If I die within the next week know it wasnt an accident

GGS: Another Story Review

Another Story has been released for a while, so I finally took the time to watch it. I was very interested to see how the characters who weren’t included will be expanded on along with the lore. Was “Another Story” worth the wait? Time to find out! (Note: This will mostly be a spoiler free review until after June 10th, which is when the big patch happens for the game. ). One of the things I do like about Another Story is the action sequences. The animation of the fight scenes, special effects, and movement is notably improved from the previous games. While not perfect, it isn’t as stiff or has an overly strange “pause” when there’s a clash. And the camera angles of not only the action, but also the scenery!

Out of all the characters, Ramlethal has the most satisfying screen-time and development, especially if you followed how she was since XRD. Like I sensed from my redesign analysis, Ramlethal displays the traits of a real leader is and was able to finally do the thing she was struggling with in the past(it’s a small, yet meaningful thing). There was another moment with her I noticed when she made a statement to Faust during the strategy of stopping Delilah. It’s another small, but meaningful moment I liked in the story. There is some small humor here and there in between that made me giggle. Another good part is seeing a “surprise” appearance of known character with a new look(it’s not really surprising since I expected to see them eventually). Now onto the criticisms I have with Another Story. The biggest issue is it’s only a one part, 41 minute long story. That’s way too short to try to fit everything the writers is trying to do. It not only makes the story very rushed, but it’s mostly “this happened” and “that happened” syndrome instead of it being a true expansion to the main story. This introduces other problems too, which I’m going to get into next. While Ramlethal’s role was satisfying, it sadly isn’t the same for the other characters. One example is Delilah, who you would think the story will go in-depth about given she has been referenced and talked about in XRD and Revelator. The story never shows, explains, nor implies how she woke up and able to stay awake unlike her brother, who remained asleep and could only communicate through his dream state. Even her connection to Baiken and the conclusion following it was rushed; instantly reminding of MCU’s Dr.Strange 2: In the Multiverse of Madness. With Delilah just being used as a plot device like America Chavez was and to “make the adult see the light”(Baiken being Dr.Strange in this case with this plotline), even though the adult already developed and soften already, lol. And since stupid Happy Chaos is the real “That Man”, it also makes Baiken’s arc like Sol’s pointless.  Another I’m most disappointed by is Faust, who is serves as a character to “move the plot” instead of giving him a proper spotlight. This also reminds me of Dr.Strange 2 where Dr.Strange himself also became a victim of being a character to “move the plot along” and do magical glyphs, XDD. Even the surprise appearance of a known character is only there to “move the plot along” and a little humor. I wouldn’t complain if Another Story had been a couple of chapters and longer(at least 5 Chapters) so it can truly feel like an expansion. After watching it, it wouldn’t be a big lost if it wasn’t included in the game.  

Overall thoughts on V8? Assuming you didn't answer this already.

I meant to do a volume wrap up review but I got incredibly busy and it fell to the waste side. The thing about me judging RWBY I have to come at it from two angles or I won’t feel like I judged it appropriately. There’s the casual, first time seeing the episodes and seeing this through the lens as a casual watcher who probably only sees the episodes once or twice. But then there’s the other side to that coin. I review these episodes, write aus, theorize, check extended lore, listen to the music, etc; that means I have to go back and watch episodes several times for any given reason and that’s when you start noticing the holes or picking up on things you didn’t before.

As a casual watcher, I’d give this an 8/10. There’s plenty of moments where characters do things that got me excited and plot points I wanted explored. This volume actually gave a decent amount of things I wanted for quite some time and some things I didn’t know I needed. Certainly there are things I don’t like in this but I’m open and curious to see where RT takes their storie because it’s their story.

Okay, now as a someone who’s had to deep dive and take a step back multiple times for a variety of reasons. 6.5/10 maybe a 7/10 if I’m being generous. A lot of my problems with this volume are problems that aren’t new to RWBY and that’s just how surface layer portions of arcs are and how a variety of choices/bonds don’t exactly make sense with what we were previously shown, or they only make sense because the writers don’t want introduce other complexities even though they should be there realistically. I’ll give a couple examples of these and yes, I’m aware what I say doesn’t bother everyone but it bothers me.

Qrow was never angry at or brought up Robyn being the reason their airship crashed in the first place because she started the fight; which aids in Clover dying.

Emerald follows Cinder, not Salem. Even if Cinder is working under Salem, why would Emerald be so willingly to complete shift to the side that actively goes against Cinder? There’s been no grand revelation to make Emerald believe Cinder doesn’t give a damn about her. Leaving made sense because she was about to get tortured. Going full turncoat right now doesn’t. No change happened. Emerald always hated being near Salem but adored Cinder no matter the crimes and the show hasn’t done anything to switch that view point.

I’m happy Whitley and Weiss had a touching sibling moment that implies they’re okay and making/made up, but there was never a conversation about the actual problem and thoughts that had them at odds in the first place. Weiss saving his and Willow’s life shouldn’t be the thing that smooths things over. It would’ve been terrible if Weiss do something to save their life. Whitley helping Penny is okay I guess because he really had no reason to contribute but did anyways. Even so, a person doing a morally correct thing doesn’t automatically warrant the conflict between him and Weiss’s resolved.

We got Cinder’s backstory; it didn’t tell us anything about how she eventually came into contact with Salem. Honestly her back story felt more in line of her main goal through the series was an absolute freedom by the means of breaking down the systems that trapped and didn’t give a damn, rather than her quest for power. Yes you can argue gaining power means it’s easier to maintain her freedom to do whatever she wants but I personally think that’s a little off the mark when you gave her a story that involves her trapped by rules and time rather than being too physically weak to gain freedom.

This show has built up that the Schnee family has suffered various types of abuse because of Jacques and uses Weiss as a medium to build towards breaking free from that. Not just overcoming but confronting the abuse by cementing it’s place below you. We don’t really get that. There will never be a moment where the siblings and mother truly get to break out of Jacques grasps emotionally and then put him in his place because he’s dead! Yeah they never have to worry about him again but even last volume they showed Winter still having turmoil and being able to get strung along by him. We don’t even really know how Whitley perceived his father. It feels so lackluster. Then they care to mention how it’s Weiss’s idea to save him like it’s an empowering moment when in actuality, it would be against her character, values of a huntress, and morality to let a person die in cell when you’re the reason they’re in a cell! Letting him die in there would just terrible. I don’t even know why he wasn’t let out in that scene! He’s a coward! He’d follow their orders to save his skin. All he has to do is shut up and walk through a portal.

Ironwood and Oscar both knew they could remove that staff to use it and Atlas wouldn’t drop immediately. Why did nobody have any kind of compromise with one another since there’s nothing stopping them from using the staff for something and then putting it back? They had this morally gray thing going on which I liked but then they decided to make Ironwood go full evil. I’ve never had to say this before but the song he got in V7 and the character they made him be in V8 just don’t connect. I got upset listening to that song recently because I liked that Ironwood.

Clover’s importance. RT tried making a character who had no more than 9 minutes in the series and one meaningful line of dialogue into the cornerstone of a side plot. Clover is such a nothing character. Vine did more than Clover. They try to make him have such a profound impact to the people around him but we never see him bond with his team; Harriet specifically. We get one scene of Clover telling Qrow the kids are fortunate to have Qrow even if he doesn’t think so. First, I doubt Clover knows Qrow decided to get drunk in a ghost town and the kids nearly died and cellar while he did it so that compliment doesn’t hold much weight for me. Second, We see nothing meaningful between the two. V7 has a time skip and just expects viewers to be on board with Clover being this influential change on Qrow without showing anything outside of a witty remark and Clover flexing his semblance. I would’ve bought it more of Qrow almost relapsed and Clover stopped him then had a real meaningful conversation.

Ruby goes against Ironwood only to then want to do a plan that’s aligned to longer term thinking than even his, talks about how everyone should be working together, but then adds a part in her video to actively antagonize and vilify Ironwood. Afterwards, she wonders where everything went wrong and doesn’t think of a plan or do anything to immediately help either kingdom until the final hour between the ultimatum being made, to everything getting destroyed. The inciting incident was disagreeing Mantle should be left in favor of Atlas but the main character didn’t do anything to help Mantle 90% of the season and hindered Atlas’s safety up until the final plan.

Yang is used to be the devil’s advocate in a bunch of situations, but she’s wrong most of the time or her lines just don’t make any sense. They weren’t doing just fine before Atlas. They almost died every step of the way. The team didn’t beat a Leviathan; silver eyes and a robot take credit for that. Why would Blake think less of Yang for wanting to go save people immediately? Blake was never mad at anyone to begin with. Yang consistently calls out people for following orders as if it’s objectively wrong, but is never called out on the fact she hasn’t followed anybody’s orders but her own and added discourse to every situation. I get RT is making her ask questions because that’s what Raven told her to do, but all she’s really doing is picking fights and disobeying every order. Yang states to Ruby they accomplished more than they expected. That’s false, getting Oscar back is correcting a mistake caused by her own plan that she didn’t even complete.

It took 6 volumes before Yang had anything to do with the Summer Rose subplot again and 7 volumes before her and Ruby had a sister to sister conversations; 5 if you wanna count Yang telling Ruby to leave at the end of volume three. The reason I bring this up is because in V8 , they treat their argument as if it’s a big deal but then have every character say it wasn’t that big a deal; but then have two circle back to that conversation later after having neither character discuss to anybody that the argument actually did weigh on them. Yang doesn’t think about Ruby until she sees her again and the closest we get with Ruby is Blake reassuring her that people need her and how Blake admires her. I like that scene but it’s not the same as Ruby actually airing out the specific point that Yang said something that Ruby found hurtful. Vol8 in general people trying to comfort others but nobody ever actually addresses what made them uncomfortable to start with. Except Ren.

This one is a nitpicking but I’ll say it anyways. Penny getting hacked only served as a purpose to go to the vault, a thing Ironwood already wanted them to do. Nobody got her because she was hacked. You can’t even say her getting hacked is the leading factor to her actually dying because Penny became a vulnerable human afterwards that can’t be rebuilt. Pietro was gone, and already stated last volume he doesn’t have the aura to build Penny again. If she died as a robot then it’s still permanent death. No core, no Pietro, and no aura; hacking her was just to create a Hound reveal situation and make them go to the vault on a different set of terms. I’m not exactly upset with this, but I don’t understand why the extra steps. The Hound was hunting her anyways. I would’ve brought some kind of value if she hurt a friend and it caused them to potentially hinder the plan later on or remove them entirely. Penny could’ve rekt Yang and it only adds value to Yang getting one shot later. I don’t know. I’m rambling.

