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crusherthedoctor · 1 year

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A positive ask: your top 5 Sonic stories? :)

In chronological order:

Sonic CD: This might be cheating since the actual plot is just "Eggman's kidnapping animals again but this time he also turned a planet into a Chain Chomp", but I love, love, love the visual storytelling at work here. Sonic was always more thoughtful and grounded than most when it came to the green aesop (including that one cartoon that claimed to be a Sonic cartoon but wasn't), and CD is the pinnacle of why. Seeing all the different ways the pasts and futures compare is always a joy, and it drives home how serious Eggman's threat really is to any world.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles: In no small part due to the level cutscenes and big set pieces, this game makes the journey feel like an epic quest. And while other games may highlight aspects of his character better (Forces highlighting his cleverness for just one example), I feel that this game is arguably the best overall use of Eggman, showing how he operates as a villain, and showing how dedicated he is to repairing the Death Egg no matter what it takes. The endgame is one of the best in the series, and a Super Sonic finale actually felt exciting rather than played out.

Sonic Adventure 1: I have my issues with it, and not just the obvious one, but I would say it's one of the 3D plots that holds up the best. Chaos is still the top-tier giant monster thanks to how he's built up and how he has more to him other than "he's a monster, fight it", Eggman has a great showing until That One Moment, I appreciate Tails' arc and Gamma's story - even if the latter is kind of irrelevant to most of the overarching stuff, which is one of my aforementioned issues - and I like how it focused on one aspect of previous lore (Angel Island) and expanded upon it in a way that felt natural, which is much better than haphazardly trying to connect absolutely every bit of lore and making the world feel smaller like what Flynn tends to do. Out of all the monster-themed stories in the games, the original reigns supreme.

Sonic Colours: Yeah yeah, I know Sonic said that one line that everyone hates and ironically loves to repeat more times than Sonic himself actually said it, but no matter your stance on the writing for everyone not named Eggman, the intergalactic theme park concept is just inherently fun, and the game really gets its mileage out of it with all the different attractions and announcements from the rotund one. Not to mention, using such a flashy setup as a ploy to convert innocent aliens into rabid beasts is quintessentially Eggman, since it would be his benefit to screw others over while having childlike fun at the same time. Like SA1, there are some details I would change, but overall I really do get a kick out of it.

Sonic Forces: The most controversial choice, I'm sure. Yes, this is mostly based on What Could Have Been, but unlike the majority of unironic '06 fans, I can actually acknowledge that; the setup of Eggman finally conquering the planet is just too good to pass up. And besides, however flawed in execution it may admittedly be, I still think it had a lot of good moments. Eggman still got to show a whole lot of underhanded deviousness, and other characters ended up well too, like Shadow. And I still like Infinite in all his edgy glory, because no matter how tryhard he is, he somehow still feels less so than Scourge or Surge.

Other game plots/concepts I like: - Eggman dumping Sonic on an island purely to murder his ass in over-the-top ways in SEGA Sonic Arcade. Simple yet brutal, I love it. - While I may not care for Heroes' plot as it is, the idea of a robot copying Chaos' data entices me. With Eggman's unused SA2 line about him vowing to conquer the world with his own power, him using said data to create his own Perfect Chaos (metaphorically, not literally) would be a great way to expand on that. - Battle is a little overly talky in its structure for my liking, and certain characters were unflattering (*coughAmycough*), but building up Emerl and his friendship with the group, only to then be forced to put a bullet in him when he goes apeshit, is what I call a power move. They played it really well… minus the obligatory upstaging of Eggman. - Solaris had the most potential out of all the post-Chaos monsters, and it could have worked as a deliberate contrast to Chaos. Iblis and Mephiles, on the other hand, can fuck right off. - Erazor and his relationship with Shahra, and how Sonic ultimately deals with him. - Robot pirates in Rush Adventure. Cause robot pirates are fun. - Eggman attempting a sort-of corporate takeover in Zero Gravity.

- Sonic being willing to do the right thing even if he's demonized for it in Black Knight. - Eggman successfully controlling the Time Eater in Generations. - Eggman clawing his way back to his rightful status in Lost World. - Giant robot that felt more like a worthy titan than the actual Titans in Mania. - Team Sonic Racing having a mysterious shady newcomer organize a tournament, and it turns out they DON'T have malicious motives for it… I dunno, there's something wholesome about it. Maybe it's because Big got to be right about something. :>

Non-game plots/concepts I like: - Eggman faking a "New Villain usurped me, you gotta stop him uwu" narrative in order to lure Sonic into a trap in the OVA. - The Helen episode of Sonic X. <3 - Eggman becoming a Super Eggman in the second movie, and in a way that's tailor-made for his characteristics at that. - Eggman creating a bio-mechanical virus with a devoted simp at his side SHOULD HAVE WENT DOWN A LOT BETTER THAN IT DID GRRRRRRRR

I know most of these revolve around Eggman, but I never claimed to not be a fanboy. :P And being the Bowser to Sonic's Mario, 90% of all Sonic plots start from his machinations, so it'd be hard to ignore him anyway.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic CD #Sonic 3 & Knuckles #Sonic Adventure #Sonic Colours #Sonic Forces

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t4tbruharvey · 2 years

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i would LOVE to hear u talk abt bruce banner characterization more if ur up for it! he’s always been my fave but truly the choices that have been made are so confusing

OH MAN yeah like he was really the highlight of the first avengers movie and also age of ultron, which sucked for normal people but RULED for fans of bruce banner having depth (aside from the kids thing which was a bad writing choice that i don't like lol!!)

