SJHSUEHENHEJSHSHSHSH THE JENNA'S ROUTE MOTEL FRIDAY SCENE DJSJJSJSKS

(no spoilers) theres like. a scene thats very obviously supposed to be tense and creepy as shit but. THEY ANIMATED THE SPOOKY SPRITE WALKING IN SUCH A FUCKIN WACKY WAY SJSBDKSNSJ

Roadwarden - In Search of Urgency Through Limitations

(This is a repost of my Twitter thread that got quite a dose of love yesterday, so I figured you may be interested in it as well.

1/ Hi! I was invited to post a thread for #MAMG23 on a unique feature of my fantasy game, Roadwarden. I’d like to tell you about its most controversial design choice - the time limit. The expectation that you’ll finish the game without seeing some parts of what it has to offer.

2/ In RW, you play as a single character patrolling the roads of a distant peninsula, aiding or harming its tribes. This land has grown detached from any strong, governmental body, and you start the game as an outsider, an agent, a spy sent here by the city.

3/ You’re encouraged to travel, make friends, learn more, but instead of being The Chosen One, you’re just a rider, a traveling sheriff. And you’re meant to get back to the city soon - usually, in 40 days, after which you are held accountable for your actions and their outcomes.

4/ You start with a personal goal you can select from a short list, and a few other quests to guide you, but none of them are obligatory. You may shape the fate of various people, or even whole settlements, but that’s just a small dent in the grand scheme of things.

5/ I think the reason why it works is that RW tries to make you feel attached to its NPCs and villages. Most people are guarded at first, but open up as you prove your worth to them - or manipulate them. You get options to spend time with them, to share meals and ale.

6/ You see NPCs’ perspectives as you exchange news and rumors. You get familiar with the way people get by, with their routines, and their plans for the future. My NPCs may not have the most depth, but in many ways, you get to learn about their vulnerabilities.

7/ At the start of the game, you’re also vulnerable system-wise, and you won’t increase your stats much. Instead, you rely on others to help you get out of the loop of hindrances. You grow closer with people - by quests, trading, hanging out - and open access to convenient tools.

8/ You unlock new shelters, free supplies, free care, free advice, lower prices, even direct help during tasks. You collect favors. It’s no wonder you may grow attached to NPCs and their problems, and actually care about what’s going to happen to them.

9/ (It’s a very different approach to many older video game plots, where your character would get dropped into mid-apocalypse, saving the world they know nothing about, or trying to save their sibling/village after a brief introduction, relying on our real-life contexts.)

10/ Your character is weak, and travels between the “points of light” (villages, inns) and the threatening wilderness, seeking ways to optimize your journeys, avoiding threats until prepared to face them, sticking to the main roads at first, then exploring the more obscure paths.

11/ But the game needed tension to make this work, to let you game the systems while pushing you into taking an occasional leap of faith. Balancing between risk and preparations is where the challenge comes from. Hence - the time limit.

12/ In the core game mode, the character has 40 in-game days to explore the peninsula. They can complete the game before that, but once the time runs out, they are forced to return to the city - very often begrudgingly. Not many people get to finish all of the quests. 

13/ Without save-scumming (reloading the game in hopes to get better results) or looking up a guide / seeking advice online, the player will struggle. I didn’t intend for them to see everything during their first playthrough. They’re meant to taste failure.

14/ RW is most rewarding when the player accepts their character’s shortcomings. When they decide that they need to leave a village to itself since they lack the time to help it. That they can’t rescue a traveler, or a place, because they’ve got to move on.

15/ Judging by RW’s reception, it’s an unintuitive, and not exactly welcome, design. Most people, myself included, expect to have the option to 100% the game from the get go. Despite my best efforts, it seems like I didn’t succeed at setting the game’s promises correctly.

16/ The tutorial section of the game tries to set the expectations straight. It promises that the peninsula is overgrowing, wild, filled with monsters, that the locals are *pagans*, that the time limit is pressing. But many players don’t treat these threats seriously.

17/ Oftentimes, they see these promises as the set up for a story of success, something to overcome with enough grind and wit. It seems like the game failed at making it clear that it tries to embrace human limitations, that it’s a part of the core experience.

18/ The game didn’t make it clear that by deciding what matters to you the most, whom you want to help, whom you leave behind, which mysteries you unravel, which conflicts you solve, and when you put your needs above others - you get to make meaningful choices.

19/ My ideas did resonate with some, and I saw people playing the game once on the “standard” mode, then again, on the “casual” mode - with no time limit - to experience the rest of the story threads. I think it’s even better to take a longer break between playthroughs.

20/ This way, you focus on your character, and encounter the realm beyond your grasp. You get to embrace your mistakes and choices. If you return to the game after a year or two, it will feel different, as you are also not going to be the same being.

21/ It may not be a reasonable expectation on my part. But to justify myself, I’d like to make it clear that the time limit is not just a gimmick, but rather a system I play with in many ways. You can’t travel during nighttime. You need to restore stats every day.

22/ Some quests disappear or show up on specific days. Some actions are available only at specific hours. Days get shorter. You can care for the roads to ride faster. In many ways, time is a resource, and various tasks can be solved by spending it.

23/ Take the wooden lantern, as an example. You can buy it from a merchant, or hang out with a friendly carpenter to make your own, chatting with his neighbors. What do you need more right now? Money? Coins? Friendship? Without the time limit, you’d get limitless resources.

24/ The world of Roadwarden is rotting, collapsing, fading away, reaching a new form. With no time limit, it’s a playground, a place to be tamed according to your will. And the time limit was meant to turn it into a mystery, an interactive adventure. #MAMG23

Hot take but bg3 doesn't have the awesome replayability it claims to have.

To get the most obvious point out the way first: 17,000 endings? Pure marketing there is like 5 unique endings and the rest is tiny details that don't change ending scenes. Realistically after you've seen one tav and one durge ending and made one of em good and one evil, you won't be replaying just for the other 3 endings.

And you won't replay for the sidequests and their outcomes either. How many sidequests are there in Act 1? How many in Act2? Barely any if any at all, almost of them link back to the mainquest and change with it so you've probably already seen it in your first good & evil playthroughs. And if they don't (namely Auntie Ethel, Baelen & Derryth , Omeluum and Zhentarim) they are short and only become relevant again in Act 3. Act 3 the place of endless amounts of sidequests that all boil down to 'defeat this boss' and then never affect anything else. You can do these quests in literally any fucking order and they will not change anything. The only order needed is murder tribunal -> Orin and Iron Throne -> Steel watch -> Gortash. And both of these can be fully or partially skipped depending on if you want to save the Gondians and if you're Durge.

And let's entirely be honest here, as fun as it is to make a new tav or durge concept, once you know the endings and some few major choices, you know how their story will play out. Do I start those playthroughs anyways? Yes. Did I finish any of them yet? No, I struggle to find a reason why I should if I can already predict how the major story beats will play out, I spend most of my time making a new character with trying to find a way to combine an interesting tav idea with a companion I haven't romanced before or with a specific major choice for a companion that I haven't played before.

Which brings me to actually reasons to replay the game:

1) Romancing a different companion, because that's literally the only way to get to know them. Except romancing a different companion doesn't change anything major except some parts of the ending epilogue dialogue, so you'll be replaying the exact same playthrough again but this time you romance Gale instead of Wyll and get 3 new scenes you haven't seen before in a total of what? 100 playhours?. But for each companion there are story changing choices too, only changes like 2 scenes with said companion and nothing else, but wouldn't you want to see those too?. Alright another 100 hours except this time the choices only change 1 scene and happen 50hrs into the exact same playthrough as your previouse Astarion romance.

And nr 2) trying out builds. Because you can't actually try out combos in Act 3, both because there is a very finite amount of enemies with very specific weaknesses and resistances and because some build changing items are in previous acts and you can't go back. If you want to try out a build you best hope you have the perfect coincidental save to reload to (and lose all progress or not save the changes... fun) or you better prepare to replay the entire damn game just to try out if 6 levels paladin and 6 levels sorcerer work well together or not. And the companions don't help here either. We have two humans, five elves (with 2 wood 2 high 2 half elves, yay!) a githyanki and a tiefling. How many of these actually have unique racial features? Your build would work better with halfling luck or duegar invisibility? Tough luck. Make a new tav. Most of the time first 5 levels aren't even worth multiclassing at unless you want to make the game unnecessarily difficult, dragging your new playthrough out even longer.

I have 600 playhours and I still don't know anything about Lae'zel, Shadowheart or Karlach because my romance runs for them are all not past Act 1 yet. And it doesn't matter how fun it feels to have a powerful build in act 3 or how fun it is to find a new story possibility. If I have to go spend like 50hrs to reach the part that's interesting. Even worse when I can't be bothered to loot things anymore, leading to me missing out on vital loot all because I didn't want to turn the stone at the grove for the 12th time. My choice here is get burned out from turning every rock every time or burn out because skipping through everything, making it unnecessarily hard, blocking potential builds and missing quests/dialogue/etc ruins the whole roleplay part that would motivate me to make a new playthrough in the first place.

Not to mention the fact that I'm struggling to make the character creator fun, it's always been lacking options but with 20 playthroughs open to go, I've already used all of them. I'm trying to choose a different face and hairstyle (gave up on makeup and body art being unique a hot while ago) for each character to make them unique but with all elves sharing faces and all half elves sharing faces and already having used at least 2 face from each race it's starting to look pretty samey here. And I'd love to use a ton of mods but the game by itself already breaks when it's update time.

The point is that no matter how much the game likes to pretend, choices don't matter that much, not in the character creator, not in the story, at best a little in who you romance but even then the difference is a few scenes. This is only made worse by larian confirming that the evil run is purposfully so short and lacking because "it's supposed to feel bad. You killed these people, now you miss out on their questlines." I'm here to explore different story outcomes, not to be punished for picking options the game gave me! An evil playthrough can be made to feel bad without punishing the player for picking an option you gave them. Not to mention the fact that there is barely any way if any way at all to be more nuanced? All options are either heroically good or comically evil, if you're lucky you get the third option to do good but ask for payment... yay... I'm sure that will totally not play exactly like the good playthrough.

The game is fun, hell I have 600 playhours. Not all of them where spent in burn out limbo. But I could've easily stopped at 150hrs after finishing my good tav and evil durge and I wouldn't have missed much.

My thoughts on Xillia 2 (a somewhat peeved rant)

So I just beat Xillia 2 for the first time and got... an ending.

(* even though I beat the game I still don’t know the other endings so if you want to interact with this post please avoid spoilers)

The ending I got was where Elle dies, the fractured dimensions are destroyed, and Ludger is implied to go on to follow Victor’s footsteps by meeting Elle’s mother. This was the ending I willingly chose, though since I was playing it blind I didn’t know the exact outcome. Unfortunately, the game portrays this ending as kinda neutral, which is part of why I dislike this game: what the games wants me to want or care about rarely line up with what I actually want or care about, and as a result, I don’t get to make choices that matter to me.

The best example of this is with fractured Milla, Julius, and Elle. I held onto fractured Milla’s hand as long as I could because I liked her and wanted to save her (as I’m sure many other players did too), but the game decided she had to die to bring back the other Milla. I’m not mad at the game for that, as right from the beginning it was clear this Milla couldn’t stick around. Despite my efforts to help, I had to sacrifice her and move on, with the game telling me this was noble and necessary.

Near the end came Julius’s time... I really like Julius and so when I saw the game foreshadowing his death I literally stopped playing for a month because I didn’t want that to happen. Once I finally did, I had Ludger protect and protest Julius’s death to the point where he freaks out and starts fighting his friends, and despite my best efforts they repeatedly kicked his ass and I had to reload the save (*is that an alternate bad ending? I wanted to see what happens if you win but I didn’t want to grind for hours so I’m saving it for later). Bitterly I fought and killed Julius and kinda cried because that was Ludger’s brother and I didn’t care if he was already dying and Elle and the world were at stake, I wanted him to live. But the game said that his death was inevitable, noble, and necessary.

You see what I’m getting at? When I beat the last boss and was given a choice to save Elle, who would otherwise turn into a catalyst and fade away, or destroy the fractured dimensions like she wanted and save the world, I chose to save the world because I thought this was noble and necessary. Then the game gave this “oh that’s your choice... :/” kinda attitude and I was indignant. Up until now my choice to protest a character’s death had been either ineffective or actually punished, so why should I expect it to work now? And the characters I had lost before were ones I personally cared about more than Elle. I never really liked Elle the way in-game Ludger does, though I certainly didn’t want her to die.

And that’s my biggest problem with this game, that the story that offered choices not only didn’t let my choices matter in a way I wanted but even punished me when I finally chose to follow the themes it had been setting up. There were other forced choices in the game I never wanted, like destroying the Ark or working for Spirius at all, but I do understand that that was central to the game at least. The thing is, I feel like I wouldn’t have minded these deaths or decisions if I never had the illusion of choice in the matter. If this had been a normal Tales game story where Ludger the character loved Elle and chose to protect her, I wouldn’t have questioned it at all.

I don’t mean for this to come across as a hate rant; I actually did enjoy this game quite a lot. The combat is incredibly complex but also extremely satisfying, the return and development of Xillia’s cast was great, and overall I appreciate the risks Tales took in making this game unique. I just wish that the game and I didn’t butt heads so much.

TLDR: I’m upset at how the game framed choices, continually making my decisions to try to save people ineffectual then punishing me for not saving Elle.

DRAGON QUEST XI S: ECHOES OF AN ELUSIVE AGE - DEFINITIVE EDITION

I've never played a Dragon Quest game before, so all I had to go on with this game was the pretty looking graphics and charming character art by the Dragonball guy, which- combined with having a hankering for a JRPG, a genre I haven't played since probably the Digital Devil Saga games (minus an abandoned most-of-the-way-done playthrough of SMT3 and a partial of one of the Megadimension Neptunias) was enough to sell me on it. I'm having a tough time determining if it was worth it.

