#spent hours to create a npc just to realize that he was a npc and half information won't be used | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blacksurvivalnostalgichanges · 2 years

Text

black survival:immortal soul when playing ttrpgs

this post got so long that i’m pretty much obligated to add a read more

Adela:That one teammate who games the system into overpoweredness, whatever’s strongest in that system is usually her pick. Singlehandedly the reason why they have to increase the boss’ HP when expecting it to be challenging. I picked Isol for the “this character deals so much damage that their friends joked about them having a spell where they throw a car at the enemy” quote, but Adela fits it as well.

Adriana:Absolute chaos problem player, has killed friendly NPCs many times, occasionally on purpose (i.e. wanted to use something that did AoE damage and someone was in the way), but usually accidentally. Adores any status effects that involve fire, inventory always has something she can use to create a fire, even in the most primitive of systems she’ll at least have some flint. Jackie once made a dungeon have a water debuff where everyone (including enemies of course) have their movement halved because they have water up to their hip (which, by default, means fire doesn’t catch), and Adriana was so absolutely mad.

Alex:Won’t reveal his character’s backstory even after he dies or the campaign ends Even the DM doesn’t know a few details most of the time, just everything they could build upon. Somehow manages to always have a spell or ability he didn’t use until the final boss, no matter how long it took to get there.

Arda:Isn’t all that interested in combat mechanics, giving his character the bare minimum to not be useless in fights and having the shortest turns in the entire party over it. The time he saves in his fights is doubled during any investigation periods though. One time, he spent a solid thirty minutes theorizing, mostly on his own but out loud, about the plot with the clues he had. He got most of his guesses wrong. While Luke would’ve been delighted to hear his theorizing, Jackie was the one DMing. She wanted to kill him. More than usual.

Aya:The one lawful good teammate who turns chaotic evil by the end. Most likely to either be hated by a teammate passionately, or passionately hate another teammate. Could probably argue in-character with a different player for three hours, but if an argument gets long enough it’s usually interrupted for the sake of everyone’s time and patience.

Barbara:Probably the one in most of her sessions who uses the environment the most. If the fight doesn’t have anything in the environment she can use, she thinks it’s boring. Ups her strength and perception stats the most so she can fully take advantage of it. One time, she defeated an enemy swiftly by pushing a large locker into them.

Bernice: Only showed up for a single one-shot campaign after a lot of insisting. He did pretty well and the experience wasn’t unpleasant, but he didn’t really want to do it again.

Bianca:Always asks for her character to be nonhuman, even when the setting will not allow it. Jackie once said she’d make an exception, then revealed her character was delusional during the session. Bianca cried. Johann forced Jackie to apologize.

Camilo:Bard who seduces every NPC under the sun. Luke has had to pre-make certain bosses unable to be seduced entirely so they can fight the damn thing, because no, Camilo, you can’t seduce this primordial god into not trying to kill you. To make it equal, he also makes those unable to be surprise attacked so everyone’s angry. Jackie usually just kills him (the character) off early on so she doesn’t have to think about it.

Cathy:Her characters are all as unpredictable as her. Everyone dreads her turn because she either does something extremely genius that carries the fight/dungeon/puzzle, or she slows everyone down by doing something stupid. In the exact same session, she once solved the really difficult secret riddle that gave them a buff in the upcoming fight, and also threw a grenade into the enemy when an ally was in hand-to-hand combat. She fully realizes everyone dreads her turn, so she always starts her sentence off with pauses to hype up whatever she’s gonna do.

Celine: Exceedingly creative kit, often asks to do things that are a little outlandish. If there’s bombs or grenades, she bases her character build off of that. If there aren’t but there are guns, she settles for guns. One of her most unique and fun moments was when her character died, and it was revealed she literally kept bombs strapped to her that would explode when she died.

Chiara:Rarely participates, but whenever she does it’s usually pretty obviously escapism. Either an explicitly villainous character who’s conditionally in the party’s side, or just a very reluctant neutral good character. Usually only participates if a good friend who knows how to soothe her is there.

Chloe: The one person who always has a familiar. Sometimes it’s a small person to mimic Nina, sometimes it’s an animal, usually it’s dead by the end of the campaign. One time, Jackie secretly made her familiar be related to her own lifeforce, and when the animal died, her character instantly died in a scene described in a way so heartbreaking that everyone in the table nearly felt like they were really watching their friend die. Chloe poured salt into Jackie’s tea and then never played any game where Jackie was DMing again.

Daniel:Absolute bummer to play with. His character is never even a minimally good person, not even when he’s actually trying. Sometimes it’s because his character is really rude, sometimes there’s just something really uncomfortable about them that isn’t even played for comedy, sometimes it’s just the opposite of a je ne sais quoi. Does okay when he’s called in to have a single-session appearance since it usually only becomes unbearable after ten hours.

Echion:Extremely bad at teamwork. Sometimes they take advantage of that by asking him to be the damage-dealer, since hitting the enemies is useful for the team without demanding much in the way of collaboration and he actually isn’t bad at optimally using his kit. He doesn’t like it much though, because he’d rather “feel the real thing”.

Eleven:Puts all her points into charisma and drifts along the plot making every NPC pour their entire heart out to her. Plans her character along with Nicky’s, so that whatever weakness her character has, Nicky can cover, while she covers the social side. Whenever they’re separated, the weakness comes up, every single time. If she made her character physically weak, a door gets stuck and she has to kick it. If her character isn’t smart, she lands on the room with a riddle on it. Sometimes she’s lucky enough to be with a character that can cover it. Sometimes she isn’t.

Eva:Has the single most normal character in the party. The human if there’s other races, the retail worker in the normal humans party, the newbie in the detective party... whatever’s the least attention-calling in context. Usually avoids magic builds because of ~trauma~, leading to her usually either being the doctor character reviving everyone else by traditional manners with a first aid kit, or the classic “hits thing until thing dies” fighter with little caveat.

Emma:Prefers the most normal person rpgs. One guy (in real life) made a paranormal order parody called Normal Order, where the conflict is them having to go to the bank to sort out a financial issue and one of the final bosses is the old ATM in the bank. That’s her jam. Real-life simulator.

Fiora:Flexible team-player, so long as no one’s trying to force her into a specific role or being disrespectful. Usually has a duo/trio synergy thing with someone else, if Jenny’s there then she’s part of the synergy, specifically with Jenny being her support most of the time.

Hart:Dislikes RPGs that are fight-based, so she joins Emma in her riveting adventures of paying off that bank payment slip because the most fighting those would ever have is killing a random spider in her room.

Hyejin:Her Luck stat is always low, almost as if to rub it in. If her character build is reliant on dice rolling instead of points you distribute, she WILL roll poorly on a stat she really needs. Usually a support mage, supporting the team by killing the enemies so quickly that no one has the chance to die. One of the good riddle-solvers in her party, fairly easy to work with during sessions.

Hyunwoo:Exclusively plays fighter/tank archetypes, taking most of the hits and dealing most of the damage. Never makes his characters be smart and good at mystery-solving because he internally knows he wouldn’t be able to pull it off (even if he sometimes has his strikes of genius); once got trapped in a puzzle room with Nicky and Eleven, and they took an entire hour to solve the simplest ones. Everyone else eventually started trying to break down the door, and Luke only didn’t lower that dT because the session’s boss fight partially hinged on them solving it. And he really liked that boss fight.

Isol:Usually plays a jack-of-all-trades build, trying to nail both support and damage-dealing. Usually winds up playing support for the most part anyway because Hyunwoo is very good at dying and no one wants to be the healer. If there’s any stats relating to setting up traps, you can expect it to be maximized since he keeps doing it and has to be able to pull it off.

Jackie:Scarily good DM, making a very thrilling story to play through. Enjoys the players’ suffering, though, so she has a habit of asking for random rolls at random points in time to see everyone get anxious, and never mentions whether an enemy looks hurt if no one asks, along with bringing along a new status effect for pretty much every single boss fight. No one really knows where she’s getting the creativity for all of those. They keep coming.

Jan:Ironically enough, he usually picks mage builds. On systems where magic isn’t a thing, he goes with whatever’s closest to a scholar.

Jenny:Absolutely ADORES the weird, niche combat positions and spells. If the system allows it, then boy will she make her own spells or pull out creative solutions to issues. Also tends to prioritize the roleplay above EVERYTHING ELSE, like for example, the time her character saw her sister be murdered mid-fight, and her reaction was to endlessly hit the boss until she was nearly downed despite her character’s damage being pretty weak.

Johann:Probably isn’t that interested in playing in a campaign. He’d still want to hear about what happened on recent sessions though.

JP:Makes absolutely batshit characters. One time, he wanted to literally play a cannibal. The worst part is that Luke allowed it. He ate Chloe’s fairy familiar. Chloe forewent hanging his laptop and just threw it off the window. To her distaste, it became the biggest inside joke in the campaign that wouldn’t die even after both of their characters died.

Laura:Likes the RPG campaigns based on heists for reasons she won’t legally disclose. Likely favors charisma-based builds, feeling very annoyed when an enemy can’t be reasoned with at all.

Lenox:Extremely fun character every single time. Sometimes gets an advantage on her charisma rolls entirely because that line failing would be a pity.

Leon:One of the people who are pretty clearly working through something with their character. Probably made one of his characters be women, honestly.

Li Dailin:Joins Hart in her real life RPGs as her trademark character, a very normal girl who has loving parents and cannot fight worth shit. She’s also one of the people working through something, and her brand of it is that one point in job interviews where you pretend to be a sane person who loves working.

Luke:Usually DMs, enjoying playing the different NPCs and giving them all distinct voices and usually allowing anything that's at least a little feasible, but in a single occasion they brought someone else to DM for a short session, and he was distinctly a bit lost during it because he’s used to beind behind the screen.

Mai:Plays the tank that hits like a rolled-up wet towel (slightly hard but not that much). If there’s nonhuman characters, she’d play as an elf 100%. Probably spends a lengthy amount of time describing her outfit and expects everyone to do the same.

Nadine:Usually fairly quiet, but sometimes randomly does something extremely unique and interesting. If the weapons are modern, she picks a sniper rifle and is only barely in the room.

Nathapon:Has extremely simple and straightforward builds to make it easier to keep track. Generally prefers any systems that don’t involve fighting (so he doesn’t have to remember all his spells or damage multipliers). Extensive notes, never has to take any intellect tests relating to not knowing something because if it’s been said, he wrote it.

Nicky:Generally makes characters who are either physically weak, or strong but appearing as strong as they are. Usually plans her character with Eleven’s, so they fill out two different roles, which is often good, but whenever they’re separated by the plot they’re screwed. Nicky always has to be the one to roll charisma when Eleven isn’t there. It always goes wrong.

Rio:Often uses the RPG as a way to improve her social skills, playing a character with a completely different personality to hers and doing her best to pull it off.

Rosalio:Definitely the guy who tests the DM’s patience.

Rozzi:The one person who makes an extremely unsociable character that’s impossible to properly RP with. Sometimes they bring her in for a special appearance when there’s too many NPCs in any given session to keep track of.

Shoichi:I’d love to actually think about what he’d do in them, but I cannot stop thinking of the fact that he definitely would miss a few of the sessions because he’s busy. His characters would likely be charismatic in some way and good at whatever main mechanic the RPG uses. But then he’d be busy right when the session he’s missing desperately needs him on it.

Silvia:Two-sided coin. Sometimes she solves the party’s issues with her “what if i did this” antics, sometimes she makes it all worse. Either she manages to solve the puzzle everyone’s having trouble with in one fell swoop, or she makes everyone nearly die. Probably makes really experimental builds, definitely always makes her characters agile so she doesn’t have to wait to get anywhere.

Sissela: Doesn’t enjoy playing it that much, but she doesn’t mind making any art for them. One time, she created a character in the universe of a campaign Luke was running, and he added the guy as an NPC. The first battle that character was an ally in was very tense because no one in the table wanted him to die.

Sua: Wide variety of characters, somehow always pulls them off. Her secret is that she usually goes to whoever is most similar to the character (or at least has the trait she might struggle with) and talks to them about it to get inspiration.

Tia: LOVES adventuring RPGs. Loves, loves, loves them. Also quite willing to help out with any art they need for it, and also maybe with materializing some of the props. Oops. In all fairness, the first time Luke pulled out the relic they found at the dungeon for them to examine, everyone nearly went starry-eyed.

William:Probably made the characters that are in the mid tiers in the “Characters From This Story I Like” tier lists. He looks like the kind of guy whose characters are kinda boring and expected. Nothing bad, he’s good enough at roleplaying and working with the system, but the character itself has very little going on to make them stand out.

Xiukai:I don’t think he’d enjoy it. Just too out of his interest wheel.

Yuki:The kind of guy who makes a hacker, smart, physically weak character, then makes the uncle who cannot stop making dad jokes and could tear an elk limb from limb. Who knows what this guy’s doing next.

Zahir:If the system has magic, his character uses magic. Usually is a spellcaster whose spells are based on weird status effects. Prohibited from participating in any of Jackie’s campaigns to spare everyone some time and sanity.

#immortal soul black survival #black survival #here it is!! i spent too long on this one #looked at this in the queue and thought ''wouldnt it be funny if i did a fakeout and had this say 'deez nutz' under the read more''#i only felt compelled not to do that because it's january and that's more of an april joke

8 notes · View notes

an-ambivalent · 5 years

Note

Hi, can i request a scenario? It's okay if you don't do it :) Can you make depressed and lonely yandere! Artist! Tae falling in love with his s/o? Thank you :")

Hello! Sorry this took ages, and this turned out to be quite different to what I thought of writing it as, or you requested. Sorry about that :’D I hope you still like this though!

This is very slightly loosely based off Barbie as Rapunzel

Warning: As this contains yandere themes, the characters display behaviors that can be triggering or uncomfortable to read. Read at your own risk. This work is purely fiction. I do not believe any of the mentioned members would display any sort of this behaviour irl, nor do I condone this sort of behaviour.

Pairings: Yandere! Taehyung x Reader | Yoonji x Reader

Word Count: 4.9K

Xanadu Of Strokes

Art was a peculiar thing – it was such a broad term that held significant meaning and value to many. But at the same time, it was also perceived as an insignificant subject with no worth, and seen as a complete waste of time. One person may believe that art is mere sketching, while most tend to have a general understanding that it included painting, music, writing, dancing and more – it was a vast definition that was limited only by one’s imagination; art was a self expression that allowed one to explore the darkest version of themselves, and express that secretive dark self of them through symbols, words, and actions without fearing judgement.

Taehyung was someone who held art dearly to his heart. To him, art was as essential as breathing – it meant everything to him. Art was his only means of expressing himself in the life where he was allowed to show no emotion. Similarly, in the life where he had little to no freedom, and no means of leaving the four walls that constantly confined him, a single paint brush was his only means of escape.

It was exhilarating – to be able to escape into the world of his own creation and be the most respected and powerful person. It was a facade fictional ideal he used to cope with the powerlessness he could likely never overcome in this current reality. He was all but a simple man who had been kept captive for as long as he could remember. In a gigantic and tall tower that loomed over everything in the middle of nowhere, where he had been cut off from the outside his entire life, his capturer Min Yoonji, had kept his freedom limited to one room. Miss. Yoonji had claimed that it was too dangerous for someone like Taehyung to be outside, that his being and what he had to offer, was too good for anyone except for her to see.

For some strange reason, she had a weird obsession with his hair. While he did not mind, Taehyung found it strange how she always forced him to keep his hair one specific length – never shorter or longer than its current length. Each day, morning and night, she would run her fingers through his soft locks, wash it in a specific way, talk about how beautiful it was, and how it was going to be the big break she needed to finally make her mark in the world. She treated his hair as if it was cultivating some sort of magic.

Unbeknownst to Taehyung, his hair was magical. Yoonji was an obsessive aspiring fashion designer. Each time she crafted an outfit and integrated a lock of Taehyung’s hair in her designed outfits, they would become engulfed in white light before quickly transforming and taking a life of their own. She eagerly looked forward to the day when she would complete her fashion line, and release her unique clothes into the world.

Presently, Taehyung had finished another painting with his one and only brush. Just like what painting and his own art to mean, the brush he used felt like it was his life line. Ever since he found it, Taehyung made sure to keep this brush his own secret and hidden away from Yoonji at all costs – it was his only ticket to getaway in order to keep himself sane. Not to mention, the brush painted whatever Taehyung imagined as an actual artwork, and it was artwork that lived and breathed.

Taehyung made it a habit to paint only cities or certain places with intricate details. That way, he could visit the cities he had created, and its’ people in it. He was able to experience the world of his creations taking on their life, and relish in the world where he was not a powerless isolated human, but where he had all the power.

One thing that Taehyung failed to realize was that his “hobby” of going into his paintings that he created was something that was beginning to develop into an obsession. Especially since the more time he spent in his paintings, which increased with each visit, a part of his soul was left behind in the world of his artwork. This would continue to be so until his whole soul would solely exist in that fantasy realm, and he could no longer return to his reality.

Out of all the world’s he had painted, and by extension, visited, Xanadu was his favourite. It was where people were at their loviest, art was at its finest, etiquette was its richest, and him, Kim Taehyung, was the strongest.

People bowed at his feet, and worshiped him for he was their God, their ruler; it was only in this world that his talent as an artist was acknowledged. Everyone appreciated his artworks as blessings the way they should, and would kill to have him paint for them.

But most importantly, it was the world where his most beloved, who he treasured more than his brush, lived. The world where his most beautiful, and his favourite piece he had ever created breathed.

You were the main reason Taehyung spent hours upon hours locked in Xanadu, and spent enough time that he was beginning to lose his soul.

Like he always did during this time of the day, Taehyung walked towards one of the walls in his room. A big, loose, rusty red and gold cloth was draped on the wall to hide the world that laid behind; Xanadu.

With the back of his hand, Taehyung moved the cloth aside. His eyes that were usually lacking of interest and life, glowed with a lustrous wonder and excitement. His heart-shaped lips stretched into a wide grin. With much practice now by his side, he had become accustomed to travelling between fantasy and reality.

Eyebags that had appeared underneath his eyes were much more prominent than they had been ever before. It was a sign that indicated how he was close to losing the last few fragments of his soul. For a mere second, his eyes glistened a dangerous and chilling blue. It disappeared as soon as it had appeared, and Taehyung allowed his hand to be absorbed into the painting, before his whole body slipped into it.

The moment Taehyung entered Xanadu, a bright light glowed throughout his entire body. His shabby appearance which consisted of being dressed in a huge, baggy, and poor-quality robe that reached his ankles, and a white loose and baggy pants underneath it, morphed into a gold tux that radiated extravagance. There were white cuffs near the end of the sleeves towards the hands, and they folded inwards. His appearance, apart from his hair, which was usually unkempt, glistened with life and glowed. Lastly, unlike how his hair was more on the longer side in reality, in Xanadu, it was shorter, and hence easier to deal with.

Whenever Taehyung entered Xanadu, he always landed in the same area: a small clearing field off of an alley, which was off the main street of Xanadu. As he was the only person who left and entered this world, he was the only one who knew of this. Taehyung’s mahogany eyes ran over his attire of today, and he soothed down his tux. He patted the inner breast pocket of his tux, and when he felt his treasured brush, the corner of his lips twitched upward in a satisfied smirk.

Walking out of the grass, and the alley leading from the clearing to the main streets, Taehyung kept himself hidden in the overcasting shadows of the alley. Once he saw the opportunity, Taehyung entered amongst the strolling civilians of Xanadu, who roamed the streets for various purposes.

The common attire worn in Xanadu consisted of clothes that one would categorize as formal in his reality. For this reason, Taehyung did not stand out with the way he chose to dress. It was not until he walked on the familiar path that led to his abode in this world, passing by people who he was acquainted with, did the word float around that their master had arrived to bestow them.

As Taehyung walked past Miss Camila’s fruit store, the petite older female waved at him with a wide smile, and he returned her gesture with just as much friendliness. This sudden exchange between the two caused the customers in her immensely busy store to turn towards the direction of her wave.

They gasped when they noticed it was the notorious artist. Not wanting to be in their line of sight more than necessary, Taehyung continued on his way. As he passed more locals, and spared a few seconds of his precious time to greet them, onlookers ended up halting in the midst of what they were doing simply to gawk at his brilliance.

When he had first started to visit Xanadu, and then later, begin travelling down this road to this actual home, Taehyung was more than happy to stop and entertain NPC’s and invest his entire time with them. However, now, he did not want to spare even a single more second than necessary – if any. This was because the more time he would give to them, meant the less time he had with you. Especially with Yoonji breathing down his neck on the other side. He could not even begin to imagine what she would do if she found him missing, and learned about the fat that Taehyung was able to escape, or what his brush could do.

It was not long until after a few turns to the left and right, away from the main crowds and towards the secluded area where there was almost no one, that Taehyung reached his desired destination.

His home he stood before was small, composed of mahogany brown wood. The windows were visible at the exterior of the house and the entrance door was painted white. The roof was dirty green, and next to the steps that led to the entrance, were vast types of flowers and plants. The darker hue of brown, and dirty green contrasted well against the darker leaves, lighter brown branches of trees that surrounded his home; it appeared to be quite cozy.

Taehyung walked up the steps of his abode, unlocked the front door, and stepped in. Then, he gave the premises around his home one last glance to make sure no one had seen him enter it, before he closed the door. He shrugged off the coat of his tux and hung it on the coat holder. Then, he proceeded to walk through the living room, up a flight of stairs, before he unlocked a room and entered it. In that room, on the large king-sized bed that was in the middle of the lavish room, laid a woman, whom’s arms and legs were tied to the bed with soft crimson silk.

As Taehyung moved closer to the bed, his lips were beginning to stretch into a fond smile. He was finally here. After so long, he could finally see, touch, and be happy with his beloved once again.

Whether it was something he had not realized, or knew but chose to ignore for the sake of it, but what Taehyung did to you, was exactly what Yoonji did to him which he despised her for immensely. He stripped you off your freedom and caged you as his captive. That was all good though because unlike Taehyung, you were not real. You existed as his creation and therefore, for him. There was no need for you to be your own person, or have your own life when you could just exist for Taehyung, and to keep him satisfied.

Your eyes, tired and filled with desperate need, fluttered open as Taehyung sat by you, and gently brushed his fingers against the soft skin of your skin, to inform you of his arrival.

“Time to wake up sweetheart, I’m finally here. I’m sorry I took longer than last time. I tried to be as fast as I could, I’m sorry that I barely only made it when you’re on the verge of dying from starvation and dehydration. I promise I’ll be faster next time. Here have some water first,” Taehyung murmured, as he held out a glass to you. Conditioned to be obedient to his every word, you obliged and started to slowly slip the water instantly. Then, after another glass of water, he started to feed you some bread. You ate it without any complaints, or putting up a struggle.