but yeah like in the first two films he was very compelling and clearly felt incredibly bad about everything and the acting for bruce was incredibly good in terms of it not being '...well THAT just happened', you know? and then he drops off the face of the earth LITERALLY for civil war - WHICH, BY THE WAY, SHOULD HAVE KILLED ANY POSSIBILITY OF HIM AND TONY BEING FRIENDS like tony sided with ROSS??? are you kidding me??? and we never ever got to see the fallout of that like.... man come ON - only to reappear in ragnarok which was like... fine? good movie all round good thor movie but not like great for addressing bruce? which is FINE it wasn't his movie i don't CARE there was enough of a nod to his issues that i'll almost forgive the kind of... dumb but in a smart way thing they had going on. but the last two avengers movies (which sucked ass i hate infinity war and endgame SO MUCH) like. who WAS that. that wasn't bruce banner that was the human equivalent of a physical comedy skit where someone gets hit in the face with a plank of wood. can't stand it and they had better fix that shit in the she hulk show.

oh and also like bruce shouldn't have his origin without rick jones i think you can't make him as sympathetic and complex as he is in the comics without that fucking... fun teen. i don't want the mcu to get their hands on rick but also where is my boy, you know? he's so crucial to provide an emotional heart and to counteract bruce's moping with jokes up until shit hits the fan, and rick being serious TELLS you it's getting dire! and also when he leaves - ideally if bruce leaves him for safety reasons - that adds depth to bruce and makes the like 'suffering so humanity can be safe' shit hit closer to home in a tangible way! i love rick jones and i'll never stop being angry abt it. read the boy and the beast from marvel (2020) #1

#i am not excited for the she hulk show they will neverrrrrrr be the comics #thank you for this ask this is like. my number one thing for real #if you want to talk abt it ever ;) you know what to do ;)

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tittaexperts · 2 years

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Warped reality 2k

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Mainly because I know that as the year comes to an end, 2K will drop even more insane cards that make current cards look ancient. Is this my endgame lineup? Definitely not. My current squad is a mix of high-end, overpowered cards (auctionable + rewards), and budget-friendly beasts that I just really like playing with. card, no one would ever use it competitively.īut again, there are so many great cards that do check off the boxes I just mentioned, anyone should be able to compete and win some games, which is great. For example, I love James Harden, but at this point even if he gets a G.O.A.T. Just like every other year, the endgame is all about height, wingspan, and animations, which does unfortunately take some of the fun and strategy out of squad building. So I would never “quit MyTeam” because a certain card has dropped and the meta evolves. I have Yao, and he is probably my favorite card, but I definitely don’t win every game I play with him. Then the Warped Reality set was the point where people claimed that MyTeam was “over,” thanks to point guard Galaxy Opal Ben Simmons, Pink Diamond Bol Bol, and a 3-point shooting Diamond Sim Bhullar (which objectively was/is insane, as is the fact that he just got a Dark Matter card on Friday that is even better).įrom there, it really was just a hop, skip, and a jump to get to Invincible Yao Ming, who is probably the best card in the game now, though with Sim or opal Shawn Bradley so easy to get (and so dominant in their own right), Yao isn’t as invincible as his card art would suggest. Point guard Kobe/Grant Hill started the oversaturation of tall point guards, and of course opal C/SG Durant was arguably the best card in the game for a while. I’ve been adding HOF badges to mine for a while now, and he’s basically an Invincible card.īut Out of Position 1 was where things got really silly. Looking back, I just want to go over a few content highlights that got us to where we are today.įirst up, waaaaay back in Season 6 (at least I think it was Season 6, like I said, they blur together), the Radioactive set gave us Dark Matter Tracy McGrady, who even today is an amazing card that I still use often. I think he has, what, 75 cards right now? Or maybe that’s the number of HOF badges on his most recent card? Plus, the amount of options for players of different play styles and budgets is impressive, especially if you like LeBron James. Not only that, but if I open a pack in July, pulling a galaxy opal gets a sigh and an eye-roll, which is telling.ĭon’t get me wrong, even though MyTeam is in full-blown fantasy land, I’m still having fun with the insane cards. And now in July, pink diamonds no longer exist, as every pack or reward card is galaxy opal or better. A pink diamond in June had four times the amount of hall of fame badges that the best card of the game in March had. The amount of content this year is awesome (free and paid), especially compared to previous years, but unfortunately, the cards are all at a place now where they are all basically interchangeable. Having some distance is nice, though, as it allows me to really reflect on the most memorable (and important) aspect of these MyTeam seasons, which to me is (and always has been) the content. I’ve gotten all of those rewards, and enjoyed the structure that XP brought, but I guess at some point I was expecting a new season to bring something groundbreaking - and no, Triple Threat Spotlight Sims don’t count. There’s a level 40 XP reward, which everything else orbits around, and that’s about it. NBA 2K21 MyTeam Year In ReviewĢK did a nice job of making previous seasons all feel cosmetically different, but as I think back on it all now, they still definitely blur together.

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That reboot is just around the corner with the release of 2K22.īut before I get into all that, I want to briefly discuss NBA 2K21 MyTeam’s Season 6 ( Glitched Reality), 7 ( Full Throttle), and 8 ( Trial of Champions).

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It’s also the reason I’m going with the NBA 2K21 MyTeam year in review here with this article.īefore getting to that, I just have to say there’s just something really exciting about starting over with lower-tier cards and figuring out how to build a winning squad with flawed (aka “normal”) players. If anything, it’s quite the opposite and I’ve been going crazy these last couple of months - to the point where I’m actually kind of happy that the year is coming to an end with Season 9 (supposedly). It’s definitely been a while since my last post, but I can’t say it’s because “the mode is dead” and I stopped playing MyTeam altogether.