(spoilers)

The story starts off very weak. Your glowing hand marks you as the chosen one, you have to collect glowing orbs to defeat the dark lord. It's like the story of a generic videogame you'd see in the background of a movie. They do throw in a little novelty to keep you on your toes- you present yourself to the king and he throws you in the dungeon, you go back to your hometown and travel back in time for some reason- but I really never warmed to the setting. It's just a collection of cliches and cute gimmicks, like the town of people who speak in haikus, the town of people who speak in rhyming couplets (you're stuck with these people for the bulk of the exposition at the start of act 2, which is a nightmare) and the town of- ugh- Italians. There's no sense of these places being places. It's just a nice pleasant fairytale kingdom of the kind that's normally mentioned in Snow White or whatever as the place the handsome prince comes from, except here you spend dozens of hours trudging through it looking for glowing tree roots and orbs. The big problem in Gallopolis is that the sultan's son isn't brave enough for god's sake. Acts 2 and 3 pick things up, and there's some neat reveals- I like that the lil red star you've been seeing in the sky right from the start was the stain of the original hero's failure to slay the villain, literally hanging over the entire setting all this time. Also the annoying act 1 scene where you get handed the name of the villain and an orb quest in an exposition dump is retroactively improved by the fact that the exposition isn't quite correct. Act 3 reintroducing time travel and actually being thoughtful about it was welcome as well, but sadly that has the effect of making you redo story points you already did since, logically, you're back in time to where you haven't done them yet. Sometimes this comes across as getting a do-over to get a more positive outcome for something that previously ended more tragically, in keeping with the way time travel is explained in-universe as essentially reloading an earlier save (and, as revealed in the end, continuing in a separate save slot). The 8th party member's act 3 quest is a standout here. In reading discussion of the game I've seen people insist on referring to this character as 8, presumably to preserve the plot twist of his existence, so I guess I'll do it too. But more often than not, act 3 quests consist of just doing the same stuff as act 2 again, in a somewhat more curt manner. This sticks in the craw after so much of act 2 already consisted of just doing the same stuff as act 1 again. The party members aren't much better, for the most part. The first three people you meet all say "ah, you're the Luminary, I was sent to help you" and there isn't much to them beyond that for a long time. Sylvando has a lot of personality, which is probably partly why he's become the game's big meme character, but it gets grating and he is insanely trite. The Dark Lord takes over the world and purges the unclean, and Sylvando's overriding concern is that he wants people to laugh and smile more. It's like he takes advantage of the fact that I need him for his boat to get my goat by acting like a fucking teletubby. Things pick way up when you meet Rab, and the 8th party member is genuinely really good. Even the early-game party members end up having their moments (Erik's backstory was pretty fun) but the game really doesn't put its best foot forward with these characters. Not that it needs to; for the first few I was just glad to be getting some help in combat. The combat is excellent in this game, when it gets going. I played with the "draconian quest" tougher enemies mode on, and I turned it off right at the act 2 end boss. The difficulty curve flowed really well this way, with act 3 enemies not feeling noticeably less tough than "draconian" act 2 enemies. The abilities and spells you get are carefully balanced so that it's very difficult to put together a perfect 4-person party, you're always missing something. This means the fact that you can change your line-up midfight isn't just a nice quality of life feature, it's a potentially vital mechanic. They tread a fine line where sometimes needing to swap people out during the battle doesn't mean the characters themselves feel useless; everyone is capable of some extremely tough stuff. And on the other end of the scale, enemy damage is heavy enough that buffing your attack and using big-damage abilities vs healing or defending can be a properly difficult choice; a heavy hit or a big heal at the right time can turn the tide of an entire battle, as can your big hitter suddenly getting put to sleep or your healer getting knocked out. Again, this is all with the caveat that I had "draconian quest" on for the first 2/3 of the game, from what I've heard combat without it is insanely easy. My big gripe with the combat is that there's very little in the way of tooltips. What's this enemy's magic resistance? Does my Sap have a better chance of landing if I up my Magical Might, or does that just increase spell damage? Does Oomphle affect Quadraslash? If I increase my agility will it go up by enough that I can take my turn ahead of these enemies? Does agility even do that? Does using abilities and spells mean I go later in the turn order vs generic attacks and defending? You just have to guess at all this; the wiki has some info on enemy stats but I don't know where they're getting it from other than datamining. There's an entire bestiary with almost no useful information which is functionally just a model viewer for all 700+ enemies. The only way to know anything is to experiment, which I guess at least adds some purpose to combat when you've filled out the bestiary for an area but still have to grid encounters- which will be required at some point, because fighting is the only way you get xp and money. There is also too much RNG. Critical hits being rare and certain attacks having a chance to cause Confusion or whatever is fine (although I'd prefer for attacks which are labelled as having a chance to inflict status effects to actually inflict the status effect way more often than they do) but why the fuck does the resurrection spell have a 50% success rate? Under what possible circumstances would I be using that spell other than needing my dead teammate back right now? Same for all the abilities on the skill tree that say "doesn't connect very often, but when it does it can cause a critical hit" OK that "CAN" is telling me that this ability which doesn't often connect won't even necessarily crit if it does. Why would I choose this ability? To handicap myself? How is this going to help me defeat the Timewyrm? All that said, when the combat is good it's really good, and whenever I lose a fight I'm thinking "I can win that next time if I do XYZ". The 2D battles are much less fun because the pace is much slower and there are no cute animations to liven it up, but it's always satisfying when the "flash" of an enemy taking damage becomes the "flash" of them disappearing, and you know you have slayed yet another blob. Non-combat gameplay is a mixed bag. The early-game fun of running around looking for new enemies to fight and fill out the bestiary wears off hard once act 2 begins and everything is either a reskin or a glowing-eyes "vicious" version of something you've already fought, and many maps are fairly sparse with just the odd treasure chest and locked door to liven up your path to the next area. That said, there are also several areas and dungeons which make a minigame out of traversing them; the Eerie Eyrie and the Battleground were standouts for me. Especially the remixed version of Eerie Eyrie you go to later on, where you get a flying mount to ride around. Crafting is surprisingly involved, with a whole minigame around it and hundreds of recipes to find all over the place. In most cases you can just use money in lieu of ingredients, which means minimal farming is required to get a lot out of the system, and the recipes with ingredients that can't be bought feel special instead of bullshit. In terms of items and recipes there really is a deluge of content- there are recipe books all over the place, with new ones available even in the last couple of maps that open up in the entire game, and there's an undeniable cookie-clicker rush you get from getting better at crafting and taking something you could barely get to +1 all the way to +3. I play games like this as a magpie, accumulating items with nice pictures and effects that make me do a 😲 face, and DQ11 certainly delivers. This even extends to character advancement, with Hidden Goodies incentivizing picking skills you might not want otherwise, and entire new skill trees opening up as quest rewards.

Overall, DQ11 is a good combat system with loot and progression systems that are well-executed enough to feel rewarding after 100 hours, all wrapped up in a style and tone that is not up my alley at all. A good litmus test for how much you'd like the game is probably: watch this scene and if you think it's the most epic thing you've ever seen then Dragon Quest 11 is for you.

NOT My Hero Academia: Part 1 – Ch.6

Mirio-senpai was right: there were plenty of awesome things for me to do at U.A.!

Not long after the Rescue Training, U.A.'s annual Sports Festival was announced.

Everyone was pumped, but Uraraka seemed especially excited to show her skills. Which reminded me of a question I'd forgotten to ask her.

"Money…?! You wanna be a hero for the money?!" "Ultimately, yeah." Uraraka rubbed the back of her head nervously. "Sorry. I know it seems base… and really embarrassing, considering your guys's noble motivations and all."

She explained that her family ran a construction company, but that business had been bad recently. They were "poorer than poor." Uraraka wanted to help her parents by using her quirk to move and lift objects, but they told her they wanted her to make "her own dreams come true." And that, when she did, she could take them on vacation. "So I'm gonna be a hero. I'll make that money…" Uraraka had a determined look in her eyes, "... so that my mom and dad can have easier lives."

I was impressed. 'So she doesn't just idolize heroes. She's thinking of the practical as well…'

Seeing how determined Uraraka and everyone else was… it reminded me of the drive I felt while first training with Master. In fact, I felt more determined than ever to prove myself!

'I can't measure up to most of the others here in strength. But… What I lack in strength, I can make up for in skill! 'I'm not gonna fall behind. I'm going to aim for the top. With everything I've got!'

.

During the two weeks leading up to the Sports Festival, I trained -- and studied. I couldn't find out what events I'd have to deal with, but that didn't mean I couldn't prepare for the worst possible outcomes. And there was one thing I knew for sure I'd have to deal with: my fellow students.

Thankfully, Master's final gift was ready in time…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We were in the warehouse again, although there was no practice today. Instead, I studied the trick gun, unloaded and reloaded it, and, satisfied that it was just like the one I'd practiced with, holstered it. "With this tool at your disposal, you should have no trouble at least reaching the final event of the Sports Festival," Master said. "Actually… I've decided not to use it."

I looked up at Master. He was sitting in a chair across from where I was standing, his face as unreadable as usual. "At least… not until I reach the final event. I want to keep the element of surprise. That way, I might…" my throat tightened, "… might actually have a chance of winning." "…" Distressed by his silence, I tried to explain myself, "If I end up having to fight someone with a strong quirk, like Todoroki or Iida, the gun will be useless if they know what's coming," my hand tapped the holstered gun, "Although… I'll still use the grapple, since I've already been using that."

"… Hmm." "...Master?" "I'm impressed. So you really believe you can win?" "Ah! Well. I mean," I jolted, blanching and gesturing wildly with my hands, "I… I think I might, if-" "-Good." "-Huh?"

Master stood from the chair he was sitting in, seeming to look up and out of the skylights. "When you first came here, you would've been satisfied just making it past the entrance exam and trying again another year. 'I am quirkless, after all' you would've said. Now…" He looked back at me, "you've really grasped the truth. … I'm proud of you."

That was the last thing I expected him to say at that moment. It… it made me happy. My blanch quickly became a blush. Then I remembered, "Oh! Um… I hope it's not too much to ask, but…" Master had turned to sit back in the chair again, but he stopped and looked back at me. I continued, "Any edge I can get will be helpful, right? So…

"May I have the plant tonight?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Master had allowed me to use the plant the night before the Festival. Even so, the size of the audience in the stadium was still unnerving.

I was a bit surprised Kacchan was the First Years' student representative, but Sero made a good point -- in that he had placed first in the entrance exam. "The hero course entrance exam, you mean," pointed out a girl from General Studies standing nearby us.

I wished I had more time to think about that, because my first thought was just 'Well, it is a hero school, right…?' But Kacchan was already on stage, ready to deliver the Athlete's Oath. He was stoic. Much more serious than I was used to seeing him. And with that neutral face, he said into the microphone, "The athlete's oath… Make no mistake about it. I'm gonna take first place!!"

The other students were understandably upset by that statement, but my brain was spinning. 'Confidence…? No…' Kacchan's expression didn't change as he walked back to his spot among the crowd. 'The old Kacchan… He definitely would've been smiling as he said that… He's pushing himself. Telling himself he can't lose.' I didn't dodge Kacchan's shoulder when he passed; I let him bump into me. Somehow, dodging it right then… would've felt like surrender. 'I need to be careful about him. His guard is up. Winning was never gonna be easy, but…'

Midnight, "without delay," announced that our first event would be an obstacle race "between every member of all eleven classes! The course is a four-kilometer lap around the stadium itself!" It was what she said next that stuck out to me -- something I was counting on, in fact. "Our school preaches freedom in all things! … Heh heh heh…

"So as long as you don't go off the course, anything is fair game!

"Racers, to your positions…" The lights above the starting gate turned off one-by-one. Ding… I looked at the size of the starting gate -- and the crowd in front of it. Ding… I measured where I was inside that crowd -- my hand grasped an object on my waist. Ding! Midnight yelled, "START!"

By the time Todoroki had frozen the ground, I had already grappled passed him. Unfortunately, my lead didn't last long; Todoroki was still faster than me on foot, thanks to his ice, and Kacchan blasted past me not long after.

The next obstacle turned out to be the zero-pointer robots from the hero entrance exam. My grapple was sufficient to get over the hulking ice monoliths Todoroki had made of them as well. As the robots crumbled behind me, I noticed a metal plate fall to the ground nearby. I grabbed it and fastened it to my back. 'I'm low on tools, since they didn't approve of many of my gadgets. This might be useful.'

Some of my classmates were falling farther behind than I'd expected. They were hesitating, too indecisive over whether to attack the robots or ignore them. Worried. Too afraid of getting injured to make the split-second decisions we needed to.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I was on the ground again. It seemed like, no matter what strategy I tried, no matter how hard I thought about it, I just couldn't find a way to beat Kurogiri-sensei! He was always one step ahead, a split second faster!!

As Kurogiri stood over me, he revealed today's lesson, "Planning is important. You must always have a strategy, no matter how simple. However… when in a REAL battle, the most deciding factor… is boldness." He reached a hand out. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet. "That is why you must train to the point that these things become second nature. So that you don't need to decide to use them!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

'Move! Keep moving!! By the skin of my teeth is fine. Just keep going!' A robot locked onto me. Grabbing the plate from my back, I swung it straight between the robot's upper and lower sections, breaking it in two and ending its pursuit. 'Works as a shield too… This thing's handy!'

Next was a section of tightropes above a canyon. I didn't pause in returning the plate to my back and grabbing my grapple-gun. It seemed to be my saving grace in this event. Definitely a good choice to bring with me. Once on the other side, I noticed a girl using a similar tactic as me -- but with some kind of special arrow-guns and hover boots… I smiled. 'Cool…'

Kacchan and Todoroki were still in the lead when I made it to the minefield. 'Nothing to grapple onto with just these fences on the sides…' I paused for the first time, looking around, analyzing my surroundings to find the best strategy.

'There are lots of mines nearby me. Anti-personnel mines should only be 14-15 cm down -- I could dig 'em up with the plate…' I had a crazy idea, and no time to second-guess it. I swallowed nervously while pulling out the metal plate again. 'Taking a page from your book, Kacchan!'

After making a pile of the thankfully-not-too-powerful bombs, I held the plate in front of me, braced myself, aimed -- and jumped down onto them, metal-plate-first.

To my -- and everyone else's -- surprise, it worked. I went shooting passed Todoroki and Kacchan! 'Now to stick the landing…' But the two leaders were already catching back up!

'Passing them again will be impossible!! This is my one chance!! I gotta stay in the lead!!' Trusting my instincts again, I tightened my grip on the wires holding me onto the plate, let myself flip over and separate from it, and, once close enough to the ground, aimed- -and SLAMMED the plate onto a cluster of bombs. I shot forward again just in time -- with just enough of a lead to make it through the finish line in first place!

Present Mic -- and the rest of the audience! -- went wild. "THE QUIRKLESS KID IS IN FIRST PLACE!?! WHAT A TURN OF EVENTS!" "He's one you shouldn't underestimate. The fact he even made it into U.A.'s hero course should tell you that kid is practically the definition of Plus Ultra." "IS THAT A HINT OF PRIDE I HEAR IN YOUR VOICE, AIZAWA? ISN'T HE ONE OF YOUR STUDENTS?!"

Quivering from exhaustion, Uraraka walked up to me, Iida not far behind her. "Deku…! That was awesome!" "To lose a race, of all things, with my quirk… And to someone without any quirk at all!" Iida lamented, "It's clear I still have progress to make…!"

Todoroki walked up to me with purpose in his step. I stood up straighter instinctively. He paused -- then bowed his head. "Well done."

And like that, he just walked away again.

Before I had time to process that, Uraraka got up in my face, "First place, though! Man, I'm jealous!" I blushed. 'So close…!' "Aw, nah… It was -- well, it wasn't luck, exactly, but I mean… if I'd gotten unlucky…"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All For One watched the camera feed interestedly. Everything was going remarkably well.

"If this keeps up, I might not need to use that after all…" He switched cameras to get a better view of Midoriya's face. The boy looked ecstatic. "He's practically caught in a dream. His perfect fantasy. Good…"

He switched again, this time to a view of All Might, watching from the audience. "The higher he gets in this competition…" One of his underlings sat down behind All Might. More -- so many more -- were visible in the crowd, spread through the entire stadium. "The harder he'll FALL."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Beginning]

[Previous Chapter] - [Next Chapter]

Read my original book, Crossroad of Infinity for free right here on Tumblr, on my website, or on AO3!

Snowfall (6)

Warning: Angst, Slow Burn, Crazy Plots and Schemes 

Word Count: 7,433 (sorry this one is so long! There was no good place to break it into two)

Enjoy!

***

As the sun and Wakanda rose to begin another day, M’Baku had yet to rest. He, instead, spent the night staring somberly at his wife’s prone form in their bed, as if the sheer power of his will would wake her. The hours seemed to crawl by as he prayed for her return. He had her physically but now he wanted the rest of her. He hadn’t heard her voice or looked into her eyes in two days, longer than he had ever gone without her. His eyes didn’t leave her bruised form the entire night, sleep never reaching him. He could stare at her for days and never tire of it. He didn’t understand how, even after such suffering, Zarah still managed to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

He could never repay the Panthers, particularly Shuri, for their role in saving her life. They seemed to continue trading debts with each other. The young princess didn’t say it as she hurried around his private chambers with M’Baku’s personal healer, but Zarah was closer to death than any of them imagined. Likely, they knew the Chief was already teetering on the edge of an emotional breakdown and didn’t need any help falling off. But truthfully, she wouldn’t have needed to voice that concern. M’Baku saw it … clouding her youthful face with a seriousness the 17 year old never usually had, even for someone who had seen too much for such a young age. He had seen his fair share of battles but nothing on the battlefield prepared him for the state he would find his wife in or how everything would play out. So many regrets. 