I think I’ve wasted enough people’s time. Honestly, I do like this volume. I’ve enjoyed a bunch of it. But there’s things that legitimately make me think it’s not as good others and makes V7 even worse.

Hey can I rant to you about how I find the mono-focus on the very much human dominated forces of Chaos as the real bad guy of 40k to be honestly even worse than the Imperiaal focus?  You know what I always wanted in 40k?  Lizardmen, Alien Ogres, Space Dwarfs, Skaven, and some Vampire Counts to the Necrons’ Tomb Kings.   In WHFB only three playable armies were human (five if you count the undead as human) and WHFB had a larger number of independent factions than 40k.   Meanwhile in 40k about half of all the armies in the game are Imperial and another large chunk are the equally insufferable legions of Chaos as the two factions circlejerk over who is the more racist and xenophobic.   While in FB you had the annoying emphasis on Chaos as the one true threat (which is increasingly being emphasised in 40k including the awful, awful retcons they want to do to the war in heaven where what was supposed to be the xenos equivalent to the horus heresy gets “akshually the real bad guy is chaos lawl” shoved into it), humanity was just a part of the struggle against it or other forces such as Undeath or the Greenskins.  Not even the biggest part, with the High Elves, Lizardmen, and Dwarfs all bearing more of the burden than the Empire or Bretonnia.   Meanwhile, while theoretically 40k is a setting where non-chaos bad guys are more relevant and more able to defeat Chaos and take over as the one; the non-humans actually do less.  Chaos is the only bad guy faction allowed to have permanent wins, to be undefeatable without any asterisks marks and whose fanboys (including GW’s writing team) love to endlessly circlejerk about how opposing Chaos is useless because they’ll get you in the end. And how 40k is really about humanity’s inevitably doomed succumbing to Chaos and how the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons are the destined victors and blah-de-blah.  Any time an effective counter to chaos is written about in any other faction’s lore; the Chaos favouratism gets to show with “akshually chaos overcomes this because phhbbbbbt” with eye-rolling descriptions of how Chaos overwhelms say; the Tyranid hive mind by scattering it with the great rift, or how the death guard can infect nurgle, or how actually Tzeentch only pretended to lose to the Eldar or how Slaanesh actually pulled a fast one over the T'au.   Nobody is allowed to be more of a threat than the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons even though the former are literally a bunch of spoiled paramilitary stormtroopers salty about the Emperor saying they weren’t allowed to rule over normal humanity like god-kings and the latter have lore that is fifty million variations of “lol inevitable victory”.  The Chaos Space Marines are so lacking in numbers, so incapable of large scale cooperation not riven with petty fratricidal personal rivalries, so bereft of a functional logistical train, and are lead by such an insufferable band of edgy cartoon villains that they should honestly be little more than a nuisance that the Imperium only focuses on because of their symbolic threat. An annoyance compared to the much more organised and vastly more numerous and far better at exponentially scaling up power of the Necrons, the Tyranids, or the Orks. One that is carrying out an empty, pointless rivalry sparked largely over a bunch of stormtroopers being furious about not being allowed to be kings.  Wouldn’t it be more thematically meaningful and fit better into the cosmic horror that 40k wants to be if Chaos was actually mostly a symbolic threat that would be ignorable if the Imperium wasn’t still spooked over what amounted to an attempted religiously motivated military coup ten thousand years ago and that ultimately; this petty rivalry doesn’t matter? That the bitter hatred over Horus’ coup ultimately is meaningless in the face of the fact that this galaxy, this universe, has never belonged to humanity or anything spawned of it?  Khorne may feed off the violence of humanity and many minor xenos species; but Gork and Mork are a far more pure form of warmongering and what we now know as the Greenskins are just the tip of the iceberg compared to what they can really do when the WAAAGH! gets rolling. Nurgle may be an infestation of humanity’s despair and inability to progress but the Tyranids are the cancer that will kill the universe itself. Tzeentch may be clever and ancient as the firstborn of Chaos; but the Necrons have plans stretching back to before even the very idea of Tzeentch came into being.   And of course, unlike the Dark Elves; the Druklhari aren’t really a major villain or threat. Vect is just kind of an asshole in his own little corner, not one of the top big bads the way Malekith was.  But nah instead we get CHAOSCHAOSCHAOSCHAOSCHAOS coupled with ADB and Reynolds’ bizarre (but in hindsight, given what we’re shown of Chaos; sensible) revelation that actually Chaos is even more racist than the Imperium.  It leads to 40k’s central conflict being between Satanist Ethnonationalist AnCaps and TradCath Ethnonationalist Reactionaries. Creepy bloodthirsty edgelords versus Roman bust twitter pfps.  None of the other villains are ever allowed to “usurp” Chaos’ place as “the real threat” and any time non-chaotic bad guys get a time to shine, the Chaos writers pitch a fit and force in awful reminders that Chaos is actually the real threat behind everything and can never ever lose.   It makes Chaos come off less as an interesting villain and more of a childish edgelord fantasy written by a bunch of kids who go “nuh uh!” everytime they take the L or insinuate that spikelord edgy mcgee is anything less than the coolest bad guy ever made.  The fandom makes fun of Abaddon because he textually hasn’t really done much in thirteen tries? Well actually retcon in some outlandishly complicated super duper secret plan so that he and his army of *checks notes* less than one million racist storm troopers in ancap colours are actually totally the greatest threat in the setting and not the vastly more organised Tyranids or more tactically competent Necrons or the more numerous Orks.  People still make fun of abaddon because he looks like a goofy mook rather than an awesome overlord (at least Archaon looks like someone you’d immediately figure for as the big bad of a setting; Abaddon looks more like…the real bad guy’s stupid but strong brute muscle enforcer)? Have an entire novel series written to squee about how awesome and cool he is which literally none of the other “big bad” factions’ primary characters have ever gotten.   Also I am sick to death of how GW pushes Khorne as the unbeatable poster bad boy of the entire setting over and above even the rest of Chaos. Yeah his aesthetic is simple, marketable, and he’s incredibly easy to write into plots (even if I think there’s never been more interesting takes on Khorne where he’s shown as actually capable of cleverness in the pursuit of maximising mindless death and destruction as we see in Dawn of War 1 and Dawn of War 2 Retribution; where the Khornate villains have an impressively clever scheme even if the end goal is just “kill people”) and you can explain his concept to anyone.  Please stop trying to throw him into literally everything and let other bad guys have even a little bit of spotlight.   Octarius and Armageddon? Khorne crashes the party. Tzeentch threatens Luna? Well akshually Khorne invades Terra, take that nerds.  Where does Khorne even get all these worshippers to yeet themselves into every warzone in existence when he probably offers the least to his followers that most people would want? 

So on some points I agree with you, others I disagree, and in some places I understand the general feeling you’re conveying but am not quite so vitriolic.

Yes; I wish 40k as a setting was more akin to WHFB and AoS in that it permitted more factions to matter. 40k is, I agree, so myopic in it’s focus that it becomes frustrating. If the other factions weren’t playable I would understand, certainly, but if you’re going to offer players a chance to invest in the Xenos factions but then just never give them any return on that investment it feels like nothing more than lying to people.

Similarly; I also wish we saw more of a non-Human (and even then more of a non-Chaos Space Marine) component to Chaos. I find it hard to take Chaos seriously as a universal force when, over their supposedly non-linear/infinite period of existence they seem to never have done anything other than obsess over one species who, compared to the majority of other playable species in the game, have been around insanely briefly.

Yes; I do agree that I wish at times Chaos wasn’t used to usurp Xenos threats just to pull the old ‘but Chaos was the true villain all along’, see what you mention about the Hive Mind and the Great Rift, about Chaos usurping Orks on Armageddon etc. etc.

However, I disagree that Chaos is remotely as irritatingly favoured in the lore as the Imperium. Yes, it is true, that it is not infrequently written in vague terms that ‘you are all doomed, Chaos comes for you,’ but, in the majority of cases, this is purely informed, never shown. It is akin to the lines that tell us ‘Aeldari are so smart and elite,’ but then we just get shown them being curbstomped over and over again. We’re ‘told’ Chaos is some great looming threat which will win...but in practise they do only mildly better than Xenos in the lore, with Chaos losing the vast majority of everything they ever do in the lore, just like Xenos. I will admit Chaos has, lately, done *marginally* better in the lore, and that is definitely connected, as you say, to the active focus to make Chaos the ‘big bad’ now, but it is still only marginal.

I do agree that I would prefer not to see Chaos made to eclipse all other threats but my main motivation here is just because in 40k, as you point out, Chaos is never separated from the Imperium. In WHFB and AoS Chaos can take on a plurality of forms and is not just a ‘spikier’ version of the main human faction. For this reason the recent feeling I have had is just that 40k is increasingly becoming a clone of the Horus Heresy which, as someone who likes Xenos, is obviously a disappointment.

I don’t share your very strong disdain for Chaos. For the most part, in 40k’s lore, I feel Chaos is largely akin to Xenos in that we’re all glorified punching bags for Space Marines (you yourself point out Abaddon’s memetic loser status). I concede Chaos does *marginally* better but, at current, that is so inconsequential to me that it doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much as the treatment of Xenos vis-a-vise the Imperium.

My personal take is I think the favouritism as an antagonist, shown to Chaos, is less detrimental to the cause of Xenos agency in the lore than the raging boner GW and BL have for the Imperium and, in particular Space Marines. 

I also, in general, think Chaos would benefit from being developed in a more nuanced way. I don’t see them quite as cardboard-cut out as you seem too (not denying many are because BL and GW can’t write non-Imperium characters well mostly) but I think many of them have, and to an extent do also, get treated more nuanced in some of the literature. I do think a big failing here is that Black Library has made *some* efforts to make *some* of the Chaos characters interesting and nuanced but, for some reason, GW tends to just ignore this. Hence Magnus can in his own novels be portrayed as sympathetic due to his loyalty to his people and desire to not persecute Psykers, but then when appearing in a campaign supplement just makes the stock-generic ‘bow before me mortals/I am your doom/all shall fall’ comments with little to no character.