#Warped reality 2k

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Prince of Wishful Thinking (Tom Retrospective): Tough Love or The True Monster

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Prince of Wishful Thinking, what is usually my look at the life and times of Tom Lucitor but since I NEED to cover the season 3 finale as vital part of Tom’s story, we’re taking one last look at the tragic tale of Meteora Butterfly before the finale sends these two stories hurtling together. You’d THINK this would be the last detour of this already sizeable arc.. and you’d be wrong as i’ll also be covering Kelly’s World, as I feel it’s vital for both “Curse of the Blood Moon” and “A Boy and his hard to remember title”, as it provides extra context for Marco’s anguish in the former.. and provides extra evidence for why a CERTAIN MOMENT in the latter pisses me off to no end.. seriously even when as universe dies and the only people left are Frankllin Richards and Galactus, there will still be a little note reading “Fuck how they treated Kelly” written in all caps so Galactus remembers to yell it.

So sadly that DOES mean it’s been three entries in this retrospective in a row that either haven’t feature Tom at all or in the case of the last episode only had him in short cameos. I mean we did get his love affair for pie but we also got a creepy goblin man forcing his girlfriend and best friend to kiss each other, his best friend being WAY to eager to jump to that conclusion, and neither considering using Marco’s Scissors because the writers only remember he has those half the time in Season 3... and clearly I ddn’t either as I forgot to mention that plot hole, something @jess-the-vampire brought up to me. Sadly I DID forget to consult on this when we talked earlier this week , and she’s not online as I write this so I won’t have her insight for this one.

But if you want some Tom content, i’m happy to share my crossover ship for the boy with you. I’ve been shipping him with Octavia from Helluva Boss lately. Because of course it’s Helluva Boss, i’ve not been at all subtle with my obession with it and much like Letterkenny, X-Men and Dragon Ball Z Abriged it is a love I never plan to be subtle about.

But I just think they compliment each other well: They have contrasting atittudes, and tastes in music, but seem like they’d share hobbies. Like taxidermy.. I could see Tom buying this... demonic combination of a badger, a skunk, a deer and my nightmares Octavia is preciously holding up.

Granted I also feel tom would both animate them with their dead souls.. and then use his new woodland friends of the dammned as a chorus to sing “Can You Picture That” from the Muppet Movie, because that’s what my mind does on a regular day. I think the contrasting attitude creates great chemstiry and it made me also realize I have a thing for ships with directly contrasting home lives. Tom has two loving decent parents who deeply love one another and at worst simply didn’t reign in his worse behavior because it was standard for demon stuff. Octavia in contrast simply has two parents, one who DOES love her and tries his best, but his best includes calling his side piece “My big dicked blitzy” right in front of her and hiring said side piece to guard them, and her mother who clearly thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional well being she hired a cowboy to shoot her daddy dead in the middle of a large crowd. The point is I think they’d be adorable and they both badly need to be happy after being emotionally fucked over by people they care about.

But alas my new ship will have to wait as we marginally important things to get down too.. things that will impact both this season and the next’s endgame and utterly destroy Eclipsa and Moon’s relationship for good. Sound fun? Well if so join me under the cut won’t you?

We open in the Pidgeon Kingdom.. and things aren’t exactly great.. and by that I mean Meteora stomped a hole through it and ravaged the place and Rich demands blood.. and vengance.. and possibly blood vengance. But not Tekken Blood Vengance.. he already has like 5 copies of that on dvd. Still needs it on Blu Ray though, hook him up if you got it.

So Moon and Eclipsa are trying to smooth this over/find out which way did she go George which way did she go, and are angrily dismissed after they try Rich’s patience, not helped by Eclipsa not being familiar with the Pidgeon Kingdom because they hadn’t slaughtered everyone who used to live there yet. Look that’s what happened, Star outright mentions in the Big Book of Spells that htey suddenly sprung up where another kingdom was and no one knows what happens. There was some bird murders up in that place.. or birdur if you will. Some birds drank some human blood. This is what Alfred Hitchock tried to warn us about with his film built on horrifying actress abuse.

The point is with some more pidgeon-led murder stabbings on the cards our heroines are trying to find her since their attempts to convince Rich not to go on an Archer Style Rampage fell on deaf ears.

But it’s clear from the second the two are alone both have diffrent priorties: Eclipsa desperatley wants to find the daughter she lost and talk her down from what sh’es become, help her become better and hopefuly heal from the pain she’s been in. She’s lost her husband, her kingdom and centuries. She can’t loose her baby girl too.

Moon on the other hand... clearly has no intrest in helping Meteora or stopping this peacefully. Her first thought is stopping Meteora. Her living through it is not necessary. It’s also clear her racisim isn’t REMOTELY gone depsite Buff Frog and Star’s best attempts and despite learning just how deeply and horribly Mewni’s engrained racism has hurt eclipsa and destoryed Moon’s own family history. To Moon this is just a big monster to fight.. i’ll dive into this more in a bit.

For now our heroines encounter an angry mob. This time their not here for Homer Simpson, but for Meteora as her rampages have destroyd their towns, livelehoods and given some weird guy a hat. It’s the best bit of the episode and i’m embarassed I forgot it happened.