"They will call us if they need us, M’Baku. We just have to be patient," T’Challa said, clad in his black panther suit while calmly sitting at the head of the Royal Talon. He was a complete juxtaposition to his anxiety-riddled friend who switched between seats on the Talon sporadically and when he wasn’t sitting, paced up and down the small ship frantically. 

"I don’t understand how you remain so calm all the time. She is my wife. I should be down there, not stuck on this damn ship," M'Baku ranted with a frustrated scowl on his face.

"I am calm because I know this plan will work. This plan will work because we have the upper hand. The only thing we are fighting is time. And you are sitting on this damn ship because N’Danna doesn’t want anything to happen to you. He can’t risk your life while Lady Zarah’s hangs in the balance, which is a sound and wise choice. That is why he is your general yes? I am sitting here because you shouldn’t wait alone. The Jabari forces, Nakia and the Dora are more than capable.” T’Challa’s monotone voice signaled his annoyance at giving the same answer to the same question over and over since they boarded the Talon an hour ago.  

M’Baku rolled his eyes and let out a disgruntled huff of air, mumbling under his breath that he could handle a few cavemen. He hated this. The waiting, the not knowing, the inability to control the outcomes and see that this plan went accordingly. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust N’Danna or the Dora Milaje. N’Danna was the best warrior and military strategist the tribe had. He had only seen the Dora in action a few times but he knew Okoye and that was enough for him. He just wanted to be there when they found her. He didn’t want to be told his wife was ok, he needed to see that for himself. 

"Lord M’Baku," T’Challa called to him. M’Baku covered the length of the Talon in two strides and made it to T’Challa’s side as a hologram of Okoye materialized above his wrist.

"We have her and are bringing her to the entrance now. We need to take her to Shuri immediately."

M’Baku let out a strangled noise of relief and collapsed into a nearby seat. They had her. She was alive.

"What of Davu? M’Baku asked he be apprehended alive." The unspoken part of that request, which everyone understood when M’Baku gave the order, was not that Davu would be shown any mercy or be allowed to live long. But that M’Baku demanded the right to be the one to end his existence once and for all. 

M’Baku, completely wrapped in the euphoria of his own happiness and relief, did not see Okoye’s eyes hardened or notice the long silence following her King’s question. T’Challa understood what that meant immediately: all had not gone according to plan.

"Understood. We are bringing the Talon and can transport her back to the Lodge." Shuri was already waiting, transforming the chief’s quarters into a personal healing room for the chieftess.

When the ramp of the Talon touched the small cliff at the cave entrance, M’Baku anxiously rushed down himself after seeing the small human-sized bundle of fur in N’Danna’s waiting arms. He refused to wait a second longer to see his wife, he had been deprived for far too long.

"Wait, M’Baku," N’Danna called before he got too close, protectively shifting his little sister in his arms. "She is alive. But s-s-she is in bad shape. She looks…" 

M’Baku nodded, his throat too tight and painful from holding in his emotions to let any words slip out. It didn’t matter how she looked as long as he had her back.

N’Danna was right to warn him. If he hadn’t been explicitly told that she was alive… he would have lost it. Only her face and neck peeked through the furs wrapped around her, but that told a tragic story all on its own. He couldn’t see an inch that wasn’t covered in black and blue bruising or dark red and brown blood. He didn’t want to think about the horrors the rest of her body told. Her flawless mocha skin had been robbed of its red glow and warmth, replaced with a pale lifeless lookalike. Her lips were chapped and tinged blue. M’Baku’s brain forced his limbs to activate so he could press two fingers into her neck to find a pulse. Moments like this required extra assurances. He expelled a deep breath he didn’t realize he was holding in, feeling like he was breathing for the first time in two days, at the life weakly pumping through her veins. Barely alive was better than not at all.

The relief he felt on the Talon was quickly extinguished and replaced by more distressing emotions. M’Baku wasn’t sure which he felt more prominently - the red hot fury ballooning inside him or the pain of his heart shattering at the physical evidence of what his wife was forced to endure. Both fed into each other, forcing the other to grow until there was no space in his body to feel anything else.

"Where. Is. He?" M’Baku whispered lowly, rage simmering in his words. He couldn’t see or think straight, the only thought occupying his mind was ripping that man limb from limb. A trial - Davu did not deserve. A toss off Dead Man’s Peak - a death too quick and merciful for him. He didn’t deserve the Jabari way of justice, was not worthy of it. No, the only justice M’Baku could see, the only justice he would tolerate, was feeling the life leave Davu’s body with his own bare hands. He would relish in it, it would be his greatest honor. His wife may live but for every moment of suffering she felt, Davu would leave this Earth feeling it tenfold.

N’Danna’s jaw clenched before he shook his head, shoved Zarah into M’Baku's arms and said, "Leave him to us. Take her and go." M’Baku seemed torn, wanting to be with his wife and kill the man who laid his hands on her. He couldn’t have both.

"Take her and go, M’Baku. Now." N’Danna didn’t care that he was giving his chief an order, something he wouldn’t dare do under normal circumstances. This wasn’t normal. Discipline and order meant little to him today. His sister needed assistance and that meant nothing else mattered, especially M’Baku’s pride. M’Baku nodded, frustrated but knew N’Danna understood what he expected. So, he adjusted his wife in his arms and reloaded the Talon, leaving N’Danna on the ground to oversee the rest.

As the Talon zoomed toward the Lodge, M’Baku settled his unconscious wife’s body on the transportation bed in the middle of the ship. He started to undo the furs around her to get a good look at her himself, but he stopped. He couldn’t make himself look at her and see all her injuries just yet, especially not in front of the King. His fingers fiddled with her hair, which had fallen wild and loose around her head. He tore his eyes away from hers for a moment to be met with looks of frustration and anger on Okoye, Nakia and T’Challa’s faces.

"What is wrong? Tell me," M’Baku demanded. Everyone shared uncomfortable glances, as if trying to decide who was going to break the bad news to the Chief.

"It seems Davu escaped," T’Challa informed his friend, deciding he should be the one to break the news. After all, he was the only one who could physically withstand M’Baku’s wrath if it finally boiled over.

"What?" M’Baku asked sharply.

"He, and a group of others, escaped through some secret passageways we couldn’t account for," Okoye said. 

M’Baku punched the side of the ship several times as Okoye and Nakia launched into an explanation. They were able to disable the entrance guards and enter the compound without raising alarm but by the time they found Zarah and stabilized her, Davu had yet to be captured. They found a trap door in the same room as Zarah, Davu clearly choosing to escape and leave the dying chieftess in his wake.

And that is how M’Baku ended up here six hours later with an unconscious wife and no justice to present her when she woke. He tried to sleep himself, one would think it would be easy after two days of no rest. But sleep was elusive, just beyond the grasp of his cluttered, overactive mind. His thoughts were too loud, too wild to allow room for the calm needed to rest. They were a tragic symphony of his guilt, his fear and his heartache. And it hadn’t stopped playing since this ordeal began. Before, it ebbed and flowed in the background, responding to the magnitude of his frustration. He expected the orchestra to finally cease, grant him a reprieve once she was safe and home. But instead, it only got worse, almost deafening in his ears as it reached its climax. Rather than feeling better, he felt worse when finally confronted with the consequences of his failures. He knew he should have gone to the caves with them. I could have apprehended Davu myself... could have stopped him, he lamented. M'Baku experienced more failures in the last two days than in his entire life. It seemed unlikely that he would ever be able to make up for this, there wouldn't be enough days in his lifetime to do so. He let her be taken, only found her on a fluke and then couldn’t apprehend the man who orchestrated her torture?

Universe: 10

M’Baku: 0

He desperately yearned for her to wake up and return to him. But he couldn’t deny that he feared Zarah wouldn’t forgive him when she did, that he would be added to the laundry list of people who failed her. He never wanted to be one of those people but now, he was the greatest offender of them all.

"M’Ba.. M’Baku?"

He snapped his head toward the bed to see Zarah attempting to push herself into a seated position. 

"Shit," she hissed through her teeth as she struggled to sit up. 

"Slow down little one. Lie back down," M'Baku whispered to her, placing a gentle but firm hold on her shoulders and settling her back onto the bed. Zarah looked around wildly, she didn't understand. She was just in the caves and now she was home with M’Baku? She was tired of the missing pieces. 

"Relax, it is ok my love. You are home and you are safe," M'Baku repeated a few times as he watched his wife struggle to get a grasp on reality. He watched panic, fear, realization and finally relief pass through her eyes as she made sense of it all. Once relief settled in her, she couldn't help the tears that fell from her eyes or the strangled sob that escaped her lips.

M’Baku could almost see the weight lift off her body as her tears flowed. He wiped them away as they slid down her cheeks, not bothering to stop the ones that slid down his own face. However, soon he couldn’t resist the urge to sweep his wife into his arms.

"Sorry my love," M’Baku whispered softly at the painful groan she let out at the movement. She shook her head, she didn’t need an apology. His arms were the only place she wanted to be, even if it hurts a little a lot. She nuzzled her nose into the side of his neck and placed a few kisses there as she soaked up the warmth she was unjustly deprived of for days. 

"Hanuman... I missed you so much," he said. 

"I missed you too," she managed to say, her hand instinctively rubbing her throat as she attempted to push her overused and aching vocal cords. He hushed her quietly, silently directing her to rest her voice. Zarah’s lips curled up slightly at the normalcy of the moment, his hand cradling her head to his chest with his thumb rubbing circles into the kitchen of her hair; a position they had taken countless times before. Her eyes fell closed, contentment spreading through her, battling all the negative emotions she felt.

"N'Danna and the Panthers will be coming soon," he informed. "Shuri has some alert set for when you woke up. She needs to check over your injuries."

Zarah nodded, finally registering just how much pain she was in. She didn’t realize her body could be in such agony. She ran through her memories, trying to understand what happened to her to cause such pain but she couldn’t. The last full memory she had was that man beating her in the caves. Then… there was nothing except small pieces. Her memory had holes big enough to fit Wakanda in them. Moments stuck out… she remembered the sound of water dripping, the cold hard floor beneath her, waking up tied to that chair. But the when, the what, the why? All the context that filled out the story that led to this moment? She knew none of it, it was all lost in her jumbled brain and she had no energy to attempt to locate it.

She appreciated the moment of alone time she was able to have with M’Baku, just to exist in his presence again. Being in his arms again felt like a hot drink after being in the frigid Jabari winter all day. After such suffering, it was needed. It was healing. Zarah was flailing in the ocean, alone and desperate to find something solid to grasp to stay afloat, to keep from drowning. M’Baku was her buoy. Her grip was not secure but it was there and that was more than she had before. Soon she would need to make the long journey back to real solid ground but until then, this would be enough.

A few minutes passed in silence, her eyes shifting from her husband’s face to their bedroom. Flashbacks quickly flooded her mind causing her body to tremble slightly. She could see the kidnapping playing in front of her as if it were being projected on a screen. She still taste the disgusting chemicals they drugged her with, still feel the fear that bubbled up inside her. M’Baku didn’t need enhanced abilities to register his wife’s rising panic, immediately attempting to soothe her with a gentle back rub.

"We can move to another room for a while or permanently. I will talk to T’Challa about visiting the Golden City. We could use a break from the mountains. I’m sorry, I should have realized being back here would be too much." 

Zarah desperately wanted to take him up on the offer. This room was nothing more than a hotbed of terrible memories to her now. It was no longer her safe haven, her respite from the outside world. Now… well she wasn’t sure what it was. Everywhere she looked - the sitting area where she was dragged across broken glass, the intricately wooden carved door where they choked her - all represented the moment her safety and security was ripped from under her. Her trauma mocked her mercilessly everywhere she looked. She didn’t want to stay here anymore, she couldn’t. But then she remembered tradition. These had been the chief’s quarters since the Lodge was built. Zarah may be able to leave temporarily but she would always have to come back. Better get used to ignoring the triggers now instead of running away, she thought. 

"T-t-these are the Chief’s quarters, where they have lived for centuries so this is where we shall stay. It is tradition. And you hate visiting Birnin Zana, you complain every time we go. We will st-stay here."

M’Baku frowned. "Little one, I would live in the Golden City for the rest of my days if it eased your heart. My comfort doesn’t matter right now."

"It matters to me. We shall stay here as all chiefs and their spouses do. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about me."

M’Baku scoffed. "Zarah… you can’t expect me not to be worried about you, I’m allowed to be worried after what happened. And you are allowed to not want to stay here anymore, regardless of what tradition dictates." 

"I said it was fine. Let it go please." 

It wasn’t fine. The despondent tone of her voice indicated that it was far from fine. The words sounded like a robot reciting the few words they were programmed to know. He knew he should push back but marriage was about picking your battles and this was not one of them. If it gave her a bit of control back to stay in this room, he would relent for now. Where they slept long term was a conversation that could wait. 

Both parties knew an emotional breakdown was inevitable and rapidly approaching the longer Zarah sat, stewing in the pieces she could remember and obsessing over the ones she couldn’t. She tried to keep it at bay by focusing on M’Baku but even that felt inadequate. She slid her hand down to his heart, feeling the steady pump of life through his frame. It reminded her of the countless nights she laid on his bare chest, the lullaby of his heartbeat helping her drift off to sleep. It had only been two days but that seemed like a lifetime ago. It felt like one of the legends she read in her books... a story of different people in a different era. She breathed in and out slowly attempting to sync her breath with his. It soothed her for a moment, inching her closer to the shore of normalcy.

M’Baku’s hands gripped around her to place her back bed and she squeezed his bicep to halt his movements.

"Can you hold me for a few more minutes?"

M’Baku’s already fractured heart split further at the sound of her voice: small, broken and quiet like a hurt child.

"Shuri will be here at any moment. She can’t examine you in my lap. You’ll be more comfortable in the bed."

She shook her head with as much veracity as the pain would allow, still refusing to meet his gaze. 

"I won't go anywhere. I'll be right here… but you need to lie down." He understood her fears but that didn’t stop his commanding tone from seeping into his words. It was a demand, a gentle one, but a demand nonetheless. She usually let him have his way but his will would not outmatch her stubbornness. 

"C-c-ca-can we just stay like this for a few more minutes, please?" Zarah begged, quiet and raspy. "I just… you don’t know how much I need this. You just don -" A few tears escaped and her voice broke as a small wave of emotions crashed over her. He held her tight again as she buried her face into his chest, light sobs racking through her. She just needed a minute, a minute to acknowledge her agony and trauma and then she could pull it back together. 

But a soft knock on the door interrupted her minute. She hastily wiped her eyes and swallowed her sobs as M’Baku called N’Danna and the Royal Family in. She pushed her emotions back into a cage, locking it, to deal with them later. She had to press forward and pulled herself together, recognizing that the time for tears was not in front of the king and the royal family.  

"Lady Zarah, Bast we are so thankful you are alright. Please know that you and M’Baku have our full support and any resources we can offer as you recover," T’Challa announced as he, Nakia and Okoye stood by the fireplace.

"Thank you King T’Challa. That means a great deal," she answered quietly. Zarah reluctantly loosened her death grip on M’Baku’s furs so he could place her back in bed. She tried but couldn’t stifled the outcry of pain that escaped as she moved. Her eyes shifted away from her audience, embarrassment spreading through her. He placed a lingering kiss to the top of her head that recognized how she felt but told her no one was judging, but that did nothing. She already hated that the Royal Family even knew this happened to her, let alone that they were her to witness her brokenness firsthand. What must they think of me? How could they still respect me or see me as an equal after this?

Shuri approached her and did a quick scan with her beads.

"You gave us quite the scare Lady Zarah. Your internal injuries are healing well. M’Baku didn’t want us pumping you with vibranium but to heal your internal injuries, we had to use some. It is two low doses, they take longer but they heal all the same. I worked with your healer and we only used it on injuries he couldn’t heal himself. He left some pain medication you can use, you will need it. Otherwise, I can only really prescribe rest and time. We wanted to let you decide but we can also use a healing pod. You will be as good as new in an hour but we would need to go to my lab to do it. If not, there was no permanent damage so all of your injuries should heal in about 6 weeks. The concussion and ribs will take the longest."