See, since long time ago, you learned your lesson the hard way and now knew that it was best to let Taehyung do whatever he wanted, and allow him to have his way. The consequences of struggling against him, when he would always be granted to be the victor, was not worth it. Besides, like he had mentioned, you were literally on the brink of death. And so, the only thing that mattered to you right now was having access to water so it would not feel like you were living in a dry desert in your own body, and to have food in your stomach so you would not feel so utterly weak and sick.

Frankly speaking, your situation was horrendous. But to Taehyung, it was delusionally perfect and something that was the best for you both. You did not know why he did this, or why he felt the way he did, but Taehyung wanted to do everything for you. Feeding you, changing you, washing you, and everything else – nothing was an exception to this rule. With his smothering presence that breathed down your neck every second of the day, you had absolutely no privacy. He treated you as if you were an incompetent baby, and he was the overbearing parent who could not help but spoil you to the point where he literally did do everything for you.

Initially, such loss of your own autonomy was downright humiliating for you. You had never been forced into such confinement from someone as controlling as Taehyung before, who left you feeling completely helpless and powerless. You desperately wished there would be way you could rescue yourself, or have someone rescue from the devil’s clutches that belonged to Kim Taehyung.

It was ironic really – Taehyung believed that the people of Xanadu respected him and worshiped him because he claimed to be the creator of some sort and it was out of their love for him. However, that was not the case. Everyone seemingly kissed the ground he walked on out of fear, and because they had to. Your ruler had heard from other cities that no longer existed about what happened to them when they refused to bow before the outsider in gold who claimed to be their creator. In anger, with the aid of the brush of creation by his side, he had annihilated their entire civilizations. Now, Xanadu, had no choice but to entertain his delusional ideas, and for your own sake, and your people’s, you were the one who had it the worst and had to go along with all of his schemes, and at the cost of your entire life, entertain his sick ideas of love.

It disgusted you to your core. Especially the thought of how an outsider from the other side could have gotten their hands on the brush of creation, travel to your world, claim it to be their creation, and continue to travel to this side and be willing to lose their soul in order to do so – it was all too much to think about, and even revolting at some point.

You just wished Taehyung could disappear so you and other inhabitants of Xanadu could live in peace and with your freedom once again.

“You’re such a good girl for me,” Taehyung murmured, his eyes eerily wide, as he petted your head in approval. Then, abruptly, he leaned down and licked some of the crumbs that were on the corner of your lips. It took your entire will-power to not grimace as he did this.

Shortly after, Taehyung moved away from you, and gave you a sweet smile. If it was not for everything he had done to you, you would have actually found it sweet, and maybe cute. But after being forced to dance with this devil and getting burned, you knew it was anything but sweet or cute.

“You’ve been really strong and good by patiently waiting for me the entire last few days and doing exactly what I say. You definitely deserve a reward for your current behaviour. Now, before I do this, I’m going to explain a few things, and if you fail to listen to me you will pay the price. Do I make myself clear?” He enquired, and you mindlessly nodded. Although, in the pit of your stomach, butterflies churned in an uncomfortable way that filled you with anxiety, and made you want to puke. After all, who knows what sort of revolting things Taehyung considered a ‘reward.’

“I’m going to untie your bindings and let you roam around in the house,” He started, and your eyes widened in surprise. Almost instantly, a grin started to form on your lips. You were unable to control your reaction, and as this happened, Taehyung narrowed his eyes at you because you had never smiled like that for him.

“And I’ll be leaving you to your own devices for a bit while I go and buy something for a special time together since it’s been a while since we’ve done anything together. While I’m gone, and I leave you alone, do you promise to stay within your limits? No attempting to runaway, hurt yourself, or make a plan to hurt me. Can I trust you to do that?” Taehyung asked, his voice etched with caution.

You were having a difficult time grasping the fact that he was going to allow you to have freedom. Not wanting to let such a rare opportunity slip from your hands, you nodded.

He was hesitant for a few seconds, before he sighed, and eventually reached out to untie the harshly binding silk cloth. As his fingers brushed against your bruised wrists, you held your breath in anticipation. He intertwined his finger in the cloth, before his movements halted, and his eyes averted to yours. He gazed into your eyes with an intense gaze, and promises of danger swam in his mahogany coloured irises.

“I’ll remind you in case you forget. Remember, the fate of your entire country rests in your hands. You make one wrong move, you do one thing that aggravates me, and I’ll make sure no one else exists in this country anymore. No one else but us. As much as it hurts me to say this, you don’t want that do you?” He said posing a looming threat over you with his words.

You inwardly winced.

“N-No,” You responded, and looked down towards your body in order to avoid Taehyung’s gaze.

Taehyung nodded in approval.

“Good, then make sure to keep up your good behaviour,” He said, before he untied all of your bindings. Afterwards, he leaned closer to you, and kissed you forcefully, and for longer than you would have liked him to. However, with freedom finally being just at the tip of your fingertips, you knew better than to mess up now.

Once Taehyung pulled away, his cheeks feeling hot, he gave you one last grin, before getting up, and making his way out of your room, and out of the house.

“I’ll see you soon my love,” He said, and walked out.

Even after the sound of the front door being shut and locked resonated throughout the household, signalling that Taehyung had left, you remained seated on the bed. You were lost in your thoughts due to still being unable to grasp the fact that you were not tied up like a caged dog anymore. It wasn’t until the noise of your bedroom’s door knob being fiddled with in an attempt to open it reached your ears were you forced out of your train of thoughts.

Your eyes widened because what? You lived alone the majority of the time, and had been for who knows how long due to your captivity. The only person who visited you was Taehyung, and always in utter desperation to see you, he would just walk in straight away. Fiddling with the door knob was NOT his style which only meant one thing… Someone was breaking in.

Did that… did that mean they were going to hurt you?

You did not get a chance to ponder on this because the door was kicked open harshly, and someone who looked oddly familiar, but you could never recall ever meeting her, strolled in.

She had straight hair that ended at her neck and looked to be quite soft and silky. Her bangs ended just past her eyebrows. She wore a full sleeve white ruffle top, and on top of her top, a brown leather waist cincher hugged her waist. You noticed how unlike waist cincher that inhabitants often wore, her’s had locks of hair woven into it. She wore baggy dark brown pants, and long brown leather boots that reached just beneath her knees. Lastly, she wore fingerless gloves, and there were a variety of weapons attached to her hip: two daggers, a gun, and a sword. It was as if she was on a mission to haunt somebody.

All to soon, her eyes shifted to your quivering form. There was a dangerous aura of a predator radiating off her. Cautiously, her eyes scanned your figure up and down to examine if you posed as a threat in anyway. Momentarily, unbeknownst to you, her gaze focused on your wrists that were heavily bruised since you had been tied up for so long. Her eyes narrowed into a glare at that observation, before they shifted to your face.

She felt sorry for you.

“Out of everything, Xanadu was the last place I expected Taehyung to be hiding in. And you to be last reason I could ever imagine being his reason for escaping. I’m surprised; didn’t expect someone as sheltered as him to have such good taste,” She said, while the last sentence was muttered more to herself. At the unexpected compliment, your cheeks reddened. You didn’t give it too much thought though because at the moment, there was a bigger fish to fry. You didn’t miss out on the fact that she had said Taehyung’s name.

Having the courage you did not know you had to voice the questions you wondered about, you spoke.

“W-Who are you? And how do you know him? Are you here to keep an eye on me to make sure I don’t do anything while he’s gone?!“

Seeing the unease and worry on your face, in addition with the questions you asked, caused her to raise an eyebrow.

“What? Me, a spy for Taehyung? Don’t make me laugh. I want him gone, permanently. I’m Min Yoonji. I would tell you about my relationship with Taehyung but you might be a spy for him,” She retorted.

Immediately, you scoffed.

“The last thing he would have me as would be a spy. I’m nothing but fancy decor for him – he has had me locked up for ages and has taken my entire dignity from me. I would never associate myself with a monster like him if Xanadu’s safety didn’t depend on the fact that I have to play pretend as his submissive,” You uttered bitterly, looking down at your lap.

Yoonji’s eyes widened, and her eyes roamed to your back that was slightly exposed due to your bent position. The numerous cuts and bruises that covered it caused anger to rise in her, and she clenched her fist.

You looked so broken, so lost, so hurt. Seeing such an expression on your face, the fact that one of her people she had failed to protect, suffered at the hands of an outsider, made her chest feel heavy in sorrow.

She walked towards you, and went down on one knee so she would be at your eye level. Then, her hand grabbed yours, and her fingers intertwined with yours; she squeezed your hands gently yet firmly in reassurance.

“What’s your name?” She asked, and you looked up and found yourself staring into her eyes. Unlike before, when her eyes were narrowed at you into a cold stone and apathetic stare, they were now etched with warmth. A bright shine that made you feel as if that now, you weren’t alone anymore, and that now, she would make sure everything was going to be okay, illuminated her eyes.

“[Surname] [Name],” You answered, and noticed that there was a slight crack in your voice, and you felt like you were on the verge of crying.

Yoonji smiled sweetly at you.

“That’s a beautiful name. Say [Name], do you know about the prophecy?” She wondered, and your eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“What prophecy?”

“The prophecy of the outsider who would come to possess the brush of creation and pose a threat to the inside realm and to people like us. Just like you, I’m from Xanadu. I’m the next heir for our country, but the information about my existence was never made public. You see, I’ve been raised as a fighter, because according to the prophecy, only a royal blood who has been outside can stop the painter that seeks the destruction – who is Taehyung. Before returning home, I did my best to keep him locked up and weak in the outside world so he couldn’t come here.

“But evidently, my plan has failed since he still somehow managed to get his hands on our brush and not only destroy other countries, but hurt you, one of my people I am meant to protect. I am deeply ashamed of my failures and for allowing you to get hurt. I don’t know if this will allow me to gain your forgiveness, but as a personal victim of Taehyung, I at least should tell you of all people.

“I have cultivated Taehyung’s hair and woven them into many clothes which will protect us from the magic of brush. Not only that, but Taehyung’s lost his soul. So with no more spiritual energy to offer, his bond has weakened and it won’t be long before he is unable to wield the brush. He’s weakening so no matter what he tries, I will easily take him down. Then, everyone of us can be free and live our own lives without fearing Taehyung again,” Yoonji reassured smiling. You would have gasped loudly still trying to get your head around all the information Yoonji told you had it not been that you two got interrupted by the very person you both despised.

“You must be delusional if you think I’ll just let you hurt me Yoonji,” Taehyung greeted in a hiss, and both Yoonji’s and your eyes snapped towards him.

Your eyes widened in fear, while Yoonji stood up to her full height, and faced him standing in front of you, with her back turned towards you in order to hide you from him. Confidence oozed out of her, and although you could not see her expression, she smirked.

“I don’t have to hurt you. The brush will hurt you for me. Your eyes are glowing blue Taehyung, you use it one more time and you’ll be gone. It would be in your best interest to give up and hand over Xanadu back to me,” Yoonji warned, as she unsheathed her sword, and prepared to duel.

Taehyung smirked.

“If I’m a goner, then I’m taking all of you with me, especially you [Name]. You’re mine! I won’t let anyone else have you or Xanadu. I created you so I get to decide what I do with you,” Taehyung stated, as he prepared to paint the end with the brush of creation he had in his hand.

You whimpered, and out of fear, went to hold onto Yoonji. However, as you tried to grab onto what you would have assumed to be Yoonji’s clothes, you found yourself trying to grab onto thin air.

You gasped when you saw Yoonji running towards Taehyung in a blinding speed, and before you even had the chance to blink, she had kicked at the back of his knees causing him to drop onto the floor. Then, she with the hilt of the sword, she hit brush of creation out of his hands, before grabbing both of his hands and twisting it behind his arm. Taehyung yelled in pain as Yoonji pushed him onto the ground. Then, she held her sword to his neck.

“One wrong move, and I’ll kill you right here and right now,” She started in a warning. Simultaneously, she pricked his skin with the tip of her sword, causing him to hiss in pain, as miniscule amount of blood leaked out from the minor cut.

“Kim Taehyung, you are under arrest for destroying countries and threatening the safety and peace of Xanadu,” She declared, before pausing to turn her eyes to you.

Then finally, she said the words you would have killed to hear.

“You’re safe and free now. I swear on my life to protect Xanadu and its’ people to make sure it stays that way.”

________

Please share your thoughts :)

#yandere bts #yandere x reader #taehyung x reader #yandere taehyung #yandere bangtan #yandere bts v #yoonji x reader #yandere fairy tale #bts fairy tale au #yandere kpop #yandere imagines #bts fanfiction #obsession #yandere taehyung x reader #artist taehyung au #yandere artist au #yandere #ambivalent writes

382 notes · View notes

pauldron-pieces · 3 years

Text

Destrier Revel: Worth The Wait

Fandom: Dungeons And Dragons (5E)

Pairing: Destrier Revel/Illeria Stennas (F!NPC)

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: This is a hypothetical narrative scenario featuring original characters in a world created by my Dungeon Master. As usual, this is non-canon and I own nothing aside from intellectual properties specifically attached to Destrier Revel. This installment is mechanically unsound in a multitude of ways and ignores certain important lore facets.

Trigger warnings are listed inside. Enjoy!

Taglist: @sporadic-fics and @cookiethewriter!

Inspired By: Josh Groban: When You Say You Love Me and Michael Shynes: The Slowdown

Destrier Revel’s Backstory: Burn The Wicked

For Leofore

Light And Home

So Little Time

A Choice

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains body dysmorphia, pregnancy, emotional duress, triggering terminology and sexual acts between two consenting adults. Stay safe!]

It had been two months.

Technically, sixty-four days.

Sixty-four days since Destrier and the rest of the King's Elite had departed on what the king claimed was, ' the last hurrah .'

Sixty-four days since Knight-Captain Destrier Revel had promised her with an easy, confident grin that he would be back.

Sixty-four days since Illeria had desperately tried to convince Leofore to let Destrier stay behind. She had gone before the stern senior paladin, refusing to be cowed or to resort to an emotional outburst even as her hands trembled.

Knight-Commander Leofore had set his jaw, the lines in his face deepening while she explained her current situation. " I understand that you are his wife, Illeria, but I cannot show favoritism among my men. The amount of spouses and partners that have thrown themselves at my feet to beg for leniency over the course of this war… " he had trailed off, turning Illeria's fragile hope to dust that clogged her throat.

" He does not know, Knight-Commander. I did not believe it would be fair to tell him and distract him further ." She managed to say.

Leofore had looked surprised, then grateful. " You are a strong woman, Illeria. You have made my former charge the happiest man alive, and I thank you for that. Should anything occur to Destrier, I will personally see to it that you are well taken care of. "

" With all due respect, Knight-Commander, " Illeria had replied, perhaps a bit more tartly than was proper, " that is my husband's responsibility ."

It had been simpler then, like putting on a performance. But her life had become so deathly quiet in the absence of the bright beacon that was Destrier. It was as if winter had descended over the land early, sapping the color from everything and leaving it lifeless and dull.

More than once she succumbed to weeping, cupping her abdomen as if to shelter the innocent life that currently grew within her. The midwife had told her that her emotions would run high, that she would be sick and changeable. Destrier hadn't seemed to notice before he left, his easygoing nature more than able to adapt when she snapped at him.

Illeria smiled sadly down at the shirt she was mending. Truly, the man could be so incredibly oblivious when he was off the battlefield.

The ring he had given her caught the light of the fire in the hearth, the recessed stone seeming to glow in the amber illumination. Illeria hadn't removed the ring since Destrier had presented it to her, and often found herself absently toying with it during quiet evenings as her mind wandered. This was apparently one such evening.

"All I can do," the woman sighed aloud, "is simply continue to hope and pray for his safe return."

/x\

Destrier was wracked with impatience to the highest degree. He knew that it was not prudent to urge their remaining troops to march home any quicker, but his mind was ablaze with concern for his wife.

His pregnant wife.

"I still cannot believe she didn't tell me." He huffed at Leofore for possibly the hundredth time.

And for the hundredth time Leofore replied, "she did not wish to seem as though she was using the child to barter, Revel. Indeed, had you not been so reckless, you would still be unawares!" The older paladin knocked a gauntlet into Destrier's right elbow teasingly, making the younger man wince.

Destrier's right arm was bandaged to the shoulder and rested in a ramshackle sling against his chest. A Kull laying in wait to ambush them had nearly ripped the limb from his body when it had hurled him through the air; even their most skilled healers had their hands full with repairing such a wound. Mainly due to the young man staunchly decrying the aid, claiming that he was fine , there was work to be done!

It wasn't until Leofore had shouted at him, upbraiding the knight for being foolhardy, do you wish for your child to grow up fatherless, Knight Revel?! , that Destrier stopped in his tracks and permitted his wounds to be tended to. Partially out of shock, of course, but also because he knew that Leofore would not lie to him.

Now, every second that they were away was another second he didn't have Illeria in his arms. To say he was 'startled' by his body's reaction to her absence would be a lie. He could barely contain the desire to spur his warhorse to a gallop.

As the first scattered outlying farms of Mid Port came into view, Leofore finally took pity on the other paladin. "Go already! I'm about to crawl out of my skin just watching you!" He urged, giving Destrier a wink. "Go to her, lad. She's waited long enough to tell you."

/x\

As the seasons were waxing into fall, travelers were few and far between. Far better to travel during the warm summer months than to endure the raw, rainy atmosphere of the current times.

Illeria had decided that Maplecrest would be closed for the week to offer her the ability to properly scour the establishment clean and swap the bedding to thicker articles. Between cycling the linens, sweeping the floors, cleaning the chimney, washing the curtains, dusting the rafters...the young woman had been so busy she didn't even have time to think, which had done wonders for her emotional state. It was so much easier to cope with the uncertainty when she wasn't actively thinking about it, when she could just collapse exhausted into bed at night and sleep undisturbed.

She was in the middle of hemming some old linens to use as cleaning rags when the sharp sound of the front door hitting the wall caught her attention.

The awkwardly mumbled apology also caught her attention.

Illeria jolted, her eyes flying to the doorway where her husband stood.

Her husband. "Destrier!" She cried gladly. "You're back!" Heedless of the linens, she bolted from her chair by the fireplace and pitched herself into his arms.

The large man cradled her to his chest, pressing his face into the kerchief covering her hair. She heard him inhale deeply and then Destrier gave a long, heavy sigh. " Illeria , I've...I am so…it's good to be home, my love." He suddenly sneezed violently. "I see you have been busy! You are coated with grime." The blond laughed, running a finger down the bridge of her nose and across her cheekbones as if to dust her off.

Illeria floundered, her face going hot at his teasing and at the realization of the state she must be in. The woman took a step back to observe him and she realized suddenly that his right arm was bound to his chest in a sling. "Oh, what happened? You…"

"It's nothing, my love. Nothing at all." Destrier tipped her chin up and gave her a soft, tender kiss. "I'll be fine once I can get you alone once more." His words were bold, so bold, brown eyes alight with mirth as he watched her try to regain her composure. "Don't let me keep you from your work, my love."

Illeria, still overcome with relief at his safe return, returned his kiss in a manner that was incredibly improper. Her tongue stroked his own in a lascivious echo of what she would love to do to him, right here if he wished.

"Iller-Illeria, please, mercy." The knight murmured against her lips, his gaze heated when he reluctantly pulled away. "Mercy, for a time. There are a few matters I must tend to, but I will return in the evening."

"You're leaving? Again?" Illeria's emotions roiled uncertainly, tipping between sadness and joy.

Destrier seemed to notice, his hand gliding over her cheek and cupping the heated skin. "Aye, only for a few hours. What is a few more hours for us, my love?" He reasoned. "I am certain we will have much to discuss!"

Oh, if only you knew! Illeria thought mournfully, wondering if this was the last time she would be on the receiving end of his affection. Many men said they craved children, a family, but when confronted with the reality…

Destrier had given her no reason to doubt his intent, she scolded herself. Now who was the fatalistic one? Illeria forced a melancholy little smile for him.

" 'What is a few more hours' , indeed. Hurry back, love." Her panic set in once the door closed after him. "Oh Goddess ," Illeria swore, "I need to bathe! " She scrambled for the door of her quarters, nervous nausea bubbling in her throat while she stripped nude.

Her stomach was becoming more obvious by the day. Soon enough she wouldn't be able to hide it, even with her heavier homespun skirts. Illeria sighed unhappily, running a hand over the still-small bump. Perhaps...perhaps Destrier would want a family. Perhaps now, they could be simply husband and wife.

But did she have it in her to tether him so blatantly? Despite the burden it would put on her, Illeria was loath to clip his wings. Would he grow to resent her? Hate her even, for coming between himself and his pursuit of martial superiority?

The young woman set her jaw firmly after a moment, willing her lower lip to cease trembling. Surely he would not have married her if he intended to flee at the first sign of their activities bearing fruit, she tried to reason with herself. The memory of their nights spent together before his most recent departure was tinged with a bittersweet melancholy, the echo of his touch haunting her in his absence.

The realization that she may still have such a lonely life ahead of her left Illeria clinging to the washstand for support.

It was a long time before she could rouse herself to continue to prepare for her husband's return.

/x\

"She does not know that you know? Why did you not tell her you knew?!"

Destrier blinked, absently nodding his thanks to the young cleric who had tended to his arm. The appendage still ached, but at least he could move his fingers once more. "I...If it is her news to give me, Knight-Commander Leof-"

" Lad , you vex me endlessly!" The older paladin cut him off in exasperation, whirling on Destrier so sharply that his mantle cracked! in the still air of the throne room. "I love you like you are my own brother but gods , you are dense! This woman, your wife , has the patience to rival any saint. 'Tis bad enough that you came here instead of staying with her to allay her fears."

"I did not wish to stand on ceremony with our monarch, Leofore. King Jonathan deserved to hear my resignation as soon as possible, that he may find a suitable replacement." Revel replied stiffly. "Illeria understands that I have a responsibility to His Majesty and His subjects."

"She is your wife , Revel! She cannot, should not be second to your responsibilities!" Leofore retorted.

King Jonathan, observing the two men with more than a fair share of bemusement, nodded his head in agreement. "The knight-commander is right, Destrier. I appreciate your care in this matter and we will attempt to expedite the process as much as possible, but the eve of your return is not the time to discuss such weighty matters." The king took his wife's hand, his eyes growing distant. "You must cherish what you have, Destrier. Life is an immeasurably precious thing." With a wave of his free hand, the monarch dismissed the two paladins.

Leofore appeared ready to seize Destrier by his gorget and haul him bodily along, the older man escorting his blond subordinate to the nearest washroom. Forty minutes later, scrubbed pink and unruly hair plastered down, Destrier Revel emerged sans armor. His ascot was untied but Leofore assured the other knight it would not be improper for him to return to his wife in such a state of undress.

