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#hi hi I’ve been playing disco elysium and it’s very fun and I love it so much
mellomemos · 1 year
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I really can not explain it but some of the writing in Disco Elysium matches this exact energy
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edoro · 1 year
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been playing more Disco Elysium because no matter how bad i feel about work, i could not be as much of a fuckup as Harrier Dubois if i tried, so it really offers some much-needed perspective
anyway just got to the second day finally (yes it takes me 100 years to play video games, shhh lmao) and today i am thinking and talking with friends (hiii Vincent) about Evrart Clair
in spite of myself, i am quite fond of him, tbh. he’s a lot of fun.
and i think he’s really interesting because, well... and i mean granted i am only two days in, so, you know, this is a very uninformed opinion, but from what i’ve seen so far... he’s a slimy little skeeze who loves to line his own pockets, but he does also seem to have some pretty firm ideological convictions re: all the union stuff, and most importantly i think is that he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak.
and like, is he necessarily a good leader, or someone i’d want to work with personally? no, lmao. the man is corrupt as hell. he’s slimy as a hagfish. but he gets shit done.
and i think honestly that Martinaise, in the position it’s in right now, needs someone like Evrart. like, Martinaise is a shithole. Martinaise looks like the revolution was six months ago, not multiple fucking decades. no one’s even fixed the bullet holes! the place is rotting. it’s been left to die, an orphan district that nobody wants to deal with.
whether or not the RCM as an institution is effective at solving problems, helping citizens, and keeping them safe - and whether or not the nature of policing is that it will inherently result in an order-keeping arm of the most conservative version of the government in power that will be used to keep the status quo through intimidation and violence and the use of the apparatus of the state carceral system against the populace, or if it truly CAN be about restorative justice and community maintenance - aside, they don’t even try with Martinaise. nobody wants to go there! everybody is too busy trying not to get stuck with the trash assignment to actually give a shit about the place.
so you end up with a lawless wasteland of poverty and ruin where people still live, and therefore there needs to be some degree of management of their community and resources. the RCM won’t step in, so the union fills that vacuum.
and clearly, like i said, Evrart is in this to line his own pockets and see to his own comfort. he’s corrupt. his union has a solid core of militant thugs who seem to want to fuck shit up and get away with it, and it’s a matter of whether or not he can hold their leashes and direct them one way or the other.
but like... he’s doing that. the union is the one actually doing the work here. Evrart is the one making the decisions and getting things done. and in a situation with a place like Martinaise, well, there’s really no way to run things without getting your hands dirty. the whole district is knee deep in the mud, so anyone who actually wants to be an effective leader has to be willing to flop down and wrestle in it, and Evrart is.
and frankly, i don’t think that martyrs make good leaders. someone willing to die and sacrifice anything for their ideological cause is going to feed themselves and everyone following them into a woodchipper. but the average person on the street doesn’t want to be fed into a woodchipper for the glory of The Cause, they just want to live their goddamn lives.
Evrart is not a man who is going to step into the woodchipper. he has a vested interest in keeping the area safe (for a certain definition of safety) and prosperous (for a certain definition of prosperity) because he’s tied his own comfort and wellbeing to it. the thing about a man who lines his pockets because he’s in charge is that there’s nothing to line them with if everything goes completely to shit.
so he’s the one actually in there doing the work. he’s the one actually making an effort. which i don’t think means he shouldn’t be critiqued at all, lmao, There Are Many Problems With His Character Actions Behaviors And Approach, but i have to respect it, because nobody else is there doing it, and even his slimy, corrupt, bribe-laden, back alley dealing way of doing it is better than nobody doing anything at all other than sitting around jacking off over a copy of Das Kapital because no possible action is morally or ideologically pure enough to take.
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marble-writes · 1 year
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Omg I was scrolling through your blog and I saw your La Squadra twitch streamer Headcanons! 😂 Do you have headcanons for if Bloodborne characters did that too?
OH GOD BLOODBORNE TWITCH STREAMERS
Maria
Insists on only playing Cooking Mama and games otherwise considered for 5 year olds
Like she's very good at video games, one time she walked in on Brador raging at Malenia, Blade of Miquella and she was like, "Hand me the controller" and beat her first try.
Her chat has been screaming at her to play other games like the god she is, but she will not heed to their cries. They will suffer watching her terrible attempts at Wii Play with Adeline (but it's very wholesome so who cares jfdlhlasdkh)
But yea she only plays games she sucks at because she wants to get better at them. Somehow bad at Mario 3D World but can do a hitless run in Hollow Knight. like HOW
Simon
Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium. 
Loves lore, dialogue, exploration-focused games
Has this whiteboard in the back where he keeps track of everything that’s happening in the game’s plot so far asdfghjkhgf he also updates everyone on what happened at the start of every stream
Also thoroughly enjoys dungeon crawlers and roguelikes 
And games where he gets to sneak around and be an assassin, yes he loves Assassin’s Creed and Dishonored. 
Games with some focus on survival he loves very much, like Fallout. 
He’s clearly very passionate about the games he plays and the lore, and gets way too attached to characters. 
Eileen
Very similar to Simon except she doesn’t get attached to characters. She is capable of making the coldest decisions and plays stealth games more often. 
The prime Metal Gear Solid gamer, is literally never spotted by the enemy. 
Occasionally streams TF2 with Djura as Sniper or Spy. Other people think she’s a bot but no, she’s just that good.
Everyone loves this grandma as she casually owns every fucking game she’s in. 
Brador
If it has banging rock/metal OST he’s going to play it. Guilty Gear, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Doom, Devil May Cry, etc etc. Plays a large variety but mainly action games. 
Is known for stomping and singing along to the vocal tracks, yes he is screaming to Bury the Light and no you cannot stop him 
“RULES OF NATURE AND THEY RUN WHEN THE SUN COMES UP WITH THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE (ALIIIIIIVE) FOR ALL THAT I’VE (NOOO CHOOOICE) GOTTA FOLLOW THE LAWS OF THE WIIILD”
Yes the chat is wildly typing up the lyrics and spamming pog champ too
A real hype beast when it comes to moments like that lol
Also plays Fromsoft, but no one has pointed out he looks, sounds like, and has the same name as the weird beasthide guy in the Bloodborne DLC lol
Fursuit Fridays. He streams in his fursuit on Fridays. One time he died to Pinwheel because he couldn’t see shit and it was so fucking funny, even he was laughing about it despite the humiliation.
Djura
First Person Shooter: The Gamer
No but really, he’s fucking insane at any FPS he’s given
Leans towards hero shooters or FPSs that don’t have gratuitous amounts of blood and gore, so unfortunately you won’t see him playing Doom or Ultrakill :(
Loves TF2, catch him as the Demoman, or Junkrat if he’s playing Overwatch 
If he’s playing a more realistic shooter, he’ll talk to the chat about the accuracy of the guns and fun facts about them 
Was really pissed about Battlefield 2042 and the recent CoD, has also been sobbing about not being able to play Overwatch 2 because of the wait times 
Oftentimes his dogs get into view of the camera and the chat goes WILD
Overall, a beloved uncle on Twitch and he’ll casually give wholesome and supportive life advice too 
Sometimes streams with Brador on his Fursuit Fridays and people ship them aljdhladfhldas
Micolash
Plays the coolest and most obscure indie games, mainly puzzle and strategy games, loves games like Inscryption and Don’t Starve 
When he talks about his strats and lore it’s genuinely interesting, and it’s mixed in with the weirdest commentary
Tangents: the streamer
Occasionally throws in the weird dating sim, like the classic Hatoful Boyfriend or Sucker for Love, where he openly thirsts for everyone in the most unhinged way
Yes he played Doki Doki Literature Club and yes he was traumatized 
Also plays weeb shit games lol
ALSO loves Spore 
Easily scared, even on shitty RPG Maker horror games from 2008 he’s screaming dgiufadlsh
Rom
Doesn’t stream games, rather she does ASMR and no I will not elaborate lol
Also streams whatever science projects she does, the legal ones at least ddfajhlds
Occasionally joined by Micolash during these science streams and it’s like Bill Nye on crack 
Edgar
Somehow extremely boring yet entertaining at the same time
Mainly plays Minecraft on survival mode, but it’s nothing special
HOWEVER if someone so much as asks for a simple opinion from him, he will start ranting
This is why people watch him. Not for his gaming, but for him to scream and cry about how much he hates Micolash or whatever lol
Basically he’s a lol cow at this point
Yamamura
World’s most terrifying Kirby main on Super Smash Bros. An actual professional and plays competitively; Valtr is always cheering him on. 