M’Baku let out a deep sigh of relief that none of Davu’s torture left irreversible damage to his wife’s physical health.

"I think the pain management is all we will need for now Shuri. Thank you," Zarah answered quietly. Zarah loved working with Shuri and learning about vibranium but she was a Jabari. She still had her own reservations about using the substance in everyday life even though she was far more accepting of vibranium than most. Small tech was one thing, however, her strict Jabari beliefs on healing and vibranium definitely didn’t mix. Her body was strong, it carried her through the worst possible circumstances. Any injuries that could heal on their own would, she didn’t need to depend on anything else.

Shuri quickly injected her with the final dose of serum. 

"Ok Lady Zarah. How much do you remember?" Okoye asked. 

"Um…. not much. There are so many holes,” she prefaced before launching into a recap of the kidnapping. “They grabbed me over there and I c-couldn’t get away fast enough. I tr-tried... really. And then I woke up in the.. in th-the...” Zarah voice fell away as she was transported back to that dark, damp room. She knew it was the caves from the dark grey jagged walls of rock surrounding her. She looked around wildly, the room had no doors… no escape. The walls were closing in on her, the air slowly leaving the space. She clawed at her throat, gasping for air as if she could force her throat to take in more oxygen that it was. She couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t think as her racing heart beat loudly in her ears. The room was getting smaller and smaller, her breaths shorter causing her panic to grow. I’m never getting out of here… there was never any esca-

"Zarah! Za! It’s ok, relax you are ok!"

A voice jolted Zarah back to the present where she opened her eyes to find her husband sitting in front of her, his hands gently cupped her face.

"It’s alright sweetheart. Just take deep breaths for me, please. You are safe now, you are ok," he kept repeating softly. He kept his voice even and tender, not wanting to exacerbate her panic.

She didn’t understand why he looked so concerned, she was just relieved to be free of that room. But then she heard it, the ragged gasps filling the space that were coming from her own body. Her hand weakly pushed into his heart again, trying to sync her breathing up with his. After slowing her breathing, she felt her lungs fill with enough oxygen to calm her body. She knew she was pushing herself too far too soon. But she couldn’t allow herself to break down, not yet. Her emotions were locked in a cage, constantly beating against their bars for freedom, growing restless to signal that they couldn’t be trapped forever.

"We should do this another time. She is not ready to talk about what happened," M’Baku declared as he dabbed the sweat from her upper lip and forehead with a warm towel. "She needs to rest."

"Understood. We can come back later to talk with Lady Zarah. The first concern is her well-being and mental health, of course," T’Challa answered empathetically. He motioned for the rest of the group to gather their things.

Her mental health, something about it rubbed Zarah the wrong way. She didn’t need the King of Wakanda concerned about her mental health.

"NO!" She shouted, louder than originally intended. She grasped M’Baku’s hand by the wrist to halt his ministrations before saying, "I can speak for myself. I apologize - it was a minor flashback but I am fine. I will tell you what I remember."

She could hear the shaking in her voice, it didn’t sound as confident as she wanted. But the message was the same.

"Are you sure? It is no trouble to come back when you feel stronger." She could hear the sympathy in T’Challa’s voice, like he understood her desire to push through.

"Yes, I am sure," she answered with increased conviction. Zarah refused to look at her brother and husband. She knew this wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted her to exist in her vulnerability and unleash her emotions. But Zarah knew if she fell apart now, there was little chance she would be able to put herself back together.

"Do you remember anything after leaving the lodge?" N’Danna asked. This wasn’t surprising. Shuri warned them that between her head injury and the trauma of the event, her memory was likely to be fractured at best. He didn’t expect her to give them anything useful but he knew his sister had a desire to push through. If she thought the expectation was that she offer them something useful, she would tell them anything she could remember. So, he opted to indulge her regardless.

"T-they had this man beat me for a bit. I must have blacked out. I don’t r-really remember how long that lasted... then they had me in t-this cell sort of thing. I dunno... I r-remember being alone with Davu at some point,”  she ran her hand through her hair, shaking her head as if that would lodge the memories loose, "I just don’t remember much. It is all just pieces." Her mind felt like pieces to a giant jigsaw puzzle but too many were missing to put the picture together.

"That’s quite alright, Zarah," Nakia assured her. "Don’t push yourself. Your memories can come back over time."

Zarah nodded. She hated this, hated not knowing what happened to her and not knowing why. She couldn’t stand not being able to help her husband put this situation to rest faster.

"So… Davu, did they do anything else? Did he…" Zarah voice grew small as it trailed off, unable to put her thoughts into the atmosphere. It wasn’t necessary, from the way M’Baku stiffened next to her and the tightened grip he had on her thigh, she knew everyone understood exactly what she was asking.

"No! No… there is no physical evidence that he did anything like that," Shuri answered quickly.

Zarah nodded, feeling something liken to relief. One of the few things she did remember was the thinly veiled threat of sexual assault he lauded over her head initially. She was thankful to know he, at least, didn’t get the opportunity to fulfill that threat. But relief at escaping one atrocity didn’t erase the knowledge of the others. Beatings…  she knew she should have been dead. Her survival was a fluke and nothing more. What did I do to defend myself? Did I try to escape? She interrogated herself. How could she have let this man do all of this to her? How did he get the opportunity? Why?

She wished she remembered more of her captor, wished she understood the reason for this chaos. After all, she had never even formally met him before this ordeal, only seeing him from a distance at M’Baku’s challenge day. Dead or alive, what use was Zarah to a man like him?

Her eyes shifted to the mountains outside her window, causing her to think about the mountains across the Lands he called home. They were cursed to her now, all the mountains across Jabariland. The mountains that once brought her peace transformed into the involuntary host of her kidnapping. The mountains that were the home to some of her most beautiful memories with her husband twisted into a barrier to hide her tortured screams and pleads for help beneath impenetrable walls of Earth. She knew she would never be able to look at those mountains or any of the Jabari ranges without thinking of all she lost, all that was taken from her. She walked away, some would reason that is all that matters, physically she would be fine in a manner of weeks. But that didn’t stop her from feeling like her soul was still trapped somewhere in those caves. He stole so much - her dignity, her sense of safety and security in her own home, her power. She wasn’t sure what she had left. 

Zarah’s mental trip was not unnoticed by the group in her quarters. T’Challa was the first to break her out of the trance.

"Lady Zarah… do you remember something else?" he asked.

"Uh - No, no that is it." She stammered as she wrung her hands together in her lap.

"Well, I have everything I need. With Lady Zarah’s account, we can legally hold them indefinitely. It will take some lengthy interrogations to determine who was a co conspirator and who were innocent bystanders."

"Davu... did he say anything when you apprehended him?" Zarah asked quietly. Zarah, still hyper focused on the snow light falling outside the window, didn’t notice the silent conversation happening around her. Nobody wanted to break the news that Davu couldn’t say anything because he wasn’t in their custody.

"No, he didn’t," M’Baku said, choosing to ignore the incredulous look N’Danna gave him. N’Danna pursed his lips before picking up his coat to exit. It wasn’t his place to out his chief and his lies, but he knew this wouldn’t end well. He stopped for a second and backtracked to the bed, leaning down and giving his sister a quick peck on the forehead.

"I am glad you are safe, sister. Hanuman knows, this one wouldn’t have survived without you." He winked and smiled before exiting.

"We will wait outside until Shuri is done," T’Challa said. "It is good to have you back with us Lady Zarah." He repeated before they exited.

****

Two hours later, Zarah had the all clear from Shuri, fresh bandages and wrapping for her ribs, and a dose of pain medication so she could finally sleep. Shuri’s warning about the long-term pain she would experience and the panic attacks she could have due to the mental trauma oscillated through her mind as M’Baku helped her out of the shower and dress for bed. And by help, that meant that Zarah stood there while M’Baku did everything. She felt like an invalid, unable to complete simple tasks like shower and dress herself. She hated it, how damaged she was. But mostly, she despised that M’Baku - her heart, her soul, her king - saw her this way.

Her shame grew tenfold when he pulled off her gown to help her into the shower, the evidence of her failure to defend herself laid bare before him. She knew what her body looked like to him - deformed and mutilated. She felt her guilt surge at the waves of anger in his eyes as they looked over every bruise and cut. He didn’t say anything about them as he helped her shower, washing her body for her. He kept his anger and emotions in check, every stroke of the loofa as he helped her was filled with gentleness and care. But still, Zarah felt it, even if he tried to hide it.

While Zarah considered his quietness to be indicative of his disgust with her appearance, M’Baku was simply using the time to finally evaluate his wife’s injuries for himself. He was pleased to see that the beautiful red glow of her skin was slowly making a reappearance. While that was progress, he was frustrated to see that the shaking in her body had yet to cease, reduced to a mere tremble. He asked Shuri about it and when they could expect that to stop but she didn’t know, only saying it was not due to an injury and would fade with time. The cut on her head was bandaged up with salve that would slowly heal it for her, the accompanying concussion would take more time.

He kissed his teeth, trying to control his rage as his visual survey continued south to her chest and stomach. Almost every inch was painted in blue and black bruises. Her back was filled with more of the same - rug burns, cuts and bruises. Lastly, he examined her wrists and ankles, which were similarly bandaged because her restraints cut into her skin deeply. M’Baku shook his head and breathed deeply, trying to release some of the anger he felt. A soft hand rested on his cheek.

"They look worse than they feel, my love," Zarah reassured him.

He nodded stiffly, not wanting to appear mad at her. He made quick work of drying her off before sitting her on bathroom counter.

"Stay here, I am going to go grab a shirt for you to sleep in," he said before retreating to the closest. He came back quickly, dressing her in one of his undershirts before placing her back in bed.

"How do you feel?" He asked tentatively as he pulled the furs over her.

"Much better," she responded truthfully. "Thank you my king." He quickly laid on his side to wrap his arms around her. She shifted uncomfortably, this wasn’t their usual sleeping position. But laying on her back was the only position that didn’t send shooting pains through her chest.

"You aren’t tired of holding me yet my King?" She chuckled lightly, her eyes trained on his chest as she mindlessly played with the edges of his undershirt.

"I could never grow tired of holding you, my queen. Not while I draw breath." He pressed a soft kiss on her forehead before settling next to her.

"You have not been taking care of yourself?" She murmured softly. It was a question but they both already knew the answer. The toll of the last two days wore clearly on the chief’s face and Zarah noticed it the moment she saw him. His mocha eyes were red and sunken with dark circles. His beard had grown unruly and worry lines were etched across his youthful face.

"Aye, my only concern was finding you. As my only concern now is making sure you heal. I could not rest knowing you were in danger," His fingers ran through her freshly-washed Senegalese twists as he spoke.

"I understand. I couldn’t rest without you either. I ju- I just don’t want you neglecting your health on my account. I am only one person but there is a whole tribe out there that need you at full strength. Promise me?"

M’Baku knew what his wife was doing; trying to gain some control back. His health was her favorite thing to obsess over. It annoyed him to no end but it was one of the many examples of how much she cared for her husband. 

"Yes, my lady. I promise. If you promise not to leave my aside ever again?"

"Not as long as I draw breath, my lord." She ignored her pain to sit up and kiss his lips before laying next to him again. He laid a soft kiss to the wrist that held her wedding bracelets and then her forehead, his nightly tradition, and draped his arm across her to pull her closer to him. They both knew a serious conversation was on the horizon - one that addressed the last two days and what it meant for their future and the tribe. But there would be time to talk, they would have hours, days to talk. All that was needed now was rest.

"Get some rest little one. I love you," was the last thing she heard before exhaustion claimed her.

*********

M’Baku waited until he was confident his wife was fast asleep. The sleeping aid in her pain medication knocked her out completely. When she didn’t move or give any indication that she could be stirring, he slipped out of their shared bed and out of their room.

"Jahari," M’Baku called quietly, letting his bedroom door shut softly before speaking again. The guard snapped at attention, saluting the chief and waiting for his instructions. "Stay here and watch over Lady Zarah. No one enters this room except me or N’Danna. No. One. For anything. Understand?"

"Yes my lord."

"Good. Call me if she wakes. Kide, with me." The guard nodded, shared a confused but determined look with his second in command before heading down the hall with M’Baku. The pair traveled through the Lodge, until they reached one of the spare storage spaces in the back corner, a former windowless office no one wanted or needed anymore. N’Danna was waiting with a hologram of King T’Challa.

Kide held the door to let M’Baku enter before starting to back out and close the door, intending to take his usual stance outside of the room.

"No, Kide! Inside. Right now, you three and Jahari are the only people I trust." The only reason Jahari wasn’t in attendance was because he needed someone trustworthy to look over Zarah.

"My lord… what is this?" Kide asked, used to protecting the inner circle, not being included.

"This chaos lays at the feet of Davu. And he will pay for his crime with his life. However, he couldn’t have done it without help. He has been five steps ahead of us since this started. There is a traitor in this Lodge. Lady Zarah’s guard… the maintenance staff… we don’t know. But we need to find Davu and finding the people who helped him is the key. This investigation doesn’t leave this room. Understand?" N’Danna asked.

"And no one tells Lady Zarah. Not a word of this. As far as she and the tribe knows, Davu is rotting in a cell," M’Baku informed.

"Lord M’Baku... you can’t expect to keep this from her forever. While she is still fragile is one thing, but what if we can’t find him? How long can you sustain such a secret?" T’Challa implored, understanding all too well the damage secrets bring.

"As long as it takes T’Challa. I refuse to tell my wife that I failed her again. I will tell her when I can bring her Davu’s head."

His tone signaled the finality of the conversation, his mind was made up and his opinion would not yield. T’Challa didn’t press the issue further, opting to let it go. The three men sat down around their new war table, everything they had pertaining to Davu and the kidnapping projected on the screen or laid out before them. M’Baku refused to stop or rest until he found this man and ended his life. He didn’t care how long it took.

****

Davu wished for the caves, at least they brought them a sliver of a reprieve from the unforgiving winds and cold whipping through the mountains. Forced to abandon his home and all he built while freezing and racing through the woods at night - he was furious. 

"That giant idiot oaf of a chief," he ranted. "A few more minutes… that’s all I needed to break her." His plan failed… a plan that culminated his life’s work… all for nothing. How could I have been so stupid to trust that deserter? He should have seen it from a mile away. They had spies in the Jabari after all… powerful ones. 

“There is one bright side to all of this, my Lord,” one of the men called.

Davu cut his eyes, trying to understand the bright side of failure, “What do you mean?”

“Your plan worked. You outsmarted him. They only found us because of a spy. You could have kept her for years and no one would have been the wiser. It’s not what you wanted exactly but a man like M’Baku? Stubborn, pride the size of the continent… K-knowing that he failed in finding his wife and let you escape? It will destroy him all the same. Slower than your spear yes, but it has the same results. As should be the fate of all who turn their backs on the glory of Hanuman.” 

Davu stilled, wheels churning in his mind as he reevaluated his expectations. 

“My lord?” Another called, confused by the break in their long march. 

Davu shook his head to himself and continued forward. “Let’s pick up the pace men. We must be there by sunrise.” 

He needed all the time he could get, all the counsel he could get to see his purpose and path through the storm ahead. 

****

@destinio1 @muse-of-mbaku @great-neckpectations @missmohnique @dawva @jellybean531

Set In Darkness

Chapter: 50 Author name: ShannaraIsles Rating: M Warnings: Tooth rotting fluff Summary: She’s a Modern Girl in Thedas, but it isn’t what she wanted. There’s a scary dose of reality as soon as she arrives. It isn’t her story. People get hurt here; people die here, and there’s no option to reload if you make a bad decision. So what’s stopping her from plunging head first into the Void at the drop of a hat?

The Promise

Chancellor Roderick eyed the couple in front of him.

"This is is highly irregular," he said mildly. "It is more usual for a Revered Mother to perform in such circumstances. Surely Mother Giselle would be a more appropriate person to approach?"

"You are a high cleric in the service of the Chantry," Cullen reminded him. "Your ability to witness and validate a marriage is no less meaningful than that of a Revered Mother. And, as you may well imagine, we do not believe Mother Giselle would be willing to accommodate us."

"And this is truly your wish?" Roderick pressed further. "To be wed private and without ceremony, with the Maker's blessing?"

Rory felt Cullen look down at her, raising her eyes to his with a soft smile. Perhaps people would think they had rushed; perhaps they would complain about being denied the opportunity to stand in witness, but neither one was comfortable to be the center of attention. They had spoken about it at length last night, wrapped in each other's arms beneath the blankets, punctuating each agreement with kisses and touches that were as much an exchange of vows as any overdone ceremony might be. Nothing would change with this step; they already lived as a married couple, people already knew they had chosen one another for life. Let Evy and Rylen have the grand spectacle and all the attention - Cullen and Rory neither wanted or needed it.

"It truly is, chancellor," Cullen answered for them both, laying his hand over Rory's fingers where they rested on his arm.

"Mistress Rory, you have stated that you do not believe in the Maker," the chancellor said then, wary of sounding disapproving but needing to ask. "By marrying in the faith of your husband, you are pledging to raise any children in the Maker's name."

"My lack of faith is my own affair," she told him quietly. "I will teach my children about the Maker and Andraste." And let them make up their own minds, she added silently, feeling Cullen squeeze her hand. It was good to know he agreed with her on that point.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Roderick. "Very well. Please."

He gestured for them to step out of the little chapel and into the garden, still in shade at this early hour. There were few people about, only a couple of herbalists harvesting in the only patch of sunlight, getting a head-start on the day's work ahead. For the sake of their requested privacy, the chancellor walked with the couple to the furthest end of the garden, where the stone gazebo hugged the wall. Despite knowing next to nothing about Andrastian weddings, Rory could feel herself grinning like an idiot, quietly excited to officially tie herself to Cullen. The inner fangirl was torn between knicker-wetting delight, sulking about the lack of a pretty dress, and profound worry that going through with this would somehow signal the end of the dream. Rory was ignoring that last one. She had no power to affect the outcome of whether she was here to stay or not; what was the point in worrying? If she lived as though expecting everything to be ripped away at any moment, she would hurt not only herself, but Cullen too. If she spent her days always looking over her shoulder, she might as well go and hide under a rock. For better or worse, she was a part of this story; surely a little happiness wasn't too much to ask?

Pausing, Roderick turned to them, his dour face solemn. "Do you come to this place willingly to pledge your lives to one another in the Maker's eyes?"

Again, Cullen answered for them both, with Rory nodding emphatically. "We do."

"Then let us begin." The chancellor raised his hands in benediction.

"In the name of the Maker, who brought us this world, and in whose name we say the Chant of Light, I offer the blessing of Andraste to this promised pair. As Andraste knew the love and duty of marriage to a mortal man, may you share in her faith and fidelity; and as she knew bliss as the Maker's chosen Bride, may you, too, find joy in your union. Cullen Rutherford, you have chosen to wed this woman in the eyes of mortal man. Will you swear by the Maker and Holy Andraste to honor her as your lawful wife, as long as you both shall live?"

Cullen took Rory's hands in his, smiling down at her as she watched him with loving trust. "I swear unto the Maker and the Holy Andraste to love this woman the rest of my days."

Somewhere in the back of Rory's mind, the inner fangirl collapsed in a quivering heap, squealing incoherently about the Trespasser DLC. Rory herself tried not to giggle through the thrill at those familiar words. It was just as well they had decided to do this quietly, virtually eloping while still within Skyhold's walls. If anyone but Cullen had been watching her, she would have snickered at this very inappropriate moment.

"Rory Allen." Roderick waited for her to school her expression before continuing. "You have chosen to wed this man in the eyes of mortal men. Will you swear to honor him as your lawful husband, as long as you both shall live?"

The slight change in wording was not lost on the couple. Rory glanced at the chancellor with surprised eyes, genuinely amazed that such a pious man would make the conscious choice to respect her belief, or lack of it, in such a thoughtful way. He nodded encouragingly to her, the corner of his mouth twitching as her smile blossomed once again.

"I swear," she said earnestly, lifting her eyes to Cullen's as she squeezed his hands, "with everything that I am, with respect for your Maker and your Holy Andraste, to love this man the rest of my life."

Cullen's fingers flexed about hers, his loving smile both hidden and visible as she took the words given and made them fit. They might not share faith, but they respected one another's viewpoint too much for it to cause friction between them, and the one point in their future that might have offered an argument had already been settled with their compromise of the night before. But even so, she could see how much her adjusted vow meant to him, to have her acknowledge his faith even as she swore by nothing but herself to be his. And he didn't seem to be the only one pleased.

Roderick glanced between them, pleasantly surprised by her agnostic twist to the vows shared. "It is traditional for some token to be exchanged at this point," the chancellor mused thoughtfully, "though your haste would suggest that you have not had the time to ..."

He trailed off as Cullen reached into his mantle, presenting a slender gold band on his palm with an almost sheepish smile. Rory bit her lip, feeling her heart constrict as she looked at the simple token of love. It shone in the light of day, the wheat sheaves engraved over its surface glimmering even here in the shade. Such a small thing, loaded with so much meaning. She swallowed as Cullen took her left hand between his own, feeling his fingers shake just a little as he spoke.

"Months ago, you gave me a token to wear, and I knew then that yours was a love I would spend my life trying to be worthy of," he told her softly, seemingly unembarrassed to have a witness to these words. Her eyes flickered to his throat, where the faintest glint of steel betrayed the mabari charm she had given him what felt like a lifetime ago. "This was my mother's wedding ring, and her grandmother's before her. I would like you to wear it, Rory Rutherford, and to know each time you look on it that you will never be alone again. You are a part of our family now ... which my sisters will never let you forget."

The sheer weight of resigned humor in those last words saved her from tears. He knew how she had voluntarily rejected her biological family; how she had thought of Ria as family, only to lose her brutally; how alone she felt sometimes, with no anchor to hold her steady. And he was bringing her home with those words - offering her not just his heart and his life, but the enfolding warmth of his family, certain they would accept her as one of them without hesitation. A bright smile lit up her face as he slid the cool band of gold to its new home at her knuckle, raising her hand to kiss it as she swayed toward him. Those beautiful amber-brown eyes never left hers, promising without the need for more words that this was their new beginning, together.

"I bear witness, in the name of the Maker, and Blessed Andraste, whom he loves, that these vows are binding and lawful," the chancellor intoned, raising his hands to bless them once more. "May no man seek to tear them down, for they are made in faith and love." He paused, an unexpected smile lightening his dour countenance. "As I understand it, this would be the part where you kiss your wife, commander."

"Thank you, chancellor."

Cullen's handsome face creased into a delighted grin as he leaned down to Rory, capturing her own smile in a soft kiss that was at once overwhelming and nowhere near satisfying. And over too soon, the pair of them drawing back to thank Roderick for performing the not-terribly-well-planned ceremony at such short notice. The chancellor demurred and congratulated them, quick to leave them to their own devices and hurry off to attend to his own duties, one of which was to officially record their marriage. Left alone in the garden, Cullen drew Rory into the gazebo, behind one of the wide pillars, to steal a few moments in kissing his wife with tender leisure.

"I have a question," Rory murmured to him with affectionate mischief, when they finally came up for air.

"When don't you have questions?" he answered, a rare glimpse of the playful commander outside the privacy of their quarters.

He laughed softly as she rolled her eyes, denied the ability to prod his stomach by the unyielding plate of his cuirass. "So lucky I love you," she muttered teasingly, raising her newly decorated hand between them. "How come this fits me? I doubt your mother's hands were a match for mine."

Cullen cleared his throat, somehow managing to look guilty and exceedingly pleased with himself in the same expression. "I may have measured your finger while you were sleeping, and asked Dagna to adjust the ring accordingly," he suggested as innocently as he was able.

Rory chuckled, duly impressed. "May have?"

"Did," he admitted, lowering his head to catch her lips in another slow kiss, muffling her laughter at his sneaky preparations for a proposal he'd never had the chance to properly plan out.

She melted into him, but they didn't have time to indulge in lazy kisses. Skyhold was waking up, and they both had work to do. "Think you can hold it in all day?"

"I will do my utmost," he promised teasingly. "If only to see the look on Dorian's face when we announce this to them in the tavern."

"That's the only reason?" she asked with a laugh, still giggling when he agreed with another grin of his own. "Good enough for me."

As he kissed her once more, they heard the chapel bell sound, summoning Skyhold to breakfast and the long day ahead. With Kaaras due to return within a few hours, there was plenty to do; plenty to fill their time and keep them from spilling their news before the agreed hour. It would not be difficult to convince their friends to join them in the tavern for an hour this evening, nor would they have to stay for the entirety of the inevitable celebration that would follow. But Dorian had been right - everyone should know at once, if only to prevent anyone from being the last to know.

With the unfamiliar weight of Cullen's ring on her finger, Rory left him at the door to the hall, moving to where she usually ate with Evy and the nurses, aware of him watching her from where he settled down to eat with his captains. The room was alive with morning chatter, most people excited about the return of the Inquisitor and the arrival of a new shipment from Val Royeaux on the same day. No one seemed to notice the the knowing smiles shared across the hall, or the glimmer of gold on her hand. Or if they did, they made no mention of it. For now, it was their secret, and one Rory was happy to revel in for just a few hours, buoyed up to know something no one else could, for certain. That would all change by nightfall, but for now, there was a thrill in being secretly married. Ria would be so proud.

Yes, I took certain liberties with what Roderick is technically allowed to do within the Chantry, but it worked for me, so I guess we've wandered into another layer of AU.

Sick anon here to say that should you feel so inclined to write more, I would be the absolute last person to object, but no pressure

well because you are so sweet and you are sick and your message made me happy, i mean

parts one, two, and three

The winter of 1838 in the state of Illinois is the coldest that anyone remembers. The rivers and ponds are frozen over a foot thick, and it snows every two or three days. The whiteness would be almost pure, if it wasn’t pocked and pitted with bloodstains from the starving, straggling, nearly-barefoot Cherokee Indians being forced to march by armed U.S. militiamen, evicted from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River, to accommodate a gold rush and expanding settlement in the states of Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. President Andrew Jackson signed the order; President Martin Van Buren is seeing it carried out. It will become known as nu na hi du na tlo hi lu i. Or rather and more simply, the Trail of Tears.

Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus, dressed in layers of fur and wool and greased leather and blankets, are still freezing solid. They are face to face with one of the ugliest and most unforgivable episodes in all of American history, and none of them are entirely certain what to do. Flynn went here straightaway after saving the Titanic, and he hasn’t turned up just yet. Wyatt and Rufus are staring at the huddled, shivering, sick Indians, herded by armed men on horseback, with looks of total horror, and Lucy can’t blame them in the least. She is the one who’s along to make sure history happens as it is supposed to. That is her job.

This, though.

This is absolutely terrible.

“I – ” She clears her throat, chokes on the cold air, and coughs. “I’ll go looking. Flynn might want to prevent the Indian removals from happening, provoke an outright war between them and the settlers. That way, the country is even more divided running up to the Civil War, and the Union won’t be able to – ”

“Probably,” Wyatt says, clearly not listening, as he keeps staring at the Indians. “Lucy, we… are we really supposed to just – what? Leave them like this?”

Lucy flinches. She is very close to grabbing a musket and shooting down one of the soldiers herself, like that’s going to do anything. This is the same paradox as with the Titanic – do they still have to stop Flynn if he does something objectively decent, saves lives, even if it’s in the interest of further destabilizing American history? What cost – her soul? – is it going to take if she stands and turns a blind eye and lets this happen, because America might be destroyed altogether by the Civil War if she doesn’t?

Doesn’t this deserve to be destabilized?

“I’ll go look for Flynn,” she repeats, barely above a whisper. “You guys sneak in there and at least see if you can – “

Rufus gives her a strange look. “Go look for Flynn,” he says. “Again. By yourself.”

“It’s working, isn’t it?”

“Is that all it is?”

Lucy opens her mouth, doesn’t know what to say, what she can possibly. She can’t tell them, but she hates keeping secrets from them. Surely they must suspect something. They spend enough time together, they know she’s turned oddly evasive and noncommittal on the whole subject. Still, though. This –

She’s still trying to say something, anything. She’s interrupted by a gunshot.

All at once, the camp turns into chaos as half a dozen men on horseback, dressed in black with bandanas over their faces and cowboy hats pulled low, gallop in, opening fire with the distinctive rat-a-tat-tat of modern machine guns. Lucy’s heart vaults into her mouth as she, Wyatt, and Rufus duck and run, preparing to try to shield the Indians, only for them to realize that the newcomers – they must be Flynn and his cohorts, who else would have AK-47s in the nineteenth century? – aren’t shooting at the Indians. They’re shooting only, and intently, at the soldiers, who are yelling and scrambling and bracing to fight back, but whose balky single-bore muskets are barely a match for the weaponry they’re faced with. And at that, somehow, something in Lucy snaps.

She breaks from cover, runs, grabs one of the muskets from where it’s leaning against a log, and doesn’t even know how to fire it, apart from the rudimentary. Points it, manages to cock it, and feels the incredible, jerking kick through her entire body as it goes off, almost deafening her. One of the soldiers yells and somersaults off his horse. She did that. Shot him. Like she did Jesse James, but this – James was going to die anyway. Who knows if this man was supposed to. It doesn’t matter. She’s crossed the Rubicon, she’s acted to consciously interfere and change history because she wasn’t going to let the injustice stand.

It’s happening.

She’s turning into him.

Just like he said.

Lucy’s frigid hands are numb on the polished-wood barrel. She has no idea how to reload, even as someone yells, points at her, and appears to take exception to the death of his friend. But then the next instant, one of the men on horseback gallops up, almost casually shoots him through the back of the head, and holds a hand down to Lucy. Familiar dark eyes gleam at her beneath the snowy brim of the cowboy hat. “Morning, ma’am.”

Lucy wants to say something, wants to yell at him – but the camp is still in total uproar, and instinct drives her to grab his hand, as he hauls her up on the horse in front of him and puts his arms around her. “Take the reins!”

“What, so you can shoot more people?” Lucy has to raise her voice over the crack and strafe of more machine-gun fire, even as the Indians, realizing this is some sort of rescue, are grabbing up their things and trying to run. “Are you –”

Flynn gives her one of those looks he does so well, shrugs, and swings the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, even as Lucy has no choice but to grab the reins or be pitched off in the tumult. She catches half a glimpse of Wyatt and Rufus trying to get the Indians to go, for however far they’ll get before news of the attack spreads. She feels numb and stunned (or maybe that’s just the searing cold) as Flynn takes aim, shoots down the guard in the rough-hewn watchtower built at the perimeter of the camp, and regards his handiwork with satisfaction. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” he says in her ear. “Destroying the bastards who deserve to be destroyed?”

Lucy doesn’t answer, in part because she can’t deny that this is exactly what she feels. It might not alter the entire outcome of the Indian removals, of the injustice of it – but try as she might, she can’t bring herself to wish that she did differently, even knowing that she’s on the verge of becoming the same sort of historical wrecking ball as him. Oh God. Oh, God. It is happening.

Flynn slings the rifle back over his shoulder, then canters off through the snow, her still clutching to the saddle, to the small log cabin on the far side of the clearing. He reins in, swings down, and pulls her off after him, shoving through the door and into the one tiny, dank, woodsmoke-smelling room beyond. Lucy stands shivering and dripping snow as he bends down, stacks some of the damp sticks of wood in the earthen hearth, takes out a modern lighter, and gets a fire going. “There,” he says, with considerable self-satisfaction. “Unless you wanted to get warm some other way?”