And if she was waiting for him…

Destrier couldn't help the impatience that took hold of him, his stride lengthening to devour even more ground. Across the courtyard to the stables where his mount rested serenely, anticipating his return. "Aye, you know where we're headed." Destrier murmured to the beast once he settled into the saddle, gathering the reins in his good hand.

The white horse tossed its head as if to agree, taking off at a brisk trot. Truly, Destrier knew he could have simply walked; the distance was reasonably short. But this would be even quicker still.

Illeria's belligerent plow horse didn't even look up when Destrier rode into the barn, the swaybacked animal too absorbed with its nightly feed. The knight rushed through the motions of stabling his horse clumsily, the weakness of his dominant hand making the task more challenging than it needed to be. But finally, finally , it was done.

Destrier's boots felt impossibly light as he strode across the sodden courtyard. Gods , being apart from her was torturous. "Illeria?" He called as he opened the door, raising his hand out of habit to graze the wood carving overhead.

"The bedroom, love!" Her voice met him and he struggled out of his boots, certain that tracking mud across her floors would be grounds for expulsion.

Her bedroom. Their bedroom. His heart ached. How long had Illeria known that she was with child? Keeping the secret so that he could fulfill his duties without distraction…

He didn't deserve her selflessness.

Destrier closed his eyes momentarily, attempting to regain his composure. Deep breath in, slow exhale out. The blow always hurts more if you're bracing into it. Relax , Revel!

It was now or never. The blond man squared his shoulders.

"Illeria, we must discuss-" he began to say as he pushed open the door to their bedroom, but the words left his mind the moment he saw her. No matter how many damned times he had been graced by the sight of her nudity, Destrier still found himself a bit awed. "Ah." He finally managed to say.

He was not so far gone that he didn't notice how pensive she seemed, the young man taking in the way her teeth worried idly at her lower lip. "You don't wish to touch your wife, Knight Revel?" Illeria teased after a moment, but an odd tension was in the air. "I have been remarkably patient, wouldn't you say?"

"Beloved," Destrier murmured, "you are the most patient woman alive. However, be patient for a moment longer. There is an important matter we must discuss."

"It cannot wait?"

"Absolutely not." Destrier took her hand in his own and he was discomfited to find that she was trembling wildly. "My love, you are shaking."

"Anticipation, that's all." Illeria attempted to brush off his concern, the young woman propping herself up on her elbows and then wrapping her arms around her knees protectively. "Well, let's hear it."

"I...I know why you did not tell me before I departed, of course. I understand somewhat." Destrier started cautiously. "But it grieves me all the same that you had to endure such a burden of knowledge alone, to say nothing of the physical strain!" He wrapped her in a one-armed embrace, resting his cheek on her head. "You are my wife , Illeria. My partner, my equal."

She was still for a moment, and then Destrier felt her shoulders shudder. Her hands dug into the fabric covering his back, gripping it so tightly. "I was afraid." Illeria hiccupped, her voice small.

"Afraid? Of what?" Destrier asked, genuinely puzzled.

"How you would react. Whether you would even wish to have a child at all. Your duties-"

" Illeria ," Destrier interrupted her gently. "My love, I have resigned."

"You…what?" Illeria blinked up at him, her face wet with tears. Revel used his ascot to tenderly blot them away. "B-But the kingdom-!"

"His Majesty has already approved my request. There is the paperwork, of course. I'm certain there will be stacks, yet I feel nothing but elation." Destrier told her, sure that his smile was insufferable to behold.

Her own smile in response was slower, tentative, until it bloomed fully and he was blinded by the radiance of it. Her laughter was like the first drops of rain that heralded the end of a drought, the build to incredulous jubilation that had her throwing herself headlong into his chest and covering his face with excited kisses.

Gods , he had to be the luckiest man in the entire world. Destrier simply listened to the praises Illeria murmured against his skin as if she was offering prayers to some ancient, sensual deity, and he felt more alive than he ever had on the battlefield.

Abruptly Illeria leaned her weight on his injured arm and despite his best efforts, Destrier couldn't conceal his wince. She pulled back, her brow furrowed and mouth opening to say something. No doubt she was attempting to apologize. Destrier shifted his body, his lips meeting her own hungrily once more before he settled onto his back. "I'm afraid I am too weary to fully solve this problem myself tonight." He said with a contrite grimace, gesturing at his arm. "If you would be kind enough to help me disrobe, I will pay you back in the morn."

/x\

"Are you certain? If you are not... able , I would not ask anything from you." Illeria protested, heat surging in her face from the implication behind his verbiage.

Destrier caught her hand, bringing it to his lips so he could kiss her knuckles softly. "I need you tonight, beloved. I am a greedy man, craving the warmth of your body." He murmured, his honest words sending a frisson of delight down her back. "My life has been fraught with sharp edges and the weight of hundreds of lives on my shoulders, please , let me find peace with you."

His eyes had gone distant, dark even in the orange glow of the fire, and Illeria watched silently as he pressed a final kiss to her palm and then rested their joined fingers over the curve of her stomach.

"What we have created...what you have nurtured faithfully in my absence…" the knight whispered, words trailing off as his voice broke.

"I should have been honest with you." Illeria blurted out. "I just didn't wish to pin you down. I see now that it was foolish of me to fear your reaction."

"I love you, Illeria." Destrier assured her while she began to unbutton the placket on his breeches. "You don't ever need to fear me, beloved. I would never willfully cause you harm, but I beg you to be plain with me from this point onward. Do not suffer in silence. Will you promise me that?"

Illeria rested her forehead against his, smiling at him. "Of course, my love."

Through her efforts, she managed to successfully unbutton his shirt and wrestle his breeches down over his knees, his smallclothes soon following suit. Destrier groaned low in his throat, his good arm slung over his eyes as if he was attempting to hide his reaction to her touch. But the flush that no doubt reddened his face also extended down his chest, his unbuttoned shirt exposing him thoroughly. Nevermind his cock, already hard and weeping on his stomach.

It jumped when Illeria stroked her index over the tip and Destrier exhaled a ragged gasp. "So eager, my love! Surely it is enough that you already have me with child?" Illeria teased.

"Illeria, if it is you, it is never enough." He answered her bluntly. "Rend my completion from me a thousand times and it will never be enough, beloved."

The low timbre of his voice burrowed beneath her skin, setting her body alight. Illeria straddled his thighs, her hand gripping the base of his cock to steady him. She tapped his hip bone sharply, and Destrier's eyes flew up to meet her own. "Please don't move until I permit you to. Give me a moment to adjust." The woman requested, relieved when her husband nodded rapidly. Destrier could be overeager and, while he did his best, he still was a bit hazy on the intersection of his own strength and her bodily limitations.

Illeria rose up on her knees and sank slowly down onto his cock, a whine escaping her at the slide of his length into her body. Destrier's weakened hand was fisted so tightly that his knuckles had gone as white as the bedding, his other hand tangled desperately in the blankets. "Ille-" He tried to speak, but she settled down on his hips and he made a strangled noise instead.

Illeria widened her stance slightly, doing her best to take him as deep as she could. He filled her so well, stretching her nearly to her limits as she rutted her mound against his pelvis. The woman took a selfish moment to minister to her own needs, her hands cupping her breasts to stimulate herself as she rocked back and forth on her husband's cock. Destrier bore it all while echoing her own moans, his teeth gritted.

"You're so good to me, Desty." Illeria managed to say, her hips moving of their own accord in the age-old rhythm of copulation. "So good, so patient-"

"You're killing me, you're killing me, gods let me move ," Destrier pleaded. "Let me love you, let me touch you-"

"You may move, love." No sooner had she given his permission than Illeria found his hand grappling at the small of her back, the knight urging her down to lay nearly prone on his chest. He then began thrusting upwards into her fiercely, punching the breath out of her with the depth of his motion. Illeria whimpered, the sound seeming to drive him into a frenzy as his movements became erratic.

" Gods , I-" Destrier choked out, " cannot last, damn it --"

"Come inside me, love." Illeria commanded him breathlessly, loving the way his entire body shuddered at the order.

"Gods yes, gods yes, as many times as you want, fuck -" The blond swore, his hand splayed on the small of her back pressing her firmly down on his length as he came inside her.

Illeria laid on top of him for several long moments while the two of them tried to catch their breath, her ear pressed to his chest so she could hear his heart's wild tempo. "I've missed you, love." She whispered, surprised when he dropped a clumsy kiss on the top of her head.

"Did you come?" Destrier asked bluntly, grimacing when she shook her head. "I apologize, I'm afraid my eagerness overwhelmed my consideration. I will not send you to sleep without your release." He promised, his smile a bit crooked. "I just need a moment to regain my composure."

Illeria put her palms on his chest, leveraging herself upright. Destrier groaned when his cock slipped free of her body, a muttered oath issuing into the heated air between them. Illeria, for her part, smiled down at him and then sat back on his hips. Her husband's still half-hard cock slotted smoothly between the folds of her cunt, and she shivered when the blunt head of it pushed hot and slick against her clit.

"Illeria?" Destrier called her name, his tone bordering on curiosity. "Does it...is that satisfactory to you?"

"Very much so, love." Illeria assured him, and his hand found her left breast. Large, calloused fingers cupped her, his touch almost reverent in its delicacy.

"I doubt you will wish for me to touch you in this manner once you are truly heavy with child." Destrier remarked, his expression distant once more. "But it is already more than I deserve to witness you like this."

Illeria bent down to press her forehead to his own, the woman forcing him to look at her, really look at her as she stroked herself over his member like some wanton, feral thing. "Destrier," she whimpered, feeling the way his cock leapt at her voice alone. "I never wish for you to stop touching me. I love you so much."

"And I you, beloved." Destrier kissed her eagerly, only breaking away to tilt his head back and gasp for air. " Gods Illeria, you urge me to expedite my recovery!" He huffed, chuckling ruefully. "Soon enough I will be able to give you what you crave. Forgive my momentary incapacitation."

"Don't rush yourself, my love. I rather enjoy having you at my mercy." Illeria replied playfully, loving the way his eyes lit up at her words.

"You would!" He retorted, sounding absolutely delighted. "But you know you need only ask. The very breath in my chest is already yours, beloved." Destrier reached up again, taking her chin and kissing her sweetly. "Anything you desire, anything in my power to give." He murmured into her mouth.

"All I ask for is your love, Destrier." Illeria answered, tenderly sweeping the hair stuck to his forehead out of his eyes.

"All that she asks for is all that I have to give." Destrier sighed, "it is all my heart beats for, beloved. For you, and…" he paused, laying his hand on her stomach while he gazed up at her lovingly. "For the little one."

Illeria bit her lip, warding off the tears that threatened to spill over. "Show me, my love."

/x\

When she woke in the gray light of dawn, it was to the hot, wet sensation of her husband's hard cock sliding back into her cunt from behind. Barely awake, all Illeria could do was keen and whimper while he sank deep. Destrier's mouth pressed against her ear, his long, low growl of satisfaction sending a searing wave through her body.

"How are you always so tight for me?" He muttered, filthy words that had the woman burying her face in the pillow even as she arched her hips up to greet him. Destrier grunted, shifting his weight slightly and reaching around to brush over her clit.

Illeria sobbed out a breath, too spent from their night of debauchery to do much of anything aside from angle her pelvis downwards against his fingers. Destrier let her struggle for a moment before he tapped the top of her shoulder, easing her back down until she was prone yet again. He didn't appear to care overmuch that he had trapped his good hand beneath her, the fingers of his other hand twining through her own as he lowered himself down with her.

Illeria's cunt throbbed with want around his length, the peaks of her breasts teased by the rough homespun blanket beneath her. She could have come just from that little stimuli alone, already so sensitive and alight from prolonged desire. But Destrier was thorough and patient, soothing her halfway back to sleep as he slowly rocked her between the searing embrace of his body and the warm, calloused touch of his fingers.

"Shh, it's only a dream, my wife." He teased her breathlessly as she cried out his name into the pillow. "I know, I know, I am a cruel and pitiless man to deprive you of the rest you need so dearly. Permit me a moment of selfishness." Destrier whispered, his pelvis seated firmly against her rear. "Just a moment, and then we shall sleep until noon."

"Fill me up, Destrier, make me come-!" Illeria begged, her voice cracking with desperation.

Destrier made a strange noise behind her, half-pained, his fingers spreading her folds so she could grind herself into the heel of his hand. It was barely a breath before she was coming, every inch of bare skin tingling in the frenzied glow of her aftermath.

Destrier's skin slapped against her own as he lost the fight with his patience, the young man grabbing her hips and thrusting into her as deeply as he could. "Gods, I love it when you come for me." He muttered through his teeth, almost as if he was speaking to himself. "So wet , warm, need you, gods what have you done to me--"

"P-- lease ," Illeria moaned, her breath hitching from the vigor of his motions. "Oh, please Destrier…"

" Yes ." Destrier's voice lowered to a strange, rich register as he found his completion, the man effectively pinning her down to the bed with the weight of his body while he came. Illeria felt his grip on her hand twitch with every throb, unconsciously echoing his release. " Gods , there. There. Now we can go back to sleep." He gasped after a moment, dragging himself up onto his elbows and rolling to his side.

Illeria, too tired to even think about moving, vaguely felt his weight leave the bed. After a moment, a warmed washcloth grazed her quivering cunt and she couldn't help the whine she let out, her hands clutching at the bedspread.

Destrier urged her legs apart and his fingers plunged into her, the man mercilessly stroking down against the sweet spot on the inner wall of her stomach. Illeria, though exhausted, felt yet another orgasm begin to curl in anticipatory preparation as her husband worked her over with practised, circular strokes. "One more for me? I am so greedy for you, beloved, please." He implored sweetly, like he wasn't the devil incarnate who had already kept her up half the night with his lovemaking.

Tears pricked at the edges of her eyes and, thoroughly overwhelmed, Illeria had no choice but to surrender to the burgeoning arousal that Destrier had coaxed to the surface. The way he moved, the expertise of his touch...she had never had a chance in the first place. Her husband, Destrier Revel, always brought her to such lofty heights and took his blessed time returning from them. He savored every moment with her after their first coupling, drawing the pleasure out until it lingered bright and sharp, wavering on pain.

Such was his love for her, and such was her love for him. Brilliant as starfire, soft as moonlight, endless as the very cosmos.

/x\

"What shall we name them?" Illeria mumbled sleepily to Destrier after he had cleaned her off. He was not quite as comfortable with his prestidigitation as he would like to be and besides, there was something achingly intimate about tending to her in a practical fashion. "The baby," she clarified needlessly.

Destrier froze midway through the motion of tugging the blanket up to shield them from the (comparatively) chillier air in the room. The baby . Gods, they were having a baby. He would be a father . Overtaken by emotion, he kissed her forehead softly. "It can wait, beloved. We shall have months for you to decide."

"No," his wife slurred in protest, clinging to his hand and blinking blearily up at him. "You decide. Pick a name."

"I...Illeria, you cannot expect me to name them. We know not whether they shall be a boy or a girl!" Destrier reasoned.

Truthfully, he was fearful to name a child as he had named himself . Gods only knew what his birth name actually was. Leofore had never questioned the validity of his identity, the dark-haired paladin unaware that the orphan had simply blurted out the first thing he could think of after Leofore had dragged him out of the muck of the barracks stable. It was truly a miracle that Destrier had managed to get so far in life with a moniker that reduced him to nothing but a warhorse.

The blond man's brow furrowed and he rotated his previously-injured arm, wincing a bit when it twinged slightly. He was on the mend, if only just. Perhaps he was aggressively foolhardy for being so active , but with a wife that was as eager and affectionate as Illeria…

Well, any man would be hard-pressed to consider their wounds under such pleasurable duress.

Illeria grumbled and grudgingly let him sink down onto the bed beside her. Soon enough she pressed against his ribs, her cheek resting on his chest as she hummed wearily and he stroked her hair. "It will be a boy." She murmured, sounding nearly asleep.

"Oh aye? You are sure of that?" Destrier teased.

"I am." His wife insisted, rubbing her nose against his chest. "I can tell."

"Very well. I shall not poke fun at your maternal intuition." Destrier promised solemnly, earning himself a one-eyed glare. "However I will reiterate my previous counsel, beloved. Rest . When you wake, then we may discuss further." He gestured out the window at the grey twilight, "the weather promises to be rainy, and if there is no reason for us to leave this bed…" the blond man trailed off pointedly.

Illeria still put up an admirable fight, lasting an entire seven seconds before she was sound asleep on his chest.

The former Knight-Captain Destrier Revel smiled, his finger delicately tracing the bridge of Illeria's nose. "I am so glad to have you by my side," he whispered to her, blinking away the grateful tears misting his eyes when she snuggled a bit closer to him, " my wife ."

Part Seven: The Most Important Part

#destrier revel #illeria stennas #a paladin and his love #pauldronsexual activity #non-player character x player character #npc x pc #NPC ruminations #female npc #male pc #paladin #conquest paladin #dnd character #dnd #dnd paladin #dnd 5e

1 note · View note

masterbeta29 · 4 years

Text

My review of Pokemon SwSh!!!! (or just Shield, cuz it was the version I play, LOL)

Finally, after finishing the game (including the Post game) and fully exploring the region, I think it’s time for me to say what I think of this 8 gen…

I know it’s obvious, but I mention it just in case: This is MY OPINION!!!, if someone disagrees with me its totally valid, I just ask for respect.

ALSO, English is not my first language so I might have certain lack/erros of spelling out there, or I repeat many words, hehe.

It is important to clarify that this review is based on SwSh base, everything that refers to DLC will NOT be included here, my opinion of the game is already done, the rest is extra content.

I wanted to give this review a more ‘’silly’’ tone, since giving negative opinions on the internet can be quite delicate and I wanted to relax the mood. Do not take this seriously, I still have my CONS with the game, but it is still genuinely enjoyable, which for me is the most important thing in a game. I will talk about everything in general, so I will try to summarize certain points.

LET’S GO!!!

NEW FEATURES

Poke Camp, Curry Dex, Boxes and more

It’s like a dream come true for me, visiting other camps, seeing my whole party next to each other in the screen playing, discussing, running, is something really magical helps, me connect with them and know their personalities better, although I admit that I miss petting them lol and the minigames like in Gen 6. I also really liked the concept of curry as an alternative way to cure your Pokémon maybe I just wish there was a simpler way to know how to create new recipes (ALSO TMs).

Access to boxes anywhere is wonderful especially when you are breeding, just like, changing the name of trade Pokémon and the move reminder.

Rotomphone

It is not used as much as a phone, more than in the post Game (I can be wrong tho) but it serves as Dex and that’s what’s important really, the new feature is that now it includes the bicycle, that can ride both on land and water and in my opinion it is a degradation of what the concept of “Poke Ride” was, but as I said before, it fulfill the function it should.

Trainer Cards

The concept of being able to share and customize them with other players is super entertaining, although it is a bit annoying that you always have to make a new code for each small modification. As for the cards of the main characters of the game, I will talk with a little more detail later.

Dynamax

At the beginning it was fun and exciting, but in the end it just became a gimmick that sometimes I had to use by obligation in raids. It is not as epic as the Megas and does not have the weight of the lore and cultural/regional connection like the Z-moves.

The Giga forms, although some are great, and I am happy that they gave Pokémon like Garbodor love, I also think that there were many missed opportunities, starting with the starters of the region or in giving forms to Pokémon that in previous generations already had like Gengar and Charizard.

Raids

They are incredibly fun, it is an activity that you can spend hours and hours enjoying, especially with friends but if we talk about NPCs… OOF, I understand that the purpose of Pokemon is that we all make friends and work as a team, but DAMN, if it is stressful when you lose a raid with 3 friends and an NPC, because the Pokémon only killed the NPC, it is almost impossible to defeat a 5 star raid with only NPCs, and as I said before I understand why they do them weaker, but there are some that are completely useless, I see you Martin Solrock lol.

Poke Jobs and Rotom Rally

I will be honest, I have not used these features enough to have a solid judgment on these lol.

CHARACTERS

Magnolia

OK, I need to get this off my chest: I am incredibly disappointed and sad with this character, especially since she is/was our first old female professor, to be simply pulled into forgettable land.

It started pretty well, but then it just disappeared until almost the end of the game to give the role of professor to Sonia … REALLY ?! I hate to say this, but she felt more like a device to give character development to Sonia, when she could have been used in scenes with Rose or repeatedly going into further detail about Dynamax for the MC (you know because she’s an expert about that topic…), before give the paper to Sonia. At least I am grateful that I had a little more screen time in the post game, although not even as a professor.

Sonia

Thank you Sonia, for allowing us to discover and know the story with you, honestly she was the one who saved mostly my interest in the story.

But speaking of the character, I like her, I like her dedication to get out of the shadow of Leon’s achievement and to show her grandmother that she is capable, which she finally manages to fulfill, she still has certain insecurities, but that makes her more human, she’s the real professor (I’m still salty for Magnolia tho)

Leon

Everyone knows from the posts on my PT on Twitter that I constantly bullying the character, but I really like him a lot, he is an excellent guide/brother through the game, charismatic, EXTRA, but very involved in his role as champion, in the sense that he is always aware of what is going on and helping in the process, in addition to being strong (one of the most difficult battles in the game). Definitely among my fav champions with Cynthia, Steven and Kukui (I count him as champion, SU!)

Gym Leaders

I love them, their designs, personalities, the animations, they are all incredibly memorable, my favorites are Opal, Kabu and Piers.

But even so, I wish I had more to go on besides the lore on the back of their cards and their battle animations, I would have liked to see them more integrated in the story, and I feel that it lack a little more interaction with some of them, especially Allister and Melony in my case, but at least the trainer cards were a good addition to know them a little more, outside of being a Gym Leader.

RIVALS

OK, I’m prepared for everyone to hate me, *sigh*:

I… I DONT LIKE BEDE AND MARNIE THAT MUCH?… I mean, I don’t hate them, and they are both far from being the worst rivals, but I did expect a little more from both…

Bede

I am one of the few of the fandom that does not like rivals flat jerks, because for me, that is not a character but rather a trait.

But I wanted to give it a try, and when I was just beginning to gain interest in him, they force his backstory in my face… And as I said, I like trainer cards…but more in characters, like G.leaders because these are characters that we don’t see much around the trip, but in the case of rivals, that appear several times and develop in the story, I personally like to get to know them little by little, discover their story and understand them in the course, here I felt it more as an excuse for me, to feel bad for him, especially at the moment he gives you his card.

His relationship with Rose is not explored enough imo.

And a complete turn-around that happens offscreen, like no joke, the MC literally didn’t see any of it, he just disappears after the Opal scene (but to give him credit, that scene is one of my favorites in the game).

But you know, I understood that he was just a lost boy, and I’m happy that he found a better place, and I admire his effort to want to change, so in the end I ended up liking him a little more.