Personally, and this is recognizing as I said above that I do understand some of the points you’re making, I feel like Chaos players and Xenos players, in terms of the lore treating us like crap, have more in common than not. But, again, that’s just my personal opinion! 

Long post about Mass Effect below

I noticed that there’s a big mass effect trilogy remaster coming out and it just made me think back on how badly the ball was dropped with that series. When the first game came out it immediately became perhaps my favourite game of all time, it was the kind of game where I was tearing up at the ending and then immediately started up a new playthrough the instant the credits got done rolling. The game was extremely jank and rough around the edges and it ran like total shit on the 360, but I loved it anyway because I fell in love with the lore of the universe, the characters and the story. It was one of those games where I’d play it in the most obsessively completionist manner possible, doing every singe sidequest possible, talking to every character on the ship after every mission, browsing the ingame codex for hours on end and dosing up on lore. When it was confirmed that Mass Effect 2 was in development I had such high hopes, of course I wanted to see the gameplay tightened up and the technical side of things improved, but more than that I just wanted to see more of the universe, get more of the universe to explore and learn more about it, and I was especially excited at the possibility that the choices I’d made, especially the massive ones in regards to the council at the end of ME1, would carry forward and really shake up the way the fate of the universe would pan out in the long term.

When the game finally came out, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t really what I was hoping for. While the combat was much improved over ME1, I couldn’t help but feel like everything else was pared back too much - like, levelling and loot in ME1 weren’t all that well done but I was still really disappointed to see how they were all but stripped out in the sequel. I especially hated how crap sidequests on uncharted worlds were, they were basically just short combat sections with almost nothing in the way of meaningful dialogue or choices to make. Like, don’t get me wrong, uncharted worlds in ME1 felt like the maps were procedurally generated and the Mako had wacky controls, but they still managed to pull off the right atmosphere of going to these dangerous and remote places on alien worlds, and there was some legitimately intriguing stuff going on in some of those sidequests, and it was honestly a little infuriating to see all that basically get the axe entirely instead of getting some polish. I also just felt like the additions to the lore and story were disappointing. I was excited to find out about how society in the Terminus systems was different from Citadel space and meet some new alien races, but that didn’t really happen - I guess they tried with Omega, but that just felt like a mildly edgier version of the Citadel. The only new alien race aside from the Collectors they introduced were the Vorcha and I guess the Batarians if you didn’t play the DLC for ME1, but neither ended up being all that interesting. People remember ME2′s story fondly because of the characters, and I agree that the characters are great, Legion and Mordin especially stand out though all of your squadmates and major supporting characters on the ship are great (except maybe Jacob I guess) as are each of their accompanying stories that get resolved through their loyalty missions, but I think that the actual core plot of ME2 isn’t good at all. The whole thing about you dying and coming back to life seems like it was done just to have the excuse of having a timeskip happen, and I never felt particularly compelled by the Illusive Man or Cerberus as a faction - they were in a sidequest chain in ME1 technically but I still felt like they kind of came out of nowhere and never really fit into the grand scheme of things properly - there’s nothing that they really enable Shepard to do differently that wouldn’t have already been justified by you being a Spectre. The revelations about the Collectors and ultimately what they were doing with the colonists they were kidnapping felt really stupid and pointless apart from giving you an excuse to have a really cheesy and out-of-place final boss. The final mission was only exciting because of the tension of potentially losing one or more of your squadmates than because of what the actual consquences of failure for the galaxy were if you failed. There was no compelling antagonist to square off against like Saren in ME1, and ultimately the whole thing felt kind of pointless - it wasn’t until later after the trilogy was done that I realised that you could take ME2 out of the equation entirely and it wouldn’t make that much difference, but even in those moments as the credits were rolling after I beat the game for the first time, I was struggling to make up my mind about whether I’d actually enjoyed the game or not. I mean, it wasn’t like the game was bad or anything but I was thinking more about the opportunities that they missed rather than the good things they added. I was really missing that sense of discovery and exploring an alien galaxy that the first game had and got left by the wayside for the second. I did start up a new playthrough after that like I did with ME1 but IIRC I didn’t bother finishing that playthrough.

Then along came ME3. Everything about that game is depressing. The whole path of the plot and just the unrelenting apocalyptic tone of the game in general feels like it’s actively punishing you if you actually like the setting, characters, lore and so on and so forth. I know a lot of people like the Citadel DLC that they released because it lightened the tone a bit, but even with that I find it hard to set aside the fact that the universe is literally ending while you’re trying to take a break from it all with how hard the rest of the game beats you over the head with it. How bad the endings were even with the “fix” DLC that got added is a horse that’s been thoroughly beaten to death by now, but it’s not just the endings either. I already didn’t like the Illusive Man or Cerberus and had a hard time buying them as an organisation with the kind of reach and pull they had as portrayed in ME2, but seeing them turn into the Hellghast in ME3 not only betrays that portrayal of them as an org that works through subterfuge but also stretches my disbelief beyond breaking point, plus it brings you into contact with Kai Leng who has to be up there as one of the most obnoxious rival characters in any videogame ever. Otherwise, it did a few things that ME2 did slightly better and some things slightly worse, and didn’t really do anything to recapture the stuff that made ME1 so memorable to me that ME2 skipped out on. And then there was the way that Javik, the game’s most interesting new squadmate by far, was preorder DLC, and then there was the multiplayer that you were kinda forced into playing if you wanted the best ending in the singleplayer (for all the difference that made) and was riddled with lootbox microtransactions (the first major implementation of that in a AAA game IIRC.) The coup de grace for me was when dipshit vidya journalists circled the wagons around Bioware and were taking a dump on angry and disappointed fans who were demanding a change to the ending. Like, looking back I think there was a lot of histrionics involved with that from the fanbase, and let’s just say that the Bioware fanbase has earned a reputation for being particularly turbulent, but even so I really couldn’t stand the attitude that they were taking and it made me hate the game itself by proxy that much more. (I honestly think that entire saga set the stage for Gamergate two years later.)

Eventually when ME Andromeda ended up being a stillborn flop, it didn’t even really move the needle for me that much because ME3 had already set the bar so low. Worse though is that the first game was retrospectively ruined for me. Like I said earlier, I was a hyperfan for that game when it came out, but now I can’t go back to it without thinking about the disappointments that followed it, and its flaws stand out extra hard now. After I beat it for the first time it was my number 1, now I’m not sure it’s in the top 10. There’s probably the added factor that I played it to death and know it almost off by heart which takes the shine away, but that’s also the case for some of my other all-time favourites like Metroid Prime 1 and 2, Ace Combat 2, or Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, but those never really dropped in my estimation the way Mass Effect did. Honestly to this day I’m still waiting for someone to do another star-hopping sci-fi RPG in the same vein as Mass Effect and to pull it off well, because at this point I’m all but certain that it’s not going to be Bioware that does it, not with the new one they’ve got coming in the works or the trilogy remaster.

hey hey, just giving you this question because you are big lore nerd and I'm analysing this by myself (and eventually doing a post)... did you check out the Chant of Light, Drakon's prophecy for the future? Exaltations canticle? I read it last night and I was surprised. It can be added to Sandal's prophecy in da2 as well.... maybe you talked about this before? would you mind to point me your post in that case? I love your analysis

Hello! Ahh thankyouu 😊 (Please tag me in or drop me a link to your post because I’d be interested to read it!) The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Sandal’s prophecy is an interesting one as we recently learned this tidbit about it and things like it in one of the David Gaider dev commentary streams:

DG said Eleni Zinovia’s prophecy doesn’t refer to Fen’Harel. He can’t remember who wrote it in there or what it refers to actually. It was most likely just intended as flavor and he was even a bit surprised by it, like “What is this?” There’s a lot of things like that in the games, not everything has a ~grand meaning~. Sometimes such small off-hand things are picked up on by fans and the writers then make it into something bigger and more meaningful after the fact. This is what happened with Sandal (all the fans being like “Ooh, what does it mean, what does it mean?” about him). It’s possible Eleni will be picked up on like that in the future, but at the time it didn’t mean anything really. A lot of the way these stories are put together is that they put a lot of questions into the world, scattering possible/potential plothooks, and they don’t necessarily know where they lead at the time, but in future games they could come back to them and come up with an interesting backstory. Sometimes they pick it up and sometimes it never gets answered or ever mentioned again (the Wardens taking some of the blood from those who didn’t survive their particular bout of Joinings and putting it in a vial to remember them is an example of one of these things). It’s pretty rare that you’d get a situation where something is mapped out from beginning to end. Sometimes we the players get a revelation as we play and we’re like “Omg!! This is all connected! They are masters!” and the writers are like “Yes, toootally… It was that way alllllll along. It certainly did NOT get decided three quarters of the way through development…” [source]

I don’t think I’ve made a post about Kordillus Drakon’s vision of the Maker’s return or on the Canticle of Exaltations. I’d be really interested to see some of his prior drafts and compare the things he changed during the rewriting process.. Anyway here’s some assorted thoughts on the Canticle, albeit disjointed and not conclusive:

Parallels - Andraste’s vision of the Maker, Kordillus’ vision of the future 

You can read Kordillus’ vision as a genuine vision of actual-Andraste, a figment of his imagination or a delusion born from religious fervor, something he’s making up (he was a fervent believer, it’s just that it’s also the case that sometimes religion is misused for power or empire), or a legit encounter that he had with a non-Andraste entity that was taking the form of Andraste or whom he had interpreted as Andraste (see the Inquisitor’s encounter with the spirit so-called ‘Divine Justinia’). Is it maybe spirit possession? “I accept the gift”, “let me be the vessel”

“the vessel” - vessels are a repeating motif in the lore: Wynne as the Vessel of her spirit of Faith, Calpernia and Samson seeking to be the Vessel of the Well’s power and Morrigan or the Inquisitor becoming such, fan theory that Sera is the vessel of Andruil (which I don’t subscribe to but it comes to mind), Flemeth as the vessel of Mythal, darkspawn as empty soulless vessels whereas Wardens are not, shells of flesh and souls, the soulless Titans’ workers (dwarves), possession, etc.