He’s stereotypically humble about it tho. Always bows at his opponents with a little “thank you for the good round” when he fucking DESTROYED them and everyone knows it
as kirby. fucking kirby. you’d think he’d play a xenoblade or fire emblem character but no, goddamn kirby
No items, no final smashes, no nothing either lol
Otherwise plays RPGS like the aforementioned Xenoblade, sometimes Persona too
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kdazrael · 2 years
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Disco Elysium for the fandom ask!
blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)
Harrier du Bois. I project hard onto Harry, not because I’ve ever suffered from addiction, but because I constantly feel it’s Too Late and I’ve Fucked Up Big Time, so seeing Harry claw his way out of the flaming wreckage of his life is very affirming. I think others have expressed this better, but he’s a player character who actually feels both malleable and fleshed out. You have choices (dialogue options, political alignment, coppotypes, thoughts to internalize, etc) but all of them are organic and true to him. He also feels like an antidote to the emotionless cypher player character (generic dude with stubble) of action games. He will cry! He will sing karaoke! He will have Opinions about art! He will wear the froggy hat! :3
scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)
KIMMMMMMM. What can I say about him that has not already been said? He is So Shaped, specifically like this: >8I
scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)
Oh, this is a hard one, I don’t think any DE character is underrated! I haven’t seen much about Siileng, however, and I love interacting with him. Specifically the part where you can ham-fistedly apologise for calling Samara ‘the apricot suzerainty’ and he’s like ‘Everything’s COOOL here. It's super nice of you to apologize for colonialism!’ *finger guns*. His customer service persona is unmatched.
glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)
Idiot Doom Spiral, my beloved. I’m doing my second playthrough as an ultraliberal specifically so I can interact with him more. He’s also the reason I now triple-check I have my keys before I leave my apartment, because I too would simply Give Up rather than like, call a locksmith.
poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)
Evrart Claire! I genuinely enjoy all the interactions with him and a lot of his lines make me laugh out loud, specifically ‘I’m a Harry man’ and ‘that there is the daughter of Mico the Kebab – a man who once killed a guy with a kebab.’ 10/10 would sit in the uncomfortable chair again and do his dirty work. In the same vein, I also love Joyce Messier, even though she’s basically a seafaring Margaret Thatcher. Would play a game based around her misspent youth gadding about the isolas.
horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)
Do not we all love to torment Satellite Officer Jean-Heron Vicquemare? I know a lot of people would put him in the poor little meow meow category, but personally I just think it’s fun to see him getting ever more enraged and French as the game goes on. He is the voice in my head that says ‘I cannot BELIEEEEVE this shit.’
eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)
This will be controversial but… Trant Heidelstam. Unbearable media-savvy mansplainer whose idea of a fun outing is taking his child to stare at a wall for 2 days. White guy martial arts obsessive who does not know the meaning of the word ‘downtime’. ‘Well, actually…’ get rekt, Trant!!!
Thanks for asking. <3
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lucky-draws · 2 years
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hi so i wanted to ask u for art blog recs! specifically metal gear! i've been looking for blogs like yours but none are really very active anymore sadly so if u know any and could direct me to some that would be awesome!
ohh hello!!!! ok, i can list some ppl who i like, some of them are more active than others bc yeah ur right it's hard to find lots of super active metal gear blogs sadly...in my case i just happen to have too much time on my hands right now xD
i guess i won't like. actually tag them bc i don't rly know most of them to talk to jggjjg so i feel shy doing that but I'll just list some urls, some of these will probably be people you've already seen tbh jgjg problems of a smallish fandom
- bigmonsteras is someone whose art i love, they do a lot of peace walker stuff that's rly good! - daydreamycrustacean posts quite a bit of mg stuff and i rly like their art too, they've done some great comics. - 730chocolate has a really unique style, so i like their stuff a lot, altho they're not super active. - pyersiki is also someone i rly like, they draw a lot of kaz content lol which is great. - sgushyonka has some rly good mg stuff, they did some cool pieces as well as funny stuff. - someone who is pretty active is the esteemed ba7land ...they draw a lot of uh. bara stuff like Very Big Tits big boss but i mean good for them. they do a range of stuff actually some cute snake eater content tbh. - pe4cewalker is doing some rly nice art of, uh, surprise surprise, peace walker related stuff, some very good kaz content. - kokirby has a cool style and did some great ocelots although i don't know how active they are metal gear wise. - berserkbrandee seems to be fairly active, they do some cute otasune stuff. - littlenim does some lovely art, cool style and does mgs3/pw as well as otasune era stuff. - jxthics has some great stuff although they're not as active now mg wise i think, but i like them a lot. - crybabimeiri has done some really lovely pieces but not as active mg wise at the moment either. - groznisad has a really fun art style, they posted recently so i hope they're somewhat active. - pejuad has some very cool stuff, i love their solid snake pieces, v interesting style - truthful-tidings used to do mgs stuff, i think not as much now, but their ocs and other stuff looks cool lol - gncbigboss posts mgs art occasionally, they did some cool sniper wolfs i seem to remember - wingedtrumpet is a blog i just noticed the other day, they did a post with some funky looking raidens, so one to watch maybe
i guess also just keep checking the mgs tumblr tag for new posts/new artists cropping up! i know tumblr messed up the search so that if you go to the 'recent' section you get a load of stuff unrelated to mgs, but if you click on the 'tagged' section instead, then you actually will get recent posts that are almost all mgs related. (that's what i’ve found on mobile anyway lol)
im sure there are many good artists i’ve forgotten or not come across, these are the somewhat active/current mgs ones that come to mind though anyway. i’m only on tumblr for fandom stuff, not twitter, so i guess there’s good stuff on there i might be missing. (u won’t catch me posting on the light blue hellsite anytime soon tho LOL)
actually, for art in general, i keep seeing a bunch of disco elysium related fanart on my dash and all of it looks so good...i’ve never played that game or know anything abt it but everyone into that seems to be doing amazing art lmfao ...not relevant in the hunt for mgs blogs but it’s something i was just thinking the other day lol
i hope this was somewhat helpful, or alternatively if u already knew most of these blogs on the list then my apologies jjgjh, anyway thanks for dropping by!
and actually, i guess if anyone else wants to rec any blogs i didn’t mention - or even to plug ur own blog lol, nothing wrong with that - then feel free to drop an ask i guess and i’ll answer that here too!!
(also feel free to take a shot every time i used the words “cool” “stuff” and “lol” in this post jjjhhhghg)
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autumnblogs · 3 years
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Day 4: You eat a weird bug and don’t even care.
Starting later than usual today because I’ve been absolutely swamped with work. Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.
https://homestuck.com/story/644
I’ve never really gotten why John falls asleep here. Seems an odd place to fall asleep, especially with the adrenaline rush that must have been. Maybe he’s passing out from exactly that? Alternatively, maybe Vriska is putting him to sleep.
 I also forgot that John Sleeps/Skaian Magicant is split between two flashes.
https://homestuck.com/story/651
Ah here we go. John has what are, if Jade is to be believed, lousy dreams. He dreams of his Dad, of clowns, of baked goods, of Fruit Gushers, of his own symbol, the weird knock-off slimer, and Harry Anderson, before finally Jade appears.
I am not a psychologist or therapist. I am not even anything more than an amateur literary critic. But let me give you my take on that. It’s clear that John is dreaming about all kinds of things that are giving him anxiety here, if Jade’s assessment about his dreams being lousy is true.
Harry Anderson is, as he’ll say later, kind of a weird mutual father figure for him and his Dad, and as a stage magician and comedian, he represents John’s aspirations.
John wants to grow up to be a great stage magician and comedian, and if there’s anything we’ve seen about the Heir of Breath so far, it’s how extremely self-critical he is of his abilities - he’s screwed up every disguise and magic trick he’s tried so far. 
The other things are pretty self-explanatory - he’s anxious about his relationship with his Dad, he’s anxious about his Dad’s identity, he’s anxious about his own identity - with the exception of the gushers. Are gushers just symbolizing Sburb for John? Does he have a premonition that the gushers are tainted by the hand of his archnemesis, Betty Crocker? Maybe that one’s just silly.
Maybe they’re all just silly!
https://homestuck.com/story/652
I promise I will have more to say about Jade’s conversations once she is actually introduced, but until then, she is too enigmatic for me to talk about :^)
I will say, if the fact that John is stressing out about everything in his life and just not vocalizing his anxiety, it’s probable that he thinks Jade is just as mysterious as his pals think she is, and is just not talking about it.
I think John, like Jake, is way more intelligent than he lets on, and probably just keeps a lot of things on a simmer, thinking about them without necessarily opening up about them. He talks a lot about surface level stuff for sure, but he seems a lot more hesitant to talk about emotions, theories, that sort of thing. It actually reminds me a lot of how Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium, far from his highly imaginative partner the player character, writes his thoughts down in a notebook to keep track of his through processes, hunches, case details, etc, whereas the Detective organizes everything in an interactive Thought Cabinet that serves as one half of the game’s Inventory and Progression System.
For example, John’s ability to describe and his ability to theorize is on full display in the FAQs that he writes, but when he talks, he’s often just as disorganized as he is everywhere else. Maybe John needs to take up journalling.