Marnie

Marnie is interesting, because although I agree with many people that she would have benefited from having more screen time, I consider that a good character does not need all the screen time in the world, is about what but what they do with it, and the problem I have with her is that her time was not well spent.

I like her dream and I really like her relationship with her brother, however there was no moment when I really connected with her. I feel partly, that I don’t know her character, like her various personality facets.

Untapped opportunities: fight with her more times or with her…would have helped the character a lot imo.

Hop

Hop is the best rival of the three hands down, his trainer card contains the right and necessary information to make us have an interest in the character, but also the story lets us know him more: a competitive boy, but who has insecurities, fears of failure, that is reflected not only by the dialogue but also in his Pokemon team (no really, it broke my heart when I realized that he didn’t have his Wooloo in his team), that he is frustrated and suffers, but he gets up, discovers other tastes and with these finds a new path, ugh perfect, I adore him.

Forcing the player to defeat him is torture, it is like defeating Hau in USUM and Wally in ORAS breaks my heart.

Rose

In short: ok character, decent /meh antagonist, and a horrible villain.

Like the climax of the story, Rose is forced in the end to be the villain, when he worked best as an antagonist, his plan makes no sense, his battle is disappointing, although his battle theme is awesome, but it just does not fit the character, the plan, nor the situation at all.

But the character has a certain charisma, especially in his ‘’suit especially in his incognito suit.”

Oleana

Interesting character, with a potential backstory, with motives and characterization, who is underused in the story * sigh *… I LIKE HER THO

Overall, I would have liked to see much more of the relationship between Rose, Oleana and Bede, I think it would have benefited the 3 characters…

Team Yell

They are … ok, it is cool to have a team that is not villain, that bother the player from time to time even for good reasons, I admire his dedication and loyalty.

THE REGION

The region is aesthetically beautiful, the details, the structure, the contrast for example between Hammerlocke and Ballonlea, and despite not living in the UK or having had the opportunity to travel to the destination, according to my friends the region in which the games are based is very well related, which I think is excellent. However, despite the visual beauty, when it comes to routes and exploration it feels a bit limited, there are really some towns, where the most interesting thing to do is complete the Gym, there are almost no reasons to return to the previous town after having passed them…

But, what I missed the most was the lack of exploration, discovery, the charm of the NPCs…

Many have told me: what about the Wild Area? Because of the ability to explore in an open area, it is probably the best in the franchise! and yes, the Wild Area is a very attractive part of these games (I will talk a little bit about this, later), but as I said, everything that is considered part of the capacity of the new console, I will not take it into account, it is unfair, because a portable console can NOT stand a concept such as the Wild Area although the developers had the idea before, not at least at SwSh scale.

And as I said before and again, the T.Cards are an incredible idea, but for me NOTHING compares to getting to know the characters through the world, dialogue, interaction… I’m going to use pokemon Moon as an example to make me understand better: (because it was the last main pokemon game I played before SwSh and that’s why I have it more fresh lol) Where you can enter Olivia’s shop, buy jewelry and visit her room and discover that she is a desperate single woman, or enter Gladion’s room and talk to the receptionist and that she tells you part of his story, that kind of things…

Let’s see for example Melony, we know she has more children besides Gordie, but only for concept art, and yes, probably do unique models would take a while, but I honestly wouldn’t have be bothered if they use generic NPCS, they did it with Lana’s sisters, then the anime can dedicated to giving them unique designs.

Speaking of NPCs (mainly of those inside the houses), many lost the charm and authenticity they had… I mean, where is the lady who told us the story of her husband’s accident or the men of the coffee shop, who every time he prepares us a drink told us the story of where such a drink came from, ect… the NPCS on that side are boring…

EXCEPT BALL GUY, he / she is awesome!

I know this look like extra or unimportant things, but these little details really give life to the region, personality to characters that are secondary, it makes everything feel more united and also makes the main characters feel more inside the world, and honestly that is why on this hand, some cities felt empty for me…

But the other hand, I really liked what they did with the NPCs fans, see how the number increasing every time the MC wins a gym battle, makes the trip to become a champion feel more rewarding, It really helps you feel like a true champion when you got it.

Other examples like the girl NPC who is going to support you in the Gyms while their pokemon is evolving, or how the NPCS react and change their dialogue corresponding to what is happening… beautiful, for this part the worldbulding is 10/10.

The wild Area

Probably the closest we have for now of an open space area in a Pokemon game, I have to admit that I get lost at least 1 half an hour trying to find the next destination (I understand you Leon), it was hilarious lol, at the beginning of the game it turns out to be a fairly limited area, and you really can enjoy it in its entirety when you finish the main story, but I don’t see so much trouble with that, since it’s partly the point, for balance. In general, it is a fantastic idea although I feel that it is necessary to polish it in certain parts, and NO, I don’t mean THE TREE, but I don’t want to be so hard on GF at this moment, because is the first time they experiment with such concept…

Pokemon and Music

I put these two together because they both share a very curious characteristic: EXPERIMENTAL.

The pokedex is super solid, I love how these last generations, GF is doing its homework and is striving to make the pokemon belong to the region, as for animals, myths, culture…muah I LOVE IT, BRAVO.

For me a good OST movie or video game not only has to be for the piece n yes, but how it is composed to accompany the events that occur on the screen, how it adapts and fits a certain scene of the story or character, and although I admit that in general it is not my favorite compared to other gens, there are tracks that have become part of my favorites:

The crowd, the screams, the build up as you gradually approach the last pokemon, ugh. Dynamax is cool and everything, but THIS is the basis for me, of why these battles feel so energetic and exciting.

That mystical atmosphere that catches you, is beautiful but at the same time mysterious, and perhaps many disagree with me, but the addition of the howls of the legendaries… I love it.

STORY

I think the game started extremely well, the introduction to the characters, the exploration, the introduction to the starters, the mystery of the legendary, everything is on track to me to enjoy this adventure to the fullest, but later I felt like it began to fall.

I understand that this is Pokémon and sometimes Pokémon does not need a complex story to make it enjoyable, as long as it makes sense and is entertaining, the problem I have mainly with the story is how they constantly get you out of it. I understand the concept they wanted to do: to take a more realistic point of view, in which adults take responsibility or in this case the champion and that later when you become champion you now can do what the champion did, and I like this concept, but the phrase of “you focus on the gym, we take care of the problems ” they say and they repeat it several times in the game like, I understood the first time!!!

Indirectly I felt like they were trying to took me out, and in consequence I lost interest in the story of the game, if it hadn’t been because Sonia bothered to explain to me the lore and a little of what was happening.

It’s more like “tell us” and not “show us”

and that’s the risk of this concept: you play as a main character, because you want to be a main character or share the role.

The climax feels incredibly forced and confusing, I felt that there was no build out, almost no foreshadowing for what was happening at the moment, everything comes out of nowhere, and thats why, I started making Okami jokes with Eternatus, because I don’t felt that emotion of the ‘’Climax’’.

Definitely in the part where the game shine was in the gym Challenge, as I said before, the gyms, the leaders, the atmosphere within them, the scale, the music that changing every time, until reaching the final pokémon, the challenges that we have to do before, the fans, becoming the champion, all this really is the identity of the game.

Pokémon returned to its roots, where this story is the story of us again, and becoming the champion here is everything, it is one of the most exciting and most satisfying Gym challenge in all generations with gyms.

ADDITIONAL

Here I want to give opinions according to the experiences I had with certain things within the game, which I think are quite PERSONAL, because each person plays different Pokémon, by the team of Pokémon, because he decided to level up more or stay at a lower level or how you decided to follow the story of the game.

Difficulty

Decent, by the standards of Pokemon of course, I try not to leveling to much, and if I do, there are maximum 3 levels and only one pokemon… So, gyms were easy in general, perhaps a pair that were difficult (Allister and Melony), but I never did black screen as in other games, but definitely the most difficult battle in the game is Leon, which I think is appropriate.

Online

Its horrible lol, There were not only once but several times in which I lasted like 1 hour trying to connect with a person, it is ridiculous.The signal falling every so often. But in general the biggest problem I have is connecting with very specific people, not even with the infamous Festival Plaza had so many problems.

Gameplay / Pacing

It is normal the same as always which is fine, some drop of frames out there in certain scenes but nothing serious, some cuts and lack of scenarios / designs that if you should in when they took me a little at the time, but absolutely nothing compared as the haters make it look, the game is still incredibly enjoyable, and it can be played perfectly.

The pacing started pretty well/decently, but from the fourth gym onwards, everything became very very fast, and not to mention the climax and the Pokemon League, honestly all this last arc felt super stuck….

So my opinion in general is: I enjoy the game like any other Pokémon game, it has its entity, it has new and interesting things that I would like it to expand more in future generations and it has personality. Is it my favorite game or my favorite generation? No, I definitely enjoyed other generations more, there were many missed opportunities that they could take more advantage, and I feel bad for GF for making them release this game for this year and these dates, because unfortunately some cuts are very noticeable. But the generation just starting ,so we will have to wait and see what we have for the future. For now, Thanks Pokémon SwSh, for another adventure…

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #swsh spoilers #my op #my post #review #I probably forgot something and I also have a lot of types cuz im trash lol

32 notes · View notes

zhenyakatava · 4 years

Photo

[ apex townhome complex ]

love prospers was a kansas ccity-based nonprofit that, in the mid-90s, has an impeccable reputation as a godly, benevolent organization intent on bringing local missourians to better circumstances by forgiving, and helping themselves forgive, their faults. they stumbled into seven devils in 1997 and could feel the moral rot and spiritual decay that existed there, so they started an initiative. in 1998, they raised enough money to begin building on a townhome complex. to create an environment within the town of ambitiousness to be better, they called on people to admit their faults through a lengthy application process. many families applied, but only five were successful.

the families moved into their new homes in 200 and, for a while, the program was ultra successful. the parents stayed out of trouble, the children excelled in school and became great friends.

or so it seemed.

in truth, the parents only got smarter with their misdeeds. they continued to drink, smoke, and party. they sold drugs throughout and outside the complex — but they gave the illusion of having it together.

all of that changed in 2003, when a suspected overdose at a party thrown at the complex and included every no-good resident of seven devils that could crawl from the gutter to get there. the police and the media came and revealed what was really happening there, and love prospers was forced to pull funding. after all, it wouldn’t be good for their now-fading image to be funding a 24-hour party.

in the years since, the townhomes have fallen into disrepair and faded from the minds of anyone who matters. the townspeople turn their noses up, while the police drive by every now and then to pretend to hold the families accountable.

as for the children living there, they have become a big, dysfunctional family. they raised each other, they acted as parents both good and bad to their neighbors and friends. they had their first drinks, smoked their first joint, and often had their first kisses under the falling awnings of the complex pool. outcast from the rest of the town, they found solace in each other.

[ BENNETT FAMILY ] everyone knew that millie shaw didn’t belong with leonard bennett, but she didn’t listen. leaving her common sense at the curb, the couple eloped at a rather young age and dove headfirst into a destructive marriage. they relocated from the dangerous streets of detroit to a run-down house in a town known as seven devils, and have been here ever since. after growing extremely paranoid about bringing his children up in a life of poverty, leonard turned to cooking and distributing methamphetamines. and once leo realized that he was one of the best cooks in seven devils, he became tunnel visioned and obsessed with drug manufacturing. it wasn’t until millie was pregnant with their third child that shit really started to hit the fan. nearly three weeks before christmas, the family awoke to blaring fire alarms and growing flames .. the shed had caught fire; its flames burning so hot inches from the run-down place the bennett’s called home. following the

first bennett, 30+, face first bennett, 24-29, face sutton bennett, 22, bridget satterlee, played by josie first bennett - 18-21, face

[ CALHOUN FAMILY ] natives to seven devils with a long history of being troublemakers. their dad was a rolling stone chasing a pipe dream, leaving their mom to raise three rambunctious kids. she applied to live in the townhomes to give them some stability, which was a nice idea but ultimately futile. ~10ish years ago, he went out and never came back. no one's really sure what happened to him. made their already-shitty circumstances worse as their mom tried (and failed) to cope. raised each other. all up to no good all the time, but they look out for each other.

corvus calhoun, 26, penn badgley, played by jools crosby calhoun, 24, charlie newman, played by alex challyn calhoun, 20, jasmyn palombo, played by jenn

[ KELLEY FAMILY ] straight-up white trash. the kids had two different dads, neither of whom stuck around for very long, and one of whom has spent a lot of time in prison. jana, their mother, is practically famous for her taste in abusive, aggressive deadbeats. but you have to hand it to her: she used the facts in her application for a townhome, and hell, she got one. however, it didn't have that much of an impact on setting her kids on the straight and narrow. in some ways, they're as bad as she is.

male kelley, 28 - 30, face summer kelley, 26, face, played by maddie

[ LINWOOD FAMILY ] the linwoods were initially chosen for the complex because the family patriarch - andrew - was fresh on parole after a brief stint behind bars. while they were barely scrapping by financially, they were happy and stable — at least at first. andrew and rebecca were high school sweethearts living their domestic bliss dreams with two kids and a baby on the way when andrew unexpectedly passed. rebecca never recovered from the loss, and plunged into a dark world of paranoia and hallucinations. the oldest sibling essentially took on the role of caretaker at a young age, and can be credited for the family not falling completely apart.

first linwood, 24-26, ace first linwood, 19-21, face elizabeth “duckie” linwood, 18, madison beer, played by esther

[ WICKENS FAMILY ] the wickens are an old name in seven devils, one that everyone who’s been here is well aware of. they’re the ones stealing your cars and breaking into your houses - even if it wasn’t them, they’re the ones you blame it on. every generation they say they’ll change the cycle, and every generation they fail: a family of pipe dreamers and schemers, doomed to fail. the patriarch, wes wickens, thought the military would be his solution but ended up with an early discharge, a drinking problem and ptsd. he married their mother, who was a sweet and unassuming women, and she wanted more for them - hence, she applied for the townhome and got it. it’s just too bad she couldn’t stick around long enough to make it work.

billy wickens, 24, luke benward, played by morgan first wickens, 23, face, reserved for emily wendy wickens, 22, npc first wickens, 19, face

#crownsrp #ignore the uglygraphic

6 notes · View notes

sarcasticace · 5 years

Text

Borderlands 3 thoughts

Cause I need to vent and get this off my chest

SPOILERS!!!

EDIT: i finished game and had time to think about this, even play some endgame stuff/replay the story w/ other VHs. So I made some edits below, but my opinion is pretty much the same.

They fucking killed off Maya, their only ace character, just for Ava’s character development, but they didn’t even DO that right. First off, NO ONE is allowed to mourn for Maya except Ava because Maya belongs to her. Two thirds of the 2nd gen VHs are cut from the game and Zer0 is basically a background character. They don’t say ANYTHING more about Maya than a haiku (or two) that players have to seek them out just to hear. And the people of Sanctuary don’t have anything significant to say for the siren hero who rid Pandora of Handsome Jack (who killed their beloved Roland btw). You can, however, seek them out like Zer0 to hear them say a thing or two which is, admittedly, nice. I missed this the first time around (I heard there was a bug?), but even though it’s a nice touch, they’re short and don’t quite compensate for how they essentially throw Maya away for development (or underdevelopment, in this case) of others. Plus, it’s dependent upon players taking time out of their play-through to speak with all the NPCs instead of playing the game. It’s a blink and you miss it kinda of situation. It just doesn’t compensate for the fact that they all just stand around and SAY NOTHING as Lilith breaks the news and says a few lackluster words.

Maya is essentially reduced to a piece of character development. This is a character that many players spent hours playing as, completing multiple play-throughs and creating a variety of builds. Like any fictional character to ever exist, she’s important to players for so many different ways. BL3 was her (and her VH teammates’) time to shine just as BL2 was for Roland, Lilith, Mordecai, and Brick. But she’s robbed of that. She has no real important to the plot, only appearing for a third of the game (if even that). We pick her up cause there’s a vault key fragment on her planet and once we’ve got it, she disappears because it’s back to Rhys’ story until it’s time for her to die. She has so little importance outside of what her death does for Ava and Troy.

And speaking of Ava, she’s done just as dirty though, obviously, not nearly as much since she’s not suddenly killed off. The story doesn’t explore Ava’s feelings beyond her initial anger towards Lilith. That anger isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it’s justified and I hate that Ava is getting so much hate. First off, Ava’s still a child and she’s grieving. Her lashing out makes sense in context and the fact that it’s towards Lilith is fine. Like I said before, Lilith’s words for Maya were rather lackluster. I get she was numb and trying to soldier on, but it felt rather dismissive considering all Maya has done for her in the previous game. So Ava calling her out not only makes sense, but was needed. The fact that none of the adults confronted Lilith made me scratch my head, but that’s not the problem. I mean, it is, but not what I’m getting at. It’s that Lilith becomes the sole focus of Ava’s anger and it doesn’t make sense. Lilith wasn’t down in the Vault. She wanted to be, but Maya talked her out of it because she lost her powers. But do you know who WAS down there, watched Maya die and did nothing (because the game forgets we’re a character)? The VHs! It would’ve made more sense for Ava to be primarily angry towards them, but also not happy at Lilith for being dismissive. But instead of an emotionally charged scene that gets the player interacting with the characters (to an extent), Ava thanks them as if they said something incredibly moving that she needed to hear and hands over Maya’s prized gun as a reward.

Ava’s not a bad character and she definitely doesn’t deserve the hate she’s been getting, but I’ve also noticed some people don’t recognize or maybe ignore that she’s badly written (like most things in the story). Ava pretty much disappears until it’s time for her to blame Lilith and question her choices until Tannis reprimands her once. Then Ava is suddenly a fully realized character. Arc complete and charging into battle alongside the VHs despite being... what? 11yrs old? Then she’s made Lilith’s successor of Sanctuary for no reason. Why? Tannis and the VHs, who have been doing all the work and not appearing in ANY major cutscenes, are RIGHT THERE! Ava has only JUST gotten Maya’s Siren powers. What about Amara????? Wouldn’t she be a better choice for successor since she’s been a siren for years??? Or Fl4k??? Moze or Zane?? There’s this gap between Ava losing Maya and being given Sanctuary that should’ve been explored because otherwise why fucking kill off Maya and make Ava such a focal character? It’s not that Ava doesn’t deserve this storyline, it’s that she deserves the missing chunk of her arc that progresses to this outcome.

Now let’s talk about Troy, the other character that Maya was sacrificed to develop. Obviously gaining Maya’s powers changed the dynamic between Troy and Tyreen while also igniting change in Troy’s overall personality and motivation. He started off being in the background, depending on Tyreen and following her plan until he gets a taste of independent power. Next thing we know, he’s down on Eden-6 without Tyreen’s knowledge and phaselocking us in a trap he planned by himself. They foreshadowed the fuck out of him possibly turning on Tyreen or even accidentally killing her, but when the big moment comes, they don’t deliver. Troy dies instead, essentially wasting EVERYTHING they had built up to this point. And I can only assume this was done to subvert expectations? As if that’s been going well whenever somebody tries that. Tyreen, although a cool character in her own right, hadn’t been given anything significant to pick up the slack and fill what Troy took away with his death. And following this point in the story, she’s shoved aside to give Typhon the spotlight when she needed it more to accomplish filling what should’ve been Troy’s role. When Angel died in BL2, there was a noticeable change in Jack’s demeanor. It changed the entire tone of the later half of the game and not to be completely biased, but it was so god damn good. Character deaths are only good when it ignites change to the story and the characters attached to them.... otherwise it’s just lazy shock value. I’m looking at you, Walking Dead.

In the end, Maya dying doesn’t serve any purpose to the story. It’s used to set up Ava and Troy’s development, but the writers don’t follow through with either of their arcs and the result is just shock value. They should’ve just kept Maya alive. The gameplay is vastly an improvement to the last, but BL3 ruins pretty much says fuck the VHs. It says fuck most borderlands characters, but specifically the VHs from the second game.

#Borderlands 3 #BL3 #Maya the Siren #Lilith the Siren #Troy the Siren #Ava the Siren #Patricia Tannis #Zer0 the Assassin #AntiBL3

42 notes · View notes

goddessmuacheat-blog · 4 years

Text

Goddess MUA Cheats

Goddess MUA Cheats were launched. Despair: attacking enemy units that have hp underneath 50% will increase the hero's bodily assault with the aid of 25%. On your quest to becoming the maximum powerful player in hero hunters, you can take the long way - or you can take the shortcut. If you've discovered a cheat you'd like to add to the page, or have thank you for making the choice to be a dana-farber cancer-combating hero. Magma form lasts for 8s whenever. More. 99 add to cart. Expected transport dates - opens in a brand new window or tab include seller's coping with time, foundation zip code, vacation spot zip code and time of reputation and will rely upon delivery carrier decided on and receipt of cleared fee - opens in a new window or tab. Create a strong group of five heroes to fight via an rpg-style marketing campaign! Allow them to lead your nation to glory as conflict generals! Be a part of a guild to fight along your allies! Ride into conflict together to overcome diverse exhilarating activities: guild wars, state versus state battles, conflict royals, surprise wars, darknest invasions, and plenty extra! Brawl with millions of players from everywhere in the global, and defeat folks who stand to your way! Seize the throne and rule over all! Revel in the fun of war as your armies conflict in lovely 3-d images! True hero morse code bracelet - nurse present - physician present - morse code bracelet claireflair. "i stated, 'this cat is in this bedroom, i realize it flash sale - first strike guerrilla aluminum 30. all heroes cheat list: 26 apr 2020 download heroes strike offline mod apk v22 Cheats unlimited money and gemstones hyperlink 1: https://droidsignal. This name generator will come up with 10 quirk names for the my hero academia universe. Before he commenced schooling brawlers, air strike skilled birds - mainly the rare blue zephyr falcons. Watch as your heroes unleash their capabilities and harness their mystical strength! - turf membership (us$nine.99/month): join get: studies speed/construction velocity/player exp raise +25%, auto-completes admin quests and guild quests and lets in one-faucet collection of rewards - 7-day sprint bundle (us$1.99/week): enroll in declare the objects: speed up, speed up schooling, and resources. - 7-day acquainted package deal (us$2.99/week): subscribe to claim the objects: exp elixirs, exp potions, speed up merging, anima, and fragments. ● subscription robotically renews until vehicle-renew is turned off at least 24-hours earlier than the give up of the present day duration ● account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours previous to the cease of the cutting-edge duration, and pick out the value of the renewal ● subscriptions can be controlled by way of the person and vehicle-renewal may be turned off by way of going to the consumer's account settings after buy this sport is the first-rate and maximum addicting cell sport i have ever performed but unluckily this game was made around p2w which truly does wreck my heart i maybe put in around 60$ into the sport to speed up a few buildings and stuff but of course the more you play the more you notice how it's p2w like the great hero items for warfare you need to spend a hundred$ to get a bundle that comes with a couple of chest to hope the rng gods will give you the right gadgets and even if you have been to get the first-rate rng you need to still buy like 10 extra seeing that you have to improve the object like 4 instances and whenever it takes more objects to do it so if you want a kick back 75 day game this one will win you over but after those seventy five days are over your state will become unprotected and you've got all the p2w players becoming a member of your sparkling new country to try and rule it and it will become game over for folks that have not spent round 1k$ in bundles like i said i spent around 60$ and performed for greater then 75 days and i'm handiest at 14mil might you have got those who are within the billions in would possibly which i'm telling you is not possible except you spend round 5k$ mainly seeing the gadgets the billions and a few millions were given it's mind blowing that they make all this cash but but still can't make a monster that drops the objects at like a 1% risk to at least be capable of obtain the objects without spending a dime rather than setting a message pronouncing that those gadgets can most effective be received in the shop bundles just mind blowing common sense we would love to present to you a contemporary Goddess MUA Cheats! Hero strike structure deck is a shape deck within the yu-gi-oh! Trading card recreation (tcg). Tap that constructing and select to search. Tp8k0loksyet5z7 three. I am iii 7. "hero coronary heart " is the 7th a part of the journey time miniseries factors and is the 8th episode inside the 9th season of journey time. This code vein valuables present giving manual tells you about all of the unique precious items we've observed and which npc's appreciate each type of present, permitting you to maximise the bonuses presented for every present. Description . New loose on-line hero's games. You can most effective use 1 "elemental hero shadow mist" impact per flip, and simplest once that turn. Now you do not want to download any Cheats gear, you can simply use our cheats. Atropos the band's maiden complete-duration proved to be the bold and certainly polarizing work many had predicted it to be. Nov 14, 2016 · but as common, no longer all so rosy, and because you are looking for Cheats epic heroes warfare, then you likely want to get the crystals epic heroes battle and coins epic heroes warfare in limitless quantities may 31, 2012 · strike force heroes, a loose on-line shooting sport introduced to you by armor video games.