“The air itself rent asunder” can easily be read as referring to the Breach in DAI and/or the upcoming intended destruction/removal of the Veil. As you say this entire verse is similar to Sandal’s “shadows will part and the skies will open wide”. Shadows parting, spilling light. There are elements here that you could link to Eleni Zinovia’s words or the words of the Ardent Blossom Faerie (whether this was intentional on the writers’ parts or no at the time when they were written is a separate subject)

The “Waters of the Fade” line is important given the similar references elsewhere in the Chant - “Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls. From these emerald waters doth life begin anew”, “From the waters of the Fade you made the world. As the Fade had been fluid, so was the world fixed.” Reference to the fluidity of the Fade vs the mundane realm as static and way less malleable. “Realm of Opposition”, the idea of the 2 opposing realms, also sticks out to me as I’ve talked before about the contrast in the metaphysical opposing elements:

In a kind of metaphysical way, the dwarves are emblematic of the mundane sphere. Not “mundane” as in normal/boring, but in terms of reinforced reality vs reality as mutable, earth and sky, underground vs land, Children of the Stone vs Birds of Fancy, magic resistance vs inherent magical quality, tradition vs change, Titan progenitors vs origins in the Fade prior to taking physical form slash being spirit-y or spirit adjacent. It’s all very thematic, especially when you consider that dwarves do not dream compared to how elves are (or rather, are supposed to be) innately tied to the Fade. and at the moment, modern Thedas is unbalanced 

I guess you could plot the races on a line from most Fadey/sky-like (very scientific I know) to least: spirits - elves - humans - Qunari - dwarves. note this isn’t a “who is most alive”, thing, it’s just a spectrum between 2 different but equally Alive ways of being. [source]

“The Realm of Opposition” is the post-Veil waking world. Obviously the “Realm of Dreams” is the Fade.

The waters stuff also reminds me of the Well of Sorrows (Andraste is the Lady of Sorrows) and how Mythal walked out of the sea of the Earth’s tears.

(Is anyone else reminded of the Eye of Sauron at this point in the Canticle btw? 😁)

Is it even Andraste he’s seeing? No way of knowing if it is, or was Mythal with a staff in hand, given their similar headpieces, for instance. And certainly a maker has returned to the world since Kordillus wrote this stuff down, just not The Maker - the maker or creator of the Veil, Solas.

Are the “men of stone” dwarves, golems (probably not) or Titans? “Sleepers waking at the dawn” immediately makes me think of how dwarves don’t dream. That whole verse makes me think of the Titans waking up and destroying the world via earthquakes or something in order for it to be made anew. This makes me 👀 given Descent and upcoming Titan plotbeats. Seventy time seven stuff is a reference in the Bible irl iirc.

And I heard from the East a great cry As men who were beasts warred with their brothers, Tooth and claw against blade and bow, Until one could no longer be told from the other, And cursed them and cursed their generations.

East of Orlais is Ferelden. This verse makes me think of Fereldans and their troubles with werewolves throughout their history and in their recent present, werewolves who were once human (or elven, depending) like them. Zathrian’s curse lasted for generations even. Interesting given werewolves resurfacing again in TN. The other thing that comes to mind here is that the Executors supposedly dwell across the eastern ocean.

And those who slept, the ancient ones, awoke, For their dreams had been devoured By a demon that prowled the Fade As a wolf hunts a herd of deer. Taking first the weakest and frailest of hopes, And when there was nothing left, Destroying the bright and bold By subtlety and ambush and cruel arts

Dwarves getting dreams (“Mythal gives you dreams”) or regaining their connection to the Titans (see Valta), the Titans awakening again, remaining slumbering Old Gods waking, imprisoned sleeping Evanuris waking, or the few remaining ancient elves in secret enclaves waking from uthernera (Abelas and co and ones like them, that Solas makes reference to)...? The wolf-like demon that devours dreams and prowls the Fade is an allusion (not from Kordillus, but the writers) to the Dalish belief that Fen’Harel is He Who Hunts Alone, Roamer of the Beyond. The wolf metaphor in Kordillus’ vision points to someone who is smart, clever, strategic, cunning, someone who goes about things in a subterfuge-y and plotting-/scheming-type way. It almost reads like the Evanuris’ anti-Solas “Dread Wolf Bad” propaganda, of which we encounter some of during Trespasser. The Fade-prowling demon that devours dreams also reminds me of the Nightmare in DAI.

The number nine, like the number seven, in this setting always makes me like.. [alarmed vibrating]. There are nine Creator-figures, including Ghilan’nain and Fen’Harel. “The mortal dust of Our Lady” could refer to the Urn of Sacred Ashes, thus the “sacred mountain” would be the mountain in the Frostbacks at Haven which contained the remains of the ruined Temple of Andraste, the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Obviously this area in DAI was the site of the Breach and in DAI Corypheus lifts (ascends) it into the sky for a bit. There’s even a reference here to passing through the fire, calling to mind that part of the Gauntlet in DAO. The mountain stuff here also reminds me of The Ptarmigan: An Avvar Tale:

Korth the Mountain-Father kept his throne at the peak of Belenas, the mountain that lies at the center of the world, from which he could see all the corners of earth and sky.

Belenas, Belenas... a mountain at the center of the world, and the reference to earth and sky (Realm of Opposition and the Realm of Dreams). It’s especially notable when you consider the Lady of the Skies, Tyrdda’s leaf-eared lover, Korth’s mountain-y-ness (Titan?) and the stuff about his heart (the Evanuris mined the bodies of Titans for lyrium and “something else”, which we suspect are their hearts). This part “And he saw strong men become weak, brave men grow cowardly, and wise men turn foolish for love” reminds me of the Canticle verse above which referred to men warring with their brothers. And in elven language “Bel” is part of bellanaris, eternity (this Canticle ends with a reference to eternal life). Belenas, bellanaris.

And I looked up and saw The seven gates of the Black City shatter, And darkness cloaked both realms.

Oh shit, here it comes. Y’know? Seven seals, some potentially already broken (the dark and lit orbs in the concentric circles on the DWR mural). Darkness is coming alright. People have speculated about this at length. 😁 And in other places in-world there are references to this belief.

Look upon the Light so you May lead others here through the darkness, Blade of the Faith!

This reminds me of the Inquisitor’s journey and role in DAI. Parallels again.

The Maker returns In dread

Self-explanatory, emphasis mine. A maker.

And saw the darkness warp and crumble

Interesting given the fabric of reality is currently warping, as witnessed by Strife in one of the recent shorts.

shroud

Another word for veil.

The meek lambs became bold And rose up, casting aside their shepherds To dance at the Maker's feet

reminds me of the ‘Slightest Ones’ bard song and some elves leaving in the Trespasser epilogue.

Where once a terrible fire swept The Light of redemption from the face of the world

the time Andraste was burned. The gates of Minrathous is also where we’re headed in the next game.

What are the “sins of creation”, exactly? - Why does it make me think back to the waters of the Fade and the well of all souls which the Chant holds life began anew from and the Maker made the world from? Why do they need “redeemed”? Why does that make me think of the creation of the Veil and the terrible consequences that had for Thedas in general and for the ancient elves, and of Solas’ drive and desire to correct that mistake? And Justice is an aspect of Mythal. 

Harmony in all things. Let Balance be restored And the world given eternal life.

See above with the “modern Thedas is unbalanced” stuff. Balance could be restored with the removal of the Veil, and then the remaining elves would be immortal again probably. I tend to veer away from “everything is elves” and “everything relates back to or is in some way a metaphor for or reference etc to Solas and Mythal” but it’s like Kordillus had a vision of the future of Thedas at that time (things which we then saw in previous games set after he died, and some things which we still haven’t seen yet but which have been foreshadowed - as in some things which have still yet to come to pass in the world’s storyline) and, naturally, interpreted it through his fervent Andrastian/cult of the Maker lens. I wouldn’t take it all completely at face value though, having given away major future plotbeats in the Chant just like that would be a bold choice.

I once heard the theory that the king was the reincarnation of Bill Cipher more and if not the king more yes Belos which is the true reincarnation of Cipher. That would explain how he knows so much about technology and he and Ford worked together for a long time (which is why Belos manages to combine technology and magic)It would also explain why he cares more for the portal than for Eda itself and does not care for the people of the island

Belos has no connections nor ties to Bill Cipher, and I can confidently say this because this show is The Owl House, not Gravity Falls! Dana Terrace herself said this is its own, separate show, story, and universe; And even if she may tease at the idea of Eda and Stan having been married for a grand total of a few hours in the past, it’s not exactly a revelation that has any impact on either character or the lore whatsoever! So it’s a completely harmless connection, VS having the main villain being inextricably linked to ANOTHER show’s main villain, and somewhat undermining the victory of that other show’s protagonists as well!

Alex Hirsch himself said in an interview that he doesn’t necessarily write for the show, that his primary purpose is King and Hooty’s VA, and that’s it! He said that it was interesting to be on a show where somebody else had the reins, and he didn’t necessarily know nor controlled what was going on! And even if I don’t know him personally, I doubt Alex would conclude the character arc to such a major and important figure like Bill Cipher, a product of his own creation Gravity Falls, and have it be handled by someone else in an entirely different, disconnected story with no meaningful connections to Gravity Falls otherwise, a story he himself doesn’t have narrative control over!

And sure, Dana worked on Gravity Falls before, and is Alex’s girlfriend… But still, Alex completely handing over Bill Cipher’s character seems unreasonable and out of the question! Especially since he made a big deal about not continuing nor extending Gravity Falls because he was happy with HIS vision for it, and wouldn’t want anyone else butchering that vision! Belos and Bill have NO connections, people… At least, no meaningful connection! Like, maybe the two played poker together once in the past, but in the end it wouldn’t be something that would have an impact on either character or the shows they belong to, and is otherwise completely irrelevant and pointless information. Plus, Disney WANTED to extend Gravity Falls to fully capitalize off of it, you’d think by adding in Bill Cipher and indirectly continuing the saga, they’d more openly advertise this fact!

