, I’m gonna ramble a bit), I kinda hate that it exists in its current state. I know that they were probably already tied up in contracts and other obligations to push out the first versions of the games on all consoles, but if they were capable of adding these “improvements” in the first place, then why weren’t they there to begin with? Everything they added really wasn’t enough to justify full price on a “new edition” of the game, literally just 1 year after the original game came out. I’d argue that they could have just released a patch, but given how many versions of the game there are, I can see why they would think it wouldn’t be worth it to push one out to all versions (especially since Switch still NEVER got the Christmas DLC). And even then, Encore Edition still has bugs that were in the original release, like how Zed’s “quest” is still broken.

I hate to say it, but Encore Edition really does read like a cash grab. I don’t blame them. They’re an indie studio, so they gotta keep the cash flowing somehow so they can work on more games, but I dunno. It just doesn’t feel good. I think that Metronomik is depending a little too much on the already existing fanbase as a source of income, rather than focusing on expanding it by making the game better. I mean, just their twitter is FULL of spoilers for the game, but I think the first sign of this in Encore Edition is the new opening movie.

As cute as it is and how much I love it as a piece of media, it really does emphasize how much this game does NOT exist for new players because it reveals EVERY major boss encounter in the game, and in some scenes how to fight them (Wan Hazmer really wants to drill into everyone’s brain that you should run RIGHT in DJSS’s fight).

I dunno how other people feel about this, but I think that one of the best parts of this kind of boss rush game is being surprised by the bosses. I mean, the gameplay proper introducesthe artists shrouded in shadows and none of them besides Tatiana are revealed until it’s time to fight them. It creates a sense of intrigue and excitement for what you’re going to be up against. Just as an example, I feel like Neon J. was supposed to be a surprise when he was conceptualized because he lacks any kind of presence in the game until Phase 2 of 1010′s battle, but now that he’s a fan favorite, it’s hard NOT to find him everywhere. Even the new opening movie spoils his existence and even hints at his desires to dance himself, which I also felt was supposed to be a huge reveal for the final phase. It just does not make sense to reveal Neon J. early under any circumstance for a new player. Like it’s cool when we get fanservice, but it shouldn’t be to the detriment of the game.

Encore Edition really put an emphasis on the fans by including all the fanart which was kinda cool, but 1: all of that would seem SUPER out of place to anyone new to the game to just have all this *stuff* plastered all over the environments, and 2: I’m not really sure how the artists were compensated for their efforts besides just being included. From what I understand, they didn’t even get a copy of the game in return, which I would think is the bare minimum. And I know Metronomik has done other cool things for the fans, especially the fanartists (I know about how they made and shipped out physical versions of the 2 zines for free to the artists that participated, which was SUPER cool of them to do), but for as “nice” as all that stuff is, it’s not making the game better.

Like, I can kinda get why they’re going for this approach: the reviews are already out for the game, and they were pretty middling. “Gamers TM” just aren’t going to buy into a game that’s a 6/10 at best, especially at NSR’s price point when there are HUNDREDS of other “better” games they could be playing. Since the damage has already been done, it’s probably going to be hard for them to get new people to get into it, so it’s easier to try and get money out of the people that are sticking around rather than to invest in trying to change public opinion about it.

I could keep on going, but I do want this studio to do better. This all comes from someone that loves this game enough to buy it 3 times. I really hope that they can take the lessons they’ve learned from making NSR to make Ondeh Ondeh a better game.

#nsr #behind the scenes: i actually had a comic idea for this #so it was a comparison between the switch version and EE version of the 1010 fight #it was like Switch version Crazy Mode: mayday breathes on 1010 and they explode #EE version Hard Mode: 1010 guns you down with assault rifles and continues to fire on your corpse #EE 1010 is no joke man #went from easiest boss in the game to one of the hardest #i also want to add that even if the final segment isn't a 'boss' in the traditional sense (you could call it Tatian's 'approach')#but it doesn't change that it's a kind of sour gameplay segment to end on

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bullets-and-masks · 4 years

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Fantastic Flustercuck: Lore, Interesting points, and a little thinking through

Here we go! This list is really, really big. I’ll do a short analysis/critic later on, but I want to get this out now! We’ll have 4 sessions: 1. Krieg and the Crimson Raiders 2. Krieg and Maya 3. Krieg and Himself 4. Final Notes

Session 01: Krieg and the Raiders

Sane Krieg starts by calling Psycho Krieg him; and dividing their mind between two minds, as if there are thoughts only Psycho Krieg has that he can’t access and/or understand

There’s a constant JACK voiceover that can be heard anywhere. Sadly, I didn’t catch the words, but sounded like the pre recorded messages at the preserve in Bl2

The first section of the DLC, the Castle raid, is considered imporant because it’s the first mission Krieg did along with the Crimson Raiders after a while

During this section, we fight the raiders

Brick and Modercai come first. They talk about how Krieg is too crazy to be a part of the Raiders. Sane Krieg does not want to fight them. Psycho Krieg fights - but it’s fear

Tannis quickly accesses it as fear of rejection. Krieg always had an issue with how the Raiders see him

Despite this Sane Krieg does know they’re friends, his family

Also sane Krieg uses the word oaf and that’s like... really funny

In this, Tannis says she relates to fear of rejection, but quickly corrects saying she doesn’t care

There’s the implication that Krieg’s eye was clawed out by a skag

The “Evil Lilith” inside his head calls him an animal, a beast, a weapon just to be used. Says they never cared if he lived or died

Sane Krieg quickly corrects this isn’t how she spoke to us

Lilith is tagged as “Scary fire lady” and that’s kind of adorable

Sane Krieg shows Psycho Krieg an old memory about how the Raiders treat him, and it’s the Raiders inviting Krieg to a bar. They don’t mind how he acts and laugh along with him

But Krieg follows from a distance

The Raiders guard his buzzaxe = strenght and attack

Krieg has a dialogue with himself that goes sorta like: Sane Krieg: (smth about finding out who is he, really) Psycho Krieg: Fragile Things

Sane Krieg also mentions wanting to learn dance, saying he has to exercise to keep his abs, calling it “lean muscle”

Session 02: Krieg and Maya

Oh boy

As soon as they see a memory of Maya, Sane Krieg wants to be careful. He doesn’t want the memory corrupted like the Raiders’.

Krieg KNOWS she is dead

Sane Krieg says Maya is the only thing he and Psycho Krieg ever agreed on

despite this, during the DLC they seem to get along better and better, Krieg is really working on themselves

Maya drops her book before proceeding. The player has to go after. Flowers grow on the ground where we walk

Tannis states diferent brain activity readings at this point, saying Krieg can really focus on Maya

Maya is taken by Locomobius, the monster train, and Sane Krieg says it’s because at the time they met, Psycho Krieg thought the train was taking her

Maya tells him in a goodbye ECHO: “No matter how far appart we are, I’ll always be with you.”

The name of the mission to catch Locomobius and free the memories of Maya is what love remains

Sane Krieg says the memories are all he has left of Maya

There’s a flashback to when they met, and it shows that Maya invited Krieg to come with her because he showed knowing how to fight

She does call him Big Guy constantly

Krieg has memories of Athenas, implying he has been there

Athenas is guarded by eridians, here funcioning as guardians to the memories of Maya

This is all viewed by Tannis as the protections of a grieving mind

The flashback about when they met also reveals that Krieg expressed he didn’t think he had anything to offer Maya and she understood him

It it’s not explained, whoever, how she understands him, but it’s very strongly implied that she sees his through thoughts/the translation of psycho speech

Maya guards his gauntlet = his defenses and hope

Even now, Maya is still a figure of hope for him

Sane Krieg complains about how Psycho Krieg lost a watch that he cared for

Session 2.5: Maya’s Spirit

Maya’s Last ECHO Maya leaves for Krieg one last ECHO that explains why she’s staying on Athenas for an indefinite time - to teach Eva. She says she knows she’ll pass her powers to Eva which implies she suspects her death could be soon. She says she can feel all the sirens that came before her like energy flowing, and says that if she days she’ll be among the stars waiting for him. There’s the quote, from her: “Even death and time can’t keep us appart from each other.”

The Spirit Maya stays in Krieg’s mind in a shining black and white form. At first, It looks like it might be his perception of her, the way she appears in his mind, but upon further triggering dialogue, there’s a lot of things told from a perspective that make it sound like Krieg didn’t know, and that also Maya is aware of this new form for her.

Quotes say:

that she never thought she could care about anyone the way she cared about Krieg

says that Krieg’s mind is less messy than she thought it’d be

had noodles in Minus-Prime, and loves it

she dyes her hair!

Maya says with all the words Siren’s have the power to leave memory on objects, memory that are almost a spirt

So this could be a fragment of Maya, alive in Krieg’s mind through the last ECHO he ever got from her

Also her spirit also mentions that one day a hotel showed up in Athenas, she slept there, it was a super interesting place, and she woke up lying on grass the morning after. Mancubus’ traveling hotel?

Session 03: Krieg and Himself

And Hyperion.

Krieg was at Hyperion to do a job at a lab

but then was “taken” by them. also not specified if he was taken for doing the wrong job, or he was there not hired by them and was captured

It is not specified what job, but he does mention he was a mercenary

The scientist responsible for him was Dr Benedict, and the called the subjects rejects of society

Sane Krieg says the lab saw the subjects as just meat. This is easily read as way Psycho Krieg registers meat as something that matters so much

Dr Benedict considered/might have done it: sweing the mouths of subjects shut or extracting their tongues so they couldn’t complain

Sane Krieg was really soft y’all... He fights a rat while imprisioned and names it Tawanda - unclear what happens to it - but Krieg says they’ll take care of each other

Krieg tells Tawanda “I’m called Krieg”. In a further ECHO, Dr Benedict calls Krieg Subject 24C. So Krieg really isn’t his name, and he can’t remember it

There’s an audio from Dr Benedict about an non specific subject asking to see his son, which the dr considers crazy, but all the others audios, even if not mentioning Krieg by name, seemed to be about him...