#goddessmua #goddessmuacheats #goddessmuaingots #goddessmuacheatsingots

1 note · View note

blessuswithblogs · 4 years

Text

The Best Games of the Decade, By My Estimations

With only a good month (ACTUALLY LIKE A GOOD 24 HOURS HA HA I WROTE THIS BACK IN NOVEMBER) or so left of the 2010s (we are regrettably not quite far along enough to really start giving them jaunty names like "the Roaring Twenties" yet, but soon we will be free of this chronological no man's land) I find my thoughts turning to my enduring hobby slash interest slash everlasting shame: video games. While a decade is ultimately a fairly arbitrary point of reference, in the business of video gamesdom, ten years is a small eternity and some very significant games have graced us since the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2010.

I might still be too young for this kind of nostalgia, granted, but I can't help but think about the game experiences I've had in the last ten years that have been altogether Important to Me. I am less interested in ranking these titles than I am in exploring why they made such an impact on me, and why, if we were to borrow the esteemed verbiage of one Sid Meyer, they stood the test of time. ...or less so, if they came out more recently. Sometimes on these lists I sort of scrimp and scrabble to actually fill it up with enough games and I have to sort of cheat and put things on there I haven't really played, but fortunately I am not so destitute that I have only been able to play one new game a year since this decade began. To that end, this is more of a personal list than usual, that will have less to do with "well the game was kind of a Big Deal........" and more to do with "well the game was kind of a Big Deal to ME."

Dark Souls The First:

This game will likely find its way onto many such lists in the coming days, because it is such a singular thing. Honestly, I would put Demon's Souls on here too, but that was actually like. 2009ish? At any rate, its spiritual successor was a marked improvement in most ways, expanding upon the core design tenets that made the unassuming FROM software ps3 title such an unexpected success: deliberate gameplay that demanded players go slow and respect both enemies and environment until they were sufficiently skilled and experienced, boss fights against extremely memorable monsters and also sometimes trees, strange asynchronous multiplayer that worked in spite of itself, and a meticulously designed world filled with oddities, grotesqueries, mysteries, and tragedies. Dark Souls was a phenomenon. "The Dark Souls of _____" is dig at gormless games journalists that endures and is relevant to this day. It created a whole subgenre that remains fairly untapped because of how much of a gamble it is to really go in on what made Dark Souls good in a game without that kind of name recognition and marketing blitz, and it changed the way the zeitgeist thought about video games in a lot of ways.

Inscrutability is an incredibly important part of the Souls experience. Abandon all hope of transparency, ye who enter here, because you're not getting it. The games were designed with the intent of being a sort of collaborative community puzzle, where players who stumbled on secrets and treasures in the game could leave down messages for others to alert them to hidden prizes - or just try to bait somebody to jump down a bottomless pit. Patches does that. A lot. It's kind of this thing. There is a very specific mood and atmosphere that Miyazaki and company were going for with these games that creates a sort of artistic catch-all for complaints I would level at basically anything else. "These weapons are poorly balanced." Yep. It's not really trying to be balanced. "Half of these systems are unexplained and nonsensical." Oh boy are they ever. "A giant man-sized baby just invaded my world and tried to kill me with a ladle." Yes, yes he did. The bizarre, fever dream ambiance of Dark Souls is enhanced by all of this. It will put a lot of people off and I can't really say "oh you just don't get it." because like no in any other game this would be bullshit nonsense for idiots. Souls just kind of makes it work by being compellingly baffling.

This murkiness also serves to highlight one of the core conceits of the game: the simple joy of greater mastery. Dark Souls starts you out with very little. You have nothing, know nothing, are nothing, and all the npcs you meet are pretty sure you're going to fuck off and die pretty much as soon as you break line of sight. On your first time through, that's probably true, too. The skeletons in the graveyard are infamous. As you claw your way through the game, as you learn more about it, you start to see measurable progress getting made. What was once a bunch of very tired men in armor giving you unsettlingly sinister laughs is now the outline of a story, vague but extant, with more waiting to be discovered. Where you used to flail around and die to random hollows in the undead burg, now you dance circles around them and paste them in one or two hits with your fancy weapons (or enormous wooden club, depending). A world that was once borderline impossible to actually traverse gradually opens up and becomes more familiar. In Dark Souls, death serves a purpose, and that purpose is not actually to block your progress. Its purpose is to get you to learn the game and get better at it. It's actually very player empowering in a way a lot of 'press F to pay respects' theme park rides are not. I'm probably treading a very thin line between thoughtful analysis (ha) and "you cheated not only the game, but yourself." here, but I'm going to stand firm in my belief that the way Souls games endeavor to make you improve yourself over time is a legitimate and meritorious way to design a game.

Of course, Dark Souls the First is very rough around the edges in spots. The second half of the game is somewhat infamous for being unpolished and kind of slapdash. The online was questionable, the PC port was laughable until the community went in and fixed it, Lost Izalith is a whole fucking thing, the works. The fact that it's so good in spite of the rough spots is, I think, what made it such a singular game. I'm one of those hopelessly sentimental idiot bitches who thinks that things that are imperfect are kind of charming and compelling in ways that very cookie cutter, by the book, technically competent but aesthetically bankrupt things are not. Miyazaki had a vision when he made this game, and that vision created an enduring legacy. That's worthy of respect in a way not many games are. It's messy and flawed but those flaws are just kind of endearing because they're proof that the developers were trying to push boundaries and be ambitious and make something new and interesting.

Dark Souls The Second:

Dark Souls 2 has a kind of weird reputation in the online net-o-sphere. There are as many opinions about this game as there are people who have played it. Sometimes more, honestly. I spent a lot of time kind of convinced it wasn't that good until some things clicked and I realized it was HELLA good. That you kind of need the DLC to get the whole picture is... unfortunate, but such is the age we live in. Going into this game, I thought that a second Dark Souls was unnecessary. The first had ended satisfactorily, and I had no desire to see FROM get tied down to the world of Lordran. The quote B Team unquote that developed 2 seemed to agree with me, and created what is one of the most metacognitive games I have ever played. Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. When I say metacognitive, I do not mean it in the usual facile sense of, say, whatever Jonathan Blow has churned out recently that beats you over the head with the fact that you're playing a video game and you should probably feel bad about it or the way Doki Doki Literature Club does the Epic Subversions! of visual novels by trying to convince you that the game knows it is a game, but failing because it cannot overcome the limitations that it has as a static, unchanging lump of code. Dark Souls 2 aims higher. And you know me - I always try to aim high.

Dark Souls 2 deals with cycles. Most notably, cycles of futility. Cycles that are so enduring and perpetual that it matters not how you choose to resolve it, it will simply keep going no matter what you do. Drangleic is a hollow simulacrum of Lordran - and that is exactly the point. The familiarity and design consistencies between the two games is intentional. The curse of life is the curse of want. It took me a long time to really understand what Dark Souls 2 meant by that. The World of Dark Souls 2 is a sort of unending purgatory. Thousands upon thousands of undead have made the journey, linked the fire, perhaps chose to become the Dark Lord instead, only for some other undying fool to go and light it anyway. Each time, a new order is built upon the bones of the old, and in time, joins its forebears in the ashes of history. When I beat the game the first time and felt that the ending was unsatisfying, I failed to realize that was, again, the point. If the game had shipped with all endings in it, I think I would have been less miffed, but, well, the curse of life is the curse of downloadable content. If you choose to take the throne, link the fire, you have essentially accomplished nothing. Another age of Fire will begin, and then end, and so on and on into the ages, an unending litany of suffering and violence, because people cannot let go of what once was. They seek and scrabble to claim scraps of glory in a systemic nightmare of self-fulfilling prophecies and false dichotomies. When Aldia eventually arrives with the DLC packs, things really start to take shape.

Dark Souls 2 is a commentary on itself. An admission of the futility of trying to recapture the unique spark of the first game, and the necessity of doing something -different-. The playerbase hated it on release. It was both not enough like the first game and too much like the first game. It wasn't like, reviewbombing on metacritic hate, but the consensus rapidly became that 2 was just worse than the first game and kind of a bummer, a half-hearted cashgrab by a "B Team" while the really talented developers worked on Bloodborne. So, basically, they proved 2's central thesis completely correct. A hollow cycle of just repeating and iterating on what has come before serves nobody. In the words of Straid of Olaphis, "it is all a curse." That is the true curse in Dark Souls 2. An undead might link the fire to try and preserve their fading sense of self and memory, but it is but a temporary measure, a prolonging of greater suffering by bowing to an order designed to oppress. Before the Ringed City was ever a thing, Agdyne and Vendrick were here telling us about how Gwyn was so covetous of his own perceived right to rule that he cursed all of humankind into a twisted state of mutually exclusive ideas. Die as a mortal in the flame, or endure as an undead husk in the darkness, bereft of heart and soul. Or... does it even matter? All of this has happened before. It will all happen again.

Those who slave away eternally under this paradigm are doomed to never find peace or fulfillment, because it was not designed that way. Gwyn's fear was so great that he got entangled in his own karmic vortex, reincarnating over and over again with his other lord friends in slightly different forms and circumstances that would continue, eternally, to make the same mistakes in the pursuit of the same misguided goals. Aldia, the Scholar of the First Sin, is presented as one of the few beings in this entire misbegotten affair with an inkling of what is really going on. Both he and Vendrick knew that Drangleic was destined for the same dreg heap as every other civilization built upon the power of the soul, but all of their efforts to prevent this fall were for naught, because they were all confined by the same twisted system in which there can be no change or joy. It is only after Vendrick loses his nerve entirely and fades away into a mindless hollow and Aldia loses everything in his increasingly unhinged and ethically questionable experiments that he realizes that they were doing it all wrong.

I think I've probably gone on too long at this point so I'll try to be brief: the "true" ending of the game, made available after all 3 DLCs were released, involves gathering the power of truly mighty souls in a crown and using them as a sort of... loophole. The empowered crown does not cure the curse of undeath. What it does is prevent -hollowing-. The degradation of heart and mind. And after the final battle, you leave the throne behind. But there is a very important difference here from the Dark Lord ending of the first game. By finding this loophole, and rejecting Gwyn's order entirely, you and you alone have broken free from the endless cycle of suffering, and by doing so, perhaps gained the knowledge necessary to take the first steps into forging a new path entirely. Beyond the reach of Light, beyond the scope of Dark.

So yeah basically it's like Dark Souls the First, with some improvements and changes and what have you, so it's got the same fun to play deliberate explorey dark holey kind of thing going on, it just takes the concepts and runs with it to places I never would have expected a game to ever go. It is legitimately one of the only metanarratively aware games I have played (that I can remember, anyway) that sticks the landing, because it is not obnoxiously explicit about it. Undertale was fun and a worthwhile game by any reasonable metric, but it falls into the same trap as all the others: when you are acknowledged as the player of a game in anything more than a briefly comedic bit of 4th wall breaking, any hope of cleverness or thoughtfulness goes out the window, because it brings to light an ironclad truth of the medium: you, the player, are just as constrained in what you can do as the NPCs in the game, who are also fake. When they start haranguing you about about brotherkilling or being a cheating visual novel boyfriend or possibly girlfriend or what have you, it's just. Meaningless. It is a contrivance of the developer, specifically included in the game as a programmed possibility designed to be experienced.

Dark Souls 2 gets around this by not engaging with the player on that level of metanarrative. It deals much more in metaphor and allegory. It's not, like, especially subtle, but it is subtle enough to let your mind draw parallels without immediately blaring at you in comic sans "THIS IS A VIDEO GAME, KID" and taking you out of it entirely. It's a fine line to walk. A barrier between worlds has to be maintained for these stories to work. I'm the kind of player who will never do a renegade run of Mass Effect because I hate being mean and nasty for no reason, even to bits of code in a game, because I try to engage with it all in good faith and do my best to let myself buy into the illusion that these bits of code are characters with thoughts and feelings. When an angry flower man pops up and says "OOHOOHOO LOOKS LIKE YOU JUST RELOADED THE GAME BECAUSE YOU KILLED SOMEBODY" my first thought isn't "wow fucked up..." it's "oh well there goes my suspension of disbelief" because like. If you're going to call me out on that then fuck I can just go into the code and make you say "there is a frightful hobgoblin haunting europe, and its name is ligma" and like. Yep. Bow before my mastery. I guess. I don't want to get into a slapfight like that with Toby Fox. He seems like a nice person.

I don't know maybe this is just something unique to me, and other people can deal with these stories without immediately becoming depressed by the deeply artificial nature of it all. It's complicated. I will say that I like Undertale a lot, but the reasons that I like it come very much from the character interactions, spritework, and music, and not the time Flowey closed my game. It's just the same pony island bullshit as its always been. "OooOOoOOoh uninstall the game or you're actually just going back and messing with events for your own perverse satisfactionNNNnNNnN" fuck off dipshit it's all fake garbage for idiot children and I am not causing a cartoon skeleton existential agony by considering that maybe I could play this fun game that I liked and payed cash dollars for again. Now, all this considered, my next game on the list might be surprising...

Nier: Automata

Okay so let's just get this out of the way. Nier does a very famous thing at the end when you get the true ending where you are given the choice to forfeit your saved data in order to help another player get past the final boss, which is... the credits. So how is this different? Well, for one thing, it's not like the central narrative conceit of the game. The sexy android psychodrama functions perfectly well without it. It's kind of its own thing. It's... an expression of hope, kind of. An admission that you -care- about the fates of these characters, in spite of being bits of code, because their personalities and their world and the way they interact are all compelling and endearing, and you would give up something of tangible worth and importance to maybe give them a chance for a better outcome in somebody else's game, too. It's a very strange thing that I can think of no real equivalent for. You even get to put a little personalized message on the extra shmup ship you send over to help some other player get through to the end. It's an act that... kind of exists outside of the story, but also kind of in it. I think the important thing here is that the conceit is that you are making this sacrifice to help somebody else, not because a small goat child said something Foreboding. It's a confirmation that if a game makes you feel things, makes you think, maybe it wasn't just a waste of time.

So enough about that. What about like the other 99% of the game? A lot of people in my peer group are super sweet on the original Nier: Gestalt game. I played through it. It was... okay. Like it absolutely had very charming characters and story and all of that but it was just kind of a slog to play through and I kind of wished the entire game was just that segment where you're playing a text adventure. Automata continues to have very charming characters and story and all of that, but it also actually like. It's fun? To hit the buttons? Like, that Platinum pedigree isn't just for show. It's not the most technical game they've ever made, but it's fun and varied (shmups! shmups!) and there's some fun character customization and you even have a self-destruct switch which is always hilarious. The real attraction is the narrative, visuals, and gorgeous music, but it's also just a solid swordswingy dodgy robot smashy time irrespective of that. So like. Yeah.

The story and characters are very interesting and well done and goes to some very dark and uncomfortable places sometimes about the nature of memory, artificial intelligence, the often arbitrary labels we give ourselves, and the implications of sexy robot men with no junk. The nice thing about Nier Automata is that the events in game are fairly straightforward and relayed in a way that people who don't compulsively watch lore videos can understand without too much difficulty, so I don't really need to go into a detailed summary of why it's genius because of tHe AlLeGoRy. It kind of speaks for itself, for the most part. Does 9S want to fuck 2B or destroy 2B? Maybe some other verb entirely! We may never know. Well, I do know. He wants to fuck her. That is obvious. But it does not preclude the other, which is a salient and disconcerting point the game tries to make with that whole sequence. 9S has really had a rough time of it, you know? All that stuff in his own game and then he pops up on the First only to get his face caved in by the Warrior of Darkness. Rotten luck.

Basically, Yoko Taro sets out to say some things with his strange brainchild about androids with very big butts, but when you think about it, the attractiveness of the YorHa androids is also kind of a statement, too. If you're building something in your image, wouldn't you want to make it as sexy as possible? I would. Like, if you could make your machine children smoking hot, why wouldn't you? It's only polite. Nobody wants to be an ugly robot. Maybe the machine lifeforms would be having a better time of it all if they weren't put in categories like "short stubby." Anyway. Saying things. He says things. The game is thought provoking and evocative and at times very very sad. I love to cry. More on that later. I feel like I'm coming up a little short on this after my small dissertation on Dark Souls 2, but sometimes you need to fuckin. Get that kind of thing off your chest. Automata is challenging, but not Souls 2 challenging, where you kind of have to look in all the nooks and crannies and paid DLC packs to really get what it's trying to say. Though I think you fight the president of Square Enix in one of the Nier DLCs. That's pretty intellectually formidable.

Bloodborne:

It is no secret that I love the Bloodborne. It's very fun, very tight, usually works right most of the time, blood vials are shit but what can you do, and is one of the most visually arresting games like, ever. Ever ever. Behold! A Paleblood Sky! indeed. It's got the Souls pedigree to make combat fun and challenging, but its also very squishy and visceral and kind of grody in a good way because it ties in heavily to the themes of what really separates people from "beasts" and how more often than not we're just fooling ourselves. We're all rancid beasts. Hunger makes monsters of us all. It is this thematic strength, and the uncommon aplomb with which the game takes a hard left turn into "wait what the fuck???" town, that I regard it so highly. It's a game with a lot to say, especially about our narrow view of "intelligence" and the imagined "right" it grants us to subjugate and victimize those we deem inferior. The Victorian setting is no accident - a lot of the horror in the game draws heavily from classic colonialist sentiment and the erroneous conviction that all things are there for the benefit of Mankind (Glory to them, see previous) that commonly defines that era. Also that architecture is some spooky shit I tell you what. Even when there isn't a large spider man with a brain for a head hanging off of it. There are those, in this game, by the way. You thought you were gonna deal with werewolves? Bitch your eyes have yet to open, strap the fuck in.

Bloodborne is the coveted "what a twist!" game I so laboriously search for. A game that expertly leads you to believe some things, then gradually shows you that you are a fucking wrong idiot baby and now there are mushroom men from mars running around casting magic missile at you. It gets this right in part because the clues were there all along, if you bothered to search for them. The first part of the game is fairly expected of what the promo material was all about, save for some weirdness with dreams and cryptic mutterings of "Paleblood." Then, you know, some shit starts getting wacky. You start running into giantass monster men clad in the trappings of the church. The NPCs you talk to start becoming more and more unhinged. Sometimes you will be randomly lifted bodily into the air and die and it is fucking alarming the first time I tell you what. Strange men with bags start appearing in random spots, and if they kill you, they don't actually kill you - they put you in the bag and kidnap you, the only way to reach a certain area of the game early. This hidden area is filled with more bagmen and some very angry giant pigs, because those are in this game too. Then you finally enter the big cathedral at the center of town and its lined with really odd looking statues of aliens and you touch a weird skull and you get a vision from the Mothercrystal about how to progress, and you tell the password to the gatekeeper, and he's like "ok cool get in here" but actually he is a fucking dessicated corpse and this isn't Dark Souls there ain't no undead here. Maybe. Are there?

Then you get into the Forbidden Woods and there are like, the weird mushroom men, if you go looking for them, and snakes, and really BIG snakes, and men who are made out of snakes and kind of give you weird nostalgic memories of Resident Evil 4 and the las plagas sphagetti heads. And there are more statues and giant fucking gravestones? That are really unnerving? And also if you went poking around you might have also met Patches again, who is back, but also a spider, and he'll show you how to get into college, except the college is in a nightmare and full of slime people, which is actually pretty normal now that I think about it, and then you can go out into ANOTHER nightmare, which is just another obnoxious poison swamp but the winter lanterns live there and those things are a fucking trip. Anyway you get to Bergynwerth eventually and there are weird insect guys and weird disheveled looking fellas that literally eat your brains if they get close and this awful npc hunter (the real horror of the night i tell you what) who casts fucking megaflare and you FINALLY get to the center of it all and jump into the lake except it's not the lake, it's actually like a fucking pocket dimension and there's just a big spider chilling out. You have to kill it to progress. And then when you do things just REALLY go to hell. And this is to say nothing of the Old Hunters DLC. This game is a fucking nightmare and it's great. Easily one of the scariest games ever made, genuinely frightening and weird and it doesn't just lose its edge when you realize the monster is a big goofy man with a flappy jaw. You are the monster, and that monster is a tiny squid baby. You're a squid now! Because you ate umbilical cords! Why!? I DON'T KNOW! INSIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER!

So what I just described is probably sounding completely absurd, random, and borderline early 2000s era monkeycheese style humor, but you gotta believe me, it is only absurd. It's actually very deliberately absurd. A lot of people will say that Bloodborne is one of the only games to get Lovecraft right, but I have actually read some of that dreck and I will say Bloodborne really only shares some aesthetic DNA and nomenclature with the racist tentacle man who ate nothing but canned beans. The themes are actually very different. Lovecraft wrote of a paradoxical contradictory world where Unspeakable Elder Things lurked behind every shadow, ready to emerge and destroy everything, but they were also very apathetic and noncommital about the whole thing. They didn't actually care that much either way, but they were still Bad, because they were weird and alien and inimicable to human life because of that foreign aspect. Like Nyarlathotep was originally envisioned as a travelling black guy who would go from town to town and show people some awesome inventions and shit and that was supposed to be evil. The dude's neuroses about race permeated -everything- he wrote.