Dylan is a Mary Sue

*look I know that the symbiote has a name and Venom is both it and Eddie. So I hope you don’t get annoyed when I refer to the symbiote as Venom because writing symbiote 100 times gets annoying and I hope you get what I mean when I call it that.

I’ve been trying to write this like nine times because I don’t want to bash this character. When I wrote the post about how I didn’t want Dylan Brock near Miles, I intentionally left out the reason why because I like the character. I hate the purpose and narrative mind behind him. And plus I don’t want to seem like I bash white cis het male characters when the characters I do trash on are bad because writers tend to make them intentionally bratty. I don’t like Spider-kid, Damian Wayne when written without consequence(he is white passing), Jason Todd,or Alpha. Like giving a character a shitty attitude doesn’t make him endearing especially on a male, I’m sorry. Characters like Tim Drake, Alex Power, and Dick Grayson work because there is something genuine in them that they want to be the good of the world.

Anyways, Dylan is fun to me because he has this precocious roguishness that isn’t malevolent nor out of place. His abuse is actually abuse that isn’t made to serve as his training or whatever nor does it warps his views. And his fandom in Eddie/Venom actually makes sense because he is a kid that was abandoned by his mother and left with an emotionally and physically abusive man who would cut him down. A dark passenger like Venom appeals to him because Venom is like the codifier of misguided anger for misguided teens.

But there is a reason why he is written that way: he is a Mary-Sue. Now I don’t care about the gender preconceptions of Mary Sue vs Gary Stu nor do I try to prescribe to reclaiming Mary Sue in some vain attempt at liberal feminism. Mary Sue is bad writing unless everyone gets to play(Mary Sues work in video games). Mary Sue is something writers in most mediums that tell stories should avoid if they want said character to succeed or evoke if you want said character to be disliked. And Dylan Brock is an example that doesn’t work and is largely getting away with it because he is cute.

1. The Immaculate Conception of Dylan Brock

This is when I knew some Sue shit was unleashed on Venom fans. I don’t have to google it but I can guess that Cates has a Catholic background. Whether he is one or raised one, it is apparent in whatever meaningful writing depth he provides outside of meaningless action. And it works because Eddie Brock, being anti-Peter Parker, is Catholic. Hence the brooding and self-loathing and abusive paternity and motifs of redemption and suffering and shit. But this was not only fucked up, but a little too on the nose.

Dylan wasn’t conceived naturally. In fact, Anne Weying was raped by the symbiote and impregnated with Eddie’s DNA. So Dylan is actually the child of the Venom and Eddie Brock. “But Anne is his mother.” Look, Cates didn’t actually consider Anne so I won’t either. Outside of the fact that it doesn’t make sense chronologically since Peter was like in his early 20s when he had the Symbiote and is at most 29 now, Anne is just a vehicle for Cates’ to necessitate the purity of Dylan Brock. Dylan is the pure child of Venom, born from the womb of Eddie’s first girlfriend/fiancé/wife/whatever and the first human woman to wear a symbiote, I think. I mean she didn’t even have sex with Eddie and boom, mini Eddie Brock is wrapped in cloth and left at the meager doorstep at the sacred house of Eddie. Praise Venom, y’all.

Jokes aside, I don’t know how Venom fans just didn’t go, “Iight, Imma head out” after reading this page. Just shows the conviction of fandom.

But I digress. Now let me regale you just how improbable this is which again only serves to ordain Dylan is the truest son of Venom in all the ways possible and also highlight the very unfortunate implications of this fuckery. Symbiotes bond is how they reproduce. When they reproduce with their host, the end result up to this point has always been a symbiote. For Mass Effect fans, it’s the Asari thing except with goo. Before you ask, yes Symbiotes sexually satisfy their hosts unlike the majority of human men*cough*. Point is that Dylan should be biologically impossible but somehow he is a human symbiote hybrid. And the unfortunate implications of such of incident shouldn’t go unnoticed either. Venom and Eddie have several children and prior to this, all of them have been symbiote. Cletus and Red also have children too and again symbiote. In fact, all symbiote bonds produce symbiotes as far as male hosts are concerned...except for the brief bond of Ann Weying and Venom Symbiote. Gee I wonder why she got a different result? Well there are a few female hosts and surprising none of them have spawned a symbiote child. So logically it can be assumed that woman + symbiote = forced impregnation of symbiote. Well this shit got dark. The symbiotes just became the Jeffrey Epstein alien species. But since Cates swears up and down that is not what is happening, he is going for the God/Virgin Mary angle for some reason.

It’s almost like he is the descendent of the Symbiote God. If only there was such a thing.

Welllllll shit.

2. Dylan is incorruptible and all-powerful without knowing why or how

Okay, backstory time because I never properly explained Knull, another of Cates shoddy creations. Knull is the galactic god emperor of the Symbiotes who created the Symbiotes as a weapon to rule the galaxy. Aside of the fact that his existence retconned the previous backstories of the symbiote, he has the ability to domesticate the symbiotes and make them subservient to him.

Guess who else has this ability.

Dylan is symbiote Jesus, hallelujah. This explains the Church of Carnage/Knull/Grendel/who gives a shit. He is the true son of Abraham and Carnage is the false prophet of Venom. It’s what Christianity considers Islam to be or some shit and both Dylan and Sleeper are about to nail the 95 thesis on the door of Carnage in the form of the greatest mixtape you ever heard.

Look, I too am astounded of the sentences my mind comes up with when I so thoroughly hate a writing like I hate Donnie Cates’ Venom.

Dylan goes beyond being just a special snowflake that was forcefully and crudely implemented. He is the pre-ordained established opposite of the nature of corruption that Knull created the symbiotes for. To Knull, the symbiotes are his thralls. To Dylan, the symbiotes are his pets. To Knull, the symbiotes are a tool to become omnipresent. To Dylan, the symbiotes are individuals who need to be liberated if good. To Knull, there is no such thing as a good symbiote. To Dylan, there is and it’s Venom or sleeper or what have you. Dylan is the forgotten son and the New Testament for symbiote kind.

And he doesn’t know yet.

Okay, this is a common Mary Sue trait to absolve culpability of a Mary Sue character. It’s to say that they are not to blame for being special. It’s like the writing form of don’t hate me because I’m beautiful except somehow more obnoxious. Dylan’s obliviousness to this what is essentially an entire alien species religious revelation is like trivialized because their prophet is a 12 year old. It’s like waiting for a savior only to be told he is a carpenter.

Imma let that last one just marinate for a minute.

Look, Cates did a lot of rewriting and retconning just for his self-insert to become his favorite series and hero to be the second coming. He created this lore for Venom only for his avatar to be the prophet. The intentionality of his obliviousness to how important this is just glazed over the fact like it isn’t a big deal. Just like Cates glazed over the whole rape and forced impregnation thing because somehow that doesn’t warrant a follow up.

3. Dylan Brock is fanboy Cates

Okay before I begin, self-inserts aren’t bad nor are they inherently Mary-Sues. Kong from Ultimate Spider-Man is Bendis’ self-insert. Boomerang from Amazing Spider-Man was rewritten to be Spencer’s self-insert. JJJ is a self insert for Stan fucking Lee like...self-inserts are great. To the degree that they aren’t unnatural to the narrative or overbearing.

Dylan Brock’s previously stated precociousness comes from the idea that Donnie is writing the inner teenager that he was as a kid reading Maximum Carnage for the first time. And I get it, man, live your truth and all. Like yeah, force and subjugate other fans of this series to your childlike inquiries like how Symbiotes poop, I mean it’s not like their fandom is important or anything.

First Dylan is a fanboy of Venom just like he is. And while that makes sense meta-wise, in-narrative it doesn’t because...okay Venom fans are about to tear me apart for this but it’s like someone being a fan of Ted Bundy. His heroics usually came with a body count is all I’m saying and I doubt it would be praised but then again Wolverine has an in-universe fandom so what do I know. Back on topic, Dylan’s fandom and praise of Venom to get him out of the dark place that is his father’s abusive household.

And this is why it’s so hard to hate him because of all the fucked up shit Cates put in this book, Dylan feels like the one character that is genuine and pure in that innocent kind of way. No one hates Dylan and how could you? We all get it. And it helps that Dylan has a completely different voice than every other Cates has written from every other character. Like I can hear the excitement in his voice when he pesters his hero for questions and I’m reading his words. The idolization is pure when he meets Normie, the god son of Spider-Man, and it creates this dynamic of Spider-Man fans vs Venom fans. It’s fun in a way.

But it’s just that. When Cates writes Eddie, he is not only writing to retell Cates own personal past demons but also in the lens of how he viewed Eddie as this tortured soul who just got the wrong interview from a copycat that costs his job. The second banana of a greater and more prominent hero. Born to the wrong person. That none of what happened to Eddie was his fault or really his doing even when he was at his worst wearing Venom, it was Venom who tempted him.

Dylan is that pre-teen who sees the best in everything Venom is: The dark avenger of the abused and neglected. And I don’t want to speculate whether Cates fits the category or not because that ain’t my business, I can see why Dylan would be a compelling self-insert if it weren’t compounded on top of Cates’ forceful insertion into Venom and subsequently Spider-Man lore.

Like you remember Carly Cooper? Dylan is exactly like Carly Cooper. And this is why I like to think of Cates’ run as the equivalent of One More Day. Cates’ retconned a crucial element of Venom to make Dylan necessary to the core of Venom. He retconned the one thing that made Venom and subsequently Eddie go beyond just being a twisted revenge story.

The erasure of Mary Brock, Eddie’s sister and Eddie’s cancer. One is the motivation and the sole good Eddie has ever known. It’s his motivation to move past is mistakes. And Cates then turns the one bond in the series into something...horrific.

Okay, Dylan replaced his sister and Venom itself. His being becomes Eddie’s motivation to be a better person rather the struggle to see himself as more than his upbringing. It’s like reading Spider-Man and finding out Uncle Ben was on crack. Uncle Ben didn’t die. He faked his death. Yeah, that is what this was. So he could evade taxes or some shit. This is exonerated Eddie in the worst way and turned him into a manipulated pawn of Venom. Let’s completely retcon the marriage of MJ and PeterVenom and Eddie, Cates pitches to editorial.