So with them being no help our queens back out but end up finding some actual help: Eddie! You know the guy from the episode I skipped over... River’s cousin or something like that. He dosen’t have a wiki entry, I do not know why. He’s voiced by Rhys Dharby of Flight of the Conchords Fame whose since made quite the career as a voice actor. No major roles yet that i’m aware of, but a lot of delightful minor ones like this. It’s good to see him he was one of the highlights of that show and not just because he sang this..

youtube

Eddie showed up in the Bog Beast of Boggabah and I honestly forgot he was in this episode.. but again, it’s Rhys Dharby. It’s not like suddenly finding out “Aw god dammit Pauly Shore is in this”. So Eddie agrees to help as he’s been tracknig Meteora.. and we find out something troubling: Meteora is getting BIGGER. Gradually, to the point the bog from said episode Is skipped over is drained because she DRANK IT. We also get a great exchange “I’d hate to see the size of her mother” “Actually her father more than helped with that”

Awwwww.... seriously Esme Blanco is a national treasure and has some great deliveries in this one.. and some heartbreaking ones. But before we can get to that it turns out Meteora sucked the powers out of Eddies family.. who he misses..e xcept one guy> That guy can fuck right off. Seriously Eddie is also a national treasure and I wish he’d shown up in season 4. I mean he couldn’t of HURT it. For one it’s Rhys Dharby and for another that season shot itself in the face, both feet, the groin and then the face again enough that I don’t think anything could hurt it as bad as the writers already did.

But sadly we say farwell to Eddie as he goes out how men have since the begining of time.. deciding to poke a strange creature till it murdered him. Or took his soul out in this case, speaking of which...

Yeah while I couldn’t get Jess in time for this review, she did bring this up in the past: Meteora’s ablility to pull a

Comes right the fuck out of nowhere with no build up and no explination for it. She DID drain personalites and according to this episode youth.. but that was with a big ole machine. It MIGHT have been intended to be one of Globgor’s powers.. but that makes zero sense, as if he COULD do that, as we saw with Toffee last season when he had that power, also out of nowhere but at least it made a touch more sense given his power was draining magical energy anyway at the time, so adding souls to that isn’t a huge stretch, but as we saw that would’ve been game over for the comission, especially since we DO see him fighting them one on three next season. If he had this power, he wouldn’t be in crystal and I think they realized that, but just tried to act as if his daugther COULDN’T do that and assumed everyone would casually forget. And I get not accounting for me writing about this years later, even I wouldn’t of thought that, but not counting on fans both young and old to latch onto a continuity error? Have you met fandoms Disney, have you? It dosen’t bring the story down entirely and I get WHY ti’s there, so she can nonlethally kill people so we’re not down most of the cast for Season 4, but it feels like an easy win button and one she barely uses despite it being eye beam activated. It should be easy enough to pull, boom, soul suck, win, rinse and repeat. It’s okay to have uber powerful tequniques but they have to have a drawback. For instance the Kaioken from DBZ. It’s a really damn cool technique that gives the user a neat red aura and amplifies poewr.. but the more you amplify the more strain it puts on your body and the more likely you’ll die, and Super later creatively explained why it hadn’t been used since Super Sayian was introduced because said form would’ve sped it up so much it’d be too much for a body to take. Here whie Meteora dosen’t use it in EVERY fight, she uses it enough that it makes no sense this isn’t just her first move for every fight she gets into, mental breakdown or not.

That being said Meteora’s current mental state as she talks to her mother, having regressed to talking in only a few words and acting like a child, makes perfect sense. Henious already wasn’t in great mental shape to begin with, having a slow sustained breakdown since Marco overthrew her. and now on top of this she remembers her whole life has been a lie, starts to mutate into her natural state at a rapid and likely unehalthy pace, and then finds out on top of all of this Mewni is rightfully owed to her. Given she ended last episode blowing a guy up for rejecting her, it’s not a stretch that given even more power and no time to process anything, Metora would deteroate further.

Esme and Jessica really knock this scene out of the park as Eclipsa presents Metora with her old doll Bobo and gently trying ot talk to her.. but you also get the fear Eclipsa feels as she tries to awkardly manuver around the fact her daughter is far more unhinged than she was prepared for, even threanting Eclipsa simply because Eclipsa wanted to be called mother instead of mommy. But despite this fear.. Eclipsa wants to help and Walter beautifuly captured metoera as a hulk like tragic figure:a being with low sanity and too much power desperate to be loved by the one person it cares about. And it makes it even more heartbreaking as Eclipsa explains what happened: bad people trapped her , a disfunctoinal society with a racist queen and even more racist subjects has taken hold in her absence... and it’s clear both want opposite things: Meteora wants what sh’es owed, her family back on the throne and Mewni back in her graps, but has lost herself so much to rage, anger and insanity she can’t see it’s not hers to take, while Eclipsa.. just wants her daughter back. She’d be happy just settling down with her and having a LIFE after hers was taken away. Eclipsa just wants a chance to be with what family she has left. It just HURTS to know that despite RIGHTFULLY hating the comission, despite having eveyr reason to take the crown from Moon by force and make the world better by force.. she dosen’t want that. She just wants some peace. It’s selfish... but it’s hard not to be when you havealmost nothing to hold onto. Eclipsa has lost her legacy, her husband and her crown... Meteora is all she has and all she wants and sh’ed of been happy if she just accepted that. If that was enough.

But the real telling part, and the thing that ultimately makes this go as bad as it does.. is Moon’s reactions to all of this. Sh’es CONFUSED by Meteora having a toy as if that’s foreign to her a monster would, and she’s cleaerly livid , if restrianing it, at both Meteora’s deire for the crown and Eclipsa RIGHTFULLY calling out the state of how things are, and mildly at that. Despite seeing how much damage Mewni’s inherent racisim has done, how it lead to her living a lie, ruined Eclipss, Globgore and Metora’s lives, despite how DESPERTLY her daughter struggles to fight against it, despite seeing firsthand that Monsters can have famiies and lives... she can’t let it go. She can’t see monsters as people. SHe dosen’t see a flawed person who was turned into a metpohrical monster by years of brainwashing and abuse and is slowly unravling under the weight of her true self.. she just sees a threat to her kingdom. She dosen’t see her kingdom as racist, just as it should be. And she dosen’t see herself as stepping down like hse damn well should’ve the MOMENT she found out everything. Because at her heart Moon can’t accept the truth and clings to her racisim.