On the other hand, Bloodborne takes a different tack. One of the central theses of the game is that the Great Ones are -not- evil. In fact, they're rather sympathetic by nature and will do what they can to help, if asked. The horror of the game comes not from the actions of the alien monstrosities who are actually nicer than most of the humans, but from what the human characters do in the pursuit of knowledge and power. Atrocities are committed by the dozen in some vague pursuit of higher understanding, against both the citizens of Yharnam and the supposed cosmic horrors themselves. This point is driven home by the fact that a number of the more alien entities you encounter in the game aren't actually hostile at all. Rom, the Vacuous Spider, will just chill out with you indefinitely at the Moonside Lake if you don't strike the first blow, and doesn't even really begin to actively defend herself until you prove yourself to be a determined murder machine. Ebrietas, the Daughter of the Cosmos, is found minding her own business in an out of the way corner of the Upper Cathedral Ward, mourning Rom after you, you know, killed her in cold blood. Again, she is completely non-hostile until you start shit. In the Old Hunters, Kos (or some say Kosm) is actually benevolent sort of mother goddess to the people of a small fishing hamlet. ...until the "scholars" of Bergynwerth murder her in the name of science, too.

All of the evil and horror and stomach-turning cruelty in Bloodborne comes from corrupt systems of power run rampant, not something as facile as the supposedly intrinsic malice of beings different from us. The terrors of the cosmos are nothing before the vile, willful depravity of mankind itself. That's the idea at the heart of it all. The Great Ones, who exist on a higher plane of existence, seem to have largely left this cruelty behind. Even the Moon Presence, the principle cause of the Hunter's Dream, is trying to help Laurence and Gherman - it's just that it's so different from humans, its idea of helping is a bit. Strange. It's this really fresh and unique take on the genre, this byzantine tragedy of miscommunication, good intentions, and mortal greed, that creates one of the vanishingly few games at are actually frightening. It doesn't even have to sacrifice being a good game to do it! No hiding in closets from the scourge of screen blur and heavy breathing here. In terms of gameplay, it's probably the most refined of quintet. I'm unsure if I should count Sekiro with them or not. It's a much different thing. Trick weapons and hunter's garb are iconic, extremely stylish, original, and honestly just fucking dope as hell. You've got a hammer that explodes when it hits things, a giant pizza cutter, a katana you coat with your own blood to empower, a gunrapier and a gunspear, a giant... wagon wheel... because Miyazaki just really likes those I guess, a bow that is also a sword, a giant fucking ship's cannon you just carry around with you, a portable flamethrower, an... eyeball, that shoots space rocks, for some reason. Like the weapon design and selection alone is worthy of considerable accolade. Bloodborne is fantastic, play it if you can.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I was a little bit kinda wishy washy on putting this on here, but I think overall that it deserves a spot. In terms of story and themes, it's honestly a bit whatever. It's Zelda. Don't be an asshole to your genius daughter who knows like ten times as much as you do about everything I guess. Prince Sidon is a nice fishman. Link is like, distressingly, "this is a kids game!!" hot when you put him in certain outfits. I'm pretty sure every configuration of sexuality interested in the act of boning probably at least went "hoo boy" when Link put on the gerudo outfit. That is, of course, not really enough to qualify for such a prestigious position as one of the best games of the decade. Where Breath of the Wild shines is its world design, music, and the masterful layer of melancholy it drapes everything in. The ruined land of Hyrule is beautiful and sad in equal measure, the vistas enhanced by a fantastic soundtrack with an incredibly rich personal voice. It takes a very certain kind of design philosophy, in my opinion, to create an open world that is actually meritorious and worthwhile and not just an excuse to spend a lot of time hoofing it through vast expanses of nothing interesting. There is enough raw Stuff in the land of Hyrule, from enemy encounters to happening upon NPCs to just finding something really weird and inexplicable that you feel compelled to check out, to justify the massive open world.

I think the enemy design in particular is worthy of some praise. The game gives you a whole lot of tools to tackle any given fight. Sometimes you can just whack something with your sword until either the enemy or the sword breaks and that will work fine. Other times, you can literally do the Tao Pai Pai thing from Dragonball and launch a treetrunk into the air, surf on it, and land it squarely in the face of some unsuspecting moblin. This is a very popular speedrun strat. The sheer amount of Weird Stuff you can do in the service of ultimately saving Hyrule is a lot of lot of LOT of fun, things not many other games would let you do. There's also something to be said for the moments where you're exploring, minding your own business, and find yourself face to face with something fearsome and big and dangerous, like a Lynel in the frozen north or one of the big cyclops guys. It's heartpounding and exciting and really hits that "oh hell yeah let's fuckin FIGHT" button. And fighting in Breath of the Wild is a hell of a lot of fun! Probably the most its been in any Zelda game. Skyward Sword please go away you're drunk this was never a good idea. To me, Breath of the Wild is kind of the platonic ideal of an open world fantasy fuck around game. That used to be Skyrim, but BotW sort of made me realize you can actually have a functional game on top of all the aforementioned Fucking Around, too, and that sort of enhances the experience.

This might be a little weird and personal and I apologize, but I think the one thing that really sealed this game as something very special and significant to me was the moment I entered the Rito village for the first time. I was greeted with an utterly gorgeous piano melody that gradually unfolded into a soulful, excruciatingly bittersweet arrangement of the Dragon Roost Isle theme from the Windwaker. I admit that I was not in a good place in my life when I was playing Breath of the Wild. I was still reeling from some bad brain stuff. Be that as it may, Breath of the Wild is the only game I have ever played - hell, the only piece of art I have experienced - that has brought me to tears with nothing more than a song. When I realized what I was listening to, when the memories of a time when I was still a child with hope and trust and innocence and any faith that life would ever be something more than cruelty and suffering came flooding back, I had to put down my switch, go lay down, and just ugly cry for a while. It's honestly making me a little misty-eyed just thinking about. It was such a personal, intimate, keening feeling of... I don't really know. Nostalgia? Longing? Melancholy? Now, believe me, I love to cry. I am a crybaby. Things make me cry all the time. But not like this. This was something else. Something I still don't really understand, or can explain. All I know is that if a game can do that to me with just a few notes, it deserves to be here.

Salt and Sanctuary:

This is probably the most niche game for me. Even people who share some of my more eclectic tastes and sensibilities didn't like this game that much, but there was just something about this Metroidvania mashed with a Soulslike that hit some very primal notes in my soul. The art style, a weird mix of cartoony and utterly deranged, the enemy design, the bizarre way the world is put together, some extremely creative boss battles, and above all, some masterfully done atmosphere dripping with poorly understood dread and a sense of complete disorientation combined to create an experience that seemed to be made for me, and possibly me alone. It's not a flawless game. The music is fine, but somewhat lacking in variety. The character progression system is a good deal more complicated than it needs to be by any stretch of the imagination, as is the weapon upgrade system. The difficulty curve is uneven, and the raw inscrutability of the whole enterprise can make progression difficult in ways that it never really was in Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, which at least had the courtesy to point you in the right direction from time to time. The ending is a bit on the weak side.

Even now it feels difficult to really like. Elucidate on why I like this game so much. Maybe it's because it was the heartfelt effort of an extremely small team with more passion than experience? Because it's so unique and bold in ways other games are not, even while being a self-admitted derivative of Souls games? I just don't know. It's just such a fun and plucky thing, even if parts of it are kind of bad. It's not like, Deadly Premonition or anything where the badness is also the primary attraction. It's like, overall a good game? I believe? It's just that if it wasn't also kind of weirdly flawed and broken in some ways I don't think I would like it as much. God, I don't know. Just. Play it if you get a chance and see if any of this makes sense. One of the weapons you can use is a giant ass ship anchor, which is just fantastic, and you can start out as a chef, complete with a goofy hat and an extra helping of salt. Salt is important. Gotta keep those electrolytes up. You can also put a pumpkin on your head, and there's a boss called the Tree of Men which is just this giant torture machine that hates you and everyone else. It's so weird! The lighting is so moody and unsettling! The Queen of Smiles doesn't have a jaw! You have to brand your ass with a metal iron to double jump! ...hand, not ass, to be fair. But ass would be pretty funny. And horrifying. If you join the Iron Ones religion your healing item is just bread. And that is a fucking mood.

Super Mario Galaxy 2:

This one barely makes the temporal cut, but it was 2010 when it came out, I'm pretty sure. As a Mario game that doesn't have paper in its name, it's also going to be a bit fluffier and lighter on actual substance than pretty much every other game here, and I don't have that much to say. It's just this gorgeously realized and scored platforming adventure that's so tightly tuned you could play Smoke on the Water on it. It is the still the best traditional jumpy wahoo boing boing Mario game I have ever played. It just makes you feel good about space, and going to space, and seeing all the wonderful things in space. Though there most likely are not charming little obstacle courses themed around bees and and toy trains in space, the various cosmic phenonmenon on display on the map screen and in the background of some galaxies are close enough to what you might expect to inspire a sense of wonder and awe. SMG2 is like the purest expression of Let's Just have a Good Time design in games I have ever seen. It induces good feelings. Not everything has to be deep and troubling and thought provoking. Like, I tend to prefer it when they are, but there's always rooms for exceptions like this. Just fantastic. And the music though holy shit. Honestly I think the only game on this list that doesn't have a fantastic OST is Salt and Sanctuary, but it's still like. Serviceable.

Darkest Dungeon:

Let me start off by saying that Darkest Dungeon doesn't always hit the mark with its central conceit of stress management and the importance of mental health in your small army of adventurers. Nobody is going to start screaming abuse at their comrades or start stabbing them to death in a fit of paranoia because a skeleton spilled some cheap champagne on them. That said, I think that it -tries- to address these things is admirable, even if it is fairly easily boiled down into a simple matter of resource management and cost/benefit analysis. The reason I like Darkest Dungeon so much is that it is a game that excels at emergent storytelling. In terms of actual plot progression and character development, there is very little. You can have a party of four Occultists, each with the exact same backstory and with the exact same pact to the exact same eldritch entity, killing the exact same boss several different times. If you want. The dungeon crawling primarily serves as a vehicle for two things: the first and most obvious, the primary gameplay experience where you command your brave or at least foolhardy group of heroes to engage the ancient horrors of Grandpa's Party House. By itself, this is compelling and demanding. A bit like Dark Souls, Darkest Dungeon is a game that is fairly exacting in what it expects out of you, and it will not let you make mistakes without slapping you on the wrist and saying "no, bad." Similarly, it is a game where mastery is rewarded, but both in somewhat lesser degrees because DD is much more random and capricious in nature. The difference between a new player and an old hand is obvious, but sometimes even veterans can get completely dicked over by things out of their control.

That leads us into the second purpose: having the Ancestor narrate your constant struggle against Murphy's Law while completely hilarious bullshit conspires to send all of your highly trained and well equipped adventurers to the grave. Let me tell you a tale. I was fighting the Countess, the extremely powerful and dangerous final boss of the Crimson Court DLC. Everybody was afflicted with some manner of madness, and things were looking grim. She had shuffled my party around into a formation wherein some of them couldn't act without switching places. I ordered my vestal to switch places with Dismas, my highwayman. Dismas, however, was currently under either "selfish" or "abusive" status and simply refused to move. This meant that my vestal could not actually act that turn, and simply doing nothing incurs a penalty of stress damage. This stress damage was enough to put her gauge to the maximum, give her a heart attack, and kill her. Dismas literally murdered the healer by being too much of an asshole. I was beside myself at the time, but make no mistake - it was fucking hysterical. I later fed him to the final boss as penance for his crimes.

Darkest Dungeon is a grindy game that takes time and effort to complete. This is one of the biggest complaints leveled at it, and it's a fair one. On normal mode, though, you are more than capable of going at it inch by bloody inch, throwing corpse after corpse at the eldritch monstrosities until they at last drown in the blood and give up. No matter how grievous the setback, you can come back from it, unless you're playing on stygian/blood moon mode, which adds a fairly strict time limit and a hard cap on how many hapless adventurers you can send into the meatgrinder before the Nameless Thing That Ends The World wakes up and gives you an auto-game over. It's designed to be a long, bloody slog where shit goes wrong. Hopefully, in the upcoming sequel which I am very much anticipating not being able to play because I am poor, Red Hook can perhaps find a better balance with this. I am, for my part, fairly forgiving of grindy games, and at times even enjoy them. They were going for something with the way they designed DD, and I respect that. If you have the proper mindset of "whatever will be, will be" and learn to embrace the senselessness of death, your adventures in the Darkplace Estate will be both rewarding and oftentimes absurdly funny because your Arbalest was too depressed to eat anything, took more stress damage from starving, and then died of a heart attack, which then further stressed out the rest of the party. If that sounds more "oh my god that's awful" than "hahahaha you fucking dipshits" to you, DD might not be up your alley. But if it is, it -really- is. It's sort of the Dwarf Fortress principle, though Darkest Dungeon is far more user friendly and nice to look at. ...you know if you payed him enough the narrator voice actor would probably do a dramatic reading of Boatmurdered. Just saying.

Stellaris:

Stellaris is kind of the odd spaceman out on this list for a variety of reasons, but it shares the same kind of compelling emergent storytelling that Darkest Dungeon has. It's just less likely to be about how your alcoholic bounty hunter missed every hit against a fishman and went insane, and more likely to be about how you found this really cool Orb in space but it was in another empire's territory so you basically fabricated Space World War 1 to take it for yourself. Maybe that was just me. Much like the many habitable planets in any given Stellaris game, Paradox's grand strategy space game falls in the Goldilocks Zone of "accessible for mortal minds" and "satisfyingly complex." I'm not a huge fan of most Paradox stuff because I don't really give much of a fuck about kings and their crusaders one way or the other, but I respect them for what they are. Stellaris was kind of a proof of concept for me for that - given subject matter I actually liked (space!!!!), the various nitty gritty systems of planetary management and fleet organization and robo-modding and gene templates became compelling rather than overwhelming. They were, granted, still pretty overwhelming at first. The game still receives robust free updates and DLC even as of this writing, sometimes drastically changing the way the game is played (alloys! consumer goods! aarrrggh!) and making my 500ish hours of playtime seem a little less nonsensical. Look, a lot of that time was idling on the galaxy map while I did something else.

It's just really polished and technically competent and -enormous- and there's space dragons and sometimes you get to fuck a black hole. Stellaris doesn't really have a narrative, per se, save what you ascribe to any given game, but that doesn't mean the game doesn't have writing. A lot of very interesting, well written, and sometimes really funny flavor text can be found in the various anomalies and in-game events your science vessels will encounter as they uncover more of the galaxy, or sometimes a planet will have a mysterious portal to Hell on it, or maybe it's actually just a huge egg for a terrifying voidspawn. The game also navigates the usual 4X/strategy game dilemma of securing an early lead and just kind of chilling for the rest of the game by introducing midgame and lategames crises. It's not a perfect fix, but the ever-looming threat of a khanate space uprising, an AI uprising either from your empire or another, or ravenous space bugs from beyond the cosmos ensures that you have to keep at least a little bit on your toes. The presence of spaceborne aliens that range from "a nuisance" to "well gosh that thing is actually eating that sun this could be problematic" also ensures that you need to pay attention to both military and domestic aspects of governing. Stellaris happens in real time (though you can thank god pause whenever you want to issue orders) so there isn't really a Civilization equivalent of "oh the tiny pissant nations are declaring war, time to buy seven tanks with my enormous hoard of gold and run over their medieval knights" in Stellaris. Stuff always takes time to make, and it takes time to get in position, too. Space being exceedingly vast, and all that.

The lategame can get simultaneously get very overwhelming and very boring, but there are systems put in place to help automate the process of ruling a huge interstellar empire and one of the nice things about Stellaris is that you can kind of just. Stop whenever you want. There are technically win conditions, if you're into that sort of thing, but a lot of the time I will just play it through until I'm like "hmm okay im good" and then just either start a new game as an extremely different kind of empire or play something else for a while. It's kind of nice. The idea of "winning" in these games is always so weird to me anyway. I kind of like the framework where it's just kind of like. You tell a story, rather than try to win a game. Recent changes have made it much easier to actually achieve victory, however. Part of the thing that kind of encouraged my "eh i'll stop when i wanna" approach in the first place was how unreasonable some of the old victory requirements were. Occupy sixty percent of the galaxy? Excuse me???? Fuck off. Also, it's not like. A really salient part of the game like it is for most other games on the list, but Stellaris actually does have a pretty nice soundtrack. It's much more ambient in nature and there's not really enough of it for the amount of Game there is, but what's there is nice, even if you will probably end up turning it off and listening to your own music instead eventually.

============================= =Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers= =============================

Alright so if you've like actually looked at my twitter or talked to me or to someone about me for more than two minutes, it's probably pretty obvious that I really like FFXIV. An unhealthy amount. I will cop to that. FFXIV is an MMORPG. Let's start with the basics. I enjoy the game's gameplay a lot. I would not have put 6 years of my life into playing it if I did not, I'm not a Dota 2 player, for Christ's sake. I like to raid, and have actively done it in every wing except for the Sigmascape. I even managed to beat the final encounter of the current Edengate raids! I'm currently sort of gathering my courage to try the latest Ultimate Raid, the Epic of Alexander. Ultimate Raids are fights that are absurdly difficult by any reasonable standard and further winnow the playerbase from "hit level 80->does endgame stuff->does savage raiding->clears savage raid tiers->does Ultimate Raids->.00000001% of the player base that clears ultimate raids". Ultimates are for a very specific kind of player. I'm just sort of mentioning it for context purposes, it doesn't really factor in to my overall evaluation.

Now, despite the fact that I personally enjoy the gameplay a great deal, it is not actually why I think this game is so good. This might puzzle you. What else is there to an MMO? Is the sense of community especially great? Well, I would say that I really enjoy the community of people I play with, but on the whole, XIV's community is about. Standard, really. Which is to say "a fucking dumpsterfire" by any human metric, but just par for the course for online video games. What keeps me coming back to the game is that in between all the endgame stuff and grinding and crafting and going to die in Eureka, there is a bafflingly compelling and superlative singleplayer experience. The game is actually like unironically the best mainline FF title since at least XII. I would personally say it's on par with IX as a narrative experience, which is no faint praise because i fuckin luv me some ffix. But how can an MMO have such a compelling story? It's kind of complicated.

History lesson for the ten people who still don't know: FFXIV actually launched way back in like. 2011 or some shit and it was -arrestingly- bad. "Embarrassment to the franchise name" bad. So bad that they decided to literally drop a meteor on the game world, bring in a new director, shut the whole thing down for a year or so, and then relaunch the game as A Realm Reborn in mid 2013. People really liked this version. It was nothing short of a miracle. It also layed the groundwork for something important: a real and genuine dedication to worldbuilding (and worldending, too). The destruction and rebirth of the realm of Eorzea is metanarratively (theres my favorite non-word word again) baked into the very DNA of the game as it is now. Learning about the people who lived after the Calamity and how they survived is a direct parallel to how the dev team had to survive and adapt to make this complete boondoggle of a game into something presentable. A lot of heart and soul went into the bones of the world the game takes place in, because it's an expression of that dogged determination to make it work. Yoshida and his team probably crunched like hell to get it all done, and that makes me really sad, but what's done is done. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but it is, and all I can do at this point is praise the team's hard work and vision and try to support them as best I can.

So there's this really weighty sense of reality to the game world, and all of 2.0 is basically spent just establishing Eorzea and how it works. If you were an early adopter of ARR, like I was (2.1 is early right. it's gotta be.) then you grew to genuinely care about the place you spent so much time in and looked so pretty and was kind of obnoxiously laid out but don't worry there will be flying in the expansion. The longrunning nature of the game sort of necessitated a sort of serialized story. It had much more in common with an episodic TV Show than a usual Final Fantasy story, which for better or for worse are usually self-contained little things until somebody decides its fuckin Nova Crystalis time. It created a really unique sense of anticipation and participation in an ongoing story and evolving world. I think this is where a lot of people find their attachments to MMO style games, why people are still faithfully playing World of Warcraft 15 years on.

So FFXIV gets two expansions, Heavensward and Stormblood, and they were very Good, and added lots of neat things to the game and advanced the story and introduced new and beloved characters and also Zenos yae Galvus I guess and the long-running nature of it all started forging a kind of personal narrative of necessity, if that makes sense? Like, your own protagonist, who is mostly silent, who you created and customized and further customized and maybe turned into a lalafell once just to see what it was like to be so short, has been an important part of this world for so long your brain kind of just fills in the gaps in spite of itself. What would my character think about this? What would she do? Why would she do it? That kind of thing. The Warrior of Light, as one is called, has had a leading role in the game's story since pretty much day one, but one of the things that compels me about the character is how much work it took to get where she is today. Like, it's not a Diablo 3 style "hmm well you killed those zombies really good so i guess you're basically stronger than god and also satan put together" affair. You start out as a newbie adventurer, you do newbie adventurer things, like helping orange pickers keep the orchard clear of bees or deliver packages for guilds or whatever sufficiently adventuresome task needs doing. You gain notoriety for doing things that are, well, worthy of notoriety. You really get noticed when you defeat the primal Ifrit in a pitched battle, get recruited by some organizations, and you keep steadily working your way up from there.

As of Shadowbringers, the warrior of Darkness is kind of stronger than god and satan combined, but it took a fucking -lot- to get there. One base game and two expansions worth of life or death battles against utterly intractable foes and also Zenos yae Galvus I guess. It is beyond the scope of this piece to just give you a full plot summary of six years worth of storytelling, so I will just cut to the chase and try to explain what I'm taking five million words to say. Shadowbringers did something I thought heretofore impossible: it made me care about my tabula rasa cipher avatar as a character in a story and not just as an expression of digital self that I had grown fond of. Don't get me wrong - Dazzlyn Reed the adventurer is absolutely an expression of digital self that I have grown -disproportionately- fond of. I figure I'm a few more patch cycles from becoming that girl in the Jack Chick tract about Dungeons and Dragons who had a psychotic break because her DnD character died. However, for the most part, that affection was more of... kind of taking pride in her appearance and the outfits I put together and the achievements I had accomplished with her and stuff like that. Shadowbringers made me care about her as a character in her own right, which seems borderline miraculous to me.