She chokes slightly at his presumption, even as she can’t resist moving closer; she is absolutely frozen through, and the warmth is heavenly. She stretches out her hands, feeling sensation slowly return, as he watches her with hooded eyes, leaning with studied casualness against the wall. Wyatt and Rufus will come back any minute, unless they haven’t realized just yet that they lost her in the uproar. Or they could be making sure the Indians get to safety. Anything.

“You shot the man, Lucy,” her companion says, after a moment. “You’ve gone past the point of no return, now. I told you.”

“I’m not interested in having this conversation.”

Flynn raises an eyebrow. “Fine. We don’t have to talk.”

“What – what happened in New York, it was completely a – “

“An accident?” He laughs, low and rough and derisive. “An accident, Lucy? Do you really think that? After everything that’s happened between us, do you think anything about this is accidental? You and I – we’re destined, somehow. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But you knew all the places I picked out in history. I care about it as much as you do. I know why it matters. And now you’ve had a taste, you’ve seen you don’t have to just sit back and let stupid and terrible and pointless things happen in the name of some evil, idiotic larger purpose. This is power. This is what you’re meant for.”

“That’s what my father said to me.” Lucy doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t dare. “About Rittenhouse. About how I’d come to it, one way or another.”

Flynn considers, then shrugs. Takes a step. She is horribly aware of his proximity, and the way her heart is racing madly beneath the shawl. “I think you’re choosing a side right now, aren’t you?”

Lucy turns to look at him, which is a mistake. He is very close to her now, and the expression on his face is – soft, almost. Utterly intent. She can feel the heat of his breath on her cheek, the warmth of the flames still on her back. He reaches out both hands, puts them flat against the wall on either side of her head, leaning down. And she’s lifting up her face, rising on her tiptoes despite herself, meeting him halfway, as they – for the first time, slowly, conscientiously, carefully – bring their mouths to touch.

Flynn is almost gentle as he kisses her this time, as his hands start venturing beneath the still-dripping wraps, getting just enough of the clothes out of the way to find his way in, and she gasps as his warm, rough hand cups the cold curve of her breast. His fingers trail down, seeking an invitation, not opposed to creating their own if necessary, and her leg comes up, foot braced on the woodpile, to lift her skirt. She is so very, very cold, and she wants so much to be warm, in any way that might present itself. Her fingers clutch at the wet wool of his jacket, sliding beneath, running along his chest, urging him closer.

He drops to his knees in front of her, pushing aside her skirts and drawers, hands bracing her thighs, as he leans forward and licks a rough stripe between her legs, in her wetness, that makes her moan. She can feel the buzz of his dark chuckle against her exquisitely sensitive folds, as he sets to his work with his customary cool, deliberate thoroughness. He does seem to enjoy this, giving her pleasure without thinking to ask any particular reciprocation, the relentless heat and pressure and insistence of his mouth like nothing and no one she’s been with before. Her breath stutters. She grips at his hair, pushing him deeper, as his tongue enters her and plays about. Kisses her inside, then moves up in slow, light motions to her clit. He has plenty to do to that too.

Lucy gulps, feeling nothing but searing heat dazzling through her, any idea or memory of cold completely obliterated. Once Flynn is finished with his very thorough exploration of her, he kisses the cut of her leg, running his hands down the backs of her thighs. Seems almost at peace, as if he might not quite care so much about what he does wherever he goes, but rather in that the knowledge that she will follow him, and this, however much she is still trying to deny it, is very likely to happen again. That he has ever so slightly altered his tactics, until she’s started to support him. Act of her own volition to help him.

This is surreal. She could still stop it. She could.

She doesn’t.

She tugs him to his feet, tastes herself on his lips as he leans in to kiss her, and starts to fumble at the complicated buttons of his trousers. Wants him in her, roused and slippery and quivering and wet as she is, wants whatever this is, wants it. He shifts, tugging them down over his hips, and she reaches for him,  caresses him with her thumb, hears him actually gasp as she circles the tip. Then he claims her with a quick, deep, matter-of-fact thrust, and she cries out.

Flynn lets out an even more self-satisfied sigh as he slides fully into her – the third time now, this is hardly a novel experience, and yet its attraction does not appear to be waning in the least. Both of them take a moment, as he closes his eyes and allows himself to absorb the sensation of completion, of possession. He is preparing to start to move, as Lucy rolls her hips on him, urging him to it – when, just then, the door of the cabin flies open.

Flynn jerks out of her lightning-fast, yanks his trousers back up, and spins around. Not quite fast enough.

“You,”  Wyatt Logan says, grim and furious, pointing the gun. “Get away from her right now.”

Long Ramblings about future planned playthroughs of mass effect under the cut, including some spoiler stuff

In this first playthrough of me1-3 I got honestly most choices and outcomes I wanted. Like I’m very paragon focused and managed to do most of what I wanted to do. But there are rly some tweaks here and there and also,, definitely some romance storylines I want to try. I did romance Kaidan, bc I liked the idea of my first playthrough 1-3 being one and the same romance, and in the end I’m happy with it.

But yeah I also just wanna play it again and get into the world and all, relive it.

So plan is, I played my first playthrough on my ps3 so my plan is to return to that for these, since I wanna rediscover it with my Shepard, the original. Bc the things I wanna explore does feel like things alt universe her would do (some choices and romance interests def). And I have no real want to replay me1 right now and no urgent things I need to fix.

- So first replay will be from me2 until the end of me3, to get the perfect ending for me2 and be able to solve some quests better in me3 because of it. Just get a more “fixed” playthrough but still in the vein of my Shepard. Garrus romance, since I was v tempted to do it the first time as well, and just, rly want to do it, I’ve heard a lot of good things and I wanna experience it myself, like it’s.. Garrus. My guy. It’s gonna hurt letting Kaidan down (already watched the hospital scene and yikes) but I don’t feel like replaying the entirety of me1 just to unromance Kaidan,, so I just gotta get through that.

- And then I wanna replay me2 again (bc it’s.. probably my fav to play out of the 3 honestly maybe it’ll change when I replay but what I feel for now is that) because I.. I gotta romance Thane. I was ready to have to avoid Garrus in me2 but I wasn’t ready for falling head over heels for Thane.. So yeah I gotta play that no matter how sad I’ll be. We’ll see how much I play of me3 though for that playthrough..

So yeah, all this I wanna do with my original shepard on the ps3. 

(I don’t rly have any plans for a maleshep playthrough. I’m fine checking up those romances/alt scenes on youtube. Like I don’t have the same need to play that personally) 

Then I have this problem. It’s called that I love to make fanvids, for mass effect it would be called gmvs. There’s, SO MUCH you could do and even if I would only use cutscenes, the stuff from all the games give so much material that you could work with. And it makes me excited.

So what I would WANT to do, is replay all the games on pc. Probably playing default femshep, use a lot of reloading saves, and capture relevant footage, turning off any subtitles. Other option would be to download stuff off of youtube, but that usually has subtitles, wouldnt be as extensive of video material and would have a wide range of different looks on the shepard. And just the downloading progress would be annoying. So I have a way I want to do it. The problem with that is well.. that I gotta do exactly that. It would take so much time just replaying it and to also capture the content. It would just... take so much time. If someone could pay me fulltime to be able to do this it would be fine but that’s.. not the world we live in. Especially if I wanna do these other previously mentioned playthroughs as well with my original Shepard, it would take ages before I even worked through them. 

(can someone just pay me fulltime for playing mass effect all day long and make videos for it thank you very much)

The Archon’s Review of King Arthur: A Roleplaying Wargame

King Arthur: A Rolplaying Wargame is a grand strategy game designed by NeocoreGames and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a dark time in Britannia. The king, Uther Pendragon, has died, leaving no apparent heir. In the wake of this power vacuum, all the petty kings of the realm have taken up arms against their neighbors in a bid for power and land. Then, Merlin appears with the sword, Excalibur, lodged in a stone in the abbey at Glastonbury. He says his piece, and then Arthur appears out of nowhere to do his thing. Except, when Arthur extricates the sword from the stone, magic returns to Britannia, Merlin disappears, and the Sidhe, the ancient fae, assert themselves, carving out a territory in the Bedegraine forest, just south of Hadrain’s Wall. Britannia is now on the brink of grandiose conflict, and you, as Arthur, the Once and Future King, must decide its fate.

I picked up KAaRPWG mostly on a whim, but I must say that, for the most part, it paid off.There is a lot to like here; although my expectations were not all that high, I was pleasantly surprised.

Let’s start with the lore. If you’re a purist when it comes to Arthurian legends, you may be a bit disappointed. KAaRPWG melds Arthurian legends with a healthy does of Celtic and Irish mythology. You’ve got the sword in the stone (Excalibur in this version, not Caliburn), the Green Knight, all the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, etc. You’ve also got the Sidhe, the distinction between Seelie and Unseelie fae, the Old Faith of the druids, and a belief in magic, all of which is inspired by old Celtic and Irish myths. The two mythoi actually blend quite well; this is probably the result of a singular aesthetic acting as a very effective backdrop for both sets of myths. There’s a sense here of a blending of time and space, wherein armored knights on horseback seem natural next to the mystical and strange Sidhe. References to the ancient Roman colonies that used to be on Britannia help complete the blend, creating a sense of a far distant past brought temporally forward to scrunch it up against the medieval knights and kingdoms of Britannia. But the Roman stuff works because the ancient, “Old Faith” aesthetic helps place us there temporally. Basically, what I’m trying, and probably failing to say, is that each element of the aesthetic and lore helps hold the others up so that when blended, they fit together perfectly.

^(The Once and Future King, just before everything goes downhill)^

The overworld map is very pretty, although a bit monotone. As we are in Britannia, we can expect mostly forests and grass lands, with rolling hills and a mountain here and there. I had a similar complaint about Eador. Genesis, but this game breaks up the monotony with a quartet of seasons, which pass one by one each turn. I really like the seasons system, and not merely because it adds snow during winter. See, each season actually does something. It’s not just cosmetic, and it’s details like this that really makes me appreciate a game. Dominions 4 and Endless Legend do something similar, but it’s not quite as strategic as it is in this. The year begins in Spring, which is when random quests and disasters appear on the campaign map, which you can then react to by sending your armies to deal with them. During Summer, armies are able to move much farther on the campaign map. The game says that Autumn is when your food comes in, but I don’t think that’s actually the case. Winter does a number of things. First, Winter forces all armies on the overworld to stop and set up camp. No armies can move during Winter. Second, Winter is when your taxes come in, and this is also when your food comes in, possibly because of a bug. Lastly, Winter is when you can interact with your stronghold(s), building new districts, researching new improvements for your kingdom, and managing your economy via the Chancellory, where you enact new laws, set decrees, and trade food for gold and vice versa. Then Spring rolls back around and new random quests appear. The seasons system is a really great way of marrying form and function, and I think it’s pretty neato.

Now, this is a strategy game, and strategy games tend to have playable battles where you can exercise that big ol’ brain of yours. And the combat in this game, well... it’s basically Total War. NOW THIS SENTENCE RIGHT HERE IS FOR ANY LAWYERS THAT HAPPEN TO BE READING; DO NOT TAKE THIS PARAGRAPH OR THIS REVIEW AND USE IT AS A MEANS FOR LITIGATION. I WILL BE VERY CROSS WITH YOU IF I HAPPEN TO FIND OUT THAT ANYONE WAS SUCCESSFULLY SUED BECAUSE OF WHAT I JUST WROTE HERE. LAWYERS, DO NOT USE OR MENTION THIS REVIEW. Right, now that that’s over with; yeah, the gameplay is basically magical Medieval:Total War. You take battalions of troops, march them around the field of battle, and use strategy and tactics to win. Hero characters, such as the Knights of the Round Table, have magical abilities you can call upon to turn the tide of battle, which is a neat addition. Also, individual units don’t have morale, unlike in a Total War game; instead, each side has a morale bar that increases or decreases depending on which side controls victory locations. These locations are things like monuments, stone circles, villages, keeps, ect. Another departure from Total War that I like is that once you’ve won a battle, the enemy army goes away entirely, even if you won via morale rather than extermination. This makes it so that you needn’t chase enemies down across the map after each battle like roaches in a kitchen

^(The first battle in the game. My troops are the ones in armor. Winning!)^

In between battles are quests. As mentioned, some are random, appearing during the spring season. The important ones, however, are related to the plot of the game. These are things like finding and hiring on a Knight of the Round Table, or determining whether the Old Faith or Christianity gains more power, or finding special artifacts. All quests, random and plot-relevant, are carried out via text-based decision trees. Some choices use one or more of a hero’s stats. In these cases, the text will be green if it’s a certain success, blue if the outcome is uncertain, or red if it’s a certain failure. This incentivizes you to have a variety of heroes on hand. It’s a bit of a problem if you need a mageknight and all you have are fightknights. The outcome of quests has various effects, such as gaining you artifacts, changing your morality, giving you more troops, or provoking a battle.

^(One of the early quests. Sir Kay here did a bang-up job of it.)^

I alluded to a morality system in the above paragraph, and this game has not a binary moral choice system, but a quaternary moral choice system. See, in the wake of Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, magic returns to Britannia, leading to a resurgence of what they call the “Old Faith”, which is worship of the Tuatha de Danaan, the old Irish deities. This causes friction between the believers in this Old Faith, and the followers of the still-new Christianity. Interesting sidenote: In the game, the Welsh are followers of the Old Faith, while the Saxons are the Christian invaders. But in real life, the Welsh had already been Christianized by Saint Joseph of Arimathea and the Irish by Saint Patrick, while the Saxons were so incredibly pagan that Charlemagne felt the need to deliver them the Cross via the sword. In addition to the religious conflict, there’s a virtue axis, each end of which is labeled “Rightful” and “Tyrant”. The game makes a point of stating that Rightful isn’t necessarily good and Tyrant isn’t necessarily evil, and that the axis is meant to measure your commitment to the ideals of chivalry. Although, in practice, benevolent acts increase your Rightful gauge, while malevolent acts do the opposite. Going toward one combination of religion and virtue is advised, as you get new spells, bonuses, and unit choices for doing so, and I also imagine it affects what ending you get.

^(The morality chart. Fun fact, the terms the game uses for Rightful-Old Faith and Tyrant-Old Faith are Seelie and Unseelie respectively. This means that from a religious standpoint, there’s actually three sides you can choose from, Christian, Seelie, and Unseelie. I guess Christianity doesn’t care whether you’re a moral person...?)^

Now, the things I talked about are all very effective and fun, and I like them a lot. But here comes the problems are there are a few. First off, the game is hilariously unstable, especially the further you are into it. The most common bug I found was the game giving me a “Runtime error” during loading screens and crashing to desktop. Sometimes the game even just cuts out after the loading screen, but just after I unpause the game to start a battle, dumping me straight to the desktop. I even encountered a really weird bug where, when I reloaded a save, there was snow on the ground even though it was autumn, and after I hit the “next turn” button, I was prevented from opening the menu to save or quit, and I couldn’t end the turn again. I was stuck in perpetual winter. I mean, I know the Starks were all like “Winter is coming” but I didn’t think it’d stay forever. In fact, these glitches came up so often that I actually did make a print screen and paste it into paint; you remember, the thing I said I wasn’t gonna do in my Fallout 2 review.

^(Fun fact: when I inserted this image, it kept flickering for a second or two before it settled. Hopefully it’s not cursed.)^

Also, the AI isn’t particularly engaging. With a little bit of strategy and good judgement, it’s possible to win a battle with a force half as powerful as your enemy’s. This isn’t to say that the battles aren’t fun or that there isn’t any risk involved, but just that the AI isn’t as amazing as one might desire out of their grand strategy experience.