And that my friends.. is what ultimately leads to Tragedy. Not Meteora’s unraveling mental state, not Eclipsa’s naitvite. What happens next is ENITRELY Moon’s fault. Whle Eclipsa was failing to get through to Metora, she was trying her best and might of gotten somewhere.. but Moon was already settling to attack.. and does so, making it look like Eclipsa set her own child up.

A fight ensues, a suprisingly even one... but Eclipsa breaks it up and PROVES her way could’ve worked. In one of Esme’s best performances sshe tearfully tells her daughter she loves her.. that ALL she wants is time with her to make up for what she’s lost.. she dosen’t need a kingdom or her crown or her wand, all things she DESERVES... she just wants her daughter. She just wants to help her baby girl before she goes so far down this path of hatred and vengance she’s alreayd well trod upon there is no point to return to.

It gets through to Meteora, makes her stop... and Moon TAKES ADANTAGE OF THAT. She then restrains metoera with a magical rock barrier and starts palpatineing her to death. It’s a horrifying moment that ultimately shows who Moon really is.. that when given the chance to let Meteora go, let her CHANGE and grow as a person and help the kingdom.. she instead tries to kill her. When she’s no longer a threat, hasn’t seriously hurt her in their fight, and could use her power to RESTORE the damage she’s done, fix what she’s broken and help the kingdom grow and mend the bridges racisim has torn down. But all she can see is a monster, and something to destroy.. not someONE to save.

So Eclipsa does what Moon would do if it were star about to die and saves her daughter, desperatly trying to stop mooon.. and allowing Meteora to get a clear shot and take half of moon’s soul. While Eclipsa is able to stop her from taking the full thing, Moon is left disoreinted and half alive and leaves on insticnt to parts unknown while Meteora escapes. Eclipsa is left alone, devistated and with her daughter truly lost. And the worst is truly yet to come.

Before we get into final thoughts i’d like to talk about how this scene impacts Moon’s betryal later. To me having rewatched this scene.. it only makes it work MORE making it clear Moon simply can’t fahtom racial equality and that she can’t fahtom that eclipsa had very good reason for doing what she did ... to me it comes off as her using Eclipsa betryaing her as a very flimsy justifcation to not validate her rule and to first retire and then try a coup. That “Well she “BETRAYED” me so i’m fine. “ But in truth... she betrayed Eclipsa first. She attacked her daughter TWICE when Eclipsa was close to getting through to her Her reasons are flimsy.. because i’ts not ABOUT eclipsa, but what eclipsa represents: equality with a race Moon dosen’t see as people. It’s about Moon’s racisim coloring everything tills h’es truly blinded and should have lost everything She didn’t because the ending is a fucking disgrace, but we might get to that at some point, the point here is for all that disgrace’s faults... it did get it right here, and Moon was always portrayed as being unable to let go of her racisim no matter what it cost her or how much her daughter despteratly tried to change her. Trust me as someone whose Dad used to argue that gay marriage meant he should be able to marry his cat, and who still argues against trans people using the bathroom of their choice, I get trying desperatley to change someone who don’t wanna. “Sigh”.

Final Thoughts: This episode is truly excellent. The writing is top notch as is the voice acting for all involved and the climax isa true, well led up to tragedy. The animation is also on point, with the characters emotions on perfect display. This is an episode I now realize is one of the series best and worth ar ewatch if you haven’ts een it. Truly amazing stuff that gets me pumped for the finale.. and disapoints me in how the series could reach these highs for one finale.. but would sink to it’s lowest point for next seasons. Next Time on Prince of Wishful Thinking: Star tries depseratly to find her mom, while Marco, Tom and a motely crew of misfits try to take down Meteora and Tom learns the awful truth from the photo booth and wears a zuko ponytail which weirdly looks good on him. That boy can rock anything let me tell you.

If you enjoyed this reviews, please consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As mentioned my 30 dollar stretch goal includes a review of the cluster fuck that is the series final arc, and the goals up to that , me making 20 and 25 dollars a month repectively, have their own nifty rewards: At 20 i’ll review Darkwing Duck once a month, the two remaning Ducktales 87 mini series I have not covered and the Danny Phantom film The Ultimate Enemy. 25 meanwhile gets you reviews of the Proud Family Movie, the theatrical recess movie and the Kim Possible almost finale movie so the drama. And 30 also gets you reviews of every episode of gravity falls season 1 at least one a month till I finish it at some point, so as you can see you get a lot of bang for your buck and these reviews will be public for everybody. Not only that but joining my patreon gets you a review a month if you pitch in 5 dollars and evne if you can’t swing THAT much just 2 bucks gets you access to my discord, a guarnateed pick in my shorts, votes for patreon exclusive reviews, and SAID patreon exclusive reviews. It’s a lot of bang for your buck is what i’m saying so please help me out so I can make a living off this and sign up today. I even JUST ADDED an exclusive and utterly insane scrooge mcduck review, The Great Wig Mystery. So throw in a buck to check that out.