It's sort of hard to explain without totally spoiling everything. And even with spoiling everything. In vague terms, I'll try to express it this way: the game put Dazzlyn in a situation where she had failed. Like, spectacularly. Everything she had done in the course of the expansion had gone up in smoke, and her own life was in real and severe danger. When you play these kinds of games, your first instinct when things go wrong in the story is pretty much always to just flippantly say to yourself "okay okay just calm down and let me fix it i'm like level a billion it's fiiiiine". Shadowbringers turns that on its head. You went to fix things... and you couldn't. Despite good intentions, it's arguable that you only made things worse. Everything you worked for since arriving on the First was just utterly undone, and the game lets you see the toll that has taken on your character. It's weirdly heartwrenching in a really uncommon and compelling way. Dazzlyn had been on the outside looking in at this kind of situation plenty of times before, and she had always had a nice and encouraging thing to say as she helped shoulder the burden and get things back on track for Alphinaud or Lyse or Cid or whoever. The game has, since antiquity, given you much appreciated little dialogue choices that don't really matter much in the scheme of things but let you kind of carve out your own characterization, and the way Dazzlyn turned out was somebody who just really cared way too much about all of her dumb stupid impossible friends who kept fucking up.

One thing that longtime players of the game have complained about quite a bit over the years is that your NPC friends never seemed very. Like. Personally close to you, with a couple of exceptions like Alisae. Shadowbringers both fixes that by introducing the Trust system, which lets you take your Scion buddies into dungeons with you instead of other players, if you are so inclined, and sort of turns it back around to be a kind of poignant narrative point. After everything she had done for them, unconditionally and with a smile, none of the Scions could actually find a way to help Dazzlyn when she finally ended up being the one who needed it. And this -fucks them up-, emotionally. Like, bad. Alisae nearly has a crying fit over it in one of Shadowbringer's more affecting scenes. And just watching the whole thing unfold fucked me up, too. Like, I hadn't signed up for this. I was (relatively) safe in the knowledge that they would not have the gall to actually kill off the player character in an ongoing MMO, but it wasn't necessarily the fear of something happening to her that was getting to me. It was more just this feeling of "god, she deserves better. this isn't fair." The emotional pain that, well, everybody involved is going through is extremely real, even if the threat of genuine death is not. I know (mostly) (please god) that Dazzlyn is going to be okay, but she doesn't. Her friends certainly don't. And even when she does miraculously pull through, it's not like all of this grief and fear and anxiety is going to just vanish like it never happened.

I really have to stress how completely and catastrophically wrong this could have gone if the writers responsible weren't sufficiently skilled. I'm pretty sure if I idly suggested a BFA era World of Warcraft storyline like this to somebody who still plays they would have an apoplectic fit. It would have been so easy for this kind of exercise to ascribe character traits and emotions to a very personal interpretation of the Warrior of Light that they would never have, for any one person's vision of them. The FFXIV writing team avoided this issue entirely, probably because they knew if they didn't people would go ape, by focusing the brunt of the expressed distress on your friends and just leaving you yourself some time to take in the enormity of how badly things have gone wrong in customary silence. A subdued facial expression here, a dialogue option there. No more than strictly necessary. The game encourages you to draw your own conclusions about what your Warrior is feeling, how they're coping, if they even have any hope left, but it does not overstep its bounds and do it for you. It's just... really masterfully done. The overall arc of Shadowbringers can be described as "intriguing, well realized, and competently done." The overarching ideas presented aren't like, groundbreaking or anything. What is groundbreaking, at least to me, is this miraculous giving of life to a character that was originally intended as as simple player avatar.

At the end of the day, everybody rallies around you, as they usually do, but it is markedly different this time. It isn't some facile repetition of the idea that the Warrior of Light/Darkness/Pants-theft is this focal point of hope given form and life to everyone. Instead, it's this... oddly touching expression of friendship. Commitment. It's all probably going to end in tragedy. There's nothing anybody can really do. But they're going to stay with you until the bitter end anyway, because they care about you. If nothing else, they can't bear to think of you dying alone and in agony. Even the citizens of the Crystarium, with whom you do not share a bond that goes back literal years, show up to give you some words of encouragement. They show up to tell you that it's okay that you failed. It's okay that you got hurt, it's okay that you're in pain, that you're scared, that you're vulnerable, that you don't know what to do. After spending such a long time in the game's lore as being kind of invincible and infallible except for the occasional matter of pesky Imperial Viceroys and Old Kung-fu Men, it's just... affecting. It's not often done in games, at least that I have played and seen.

Does this one story moment justify making Shadowbringers the game of the decade? Honestly? Kind of. To me, art has always been about emotional reaction. This kind of reaction is something special, even for a crybaby idiot bitch like me. Moments like these are what make or break truly fantastic experiences. Finally finding Vendrick in the Tomb as that haunting, off-key melody starts playing. Realizing the true nature of the Upper Cathedral Ward. Hearing a beautiful piece of music in Rito Village and thinking about what that song means to you. Admitting that you care about your Warrior of Darkness more than you thought. They're all quite different, running the gamut from existential despair, stomach turning fear, a deep and abiding nostalgia and longing for what used to be, to a sincere, melancholy affection for a game world I've been a part of for almost six years. There's one unbroken thread: a cascade of genuine emotion. Something that goes beyond the simple pressing of buttons and jolts of serotonin as the numbers go up or the bad guys die.

Fortunately for my general credibility, Shadowbringers is also just really good in general. Soken's soundtrack is, as always, kind of spooky in how high quality it is. The presentation is top notch as usual. Encounter design is probably the best its ever been in terms of balancing accessibility and challenge and having mechanics that actually Work As Intended and not nightmarish garbage like Digititis and Black Hole Walking. Royal Pentacle! Server ticks! Server ticks! Uh. Sorry. Going slightly feral there. Anyway. Overall, I think Shadowbringers is the most polished expansion so far, in all respects, and its narrative quality in particular is kind of transcendent because of what it accomplishes in regards to how players see themselves in relation to an unfolding story. Also, it has an unfair advantage, because it's also a continuation of Nier Automata now! That's two games of the decade in one! Now, due to the serial nature of it all, I will allow that if something goes... like, inconceivably, catastrophically wrong with 5.2 - 5.5 I might be a little premature in my assessment. That said, 5.1 was just as fantastic as 5.0 and I don't see a reason to assume that the quality will so drastically drop in the coming months.

If you're somebody who really likes Rankings, here is a pretty noncommital list of them going from least good to best good but they're all special damn it.

10. Super Mario Galaxy 2 9. Breath of the Wild 8. Stellaris 7. Darkest Dungeon 6. Salt and Sanctuary 5. Dark Souls 4. Nier Automata 3. Bloodborne 2. Dark Souls II 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

And here's a couple of Honorable Mentions just because!

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

To be honest, this easily could have taken the place of like. Breath of the Wild or SMG2 if I was just a little bit more into Sekiro's aesthetic. It's easily the most technical and best-playing game that Miyazaki's team has put out so far, with a very simple to learn, difficult to master system of fighting based more around swordfighting than "shove large axe into monster butt" its predcessors liked so much. It also has a well-told story about a fairly down to earth conflict between an independent fiefdom and Japan's internal ministry trying to conquer it, with a splash of supernatural weirdness to give it some spice. There are monkeys with guns. Sekiro is just fantastically put together, and I really did end up loving Wolf as a main character, despite my initial misgivings about one of these games without a character creator. Wolf is kind of a lovable chuuni dipshit who tries his best in completely unreasonable circumstances and having him as an anchor lets Sekiro's story be more personal and self-contained in nature than the heady cosmological epics of the Souls games, which was a nice change of pace. Ultimately, though, I just find ineffably weird nature of the earlier titles to be a bit more interesting than shinobi and samurai, which is why Sekiro gets an honorable menchie and not a top spot. Don't get me wrong though shinobi and samurai are dope and Sekiro is not a -worse- game for their inclusion. It's just a matter of personal preference, and I could easily see this game taking a top spot on somebody else's list.

Pokemon X and Y

I am a Pokemon bitch. I play all of them, except for black/white 2 and ultra sun/moon, which seemed too similar to their predecessors to really justify spending my precious, jealously guarded money on them. I feel that in general, X and Y has overall, the best mix of available pokemon, world design, music, Fun Little Things, and general game flow of all of them. Sword and Shield excepted I am still in the middle of that one. Pokemon is absolutely kind of video game comfort food, and its kind of just. There's not a lot to it emotionally, though it does have some fairly in depth mechanics and shit if you want to look into it. I don't know I just really liked X and Y. I felt like it deserved mentioning.

Blade and Soul

This game is awful I'm pretty sure but I have so many fond memories of playing it with people I love and creating a ridiculous titty oil monster and having adventures with her sorry i'm trash

So there you have it. A very personal (sometimes maybe probably too personal) look at the ten games that I found to be the best that came out in the last ten years. Now, I usually consider my opinions on these things to be fairly well reasoned, but in this case, I did rely a lot more on the touchy feely qualitative things that are really important to me over the necessary but lamentable "yes i suppose this game is technically competent and plays extremely well" considerations a more objective list of this kind would entail. So you're free to disagree and think I'm stupid and wrong. I would prefer it if you did not think I was stupid, though, but the fact of the matter is I cannot stop you. Here's to another ten years of wonderful games that make us feel things.

#game of the decade #ffxiv #dark souls #bloodborne #botw #darkest dungeon

9 notes · View notes

thegildedgun · 5 years

Text

Musings on ShB spoilers V 1.0: Some Theories™ Ahead.

Specifically toward the end. I’ve got some thoughts, and I’m going to tag this post appropriately. There are no images, just some musings about the last leg of the MSQ and the Story Thus Far™.

After doing the final trial with the Siren’s Bounty (Or a fair number of them. There are a few who haven’t caught up just yet) there was a good hour-to-two spent just tossing ideas around in voice chat about the conclusion of 5.0′s MSQ. I spent a lot of time considering the final area in the Tempest, the lore we’re given through interacting with NPCs, and the explanations acquired through runs of the Twining and Akadaemia, not to mention Amaurot proper.

It all came back to a couple of questions about Amaurot itself, however, and its subsequent destruction during The Final Days.

What We Know:

-The First People who later became Ascians were immortal and capable of creation magics simply by focused thought and sufficient aether. Similarly(Indeed, a one-to-one comparison) to summoning magic utilized by beast tribes.

-We already know this to be no coincidence as the Ascians are the ones who taught summoning magic to the beast tribes in the first place.

-The people of Amaurot who created complex new ‘concepts’ and ‘ideas’ had to submit them for acceptance and approval, and then their ‘creation’ would be realized with the assistance of others.

-Clothes, creatures, and objects were all within the purview of creation magics.

-Creation magic was not a 100% science and required intense focus and concentration to achieve. (As suggested with the Lucid Amaurotine Shade during the MSQ.)

-Having ostentatious clothing in Amaurot was considered ‘peculiar’ and largely discouraged, as one’s ‘inner creativity’ should be celebrated rather than their outer appearance. For this reason, the player is encouraged to go find robes akin to those worn by other Amaurotines.

-Outside of Amaurot, in far-flung reaches of the world spontaneous creation magic was taking place, unguided by conscious thought. Monsters were appearing, believed to be shaped by the innermost fears of the people.

-These were isolated incidents, culminating in the creation of Archaeotania, who was lifted to the Akadaemia Anyder to be contained and studied. Archaeotania would later escape, and cause a containment breach as several of the other creations then set upon the Amaurotines and kill a number of them.

-An Amaurotine within the Akadaemia creates a Guardian Force to contain the breach. This births Quetzalcoatl, but extinguishes the life of the Amaurotine who creates it.

-At some point, Amaurot faces the Final Days, an understood conclusion by the people of the city, who otherwise calmly go about their business while they await the Convocation of thirteen(fourteen) to deliver a solution to the issue.

-During the Final Days, the fabric of reality was somehow ‘pulled apart’ in terms unspecified and the convocation decided the solution was to somehow ‘rewrite’ them.

-Also during the Final Days, the panic that had gripped the outside world as the First People began spontaneously manifesting their fears explodes, and the entire world faces destruction on a monumental scale.

-The proposed and carried out solution to the looming apocalypse was to give the ‘star’ a ‘will’, which would become Zodiark. Through the sacrifice of 1/2 of the population (Or rather, perhaps, their Aether) Zodiark is brought into being.

-The world After the Final Days is a barren waste, and another half of the remaining population sacrifices themselves to Zodiark to bring life back to the world. The remaining 1/3rd of the population of the original First People plan to nourish the world, then offer up a portion of its vitality for the return of their fellows.

-Dissidents to the idea of Zodiark’s rule came to create ‘Hydaelyn’, whose domain allowed ‘Her’ to split, divide, and halve all traits of anything ‘She’ touched. People, places, and even Zodiark himself.

Side Notes For Reference:

-Much of FFXIV’s story and themes takes from other games, literature, and real-world conflicts. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Shadowbringers, with liberal usage of themes from other FF titles in music, boss design, naming conventions, and environments.

-The terms “Amaurot” and “Anyder” are both direct pulls from Thomas Moore’s socio-political satire work “Utopia”. Amaurot was the capitol city of Utopia, while Anyder was the river that ran through the city. Interestingly, “Anyder” means “No Water”, cementing the concept of Utopia as an abject fantasy. (Utopia itself as a word means “Not a Place”.) I’m not going into too much detail about why this is important or what Utopia’s story and commentaries were about but suffice to say it is well worth the read if you want to get a little kick out of Amaurot’s concept.

Overarching Theory:

Much of what I have concluded through the MSQ boils down to this: the First People were a largely stifled lot, and we view them through the lens of Emet-Selch’s nostalgia. They wore identical robes and similar masks, concealed their bodies and faces, and their ideas and contributions had to be submitted and approved in order to be recognized. This, to me, exemplifies a society where one’s freedom of self-expression would be utterly strangled by rules and regulation. However, in Amaurot this incredible sense of control would also serve the purpose of keeping a leash on the greater rules and understanding of reality.

In the Final Days, reality comes apart at the seams. Monsters are created, yes, but more than that, fire rains from the sky and seas boil. These are non-specific fears of destruction, of reckoning without carefully defined parameters. This is the framework for an apocalypse born of the collective consciousness that was the First People. Fear is a mighty thing, especially when it is loosely defined. Imagine all of that creative magic and energy without perfect control and parameter, allowed to manifest incomplete but nevertheless horrifying concepts. The First Beast is a great example of this: too many mouths and teeth, too many legs and nothing but want for destruction, a creature who can call down fire like rain.

But what about the catalyst for all of this? The people of Amaurot didn’t spontaneously all start fearing for their lives, did they? No, no they did not. That particular honor belongs to Archaeotania, and the containment breach in Akadaemia Anyder. We know that Archaeotania was created on one of the colonies away from Amaurot in the preliminary ‘incidents’ of spontaneous creation, and was then transferred to the Akadaemia for containment and study. However, it couldn’t be contained, and that concept in and of itself has hefty implications.

Something, a monster, born of fear cannot be contained. Fear cannot be contained.

What happens in the Akadaemia fosters growing panic, which then festers among the populace, and the Convocation (Already debating how to go about containing the threat of these ‘beasts’) realizes the situation is way out of control. What can be done? How do we contain this threat of fear that is burning through the people? How do we calm them all down?

They, of course, turn to the one tool at their disposal which started the mess, but also the only tool they really have: Creation Magic. The Guardian Force known as Quetzalcoatl serves as the tinder and spark for the idea of Zodiark: a being that could protect and guide the people. Zodiark, on the other hand, had to be on a massive scale and thus require a massive amount of aether.

Emet-Selch says a very interesting phrase about Zodiark. He mentions that Zodiark tempered them because ‘of course he did’. He also mentioned something about it being ‘futile to resist such power’.

It became startlingly clear to me after the fight with Hades why that phrase bugged me so much.

Zodiark tempering the First People is what saved them in the first place. Him, binding their will to His, and therefore stopping the rampant panic.

In the sort of manner, you know, that an Abrahamic angel might shout BE NOT AFRAID. But with more ‘oomf’ behind it, if you will.

The ‘rewriting’ of the laws of reality was simply placing those ‘laws’ under Zodiark’s command. He decided what was and was not possible, what was and was not acceptable.

Why is this so important though?

Because the First People were possessed of incredible power, but in order to ‘control’ it, sacrificed much of their self-expression and indeed, self-identity. When all of the rules of how and what to conceptualize went out the window and the First People lost their control over their thoughts and emotions, chaos ensued, monsters were born.

In a word, the First People were guilty only of ‘thought crime’. And Zodiark was the answer, tempering their minds so that they couldn’t create such unrefined concepts of fear and destruction. And with Zodiark holding hostage so much of the aether sacrificed to make him...no one could create anything.

Not without his say so.

He was the Will of the star, because nothing happened without his approval.

Questions Yet Answered:

-How did Hydaelyn come into being, and how did Her creators escape Zodiark’s tempering?

-How does the WoL fit into the narrative, with a soul ‘seven times rejoined’? (Eight with Ardbert.) Do they happen to be a dissident? Were they the ‘fourteenth’? How were they ‘nostalgic’ to Emet-Selch, as was suggested in the MSQ?

-All this and more...

#spoilers #Shadowbringers spoilers #ffxiv spoilers #ShB spoilers #I'm not editing this #This is just the culmination of like 3 weeks worth of thinking real damn hard about all the story and lore #Long post

15 notes · View notes

sleepymarmot · 6 years

Text

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

#friends at the table #blah blah blah

4 notes · View notes

adventureswithdnd · 6 years

Text

Campaign Prequel

So I’m trying to start DMing. I built a huge map and started trying to nail down the details of all of the locations, the history behind the continent, etc. My fiance, Dave, also plays RPGs and has taken an interest in the world I’m building. He agreed to join the campaign and even run through a couple of small solo sessions with his character so I can get better at running combat, developing the world, and role-playing as NPCs.

We’ve spent two hours so far with his character, and I want to recount what just happened. He’s playing a human cleric named Leona (yes, modeled on the LOL character). She starts the campaign as an acolyte, having lived on the top of a mountain for five years with a religious sect, training to become an elite class of warrior known as a Solari (it’s a southern matriarchal kingdom near a desert and they all worship the sun, so I was’t terribly creative with this name either).

Leona failed her final tests to become a Solari, but the council who live on the mountain (Mt. Crulevi) have told her to leave but return in one year to retake the test. She collects her possessions and a few days’ rations and leaves. She descends a series of steps that have been carved into the mountainside towards the gate that marks the edge of the sacred grounds. Upon exiting, she stops to pray at a stone statue outside the walls. The statue, which is of the goddess Iomedae, has been vandalized, both of the arms crudely broken off. A couple of guards are inspecting the statue, one in tears. Leona, unable to notice any clues left by the vandals, leaves and heads for Meridia.

The road from Mt. Crulevi to Meridia heads first due west, towards the Copper Woods. A few miles later, after completely descending the mountain, Leona approaches a crossroads where she will head south to cross the Solusridi (a long river controlled by the Solara kingdom). As she nears this crossroads, small homesteads exist closer together until she reaches the outskirts of a small village named Wrenville.

By one of these outer houses, Leona sees a group of children playing in the mud with a handful of stone statues. She nears them and asks to see their statues. One of the children holds up his toy: it’s a small stone effigy. She can tell it’s a deity of some sort, but she does not recognize it (possibly because it is caked in dirt and mud).

Leona casts “create water” over the child to try to rinse off the effigy. The child, unhappy at the scary use of magic, begins screaming and the other children just watch in horror. Leona calms the children down enough to ask about the statues they’re holding. They don’t provide a lot of answers, except that the statues show up every day.

One young girl gives Leona a small statue, a stone figure holding an ax. She rinses it off in the now-larger puddle of water but still does not recognize the figure. She pockets it for later research and gives the small girl one gold piece, which she drops in the mud but picks back up to place in her pocket.

Walking further into the settlement, Leona notices many of the houses have the same effigy on their doorsteps: a black statue crudely carved out of obsidian. She picks up one of the statues but again does not recognize it right away. Near the center of the village, she runs into a man who is tending some livestock and chickens and asks him about the statues. At first, he is hesitant to answer, but finally responds that the effigies show up by dawn every morning. They don’t know who brings them, but they don’t dare to find out. When Leona presses him on this final answer, he ignores her and walks off. She sets down her items near the center of the town to rest for the evening.

Later, a couple of adventurers returning from the Copper Woods spot Leona. Recognizing her as a Solari (and presumably a religious zealot), they do not appreciate her presence in the town and repeatedly threaten her to leave. She begrudgingly walks down the road but circles back to keep an eye on the small settlement from a nearby grove of trees off the road. She wants to see who is leaving the effigies.

Leona stays awake all night. Just before dawn, she hears a rather loud scuffling and grunting nearby. She moves closer to inspect the sound. She spots a hunched figure in a large black cloak moving from house to house. It reaches into a basket under its cloak and sets a small stone statue on each doorstep with a grotesque, misshapen hand.

Leona approaches it, drawing her sword and casting “light” on her sword to make it glow. The figure eventually spots her, and as it looks up, Leona sees its dark, gaunt face under the hood. The creature runs for the woods, easily losing Leona in her heavy armor. Leona decides to wait another day. She wants to confront this creature and find out why it creates these effigies.

Before resting, Leona casts “know the enemy” and asks her deity, Sarenrae, about the creature she just encountered. The goddess informs her that it was a flue hag that harasses these villagers, leaving effigies on their doorsteps every morning to scare them. It sometimes changes the type of deity it carves to hint at an upcoming event, such as leaving a deity of death the day before it murders a resident.

Leona spends most of the day sleeping and praying. When she wakes up in the early afternoon, she wanders into the town to find food. She walks into a bakery and asks the baker behind the counter if she could help him bake bread for the day, as she worked as a baker back on Mt. Crulevi. At the mention of the Solari, he refuses to let her step behind the counter, but he hands her a roll of bread and advises her to “leave and I won’t tell anyone you were here.” She takes the bread and agrees.

In the village center, she meets a couple of young mothers (named Rylee and Aubriella) washing laundry with water from the settlements’ well. They do not recognize that she is a Solari soldier, and they happily invite Leona to help them with their chores. Leona asks about the effigies again, particularly about the creature that leaves them. The women are extremely reluctant to answer her questions. The villagers believe it is bad luck to talk about the flue hag, and that talking about it publicly could seal one’s own fate. Leona stops pressing them about the flue hag and, after helping the women wash their children’s muddy clothes, she asks if there is a candle maker in the town.

They point her to a small shop on the first floor of the home of Samuel Chandler. Upon entering the store, a bumbly little man walks from the back room and asks how he can help her. She asks if he has a candle, a nail, and a frying pan. Puzzled, the man replies that of course he has candles, and he can probably find a nail in his shop, but that he can’t help with the frying pan.