Dylan becomes more than just some kid who idolizes Eddie. He becomes the sole motivation of Eddie himself now. Eddie’s past is now completely erased or made irrelevant to uplift Dylan’s importance to Eddie. It’s too a point that the Symbiote kids of Venom aren’t Eddie’s kids anymore. It’s like Eddie was in an interracial relationship and the one non-brown baby with blue eyes is his one true kid and others are mulatto chocolate eugenic mishaps or some shit that his ass don’t want to deal with anymore. I mean disowning Carnage I understand but come on?

Cates’ self insert changed the entire nature of the series. And for what purpose? To give Venom a legacy just as Peter has one. And that is the problem with Dylan.

@ubernegro

Doctor Who, series 12 as a whole

In short: [looks up if the last SW:TCW season will be out on Blu-ray]

Oh hi, didn’t see you come in. I was trying to distract myself from the fact that series 12 of Doctor Who went there.

I mean, the show’s gone up itself a bit, hasn’t it? And I do mean that quite literally. It’s gone upstream in canon and I just don’t know why Chibnall bothered. It’ll teach me to complain about Moffat’s new!Who for taking Doctor-lore so seriously, I suppose, given everything that’s happened now.

Things I liked about series 12: I do feel that with Chibnall as showrunner, each series feels more cohesive in a way that they did not with Moffat, and really not even necessarily with RTD. Plot elements get set up and paid off all throughout the series, and it’s a nice thing to see.

Sacha Dhawan was pretty great to watch, and I rather think maybe his introduction in this series brought out a bit more in Thirteen as well.

Things I can’t say I liked about series 12: just about everything else. This is not equivalent to saying I hated everything else about series 12. But this is me saying that at the end of the day, I found the plotting too exhausting with not enough heart to get me to care much about the story or the characters. The show’s starting to feel like a caricature of itself, in many ways.

In less short: again, I don’t mean to say I disliked everything about series 12 apart from the new Master and the improved cohesion, but I ended up pretty indifferent about much of it, and did start to get a bit irritated by the increasing defiance of ‘show, don’t tell’. But I’m really disheartened by the fact that series 11′s focus on the companions seems to have been just a passing whimsy in the overall picture of Chibnall’s master plan.

But what exactly was the godforsaken point of this master plan anyway? Why bother plotting this series so tightly and cohesively together if the message at its heart is ... basically nothing but a revelation about our protagonist, and one that ultimately (not at first, but ultimately) holds no emotional weight by the protagonist’s own admission? Great, you’ve woven this giant earth-shattering twist into the Doctor Who canon. But is that all that the show is good for? Editing its own lore?

Of course, part of this is that I’m old. (As far as you know.) The show that returned in 2005 is not the show that’s airing now in 2020, and as someone who was sold on new!Who based on the vision it had in RTD’s time, I’m bound to connect less strongly with Chibnall’s vision for the show. This sort of evolution is fine in principle—even necessary—if it’s actually still good television, competent storytelling, with its heart in the right place and an audience that it speaks to. I’ll admit that series 12 is spectacular television in the literal sense of it being a right flashy spectacle of a show—Spyfall should have convinced everyone of that—but is it good? And the serious doubt I have after watching this finale—I had an inkling of a doubt back in episode 3 but by god it’s a serious doubt now—is: is Doctor Who, under Chibnall’s supervision, actually a competent show?

I’ve seen multiple people across subreddits compare this finale to Episode IX of the increasingly incredulous Star Wars saga, and I can’t say I disagree. I’d honestly almost extend the comparison to all of series 12—you have to, in a sense, because the series just functions that cohesively.

And I’d make the comparison a tad favourable to The Rise of Skywalker, actually. There is a case to be made that JJ Abrams, for all his faults and overambitious gambits, was trying to say something beyond just ‘oh Palpatine never died and Snokes grow in jars’ or ‘oh here’s the skinny on Rey’s ridiculously dark past’. I genuinely saw attempts—gestures—at broader messages like ‘you are not alone’ and ‘together we can overcome anything’. I’m not saying these are particularly novel or insightful messages to try and convey, and I’m not saying they were even conveyed that competently. (Episode IX fell into the same more-tell-than-show pit of quicksand that series 12 has found itself in, for one.) But by god there was at least an attempt, whereas I don’t see that here.

If you want a study in contrast, look no further than Moffat’s series 9 finale in comparison to the finale we got tonight. There was an actual character arc! Twelve’s obsession with his ‘duty of care’ bit back on him! He was forced to recognise loss as part of events! Granted, Moffat still pulled his ‘everybody lives’ gambit so Clara only technically died and for all intents and purposes lives a fairly exciting life for many years after we say goodbye to her. But there was an actual emotional resonance that was there!

The point is that Moffat, for all his lovely diversions into past show lore and Time Lord social psychology, never forgot about human relationships and human emotions and how they drove the audience’s investment in new!Who. I mean, sometimes it was played up in a rom-com way (you can take Coupling out of the TV schedules, but never out of Moffat’s writing, I suspect), and there were times when it worked and times when it definitely didn’t work. But it was always there. You could find it. You could see yourself in it, sometimes.

This? What was the point of this? The Doctor is the Timeless Child. It turns out this was a carefully guarded secret known only to the highest echelons of Time Lord society and certainly to the ominously named Division. A large chunk of the Doctor’s life is basically missing, possibly forever.

From a lore point of view: sure, this has massive implications! And Chibnall is at least smart/restrained enough not to spell it all out, and at the end of the day there’s still some mystery—at least, for as long as Chibnall doesn’t proceed to smash that to bits as well in the remainder of his tenure.

But from a storytelling standpoint? Ruth!Doctor even spells it out: ‘have you ever been limited by who you were before?’ The Doctor’s past, ultimately, just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to the companions. It doesn’t matter to the Doctor. It doesn’t matter to (I would wager) a large part of Doctor Who’s audience. Chibnall knew this and yet built the whole arc of series 12 around this revelation, which was totally irrelevant to the heart of the show by his own indirect admission.

It doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that you build a 10-episode run around. It feels like something you drop like a mic at the end of a two-parter, and then pick up the pieces of the next time around. In fact, you know, I think series 12 would have been better if we started off with this revelation, giving us time to have any meaningful emotional fallout, some space for it to breathe.

Series 1 had the revelation that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Last Great Time War, but we didn’t build to it. It was given to us near the outset, in episode 2. And new!Who was richer for it, for treating the Time War not as a culmination of some arc, but something that impacted so many subsequent events in the Doctor’s life and by extension in the companions’ lives. The big surprise in series 1 was the Bad Wolf, because it was Rose all along—basically your average Londoner whisked away into extraordinary circumstances and doing extraordinary things. There’s some value in seeing that sort of thing on screen. I don’t find any such value in seeing the Doctor’s past rewritten on screen.

Chibnall, I suspect, overestimates the level of patience everyone else in the world has for tedious lore unfolding, and sees this as only the first half of a grand multi-series plan for reinventing the show. I suspect we will learn that RTD and Moffat were both wiser to attempt no such thing.

Someone should make a game about: Gormenghast • Eurogamer.net

Somewhere along the way, my copy of Gormenghast got rained on. I wonder if a roof leaked in some previous house, or a chimney made a nearby wall a bit damp. Whatever. I went for it a few minutes ago and the book’s pages have the wavering crispness of the once-wet. The cover is thickened around the edges, and the first few chapters have some kind of dark speckling on them advancing from one spread to the next. Some of the print is smeary.

It’s perfect, really. A perfectly damaged book. If you’d asked me what the Gormenghast books were about when I first read them in my late teens, I would have said they were about a very dangerous dishwasher. I was a dishwasher at the time, and took a certain kindred thrill in Steerpike, who moves from the kitchens of Gormenghast to…well, that would be saying too much. Now, in my forties, I would say they’re about aging, about a great mass of aging and forgetting and crumbling and ruination. Castle Gormenghast is ancient and tumbledown. I bet its own books have the wavering crispness of the once-wet. I bet there are dark speckled forms growing throughout the chambers.

I read once that Mervyn Peake’s trilogy of books was not meant to be a trilogy – and was not really meant to be about a single place. I gather it was conceived as being the life story of Titus Groan, who is present but very young for most of what survives of the Gormenghast books. There are more than three of these books, but only three are canon, and I think I remember reading that actually only the first two have arrived in the manner that Peake intended. And so Titus Groan’s story doesn’t always have that much Titus Groan in it.

What it has is Castle Gormenghast, where Titus is born. Gormenghast is an enormous rambling place and seems all but deserted. A few people have remained, though, and they’re lost in the grip of rituals – huge, complicated rituals which have long ago lost their sense of meaning or their context. The rulers of Gormenghast are its slaves, really: they are stuck doing stupid things all day for no reason except half-remembered history.

There are two things I love about this. The first is that, as I remember it, Gormenghast is both fiercely detailed and completely amorphous. The sense I got when I first finished it for the first time was that there were brightly seen spots in this world, akin to the single-page illustrations that Peake made a career of, while the connective tissue was shapeless and boundless – there was room in this castle for Peake to invent whatever he needed whenever he needed it.

I love that sense of a place that will simply not come into focus, a place which is text, really, and text with promising gaps. But the other thing about Gormenghast that I love comes into focus when you compare it to that other big fantasy series that Gormenghast often shares a shelf with.

In the Lord of the Rings, history is really meaningful to everyone. It guides them and warns them and judges them and comforts them and reveals their true natures. In Gormenghast, it’s completely the opposite. Titus is born into a world that has already been strangled by a history that no-one really understands, so it’s all just empty ritual that guides and warns and judges and comforts nobody. This huge castle that has limits that are so hard to see is bound up with all this busywork to do that has no end, no reward – and no revelation.

Lord of the Rings has had a lot to do with the shaping of games. That’s great. I love the books and I love hearing about lore in games from other players even if I skim through it myself for the most part. But I do wonder what fantasy games would look like if more of them were distrustful or order and history and ritual – if they made a mocking problem of the past as Peake does to such beautifully rotten ends.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/someone-should-make-a-game-about-gormenghast-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=someone-should-make-a-game-about-gormenghast-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

On Tattoos

™ Okay, so I usually always come here only when there’s some deep revelation of mine that I need to discuss with myself by writing as a means to sort out my thoughts. I don’t think anyone is reading this, but on the offchance that someone is -bear with me. Also, here is a 23-year-old’s experience with tattoos and what I’ve learned in the process, if you’re interested in reading what I have to say before you get one yourself.