And if your intrested in Tomtavia... please hit me up. I’m really proud of it and until then... i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#star vs the forces of evil #tom lucitor #prince of wishful thinking #meteora butterfly #eclipsa butterfly #moon butterfly #rhys dharby #disney xd #disney channel #disney plus #reviews

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bookofmirth · 3 years

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I'm curious about the Book of Breathings quote. I've seen posts breaking it down, highlighting how it showcases endgame couples but only in relation to Feyre/Rhysand, Nesta/Cassian and Elain/Azriel. I'm curious if anyone has applied the quote to Elain and Lucien? I've seen the sing me part connected to Az and that does kind of make sense to me. I always interpreted it as more about the sisters themselves and their journeys though, not specific partners.

Just for fun, I decided to interpret it in a way that could discuss the three sisters and their mating bonds. If it can be interpreted to include multiple ships, then it doesn’t make sense to me to say “well it’s about feysand but not nessian” etc.

The context in which this all was said is still important, too. It was the book trying to get Feyre to use it. It wasn’t giving her prophecy, or promising her knowledge about her future, or anything like that. It was a magical object saying random, flowery things to get Feyre intrigued (and flattered) enough to use it.

Life and death and rebirth. Sun and moon and dark. Rot and bloom and bones. Hello, sweet thing. Hello, lady of night, princess of decay. Hello, fanged beast and trembling fawn. Love me, touch me, sing me.

Life = Elain’s power (death being Nesta, rebirth being feysand because neither of them can stay dead)

Sun = Lucien’s true parentage (moon being Rhys, dark being nessian because of the dark heart of Windhaven)

Rot and bloom and bones = Elain’s preference for gardening, the fourth Dread Trove object that she may find together with Lucien

Hello, sweet thing. Hello, lady of night, princess of decay. Hello, fanged beast and trembling fawn. The lack of symmetry here kills me and reinforces something I’ll say below, but lady of night = Feyre, fanged beast = Nesta, trembling fawn = Elain.

Love me, tough me, sing me = the way that the mating bond unites all three couples, feysand, nessian, and elucien. The way that the mating bond draws them together physically, emotionally, and is described as a song between each of them.

HOWEVER

I don’t think that this quote is actually about ships, again because of the context, but also because some of my interpretation above is based on headcanons or things that haven’t happened yet, mainly with Elain. Any connection between her and the quote, other than bloom, is speculation. Hell, the first few lines could just be describing normal life cycles and have nothing to do with any characters.

I think the most reasonable interpretation of this quote is just what the scene tells us - the book is trying to get Feyre to use it. That’s it. It’s a magical object so it doesn’t think the way that we do, it’s throwing out metaphors and compliments to Feyre. It insults her, and when that doesn’t work it switches to compliments.

Sweet-tongued liar, lady of many faces, yes, you see now, princess of carrion - you see what you must do... The other one the Book hissed. Bring the other one, let us be joined, let us be free... Lovely girl, beautiful bird - so sweet, so generous. Together together together.

And then Feyre is compelled to put the two halves of the book together.

I’m pretty sure that people have been thinking about this quote since acomaf came out, and every new release people go back to it to see how it can fit what has happened, but? sjm just does NOT put that much thought into it, I’m sorry. The friendship bracelet colors were just colors, and what the Book of Breathings says is just its attempt to lure Feyre. It can be fun to go back and try to reinterpret things, but that doesn’t mean we are right, or that sjm intended for those connections to be made when she wrote what the Book whispered to Feyre.

#acotar #acosf #acotar meta #ask #anon

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rwbyconversations · 4 years

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The Scarlet Letter: Let’s talk about RWBY’s male LGBT rep

I have been sitting on this post for nearly four weeks waiting until the 15th due to the Before the Dawn spoiler rules.

So let's start with a blunt statement: RWBY's male LGBT representation has not been good. If the series' handling of female LGBT rep is good (which... well there's worse shows) and the general standard for how you write LGBT characters in a show like this, its handling of male rep has been... how not to. And Before the Dawn kinda solidified the idea in my head that the show's handling of its male LGBT cast just isn't good enough, either by the standards of when RWBY began in 2013, or today in 2020 when compatively massive steps have been taken over the past decade to show a more diverse list of characters... or at least a more diverse list of female characters.

I don't wanna make this a pissing match over how over-or-under-represented male or female LGBT characters are, but I feel like it's safe to say that the majority of the trend-setters for modern romances, especially in western animation, have been between women. Korra and Asami from Korra, Chloe and Max from Life is Strange, Marceline and Bubblegum in Adventure Time, (insert the relevant Steven Universe characters here, never watched it), and more recently, Adora and Catra in She-Ra and Luz in Owl House.

Compatively, while studies have shown that in general male LGBT characters get more appearances on a purely numerical level, in general they're more one-off characters there to pad a roster, or played more for comedy (see Josh Gad in the Beauty and the Beast remake or the gay guy in Avengers Endgame that was more notable for how hard China and Russia snapped him out of existance). The only big male-LGBT focused media I can think of from the last decade would be Yuri On Ice, Moonlight, IDW's Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye (Chromedome/Rewind best pairing fuck you Roberts for issue 16) Love Simon, and the anime adaptation of Banana Fish.

So it's no surprise that RWBY basically follows these ideas. It's big romance is (unless the writers are very stupid) going to be between Blake and Yang, their first out character was Ilia, Coco got sent to the Book Dimension where she confirmed "I use my sunglasses to perv on women without their knowledge" which uh... yeah you can definitely tell RWBY is written by men... and Volume 6 had Saph and Terra being a good example of an LGBT couple without any real drama. In the last three years alone, the show has drastically increased its lesbian and bisexual characters, alongside even including its first out trans character in May Marigold (albeit only revealed on Twitter). In general, these depictions of sexuality have been pretty OK. Would have liked it if Ilia wasn't immediately written out of the show after Volume 5 as it made her feel a bit more disposable than intended but whatever, subject for another day.