The game is really bad at telling you how to get plot quests to appear. You get hand-held through the first set of plot quests; the first book, as the game calls it. But then, things just sort of happen. And eventually, you start coming up on quests from books three and four just because... enough time has passed? That would be my guess anyway. Eventually, I did figure out how to get the quests to appear, but it didn’t feel like a natural story progression. A few pro-tips in the plot quest department: First, conquering territory gets the quests from book two to appear. I’d suggest trying to take the Mercias (There are two, East Mercia and West Mercia), and any small kingdoms you may have left. Second, do not conquer Wales or the Saxons; they’re quest-important. Lastly, around turn 150, something really important happens, so get the quest “The Vision” finished up by then.

One last thing that really bugged me. There’s no way to tell what your income is until winter time, so you have to make absolutely sure that everything in your economy is squared away by then or else you might find yourself up a creek.

ለማገባደድ, despite the bugs, I would absolutely recommend King Arthur: A Roleplaying Wargame to anyone who’s into fantasy, Arthurian legend, grand strategy, or swords and sorcery type stories. It’s got a lot to like, and a lot of really neat ideas and aesthetics. I am probably totally going to keep playing it, at least to the regular campaign’s conclusion. Now, this being a game taking place in the early Middle Ages, there are instances of arranged marriages, with you deciding which maidens marry which knights. There is something to be said about how doing so improves the knights’ abilities, basically turning them into stat boosting objects, but this is justified somewhat in that the attributes that boost stats are personality traits, and it would make sense for a person to be influenced by a person they spend a lot of time with. What is perhaps more disturbing when one gets into fridge logic, is that these maidens can be bartered to certain groups on the map, such as rebels or mercenary groups. The game wants you to believe that you’re arranging marriages between the rebel leaders and your maidens, but because doing so makes use of the same interface as bartering artifacts or gold, it really presents the unfortunate implication that you may be selling these women into slavery. Is that what’s really going on? Prrrobably not, but once the whole “slavery” possibility occurred to me, it wouldn’t be shaken. Really, the sexism problems this game has are the same ones that plague any game that takes place in Medieval times, and the same ones that plagued Medieval times (the time period, not the restaurant). Although, it is weird that each of the female heroes have an ability that gives them a stat boost in return for being prohibited from riding horses... Yeah, I thought that was weird.

^(One of the Sihde, on the right, compared to a group of puny mortals on the left. Like, dang. Why haven’t those guys taken over Britannia on their own?)^

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Previously posted on the Frictional Games blog. 

                     Say you are playing a game like The Walking Dead, or any other interactive movie, and you are faced with the choice whether or not to help someone who is hurt. You decide that you want to help the person, after which you never see them again for the rest of the game. Reloading a save and playing through the scenario you find out that if you chose not to help, the same thing plays out. Simply put: in this case, your choice really has no consequences.

While the scenario is made up, it presents a very typical situation that opinions are heavily divided on. Some people are totally okay with it for various reasons. But others will argue that this lack of consequences ruins the entire experience, as your choices doesn't really matter. It's really easy to say that people who feel this way are simply playing the game the wrong way or are not properly immersed. However, I think it's really important to investigate this reaction further as it gets us closer to some fundamental problems of narrative games.

The argument from people who get annoyed by these non-choices goes something like this: if every branch leads back to the same path, then you really don't have any say in how the game plays out. You are not playing a game, you are only pretending that you are. It's like when you are playing a split-screen game and notice you've been watching the wrong side. The feeling of play is just an illusion. Nobody would tolerate a Super Mario where a pre-written script - not the player's skill - determines whether or not they survive a jump, so why tolerate games where all choices lead to the same conclusion?

One could counter that by saying the intention is to put you into a hard position and the game is about your varied emotional reactions as you ponder the different choices. It isn't about affecting how the game plays out - it is about making an emotional journey. If you require the game to show you the consequences of your actions, you are not immersed in the game's story - you are simply trying to optimize a system. This might sometimes be the case, but I also think this line of thinking is missing what the actual problem is: the failure of the player's mental model.

                                                                   ---

Let's start by breaking down the problem. A mental model, as explained in this previous post, is how the player perceives the game's world and their role in it. As you are playing a game, you slowly build a mental model of the various objects and systems that make up the game and attach various attributes to them. At first a box might just be a piece of the background, but as you learn you can destroy it in order to gain items, attributes are added. The object gains complexity. The reverse can also happen. For instance, when you first see a character you might think that you are able to speak to it and therefore label it with various attributes you know that humans usually have. But when you find out that the character is really just a piece of the background without any sort of agency, most of those attributes are lost.

Your mental model of a game is something that is continually revised as you are playing, and it is something that always happens, no matter what the game is. In fact, this is a process that is a core part of any medium, including books and films. So, obviously, when you are playing an interactive movie game, you are not simply reacting to a direct stream of information. You are answering questions based on your mental model.

Take my "will you help your hurt companion?" scenario from above. The knowledge you take into account about that choice is not just what is currently projected at you from the TV screen. It is a combination of everything you have gone through up to this point, along with a bunch of personal knowledge and biases. Even basic concepts like "hurt" and "companion" aren't just created in this moment. They are ideas that the game has spent a lot of time building up, be that for good or bad, from the very moment you started playing.

When you are faced with the hypothetical scene of  a hurt companion, you are not just dealing with an animated image on a screen. You are dealing with a whole world constructed in your mind. This is what your choice will be based around. While it might objectively seem that everyone is reacting to the same scenario, they may in fact be dealing with quite different setups.

So when someone gets annoyed by the lack of consequences, it is not necessarily the direct consequences that are missing. The issue is that they have constructed a mental around a real person in need, along with that person's future actions. So when it becomes apparent that the game doesn't simulate that as part of its own model, the player's mental model is broken and it feels like a big let down. Remember that we don't play the game that is on the screen, we the play game as we perceive it in our heads. So when it turns out that your imagined world is fake, it has a huge impact.

It gets even worse once we take into the fact that planning is fundamental to a sense of gameplay. As explained in a previous post, engaging gameplay is largely fueled by the ability to make plans. The way this works is that the player first simulates a course of action using their mental model, and then tries to execute that in the game. This is a continuous process and "planning and executing the plan" is basically the same as playing. Interactive movies normally don't have a lot of gameplay and it is really only in the choice moments that the player gets to take part in any actual play. Hence, when the choices turn out to have no consequences, it becomes clear that planning is impossible. In turn, this means that any meaningful play is impossible and the experience feels fundamentally broken.

As an example, take this experience I had with Heavy Rain:

[...] one scene I had made a plan of actions: to first bandage an unconscious person and then to poke around in his stuff. There really was nothing hindering me from doing so but instead the game removed my ability to interact directly after caring for the person. The game interpreted me wanting to help the guy as I also did not want to poke around, thinking that they two were mutually exclusive actions. Of course I thought otherwise and considered it no problem at all to do some poking afterward.

I think that people to complain the loudest about the lack of consequences are extra sensitive to situations like this. But, as I said, this is not due to lack of consequences per se, but due to the impact it has on the consistency of their mental model and sense of play. It is really important to note that this is not due to some sort of lack in immersion or ability to roleplay. On the contrary, as I have described above, many of the issues arise because they mentally simulate the game's world and characters very vividly.

                                                                 ---

So the problem that we are faced with is really not a lack of consequences. It is because the underlying systems of the game are not able to simulate the mental model for a subset of players. One way of mending this is of course to add more consequences, but that is not a sustainable solution. Additional branches increase exponentially, and it quickly becomes impossible to cover every single possible outcome. Instead it is much better to focus on crafting more robust mental models. Sure, this might entail adding consequences to choices, but that is just a possible solution - it is not the end goal.

As I outlined in the previous blog on the SSM framework it is incredibly important to keep track of how systems and story help form a mental model in the player's mind. For instance, if you start your game saying "your actions will have consequences", that will immediately start filling up your player's imagination with all sort of ideas and concepts. Even how pre-release PR is presented can affect this. All of these then become things that lay groundwork for how the game is modeled in the player's head and it is vitally important to make sure this mental model remains stable over the course of the game.

One of the main things to have in mind is consistency. Remember that as someone is playing a game, they are building up a mental simulation for how things are supposed to work. If you provide information that certain events are possible when they are in fact not, you are running the risk of breaking the player's mental model. You either need to remove this sort of information or to make sure that they never take part in situations where these sort of events feel like a valid option.

However, the most important thing to keep in mind is the ability to plan. A major reason why the lack of consequences can feel so bad is because these consequences were part of the player's gameplay plans. So when it becomes apparent that they don't exist, the whole concept of play breaks down. In all fairness, this might be OK for certain genres. If the goal is to simply to make an interactive movie, then losing a subset of player might be fair. But if the goal is to make proper interactive storytelling, then this is of paramount importance - planning must be part of the core experience.

That doesn't mean that every choice is something the player needs to base their plans on. But in that case then there need to be other things that lie on a similar time scale and which are possible to predict and incorporate into plans. I think that one way around this problem is to have a more system-focused feature that runs alongside the more fuzzy narrative choices. When the players make choices, their mental model will have the best predictive skills around this more abstract system, and play revolves mostly around this. Then when more narrative choices are presented they will feel more game-like and part of the a solid simulation, despite not really having any consequences.

A simple and good example is the choices you have to make in Papers, Please. This game is driven by a type of survival simulation where you need to gain credits (though doing proper passport check) in order to keep your family live. Entwined into this are choices about who you will allow into the country. Many of these don't have any far reaching consequences, but that that doesn't really matter because your ability to plan is still satisfied. But despite that, these choices still feel interesting and can have an emotional effect.

 This sort of approach relies on combining several elements in order to produce the feeling of something that might not actually be there. This is something that is used in a wide range of applications, from how we view images on a TV, to how films can create drama through cuts. We don't always have to have solve problems straight on, but often the best way is to split the problem into many and to solve each problem on its own. The combined effect will then seem like a solution to the original problem. This is a technique that is super important for not just this, but many other narrative problems. I will write a blog post later on that goes into more details.

Once you have a game that is consistent and that has some sort of planning apart from the more narrative choices, the probability of satisfying the people will be greatly improved. And not only that, your narrative experience will improve over all, for all players, not just a subset. In this case I think it is fair to view these extra sensitive people as canaries in a cave, something that is first to react on a much bigger issue.

                                                                ---

This blog post by no means presents the solution to end all problems with choices and consequences. But hopefully it will give a new way of thinking about the problem and some basic directions for finding a solution. I don't think we will ever find a perfect way of dealing with choices, but the better informed we are at underlying causes, the better experiences we can provide.

UnderLate: Broken Fate. Chapter 10

Undyne watched as that dark version of Sans raised his hand, reloading his weapons. She was wounded, unable to dodge them again. Undyne closed her eyes, waiting for the blow. At least that way she would stop feeling, of being alone. She would have liked to see Alphys again, daring to say something to Papyrus, to see Asgore reach Snowdin…but she had failed them. To everyone, even to herself. The seconds before her death became eternal, she heard the final noise, the weapons were loaded. But what she heard wasn’t the shot but the scream of the girl. Opening her eyes, she was surprised to see the human in front of her. Her body turned to shield as her hand held the skeleton's, making it slowly lower. "You can’t do that," Undyne heard Frisk say, “Friends don’t hurt and she is, even if you think otherwise.” "Frisk, you can’t defend her," Sans said. "If I do, for Papyrus. He cares by Undyne, in spite of everything. Yes, I know it happened between them.” Undyne watched as Frisk looked at her out of the corner of her eye, lowering her, devoured by guilt, “How do you think Papyrus will feel when he finds out that his brother has finished with her friend? If you don’t do it for me, do it for him. Don’t hurt Undyne” Undyne didn’t believe in what her eyes saw. Sans, the vengeful monster who longed to kill her, was doubting by the words of that human. The intensity of the brightness of the blaster diminished, soon it was extinguished, while the one of its eye, returned to be the normal Sans. Then Frisk turned to her and held out her hand. "What are you doing, brat?" Her pride prevailed, she didn’t want to accept her hand. But she wouldn’t bring her down, a smile on her face, “I don’t need help.” "Come on, it's okay to let yourself be helped. It doesn’t make you weak if you are with a friend.” "You and I aren’t friends. We can’t be!” "I want to be your friend, Undyne. Papyrus told me things about you, you taught him to cook, right?” "No ... don’t use him." "You said Asgore is coming for me. Well, you don’t need to hunt me anymore. He will, will not he? I don’t know what will happen, but before, I want you to do me a favor.” "Arghh ... you saved my life, so I guess I owe you." Undyne looked behind her. Sans looked calm, smiling, but when he noticed her look, his eyesockets turned dark. Apparently she had no choice but to give in to the human, “And what do you want, punk?” "Something easy," Frisk said, helping her up, after Undyne accepted her hand, “I want you to come with me, see Papyrus and do what you had to do a long time ago.” “What?” Said the two monsters at once. "Sorry, I thought it was clear," Frisk said, shrugging her shoulders, “Please, it was very easy, I thought you were both smarter. So, let's go?” “But what...” "It's like talking to my brother," Sans said, taking both of them and dragging them along the path he wanted, “Come on, I know a shortcut. I refuse to return to the same path, I have walked enough.” “You’re a lazy, Sans” “I’m adorable” “You're trash, fuck you, Sans!” Bob's voice was heard. "Hey, what does that verb mean?" "He said bite you, he doesn’t know how to vocalize." In a second, Sans caught the rebellious Temmie with his power and returned it flying to his village, “He says it because I'm good to the bone.” "Oh, my God, Sans, they're getting worse! And why did you throw him?” “He deserved it. Come on, girls. "Before he left, Sans glanced over to where Bob was still flying, “Get dunked on, Bob.” ** “Hello, did you miss us?” Sans said as he opened the door to his house. It wasn’t long before Papyrus came out of the kitchen, the wooden spoon in his hand. "Sans, you've been out almost all afternoon!" Frisk has not even eaten"  In that, Papyrus saw what was behind his brother. Frisk was fine, though she was carrying an Undyne who grimaced in pain, “Oh god, what happened?” "Is Frisk right?" Toriel stepped out of the kitchen, where she was watching dinner. With Pap, she had taken care of the dessert with one of her pies. "Safe and sound, mom. But Undyne has had a little accident and we've helped her.” "Wowie! But, what kind of accident?” Pap asked, not seeing his brother's face. With Frisk they put Undyne on the couch and examined the wound. "Don’t worry, Papyrus, sometimes I'm a bit clumsy," Undyne said, hiding the real reason for her injuries. On the other side she saw Sans's gesture of appreciation. "Don’t talk nonsense, Undyne, you're not clumsy, you're very strong. But we have a bad day sometimes. Frisk, go to the bathroom and bring me the first aid kit, in the closet next to the shower.” "With a little food she'll be well soon," Tori said, returning to the kitchen, “I hope you like the snail cake.” "You made a snail's pie?" Frisk's eyes gleamed as his guts began to ring, “Wow, I'm hungry.” Undyne watched as everyone except Sans moved through her, even though their last encounter hadn’t been very good. Between Frisk and Papyrus they healed their wounds, while Toriel finished preparing the food. Undyne looked at Pap, it seemed unbelievable that he continued to worry about her like this. "I didn’t know you needed glasses," Undyne said, trying to start a conversation that cost her more than she believed. "I don’t focus well, but I didn’t want to put them on for aesthetics. I saw them  like a nuisance. Even now, at Grillby's it fogs me. Neither is anything serious, you don’t have to worry about me.” "What I don’t understand is, how the hell do you get them? If you don’t have ears or nose.” “At last!” Frisk shouted, “I thought I was the only one wondering what!” "Don’t you know the power of magic?" Sans said from his side, “Although, do you really want to talk about that with Paps, Undyne?” "No, it's true." Undyne took a deep breath before continuing. She turned to face Papyrus on the couch, waiting expectantly. Sans noticed the difficulty of Undyne, without them realizing turned blue to Frisk and took it to its corner, leaving space to them. The girl didn’t complain, she understood, “Papyrus, I ...” "Is something wrong, Undyne?" Asked the skeleton. "I should have done this a long time ago," she sighed, “Papyrus, I'm sorry for everything I said to you that day. With the disappearance of Alphys and all that happened, I paid with you and said things I didn’t feel. I don’t think you're useless or that I wasted my time training you. What's more, you proved it when you confronted me by the punk girl ... you could enter the Royal Guard, you are strong. But, if I lengthened your training so much and doubted it was because I was afraid. “Afraid?” “You're the most fucking good and sweet guy in the underground, Papyrus. I was afraid that if we went out and went to war with the humans, they would hurt you. Killing someone changes you and I don’t want you to. You're cool just the way you are and ... well ... I'm worried about losing that Papyrus. Sorry to have done that to you, it was your dream and I destroyed it by my fears ... in the end if I lost you. I shouldn’t have decided for you.” After Undyne's confession, there was silence, everyone waited for Pap's reaction, even Toriel, hidden behind the kitchen frame. When he finally reacted he surprised Undyne, who received one of the skeleton's surprise hugs. "Wowie, you should have told me before. You were just worried about me! Like a good friend.” "It didn’t matter, I was unfair to you. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” "Hey, we all make mistakes, Undyne.” Said Papyrus, giving him a smile to calm her down, “Maybe I did wrong too discouraging myself. But I'm beginning to feel better. A little human sees me as his hero, apart from my brother, of course," he said, looking at Sans and Frisk, “I like my job as a cook, but I don’t deny that my dream is still there. I thought he was very weak. I felt sad because I thought I was disappointed you.” “You never did, I was the one who disappointed you. I am sorry. I just get everyone away from me.” "That won’t be the case anymore." Papyrus hugged her again, smirking at her, ”Welcome back to the family. I would like you to be my friend again.” "If you want ... yes, I will. And, if you wish ... I can continue teaching you what you want ... to cook, we can train as before ... I have too much free time.” “Great!” Papyrus said, “Oopsie, Toriel will need help.” "No need,honey" came the voice of the queen. Likewise, Papyrus went to the kitchen, leaving Undyne with his brother and the human. The captain approached Frisk, feeling like the skeleton's gaze kept his eye on her, intent on her movements. This time she didn’t care, she wasn’t going to do anything wrong. "Okay," she said, holding out her hand to Frisk, “You have earned it.” "Uh?” "My friendship," said the fish girl, smiling, “I must thank you for taking this step. I'm still on Asgore's side, but before the outcome, I'd like to meet you, Frisk. Would you be willing to give me the opportunity ...?” "Yeeaaahhh!” Before finishing, Frisk threw herself into her arms, happy for the new friend. They all dined together, including Undyne who, after clarifying her friendship intentions with Frisk to Toriel, was forced to stay to taste the Papyrus spaghetti, which Frisk repeated, leaving everyone astonished by that taste for the kitchen of the skeleton. She even had space for dessert, which Sans refused, changing it for a bottle of Ketchup. He had to be awake for his plan, when he'd gone for his bottle he'd started orchestrating it. It didn’t take long for him to teleport to his lab to pick up the sleeping pill and mix it with the cake that made sure everyone ate until they finished it. Soon it took effect, Undyne slept on the couch while Toriel and Frisk shared his room. He took Papyrus to his, and after reading his story, lay down beside him, had to be careful not to fall sleepy, to be with his brother always calm him, sometimes too much. But he had to be sure. A couple of hours later and miraculously awake, Sans left his brother's bed and walked stealthily to his room. Luckily, Toriel didn’t share the bed with her daughter, his plan would be more difficult. Sans made sure Toriel slept deeply on her folding bed before looking for Frisk. Although she was a little taller than him, his pajamas were worth it. "I'm sorry to do this to you, Frisk," Sans whispered, catching the girl in his arms. From her little confession at Waterfall, he continued to think about her amnesia. And her words hadn’t helped him relax, “But I need to know, whether or not you're ready.” And, before they knew it, he teleported with her, to their destination in Hotland.