Huh. I wonder if Kim is a Prospit Dreamer and the Detective is a Derse Dreamer? That would make a lot of sense. Once @bladekindeyewear finishes playing Disco Elysium (which he is playing at my behest), I’ll see if he’s interested in assigning Lunar Sway, Classes and Aspects to the two of them.
https://homestuck.com/story/665
Dave Owns. The Narrative switches between character perspectives often right before there’s a major climax so that lots of characters can all have climactic encounters in sync with one another.
Eye imagery is on full display here as Dave ascends to the highest point in the building. The Sun over Dave’s house is drawn differently from other abstractions of the Sun in Homestuck, and this particular drawing of the Sun will later be juxtaposed against Terezi’s eyes as Alternia’s Sun burns them out.
The Sun as the Symbol of Light is also juxtaposed with Rose’s eyes later when she uses her seer powers, strengthening the connection between the Sun and Eyes. Near the very beginning of the comic, Rose compares the Sun moving on from the east coast to the west as him casting his lurid gaze on younger parts of the world, or the country. I’m not recalling the exact phrasing at this time.
Lil Cal’s creepy eyes are also highlighted by the Camera here. Through the vehicle of Lil Cal, Lord English is watching and quietly giving approval to all of this.
I choose to interpret the camera’s focus in this flash as giving us a glimpse into what Dave is paying attention to. And boy does Dave notice all of these eyes on him. Between seeing the sun as a malevolent eye watching him, to Lil Cal’s glassy gaze, to the Cameras bro uses to surveil him 24/7, Dave feels like he’s constantly being watched, and I think it’s safe to say it gives him the creeps.
https://homestuck.com/story/673
WV’s self-estimation isn’t much better than John’s.
https://homestuck.com/story/678
I wonder if we can get some insight into the strange minds of the Carapacians in the way that before he’s even finished receiving the commands, WV acts on them. WV is even more impulsive than John.
https://homestuck.com/story/684
Oh yeah, WV’s self-worth is way worse than John’s.
https://homestuck.com/story/685
Luckily almost as soon as his thoughts come, they go. He doesn’t spend too much time brooding over his self-loathing and survivor’s guilt, so good for him.
https://homestuck.com/story/688
A whole bunch of things that are symbolically related to the cast!
While WV’s can town playtime functions as foreshadowing for us, it serves as a replay of the extremely recent past for him, at least in terms of events that we know about.
https://homestuck.com/story/694
The light on Serenity’s belly looks a bit like the Sun, and therefore, an eye.
https://homestuck.com/story/699
The Blue Trees of Can Town call forward to Terezi’s forest, but I don’t think this is probably more substantial than something fun Andrew decided to call back to when he was writing the trolls.
IDK. Maybe Blue Trees = Democracy = Justice?
But Terezi’s brand of justice has nothing to do with Democracy.
https://homestuck.com/story/709
Tab, like GameBro, is an artifact of a bygone age.
https://homestuck.com/story/711
It’s a lot easier to become a citizen of Can Town than it is to become a citizen of the United States!
https://homestuck.com/story/714
I wonder who input all those commands before WV got on board? Maybe whoever was in charge of building these contraptions in the first place - a Carapacian Lab Rat in the Veil.
Always felt like the unseen actors making Sburb run behind the scenes were one of the nicest touches, they lend an air of sinister mystery even beyond the Guardians.
https://homestuck.com/story/721
I am not good at chess.
Maybe sometime, I will have my friend who is good at Chess analyze this game, and see how he feels about it.
https://homestuck.com/story/735
WV’s Self Esteem is very, very bad.
https://homestuck.com/story/752
Our first introduction to the laws of time travel in Homestuck - the past is a place that materially exists, and in only one specific configuration that can be interacted with. You can only bring things forward from the past if nobody else got to them before you. You can’t go back and undo things that somebody else (or you) has already done according to the canonical configuration of events.
https://homestuck.com/story/757
This is ridiculously cool.
Homestuck’s huge climactic story events are arguably one of the things that makes it so special as a story. I can’t think of a story that does such a good job of building up tension in multiple storylines before having them all converge.
https://homestuck.com/story/760
:D
https://homestuck.com/story/765
I wonder what the exact mechanism is by which Jade is aware of the gaming abstractions and commands to the degree that she is? Is it just her Skaian dreams? This could be a one-off gag, but it could also be an indication of a degree of clairvoyance greater than that which I feel like the visions she has as the Prospitian Moon passes through Skaia.
https://homestuck.com/story/768
Jade loves to watch things grow.
It’s a Space Thing.
https://homestuck.com/story/777
According to BladeKindEyeWear’s Inversion Theory Jade’s complicated and carefully orchestrated time loops, which she uses to connect people with possibilities, is an example of her inverting under extreme stress, acting more like a Seer of Time, her opposite, than like a Witch of Space (in much the same way that Rose acts an awful lot like a Witch of Void for much of the comic’s first half!)
I expect a real Seer of Time wouldn’t need quite so many contrivances to keep track of everything going on in the past and future. Eventually, Jade stops using her colourful reminders, which is probably an indicator that she is no longer attempting to play outside of her lane.
https://homestuck.com/story/789
Pretty much all of Jade’s interests cast her immediately as someone with a pretty strong maternal instinct, something that she shares with other heroes of Space. Jade is a caretaker. 
Her playthings are dolls so she can roleplay the part of a Mom. She grows oodles of plants, and seems to have a knack for it. She likes animals, and though the only animal in her life takes care of her, she puts in some work to take care of him too.
Her interests definitely mark her as the more classically girly of the two between her and Rose, and like her brother is preoccupied with manhood and Dadliness, Jade seems to preoccupied with Momliness - which is odd, considering that she doesn’t have a maternal figure to aspire to! (Maybe the White Queen?)
https://homestuck.com/story/790
Jade is not of course, only girly. The same way that Dad’s culturally out-of-place baking hobby marks him as transgressively feminine to John’s dismay, Jade’s scientific and artillerist hobbies are transgressively masculine.
Although it’s tempting to say that Jade loves the sciences because Grandpa raised her to, or because she’s aping him after he died, she’s clearly born to it. I think about the question of nature and nurture a lot in Homestuck.
I think on the whole, it falls pretty far to the side of Nature. Characters who share a common ancestry also share common character traits more often than not, even in the absence of shared cultural touchstones, shared geography, shared timeline. The same character only has a limited number of possible choices that they could have made, as Aranea will later say.
On the other hand, some characters turn out very different in one life than they do in another. Dirk doesn’t turn out nearly the psychopath that Bro Strider is by the time that Homestuck Proper concludes.
https://homestuck.com/story/795
Squiddles are, as everyone knows by now, a manifestation of the Dark Gods of the Furthest Ring, but I think there’s more going on with them too - they have kind of a horny energy that I can’t quite place. I’m going to come back to that. Any case, they seem to be one of the symbols that Rose and Jade share in common, although Rose subverts the colorful and cute squiddles into icons more of the extradimensional beasties that they actually represent.
Maybe I think Squiddles are a symbol of horny for the same reason that snakes are lewd to Cherubs - there’s definitely something phallic about tentacles, and definitely something intimate about the idea of becoming someone’s tangle buddy. The very first time I read Rose’s handle, I thought it read Tentacle The Rapist, which I suspect is kinda the point, and some of Andrew’s other works have variously described the process of interacting with tentacles as being molested and so on and so on.
Rose and Jade actually share a huge number of symbols in common between the two of them, which I think is great, but also sad - Rose and Jade clearly actually have quite a lot in common, and the two of them don’t really interact very much.
https://homestuck.com/story/797
I’m going to eventually decode Jade’s fascination with animals too, but for now I want to remark that it’s not just the idea of looking like an animal that excites Jade - it’s the idea of being  like an animal that excites her. The exact same little poem is later reiterated by Serenity in WV’s nightmare, as he dreams of losing control of the power of the Ring of Orbs Fourfold and killing everyone he loves. What would be a nightmare for WV though is a fantasy for Jade. The idea of being out of control is thrilling for her.
Dave is also a furry.
https://homestuck.com/story/798
The trappings of a proper gentleman. Monocle. Pipe. Top Hat. Little White Gloves. A proper gentleman without these is a piss poor excuse for a proper gentleman indeed.
SYMBOLS.
https://homestuck.com/story/800
Another spot where Jade is able to interface directly with the audience, in some form or another.
https://homestuck.com/story/802
Jade may have fantasies of transforming into something more animalistic, but she’s not willing to indulge them.
https://homestuck.com/story/803
Jade completely rejects the symbols of witchcraft that Rose so readily embraces.
https://homestuck.com/story/804
Jade contemplates engaging in some Vriskaesque behavior. Is it just because Vriska is watching her? Maybe she’s picking up some Vriska-esque vibes through the feed as the Thief of Light practices her mind control. 
https://homestuck.com/story/808
I think it’s safe to say one of two things is going on here.
Jade is either literally cognizant of the audience and interacting with them, putting her on a layer of the story that is quite a lot closer to us than you would expect of someone as innocuous as Jade (maybe the immediate presence of the Fourth Wall upstairs could facilitate that relationship?)