RWBY's male rep though is a bit spottier. There's the plant bois in Volume 5's premiere, we nearly had Pilot Boi until some last-minute revisions, and... Scarlet.

Why Scarlet's a bad launchpad for male LGBT rep

I don't like Scarlet or how his sexuality has been handled. Scarlet's homosexuality wasn't revealed in the show, or by the writers, or even in anything that's actually canon. He's confirmed gay in his sole of dialogue in a non-canon fan anthology, where the manga's Twitter team had to say that Miles suggested the idea and approved of it.

In short, Scarlet is Dumbledore'd, where his sexuality is revealed in out-of-show material and in a way that doesn't make it supremely obvious (Miles himself never commented to confirm this so this news was limited in how far it could spread. I'm genuinely curious how many people still don't know Scarlet's gay), and Scarlet himself is a nothing character who was written out of the show after Volume 3 and only reappeared in Before The Dawn, half a decade after he vanished. Compared to Ilia, as this came out after Ilia's entire arc in Volume 5, it's not a great starting point for mlm rep. But things would have been forgiven if it had gotten better, if the show did have more male LGBT characters introduced, even just on the Saphron/Terra level of just being around for a few episodes before leaving. Then it would have been a misfire but then we could all say "Things got better."

It... didn't. Which is why when Before the Dawn released in 2020, a full two years after Scarlet was first confirmed gay, while the franchise had more than doubled its wlw rep, Scarlet remained the one male character in the entire franchise who had a name and liked men. I remember vividly a fake leak for After The Fall which claimed Yatsuhashi would come out to Velvet and admit to having a crush on Fox. And I remember as well how many people were disappointed when it was said to be false, because it would have been nice for Yatsuhashi's character, especially after the fleshing out he gets in the CFVY books. If Yatsu had come out as gay in the books I'd like his writing enough to say he's a good case for rep, albeit with the caveat of "This is all in side material." But in reality, the leak was fake and Coco was confirmed gay instead.

Unfortunately, Before the Dawn proceeded to ruin Scarlet and made me at times feel genuinely uncomfortable as a queer man! Let's talk about that.

Before The Dawn is crap and Scarlet's writing is borderline offensive

I hate Before the Dawn. It's... bad. I read it while on a vacation and the only solace I had about the entire thing was that I'd bought an M&M chocolate bar. The bar was finished before the book. That bummed me out. It's not a very well written book, the prose is very Early 2010s YA Writer, none of the characters are memorable and there's various Fun Incidents like "NGDO using children as bait for Grimm," and "Neptune's hydrophpobia being used as a threat to torture him and the scene is played for comedy."

Theo was cool. I can't wait to see him as written by good writers, he should be a highlight of the Vacuo arc.

I had two hopes for Before the Dawn- "Don't be bad," and "Let Scarlet and Sage be well written." I'd liked how After The Fall had handled some of its characters (barring, y'know, Coco perving on women), especially Fox and Yatsu who were surprising in how much I liked them. I was looking forward to seeing Myers give Sage and Scarlet similar treatment- two relatively nothing characters meant he'd have a blank slate to write them however he wanted, he could give them unique personalties and if nothing else it could be cool to see their Semblances.

And then I read the book. (Sage fans I am so sorry for you, you got baited harder than Johnlock fans)

Scarlet's a giant dickhead in the book. It's his sole character trait and his inner monologues go on, and on, and on about how much he hates Sun, how he revels in mocking him. Most of his dialogue is sarcastic put-downs about Sun and how lame he is, and Sun is never properly allowed to defend himself or point out how going with Blake meant he was able to help save Haven Academy.

(hey remember when Sun in Volume 6 expressly says to Blake "I was a bad leader for ditching Neptune and the others, and I need to work on that" only for Before the Dawn to have him staunchly refuse to accept that he let the team down? I don't think Myers did but I do)

Scarlet being a ratty bitch would be one thing if, again, the franchise had done more rep. He'd still be a badly written character, but it wouldn't sting as much. But because Scarlet is still the only expressly confirmed male LGBT character in canon (the book teases that Nolan is gay but there's never confirmation either way beyond him smiling at Scarlet), it means that he has to represent that entire ideal. So when the one gay man in Remnant is being an asshole and a snide loser, that means that by extension, this is how the franchise sees gay men. And that fucking sucks! I wanted to come out of Before The Dawn singing its praises, I wanted to like the book, but it was a massive letdown, especially coming off of the other big 2020 RWBY controversy involving gay characters.

Yeah. We're doing this.

Clover and Fair Game: Technically not queerbaiting. BUT:

Let's pre-empt this: Clover wasn't queerbaiting, and Fair Game, while cool and I dig it, kudos to them for becoming one of the top 5 RWBY pairings on AO3 in one year that's fucking impressive (I say with mild malice as an IronQrow main), never had a chance. The writing never seriously boosted it barring one interaction which was flirty (them talking in the lobby of the Schnee Manor), and everything else was out of show boosting through the social media teams and CRWBY hyping it themselves by saying they liked it. If you wanna blame people, blame the animators who went off-script with stuff like Kim Newman adding the wink as a deliberate nod to the Volume 4 waitress, or the social media team deliberately using the same policies for Fair Game as they do for Renora and Bumblebee.

It wasn't Eddy's fault that things escalated, and he himself has said that in retrospect, he should have warned people that this never had a shot.