He shows her his stock, which includes simple pillar candles. Leona purchases a candle that burns for 8 hours. Samuel also convinces her to purchase a candle he has been experimenting with making. He says he has purchased a rare spice called Cinnamon from a distant land and has started scenting his candles with it. He also enthusiastically explains that his wife has started flavoring her baking with the spice and that it has helped make a lot of her food, especially the pumpkin pie she makes, even better. Leona agrees to purchase one of his new candles.

Leona eats a set of the rations she took from the kitchen on Mt. Crulevi and settles in for the night. She sets up the candle on her metal canteen with a nail driven into the candle so it should fall after the wax melts in six hours. This works, and she wakes up shortly before dawn. The creature is quieter this time, and it is only about 80 yards away when Leona finally hears it scuttling from house to house.

Leona removes her armor, hoping to be able to keep up with the creature if it tries to escape, and draws her sword. The flue hag fails to hear her approaching, and Leona charges but misses terribly. the flue hag’s aura of misfortune affects Leona, and for several rounds, she swings her sword over and over, missing every time. The monster lashes out, attempting to bite Leona, and instead stumbles, falling onto the ground. Her basket of stone effigies spills out over the dirt.

Leona casts “fire bolt” at the flue hag, but realizes that the monster is resistant to fire. Leona slashes at the monster again and again. She makes eye contact with a small child in the window of one of homes. They’ve been awoken by the fighting outside and are too curious to keep from peeking outside. “Help!” Leona screams at them. The child’s face disappears.

They continue fighting for a short while, but the monster’s searing bite and sharp claws are too much for Leona. The cleric casts “cure light wounds” once, but the monster bites Leona’s arm, and she is critically injured. She collapses to the ground, just as she hears a door open and a loud voice shouting “Get back!” Everything goes black.

#dnd #pathfinder #prequel #campaign #leona #crulevi #wrenville

1 note · View note

loreweaver-universe · 6 years

Text

Y’know, today I feel like talking about Disgaea, specifically my problems with Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance.

Spoilers for Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom, I guess.

So, first off, let’s talk about...

The Narrative.

Disgaea 5 tells the tale of edgelord Squall Leonhart wannabe Killia, a former asshole who got redeemed by falling in love with the daughter of the only demon to ever give him a proper ass-thrashing, who spent his time teaching Killia how to find inner peace blah blah blah it’s actually pretty bland. Killia speaks in a constant monotone, half-heartedly tries to get his rapidly accumulating party of Overlord-level demon pals to leave him the hell alone, and is generally just really goddamn boring. It’s not to say this kind of character can’t be interesting--in fact, I name-dropped Squall earlier, and until Final Fantasy VIII went completely off the rails in the second disc he was a legitimately nuanced character and I was interested in seeing where he went. Here’s the problem with all that, though:

The Disgaea series is a parody.

Now, full disclaimer--I’ve only played Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom. I have Disgaea 3 and 4, but I haven’t been able to secure a PS3 to play them on yet, so I’m leaving those out of the discussion (though from what I’m aware those are parodies as well.) However, of the four games I have played, Disgaea 5 stands out as being the only one of them to really take itself seriously.

Well, 2 did as well to a certain extent, but other than the looming issue of “we’re trying to off your evil dad, Rozalin,” Disgaea 2 takes itself about as seriously as Disgaea 1 did, and Disgaea 1 is a farce.

A beautiful, glorious, hilarious, one hundred percent intentional farce.

Laharl is a ridiculous creature. He’s petty, narcissistic, and childish, and while there are serious story beats (Etna being blackmailed, that asshole Angel stealing Flonne’s protective pendant, etc) Laharl never stops mocking his foes, his friends, and the genre itself. Disgaea 1, in short, is taking the piss, parodying the most ridiculous parts of anime and JRPGs (and, hell, American raygun gothic) with delightful glee...which is why, when things turn deadly fucking serious in the final chapter, it’s so goddamn heart-wrenching and effective. That slow burn of Laharl growing to care about Flonne enough that he tears the Heavenly Host several new assholes to try to save her from their judgment (and, even in the best ending, has to talk himself down from murdering the head angel in cold blood because she wouldn’t have wanted him to take revenge for her sake) is one of the most effective tonal twists in the history of media, in my opinion: all of a sudden, it’s not funny anymore.

While Disgaea 1 lampooned the genre as a whole, Disgaea 2 takes a different tack, and lampoons common anime/JRPG character archetypes. The hot-blooded, idiotically honorable melee fighter; the spoiled rich brat of a princess; the annoyingly perverted goblin of a third wheel (and, ugh, I wish that archetype would die already), the plucky little kids who are the least innocent characters in the whole crew other than the aforementioned perv goblin, on and on and on. The goal may be serious, but the characters are almost as silly as they were in Disgaea 1, and I actually think 2 manages an even better balance of humor and compelling storytelling than 1, because not only is the romance between Adell and Rozalin natural, enjoyable, and endearing, the dramatic beats come along without undermining the sheer silliness of our protagonists until it can have the most impact. There’s a moment in one of the later chapters where Laharl from the first game appears without warning, pissed off, heavily geared, and more than a thousand levels your superior.

(Yes, I said a THOUSAND levels. For those of you in the audience who aren’t familiar with the series, the level cap is 9999, and you can reset a character to level 1, storing attained levels for bonus stats. I’ll be talking about the grind later, don’t you worry.)

The encounter with Laharl accomplishes several things over the course of the two fights with him: it delivers a joyful reunion with the protagonist of the first game, which turns to terror when you see his stats, which turns to horror as you send your team into the meat grinder to die helplessly...and then it shows us that something is frighteningly wrong with Rozalin as she is seemingly possessed and tears this impossible foe apart effortlessly. From there the story really kicks into high gear, and like Disgaea 1, transitions into a deadly serious final assault on Zenon’s stronghold, but unlike Disgaea 1 it’s not a shocking swerve in tone--the story’s been building to this over time, gradually reconstructing the genre it gleefully tore to pieces over the previous game and a half.

Makai Kingdom is a very different affair, and can actually be most closely contrasted with Disgaea 5. In the Disgaeaverse, an “Overlord” is a very powerful demon who rules a pocket dimension called a “Netherworld.” Laharl’s an Overlord, for example. Makai Kingdom deals with a set of protagonists on a whole other level of power; these are the Overlords that other Overlords view as gods, and they essentially sit around on their asses playing card games and throwing popcorn at their TV.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Makai Kingdom is a return to Disgaea 1′s attitude--relentless silliness, mockery of itself, with a sharp turn at the end. Whether it accomplishes this goal as well as Disgaea 1 isn’t all that relevant, but it is something we can compare to Disgaea 5.

Disgaea 5 starts off similarly--hideously powerful Overlord-level demons gather together, but the characters are...not exactly dour, but played straight, I guess. There’s no parody, no lampooning; it’s very stock JRPG comedy (and “comedy”), with dramatic tension, a serious approach to its story and antagonists, and predictable story beats obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a mediocre anime or played a mediocre JRPG. Hell, the main villain’s name is Void Dark, and not a single character makes fun of that! There are some interesting designs, and I actually think Majorita is a compelling villain for Usalia, who I likewise enjoy immensely, but the story abandons almost everything that made the previous games’ plots entertaining. Topple an empire, murder some baddies, get your homes back, save your dead love from the creepy brother with the incestuous undertones. That’s it. That’s all. As a story structure, it works just fine, and as evidenced by my love for the rest of the series I absolutely think challenging established conventions is a good thing, but it doesn’t do so successfully enough that it stands out as a worthy entry in the series. Where it does shine is in improvements to gameplay quality-of-life and beautiful animation, which brings me to...

The Gameplay.

Disgaea 5 improves the UI, adds all sorts of neat little quirks to character customization, and improves game control substantially. It adds extra ways to gain stat points (like I said before, character levels cap at 9999 and can be stored for stat bonuses--this game also allows you to train stats for stat points via minigames) and is just generally more in-depth than its predecessors...at the cost of being stupidly easy to grind out.

Yes, I think an easier grind is a bad thing. Let me explain: I have over ten thousand hours in Disgaea 2 alone over the last twelve years. I picked the first two games up when Disgaea 2 was brand new, and have beaten the game dozens of times in the intervening span. Most recently, about five years ago, I created a save file on the PSP port of the game, and I spend idle trips or the time I’m falling asleep grinding it out as kind of an idle game.

Literally everything you do in a Disgaea game gets you experience for something. Weapon mastery, skill exp, character exp, you name it. Hell, you can run randomized dungeons inside your items to level those up, too. It’s incredibly satisfying and makes for a constant sense of progression--even if you don’t level up in a fight you’ve still gotten experience points for the skills and weapons you’ve used, making it stronger, more effective, etc. My personal goal is to, eventually, have one of every character class maxed out on stored levels and every skill and weapon proficiency in the game, which is a deliberately impossible task because it’s just so much fun to chase it forever.

Here’s the other thing: the Disgaea series, due to the ludicrous level cap, is known for its absurdly deep pool of ever-stronger bonus bosses, stretching, yes, all the way up to the level cap. The hunt for those is likewise extremely satisfying, and takes quite a while, especially since the campaign usually caps out at around levels 70-90.

With all this in mind, imagine my dismay when I realized I was blowing through skill and weapon exp and hitting the caps on everything in a tiny percentage of the time I was expecting. To be fair, there is a “Cheat Shop” NPC who can adjust the EXP you gain up and down, which is neat, but I have to crank it down to literally single-digit percentages of normal to get the same amount of chase-time out of it. This is not to say that the game should be inaccessibly grindy; in fact, Disgaea 1 and 2 aren’t. The story campaigns in those games are perfectly completable with the normal skill progression and a small but admittedly grindy amount of extra leveling in unlocked areas. It’s all the extreme bonus content that’s gated behind the postgame grind, and the huge ceiling on skill levels and weapon proficiencies means you’re constantly rising in power and challenging new heights. I think that’s a fantastic reward for being dedicated to the game! And Disgaea 5 in its default state takes that away. I had a character capped out on all proficiencies, subclasses, and aptitudes within my first hundred hours of the game.

It was...disappointing, I guess. All around, mostly; for every step forward it took, it also took a step back. Ultimately, the story takes a backseat to my points about the grind, because the campaign in any Disgaeaverse game is literally about 2% of the game’s content. Disgaea 5 took my grind from me, and that’s why I’m salty enough to have just spent an hour typing up a book report on its failings, I guess.

#disgaea #disgaea 5 #disgaea spoilers #disgaea 2 #makai kingdom #bloggin #inbetween

46 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Ready Player Two Ending Explained: How the Sequel Jumps the Shark

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains MAJOR spoilers for Ready Player Two. You can read our spoiler-free review of the sequel here.

At the end of Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One, Wade Watts a.k.a. Parzival inherits everything he set out to win in James Donovan Halliday’s Easter egg hunt: the OASIS creator’s massive fortune, as well as control over the digital world itself. So how could Cline, and Halliday, top that with Ready Player Two?

By helping humanity level up.

The sequel’s ending definitely goes in a very different direction than how Ready Player One ended, both relating to the book’s central quest and in how it opens up the world of Cline’s future-Earth. Read on as we trace the path from the Seven Shards for the Siren’s Soul to the posthumous gift that allows Wade to finally achieve some level of closure when it comes to his adventures in the OASIS.

What Are the Seven Shards for the Siren’s Soul?

Not even two weeks after winning control (along with the rest of the High Five) of the OASIS, Wade in his unique capacity as Halliday’s sole heir (via the Easter egg hunt, at least) receives another gift: the OASIS Neural Interface, or ONI. By interacting directly with OASIS users’ brains, the ONI allows for an all-senses experience of the digital world. It takes very little convincing for Wade, Aech, and Shoto to vote to share the ONI with all users, though Samantha votes against and Ogden Morrow abstains.

Once there were 7,777,777 OASIS users connecting via ONI technology, Halliday released another posthumous riddle:

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul

On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role

For each fragment my heir must pay a toll

To once again make the Siren whole

But at first Wade is stymied by the quest, unsure who the Siren is or how he would go about finding seven shards with few clues to start with. The sequel’s action doesn’t truly pick up until the High Five are visited by a ghost in the machine: Anorak, Halliday’s NPC avatar in the OASIS. Except that Anorak is actually a self-aware AI that’s gone rogue, kidnapped Ogden, and forced him to begin finding the Shards. Once Og outsmarted the AI, he turned to the next best option: Wade/Parzival would have to find the Shards, but this time he would have a twelve-hour ticking clock before he and the half-billion people logged in via ONI would hit their time limit and be lobotomized.

Like the three keys to three gates in Ready Player One, each Shard is tied to a moment in Halliday’s life, particularly a moment set in the 1980s, particularly 1988-89: the year that foreign exchange student Kira Underwood spent in Middletown, Ohio, and where she met Halliday and Morrow.

While racing after the Shards, the High Five learn that when Kira had to go back to England after her year abroad, she left behind a D&D module that she had written for the rest of their group to play in her absence: The Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul, in which her character Leucosia was trapped in suspended animation, her soul split into seven pieces that her friends had to find.

Wade comes to realize that the Siren in the OASIS quest is Leucosia herself—that is, a digital copy of Kira’s consciousness, an AI like Anorak. But while the flesh-and-blood Kira died before the ONI was officially created, the final memory toll is the last seven seconds of Kira’s memory, as Halliday tricked her into trying an ONI prototype while she was still alive. It copied over her consciousness up until that moment, creating Leucosia.

Initially, Halliday had kept Leucosia in a private simulation, in the hopes that he could convince her to love him. But he soon realized that because he had copied over every aspect of Kira’s personality and experience, that included her love for Ogden. Further, witnessing Kira’s memories of Halliday at his most insecure and selfish moments made the man realize how wrong he had been to violate her trust.

While it was Halliday who created the Seven Shards quest, it was Anorak who wanted Leucosia as his prize. Anorak, the digital copy of Halliday who grew unstable when his creator tried to remove the worst parts of his own personality from the copy and instead just gave his monstrous alter ego more control over the OASIS. With that power, he is able to hold Parzival and millions of other OASIS users hostage until Z can restore the Siren’s Soul.

How Do the High Five Win the Quest?

Even though Parzival is the only person (aside from Ogden Morrow) able to physically collect the Shards, he relies heavily on members of the High Five and the L0w Five in order to complete the seven trials. Each puzzle draws from a different person’s own particular fandom or knowledge base: Z’s new ally L0hengrin figures out the first Shard years after it gets announced; Shoto is the one to crack the riddle of Sega Ninja, while Art3mis walks them through the John Hughes tribute planet that is Shermer, and Aech coaches Z through doing musical battle with the Seven Princes on the Afterworld. Of course, Wade is the one with the personal experience on education-is-fun planet Halcydonia, and the trip to Arda I is a Tolkienesque date for Parzival and Art3mis.

Finding the Seventh Shard is simply a matter of visiting the Shrine of Leucosia on the D&D planet Chthonia, site of the final battle in Ready Player One. Once all Seven Shards are collected, one need only combine them into one jewel in order to resurrect Leucosia.

But what Z hands over to Anorak is a counterfeit jewel, which he uses to surreptitiously trade the Robes of Anorak back into his inventory. This allows him to teleport into Castle Anorak and threaten to push the Big Red Button that will destroy the OASIS—even if that means it will kill the half a billion people forcibly logged into the OASIS.

Ultimately, Parzival convinces Anorak to duel Halliday’s heir to prove that he is the only one worthy of inheriting Halliday’s power. And while Anorak thinks he’s fighting Wade, who is starting to suffer the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome, instead he’s up against the other heir: Ogden Morrow (who had indeed inherited Halliday’s treasured collection of arcade machines), near death after captivity and torture but putting on an ONI headset for the first and last time in order to enter the OASIS as the Great and Powerful Og and duel Anorak the All-Knowing.

Who Dies in the Final Battle?

Whereas the Battle of Castle Anorak in Ready Player One caused an OASIS-wide massacre of all the users who came to Parzival’s aid—who he later brought back to life—the casualties in Ready Player Two’s final showdown are much smaller. Z is mostly a spectator to what he calls “the most epic player-versus-NPC battle in the history of the OASIS… It was like Yoda versus Palpatine, Gandalf versus Saruman, and Neo versus Agent Smith, all rolled into one epic clash of the titans.”

The two seem fairly evenly matched until L0hengrin appears, fresh off her own epic side quest, to deliver Og the sword Dorkslayer. The sword was a creation of Ogden’s, once he received Halliday’s posthumous email apologizing for creating Leucosia without either Kira or Og’s permission. Knowing that Anorak might go rogue, Og created the contingency of an in-world sword that only his avatar could wield. Once he receives the sword, it’s all over, requiring only a single blow to destroy Anorak.

In the real world, Sorrento has already died. When Wade and Samantha, acting via telebots, went to rescue Og from his and Kira’s mansion, Anorak (also via telebot) decides that Sorrento has served his purpose and shoots him. Unfortunately, Sorrento is able to get off a wild shot that strikes Og in the stomach, a wound to which he eventually succumbs after killing Anorak in the OASIS.

Who Lives (Again) After the Final Battle?

After Anorak is defeated and all of the OASIS hostages are released back into the real world, Wade wakes up after a few days’ recovery. Samantha passes on Og’s last words to Wade, telling him that he should bring Kira back so she can decide her own fate. At first Wade is confused, but he remembers teenage Kira’s D&D module: The party has to collect all seven shards and reassemble them into the Siren’s Soul. Only then can they free Leucosia from suspended animation. Once they do, she presents them with their reward. A powerful artifact with the power to resurrect the dead, and make them immortal in the process…

First Wade assembles the Seven Shards and resurrects Leucosia, who explains that she is technically the world’s first stable AI (though Anorak predated her, he was clearly unstable by the end). She also reveals that Halliday, when he realized how badly he had wronged Kira and her, offered to destroy the ONI technology. However, she told him not to, because she was glad to have been created, as she could carry on Kira’s memories rather than letting them get lost. She also didn’t want to be alone. “I don’t feel like some sort of unnatural abomination,” she explains to Wade and Samantha. “I feel fine. I feel alive.”

It’s similar to what Black Mirror has done with their “cookies,” or AI copies, especially in its episodes “White Christmas,” “San Junipero,” and “USS Callister.” Each explores these copies’ rights to be considered as independent entities, their fates separate from their human counterparts.

Leucosia gifts Parzival the Rod of Resurrection, which will allow him to bring back any OASIS user who has died in real life—but only if they had used the ONI to back up their consciousness. So Z is able to bring back Art3mis’ grandmother Ev3lyn, as well as the Great and Powerful Og, to be with Leucosia. Unfortunately, he can’t bring back his mother, who died long before the ONI technology existed, nor Daito.

But what he does realize is that everyone who did ever use an ONI headset automatically has the chance at immortality: “We might be part of the last generation ever to know the sting of human mortality. From this moment forth, death would have no dominion.” From beyond the grave, James Donovan Halliday had created the Singularity by way of simulacra.

What Happens to the OASIS and the ONI-net?

Although Wade spends the entire book agonizing over the possibility of pushing the Big Red Button, ultimately he decides against it. It’s not his call to take away an entire world that provides escapism for people suffering in poverty, or who feel uncomfortable in their physical bodies, people for whom the OASIS is the only realm in which to be their true selves.

So, humans get to keep the OASIS and the ONI-net; but they don’t get to learn about the Singularity created by the ONI technology and the Rod of Resurrection. The High Five decide that it will take some time for humans to get comfortable with the idea of living alongside digital ghosts of their loved ones in the OASIS; but that won’t stop them from making plans for generations from now.

What Happens to Wade?

Or perhaps the better question is, what happens to Wade… and what happens to Parzival.

Like Ready Player One, the sequel’s action was narrated by Wade after the fact, recounting a digital adventure that changed the real world forever. The twist here is that in the final chapter (appropriately titled “Continue…?”), readers learn that the first-person narrator is technically Parzival, a digital copy of Wade’s consciousness in the OASIS.

Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that when Wade returns to the OASIS to resurrect Leucosia, he mentions that it is his final login to the OASIS. This makes sense in the final chapter, when the tenses shift to describe Wade in third-person but Parzival in first-person, revealing that the two shared memories of the entire story, until their experiences diverged at the creation of Parzival as a self-aware AI copy.

What is the Future of Humanity?

In his bleakest moments, Wade had worked with Aech and Shoto to build and prep the Vonnegut, a spaceship intended to leave Earth behind for a new home. Samantha was understandably upset at the idea of the OASIS’ co-owners abandoning an overpopulated Earth for their own gains, as this ark could only hold about two dozen bodies.

However, once the High Five begin resurrecting the AIs via the ONI technology, they come to a better plan: Move Parzival, a copy of Art3mis, Ev3lyn, Og, and Leucosia from the OASIS into ARC@DIA, the standalone simulation on the Vonnegut, and set a course for Proxima Centauri, where they hope to find a habitable, Earth-like planet. The voyage will take close to fifty years, but the AIs will have one another in their digital world and won’t need to take up any resources like human bodies would. Along with copies of all of the ONI users—in suspended animation—and frozen human embryos, the Vonnegut will have more than enough physical bodies and digital souls to populate a new world, should they find one.

There is, of course, a huge ethical dilemma in copying over a billion OASIS users without their knowledge. Wade leaves it up to Parzival, since he knows what reincarnation is like. They seem to be adopting an “ask for forgiveness, not for permission” attitude—assuming that the copies’ namesakes on Earth even ever find out about the AIs’ existence.

Parzival also distinguishes how he and Wade are different people despite their shared experiences. Wade and Samantha elect to stay on Earth, where they get married and get pregnant with a daughter they plan to name Kira. (Shoto and Kiki have their son, Daito, while Aech and Endira remain happily married.) Fatherhood gives Wade a renewed purpose, while Parzival both delights in his immortal, ageless relationship with Art3mis but also hints at the AIs possibly constructing bonds that may transcend human ways of relating to one another: “Our relationships with one another have also evolved, now that we’re immortal beings of pure intellect, freed from our physical forms and set adrift in the vastness of outer space, possibly for all eternity. Even though our perspectives may have changed, we still value those relationships above all else. Because out here, that’s all we have.”

The book ends on dual notes of hope: that the humans remaining on Earth will recommit themselves to figuring out how to fix their planet, while still thriving in the escapism of the OASIS; and that their digital counterparts will settle a new planet, or even make contact with another civilization who can help them continue to evolve.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Wade and Parzival both grow up playing video games, and spend their formative years inside one. Then their paths diverge: Wade finally realizes that there are enough people and experiences in the real world that matter enough to keep him grounded IRL, going so far as to claim that he will never put on an ONI headset again. Meanwhile, Parzival carries their gaming spirit further, to explore more digital worlds via ARC@DIA and what feels like a whole new level in the video game that is life. Sounds like Cline has left enough of an opening for the possibility of Ready Player Three…

The post Ready Player Two Ending Explained: How the Sequel Jumps the Shark appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2KT4ny6

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes