#getting a lot of development for random NPCs was not was I was expecting but I 100% support it
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Little Bits I got from the hangout (Spoilers for Kaeya’s Hangout)
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Things in parentheses are my own thoughts rather than canon stuff.
- Kaeya is a very kind person at his core. Both to those he loves and total strangers.
- So many people love Kaeya. From the staff at the Winery to the KoF to the citizenry of Mond to mild acquaintances to total strangers, Kaeya is truly loved by those around him.
- The KoF are all co-parenting Klee together, though they disagree a bit on exactly HOW to parent her.
- Kaeya is a great schemer but he TERRIBLE at coming up with fake names (Albert Rich...really?)
- Kaeya was a very shy child while Diluc was rambunctious. Diluc would get them into trouble and Kaeya would go along with whatever Diluc wanted. (I hope that we get a bit more of their dynamic when they were younger explored and that we see more of what Diluc did to be a good brother to Kaeya)
- The entire winery loves Kaeya. Not just Adelinde, not just Adelinde and Elzer. Everyone. They watched him grow up into the man he is today and they consider him a member of the family.
- Adelinde has covered for Diluc and Kaeya’s antics in the past. (probably why she’s so adept at covering for Diluc’s darknight hero stuff.)
- Tunner knew that something bothered young Kaeya, that there was some sort of deep-rooted issue that it’s implied Kaeya never talked to them about. (If Tunner knew, it is very likely that others at the Winery knew that this kid had TRAUMA. My guess is that at some point somebody brought it up to Crepus, who had noticed something similar, and he then asked Kaeya about it. Whether Kaeya confessed at that point...IDK)
- Klee is the cutest thing to ever exist and she loves Kaeya so much (that is not opinion, it is fact).
- Kaeya sometimes forgets which lie he has told to a person before and uses it twice. Diluc WILL call him out on this, before inevitably capitulating to whatever Kaeya asks. (Standard older sibling behavior, you put up a fuss but ultimately you will do literally anything to make them happy. It’s why I think Diluc is the older of the two, even if Kaeya also has many older sibling traits).
- Kaeya got sick fairly often as a child, but has grown up to be healthier. Adelinde took good care of him whenever that happened. (Chronically ill Kaeya truthers rise up! Also, he was probably sickly because of a few factors: not having the immune system for Mond’s diseases, probably living in the Abyss, probably having malnutrition, he was abandoned in the MIDDLE OF A STORM, and because winters in Mond are harsh).
- Adelinde knows exactly how Kaeya likes his food.
- Adelinde cares a lot about how maids are supposed to behave, but only on the surface level. If Kaeya can word something correctly, she’ll happily capitulate.
- Kaeya knows a lot about the winery business. (Supports my personal headcanon that Kaeya was supposed to take over the Winery’s business after Crepus’s death, but then the fight happened).
- Kaeya loves to act and would consider doing it full-time. He is also apparently very good at it (wow shocker. Boy who was raised as a child-spy and is constantly lying is good at acting.)
- While onstage, Kaeya is allergic to subtlety. (I love this. 10/10, throw off the shackles of destiny and toss a prop into the audience).
- Kaeya doesn’t like to bask in the glory of the good things he does, sneaking out just as songwriting preparations are getting good (Kaeya is also fairly shy at his core, but the persona he’s formed won’t allow for that).
- Kaeya is known to be thoughtful and is a good gift-giver.
- Venti wholeheartedly accepts Kaeya as a child of Mondstadt, considers him a friend, and wants to see him throw off the shackles fate placed upon him. (I actually liked Venti a lot this hangout. We get to see him be silly but also wise, understand how he feels about the whole ‘worshipping Barbatos’ thing, and watch him encourage the creativity of others. Plus, imo this hangout basically confirms that Venti 100% knows about Kaeya’s predicament and more than anything wants to see that Kaeya is happy and cared for in Mondstadt).
- (Kaeya at least suspects that Venti is Barbatos. The way the english VA acted things was a little too pointed to seem like genuine lack of knowledge about Venti’s identity.)
- Barbara cares about family the most, to the point that she will suggest that over even the worship of Barbatos himself (this is unsurprising, but also very sad considering how rarely she and Jean get to interact as sisters).
- Diona will sing hymns about fish-related foods and Venti 100% supports singing about that over Barbatos (also unsurprising).
- Diluc CAN AND WILL kill anyone who harasses his staff (somebody please draw fanart of Diluc fucking bumrushing poor Captain Wu to defend the maids, the image is simultaneously sweet and HILARIOUS).
#kaeya#genshin impact#kaeya hangout#kaeya hangout spoilers#venti#bro this hangout made me like Venti so much more#adelinde#mvp#best person in the world love you ma'am#tunner#getting a lot of development for random NPCs was not was I was expecting but I 100% support it#diluc ragnvindr#he is also a fundamentally kind person he's just worse at it than Kaeya is#I would also kill anyone who tried to harass the winery staff Diluc is so right for that#klee#she is the star of every show#like...this post is about Kaeya but everything I do is about Klee#I also now want to write about how the KoF co-parent her and what that looks like#idk I just love how much Kaeya is loved#like...people write Kaeya angst all the time and I like it and I write it too#but sometimes I just want to see characters be soft and show kindness and then RECEIVE that softness and kindness in return
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hello everyone i hope you like devlogs
Go Into The Fucking Dungeon is a variant traditional roguelike, which is to say, it is a full game that you should expect to be able to beat in 6-15 hours depending on skill level and completionist tendencies, just one that happens to randomly generate its dungeon layouts.
the problem; existing random generation/roguelike plugins suck and are unwieldy and suck and aren't made to work with the specific systems i have in mind, which means i have to do it myself.
solution existing random generation algorithms for rpg maker mz within the context of the first-person dungeon crawler system i am trying to use produce boring and incoherent dungeons with no intentionality. this is a common issue to roguelike generation and i wont be the first person to talk about it. so instead we are taking the Spelunky/Binding of Isaac approach - prefab chunks with randomized elements. on runtime, a tile-changing plugin first randomizes specific areas in the "jigsaw puzzle" map, such as opening a wall here while closing a corridor there, or changing whether or not a chest is somewhere, in order to produce variance.
it doesn't need to be a lot of variance. it just needs to force you to pay attention to your location in physical space.
problem w/ solution: there is no way of accounting for a labyrinth's solvability using this method.
solution to problem w/ solution: i am attempting to develop an event-based method to hijack this.moveStraight(this.findDirectionTo(x, y)); which is the touch-screen pathfinding algorithm in order to determine a maze's solvability. this means that when the game loads, as it is generating the map, a small invisible NPC runs VERY FAST to the end of the maze, then reports back and, if the maze is unsolvable, busts open a wall somewhere until it is solvable.
problems with THIS solution: so fucking many, including the very simple fact that the a* pathfinding doesn't kick in until the invisible npc is within 12 squares of the target by default and i don't know how to increase that count. but believe me there's more problems.
so i think instead of this naive approach it would be better if i could somehow get an invisible representation of the map in terms of passability that i could then arrange an A* algorithm through via javascript.
problem with that: i dont know how to do any of those things. but i will have to learn if i want to make the dungeon crawler roguelike of my dreams.
GO INTO THE FUCKING DUNGEON!
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Random TOTK thoughts since I'm back in work today but am very 'head empty, only Zelda' so have some things I'm in love with:
I love how, although there is some 'who are you? Oh, yes, you're that swordsman' reactions to Link, in general NPCs (especially ones who had side quests in BOTW) know who Link is. It makes everything more cohesive and gives a depth to the world for both games
All BOTW side quests are canon. Link's house (which Zelda now lives in *wiggles eyebrows*)? Canon. Tarrey Town? Canon. Yiga Hideout? Canon. Weirdly presented penpal quest that creeped everyone out? Canon but JUST FRIENDS.
Mattison implies that around 5-6 years have passed (since she didn't even exist in BOTW but now is a walking, talking, reading child...unless Gerudo grow and develop quicker than we expect). And you can see that in the age of some of the younger characters like the Sheikah and Rito kids. And it also helps with the belief that they had time to dispose/repurpose the Sheikah tech into the new tech. Especially if it all stopped working.
Link is so much more expressive this time round but in appropriate ways. They took care to not just have him blank faced or generic emotional response. The first tower scene is panic and wtf but all the ones after that are slightly different than that first one because he knows what to expect. I wish they'd had different reactions for the different geoglyphs but the spoilery post final one has a much more intense reaction at least.
I still haven't stopped opening the item menu everytime I want to change abilities...
The cutscenes are getting me right in the heart. No spoilers but I had to spoil myself for the end because I got too emotional and couldn't wait the next 100 hours it's going to take me to finish to find out how certain things are resolved.
Yahaha you found me! I still love Koroks but, no, I can't help you find your friend right now. I'm busy. (But I am going to go back and do all the friend ones later)
Shrines are genuinely difficult at times. Probably because I keep underestimating some of the abilities. I've seen some uses online that are so 5 head it's unbelievable. I'm going to watch so many let's plays when I can to see how people did things differently.
Gimmie all the clothes. I will explore every nook and cranny of this world for a shitty tunic.