I’m getting tatted after a year and a half tomorrow. I’ll be bluntly honest: I don’t know that I have completely thought this one through, but I want to get it. This could be me just second-guessing every single little thing in my life like I always have and always do, but it could also be my gut telling me to come to a halt.

Those who know me, know that I don’t just do anything on a whim; I plan things carefully, considering every possible outcome, but when I get so excited with a concept I usually develop this tunnel vision and get carried away. I think 2/3 out of my 4 tattoos were the result of a rushed decision, and I’ve come to regret all four of them at one point or another, and then fall in love with them again, and then get worried and anxious all over again. 

Don’t get me wrong: even though a solid 75% of my tattoos are the result of a whim, they are about extremely meaningful things in my life. The decision to have them inked may be rushed, but it’s not like I got ‘yolo’ tattooed on my skin; these things are very near and dear to my heart.

Just so you, ghost readers, can get an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll briefly describe them:

1. A pair of musical clefts, the F cleft on my left hand and the G cleft on my right. I play the piano, have been for ten years now (started when I was 13, holy fucking shit) and it’s a central part of my life. I’m by no means the next Argerich, and struggle with my Bach, but I love playing the piano. It takes my mind off things, and to be able to create music is, honestly, as cheesy as it sounds, one of the few things I truly find some genuine happiness in. 

Sometimes I look at them and cringe a little because I got them on my hands, right under my thumbs, very clearly out there for the world to see, impossible to conceal without heavy makeup. I was a very bold 17 year old, wasn’t I.

Still, I love them, and though they are anxiety-inducing from time to time because of their obnoxious placement, I couldn’t imagine having got those tattoos anywhere else on my body. I love my hands because they are my instruments for creation. It wouldn’t make any sense, for me, in my life, to get them on the neck, or the arm, or anywhere else.

2. A Deathly Hallows tattoo on my right shoulder. I’ve always known I wanted a Harry Potter tattoo, because, again, very central part of my life both as a child and an adult, played a very important role in the development of the person I am today. I may not always like that person, but it is me.

Without Harry Potter I wouldn’t have learned to speak English, I wouldn’t have become interested in all things anglospoken and I may never have got a real dimension of what a big, broad, beautiful world is out there, beyond the limits of my birthplace. I would never have found a profession tailormade for me -that of translation. Perhaps I may not have even entered the world of reading, and all books have to offer. 

Then again...I probably would’ve liked to get something more meaningful and less run-of-the-mill when it comes to your standard Harry Potter tattoos. I wanted something that branded me as a Proud Harry Potter Fan ™, and in truth, I quite like the aesthetic of the symbol, but, given the chance to get something else that was also Harry Potter-related, I’d get something a lot more personal.

3. “Life without music would be a mistake” on the side of my forearm, in cursive. In Latin. Enough said.

4. A TARDIS tattoo on my forearm. The story behind this tattoo is too long for a post that is already a good two thousand words in length, but suffice it to say that it involves a dead friend and a shared love for Doctor Who.

I’ve come to regret it because it’s quite large and is always bound to draw a lot of attention. I love the design (black and white, very thin lines, enclosed in a rhombus frame), don’t quite like so much all the looks it attracts.

I still remember the first day my boss saw it, and though she didn’t say anything, I caught several quick glances down my forearm when I wasn’t looking and it made me realise that it is a big, beautiful thing, but a very strange tattoo to behold. The fact that they can only be concealed by using long sleeves doesn’t help matters much.

I can’t picture myself without it, though. Recently, while on yet another one of my usual ‘oh-my-god-what-have-I-done-to-my-body’ spirals, I had a dream in which I was getting it removed, and the procedure wasn’t painful at all, but I woke up to find myself crying over the loss of something that at this point feels so utterly mine, I cannot conceive of my body without it.

So, what have I learned from these experiences?

1. Try not to get tattooed until your twenties. I feel like you don’t really know yourself until you’ve reached a certain age, and when you’re a teen, you have no idea who you’re going to be in five years, even though it can feel like you have already figured your shit out.

Kid, I wanted to get a Nirvana tattoo. No, not a meaningful lyric. No, no particular gorgeous artwork. I wanted to get the Nirvana font tattooed, just because I Kurt Cobain spoke to me on a deeper level. And he still does -but I don’t feel like having a band name on my arm. Same goes for the Mockingjay I wanted to get tattooed on my other shoulder to match the Deathly Hallows, because I liked the Hunger Games. Sure, I think it’s a good series, but it’s nowhere near as relevant to me now as it was when I was a little less literate. (Not implying it’s a bad piece of work -it’s actually a really good introduction to dystopia for teens, and that has a lot of merit- but there are books I’ve read and come to love which have made a more lasting impression on me than Suzanne Collins’s books did.)

This is a personal appreciation, and one you’re free to disagree, because of course there are 15-year-olds out there who are really smart and self-aware. I just wasn’t one of them. And this isn’t to say I was some wild-partying girl with a death wish who did all the drugs -I was as unremarkable and average as they come. I was the counter-culture girl of the town, straight dark hair and heavy eyeliner included, and now I’m pretty much your standard plaid-wearing adult with a softer edge. My thesis in all of this is, you might not have an idea of who you are until you get out of highschool and into the brave new world beyond the walls of your teenage years.

People change; interests change, and who I was five years ago is a person completely different to the person I am today. Sure, she’s an integral part of me, but the tattoos she would’ve liked to get wouldn’t have been relevant to the person I am today.

I am lucky, because I did get three of my four tattoos before the age of 20, and thankfully, they still speak to me. I still love music. I still love Harry Potter. But I could’ve done a lot worse.

2. Don’t get tattoos in languages you’re not proficient in. I had my Nietzsche quote translated into Latin by someone who had studied the language -but evidently, they hadn’t studied enough to make one apparent grammar mistake I’ll have to wear on my skin until I die -or until I become a millionaire and can afford getting laser removal like I can afford an apple; whichever happens first.

We all like to make fun of that basic, dumb dude who got ‘laundry’ tattooed in Mandarin, until we go and make the same mistake ourselves.

3. Don’t be afraid of how your tattoos are going to look when your skin gets wrinkly. It’s time we all as a society embraced aging. I know my tattoos will look worse for wear when I’m sixty, but they’ll still tell my story. I’m not the least bit worried about what my cleft tattoos will look like in my time-worn hands. They’ll still play the piano.

4. People are going to ask about your tattoos. If you can’t explain them without feeling uncomfortable, then probably don’t get them, or get them some place where they can’t see. My TARDIS tattoo is meaningful beyond words to me, but that meaning isn’t so easily conveyed to my acquaintances. It’s not like you can casually mention how it represents embracing change and having the will to live to fight another day and to do the right thing by someone else and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and the powerful force of science fiction to affect history and yadda yadda yadda in an office small talk conversation...right?

5. You’re bound to regret at least one of your tattoos, even if for a split second, even if you love them as profoundly as you do your mum, or your pet, or your best friend. This does not mean you’ve made a mistake. I doubt there’s a person out there who hasn’t second-guessed a tattoo they’ve already got.

In my case, I get anxious then and again about my tattoos in regards to their visibility, and what people may think of them. If this is something that concerns you, you might want to consider getting inked on your legs, thighs, back or ribs. 

But no matter what, remember: these tattoos mean something to you. You got them for a reason. They are telling your story. Sure, there are some people out there who may be quick to judge without basis -but these days, they are very few and far between. And in any case, these are not the people you want to surround yourself with.

The people you do want to surround yourself with are people like my friend from dance class, who was really interested in getting to know the meaning behind my TARDIS tattoo. I spent a whole hour during our train ride to a presentation in the city explaining Doctor Who lore to her, and I had her full attention (those who watch Doctor Who know that we can easily bore people or freak them out trying to explain the regeneration cycle). What I mean by this is that your tattoos are an invitation for people to know you on a deeper level, and those who bother asking may find that you are a remarkably interesting individual. Those who don’t, don’t. Those who look down on you without even trying to understand...to hell with them.

Having said all of this...I think I’m going to go ahead with my My Chemical Romance tattoo. 

I do feel some of that second-guessing guilt in anticipation. I’ll be the first to admit I might not be thinking this all the way through -after all, I got the idea just a few days ago. It might just be the intoxicating thrill of getting inked with a friend (we’re getting different MCR-related tattoos, it’s not like they are matching).

But MCR have been with me for a very long time, and have taught me the beauty in all living things. They taught me to channel my pain through any form of art. They are the very reason I’m even writing this -I can think more clearly about permanent life decisions when I write about them. I’ve always known I want to get something that represents them as a band, and this is as good a time as it’ll ever be, with their reunion and whatnot.

I don’t think I’ll regret it, or perhaps I will, as I have all of my tattoos from time to time. It’s small, and black, and not so visible to the naked eye, but I’ll know it’s there. It’s the first three notes of Welcome to the Black Parade, on a staff, with the G cleft and F sharp. It has a double meaning -my love for My Chemical Romance and everything this particular song stands for, my love for piano, and my love for playing their music on my piano.

It may be a rushed decision, but damn it, I’m feeling good about this.

Solving Mysteries Across Time Is a Blast in YU-NO

It's hard, perhaps impossible, to talk about YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. without addressing its reputation up front. Around 1996, the year of this game's original release for the PC-9801, visual novels had a very different reputation. In modern times, the words “visual novel” instantly creates the picture of 60+ hour endeavors, filled to the brim with lore and choices and dozens of possible endings. But in the mid-90s, visual novels were most known for being very cheap and quick to produce, leading many creators to tend toward short adventure games, light on story and big on hentai. Enter ELF Corporation, a now-defunct eroge studio, and the two talents Hiroyuki Kanno and Ryu Umemoto who they just hired to make a big-budget adventure game coming off the success of some previous projects. With their newfound resources, Kanno and Umemoto realized they can dream much, much higher than anyone in their medium ever could have before. The question then: did they succeed?