Sane Krieg sits along with Pyscho Krieg in an aparent crumbled cell space watching shadows that he calls The World. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, here showing Krieg is content with the world presented to him, unable, weak or even afraid to explore. It speaks to a false meaning he found to have the sense of living without having the strenght to do so

the player destroys the allegory, thus freeing Sane Krieg to see the actual world, a further step in regaining his mind as a world to really live in - he truly was trapped in himself

Bloodlust is a type of psychosis studied by Dr Benedict. It’s unclear wheter he created it, or what is behind it, but he uses a gas to infect people

considers making a gas bomb to infect whole populations

there’s a line from the Dr about how brain probing worsed pyschosis

the gas didn’t affect Krieg like the others - it is also unclear why

a mission with a Fear Mom, completely referencing the Clockwork Orange, tells Krieg to drink Milk to grow strong so “no one will hurt you ever again.” This could be read as remnants of his past self, creating a place to feel cared for someway, but also embracing the ultraviolence of his being and the brainwashing he went through

this side mission rewards a gun with the flavor text our eyes are yet to open like a baby, or like someone who lacks clarity

Krieg cared a lot about people before going insane. He holds strongly to a sense of right and wrong he calls goodness, and values innocence a lot

The Psycho personality is a schism that showed up in several test subjects that manifested the same personality

Dr Benedict wanted to change the subject pool to see the relation and considers an elementary school class

Also considers putting the gas in water supply to infect people since the gas won’t work on open areas

Psycho Krieg saves Sane Krieg when he had given up on scaping

It is a bloodbath Psycho Krieg calls Tea Party

Sane Krieg sees this realization, about being saved and the Vault Hunter being inside his head, as Psycho Krieg letting people in

Hyperion kept his mask from him = “false face is protection”

Upon defeating the boss, the Gigantic Krieg tied to an experimentation bed fades.

After taking the mask, this Three Figures walk into a portal in his mind and disappear forever. Sane Krieg doesn’t remember who they are and remarks that he forgot his past entirely. But looks at Psycho Krieg and decides on Forging a future.

They tell jokes to each other constantly, though Psycho Krieg only tells a decent joke by the end of the DLC. The joke is the one coherent sentence he can make; showing a lot of progress in how he communicates, but not changing who he is. By the end, his mind is empty, and both Kriegs work together to fill it slowy with new memories and thoughts. They start with Maya, and keep creating until she says “Enough for now. Come in and tell me about your day”, to which Krieg responds FUSING INTO HIMSELF, WHOLE, and walking into the house with her. The voiceover from Krieg tells us we’re always breaking and hurting, but we put ourselves together again, never perfect, but close enough. Always fixing ourselves.

Final Notes:

This DLC was really good, imo. I really liked the direction it took and I’m glad it wasn’t TOO wacky, loosing all the meaning and more seriousness it could have. It is a great character exploration, respects Krieg as a character and the one around him and their relationships. Krieg comes out as not needing fixing, and instead making peace with all he is and growing. Canon things confirmed: Worked as a mercenary, was a Crimson Raider, was one invited by Maya, was loved back, was experimented on by Hyperion, was saved by himself.

#borderlands #borderlands 3 #bl3 #fantastic flustercuck #krieg the psycho #krieg #dlc 4 #bl3 dlc #mmar talks #mmar plays bl3

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riviae · 5 years

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Regis and/or Dettlaff for the character headcanon meme (ya know, if a hundred others haven't already asked lol)

character meme (accepting!): under a read more due to length

Regis:

favorite thing about them:

besides his obvious kind heart & unflinching loyalty, i love how passionate he is about things!! dude’s been alive for 400+ yrs & he still wants to travel, to make friends, to learn, to teach, to heal, to share his interests & knowledge. he loves life–loves humanity (cdpr can miss me w/ his referencing humans as mosquitoes metaphor nonsense)–& is my favorite example of a good redemption story/character.

least favorite thing about them:

he can be… rather pretentious at times. but to his credit, he never really belittles or alienates anyone in the hansa–it’s more like he has a lot of ‘high-brow’ interests for the time/setting (not counting distilling, of course) & in sharing/explaining them, he goes a bit over the top. i don’t think it’s on purpose, but case in point… not everything has to be a lecture, ya know?

favorite line:

kinda cheating on this, but my favorite scene of anything ever is this one from lady of the lake:

“Well,” sighed Regis. “Have it your way. I’ll have to avoid mirrors and dogs, and will have to beware of sorcerers and telepaths… And if I’m still exposed, I’m counting on you.”“You can count on me,” Geralt said seriously. “I’m not in the habit of leaving a friend in need.”The vampire smiled and because they were alone, he did not hide his fangs. “Friend?”

now specifically from b&w, i like this line from Regis’ journal: People justify bad deeds by good intentions. I’m not sure if there is greater idiocy

brOTP:

geralt/regis (which you’ll also see in the otp section), regis/yen (goth-nerd solidarity & also they both love geralt so jot that down), & regis/angouleme (he’s a wonderful uncle figure to angouleme)

also if regis ever got to meet vesemir i’m 100% sure they’d have gotten along swimminglg

OTP:

geralt/regis–it’s my lifeblood babey

nOTP:

romance-wise, any regis/hansa member that isn’t geralt is just not my cup of tea as well as regis/dett****

random headcanon

after his second regeneration, he became wearier around unknown sorcerers/sorceresses/magic users (w/ the exception of yen). at one point, geralt had decided to light a candle near regis using igni w/o really thinking abt it & noticed that regis had visibly flinched. geralt apologized immediately & now lets regis know when he’s abt to light something using magic (’normal’ fires, those not started by magic, don’t bother him. so it’s less of an aversion to fire & more of an aversion to fire made thru magic).

unpopular opinion:

i don’t really like his sideburns or hairline–not bc i think the design is bad per se (i think it solidified his intro in b&w as a more scholarly character), but bc i think it ages him much more than necessary. when the other 2 higher vampires (dettlaff, orianna, hell–even the unseen elder), look much younger, then it just seems unusual imo. a middle-aged tax collector w/ a crooked nose is how sapkowski describes him & idk, i think cdpr just wanted to give regis a more stereotypical scholarly look instead of using descriptions from the books.

song i associate with them:

when i’m in an angst™ mood, this song is what makes me think of regis (& higher vampires in the witcher series in general). it’s called far from home (the raven) by sam tinnesz

favorite picture of them (i’m too lazy to do this but assume every picture of regis is my fave)

Dettlaff:

favorite thing about them

his hobbies! woodworking & building toys for kids is nice™; cdpr should’ve at least given us a tiny scene of him tinkering on stuff. presumably he has a caring nature given that he nursed regis back to health but once again, cdpr couldn’t be bothered to flesh out the interesting aspects of his character & instead gave us an albeit cool but ultimately unnecessary boss battle :/

least favorite thing about them

oof, his lack of patience & propensity towards violence. well, perhaps propensity is the wrong word; i mean that in a character who is powerful/deadly (in which even a brief lapse in judgement could mean death for another), a hair trigger temper is... not going to endear me to them. for instance, i don’t think that dettlaff went to tesham mutna with the intent of killing syanna--i don’t think he knew himself what he would do upon seeing her. BUT, he still did it--& i’m sorry but killing an unarmed/defenseless (presumably unarmed, but even if she were armed it wouldn’t change the fact that she was defenseless against him & dettlaff knew that) woman in a fit of rage (who yes, wronged dettlaff greatly) speaks of a deeper problem relating to his inability to process his emotions.

i originally thought that cdpr was going to do some cool parallels between dettlaff and geralt bc both have issues w/ emotion but in different ways (i.e., dettlaff has difficulty controlling his while geralt has trouble expressing them), but they shared maybe a handful of sentences w/ each other before the conclusion of the dlc so yeah D:

favorite line:

“If you acknowledge any gods... start praying, now.”

brOTP:

regis/dettlaff is pretty much it/the only relationship i find interesting in b&w for dett anyway

OTP:

dettlaff/character development

nOTP:

mentioned in regis’ list above, but i also am not a fan of geralt/dett

random headcanon:

his “pack” up until syanna consisted almost entirely of orphaned lower vampires. whether due to their family dying or abandoning them, dett’s reserved & calming demeanor makes it easier for LVs to trust him. he’s nursed plenty of injured LVs back to health & when he passed thru the remnants of stygga castle, he did so bc he originally thought that he was following the trail of an injured LV (having caught regis’ scent). it was only when he got closer that he recognized the ‘shapeless smear’ was regis--someone he hadn’t seen in centuries--& chose to help him heal despite how taxing it would be.

unpopular opinion

i don’t understand his popularity as a character or how his actions can be defended. his character design is great (i still wanna to buy his moth brooch tbh), he was voice acted very well, & there are hints of an interesting backstory esp in relation to why he chose to help regis regenerate, but that’s not the focus of the dlc.

if i have to rely on regis to explain why dettlaff is a good person/deserves redemption/etc., then that’s lazy writing. i love regis to death, but he, like anna henrietta, was blind to/didn’t want to see his loved one’s faults/misdeeds. u can’t make an unbiased character judgement on someone you’re close to and indebted to imo.

granted, regis himself is an example of dett’s charity since he is alive & well (& also is stressed af bc of dettlaff), but does one good deed wash away all the death he later commits in the attack on beauclair? motivation or not, murder is murder, plain & simple. i can forgive but not condone regis’ actions in his youth bc, arguably, regis was already punished severely for it & chose to change/become a better person. cdpr didn’t give us an option to allow dett to be punished for his crimes (in something other than death--which i don’t think he nor syanna deserve) or let us know if he eventually grows to be a better person w/ the help of regis & so i can only care for him in the respect that i mourn the character he (& syanna) could’ve been.

in summary: everything i dislike abt dettlaff is entirely due to a lack of care when it came to fleshing out his character. we only see him committing acts of violence/murder, never healing or helping. we see the fallout of his anger, see that he feels grief & even remorse (like in de la croix’s death), but it doesn’t excuse the act itself. ppl are more than welcome to like or love morally dark/dubious characters, but i have an issue when a morally dubious character is painted as good or good but misunderstood.

song i associate with them

the song inferno by sir sly gives me real dettlaff vibes: I think you clipped my wings to save me from the sunForgot my hands and knees, I had to learn a lessonOh fearless teacher how'd I ever lose my sightWhy'd I ever try to fight against your path?Somewhere at half my life, I wandered in the woodsCan't find a single right, I swear nothing is goodI'm blinded now and darkness shrouds my every sightWhy'd I ever try to fight for my own path?

favorite picture of them:

once again, too lazy to find one, but his final form in the boss battle was cool even if it kinda went against sapkowski’s lore.

#Anonymous #hannah rambles into the void #warning: if u like dett maybe don't read this as i might've been a tad harsh on his character & i know how it feels when someone criticizes #a fave character #& that's also why i won't be tagging either of them as i don't wanna put these sorts of things into their tag #but yes!! thank u for asking anon ;v; i appreciate it! rambling about the witcher is fun!!

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druidcandy · 7 years

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I’m playing Agent’s of Mayhem and while I came in not having a lot of expectations and not thinking this was gonna be Saints Row 2.0 Boyz In The House, I still can really easily see why this game kinda bombed

Everything feels like it’s not enough, and I’m putting a readmore here because there’s a lot that doesn’t feel enough.

The equips aren’t really balanced enough to really bother with any of them unless you really want to change your playstyle with that character drastically. Legion tech, which is supposed to be the Big Thing that you start working towards as far as character progression goes (past levelling) basically feels like it’s not there, which is a rough death sentence for something that’s supposed to be worth investments of time and ingame money. Gadgets are also pretty much entirely wastes of money and resources, aside from the autoressurect one which is so much more useful than any of the other ones (lmao roll out a giant ball!!! get em) to the point you’re actually an idiot if you don’t have it equipped just to save your ass from a tpk.

The aesthetic doesn’t go nearly as far as it should, which is a shame because I would have LOVED to drown in goofy saturday morning shit. It’s a pain in the ass because it’s kind of pushed in promotional material, and I guess there’s some elements of it in the “bring out a group of agents” thing, but aside from that and the goofy codenames there’s only the loading screens when you get back to the ARK, which are fun but also sometimes they aren’t even goofy moral lessons (or the villains giving shitty goofus and gallant kind of moral lessons) which kind of is irritating. Also, there’s completely no interaction between your squad aside from the one or two missions they’re all together in their groups (or their solo missions leading into their group mission), which is a waste, because some of their best lines are from your agents interjecting nonsense (for example, your trainer/dj/??? why is he on the ship Mixer is embarassed about having a pen pal, and Yeti, the active agent at the time, loudly yells “I AM PEN PALS WITH BEARS IN SIBERIA”) and I feel like there’s a lot you miss out on by only having the active agent comment on a situation, which leads to me trying to switch out agents a lot during missions during conversations just to try and keep all of them in the scene like an asshole. It’s just a pain in the ass because, with a few exceptions, all the characters are pretty fun and they don’t get a time to shine aside from when they have solo roles, where after they just kind of get sidelined. Daisy has a really fun opening mission where she tries remembering her drunk-ass night, and then they give her a mission where she shoulder checks a bunch of cars and that’s the last she’s really like, there.

Speaking of missions, this is probably where the game is handled the least well. There’s two agent missions for each character (dlc included that’s 30 missions, which seems like a lot,) but I’d say a significant portion of each character’s second mission is less a mission and more a “now play the game like THIS” thing, and honestly? I can’t complain about that super hard, aside from the fact this is one of the few ways you actually interact with the characters in the world and it’s relegated to like, a small minor thing where you run A race in a car, not actually playing as your character, and then ditching them. There’s also not a lot else to do aside from those and the main story, which is a straight path from point a to b, with no stops or multiple concerns at one time (like Saints Row), which wouldn’t be concerning if they weren’t also kind of linear and shallow as far as plots go. There’s 5 missions and most of them are legion lairs (will get to those in a second), and most of it isn’t even anything terribly interesting other than “investigate this evil plan, now follow up on this investigation a little and find out what’s REALLY happening, now barely miss this villain again, now you are shooting them to death”. It’s irritating because there’s a lot more that could be done, especially with steeltoe, who was on screen doing things for approximately one second, and most of the time you interact with him he’s just loudly saying MY BEAUTIFUL AISHA, SOON WE WILL BE MARRIED and it’s fully a waste of a cool character idea. Global conflict is also like. A nothing thing. It’s literally there to waste time and maybe force you to use different characters. You get no real tangible amounts of rewards out of it (not any more than you’d need after normal gameplay, anyways) and you only seem to unlock contracts (generally irritating and grindy miniachievements along with a changing global set of goals that will likely never be met, thanks Volition) and legion lairs.

Legion lairs.

These are easily the lowest part of this game. Legions lairs are long, tiring, aggressively randomly generated, they generally suck, and also more or less every single mission that doesn’t take place in overworld Seoul takes place in a legion lair. And there are a looooot of missions that take place in legion lairs. The environments don’t change, the traps are irritating and a pain to deal with during a firefight, they’re literally just a series of rooms with missions in each room that randomly pop up, and you just kind of wander around a really ugly looking sci fi base and blow it up. There’s nothing interesting about them, past the exploratory feeling of going through missions the first time, but after that they just get boring and repetitive. In-story they say that the base can’t communicate with you in the lair, which means that a loooooot of potential fun conversations are just out and out struck down, and while there’s a few good things between characters in group missions and occasionally with your agents irritating the evil henchman in charge, it helps add to the sameness. Legion lairs are fully not even close to being optional too, given all the story missions that force you into them and the global conflict rewards sometimes including a legion lair that you can do to get legion tech, which is a pain in the ass task for a nothing reward that you have to do or you can’t keep doing global conflict.

The missions in general are lacking, Seoul as an overworld is pretty, kind of high futuristic mixed with traditional elements in really cool ways, but there’s absolutely nothing to do with the environment. Since everything is legion lairs (underground) there’s actually more or less genuinely 0 missions or distractions that are entertaining or worth the effort. Sometimes a doomsday device or a fracking drill spawns and you are kind of conscripted into blowing it up, otherwise it really makes your drive inconvenient, but hate machines, races, gremlin meetups, legion base takeovers, etc, etc, etc, mean absolutely nothing to me because there’s genuinely no meaningful reward for doing these things. You could theoretically get skins and cars and upgrades, but they’re dropped so rarely (until you buy an upgrade, which, spoiler alert, before I got that upgrade I had the two cars the story gives you for free, and after, I almost immediately unlocked all of the 10 cars except 1)

It just feels like it fully could have been so much more and they do NOTHING and it’s a pain

A good way to kind of summarize this is that in saints row, I generally got the collectibles if I found them by the road/path I was using, but kept going because I was doing things. In agents of mayhem, I sometimes stop and search for collectibles because I either have nothing to do or that shitty hum that upgrade core shard fragments is driving me insane

Another good way to summarize this is that I got to the maximum agency level that should theoretically put you near endgame on the second (out of five) lieutenant of the game

I’m still playing it and I kinda like it but buy this game on sale

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crystalelemental · 7 years

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Well, it’s finally done. After all these years of just refusing to play the damn game, I beat Dark Souls 2 in its entirety. Which means, I have now beaten the entire series to 100% completion, and it is time to make a decision.

I’ll start with the game itself. I know a lot of people identify it as the jankiest, and that it just doesn’t function right. I’m not quite sure I’d agree with that entirely? It’s definitely weird, though. Like, when adaptability is low and your roll sucks, you’ll be rolling through something but still take damage for reasons. That’s kinda shitty. And it’s only really fixable by keeping low weight and trying to allocate points there early on. So we hope you enjoy playing melee only for most of the game. Not that it makes sense to do anything else anyway.

What is a major problem is how many times your slow-ass character is surrounded by like 5 enemies. Look, the Souls series is weird. A single boss with big attacks is not really that threatening, but a room of three normal enemies is a death sentence if you aggro them all simultaneously. There are a ton of bosses where the only real difficulty is crowd control. Skeleton Lords, Ruin Sentinels, Looking Glass Knight, Twin Dragonriders, Throne Defender and Watcher, Duke’s Dear Freya, Executioner’s Chariot (which extra sucks because adds are infinite unless you kill the necromancers), Darklurker, the fucking Belfry Gargoyles, Royal Rat Authority. Then in NG+ you get Lost Sinner summoning help, and the DLC introduces all kinds of fresh hell for you, like Elana (who I actually love, but only from lore standpoint), Lud and Zallen, the Ivory King, and the ganksquad. So much of this game is difficulty by suddenly being surrounded by too many units, and there are locations that are outright impossible to get through without a bow or spells to draw one person at a time (the run to Velstadt and the Ancient Dragon most notably).

That said...this is probably the easiest of the games. Not for any sensible reason like bosses just being easier or anything. It’s because you can power-level like a motherfucker, and are almost encouraged to do so. Levels scale so minimally that, at around level 200, you still only need around 50,000 souls to level. That is not a high bar to set, and level 200 means you can pack a lot of different tools, including your melee weapon of choice, spells of choice, and still have a good HP pool and a solid roll. Not gonna lie: actually love this fact. I think that the series as a whole suffers from not really allowing you to mix-and-match sets. A lot of things require specification, and quality builds are notoriously Not That Good. So being able to fairly easily cap most relevant stats in the first playthrough is fantastic.