Or Jade has an active imagination, is extremely lonely, and likes to interact with her imaginary audience as a way of projecting a friendly and hospitable demeanor onto the world around her in sort of the exact opposite way that Rose imagines the worst of everything and everyone?
Or, as it often is in Homestuck, it could be both motherfuckin’ things.
https://homestuck.com/story/829
Did I mention Dave is a furry? Dave is totally a furry.
If we read Squiddles as a symbol of intimate contact with living things, Jade’s computer having Squiddles front and center is appropriate - it’s her point of contact to all the people in her life.
Tune in on the morrow to watch Dave’s Bro beat the shit out of him.
Until then, this is Cam signing off, alive and not alone.
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bexical · 3 years
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April ‘21
Okay, monthly updates. I can do this.
I’m doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month! I mentioned last time that I wanted to do a rewite of Soul, and I decided to try to focus on that this month. I hear that finishing projects (as opposed to 1: getting distracted by side projects and 2: forever striving for ‘perfect’ as opposed to actually 'completed’) is an important skill to practice and develop, and I figured this was a good way to do so.
Of course, a little more than a week in and I don’t think I’m doing quite what I set out to do. I did work on it for a bit and make some good progress, but then I got distracted and returned to Fireflower for a bit (I’ve got a fun fight scene I’m working on - first fight scene I’ve actually sat down and written since I started taking MMA classes. The emotions in one particular scene in Raya and the Last Dragon have been perfect inspiration also). Then I picked up a draft of a poem I’d started some time ago - and while working on a stanza for that, I conceived a whole new poem. So much for practicing focus and finishing projects :P
That’s not entirely true though. I did actually finish that second poem (or a…sixish-th draft of it?) - if I’m feeling courageous, I’ll post that soon.
What else is new…
I’ve discovered how much I love writing on pen and paper, especially outside in the sunlight. It’s tricky - my body does a shit job at staying warm when I’m not moving so I get very cold sitting there, and when I’m out I don’t have wifi to stream music beyond what I’ve downloaded onto my phone - but it really is such a nice feeling. It’s not just that I’m more free of distraction (though that certainly helps) - there’s also the way scribbling the words feels that is… different, somehow from typing. (I don’t know the word to describe the difference. For some reason, my brain has descended upon the word 'vistruously’, which is of course not a real word. the word was VISCERALLY. figured it out the next day =P)
I’ve also been playing Disco Elysium - i.e. I played it with a friend, then decided to purchase it myself and play through it again in French to practice the language. It’s actually really great for practicing a language, since you can switch the text between two languages instantly, allowing you to compare the text easily. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t have Japanese, which I’d also love to practice with Disco Elysium. Alas.) One fun aspect is how the characters aren’t the most clean-mouthed, which means I get to see how people curse in French: I’ve learned the equivalent of 'fuck’, which is 'putain’ (transliterates to 'whore’) and sadly does not seem to partake in expletive infixation to the same extent as 'fuck’, if at all. The favorite French thing I’ve learned though is probably the translation of “Have you found anyone to be sweet to?”, which is “Avez-vous trouvé chaussure à votre pied?”, which in turn transliterates to “Have you found a shoe for your foot?”
Beyond the use it provides in language learning, I of course have thoughts about the game that I’ll hopefully write up and post here soon. One thought in particular is that it’s a really interesting way to tell a story. To briefly describe the game: it’s an RPG, playing a specific character (as opposed to a fairly generic blank slate). Your skills are customizable but are still personalized to the character: the best example is probably Inland Empire, a skill that reveals the inner workings of the character’s imaginations and fears. I really like how the skills interact with each other: while they are all a part of you, they’re separate parts of you and they argue with each other fairly often. Obviously, since they disagree on occasion, they can also be wrong on occasion: a fun lesson the game reminds you of is that succeeding a skill check does not always mean success in a more conventional sense.
So, in a return to the first topic of this post: I’ve thoroughly failed at not getting distracted with new projects by deciding I’d like to write my own game with similar concepts. Tentatively titled Dreamscape Fantasia (so while the game design may be a ripoff of DiscoE, the name is clearly a ripoff of Planescape Torment, a D&D game considered to be the spiritual predecessor to DiscoE =P), the game would focus on the exploration of the main character. DiscoE does of course explore the main character (that’s the whole point of personalizing the skill system to this character, after all), but DreamscapeF would do so more explicitly: as the title suggests, it would take place in the dreams of the main character, with events being far more abstract and with little to no extrinsic storyline.
I’ll likely develop it a bit then leave it alone for a while - I want to get the basics down while the idea’s fresh with inspiration from DiscoE, but then I want to focus on existing projects (hi Fireflower, I haven’t forgotten you). There’s also the question of feasibility… I’d ideally want to hire people for the art/music to fully deliver on the concept, which is of course technically doable - it just (significantly) ups the difficulty on a number of levels.
Nevertheless, it’s a fun project I’ve got going in my head. And that’s all for now - pce out til next time!
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roaringgirl · 3 years
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Books read in January
I am keeping this as a little record for myself, as I already keep a list (my best new year’s resolution - begun Jan 2018) but don’t record my thoughts
General thoughts on this - I read a lot this month but it played into my worst tendencies to read very very fast and not reflect, something I’m particularly prone too with modern fiction. I just, so to speak, swallow it without thinking. First 5 or so entries apart, I did quite well in my usually miserably failed attempt to have my reading be at least half books by women.
1. John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974): I liked this a lot! I sort of lost track of the Cold War and shall we say ethics-concerned parts of it and ended up reading a fair bit of it as an English comedy of manners - but I absolutely love all the bizarre rules about what is in bad taste (are these real? Did le Carré make them up?).
2. John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963): I liked this a lot less. It seemed at the same time wilfully opaque and entirely predictable. Have been thinking a lot about genre fiction - I love westerns and noir, so wonder if for me British genre fiction doesn’t quite scratch the same itch.
3. David Lodge - Ginger You’re Barmy (1962): This was fine. I don’t have much to say about it - I was interested in reading about National Service and a bit bogged down in a history of it so read a novel. As with most comic novels, it was perfectly readable but not very funny.
4. Dan Simmons - Song of Kali (1985): His first novel. This is quite enjoyable just for the amount of Grand Guignol gore, and also because I like to imagine it caused the Calcutta tourist board some consternation. Wildly structurally flawed, however. Best/worst quote: ‘Hearing Amrita speak was like being stroked by a firm but well-oiled palm.’ Continues in that vein.
5. Richard Vinen - National Service: A Generation in Uniform (2014): If you are interested in National Service, this is a good overview! If not, not.
6. Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall (2018): I absolutely loved this. About a camping trip trying to recreate Iron Age Britain. Just, very upsetting but so so good - a horror story where the horror is male violence and abuse within the (un)natural family unit.
7. Kate Grenville - A Room Made of Leaves (2020): Excellent idea, but not amazing execution - the style is kind of bland in that ‘ironed out in MFA workshops’ way (I have no idea if she did an MFA but that’s what it felt like). Rewriting the story of early Australian colonisation through the POV of John Macarthur’s wife Elizabeth.
8. Ruth Goodman - How to Be a Victorian (2013): I mostly read this for Terror fic reasons, if I’m honest. I skimmed a lot of it but she has a charming authorial voice and I really like that she covers the beginning of the period, not just post-1870.
9. Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story (2010): I read this on a recommendation from Ms Poose after I asked for good fiction mostly concerned with the internet, and I thought it was excellent - it’s very exaggerated/non-realistic and that heightening of incident and affect works so well.
10. Brenda Wineapple - The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019): What a great book. I had to keep putting it down because reading about Reconstruction always makes me so sad and frustrated with what might have been - the lost dream of a better world.
11. Halle Butler - The New Me (2019): Reading this while single, starting antidepressants and stuck in an office job that bores me to death but is too stable/undemanding to complain about maybe wasn’t a great decision, for me, emotionally.
12. Halle Butler - Jillian (2015): Ditto.
13. Ottessa Moshfegh - Death in Her Hands (2020): Very disappointed by this. I don’t really like meta-fiction unless it’s really something special and this wasn’t. Also, I’m stupid and really bad at reading, like, postmodern allegorical fiction I just never get it.
14. Andrea Lawlor  - Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017): This was really really hot! I will admit I don’t think the reflections on gender, homophobia, AIDS etc are very deep or as revealing as some reviews made out, but I also don’t think they’re supposed to be? It’s a lot of fun and all of the characters in it are so precisely, fondly but meanly sketched.
15. Catherine Lacey - The Answers (2017): This was fine! Readable, enjoyable, but honestly it has not stuck with me. There are only so many sad girl dystopias you can read and I think I overdid it with them this month.
16. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (2010, reread): Was supposed to read the first 55 pages of this for my two-person book club, but I completely lack self-restraint so reread the whole thing in four days. Like, I love it I don’t really know what else to say. I was posing for years that ‘Oh, Mantel’s earlier novels are better, they’re such an interesting development of Muriel Spark and the problem of evil and farce’ blah blah blah but nope, this is great.