This whole game is 'Oh, what's that? Oh, what's over here? Oh, a quest marker! Hmm, that's weird I should check that out. BLUPEE! Wait...what was I doing?' And it's GLORIOUS.
Tulin my beloved...please stop jumpscaring me with your sound effects that are soft but just close enough to make me think I'm gonna get shanked by an enemy
I have stumbled across more than a few enemies that I have noped back out of ASAP. Even with my new confidence on fighting enemies from my recent BOTW playthrough. That is a later goal.
All the new characters and existing significant NPCs are amazing so far. And there is a lot of hope in the rebuilding which is nice despite the Upheaval. People are looking to the future everywhere and it warms your heart :)
#totk#spoilers#i love this game so much#i spent 70 hours on it over the last 4 days and i can't wait to get home and play it some more#if this isn't game of the year it'll be a crime
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Silver Talks AniManga (31/03/24)
there's still 3 shows that haven't finished yet and next week the new season is gonna start already
at least I will only be watching a fraction of what I was this season so that's gonna give me a lot more time to catch up on some stuff and play some things I've been putting off for a while (hopefully)
blue - finale/completed
Anime
Gushing over Magical Girls Ep13 (Finale)
surprisingly the best looking showed out of the 3 ecchi ones I watched this season, despite being the lewdest by far but anyway
it was alright. the only thing I knew about it going in was that it was about magical girls and lewd. turns out it's just the author's thinly veiled fetishes totally out in the open with a thin coat of magical girl on top to have an excuse to do stuff like MOTW
there's not much else to say about it really, everything that happens including plot developments are just an excuse for more and lewder scenes. not sure about reading the manga anymore after having watched it but I'll probably watch a s2 if it ever gets one
Mashle S2 Ep12 (Finale)
there's not much to say really. I had hope it'd be better than s1 and while it was due to the source material being better it still wasn't that much. was hoping for a lot more sakuga cause of one of the pvs they showed but there was barely any. even the best fight in the series which I had my hopes up for only had 1 cool moment and the rest was just the usual quality. which mind you, isn't bad at all, but still not as good as it could be.
out of all the things that aired this season too I expected this to get another season announced since they can finish adapting the manga with just 2 more cours (3 at most) but they haven't yet. they announced an event in may so if there's a s3 announcement it'll be there but don't hold your breath I guess
tl;dr: everything I said about s1 applies here. you're better off reading the manga instead since the anime doesn't really get the vibes right
Pokemon Horizons Ep45
this episode marked the end of the second arc and the first year of the anime (basically). next episode we start a more scarvi focused art with the main characters going to the school from the game and a ton of npcs showing up or making a return (rika and nemona 🙏)
but anyway this arc was just alright. it was all about searching and getting the six hero pokemon but there were more random eps about other stuff than that. we also have the explorers who are supposed to be the antagonists and they barely showed up despite them revealing the designs for a bunch of them. two of them are gonna be a part of the school art so maybe they'll have a bigger part in the story but I doubt it. they'll prob just be there to give the mcs a hard time and be comedic relief like team rocket.
anyway, considering how it's gone I don't have very high hopes for this next arc BUT I'm stoked to see rika and nemona, they're some of the best things to come out of those games by far
Manga
Ruri Dragon Ch11
today marked the last chap of ruri on WSJ, going forward it'll be on jump+ and run biweekly, tho the next chap will be on the 21st so I guess it's taking a week off. kinda weird to make the transition on an incomplete part like, could've very easily done it on last week's chap it felt like a more natural stopping point, but oh well.
obviously tho she's gonna join that committee thing and the other girl that doesn't like her is gonna be a part of it too and they'll make up and become friends too
anyway it was nice having ruri back, it's still as good as before it left. it's a shame that it's going biweekly but hey, the author's health is more important
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sumeru archon quest act 2 appreciation post
HEAVY HEAVY spoilers warning, wall of text
note: i know the game said it wasn’t a time loop but for simplicity’s sake we’re keeping that phrase
honestly, i’m still riding the high of the archon quest so i will be very biased in my opinions LMAO. however from reading some friend’s and randoms’ opinions, i think we can all agree to a certain extent that this is one of the best if not the best archon quest to date. it’s such a mindfuck, wonderfully executed and so much more engaging. this is what inazuma should have been instead of the rushed mess that we got. i knew that the writing was going to improve bc MHY is no stranger to well-written stories (honkai, dainsleif’s and inazuma npc’s quests) but i certainly did not expect such drastic improvement this patch lmao.
first i want to go back and look at previous nations and why i hated the format of the missions. (to be fair i know that story-heavy live services games usually get better over time and not perfect the first few years but just using these points for comparison ;)). mondstadt and liyue, imo, is just there to set a foundation and test the waters. how the story was delivered was very boring. it’s pretty much: you walk here, read dialogue that most skip anyways, fight for 3 seconds, watch characters do the same 3 talking animation, cue cutscene, conclusion. look, i may be able to play visual novels for hours, but when i play genshin i expect something much more engaging than that okay lol. story is supposed to excite you, keep you immersed and encourage you to keep coming back to it. but i really didn’t feel that with mondstadt and liyue. most of the excitement were boss fights and cutscenes. if you asked me what happened in-between, i wouldn’t really remember much LMAO. inazuma was slightly better but followed a very similar format. i think we were all hyped from raiden shogun reveal and new region that we just kinda accepted whatever we got. Inazuma’s quests were better near the end with yae miko’s and raiden’s quest for certain though. building up to sumeru, we had a LOOOT of unanswered questions and no one seems to know or want to talk. this frustrated me a lot bc the only time we get to learn more about our sibling/khaenri’ah was through dain and that motherfucker appears like TWICE in the duration of one nation KJASEK. so as we enter sumeru we have a LOT of anticipation for something MORE, whether that’s through better quests or getting actual answers about the other sibling/abyss. inazuma is not completely flawed and is amazing in its own way but it should tell you a lot that I was already kinda done with the region by 2.4 ish.
now to actually talk about why i think act 2 was so good. i love time-loop like tropes ok? like a lot. it’s a complex trope to write and the audience can very easily get lost and frustrated trying to follow it. however, if developed with care, it’s extremely rewarding for both the writer and us pea brains gacha addicts. it’s not perfect as i think MHY could’ve done better than a “collective dream” as the reason for samsara. the conclusion was a tiny bit jarring with nilou being the host bc she barely appeared. but everything else was incredible. i appreciate that they tried to make that trope work within genshin’s lore. if anyone has ever watched madoka magica, i think it’s a great example of why time-loop like tropes are so good. simply, it’s disturbing. (madoka spoilers skip to next bold text if needed) the creator of madoka confirmed that homura has ran through at least 100 timelines to attempt to save madoka. when i watched it, i personally didn’t even get the hint that homura was stuck in a time-loop lmao. (end of spoilers). i like that the time-loop in genshin was similar to this. we sensed that something wack was going on. our memories are erased and we keep repeating the festival until the duo consistently retain their memories. nahida confirmed that they went through at least 20 time loops before realization. that is so eerie to me. i would legit question everything i ever knew about time and reality lmao. paranoia would overwhelm you and you can’t help but think if you’re truly of out the “dream”. if the duo wasn’t protected by plot armor, they could’ve been trapped there for an eternity. autonomy over your own life lost bc of some petty scholars. it’s that feeling of helplessness and trapped with no way out is what makes this quest so terrifying.
so that’s reason #1: time loop tropes are cool and it was executed well majority of the quest. reason #2: better audience engagement. aw man 100 chefs kiss to the teams that worked on this together. i don’t want to ramble but to summarize the following things really helped me stay engaged in the story:
- camera work: I might be very wrong there were some shot that utilizes actual camera techniques such as dutch angles and dolly zoom. subtle maybe but it was there. these are great for giving the feeling of uneasiness. and it was a great way to lead the audience too
- dunyarzad: she was fleshed out very well! i was attached to her early on and even shed some tears during the dancing cutscene lmao she feels much more alive bc she had a purpose and relationships (nilou, dehya) that we care about. teppei lacked a lot of that and while i adored his character, i can’t deny that dunyarzad was more complex and believable
- deduction mechanic: for once the player actively participates in the story!!!! it was so cool piecing things together. it helps making you feel like you’re a part of the mystery. aaaaanddd it confirms that the traveler is an established protagonist that actually speaks and not a piece of cardboard voiced by paimon.
- battle of wits: we always see paimon solving issues via brute force but i think this is the first time we really get to watch them use their intelligence and observational skills to get out of this sticky situation. it was so refreshing to do a quest that was more mystery oriented. i definitely need more quests like this bc the dynamics/bonds between the duo truly shines here!
- small little things such as art of young dunyarzad speaking to nahida, and mini-cutscenes of the duo time-looping to show quest progression. it helped liven the quest for me!
- traveler: traveler feels so much more human here. like I LOVED that they were mourning dunyarzad and angry at themselves for being unable to protect her. paimon has always spoken for them and we don’t really get to see traveler express their own thoughts and emotions a lot. I feel much more attached to the traveler bc of this imo. I’ve always seen them as a blank slate (and they are for the player but I see them more as an OC)
CONCLUSION
whether or not they're listening to our feedback regarding story (certainly not for character design oop), this is very exciting. i love the direction that they are going in in terms of storytelling and execution. this specific act is more story than action so it's possible that this gives MHY more leeway to be creative. but i'm gonna send them a fat feedback to make sure they keep some of the elements i mentioned bc i refuse to go back to the 40 minutes of pure dialogue and talking animations. the sumeru plot line has potential to be one of the best AND very dark thematically but will mhy actually do it??? we’ll find out in 3.1 and 3.2!
#if u read this whole thing ily#i already want to replay it#i promise i'll start posting more edits again skjease#sen speaks#sumeru spoilers#genshin spoilers#3.0 spoilers
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I agree with you, Mai. A happy, utopic ending was unlikely in AOT from the start. I understand that the ending was rushed, but to me it conveys perfectly the message AOT was trying to send from the beginning, the cycle of hatred never ends, wars never end, exactly how it happens in real life as you pointed out.
What I disagree with is this widespread sense in the fandom that Eren died for nothing and his actions were innocuous because in the end Paradis was destroyed all the same. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Eren ever said his goal was to stop the cycle of hatred and the wars. His goals were: that his friends survived and lived happy lives; that, in his words, he gave Paradis “a fighting chance”; and end the Power of the Titans by freeing Ymir Fritz through his own sacrifice at Mikasa’s sword. He accomplished all three.
Remember, the war we see in the end was many many decades after our main characters passed away. We can’t even quantify how far in the future that is. We’ve seen, however, that Mikasa, Armin, Levi etc. lived happy lives and died of natural causes without wars and that Shiganshina District developed into a modern society. That took literal decades, so Eren did give Paradis peace and “a fighting chance” for many generations. To expect that the Rumbling would give eternal worldwide peace is naïve, in my opinion, not even Eren expected that. Eren also freed the Eldians from the titan curse so that they couldn’t be controlled by the Founder nor turned into cannibal mindless titans again.
We also don’t know what the war in Shiganshina in the last panels was about. A lot of people somehow speculate that this was Marley, or the rest of the world exacting revenge on Paradis for the Rumbling, and therefore Eren failed completely. This was never stated. That could very well be only a civil war that destroyed a district. Like parts of Syria are destroyed. Or the war only partially destroyed Paradis, in this case Shiganshina, much like how it’s only Eastern Ukraine that’s in shambles due to the Russian invasion, it’s not like the whole country is completely, hopelessly destroyed. We don’t know what happened. It could very well be that only Shiganshina got destroyed – like, you know, what happened in canon in the first arcs – while the rest of the island thrived on. Or Paradis got destroyed, but maybe at that point in the future the Eldians had other settlements, be it in in other parts of the island or even in the former Marleyan territories (which, if I recall correctly, were the actual birthplace of the Eldian Empire, so it wouldn’t be unusual for people to move there after the Rumbling destroyed everything). We just don’t know.
And although I personally believe Mikasa did get married do another man, like Jean or some random NPC and moved on without forgetting Eren (which is what he wanted, he said that word for word), we’re also not sure this happened. We got one panel with Mikasa and another man. That could be Jean or Armin or anyone else, we got no way of knowing, only of speculating. Some people have pointed out that the flowers on Mikasa’s casket symbolize innocence and virginity, as if she lived a spinster’s life, which could also very well be true and beautiful, if not bittersweet.
People make a lot of assumptions to hate on the ending, which I do not agree with. You and everyone else can throw their lot and disagree, though. To me, what bothered me a bit in the finale was the whole Ymir Fritz – Eren – Mikasa cause and effect relationship that proved so vital and was so little elaborated. I think it should’ve been better explored in previous chapters or foreshadowed Ymir’s character and choice. In the same vein, I think Ymir’s relationship with the Founder’s power should’ve been better explained also, it was weird seeing this whole “only the royal family can control the Founder” but then Eren suddenly can, which implies that only Ymir can control it… but maybe she’s dependent on some stronger will… you know, this dynamic is fine, I like it, but it came out of nowhere in my opinion. Anyway, that’s my critique.
But it was showed that Eren asked Ymir (the founder and controller of everything) for her power, so that’s given. that’s consistent. it’s not sudden. she’s sharing it through Eren which is why we see her reflection in the panels in the last chapters. she’s present. like 134 side by side or 133 with Ramzi, because in itself Ymir is not real, she’s a consequence of Paths, she still controls it but she gave agency to Eren to take revenge for her on the world that she cannot step foot on. I do agree that this trio needed more tho, while i also get the lack of words and agency for Ymir is what make Ymir at all.
his goals can speculated honestly because he never said all of them out loud, the only thing we know is that he didn’t do it for Eldia alone, but seeing the last bits in 139 and 138 he’s giving his friends a chance and for Ymir to be free as well, which essentially ends the cycle of royals that he was avoiding all throughout the timeskip (him protecting historia). so we can say that’s also a goal. he more than anyone should know that the cycle cannot end, so i do think he’s actually just giving them time and that was the purpose kind of.
for the rest i agree, i do have an open mind on mikasa’s ending honestly, she’s a grown woman and if after a decade she decided to stay alone or get with another, i’m fine either way. i’m on the opinion that the man with her is Armin just coming to visit.
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6.2 MSQ ramblings by your local Golbez fan
Partner and I finished the entire thing in one sitting last night. Here's my thoughts now that I'm more awake, in vaguely chronological order...
(Tl;dr more FFIV callbacks than you can shake a spoony bard at!)
Varsahn getting a new adult mammet body is a brilliant way to reference Rydia's return as an adult without having to actually use a child character for the role or doing some kind of timey bullshit.
Troia is brilliant. I was losing my mind over the music the entire time...
Speaking of Troia, let's get this out of the way because I've been obnoxious about it on Twitter, Discord, and in-game: HI MY IRL NAME IS BEATRICE. It's me. I feel so seen as a big FFIV fan. Thank you whichever dev did this.
of course, the choice of name isn't really because of random FFIV fans like me. Beatrice is obviously an extension of the Dante's Inferno theme that begins with the Archfiends.
Also, the creepy statues jumpscared me!
Beatrice's mechanics are a nice mixup of the gaze mechanic, otherwise nothing too new here.
So many empty rooms breaking up pulls. Why???
Scarmiglione...I was too distracted by his voice. He sounds like Fandaniel. Maybe if it was just a slight raspier it would've worked better for me.
that said, I adore how hectic his fight is, even though I was constantly expecting the "back attack" during the dungeon. Of course, the back attack happens later instead.
Using Troia as a somewhat explorable zone of course makes the empty rooms make more sense. This part is a lot of back and forth and even with mounts it's kind of tedious, but all the voidsent lore is worth it.
The voidsent talks remind me of Megaten demons by the way. Voidsent Summoning Program when?
That feeling of going back through the dungeon and talking to previously hostile NPCs—it reminds me a lot of old school RPGs! It's definitely something that's been a little missing from XIV imo.
Zero. I love her. I love that she operates on a different morality and value system from the usual sort of person the (ex-)Scions deal with, and she isn't going to give that up just because we've been nice to her. Of course, there is some compromising on her part, but she's very solidly set in the ways of the Void.
also: she's a tease for Zeromus. Now, I don't think she will be Zeromus, or that he will necessarily even appear, but if not foreshadowing, her name is the devs teasing those "in the know".
Zero's Domain! It was here I said out loud "wow, that's quality patch" because adding in another location after the dungeon feels big. It's appropriate for the Thirteenth and I hope going forward we'll be able to come back freely and use it as a base of operations.
AND THE MUSIC ITS THE FFIV OVERWORLD THEME I started tearing up a little.
Sad gay Voidsent relationship lore :(
Speaking with the Voidsent around Zero's Domain leads to some fun dialogue btw, my favorite is the Mindflayer kinkshaming a summoner that tied his vessel up.
ok. Barbariccia. I was unfortunately spoiled by crafting recipes (AGAIN) that she would be the trial and not Cagnazzo. I really like the way she's written, and once she appears in person, there's not much of the fanservice you might expect. Instead she has some power poses. Imo that's kinda sexier.
Her design—and Milon's—visually are...I guess pretty much what I should have expected of XIV's style of monster/character design and detail.
Now, as soon as Barb said she was next, I told my partner "I hope Estinien gets some spicy dialogue with her." Ok small tangent time. I personally think Zephirin was the Kain analogue in Heavensward in terms of his backstory and development, but hey I'm not going to deny that Estinien is the one with the "Dragoon who 'betrayed' you" job arc.
AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW ESTINIEN GETS THE SPICY DIALOGUE. And not just any spicy dialogue, he gets to fucking quote Kain Highwind verbatim. Good job, Estinien. "Ride the wind" indeed.
AND THE TRIAL THOUGH. Absolutely bonkers. I only died once because Phys Ranged Movement Privilege but holy shit the mechanics spam. I love the intensity. I was expecting Calofisteri mechanics but nope it's just insanity instead.
Her phase change is a pretty cool way to handle the "wrapped in hair" aspect of her and translating that into something you can still fight.
They did a good job not making her Calofisteri 2.0 or Garuda 3.0 basically.
I think everyone basically assumes Azdaja will be Shadow Dragon, and I'm very interested in how that's going.
So IMO the segments after returning to the Source drag on a fair bit and just keeps going. But this was also bc it was 1 AM for me.
Golbez!! GOLBEZ.
His voice. I like it. It's really hard to top Peter Beckman's iconic performance for Golbez, but his VA here does a good job with this take of the character.
AND WHAT IS YOUR BACKSTORY. GIVE ME THE GOLBEZ LORE. What is his ambition???
It is very refreshing to see Golbez back in his classic villain role though! And he brings a more militant theme too—we're dealing with his minions and their minions, not with him directly like with most of the other antagonists.
Memoria lore will be relevant for Golbez right? INB4 he's Zero's brother hahaha...wait I like this
I have to admit, this is the first patch in a while I've been honest to god this excited and manic about the MSQ. I was so afraid of the FFIV handling going poorly, but they did a great job in keeping it fresh.
Now I'm going to Island Sanctuary.
...Void Sanctuary when?
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I’d say China seems to be a bit worse of racial representation tbh. Like removing Finn from the movie poster for Star Wars. To appeal to the Chinese market.
I’ll keep calling for more rep, but sometimes it’s best to temper one’s expectations when dealing with properties that aren’t produced in North America.
PT I of II
First of all Finn wasn't removed from the Star Wars poster, he was shrunk significantly but wasn't altogether removed. I'm not saying that that's better, but just fact checking. I don't think it's something with China and generalizing it that way seems problematic and is annoying. Just because it's a Chinese game lets not forget that its target audience is not just China and that it's also heavily influenced by anime culture and community. Racial representation in general is a huge issue in every part of the world, not just China. There are other countries where racism and colorism are extreme problems, but maybe those things don't show up on your newsfeed because America isn't as obsessed with villainizing other countries as it is with China. Even India where the majority of the population is not pale deals with extreme colorism. So no, I don't think that the lack of racial representation can be simplified to "China seems to be a bit worse" or that its to "appeal to the Chinese market". I mean, by that logic why is Kaeya a starter character with tan skin and a Hindi name who clearly has great significance to the plot? If they were trying to mass appeal to only the Chinese market then they wouldn't have Kaeya as a starter.
Undoubtedly, there is an issue with representation. But lets not pretend this is something limited to or exacerbated by "China" (as you generalize this game and its developers to a whole country with the largest population and incredible diversity!) and that the situation is any better in North America. The best comparison I can think of is the kids tv show Avatar. On paper the show has great representation, but if you analyze it from another perspective it's pretty weird how major themes and the whole premise of the show, reincarnation of an avatar on earth, is prominently based off of Hinduism and Indian culture and yet there is no cultural group in the show symbolic of that (besides one character who is a racist caricature). But that show is applauded for representation because other minorities are represented and the cultures are given a spotlight and told in a way that's respectful. Sumeru for Genshin is a lot like that, a lot of the characters have Indian or Arabic names and yet the skin tones so far are pretty limited. And no, I'm not just talking about the leaked characters, I'm referencing NPCs as well because editing skin tone in an NPC with an Indian or Arabic name to have a greater variety would be pretty easy. Still, similar to Avatar, Sumeru is this random amalgamation of a bunch of cultures and its existence itself is a form of representation. Is it the best form? No. Is squishing a bunch of cultures together in that way the best idea? No. However, it's not like "North America" is doing representation way better than "China", so lets get over ourselves and our internalized racism/prejudice/ignorance or whatever it is you guys suffer from. I could think of a million other examples beyond just Avatar where representation is existent but not extraordinary. I can, in fact, think of innumerous examples where shows are obviously just attempting to meet a diversity quota where the characters seem representative, but in fact have absolutely 0 representation beyond harmful stereotypes and a non-white skin tone often accompanied by a thick unrealistic accent poured on by a white actor.
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Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery
This review contains spoilers.
Frog Detective came out in 2022 and was co-directed by Grace Bruxner (no shocker if you've played or watched a playthru of the game itself) and Thomas Bowker, whom also designed with help from Olivia Haines, and soundtrack by Dan Golding.
This was yet another Gamepass quick and easy game, but I would not let that fool you into thinking this game was quickly thrown together or made to be completed without putting any effort into it so lets jump straight into the gameplay.
The game is a collect-and-complete puzzle where you play as a Detective (who is also a Frog incase you didn't deduce that yet), who through the help of The Supervisor, is assigned cases and utilizes the people and items around him to solve the mystery at hand. There is not a lot complicated about the game at all, you simply walk up to an NPC, they tell you what they want in exchange for another key item or piece of information, and by the time you've spoken to every NPC in the area once or twice, you've collected the necessary objects or completed the tasks and have solved your case, and it really takes no time at all.
While the conversation piece can become redundant and long-winded, the writing is remarkably hysterical. Every NPC that talks to our main character is so out-there that you almost don't blame him for giving up on correcting them and just saying "OK", like constantly bringing up that he is NOT the more popular Lobster Cop, who is DEFINITELY the #1 Detective or that he is small or could never wear a hat because of the odd shape of his head. Despite his apparent short comings constantly brought up by random suspects that he's just meeting, it is apparent in every conversation that all he cares about is solving a mystery and being the best Detective he can be! His notes on each suspect in his personal detectives notebook are a testament to his honest but endearing nature, even writing himself in as a suspect!
There were little surprises around the corner in the game, like the Developer herself popping in to let you know she doesn't condone giving out your address or that all books are NOT factually incorrect and useless. Or the other NPCs of the game taking over the role of playable characters when you least expect it. Even the achievements themselves made me chuckle.
The soundtrack is light, mostly piano, but at the end of every case you do get a fun party where you can see all the characters dancing together to goofy music, and it made me genuinely smile every single time.
Towards the ending of the game, about 3 hours in for me, I was just aching to have more to play or more to solve, and wished the dialogue was less heavy. All in all though, I was surprised by how much I actually ignored the walk thru and just played the game because it was fun, and there wasn't much that you can miss even if this is the first game you've ever picked up, and it is not another quick completion that makes you feel like you somehow cheated your way to a thousand gamerscore.
This game is currently available for $19.99 on XBOX, Playstation 4 & 5 and Nintendo Switch or free with XBOX Gamepass.
This has been a free and honest review by someone who played the game and simply enjoyed it. Please give the developers some love and give the game a play, or let them know your thoughts if you've already played/watched it.
Trueachievements.com
Imdb.com
Please note the IMDb ratings are separated into the the three parts that the game integrates.
Thank you for reading and let me know what you thought about the game. 🎮🏆
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i think, since im getting into coding and game development more, and since that ebiquest game project is gonna take a VERY long time, i had two separate ideas for a smaller, low-stakes game involving my eldritch gods: a smash/street fighter-style fighting game, or a vn dating sim. both would be very satirical and mostly for jokes (and, well, testing my hand at coding, first and foremost)
dont expect it to be made within the next five months or something, im still very busy with work and life bullshit, itd be a project id be slowly working on over the years whenever i have the free time, so it could be done at like any time from next year to 2030. i dunno. somethin like that. point is dont expect it to be done tomorrow lol
but anyways the ACTUAL point of this post was to ask my followers whether i should go for the fighting game idea or the dating sim, so poll:
either way itll be centered around all my eldritch gods ive made.
the fighting game is realistically gonna just be you against NPCs unless i somehow find a way to make it multiplayer (main concerns is shit like server costs), but if i can then i probably will. itd be a good way to show off the abilities of various gods though. maybe have some easter eggs and random chance events strewn around for a little extra content
the dating sim is exactly what it says on the tin, a 2D visual novel (probably gonna imitate the old-school kinda styles since i like those a lot), you'll pick to be a certain god and then have a specific selection of other gods to pick (to make sure theres no accidental incest lol). there wouldnt be much of a plot outside of fun slice of (eldritch) life besides hints/references to like, actual existing stuff ive already written/conceptualized. might be a bit spicy but there could be a way to switch to a "family friendly" version
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okay, time for my own writeup on thoughts on genshin as a whole. gonna be long, so i’ll start with its writing/general stuff
for people who like old-school rpgs, where the average playtime could be a couple hundred hours if you want to do all the side quests or hunt down gear, with a “speed run” of the story taking like 60 hours on its own, genshin is pretty on par. tho i’d liken it more to an mmo style of questing, where story threads are offered and then unresolved for months at a time. this means that, for casual players, your expectations on progress for a single play session should be low, and expecting any full character resolution just isn’t gonna be happening for a while.
while i often see complaints on quest tasks being repetitive (fetch quests, defend the monument, run to x place for story), genshin does actually have an unexpected variety in minigames that it throws into the main quests (stealth missions, unique tools for specific uses, on-rails shooter segments). these are also pretty standard quality for an rpg, which is to say some are pretty dull or clunky mechanically. this is also on par with most rpgs i’ve played, and to genshin’s benefit, the fact that they even HAVE an event that is basically a prophunt gamemode is actually pretty cool and fun. there’s also fishing, a whole furniture and realm thing, lil world challenges. just stuff to do.
if you’re the sort who doesn’t like to read npc dialogue, a lot of the game will feel like a slog to you. i find a lot of the character writing to be charming, the localization team put a lot of obvious effort into it. cutscenes are frequent. if stuff like metal gear or final fantasy style scenes where characters stand around and have set emotes that may or may not be voice acted annoyed you, genshin will probably also. i actually really dig character banter and there is a Lot of story crumbs given for just about every quest.
speaking of, genshin’s writing team have done a great job of establishing an entire network of interconnected characters. you can pick just about anyone on the roster and do the degrees of separation game and probably typically only have maybe three degrees max. even random town npc’s are given distinct storylines and even character development as you do quests for them.
this leads me to the playable characters. every playable character has both a set of story snippets (where a narrator reveals more about them as a person by relaying parts of their life to you) and a profile with a bunch of unlockable voicelines that are conversations they have with the Traveler. you earn access to more of these by building friendship with the characters, which can be gotten from doing quests with them in your party, inviting them to your teapot house (i’ll get to that later), or even from crafting some items while they’re with you.
these are completely optional and skippable, but i really like them. it reminds me of systems like tales of vesperia or xenoblade where you get just nice insights into these characters’ deals after spending dozens of hours with them. it’s not crucial for the plot, it’s just nice.
BUT, that does lead me to my first big critique: the way genshin tells stories in pieces is a big hindrance to the impact of certain scenes. there’s a major problem brewing where very neat character moments and stories are stuck as limited time events which are as of yet unplayable once the event ends, and even if you DO participate in these story events, none of the info is saved in your game’s archive which otherwise saves all main story quest dialogue.
this may be changed in the future, given the latest update did finally add a QoL feature that had been asked for for a while (the ability to choose a country from a tab list on the map to zoom to it rather than manually). but, as of right now, the only way to revisit plot from events like golden apple archipelago, shadows amidst snowstorms, the lantern rite, etc is via player recordings on youtube. a quest replay feature has been requested, seems like it should be possible but who knows.
my second major critique of the writing is how genshin seems to be struggling to maintain tone. the inazuma plotline was a big deal for a lot of players and it definitely still has some very cool moments, but the ball got dropped hard with chunks of it, mostly pertaining to Baal aka Ei aka the Raiden Shogun.
if you, like me, spent time doing sidequests in inazuma you’d notice that, outside of even the plot critical ones, things have gone really bad for the people due to the electro archon’s decision to close off her nation. people are starving to death, children have been abandoned by their parents and left to fend for themselves, there is a civil war wherein neighbors are tearing eachother apart and turning in childhood friends because of the vision hunt decree. things are BAD and you can see entire fields of fresh graves.
one of the playable characters from that region that you first meet is Kazuha. he is on the run from the vision hunt decree, if he is captured he will be sentenced to death for his crime. his crime of saving the vision of his friend who was slain by the raiden shogun for defying the decree. he wishes to see the vision shine again.
you also meet characters like Gorou, a war general who has dealt with a lot of death and loss, and Kokomi, a too-young leader who is an inheritor of an entire people’s grief after Baal slew their own god Orobashi and then took them under her dominion. Yoimiya who is just trying to protect her neighbors from having their lives destroyed. Ayaka and Thoma who are working within a rigged system to the best of their abilities to save as many as they can. (this follows the pattern in past nations, the Traveler meeting a bunch of people involved in the disturbance in the region and befriending them, each character having their own perspective or hand to play in the narrative)
a war torn nation isn’t new, genshin’s map is covered with the ruins of past societies. liyue’s questline has you discuss parts of the archon war with the geo archon. the tone is consistent there, the sense of grief and how hard people try to stand for what they believe in.
but, then, once you actually meet the electro archon, even after she has then killed another person in front of the Traveler, even after she has tried to kill the Traveler themself like three times, we’re left with… a kind of vapid character. don’t get me wrong, i want to like Ei and even feel it would make sense for her to befriend the Traveler eventually somehow, but… the way the writers chose to do it was basically to handwave her callous behavior and clean the blood off her hands by saying she is just not a people person after living under a rock for 500 years and really she’s just spacey and loves sweets and-augh.
the nuance that had been given to characters like Zhongli, who we learn has been part of war after war and likely has taken hundreds of lives, and how he put effort into actually standing beside his people for thousands of years and that is why they respect him is just. not given at all to ei. instead, your story quest dedicated to ei is introducing isekai manga and dango smoothies to her. meanwhile her citizens who she had been harming with her decrees just. are excited to see her. it is. frustrating.
and that is kind of the thing with genshin. there is so much stuff in it that there is bound to be flops, sturgeon’s law and all that. a lot of sidequests are hit or miss too, it’s just a shame that a huge plot character seemed to be defanged so easily for the sake of advertising. cuz that is likely what it is, genshin wants to sell the characters to you, and it’s kind of hard to sell the electro archon as the “i don’t care if my people die, i believe what i’m doing is right” callous war goddess versus “let’s do a photoshoot with the mountain, what pose should i do? :)”
tho, speaking of, in terms of gacha games being obscene with using s3x appeal to try and drive sales, genshin is shockingly tame. there are a few designs that are incredibly uncomfortable for me, like fischl’s, but i have seen news that many designs are being reworked to be more pg. because genshin is rated t at most, and i believe in china it’s closer to a like pg-13 rating, the content does not have nearly the amount of anime bullshit i thought it would going in. the camera plays nice, the story content is focused on the actual story, and i have only wanted to die on one major occasion which was during mona’s quest and she’s getting new clothes so. Yay? i guess? for not being as scummy in that way?
the story has nothing to do with any romantic pursuits and while it’d be easy for a game like this to go the “collect cuties ;)” route, genshin doesn’t. it instead offers to you enticing plot bunnies that scatter in every direction, like a ton of white rabbits with their own wonderland holes that aren’t going to even have a card kingdom for you to visit for like three more years but oh my god that rabbit HAS a card what’s on it what does it say-and then you may be tempted to buy a nice little hutch for the rabbit so it sticks around until you have a full deck of cards from it maybe. i might just be really asexual and blind tho.
just as the characters are all given interconnected storylines and attachments, so too are they to the world setting! and man, is there so much world lore. do you like books?? lots of books? like ur in elder scrolls only you don’t even get a spell ability for reading these things you just get more tangled up and lost in the lore sauce. it is completely optional but i find a lot of genshin’s charm is in its dedication to creating a really expansive narrative regarding the nature of divinity, what responsibility do gods have to their people, and the weight history has on the present.
the variety of real world cultures and historical references are diverse and every nation in teyvat has a specific blend, with characters having regional names and designs that show off a lot of research and thought. i have been having a lot of fun parsing what may have inspired what and what that may mean for the story.
overall, i feel genshin’s writing is more rewarding for people who are used to long-form storytelling that requires a lot of looking around to piece it together. the main story is straightforward, the Traveler is on a journey to find their twin and they make friends on the way. if the team doesn’t add some way to replay some quests, i feel there’ll be trouble with huge gaps in information, but it’s hard to tell just yet with it being so incomplete. it may also suffer more and more over time from needing to market characters to people and thus negating a lot of the story’s power to explore themes of divine wrath and tragedy. it has some moments that are really really cool and some that are just bummers, but as a whole for what it is right now it’s been a fun trip.
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This is why I can't play Morrowind rip
I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of games I can’t play, even some I used to, for reasons like Morrowind’s navigation issues. A thought that enters my mind a lot for games with those issues is “this game does not respect my time”. Whenever I think that, I’m just done with it now. I tend to find I’m happier for it.
To be clear I don’t dislike Morrowind, I do in fact like it quite a bit. I also understand that it is a product of its time, popular concepts in game design evolve with time, with a lot of what I would consider bad ideas falling to the wayside with time (along with some game design ideas that should really be given more tries, although that’s super tangential).
At the same time I’m willing to admit to things I dislike about the game. Morrowind is not sacred, it can be criticized. I don’t like running into unjustified difficulty walls (without taking advantage of exploits). If a game encourages you to explore, and exploring the world is arguably what Morrowind MOST encourages you to do, getting cut off by enemies who are arbitrarily too powerful is terrible design. That’s not to say I dislike a game expecting you to get more powerful to expand what areas you can explore, far from it. But it should be a fairly natural process of discovery. It should be clear that I’m heading into danger.
One good example of this is Red Mountain. Red Mountain in its entirety is gated off by a giant glowing and ominous wall with only one easy entrance. As you approach it the weather becomes increasingly grim, before the entire world turns a sinister shade of red. That sets the tone. It tells me, without necessarily saying anything (although NPCs also warn you), that what’s in there is going to be much more dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go that way unless I’m sure I’m ready.
A random human living in a cave being considerably more powerful than a different random human living in a similar cave is comparatively bad. Sadly, I feel that this is much more common than the warnings with Red Mountain.
To change topics, the Dark Brotherhood NPCs constantly attacking you whenever you rest if you have the Tribunal expansion (which most people will have at this point, as most copies of the game you can easily acquire come with it by default now) is absolutely awful design of the highest level. If you aren’t familiar, when you start a new game or load a save after enabling the Tribunal expansion, there will be persistent, respawning enemies that attack you when you rest until you go to a higher level area to put a stop to their attacks. They start spawning immediately, and they become increasingly dangerous if you just try to put up with the attacks.
What were they thinking? In my opinion, the implementation of these Dark Brotherhood assassins to get you to start Tribunal is a solid contender for the single worst developer decision in any Elder Scrolls game. I’m sure there have been worst design choices in games overall, but I think it might be an honorable mention on a list of all-time worst game design decisions. I have actually tested this with a group of people who have never played Morrowind before, and the DB attacks were consistently a wall they couldn’t get past. I don’t think a person can pick up Morrowind today without either having a game guide (like the UESP), using mods to fix this, or just dropping the difficulty down (a feature hidden in the menu). That’s really, really bad.
I know we’ve been talking about this in other posts, but while talking about things from Morrowind that make it harder for me to get into now, I would be remiss to not go more in-depth with my problems with it (especially since that was the anonymous message’s primary gripe). As Morrowind does not have quest markers, you are reliant on directions NPCs give you. Directions like this...
"The burial caverns lie to the south-southeast of the camp, a north-facing door in a little hill halfway between us and the slopes of Red Mountain. Go north from the camp to the water, then turn east. At a rock cairn on the beach, turn and head straight south until you find the door. The spirits of our ancestors guard the caverns. They will attack, and will kill you if they can. Force your way past them, or evade them, get the bow, and return to prove your worthiness."
Those are actual directions you get during part of the main quest.
Honestly, I can often remember where to go or just instinctively pull up our interactive map if I need it, but if I didn’t have foreknowledge of Morrowind locations, this would bother me immensely. I don’t have unlimited free time, I would like to do the parts of the game that are fun and rewarding, not search mindlessly through Morrowind’s ash and fog-covered countryside for a gray door on the side of a gray rock. When a game doesn’t respect that, I have a hard time playing it. TES has a special place in my life, but I can absolutely understand how things like this are deal breakers for people.
But to change tracks, and to end this post, I would like to leave you with something I absolutely love about Morrowind. A lot of games play with the trope of you having to prove you are “worthy”. Morrowind absolutely does, you interact with a ton of characters who outright despise you, and barely tolerate you enough to send you to complete some task to prove your worth, before sending you off on a dozen more missions to continue to prove yourself, before sending you to other groups who you then have to prove yourself to. However, Morrowind lets you throw up your hands at their demands and snide comments and go “You are all garbage people, and I dislike you all immensely. I don’t need you or your perfunctory approval or your stupid artifacts. Now I’m going to go kill the monsters none of you could because I am AMAZING and HARDCORE and YOU ARE NOT. And I’m going to do it all while FLYING because I am too good to walk on the same dirt you all are confined to.”
And honestly, every game should let you do that.
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Actual Play: How it works
This is a collection of how I think of actual play as a medium, because TTRPG actual play is a unique one - a combination of improvisation, a rule set, and randomizing elements. This isn’t fully comprehensive, and I may add to it in the future as I come up with more ideas. I’m also thinking of providing some examples/more in-depth stuff for the items in separate posts, so please let me know if that’s something you would want.
Most of the observations here heavily skew towards D&D and Pathfinder actual play, as they are what I know best. Other systems I’ve listened to (PbtA, Cortex, Savage Worlds) fit in here as well, but this may not apply to all actual play, particularly GM-less games or games that are primarily played as one-shots.
Finally, and I say this only because it is a recurring problem on the social media that I happen to find incredibly irritating: you are also welcome and encouraged to have other opinions, disagree with me, dislike all of this, etc. If you have things to say, my inbox is the best place; this is too long for multiple reblogs and this is a sideblog so replies are tricky. However, if you are the kind of person who is inclined to say things like “Actually, there was an exception to this rule! It’s in the backmasked audio at 06:59:32 in the outtakes of episode 192c of Dungeons and Discotheques! :)” I would like to provide you with this actual play line quote from Adaine Abernant in Fantasy High: I think that you feel like you have a lot to offer, and please take this the right way... you don't.
Onto the thoughts, below the jump!
On narrative devices and rules and the random element:
Foreshadowing is possible, but limited to specific circumstances. A GM can (and should) foreshadow! The point of foreshadowing is to set expectations, and GMs should have hints that indicate things about the world that the party may encounter later, provide potential plot hooks, or otherwise provide the party with information. Similarly, players can do things that nod towards as of yet unrevealed elements of their backstories. However, it is impossible to deliberately foreshadow plot resolutions, because it is unknown what they will be. That doesn’t mean that in retrospect things may happen that echo back to earlier events, but the intent to foreshadow was not there - it’s a happy accident.
I don’t want to say normal narrative rules don’t apply because what are the normal narrative rules, really? However, I think an important thing to emphasize is that narrative satisfaction is not guaranteed. This is especially true if the cast has agreed character death is an option, but even beyond that, an unlucky or lucky roll can seemingly cut an arc short or take things in a weird and unforeseen direction. Because there is an element of randomness, randomness will occur. This, along with the character agency I discuss later, is one of my favorite things about actual play. It strips out the need for a moral or message or specific beats - not that those can’t arise, but they can’t be forced - and as such it can make for unusual, creative, and very true-to-life stories even in a fantasy setting.
On character role, viewpoint and agency:
Actual play stories have an ensemble of viewpoint characters (the PCs). This is perhaps the clearest restriction that exists, at least in all of the game systems I’ve mentioned. There is no good way to depict NPCs acting on their own unless the PCs have a way to observe them, unseen (magical or mundane). It is extremely difficult to have one player play multiple PCs, and if a player leaves there is not a good way to recast their PC. This doesn’t mean NPCs can’t do things with each other offscreen that have implications for the story, nor that PCs can’t come and go or become NPCs, but it does mean a good GM is very careful about NPC interactions because it gets very boring and non-collaborative very quickly to watch someone talk with themselves.
The PCs hold a level of agency that characters in other media do not. Statements about how the characters have a mind of their own in original fiction aside (sidebar: I am team ‘they don’t, you just didn’t realize that the way you wrote their personality and the way you wrote your plot conflicted until you actually started writing it out, which is very understandable’) PCs do in fact have a mind of their own separate from the GM and from each other.
Something I like about this is that unless you are coming up with conspiracy theories regarding the interpersonal dynamics of the players themselves (in which case I think you’re both a creep and a weirdo (derogatory)) or if the GM is not respecting player agency (which I feel is usually very easy to see; see below for more on that) you do not get cases of “these characters are together simply because the author felt like pairing them off” as can happen in scripted media. Any romantic relationship is, inherently, a mutually agreed choice between the originators of these characters, and more generally any plot or relationship necessarily needs to have something that appeals to all characters involved. It may be as simple as “these are my friends and I want to keep hanging out”, but, despite this being improv, it’s a medium where saying “no” is always an option.
With that said there is still room for players to be uncooperative or selfish. It’s rare, but it does exist, and I’m personally of the opinion that it’s in part the GM’s responsibility to have a conversation with that player and to not play into their attention grabbing. That said, with one notable exception, all the accusations I’ve seen about this have seemed to me to be more “I don’t like this player/character/ship/arc and I am going to claim they are stealing focus, despite it being justified,” and not genuinely about a player being obnoxious.
Agency separate from the person who creates the world is perhaps the most unique element of actual play and at this point I’m going to talk a little about how a good GM fosters that.
I’ve said before that when a GM has things happen that are not at least mostly a direct response to character actions, they are typically either world-building or a hook, and can be both. I think of this sort of as a variant on Chekhov’s gun, actually; the gun doesn’t have to go off, ultimately, in actual play, but it is saying the following:
This is a world where there are guns hung on the wall sometimes.
Someone else might do something with this gun.
You can attempt to do something with this gun before they do.
And then the players decide how they want to interpret it and what they want to do, and the dice indicate the level of success in doing so.
A good GM should encourage the players to explore and be creative, and more than anything, reward agency. This doesn’t mean rewarding it with success; rather, it means if someone explicitly indicates they want to interact with an element of the world, you should give them the tools such that eventually, they can try to do so. You can also give them reasons in-game why they should change their mind, or make it so that it’s almost certain to fail if that is reasonable, but if you are trying to flat-out shut it down without providing an in-world reason why, the cracks will almost certainly show.
One important thing to remember about GM-ing: GMs will probably come into the game with some ideas of what’s going on in the world, and some level of understanding of what the world looks like. That will be influenced by the players, both in terms of the consequences of their actions and choices, and also by what the players are interested in. Which is to say: even if there is a session zero, and the GM states a specific premise, that can change! Characters develop, player interests change, dice rolls do weird things, and so a good GM absolutely must if not kill their darlings at least remove, recycle, and adapt them based on the direction of the game and motivations of the characters. Even in a plot-driven campaign, the players and GM and what makes them happy needs to drive the story, because fundamentally, this is a game that should be fun. Which brings us to...
On the Watsonian and the Doylist in actual play:
Stepping back for a second: the context in which people are creating fiction influences them. End of sentence. It’s ridiculous to think it doesn’t. This means everything from political events and worldwide trends, to the media the creator is consuming or has consumed, to personal life events. There are always going to be in- and out-of-universe explanations for choices in fiction.
In actual play, the players and GM know the underlying rules of the world, and it’s difficult to truly split the party and have everyone not involved leave in a way that feels fun, so everyone always has information that they can’t really use in-game. Also it’s a fully improvised medium that is primarily theater of the mind, so unconscious choices, misunderstandings, and accidents are frequently not edited out, and people are human. Which is to say I think it’s important to take this into consideration in one’s analysis; it’s not that you can’t incorporate a Watsonian reason for something that happened, but Doylist reasons are given a weight that they may not have in an edited work.
Three of the Doylist reasons beyond the misunderstandings and accidents I wanted to cover are metagaming, awareness that this is for an audience, and character knowledge.
Metagaming exists in many TTRPGs, and it’s not actually inherently bad. When a DM in D&D says “that just hits” you get an idea of the AC of the creature, and you know your own attack rolls, and you can make decisions based on that, when, in a ‘real’ fantasy battle scenario, you probably wouldn’t gain all that insight from a single hit. The rules of the TTRPG are considered part of normal acceptable metagaming. There’s also the more general one; if you start the first session in a tavern, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will interact and form an impromptu group and not just quietly drink their ale and leave - basically, the rules of improv still apply. This is a good thing. And finally, there’s the acknowledgement that you are people with feelings and this is a game and so if someone is upset you stop, or you have discussions about consent between sessions that inform actions in-game. Metagaming just gets obnoxious when someone rolls a nat 1 and then argues that this is obvious information and they should know, or looks up every monster in the manual when you encounter it instead of playing true to the character’s knowledge.
In actual play, the ‘hey fellow tavern-goers, would you like to be a group’ form of metagaming, the “oh right this is a story and we should move the story forward,” is even more important than in home D&D games. This is where I recommend listening or reading some Q&As or watching some after shows, because you’ll hear players talk about this. A 5-hour shopping episode or extensive foraging can get boring to watch or listen to (and unlike accidentally boring or frustrating things, are pretty easy to predict and avoid). On the flip side, a risky choice might seem more appealing when you know there’s an audience who would love the payoff.
I am personally, perhaps unsurprisingly given what I said about player dynamic conspiracy theories and randomness (or, outside of this post, my strong dislike of certain popular fan theories), not a big fan of creators catering to audiences’ every whim...but it’s unavoidable that they will take the audience experience in mind.
Finally, character knowledge, which is the opposite of metagaming - when a character knows something the player doesn’t. This is sometimes covered with, for example, GM statements like “you would know, as a person with history proficiency, that this country is actually in a regency period.” If the character had, in improv, before the GM had a chance to say that, mentioned the king, that’s just because the player did not know that and had made an assumption.
Personally I find going deep down the rabbit hole with things like this - “why doesn’t this character, who CLAIMS to be from this country, not know this?”, or clearly OOC statements - tends not to actually spark any interesting theories, but that is, ultimately, an opinion.
A few final thoughts on different formats of actual play
True livestream/live-to-tape (Critical Role, Into the Motherlands, and the second season of Fantasy High): the main thing to keep in mind is Doylist explanations are even more important because there is quite literally no editing. Also, there will possibly be some of those more boring stretches or even a little OOC metagaming discussions within the structure of the game, because there’s no way around it.
Editing, but primarily just to remove long explanations/math and doing soundscaping (NADDPod, Rusty Quill Gaming): Pretty similar; a lot of them even make the choice to leave in OOC metagaming discussions, so it’s mostly that there are fewer cases of people slowly adding numbers.
More extensive editing and possibly some predefined other elements (TAZ, most Dimension 20 shows): this may fall into a more traditional story structure. It’s not to say that there won’t be surprises, because the players do still have agency, but the ‘rails’ might be a little more apparent; there might be some DM monologuing done after the fact (beyond just cleaning up the audio) or choices that were not scripted per se, but not exactly improvised either (think how D20 tends to have pre-set battle maps and earlier seasons had a pretty strict RP/Battle structure.
Somewhat relatedly there are broad story structures, which is more of a spectrum, ranging from sandbox (Critical Role) to very clearly GM-driven missions (TAZ Balance and, to an extent, Amnesty); nearly all of the other shows here fall into a structure of “here is your overall goal, how precisely you get there is up to you although, like any GM, I will provide in-story information on where it may make sense to go that will often funnel you towards specific places.”
I do have a theory that since TAZ Balance in particular was an entry point for so many people, it takes them time to adjust to the more sprawling, unpredictable, and difficult-to-organize stories other actual play can have, but ultimately it is a matter of personal preference and all of these still fall into the category of actual play.
#long post#today in: unsure if anyone wants to read this but that has also never stopped me not even once#and writing this was fun
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Reader’s Corner: Skip and Loafer, Zom 100, and Megumi Hayashibara’s Characters
A Sign of Affection, Vol. 3
A Sign of Affection continues to sweep me off my feet! Volume three begins with all the giddy expectation that volume two left me on. Yuki and Itsuomi continue their conversation of how far does it go when it comes to Itsuomi and the answer to that question leads to the beginning of a sweeping romance that I have been longing for since the beginning of volume one! In no way did this story disappoint (except maybe in the slightly smaller size of this volume compared to the previous two) because Itsuomi was full of surprises that had me turning pages quickly. I deeply enjoyed seeing him open up more and how deep his feelings go for Yuki. I also continue to deeply enjoy Yuki’s character; her bravery in speaking her feelings continues to inspire me! While the romance is most certainly my favorite part of this series, I also continue to love the sign language part of this manga a lot, too, and the thought the creators put into this series because it is extremely powerful to read. There are subtle things that I wouldn’t have even thought about, but makes me realize how I take certain forms of communication for granted. (A great example of this is when Yuki internally mentions it’s harder to sign when she’s holding hands.) A Sign of Affection definitely continues to be in my top three favorite series this year and already desperate for volume four! ~ Laura A. Grace
A Sign of Affection is published by Kodansha.
Megumi Hayashibara’s The Characters Taught Me Everything
During the past four decades, Megumi Hayashibara has voiced some of anime’s most popular and iconic characters, including Rei Ayanami (Evangelion), Ranma Saotome (Ranma 1/2), Lina Inverse (Slayers), and Jessie (Pokemon), so it makes a great deal of sense for this unconventional memoir—first made available digitally in both Japan and the U.S. and now available in print—to move chronologically through dozens of her characters as the voice actress and musician writes about her relationships with industry staff and actors and gives life advice. Hayashibara’s voice is strongly present in every part of the writing—she emphasizes that these are her words, and that’s both part of the fun—getting insight with seemingly little editing—and what leads to a quite meandering book, with Megumi discussing two to three topics for each character. Generally, she’ll discuss her experience in voicing the character, and then what that experience or the character taught her about about life (also included are a number of new illustrations by the artists who originally developed the characters, some with notes celebrating Megumi). The thoughts sometimes feel random, though I can’t say I was ever bored. The book reads a bit like a history of voice acting in Japan, while also conveying the actress’ wisdom and caring. However, at times, I wondered who this was written to—super fans of Megumi? A new generation of fans? As a manual for voice actors? For Japanese readers? English-speaking? Ultimately, it’s firmly a work written to all the above, and indeed to anyone with a passion for anime or voice acting. Although not all the sections will be of interest to every reader, and one might disagree with some of her assessments and advice, it serves as a testament to Megumi’s heart for the craft, industry, and fans that she can reach out to such a wide audience and successfully convey to that vast spectrum her experience and love. ~ Twwk
Megumi Hayashibara’s The Characters Taught Me Everything is published by Yen Press.*
The NPCs in this Village Sim Game Must Be Real!, Vol. 1
Yoshio is a thirty-something NEET living at home, but totally alienated from his family. One day he receives an unsolicited opportunity to playtest a new game he’s never heard of. In it, he plays as the God of Fate, watching over and guiding some villagers. But a lot of things are strange. Maybe the incredible graphics are just cutting-edge tech, and the hyper-realistic NPCs are some new form of AI. Maybe. But it’s pretty weird that Yoshio didn’t need to sign an NDA; he just gets a letter asking him not to tell anyone about the game. Also, why would the alpha version of a game have microtransactions? And isn’t it weird how committed the developer is to this gimmick of sending Yoshio packages of meat, fruit, and even lumber that exactly match whatever the villagers offer to their god each day? In addition to the gaming, fantasy, and mystery elements, this volume is surprisingly heartwarming, as Yoshio’s villagers inspire him to start turning his life around, to get a part-time job and begin to rebuild relationships with his parents and sister. I found this combination of themes unexpected, but a lot of fun. I quite enjoyed this volume and will definitely pick up the next one. ~ Jeskai Angel
The NPCs in this Village Sim Game Must Be Real! is published by Seven Seas.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, Vol. 3
The peculiarities of Zom 100—how it balances out quite serious themes about a workaholic society society with comedy, fanservice, action, and really macabre illustrations—finds a comfortable stride in volume three. One single, short arc occurs from beginning to end in these chapters, as formerly overworked Akira once again finds himself trapped by his old manager, as do Kenichirou and Shizuka, who now seems to more or less officially be part of the group. As Akira retreats back into his old self, Shizuka’s unexpected backstory is revealed, fleshing out her character and transforming her more fully into a likeable character. A brisk read, volume three doesn’t seem to be particularly consequential, but it’s a nice respite from the almost too-big story of the initial releases, and continues to do an admirable job of sitting solidly within the zombie genre while poking fun at it. And while the smallness of a mini-arc leads Zom 100 toward more traditional shonen territory than in previous volumes, it also exposes the story as having a strong enough foundation with its three main characters to push the tale forward as more than a simple shock story or exercise in imagination. This is a good manga, and one that any fan of shonen or comedy should try out—even those that, like me, find zombies to be a bit much. ~ Twwk
Zom 100 is published by Viz Media.*
Skip and Loafer, Vol. 1
While A Sign of Affection was my most anticipated manga of the year, the latest release of Skip and Loafer volume one is almost its equal! I preordered it months ago because I loved the premise of a “country mouse” (Iwakura Mitsumi) moving to Tokyo to attend a local high school near the aunt she will be staying with so she can reach her dreams of one day attending Tokyo University. Combine that with rekindling old and forming new friendships, getting lost, and the inklings of a blooming romance, and I’m hooked! Iwakura truly is such a fun and down to Earth girl that made me laugh more than once in this volume.. She’s so open and honest, and genuinely wants to give her all. Throw in the super kind “hunk,” Shima, in her new school adventures, and I had a really great time seeing their friendship unfold! The relationships are one of the most exciting things about this story because each of her new friends are so different, but they all really form a “connection” with Iwakura that is special. Due to these new friends Iwakura has made, I already went ahead and preordered volume two because I need more of this story! Skip and Loafer is a very calming and fun slice-of-life read that had me smiling as I turned pages—I loved the story more as it progressed and really enjoyed many of the characters. A fun read, I definitely look forward to seeing what happens next! ~ Laura A. Grace
Skip and Loafer is published by Seven Seas Entertainment.
High School Debut, Vol. 4
This has been the best volume yet of High School Debut! One thing I have really come to appreciate about these volumes is that even if they feature lot of drama, tears, and misunderstandings, they still get a good solid ending with happy closure. I feel this is a rarity in shojo manga, with High School Debut not only lacking cliffhangers, but also providing “happy endings” of sorts. I know volume four really fulfilled all the happy feels and I absolutely loved it! It also made me realize that the “Christmas date” is my absolute favorite kind in shojo manga! I deeply enjoyed the one in this volume, even if at times I felt bad for Haruna (because oh no to her plans!). She is so so so sweet! Yoh, on the other hand, is a very patient man! I couldn’t help but start to admire him, too. It was really nice to see Yoh smile more in this volume and see that he actually does have a funny streak with the ending making me laugh! ~ Laura A. Grace
High School Debut is published by Viz Media.
Strobe Edge, Vol. 9
There’s no obstacle left in the way between Ren and Ninako—not a real one at least. Instead, Ninako continues to make assumptions about Ren, while Ren may be waiting too long to tell Ninako about his feelings. Everyone else in the story, including Ando and his girlfriend, as well as a new sorta love rival in this chapter and the last, are superficial challenges at best to the ones in their own minds, which is what makes Strobe Edge so frustrating. If the pair would just talk things out, rather than depend on their own self-justifications and poor advice from others who in some cases barely know them, the story would be concluded. But I guess that wouldn’t be much fun (and admittedly there are fun scenes in this volume, including a “gotcha” moment at the very end that’s one I haven’t seen before and which drew me vividly into how that scene might happen if I were one person or the other engaged in it), and it wouldn’t be very teen-like, which if nothing else, describes these kids and how they think—which perhaps is what should be expected from this series after all. ~ Twwk
Strobe Edge is published by Viz Media.
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Reader’s Corner is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works their reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works and older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.
#Manga#Light Novels#A Sign of Affection#Yubisaki to Renren#Megumi Hayashibara’s The Characters Taught Me Everything#The Characters Taught Me Everything#The NPCs in this Village Sim Game Must Be Real!#Murazukuri Game no NPC ga Namami no Ningen to Shika Omoe Nai#Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead#Zom 100: Zombie ni Naru made ni Shitai 100 no Koto#Skip and Loafer#Skip to Loafer#High School Debut#Koukou Debut#Strobe Edge#Reader's Corner#Articles#Author: Laura A. Grace#Author: TWWK#Author: Jeskai Angel
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Is it bad that i find Freemance (Gordon and Alyx) kind of squicky? I don't know, I really used to like it and the possible romantic relationship between them is super cute! But the fact that Alyx was a child when she knew him, and that Eli makes the weird comments about them when he has known Gordon for so long and that his DAUGHTER. It just really doesn't sit right with me anymore. I wouldn't want any of my friends to date my daughter if i had one! But i don't know anymore :-(
I’ve answered this question a few times before (sometimes more politely than others), but I’ll bite one more time, since your message sounds genuine and I hate to see people stressing out over this.
In short, no, it’s not “bad” to find something squicky. That’s the beauty of the term; sometimes you just don’t vibe with something and “squick” is a great way to express that without needing to justify why you don’t like the thing. There are HL pairings I find squicky that aren’t necessarily objectively bad. Nobody’s saying you have to love freemance to be a HL fan.
That said, though, I can tell you’re feeling conflicted about this and I’m hoping I can help by clearing up some common misconceptions about the ship:
1. There’s nothing in canon that says Gordon knew Alyx when she was a child. What little information we do have actually suggests he didn’t. We know he worked with her father in some capacity, but given how dangerous and secure Black Mesa was, I highly doubt Eli was bringing his 4 year old to work regularly. Also, Alyx canonically doesn’t know much about Gordon in either HL2 or HLA, which strongly implies that if they ever did meet pre-canon, it was brief and not at all memorable. Anyone who claims that Gordon and Alyx were close pre-canon or had some sort of uncle/niece relationship is either confused or lying because nothing in the games supports that conclusion.
2. Yeah, Eli’s jokes are a little cringey at times (and it appears Alyx would agree with that assessment, which is clearly intended to be humorous on Valve’s part), but I don’t think that’s an argument to sink the ship. Eli was probably at least a decade older than Gordon when they worked together at Black Mesa. Presumably, they didn’t work together for terribly long, considering how young Gordon is; HL1 was originally meant to take place on Gordon’s first day of work, but that was retconned to an unspecified earlier date to explain why he knows these people in HL2. Regardless, now Eli’s 20 years older than that with a daughter who’s around Gordon’s age. It’s not like Eli’s trying to set Alyx up with a same-age colleague; actually, Gordon arguably has more in common with Alyx than he does with Eli at this point. Also, it’s not unheard of in the real world for parents to try to set their kids up with respectable acquaintances and yes, even co-workers. Valve wouldn’t have written that in if it was socially unacceptable.
3. We know Eli knows about the G-man and his relationship to Gordon and he also comments on the fact that Gordon doesn’t seem to have aged. He definitely knows (or at least strongly suspects) that Gordon’s still 27, which makes him a perfectly acceptable potential partner for his 24 year old daughter. Regardless of when Gordon was technically born, he’s still physically and developmentally in his 20s. He and Alyx have a similar amount of lived experience and complementary skillsets.
4. Eli, Barney, and other random NPCs don’t start teasing Alyx and Gordon about possibly being interested in each other until they’ve been working together for a while. Regardless of whether or not Gordon/you (as the player) reciprocates, it’s quite clear in the games that Alyx is developing a thing for Gordon as the story progresses, so it’s not like this is a case of creepy meddling friends/relatives (or game developers) trying to force a weird relationship on unwilling participants.
5. This is a dynamic that could never happen in real life that neither party had control over, which means there’s nothing predatory going on here. Time travel/stasis is also a very common trope in sci-fi media. Everyone in HL2 has been through a lot and seen some shit. Alyx getting together with a 20-something year old dude who got yoinked out of time for two decades probably doesn’t even crack the top 10 for “unexpected shit that’s happened since Black Mesa” at this point. The characters clearly love and respect each other and we have every reason to believe everyone’s intentions in encouraging this relationship are pure.
If freemance still doesn’t appeal to you, that’s totally fine! I’m not expecting to convince you to love it and that’s not a prerequisite to participate in the fandom, but I hope this helped counter some of the misinformation you may have heard elsewhere. As always, I’m happy to discuss this further in other asks or DMs if you still have questions!
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I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:
Raging Loop
Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch.
I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.
That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.
Detective Grimoire
I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.
Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery
This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)
As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over.
All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.
Ikenfell
Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.
There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.
(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)
Trails of Cold Steel IV
Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense.
Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.
It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.
did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win
One Step From Eden
OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.
Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.
(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)
The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???
A Short Hike
This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.
Pokémon Sword
Ehhhhh.
I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.
Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.
It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime.
(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though)
Hades
Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.
Petal Crash
It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.
Hollow Knight
Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.
(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)
Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”
(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)
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