That said, then you have the negative: Soul Memory. So, in this game, you can be summoned to help a player fight a boss, to regain your humanity without using the finite consumable Effigies. This is good, because going hollow means your HP gets cut pretty sharply, up to 50% of your max life. Which is stupid as hell, but whatever. Now, to be summoned, you need to be in the right tier as other players. Meaning that, if you want to be summoned reliably to fight Old Iron King, you need to be...not at Soul Memory 800k. Otherwise it takes like 3 days to get your 30 sunlight medals you need for that spell to get the trophies. Not that I’m bitter. Basically, as you fight the boss, you gain more souls, which puts you at a higher soul memory, which puts you out of range of typical players, so you can’t really farm reliably or recover humanity reliably from easier bosses. I like the idea of encouraging co-op, but the soul memory system is awful. It probably also influences invasions, but fuck invaders. If you invade people, you’re a piece of shit and I hope your system bricks.

As the last thing to note: the major complain I often see is “why are so many bosses just armored sword man; what is this, Smash 4?” Which is super legit. There are a lot of bosses that are just different variants on knight. Especially in the main game, this made it really easy to reach Velstadt...and basically beat him no damage. Because you know what’s happening now. You know how the knight fight goes, and there’s nothing all that unique. It’s very same-y. Of course, this does nothing to stop me from getting my shit pushed in like 37 times against Fume Knight, but honestly fuck that asshole.

Lore-wise, I feel like this is the weakest of the games, but I also feel like it’s closest to what I would want out of a sequel. I’m serious. I think that DS1 presented a fairly complete story, that didn’t really have a need for continuation in this way. DS2′s focus on bringing all these references to DS1 back is obnoxious, and the thing that holds it back the most. Focus on kingdoms within the world all you want. Focus on this entirely separate place called Drangleic and have it focus on all this unique stuff, in a place that doesn’t even know what the hell Lordran is or why the curse is showing up. But keeping it separate was really what is lacking here. Why is Ornstein just here? Just hanging out? Why is the statue for the Warriors of Sunlight still here when nothing else remained, and why is it near fucking Earthen Peak of all damn places? Why do the four great lord souls from DS1 just show up on NG+ with the new four great souls? Just keep them separate. You didn’t have to do this.

There is, however, one thing I actually like that’s a tie-in, and that’s the queens. I like the idea of Manus’ defeat resulting in the creation of these beings of the abyss showing up, and trying in their own ways to bring things back to the Dark. It’s something that ties in nicely, but isn’t just a shallow reference without meaning. It also helps that they’re pretty cool. Elana is, as I mentioned, my favorite, which has a lot to do with her trying to poison a dragon to death. Fuck that dragon up, girl. Stupid bitch lizard ain’t got shit. She’s also just the most outright conniving of the four, I think.

Overall, it’s not a terrible game, but it does feel very different. I think the main thing I take away is that it’s still very much a Dark Souls game. It’s all focused around difficulty meaning dying a lot, but this time with added penalties in the form of hollowing, and soul memory fucking literally everything up by putting you out of summon range whenever you suck and have to re-do runs to the boss, or try to farm levels to handle a problem. Magic is still boring a shit, and this game is almost the worst offender considering all my best spell options were just throwing Dark Orb at shit until it stopped breathing because it was fast and had a stupidly high number of casts compared to everything else in the game. I still feel like boss health is way too goddamn high given how unforgiving the game is toward any mistake in a fight, and how little variation there often is in a moveset. I’ve said before that I enjoy this series largely because it’s an active playing process that lets you build up your character, and that stat allocations are something I adore above all else, but it’s just not doing it for me. I’ve played about every type of build I can, in every game. Magic is always boring and way less effective than heavy armor with a stick. Melee weapons function very differently, but every major boss still boils down to learn pattern, dodge or block, attack one or maybe two times then back to defense so you don’t eat shit, repeat for 15 minutes until dead. It’s...kinda boring by now.

Which leads me to this: I’m trading this entire series in for Etrian Odyssey V on Tuesday. I don’t hate the games, but I find there is no further enjoyment to be had here. I’m more invested in completing a build, which leads to a lot of time just spent grinding, and I experience more frustration with getting through a run than anything else, since the series has become more of a placeholder between games than something I actually want to play on its own. In a weird way, it’s almost become too effective of a placeholder, and I could probably accomplish more significant things or branch out a bit instead of just replaying these whenever I’m bored and waiting on something else to come out. So, I’m done. I’m trading it all in, and honestly, thank god.

#dark souls 2 #I'm finally done with this series #time to get rid of it and never look back

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kapanbenernya · 6 years

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BombTag -- Watered Down Bomber Man

So about a few days ago, my friend messaged me about some new free game that’s just like bomber man

His timing’s actually pretty damn bad because the CNY sale on steam had just started and I pretty much splurged on like your mum on the buffet table. I already bought loads of games due to the sale, and now I’ve got a lot on my plate I’d love to try, and I’m not sure that more stuff is what I need at the moment, unlike your mum on the buffet table

Regardless, I still downloaded the game, because you can’t go wrong with free stuff. An advice that I take to heart, although I chose to disregard it this one time when a guy with no teeth offered me free meth samples

so I launched the game with good expectations, because me and bomberman go waaay back. Not on the SNES, mind you, I played it mostly on the PC emulator because boy, was I a dumb fuck when I was young

But the question is, is it good? Clearly you can guess from the title of the post all the way up over there that I didn’t like it that much. Here’s why

First hurdle is the fact that you have to register an account to play the game

don’t make no fucking’ sense to me

Why? I already had to login to steam to play the mofuggin’ game, registering for another account seems a bit extra, and I kinda feel that the account does not have any use at all. If you tell me it’s for cloud save or something, it’s not needed, since it’s usually available on steam and there’s nary a thing to save, since there is no real progress whatsoever.

Progress is simply marked by a tiered badge, bronze, silver, and gold, but those things can go up a horse’s butthole for all I care. There does not seem to be any profit from getting new badges other than you can tell which one of your friends doesn’t have a life.

Of course this is a very, very minor thing, and it does not matter much. I’m only questioning why it’s even a thing because it does not have a cleae purpose. Although if it’s purpose is to slightly piss me off, then I’d say it’d done a bloody good job indeed

But enough about those, let’s check out the second skid mark

On it’s current version, the game lacks depth

Yes, I’m aware that the game just released very recently

Yes, I’m aware that the game is free to play

Yes, I’m aware that the game might be developed by a single person

Yes, I’m aware that the game is an indie title

And yes, I’m going to destroy every single one of your opinion if you think those points make this game free of criticism whatsoever.

Let me show you the counter-argument: Stardew Valley. (And yes, I’m aware that Stardew Valley is not free)

Stardew Valley is indie, developed by a single person (except the publisher), and as far as I know, is filled with content from version 1.0. I could gush on and on, but I’ll be wasting my breath since the previous sentence alone has done the job adequately. Now, let’s re-focus our minds to the game at hand.

I’m going to just straight up compare this to Bomberman, since that IS the inspiration for this game, if not a blatant rip-off. And by that comparison alone, the game falls flat in the face! Where are all the fun items? The stage varieties? The different characters with different powers?

Instead of the amazing variety of gloves, kick-shoes, poison, and pets, the items are reduced to the staples: bombs, fire, and skates. Oh God, this must be how the communist defectors felt when they were eating half a rotten potato while the capitalist are eating pancakes. Also, why skates? Is it because the original Bomberman used skates for speed pick-ups? It does not make it a better experience just because it’s familiar, it just makes me wish I was playing the REAL Bomber Man. The one thing that’s new is that there’s a slide button which I actually like. It functions as a movement ability, also as a mean to kick your bombs around. Think about it like the glove and the kick-bomb fused into one. This is actually really fun to use, as you can bamboozle people from a few blocks away. The only thing that can make it better is if we can use it to direct our foot to the enemy’s balls for a stun attack, Mirror’s Edge style.

The stages are divided into 3 types of map, A, B, and C. That’s it. Don’t let the game fool you into thinking it’s got six maps, there is no difference between the grass and snow type maps except the textures. They could’ve at least made the snow map slippy like everyone with imagination and willpower would’ve done it, but I think the devs couldn’t be bothered. Map A is the standard bomber man map, Map B is the one with fuck all in it, and Map C is the map with a gap running smack in the middle which you cannot cross. And since the other player always spawn on the other side, so the only way to win is to chuck the bombs across, and it quickly turns into slide-o-rama happy hour funtime.

okay, who the fuck chose Map C again?

The game mode is kinda okay-ish, it lets you choose between a Free for All and a Team Death Match. Not exactly the ideas that will get you a scholarship on the really nice schools, but it checks out, especially if you can get an 8-man party going on which will always be hectic. Thing is though, it does not help the issue of limited items and maps. This is still the bare minimum, lowest effort kind of development. Speaking about effort, if the effort doesn’t show in the item varieties, the maps, and the game modes, where is it? I’m glad you asked

Behold the character customization! Where you can choose upon hundreds and hundreds of colorful and wacky clothes, hats, masks, face, and gender! Every single one brimming with effort and polished to a mirror sheen. Also isn’t it fucking coincidental that 90% of the items are locked and that you have to buy the paid DLC to unlock it?

Did I also mention that there are no free customization unlocks or drops in-game and that your in-game character looks exactly the same like everybody else?

if I’m you, and you’re me, how do I know I’m not me and you’re not you?

Mr dev person man guy team, if you’re reading this, just please make the game either priced or truly free-to-play. Don't go passive-aggressive on me for money. Losing track of my character because I didn’t feel like buying the DLC does not count for gameplay depth.

In brief

Like a fresh water well, its lack of depth does not make it a bad thing, more so if you’re thirsty for casual shouty games to end your friendship with. However, also like a well that lacked depth, you will be abandoning it sooner or later when you’ve run it dry, and on its current state it’s going to be dry really fast. To illustrate, I’ve played this game with my friends for half an hour before getting bored and switching to fucking MONOPOLY.

Don’t take this as a turn off though, it all depends on the swift mercy of the devs. Nothing an update won’t fix, really.

22/2/2018

#pc games #bombtag #steam

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