17. Oisin Fagan - Hostages (2016): Book of short stories that I disliked intensely, which disappointed me because I tore through Nobber in horrified fascination (his novel set in Ireland during the Black Death - which I really cannot recommend enough. It’s so intensely horrible but, like Mantel although in a completely different style/method, he has the trick of not taking the past on modern terms). A lot of this is sci-fi dystopia short stories which just aren’t... very good or well-sustained. BUT I did appreciate it because it is absolutely the opposite of pleasant, competently-written but forgettable MFA fiction.
18. Muriel Spark - Loitering with Intent (1981): Probably my least favourite Spark so far, but still good. I think the Ealing Comedy-esque elements of her style are most evident and most dated here. It just doesn’t have the same sentence-by-sentence sting as most of her work, and again I don’t like meta-fiction.
19. Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies (2012, reread): Having (re)read all of these in about 3 months, I think this is probably my favourite of the three. I just love the way a whole world, whole centuries and centuries of history and society spiral out from every paragraph. And just stylistically, how perfect - every sentence is a cracker. I’m just perpetually in awe of Mantel as a prose stylist (although I dislike that everyone seems to write in the present tense now and blame her for it).
20. Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means (1963, reread): (TW weight talk etc ) As always, Hilary Mantel sets me off on a Muriel Spark spree. I’ve read this too many times to say much about it other than that the denouement always makes me go... my hips definitely wouldn’t fit through that window. Maybe I should lose weight in case I have to crawl out of a bathroom window due to a fire caused by an unexploded bomb from WW2???? Which is a wild throwback to my mentality as a 16 year old.
21. China Mieville - Perdido Street Station (2000, reread): What a lot of fun. I know we don’t do steampunk anymore BUT I do like that he got in the whole economic and justice system of the early British Industrial Revolution and not just like steam engines. God, maybe I should read more sci-fi. Maybe I should reread the rest of this trilogy but that’s like 2000 pages. Maybe I should reread the City and the City because at least that’s short and ties exactly into my Disco Elysium obsession (the mod I downloaded to unlock all dialogue keeps breaking the game though. Is there a script online???)
22. Stephen King - Carrie (1974): I have a confession to make: I was supposed to teach this to one of my tutees and then just never read it, but to be honest we’re still doing basic reading comprehension anyway. That sounds mean but she’s very sweet and I love teaching her because she gets perceptibly less intimidated/critical of herself every lesson. ANYWAY I read half of this in the bath having just finished my period, which I think was perfect. It’s fun! Stephen King is fun! I don’t have anything deeper to say.
23. Hilary Mantel - Every Day is Mother’s Day (1985): You can def tell this is a first novel because it doesn’t quite crackle with the same demonic energy as like, An Experiment in Love or Beyond Black, but all the recurring themes are there. If it were by anyone else I’d be like good novel! But it’s not as good as her other novels.
24. Dominique Fortier - On the Proper Usage of Stars (2010): This was... perfectly competent. Kind of dull? It made me think of what I appreciate about Dan Simmons which is how viscerally unpleasant he makes being in the Navy seem generally, and man-hauling with scurvy specifically. This had the same problem with some other FE fiction which is that they’re mostly not willing to go wild and invent enough so the whole thing is kind of diffuse and under-characterised. Although I hated the invented plucky Victorian orphan who’s great at magnetism and taxonomy and read all ONE THOUSAND BOOKS or whatever on the ships before they got thawed out at Beechey (and then the plotline just went nowhere because they immediately all died???) I had to skim all his bits in irritation. I liked the books more than this makes it sound I was just like Mr Tuesday I hope you fall down a crevasse sooner rather than later.
25. Muriel Spark - The Abbess of Crewe (1974): Transposing Watergate to an English convent is quite funny, although it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that’s what she was doing even though I lit read a book covering Watergate in detail in December. Muriel Spark is just so, so stylish I’m always consumed with envy. I think a lot of her books don’t quite hang together as books but sentence by sentence... they’re exquisite and incomparable.
Overall thoughts: This month was very indulgent since I basically just inhaled a lot of not challenging fiction. I need to enjoy myself less, so next month we’re finishing a biography of Napoleon, reading the Woman in White and finishing the Lesser Bohemians which currently I’m struggling with since it’s like nearly as impenetrable Joyce c. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but, so far... well I hesitate to say bad since I think once I get into I’ll be into it but. Bad.
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Top 10 Games of 2019
This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:
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-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 
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-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.
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-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.
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-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.
Alright, he’s the actual list:
10. Amid Evil
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The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.
9. Ape Out
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If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.
8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
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I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.
7. Resident Evil 2
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It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.
6. Judgment
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No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.
5. Control
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Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.
4. Anodyne 2
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I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 
3. Eliza
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Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.
There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.
Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.
2. Death Stranding
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For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.
The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.
Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.
1. Outer Wilds
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The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 
What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.
The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.
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videogametim · 4 years
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My Top 10 Games of 2019
It was pretty hard to narrow down the list this year. 2019 was a lot stronger for video games than 2018 and I feel a LOT more confidant about my picks and GOTY choice. In addition, there were also a lot of indie games not mentioned here that I think I will highlight in another post a bit later. For now, here’s the Top 10.
10. Sayonara Wild Hearts (Simogo)
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Sayonara Wild Hearts is something special. Although clocking in rather short at just under an hour long, I would best describe the game as an Album Video Game. Each of the game’s 23 or so levels has its own song. The actual gameplay consists of mostly on-rails segments where you have basic movement and avoid obstacles and collect pickups to boost your score, but every level has a unique take on that concept with major climax levels being full tracks with vocals. It’s incredibly stylistic and tells a heartwarming story about dealing with heartbreak. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys musical games.
9. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Intelligent Systems)
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first game in the series that managed to grab me. It’s a very competent tactical RPG with one of my favourite casts of characters this year (especially the Black Eagles house). I was consistently impressed the most with just the sheer amount of content and detail that went into it. An unnecessarily large amount of the dialogue is voiced, the second half of each of the three selectable house’s routes are totally unique, and each route takes around 60 hours to complete. I really never thought a Fire Emblem game would be my new most played game on the Switch by a mile but here we are. 
8. AI: The Somnium Files (Spike Chunsoft)
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Kotaro Uchikoshi’s (creator of the Zero Escape trilogy) latest work might be his finest. AI: The Somnium Files is the game on the list this year with the most heart put into it. Consistently funny and over-the-top, a wonderful cast, and a really well executed sci-fi murder mystery. It makes me hope that Uchikoshi continues to make the kinds of games he wants to make, because you can definitely tell he had the most fun making this one.
7. Resident Evil 2 (Capcom)
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Resident Evil 2 is the new gold standard for game remakes. I could go on and on praising it for how good it feels to play, the sound design, and the painstaking detail of recreating the original game from the ground up to be a third-person shooter. Quality of Life changes like the map marking items and telling you when a room is cleared and telling you when it’s okay to throw away key items are such fantastic additions. It gives me really high hopes for the RE3 Remake next year. Capcom’s hotstreak continues.
6. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (From Software)
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Sekiro rightfully earns its spot as my second favourite FromSoft game. The Souls formula is still there, but the gameplay is fairly different now. Taking Bloodborne’s aggressiveness encouragement another step forward, Sekiro rewards not giving the enemies a chance to breathe more than ever. Boss battles are a tug-of-war of trying to break each other’s posture and perfect blocking to mitigate it. The dodge button pushes you forward by default and you often hope to have your attack blocked more than a it be a direct hit. Some of my favourite FromSoft bosses reside in this game with the final boss perhaps being my favourite overall. Level design is also at its best with the game finally giving you a greater range of movement and verticality with jumping and grappling. There’s even decent stealth mechanics. Sekiro was a really pleasant surprise and I hope they continue The Wolf’s story.
5. Judgement (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio)
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Judgement is a Yakuza game in all but name, and RGG Studio’s first one set in Kamurocho without Kiryu as the main character. After giving up being an attorney, Takayuki Yagami becomes a freelance detective and investigates a series of murders in the city with the help of his former law office and ex-Tojo clan friend Masaharu Kaito. Substories are framed as side cases that Yagami can take on to earn some extra money, and new mini-games like drone racing and the Paradise VR board game are incredible additions. Anyone who is a fan of the Yakuza series should really check this out, and newcomers can jump right in without prior knowledge. 
4. Disco Elysium (ZA/UM)
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Disco Elysium has some of the best writing I have ever seen in a video game. As an amnesiac detective, you explore the rundown post-wartime district of Martinnaise trying to find who was behind the lynching of a mercenary before the situation gets out of control. What sets Disco Elysium apart from other RPGs in terms of gameplay is its character builds. As there is no combat, the 24 skills that you can put points into when you level up are all social skills. The higher you have various skills leveled, the more you will hear advice from them during conversation trees. A high Authority level will constantly remind you to tell people you are The Law, where a high level in Inland Empire will let you talk to inanimate objects to gain new perspectives. I also feel I have to give a nod to your partner throughout the game, Kim Kitsuragi. I’d rather not give anything away but they could not have written a better character to support you throughout your journey. I’ll likely be thinking about this game for a very long time.
3. Control (Remedy Entertainment)
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I think Control flew under a lot of people’s radars until the publicity from the overwhelming number of Game Awards nominations. Control is a game for people who like SCP, psychokinesis powers, cool architecture, and a bit of Alan Wake. It wears its inspirations very blatantly on its sleeve and wraps a very cool story and even better side quests around them. It’s very stylish and has phenomenal lighting. Perhaps this is my Remedy bias but I really really adored this game and featured the coolest moment of the year for me. Please check it out if you get the opportunity.
2. Kingdom Hearts III (Square Enix)
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Kingdom Hearts III has been a long time coming and what I think it nails best are the size and scale of the worlds. Olympus is the best its ever been with how much of the area outside the Colosseum you get to explore. The Caribbean is more expansive with boat combat that’s better than it has any right to be. Monstropolis has a great original story with some incredible tie-ins to the Kingdom Hearts plot. There’s a ton of incredible fanservice moments too for everyone waiting to see their favourite characters again. I still think a lot of it is really hype albeit cheesy, and it finally puts to rest an arc that has been going since the very first game. Kingdom Hearts isn’t over, but KHIII wraps a lot of things up in as satisfying of a way as they could for a story so expansive and often times convoluted. It’s very rare when a game that has been anticipated for so long not only doesn’t fumble it, but delivers on what I had hoped for, so I’m really glad it got to finally release this year.
1. Devil May Cry 5 (Capcom)
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Speaking of games that I’ve been waiting a very long time for, DMC IS BACK! Every moment of DMC5 is a treat. Dante and Nero are at their most fun to play in this game, and V is a very cool addition both story-wise and gameplay-wise.This is the game from this year that I’ve kept going back to the most whether it’s for getting good at harder difficulties, or playing through bloody palace until floor 70 and give up ,or practicing with different weapons. It makes me happy to know that Platinum haven’t just been relegated to being the character action studio and that Hideaki Itsuno’s still got it. There’s no question that this is my Game of the Year and anyone who loves action games but hasn’t ever jumped into this series really needs to address that because DMC5 alone is worth it. 
That’s all for my GOTY 2019 Top 10. If you’ve read this far, thanks for doing so. I really enjoy writing these and there’s a lot to look forward to in video games next March year, so please join me again next time when we can do this all over again!
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twiststreet · 4 years
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I'm curious: a bit ago you referred to Disco Elysium as being a "Child-of-Kentucky-Route-Zero game." I think I get what you mean, but could you elaborate on that a bit?
Well, Kentucky Route Zero kind of looms large in my head, for a lot of reasons (moreso than something like Gone Home which may have been equally influential but which I just didn’t really like much):
1) It was an adventure game that really abandoned the puzzles. I’m not gamer enough to tell you the historical antecedents for that-- I was aware of things like Gravity Bone or Jason Rohrer’s Passage before it, the Stanley Parable, that game where you’re an old person walking around a cemetary, etc.  I had been kind of lay-person aware of indie games (but not like Japanese games like you sometimes post where it’s ... a kid having magical summer or whatever, Boku no Natsuyasumi).  But it was the first one in that sort of graphical adventure space that really clicked in my head, where a lot of ideas I think finally came together and got amplified or put together into a bigger whole, a bigger story that those ideas felt organic to...
Unlike puzzle-era graphical adventures, KR0 was just really confident about the story it’s telling being enough.  It gives you a level of control but it doesn’t come to a dead halt if you don’t know what to do with that control.  It’s sort just happy to let you walk around in its narrative space, but it’s not trying to “create the Holodeck.”  Even if you didn’t read about the behind-the-scenes, you can tell the creators are more interested in theater than in simulation, which I think the older generation of game designers were more into-- there’s a classic designer who talks about his dream game being one where you perfectly simulate a single neighborhood corner, whereas I don’t see that as being a goal for the current generation the same way.  (Though I thought of that designer a lot too playing Elysium because so much is set in a small place of people colliding with one another, but in a more D&D way...).  
Disco Elysium skews back the other way more in a way-- I think the creators talk about it having more of a classic D&D influence in terms of player choice. But they’re emphasizing choice instead of puzzles, which I think is different.  There’s ways of failing but you’re not going to just come to a complete halt the same way with Elysium, I don’t think.  It’s going to tell a story to you rather ... kneel at some altar of “gameplay” that doesn’t really make a ton of sense.  Because those puzzle games have their time and place, but I don’t think they were even as fun to play as KR0 has been, even when your character’s like... slow and limping... KR0 just sort of gets that the game tools are there to create an emotion in the player rather than to be some “challenge” to be surmounted or conflict defeated. 
But yeah: how much interactivity is “enough”?  Like, KR0 I think asks that questions in a more interesting way than other people did.  
2)  But yeah, KR0′s de-emphasis of the player-- it really from the get-go was unapologetic about de-centering the player.  Who you even play as changes moment to moment sometimes (which is kind of a move I’m always into, e.g. MGS-2), but also on a more molecular level... You’re not there to “save Kentucky.”  You have a minimal mission in the game, making some deliveries, but it’s hardly a mission game.  That world exists before you, and the stories that have happened there have already happened, and you’re just sort of there to explore that narrative and react to it, rather than try to control it.
Which I think is just healthier in ways, too-- would a game environment that deemphasized “heroic fantasy” ideas would produce the same kind of “They targeted gamers... gamers!” mania? There’s a pretty great game designer (I’ve read all this stuff in the last few years-- it’s horrible) Chris Avellone, who did a lot of Fallout New Vegas and stuff, who talks about how with people playing traditional role-playing games, they don’t care about their decisions unless those decisions are couched in “How will this effect your character” and “will it make your character more powerful?”  (I forget his exact phrasing so I might be mis-remembering).  Whereas KR0′s powered just by empathy and curiosity and metaphor.  
(New Vegas is an interesting comparison point as Elysium where New Vegas has the same “trying to be D&D quality” of emphasizing choice but the combat is more traditional games and... while the very best parts of New Vegas, which is to say the casino for foodies, resemble Elysium, it’s mostly... It defines the role-playing completely differently.  KR0, there’s this variety of choices that are about deciding things that may not matter but that you want to decide, maybe deciding who people are and how they feel and who they were, rather than just what they do.  And I get the feeling that’s a big part of paper-pen role playing, whereas New Vegas and those games try to create a “blank slate” which you can then define by your actions and see that as being the appeal of RPG’s, the ... character definition through action functions.  Elysium, it’s about really deeply exploring this single character and deciding who you want your character to be, down to deciding whether they think of themselves as being a HoboCop or a superstar cop...)
(I don’t know-- I’m rambling and within parentheses at that, but I think the difference in those approaches can be understated... I think that’s 90% of the ballgame, but it’s like... You know, it’s hard to talk about without getting into “power fantasies” and heroic fiction and the sometimes-troubling relationship between those, which KR0 really completely eschews...)(Though again, see Metal Gear Solid 2, for the alternate move which is just ... taunting and belittling the player for wanting a power fantasy, which I kind of admire more but...)(I’m really loving Death Stranding so far, but I think that sort of willingness to be just openly hostile to his audience is a huge part of what I admire with Kojima-- he made an open world game where you *fall over a lot*).
3) Plus, and I don’t know how much this is just me overstating it, but:  KR0 has that thing comics people used to talk about, to no effect, of being a “container” for other art. (In comics, they just meant they wanted pie charts about how Cyclops is into cuckoldry...?  But perhaps predictably).   My memories of games back then aren’t reliable but... It has art direction.  It has visual storytelling.  It approaches the 2d plane of the viewing screen as a proscenium so then you have those moments of that coming apart in the first game and I found that pretty thrilling.  I just don’t remember the level of that being as high before KR0-- certainly the abandonment of AAA photorealistic values in the indie space was inevitable, but it doesn’t just do, you know, that cute ultraflat “lowpoly” stuff-- it has a look to it.  Style!  Like, Elysium gets compared to Planescape Torment a lot, which I never played, but Elysium just looks really gorgeous by comparison... Just designed.  
But it’s to a thematic effect that I think the games after it have really adopted of ... contemplating people within an environment, and that relationship.  Games are really amazing at creating environments to explore-- it’s like the easiest thing to do in a game engine-- you can download Unity and in about 5 minutes create a whole little world to walk around in with mountains and trees and clouds and everything.  (Doing anything else is a little tricky, it turns out but).  Kr0 kind of shifted the focus onto the environment more and thinking about how that environment was shaped by and in turn shapes the people within it.  
This invariably turns out to be a “political” consideration, so KR0 and Elysium and Night in the Woods all have a certain amount of political content.  (I think KR0 most successfully because I don’t think any game after it has their sense of the poetic, but.  Or KR0′s not interested in explicit political messaging so much as ... the humanity of the situation, but).  And I think that’s really cool, personally, as it opens up a space to think about what games are for... that I don’t think was a part of the conversation otherwise.  
I mean, by comparison, the New Vegas folks when they were promoting their new thing Outer Worlds (which I’m going to play!  I like those guys!)... they’re out there talking about how their game is “political” but not “politically charged.”  What the hell does that even mean?  Whereas Night in the Woods, say, I mean that one’s to the left of me.  Night in the Woods is pretty much a game about how cats should join a union... I don’t want cats unionize!  Imagine the amount of yarn the NLRB will have to buy...  (This is where I think Oxenfree falls down where... Oxenfree had a lot of KR0′s surface qualities, but didn’t really get at anything more, I don’t know, “thematically mult-valent” or whatever, I don’t think... Oxenfree was more a surface experience for me...)
I don’t know.  There’s probably more to talk about.  (Other people are bigger fans of those side-games than I am-- I appreciate those but haven’t delved as deep into those as other folks).  Or there are things KR0′s doing that I don’t think the games after it have caught up with yet-- KR0 has a meta level to it, where it’s in conversation with adventure game history, in ways I might not fully appreciate, and if that’s true of Elysium, say, I don’t see that. For me, I think another thing about all those games though is they have a sense of the tragic, but then don’t wallow in that space.  KR0 has some sad shit going on it, ruined lives, broken places, but I think if the only way KR0 was influential was just the Junebug scene, and her song in it, it’d still be the game of the decade, you know?   Elysium and Night in the Woods both have that same mentality of ... It’s not about the misery, it’s how people find meaning past that point.  Which isn’t to say there’s not a quality sometimes to contemplating the misery and really acknowledging the terror and anxiety of that. I think you can do interesting work that isn’t “hopeful”, if that’s not your honest orientation. But what I think is interesting is how KR0 and its progeny carve out this space for sadness and anxiety and a feeling of the spookiness of a post-collapse space that isn’t just a “horror” game, that isn’t just jump-scares or whatever (though I remember getting pretty anxious playing some KR0 bits, even knowing it’s not a horror game, e.g. that contract scene)... I think that’s really interesting, that it’s not as easily categorized as that... 
Sorry to ramble.
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atekasey · 4 years
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My Top 5 Games of 2019
As I like to do every year, here’s some collected ramblings about my opinions of some games I played and really liked this year. While there were a lot more than 5 games that I enjoyed this year, I only had strong opinions about these 5. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on my top 5 games of the year of our lord 2019.
DISCO ELYSIUM
Full disclosure: I have not finished Disco Elysium; I am about three quarters of the way through the 3rd day. Regardless, I loved so much of what little I played that I consider it one of the best games of the year, based solely on the world-building and characterizations I’ve encountered so far.
Disco Elysium is an adventure game/RPG where the only stats you build up are personality stats and thought processes, which affects how you talk to people and interact with the environment. The main plot is about you playing as an amnesiac cop tasked with solving a murder at the centre of a labour dispute, but to be honest I couldn't really care less about the main plot. Not to say the plot is bad per se, it just didn't grab me like how the setting and individual characterizations did. The main plot was nothing more than a vehicle for me to explore and find out more about Revachol, its residents, and how all of them came to be who they are. The amazing writing that underpins every interaction is what makes the individual interactions so compelling.
When I woke up every morning (in the game world, mind you), the only thing I wanted to do is talk to people, conveniently ignoring the dialogue choices that furthered the plot until the end of the conversation. The pétanque-playing veterans who have some scathing opinions about communist theory, the paledriver who's mind is corrupted by nostalgia, the mysterious balcony smoker who I later learned was part of the homosexual underground, the Semanese race theorist who I wanted nothing more than to punch in the face if not for my low physical instrument stat, these are just some examples of the extremely varied characters you meet while you investigate some dead dude or whatever, I guess. Speaking of the paledriver, learning about the true nature of the pale from the White Pines rep was a pivotal moment for me personally, as it made the world feel both unique and existentially terrifying. All these little details and more create the rich tapestry that is Disco Elysium. Also, some dude was murdered??? Who cares about that, I need to make my sorry-cop sing depressing karaoke!
I should really get back and finish it.
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CONTROL
I remember the first time I read SCP-087 back in the day, and it introduced me up to the horrifying (and sometimes comedic) world of SCP. For those who don't know SCP (which can stand for "special containment procedures" or "secure, contain, protect", depending where you look), is a collaborative fiction wiki about fake government reports on the supernatural and paranormal. It's the bureaucratic nature of SCPs that really drew me into reading them, making it feel like I was reading real government reports.
So imagine my delighted surprise when I first played Control, I picked up the first of many report-type collectible and saw that it was written almost exactly like an SCP entry. Control is a game that asks "what if the SCP Foundation was a real branch of the US government?" and goes off the deep-end with that premise in the best possible way. The bureaucratic mundanity of the Federal Bureau of Control really shines in these reports, as you read report after report of some other-worldly phenomenon while also reading reports about the monthly book club. Beyond that, actually playing control was fun and engaging... up until the end. Jesse is a great protagonist, and the characters you meet along the way have great personality and give life to the bureau. The Oldest House is a fascinating setting to explore, with it’s brutalist look and nooks and crannies that change and spiral off in otherworldly ways. Unfortunately, for all the build-up the story was leading to, it ends on a pretty lame whimper. But the lackluster ending did not sway my overall love for Control. No one makes games like Remedy at the AAA level, and I'm happy they are making games like Control. I cannot wait for the DLC for this game to get back into it.
Also, the PC version of control does a phenomenal job at showing off how ray-tracing really is the future of lighting and graphics. The real-time reflections alone, where the scene I was watching was reflected almost perfectly on a pane of glass like an actual reflection (in real-time, no less!) was a marvel to look at. And, not since Quake 2 did coloured lighting look so pretty. Suffice to say, Control justified my RTX 2080 purchase single-handedly.
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AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES
I have what one can say a love/hate relationship with the Zero Escape series. The first entry, 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, is one of my favourite games of all time (currently ranked 3rd, if you care at all, which you probably don't, sorry to bother you), and while the cliffhanger ending of the sequel, Virtue's Last Reward, made me excited to see where the series would go, Zero Time Dilemma ultimately did not offer a satisfying conclusion. Not only did ZTD barely resolve any of the threads started in VLR, but it was a very disappointing conclusion to the entire Zero Escape series as a whole (Junpei and Akane's story just getting a tossed-off mention after you beat the game about how "they lived happily ever after" and nothing else? THEY DESERVED BETTER!). So when it was announced that the creator of the Zero Escape series, Kotaro Uchikoshi, was making a new game called AI: The Somnium Files, I was cautiously optimistic. I hoped ZTD was just a one-off and not indicative of a downward trend starting to happen, and Uchikoshi still had it in him to tell a compelling story.
Very fortunately (for me at least), AI: The Somnium Files delivered in the best possible way, meeting and thoroughly exceeding my expectations.
It took some time before the game adhered itself to me as a truly great game, unlike Zero Escape. In the Zero Escape games, given the Saw-like murder games the characters were forced to participate in, there was an sense of urgency to the story that helped propel it right from minute one. AI, on the other hand, is more procedural, which makes sense given that you're playing as Kaname Date, a cop who has a fake eye that is also an AI named AIBA (trust me, it makes sense in context), trying to solve the murder of his adopted daughter's birth mom. Not to strip the act of murder from the seriousness it deserves, but AI ends up being more lighthearted than the Zero Escape games, which only made me enjoy the game more. AI takes its time to explore it's story and characters, letting scenes breath and focus on characters instead of the mystery at hand, allowing said characters to have more development and growth. I bring this up only so I can talk about Mizuki Okiura, Date's adoptive daughter, who quickly becomes the standout character from the game. A back-talking, street-wise 12-year-old punk who forces her way into becoming Date's "partner" as he unravels an ever-growing conspiracy of politics, missing eyeballs, and twitch streamers (again, please trust me, it makes sense in context).
She also has a lead pipe she likes to beat people with.
Mizuki is the best.
She is THE BEST!
Make an entire game about her YOU COWARDS!!
...Anyways, structurally, AI plays similarly to Zero Escape, but with more adventure game elements to it. You still follow a flow-chart that branches depending on story choices you make, and you need to see all branches to complete the story. Not to keep comparing AI to the Zero Escape games (that's why I'm playing this game, so that's the lens I'm analyzing this game through; this is my essay, I can do what I want, you’re not my real dad), but unlike the Zero Escape games, AI ends on a legitimate, no-fooling, unambiguous happy ending that couldn't have put a bigger smile on my face. Sure, it was corny, but the entire game was corny, and ultimately I didn't care! I was just happy that I wasn't uber-depressed after playing one of Uchikoshi's games! It even ends on a dance number consisting of the entire cast of characters!
AI is a good time all-around!
(Except for the murders. Those are bad...probably...)
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RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2
Yes, this game came out last year, but honestly I don't care. I played it this year and that's all that matters. However, as I am coming to this game later than most, most of what can be said about Red Dead 2 has already been said by way smarter people than I am, so I won't retread any of that well-trodden ground. So, I'll keep this short: Arthur Morgan's journey is one of the best told story in AAA gaming to date, and never have I felt more like a rustic cowboy wandering the the old west. People harped on the sluggish nature of the controls, but I honestly liked it, as it added to that feeling of being a wandering cowboy. I took my time meandering through the the forests of Roanoke Ridge, the deserts of New Austin, and the red earth of Scarlet Meadows. There was nothing more that I enjoyed in this game than gearing up, getting on my horse and just riding aimlessly until I encountered something that catches my attention, whether that be a 3-star animal, a legendary fish, or even a dilapidated church on a civil war battlefield. I put in well over 100 hours on PS4 earlier this year, and I've put in another 100+ hours on PC, and I don't see myself putting it down anytime soon.
Fucking superb, you funky little cowboy game.
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OUTER WILDS
Outer Wilds is not only the best game of 2019, but probably one of my top 5 favourite games of all time. It's hard to describe what makes Outer Wilds a truly one-of-a-kind experience for me without spoiling the ending. It's a game driven purely by exploration and discovery. Knowledge of the world and how it works is the sole "progression" system in the entire game; so much so that you can beat it in your very first first session if you happened to have the discoveries spoiled for you. Go into as blind as possible, that’s what I did and it made the experience all the more special. Play this game, you will not be disappointed.
At this point, I will be spoiling the major parts of the story of Outer Wilds, primarily the ending, because it is the thing that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I first experienced it. Be warned that there be major spoilers beyond this point. Given that Outer Wilds is all about discovery, I highly recommend you do not read anything beyond this point if you haven't beaten it. Again, play this game, you will not be disappointed.
One of my earliest existential fears was when I learned about the lifespan of stars in the second grade. I remember it vividly: sitting in class, hearing my teacher describe the stages of a star's life, going from normal-sized star to red giant, then eventually to a supernova, then explaining that will happen to our Sun as well. The dawning realization that the Sun will grow to a size that will envelop the Earth terrified me beyond anything that has ever terrified me up until that point in my albeit short life. I couldn't sleep for days without fearing that the sun will expand, consume the Earth and burn everyone I ever loved alive. It didn't matter that my teacher said it would take millions upon millions of years before the Sun ever reached this stage, this was my single-biggest fear.
Fast-forward 23 years later to beginning of June of 2019, I pick up Outer Wilds based on the buzz the game was getting. I knew the game was based around a time-loop à la Majora’s Mask, but had no idea about one of it’s biggest “mechanics,” so to speak. My first few runs in that game resulted in premature deaths, so it took me a little bit to realize that the Sun explodes after 22 minutes and envelops everything in a fiery blaze. Seeing my childhood fear unfolding right in from of me just drove me to unravel the mysteries of the universe I inhabited, if nothing more so that I could find a way to stop it. As I learned more about the ostensible precursor race, the Nomai, whom were fixated on finding something called the Eye of the Universe but perished before they could find it, I got it in my head that, if I can just do what the Nomai failed to do, I could stop all of this from happening. Every time the time loop started, I would run out into space and unraveling the mystery further and further, each time being obliterated by the sun at the end of 22 minutes (or dying in a really stupid physics-y way), getting closer and closer to finding out what’s really going on.
Eventually, I discovered enough information to accomplish the task of reaching the Eye of the Universe: I found the coordinates of the Eye, a ship with the necessary warp-drive to get there, and a power source to make it all happen. With the keys in-hand to finally unlocking the answer to this mystery, I set off on what would be my final run: I performed the necessary tasks, said one last goodbye to the Solar System, and barreled into what I would eventually learn is the quantum singularity of time and space, a.k.a the Eye of the Universe. I stepped out into a vast, cold emptiness of quantum existence that was the Eye and wondered around, looking for something, anything. After falling through what seemed to be a quantum vortex, I eventually found a museum not unlike the one you find at the beginning of the game; a museum that is part of the tutorial for the game. This museum contains a picture at the entrance showcasing the founders of the Outer Wilds Ventures space program, the in-universe space program your nameless, faceless alien character is a part of. However, in this quantum facsimile of this tutorial museum, which is cloaked in darkness save for the sole light emanating from your spacesuit, you're positioned to see the same picture you saw at the beginning of the game, only this time a new caption appears when inspecting it:
"Outer Wilds Ventures was founded by Feldspar, Gossan, Slate, and Hornfels to explore a solar system at the end of the universe."
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I'm not trying to be hyperbolic when I say that: reading that caption started to make me go through the 5 stages of grief. I was immediately in denial of what I just read. “How could the universe be ending? The Hearthians just started their space program! How unfair it is for them for the universe they were just about to explore to end like that! Also, this is a video game! You’re supposed to give me the feel-good ending of being the hero and stopping the universe-ending event from ever happening!” As I explored the quantum museum more, the fact that the universe actually ending became more and more apparent and harder to ignore. Then, I recalled pieces of information I encountered during my travels that hinted (or plainly stated and I was too deluded to acknowledge them) that the universe was ending, and transitioned to the 2nd stage of grief: anger. Anger at myself for missing something so obvious and deluding myself into thinking that I could enact change on such a cosmic scale. I quickly entered the 3rd stage, bargaining, as I tried to snap myself out of it. “The game was pulling a fast one on me,” I told myself, “I hadn't reached the "end" of the ending yet, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Let’s not count all our chickens before they hatch!” I interacted with with the final prompt in the quantum museum, which transported me to a forest filled with galaxies. One by one, I watched these galaxies explode and fade from existence, until all that was left was darkness. It was at this point, I truly realized there was no stopping this, and I transitioned into the 4th stage: depression.
Through my depression, I stumbled across the dark, quantum glade to where I eventually found a quantum facsimile of myself, which no joke spooked me. Then all of a sudden, a campfire appears. The game asks me to settle, roasts some marshmallows, which I do, I guess. “What else can I do? It’s all pointless, the universe is over!” As I roast marshmallow after marshmallow, I'm eventually joined by a facsimile of the first Outer Wilds Ventures companion I met after launching into the stars for the first time: Esker. Esker  (”Feskermile? does that work?”) wants me to gather all the other facsimiles of the Outer Wilds Ventures folk I’ve met during my travels and have one last campfire jamboree. Still feeling defeated and hopeless, I begrudgingly set out into the darkness of the quantum forest to find Feldspar, Gabbro, Chert, and Riebeck, along with Solanum, the kinda-but-not-really-last-living Nomai I met on the Quantum Moon. Once everyone was gathered around the campfire, they started played the tune I've heard all throughout my travels in the solar system. A melody that immediately starts flooding my brain with memories of my adventures: seeing the islands of Giant’s Deep being flung into space by a storm of tornadoes; the asteroids of Hollow’s Lantern destroying the surface of Brittle Hollow, revealing a black hole core; traversing the endless fog of Dark Bramble while dodging giant eldritch anglerfish; watching the sand majestically trade places between the hourglass twins. All of these memories and more came rushing to the forefront of my mind as I listened to the characters I’ve come to know and love play the same blissful tune that propelled me on my journey up until this exact point.
As the members of the Outer Wilds Ventures space program and the both-living-and-dead Nomai finished playing their song, a new universe is born from the ashes of the doomed universe we're all currently in, which indicated to me that this is truly the end, not just for the universe, but also for the game in general. So, with a heavy sigh, I went around the campfire one last time and spoke with every character as a way to say goodbye. It was when I talked to Riebeck, the ever-optimistic banjo player, that I finally transitioned into the 5th and last stage of grief: acceptance.
"The past is past, now, but that's... you know, that's okay! It's never really gone completely. The future is always built on the past, even if we won't get to see it."
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A wave of catharsis washed over my entire being. Grief is a feeling that I never truly felt while playing a video game before playing Outer Wilds. Sure, I've been sad when I character I liked gets killed and the like, but I never experienced grief so profound like the one I felt during the ending of Outer Wilds. It was grief for a universe still teeming with life about to end; it was grief for a species that just started looking at the stars not being able to fully explore their own domain; it was grief for a species that never saw the fruits of their scientific labour; ultimately, it was grief about the inevitability of death. Abject terror flooded my mind when I finally realized that the universe was truly ending and I was powerless to stop it. But that single line of dialogue from Riebeck allowed me to appreciate what was happening. I was finally happy, not because it was truly over, but because I was able to experience everything I did up until the very end. No ending, no matter the cosmic scale of it, can ever take away the memories I had existing in this universe.
With that, I collected myself, took one last look at everyone around the campfire, and collapsed the singularity, ending the current universe and giving birth to a new one, with the clearest sense of purpose I've ever had: I was finally able to confront and conquer one of my biggest fears.
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