    In terms of scope, the answer is an unquestionable “yes”. The basic premise in YU-NO is hardly groundbreaking now— you can see its influence not just in visual novels, but in anime/manga media broadly—but is revolutionary in the context of its time. You play as Takuya Arima, a third year high schooler who is taking summer school after the death of his father two months prior. He is surrounded by many colorful characters, including fellow students, the faculty of the school, and the staff of a local company called GeoTech that his step-mother works for. There are mysteries about in the town of Sakaimachi, mostly surrounding a mountain outside the town's beach called Sword Cape.

  GeoTech is researching the area around Sword Cape, but recently the workers at the site have been randomly struck dead by lightning at alarming rates. There is a rumor going around about a curse that is connected somehow to the very old house the school's principal, Ryuuzouji, resides in. Ryuuzouji, and old friend of Takuya's father, himself seems off, with people close to him saying he hasn't been acting like he normally does. To top it all off, at the end of the prologue, Takuya receives a package from his father, containing a strange device and a letter. The letter instructs Takuya to “take this device to Triangle Mountain on the Sword Cape at 10 PM.” And when he does, he finds plenty waiting for him: a passed-out blonde woman, the new transfer student, and Ryuuzouji himself—armed with a gun.

    Because of the nature of this game as an intricate weave of mysteries and revelations, I am going to go into very little detail about the actual plot, but I will describe the main mechanic of the game because it's impossible to discuss otherwise. The device Takuya receives is called the Reflector, and it's how you navigate the world of YU-NO. Using the Reflector causes a map to open on the screen, a series of lines that represent the passing of time and which branch off from each other at various points, as well as a dot representing where in time you are. Your choices in-game change which “direction” you go on the map, and potential future directions are hinted at as branch nubs on the line you've completed so far. How this works mechanically is one of the most interesting and yet also frustrating things about YU-NO.

    Inside the Reflector are small jewels you use to “save.” You can save normally, but only one spot at a time, so you're going to have to rely on the Reflector to navigate and find new routes and endings. With the map, called A.D.M.S., open, you can use one of your jewels to fix that moment onto the map. This consumes the jewel, so you can't just spend them as much as you want, but that leads to the whole point of using them.

  At almost any point in the game, you can open A.D.M.S., click on a previous jewel point you had set, and instantly transport back to that point in time, conveniently keeping any key items you've found along the way. You also get the jewel back but lose the jewel point. Finally, scattered across the map are markers for jewels and other interesting things. These help you figure out roughly where you need to be to get to important parts of the game.

    The implication of this is striking and nigh unmissable the first time you find yourself using it strategically—with this system, YU-NO's story also acts as its gameplay, its narrative an intricate mystery you have to solve yourself. I used the term above, but there are also extremely few actual “choices” made, at least in a traditional “pick from this list of responses” sense. It's a point-and-click adventure in the truest sense, and where on the timeline you end up is largely determined by your actions, not your words.

  The only hand-holding is a hint system that shows you where you should go, or what places you could potentially go, and a popup that will inform you that you can either find an item where you are or need an item to progress. You can also turn the hint system off if you want the original experience. It only displays in those instances though, so if you need something at a certain point but don't have it, you're just going to have to remember when and where you needed it again after eventually finding the item elsewhere. I recommend taking notes. When you're on a roll, finding and executing on this system is immensely satisfying—you really feel like you're achieving something, digging deeper and deeper into the mystery of the town and uncovering seemingly endless secrets about the other characters.

    Unfortunately, you're not going to be unlocking stuff left and right, and that's where the main issues with the gameplay begin. Missing key times to put down jewels can cause huge time sinks, as if you didn't have a jewel places before or at the key moment, you have no choice but to go back to the very beginning. That means long stretches of skipping content you've already read, clicking around over and over again until you finally get back to that part of the story.

  Even if you play as well as you can, unless you're following a detailed step-by-step guide, you're inevitably going to run into a situation where you realize that you need to do a complete backtrack because the item or choice relevant is in another route, or you simply couldn't afford to put down a jewel at a point you knew you would be going back to eventually. And, of course, of all games I'd avoid using a guide for, YU-NO is one whose experience would be totally marred by not going through the motions and figuring it out for yourself. Luckily the skip option is very fast, so you're not actually going through a ton of text, it is simply that you still need to play the rest of the game properly.

    Another pitfall baked into the map system is tempting but similarly a waste of time and avoidable. A.D.M.S. differentiates the various routes of the game by changing the color of the time line per character. In addition, because of the nubs indicating potential different routes, you can pretty clearly see where a new route potentially can begin. It's tempting to want to go back in the middle of the route and see how things change there, the way the game is designed makes that largely a trap. Because of how certain routes need certain items to finish, it's easy to accidentally end up on a dead end you can't have avoided because you haven't finished an “earlier” route. This means that to some extent the sense of freedom you have to explore the timelines is kind of an illusion. And though there is no official “order” to the routes, even if you can finish one of them “early” some of the routes simply give away way too much endgame information. Finish the wrong route first and many of the revelations in other routes won't feel so meaningful anymore.

  The story itself mirrors the positives and negatives of the mechanics. The first two-thirds of the game is a compelling puzzle, the pieces of which don't come together within the narrative itself until the very, very end. Instead, you're trusted to be able to put things together as you learn more about the game's world. The biggest “a-ha!” moments don't ever come from the characters' mouths, but from you slowly coming to the realization yourself, making the whole experience incredibly immersive. Again, like the gameplay itself, the fun comes from the game letting you loose to mostly do as you please.

    Unfortunately, detailing at all what the last third of the game is comprised of is an untouchable spoiler; luckily, I don't need to describe it at all to explain what's wrong with it. Simply put, the game becomes restrictively linear, and all of the cool time-jump shenanigans I praised above are essentially thrown out of the window. You're still in a point-and-click game, but one you don't have any meaningful control over until the story eventually ends. It has been said in interviews that this was not meant to be the case, that when concepted the whole game worked the way the first part does.

  Deadlines caused this to not be the case, and we're stuck with what feels like a completely different game for what should be the climax. Indeed, I suspect the story itself suffered from the need to meet deadlines. The satisfying conclusions the previous part of the game enjoys are replaced with a plot that feels the need to wrap up as many loose threads as possible, in as little time as possible. YU-NO's story is memorable for the journey; the ending feels like an afterthought.

    Something that definitely isn't an afterthought is this game's wonderful soundtrack. Instead of tracks being tied to places in the game, the whole soundtrack is carefully placed to match scenes and emotions. Characters don't have default themes, every single moment's musical choice feels deliberate in an unforgettable way. Also, while the remastered songs are good in themselves, this remake comes with the option to switch to the original version, something I highly recommend doing if you want the best experience.

  On the other hand, the remake completely removes the overtly sexual content from the original game. Not to be confused for this version of YU-NO being very conservative in that area—it earns its M rating loud and clear—the actual sex scenes are cut around. Even if this doesn't bother you, it makes for some awkward scenes that are clearly the lead-up and aftermath of the event, but without ever addressing that anything happened in that in-between time. It doesn't seem like much if anything was done to the dialogue in those parts to make them feel more natural. Luckily there are very few of these, and they aren't very important to the story itself, so this doesn't impact the whole of the game much.

    Speaking of such things, there are definitely things here that will turn you off of this game if they bother you too much. The first is the incessantly horny protagonist Takuya. There is actually something to this in the story. Takuya has a reputation among his peers for being skeevy toward women; however, in the mandatory parts of dialogue this only really comes up when he is called out for it by other characters. His non-optional internal dialogue is much more down-to-earth and serious, and his hatred for his father (another horndog) seems to stem from Takuya's hatred of his similarity to him.

  That said, there are seemingly endless optional places you can click to get more of that, to the point I eventually just stopped clicking on unnecessary things just to avoid it. The second is more straightforward: incest. There's plenty of incest, it's important to the game, and the story itself doesn't even seem to think it's all that odd. That part is strange and sadly unavoidable.

    On a technical side, the game is smooth. The redesigned characters are simply the classic '90s designs with changes to fit '10s standards, and the backgrounds are detailed and sometimes beautiful. The config menu is elaborate, letting you tweak every knob possible, from the text speed down to how loud each individual character's lines are. In fact, every single spoken line in this game is voiced in Japanese, using the cast from the recent anime.

  It's also worth mentioning that the Switch version comes with a cute little side-scrolling 8-bit action game called 8-BIT YU-NO's GREAT ADVENTURE. Your only actions are to fire blasts at various creatures and the occasional boss with B, which you can hold down to keep them coming out, and jump with A. The screen is also constantly scrolling which can make the game pretty hectic. However, at almost any time you can press X to activate A.D.M.S., which works almost exactly like it does in the visual novel, except you can traverse time almost as much as you want, though if you run out of gems your run is over. The point of this is similar to the main game too; on the map are various things that indicate that going to that point in time will help you find items to help you out and raise your score. It's neat, and I'd like to see a larger action game integrate this system, but it's fun as it is. Probably best not to play it until you've finished the main game, since it's basically a spoiler for the last part of the main game.

    YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. is an undeniably important part of the history of its medium, a behemoth of a game that inspired other creators to similarly reach for the stars. Even taken at face value it is a game brimming with ambition, grabbing you by the shoulders and trying to shake as much emotion and reaction out of you as possible. And a lot of the time, it works—I'll probably never forget even some of the smallest details about this game. But it's also inherently flawed in so many basic ways it's hard to say that by modern standards it's a particularly great game. Play it for the spectacle, play it for the history, but you're warned ahead of time that there are many bumps in the 40+ hour road ahead of you.

REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ The original 1996 game's story is here, almost entirely intact + A carefully created and curated soundtrack, with both new and old versions available + The story has twists and turns that will leave your eyes glued to the screen until the very end + The game's unique mechanics turn the normal visual novel routine into a fun puzzle +/- The H-scenes are removed entirely making for some awkward framing - The same things that make the game's mechanics interesting also make them frustrating - The last act of the narrative loses momentum and drops key aspects of the gameplay

  Are you interested in tackling this blast from the past, or have you played the original and want to give it a new go with fresh paint? Let us know in the comments!

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If you want to bug David Lynn for even more thoughts on this game or anything else, hit him up on Twitter at @NavyCherub.

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