Self-destruction & freedom.

An onlooker could almost feel the pelt of the hail,

Taking in the sounds it made against the handrail,

As a disheveled man stood atop the stairs,

Shivering, as ice formed around the tips of his hairs.

He couldn’t have known, but he had an hour to live.

Better make it worth it.

Whether or not I deserve it is irrelevant.

To answer the question I certainly can’t.

Not that anyone deserves anything,

As we’re all doomed to be radically free.

And that freedom scares me.

I don’t trust myself to make decisions,

I can’t, I just screw everything up.

I’m happy for a while, and I burn it all down,

Like the self-destructive person I am.

I’m a slave to my passions, and that slavery

Is what will doom me.

A second man entered atop the roof.

His hands were wrapped around vial in his pockets,

As he marched closer to the disheveled man.

A mix of anxiety and excitement overtook the face of the disheveled man.

Sometimes he prayed that no one would come,

And he could finally be free.

As if the dealer was the one that created his dependance.

Everything he had done of his own volition,

Even in that small moment, he had the power to run.

And the fact that he didn’t proved his prayers to be

Nothing more than easy justification for why

He continued on into his downward spiral.

When I look in the mirror, what do I see?

A liar. A narcissist. An autist. Someone no one would want to be around.

Yet I sat in the basement of that building, with the two

Girls I had feelings for, playing with my hair, asking to hook up.

I had to pick one.

No, I could pick both. I had been offered a three way!

Like the autist I am, I sat there with my thumb up my ass,

Trying to avoid any kind of agency in my decisions.

But when a person is free, and they have to make a choice.

And trying to make no choice, is a choice within itself.

So I picked.

With the last few dollars he had, the man paid for the vial.

He took it into his own pocket and walked off.

He owed too much money. He would be dead within a week.

If he were to die, at least he could do it on his own terms.

He was free, after all.

I wish life was a game. Even in games claiming to be all about choice,

You can still reload a save and remake that same choice.

Maybe a cartoon flower will call you a bitch,

But at least you saved a life.

Being able to go through every choice to pick the best outcome…

What a lovely fantasy.

Because now I ponder, have I doomed myself?

Doomed to be alone, ashamed of my previous actions.

Must I put myself on a personal leash?

Never to meddle in the affairs of others?

Have I made anyone’s life better?

So many have made mine, but I doubt I could ever say the same.

So I have to stop.

I can’t continue to be self-destructive.

Half an hour had passed, the man was back in his room.

He laid on his bed, with his eyes closed.

A syringe was stuck in his arm.

He made no attempt to pull it out, he knew he wouldn’t

Come out of this alive.

As his consciousness faded, he thought of his life.

Was it a good one?

He saw his loving family, his happy childhood,

How everything had been great.

He had a future. He had people that cared.

He was the happy child that would make you smile on the street.

But his freedom had lead him down this path instead.

His agency had doomed him.

His final thought was an incoherent jumble of pictures and symbols,

But to him, it represented inescapable regret.

And a once happy child died on a bed bug ridden mattress, with a heroin needle sticking out his 

Arm.

But the beauty of agency is that for as much as you have the power to fuck up,

You have the power to make things right.

Until the day my body ceases to move, I will always have the power to be good.

And no matter the situation I find myself in,

I can do the right thing.

Not out of obligation, but love.

Love for those around me, and love for all those I know that care about me.

I used the story of the addict to illustrate how petty my problems are.

Like the addict, my problems stem from my freedom and self-destruction.

But I have not fucked up enough to where I can’t come back.

Until I too feel the lustful desire to die in a crack den on heroin,

I’ll be free.

That freedom may be good, it may be terrible, but both possibilities exist.

And no matter how much I destroyed one night,

I can try my best to make it right in the morning.

I may be told to fuck off, and things may never be the same,

But I can never strip my freedom.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Previously posted on the Frictional Games blog. 

                     Say you are playing a game like The Walking Dead, or any other interactive movie, and you are faced with the choice whether or not to help someone who is hurt. You decide that you want to help the person, after which you never see them again for the rest of the game. Reloading a save and playing through the scenario you find out that if you chose not to help, the same thing plays out. Simply put: in this case, your choice really has no consequences.

While the scenario is made up, it presents a very typical situation that opinions are heavily divided on. Some people are totally okay with it for various reasons. But others will argue that this lack of consequences ruins the entire experience, as your choices doesn't really matter. It's really easy to say that people who feel this way are simply playing the game the wrong way or are not properly immersed. However, I think it's really important to investigate this reaction further as it gets us closer to some fundamental problems of narrative games.

The argument from people who get annoyed by these non-choices goes something like this: if every branch leads back to the same path, then you really don't have any say in how the game plays out. You are not playing a game, you are only pretending that you are. It's like when you are playing a split-screen game and notice you've been watching the wrong side. The feeling of play is just an illusion. Nobody would tolerate a Super Mario where a pre-written script - not the player's skill - determines whether or not they survive a jump, so why tolerate games where all choices lead to the same conclusion?

One could counter that by saying the intention is to put you into a hard position and the game is about your varied emotional reactions as you ponder the different choices. It isn't about affecting how the game plays out - it is about making an emotional journey. If you require the game to show you the consequences of your actions, you are not immersed in the game's story - you are simply trying to optimize a system. This might sometimes be the case, but I also think this line of thinking is missing what the actual problem is: the failure of the player's mental model.

                                                                   ---

Let's start by breaking down the problem. A mental model, as explained in this previous post, is how the player perceives the game's world and their role in it. As you are playing a game, you slowly build a mental model of the various objects and systems that make up the game and attach various attributes to them. At first a box might just be a piece of the background, but as you learn you can destroy it in order to gain items, attributes are added. The object gains complexity. The reverse can also happen. For instance, when you first see a character you might think that you are able to speak to it and therefore label it with various attributes you know that humans usually have. But when you find out that the character is really just a piece of the background without any sort of agency, most of those attributes are lost.

Your mental model of a game is something that is continually revised as you are playing, and it is something that always happens, no matter what the game is. In fact, this is a process that is a core part of any medium, including books and films. So, obviously, when you are playing an interactive movie game, you are not simply reacting to a direct stream of information. You are answering questions based on your mental model.

Take my "will you help your hurt companion?" scenario from above. The knowledge you take into account about that choice is not just what is currently projected at you from the TV screen. It is a combination of everything you have gone through up to this point, along with a bunch of personal knowledge and biases. Even basic concepts like "hurt" and "companion" aren't just created in this moment. They are ideas that the game has spent a lot of time building up, be that for good or bad, from the very moment you started playing.

When you are faced with the hypothetical scene of  a hurt companion, you are not just dealing with an animated image on a screen. You are dealing with a whole world constructed in your mind. This is what your choice will be based around. While it might objectively seem that everyone is reacting to the same scenario, they may in fact be dealing with quite different setups.

So when someone gets annoyed by the lack of consequences, it is not necessarily the direct consequences that are missing. The issue is that they have constructed a mental around a real person in need, along with that person's future actions. So when it becomes apparent that the game doesn't simulate that as part of its own model, the player's mental model is broken and it feels like a big let down. Remember that we don't play the game that is on the screen, we the play game as we perceive it in our heads. So when it turns out that your imagined world is fake, it has a huge impact.

It gets even worse once we take into the fact that planning is fundamental to a sense of gameplay. As explained in a previous post, engaging gameplay is largely fueled by the ability to make plans. The way this works is that the player first simulates a course of action using their mental model, and then tries to execute that in the game. This is a continuous process and "planning and executing the plan" is basically the same as playing. Interactive movies normally don't have a lot of gameplay and it is really only in the choice moments that the player gets to take part in any actual play. Hence, when the choices turn out to have no consequences, it becomes clear that planning is impossible. In turn, this means that any meaningful play is impossible and the experience feels fundamentally broken.

As an example, take this experience I had with Heavy Rain:

[...] one scene I had made a plan of actions: to first bandage an unconscious person and then to poke around in his stuff. There really was nothing hindering me from doing so but instead the game removed my ability to interact directly after caring for the person. The game interpreted me wanting to help the guy as I also did not want to poke around, thinking that they two were mutually exclusive actions. Of course I thought otherwise and considered it no problem at all to do some poking afterward.

I think that people to complain the loudest about the lack of consequences are extra sensitive to situations like this. But, as I said, this is not due to lack of consequences per se, but due to the impact it has on the consistency of their mental model and sense of play. It is really important to note that this is not due to some sort of lack in immersion or ability to roleplay. On the contrary, as I have described above, many of the issues arise because they mentally simulate the game's world and characters very vividly.

                                                                 ---

So the problem that we are faced with is really not a lack of consequences. It is because the underlying systems of the game are not able to simulate the mental model for a subset of players. One way of mending this is of course to add more consequences, but that is not a sustainable solution. Additional branches increase exponentially, and it quickly becomes impossible to cover every single possible outcome. Instead it is much better to focus on crafting more robust mental models. Sure, this might entail adding consequences to choices, but that is just a possible solution - it is not the end goal.

As I outlined in the previous blog on the SSM framework it is incredibly important to keep track of how systems and story help form a mental model in the player's mind. For instance, if you start your game saying "your actions will have consequences", that will immediately start filling up your player's imagination with all sort of ideas and concepts. Even how pre-release PR is presented can affect this. All of these then become things that lay groundwork for how the game is modeled in the player's head and it is vitally important to make sure this mental model remains stable over the course of the game.

One of the main things to have in mind is consistency. Remember that as someone is playing a game, they are building up a mental simulation for how things are supposed to work. If you provide information that certain events are possible when they are in fact not, you are running the risk of breaking the player's mental model. You either need to remove this sort of information or to make sure that they never take part in situations where these sort of events feel like a valid option.

However, the most important thing to keep in mind is the ability to plan. A major reason why the lack of consequences can feel so bad is because these consequences were part of the player's gameplay plans. So when it becomes apparent that they don't exist, the whole concept of play breaks down. In all fairness, this might be OK for certain genres. If the goal is to simply to make an interactive movie, then losing a subset of player might be fair. But if the goal is to make proper interactive storytelling, then this is of paramount importance - planning must be part of the core experience.

That doesn't mean that every choice is something the player needs to base their plans on. But in that case then there need to be other things that lie on a similar time scale and which are possible to predict and incorporate into plans. I think that one way around this problem is to have a more system-focused feature that runs alongside the more fuzzy narrative choices. When the players make choices, their mental model will have the best predictive skills around this more abstract system, and play revolves mostly around this. Then when more narrative choices are presented they will feel more game-like and part of the a solid simulation, despite not really having any consequences.

A simple and good example is the choices you have to make in Papers, Please. This game is driven by a type of survival simulation where you need to gain credits (though doing proper passport check) in order to keep your family live. Entwined into this are choices about who you will allow into the country. Many of these don't have any far reaching consequences, but that that doesn't really matter because your ability to plan is still satisfied. But despite that, these choices still feel interesting and can have an emotional effect.

 This sort of approach relies on combining several elements in order to produce the feeling of something that might not actually be there. This is something that is used in a wide range of applications, from how we view images on a TV, to how films can create drama through cuts. We don't always have to have solve problems straight on, but often the best way is to split the problem into many and to solve each problem on its own. The combined effect will then seem like a solution to the original problem. This is a technique that is super important for not just this, but many other narrative problems. I will write a blog post later on that goes into more details.

Once you have a game that is consistent and that has some sort of planning apart from the more narrative choices, the probability of satisfying the people will be greatly improved. And not only that, your narrative experience will improve over all, for all players, not just a subset. In this case I think it is fair to view these extra sensitive people as canaries in a cave, something that is first to react on a much bigger issue.

                                                                ---

This blog post by no means presents the solution to end all problems with choices and consequences. But hopefully it will give a new way of thinking about the problem and some basic directions for finding a solution. I don't think we will ever find a perfect way of dealing with choices, but the better informed we are at underlying causes, the better experiences we can provide.