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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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shadowyin-yang · 5 years

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SY-Y watches Voltron (in 2019): Misc. Lance Commentary

Context: I’m watching with @ficus-fig (who as seen about half of the show); I have not seen the show at all (beyond what I have seen now I mean) but know a lot of spoilers and general stuff.

Ep 1: Wow Lance sure shows a lot of potential. He doesn’t seem anything like how others have described him to me.

(Later) in Ep 1: Okay I’m confused. I vaguely know stuff that happens later so how does a show start off with SO MUCH SET UP in a character they supposedly throw under the bus later?

Throughout Ep 1: Why is Keith such a fucking douche to Lance? He insulted Lance literally over NOTHING a total of 3 times and Lance just took it. I don’t even care that Lance snapped by the 4th insult, I would’ve cracked by insult #2 so idk how Lance lasted until Insult #4.

^Somewhere in the middle of the season: Wait a minute. Keith’s terrible at social interactions on all levels and seems to run on impulse. So...Keith is either a liar or this is a huge plothole but there is no way Keith forgot Lance in Ep 1 with how ready he was to insult Lance - as if he thought of these things before and jumped at the chance to finally say them. Keith has shown no ability to be able to be so specific and quick (in his words) over anything or anyone else (snappy, yes, but that’s it). In fact, he is consistently shown to be impulsive and just BAD when it comes to communicating in general. So HOW was he so ready to shove a knife into Lance and twist it after claiming to ‘not remember’ Lance?

^^All the episodes: Okay, almost all the problems/plotholes regarding Keith seems to go away when you apply him being gay for Lance as canon.

Ep 9: Okay maybe I’m wrong and Keith can be good/fast with words-WAIT A MINUTE! HIS INSULT TO LANCE WAS MEMORY-BASED! HE WAS REFERRING TO THE FORGOTTEN BONDING MOMENT! HOLY SHIT KEITH TOTALLY WAS THINKING UP THIS INSULT FOR LIKE 4 EPISODES! yeah, he totally remembers Lance...

Ep 10: So when does Lance start flirting with Allura (consistently)? Does he really do it a lot or was that an exaggeration from the fandom? He only flirted with her I think literally two times so far. I counted.

After Ep 10: Okay...was Lance originally the main character in the concept and they just forgot to remove all the set ups and parallels-to-Shiro that was sprinkled in throughout the entire season? Cuz from what I know of what happens later on it really doesn’t feel like they will follow through with setting up Shiro to be Lance’s mentor and help Lance hone his already-established skillsets. If this is true, I feel so bad for the people that saw this too and didn’t see the disappointment coming......though I’m now pre-disappointed knowing this so idk which is worse...

Me right now: Okay I just found out the season only has 11 episodes so I’m apparently right before the season finale and idk what to expect...Lance better be awesome in it though...

Idek when this happened: Okay so I love Lance. There is no Lance-hatin’ under my roof. I will die for him. I will give him the world. I don’t know how this happened in one season so I’m also going ‘WTF” to myself. I’m not supposed to get attached when I didn’t even FINISH the season yet. Oh god. I’m already feeling pre-disappointment but and I’ve decided I’ll definitely take pre-disappointment over disappointment knowing vaguely what happens later.

[EDIT: we are now past this point]

#voltron #lance mcclain #Lance vld #lance voltron #Klance #i mean it's DEF at least one sided here #voltron critical #i think this applies #syypost #syywatching #ficusfig #Lance #syywatchesvoltron #syywatchesvoltrons1

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