But I can't blame the Fair Game fanbase. Because Fair Game took off like wildfire. It came right as the fanbase began seriously asking for more male rep, Qrow's pretty hot, and the Clover wink came right after the Great IronQrow Reawakening of November 9th, 2019. The rocket was primed, and they rode it to the moon. Finally, to these people, after seven years RWBY seemed to be doing something with mlm rep in show. People started getting into RWBY just for Clover and Qrow's interactions. And if heroes were boring, Watts and Tyrian also had a fantastic dynamic that made Nuts and Volts one of the more popular villain ships overnight. Things seemed to be turning around! RWBY was remembering that gay men existed! You could hear the choir sing!

... And for those people, that meant that episode 12 hit like Truck-Kun.

People got pissed. People were horrified. And it didn't help that some members of CRWBY had said in the build-up that episode 12 would have some shots that made them nauseous (probably the Tyrian thumb thing) Out of context, it looked to these fans like CRWBY were basically laughing at their suffering, like they were saying "Lol, you thought you had a chance, get fucked, I hope your vomit burns on the way up."

Yeah, Fair Game was never gonna be canon, and I think some people ran too far with it. But in the wider context of how desperate RWBY's mlm community had gotten for basic crumbs of content? I can see why they'd run with what they had. The writers aren't at fault for what happened, but CRWBY didn't help matters. And that desperate mix of what felt like official backing from the crew, jokes about how cute the ship was, and the hope that finally the show would have onscreen rep? I can see why people ran with it.

So why is the show more lackluster in depicting mlm characters?

Money. Let's be honest, most RWBY fans don't care if the show doesn't have good male rep. I'm willing to bet some of you reading this won't care and just dismiss it as not being that big a problem. I don't think the writers care if the show doesn't have good mlm rep because they're not poaching that market. They're after what they see as a bigger, more lucrative market, which in this case is female LGBT rep. That gets people buying games, watching shows, raising awareness and boosting awareness of your property, which means you make more money. In short: Two women kissing hits more markets and generates more attention than two men.

Am I saying that Miles, Monty and Kerry deliberately sat down seven years ago and said "We're not doing gay men because it won't generate enough ad revenue and traffic to be worth the loss in revenue from homophobes?" No, that's silly. But I'm saying that it's less important for them, and it shows in the things that are small and add up. Things like Miles not verifying Scarlet's sexuality or retweeting the manga account's confirmation to spread the message (compared to how he enthusiastically confirmed Ilia being a lesbian himself during the Reddit AMA). It shows in how Pilot Boi would have been the first mlm character only to die in his second full episode until M&K were told about the Bury Your Gays trope. It shows in how Shannon believes that Ozma is "megaqueer" and Miles jokingly laughs it off instead of confirming it, leaving it to just be Shannon's headcanon. It shows in how actor shipping is compared between the mlm and wlw ships, where Arryn and Barbara's frequent pushes for Bumblebee are seen as "official confirmation that it's endgame" while Michael and Kerry saying they enjoy Seamonkeys is treated as "well it would be cute if they did it, but they're never going to."

I'm not gonna say anything like "CRWBY are gonna have Qrow end up with a woman like Robyn out of spite against the bad apples of the Fair Game crowd." I'm not gonna say that I don't think CRWBY cares about male representation in the series. It is, however, definitely a low priority for them, and because that leads to gaffes like Scarlet's writing in Before The Dawn being offensive in his depiction, it only makes the contrast between the sexes all the more painfully apparent.

I'm kinda tired of waiting for Rooster Teeth to show that they do care about mlm. I'm kinda tired of RWBY's male rep being written like it came from a 1993 time capsule where I have to enhance the screen to see a guy holding a sign of Sun's abs or be content with the only onscreen rep still being the plant bois in Volume 5. I'm tired of how often the crew dances around answering basic questions about sexuality (and age, and birthdays, and heights, and so on) by treating it as a spoiler question, as if just wanting to know what way people swing would ever be a spoiler. I'm just... tired of all this. When the best mlm rep in Rooster Teeth's history remains the two dads in Camp Camp who show up in a few episodes, that should say something really bad about your company and your biases (To say nothing of the recent Red vs Blue seasons and their blatant queerbaiting for Grif and Simmons and the whole can of worms that is Donut).

I'd like to not feel like I'm borderline unwelcome because I'd like to see two men in this show kiss, and that the sole thing that represents people like me in this show is some British twat who complains about sand.

I'd just like to feel like my sexuality isn't a joke to Rooster Teeth (or at the very least, be like Donut and have it be a funny one). But at this point after the last few years? I feel like a very uncomfortable punchline to them. And it just sucks.

#rwby #rwde #fair game #queerbaiting #rwby before the dawn #mlm #lgbt #rwby analysis #Rooster Teeth #clover ebi #scarlet david

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avatar-index · 4 years

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Statement 158103

Pokemon Trainer Hau is an Avatar of the Vast, marked by the Lonely.

Island trial? Ultra beasts? Team Skull? The Aether Foundation? Why are there so many damn problems here in Alola? Better yet, why should he care? What’s stopping him from trying to appreciate the little things in life other than the trials, battling, and all the disasters ready to strike at any given moment?

On the surface level, Hau appears to be quite nonchalant; pretty lax - just wanting to have some fun in life -, a trait I appreciate as someone who suffers from good ol’ Anxiety Prime(TM). He’s also pretty jumpy and can get excited on the get-go; asking of you, the player, to battle him as soon as the two of you make eye contact. God, can’t this kid stop being the embodiment of a Rockruff? I ALREADY WANT TO HUG HIM SO MUCH-

This isn’t to say that he is “stupid” in any way; he has his determination, as presented to us in his moments in the anime, and, though he sometimes gets swayed by his enthusiasm or a malasada on a stick, he never lets go of his desired endgame.

Dig a little deeper, however, you are sure to find a ton of stress ready to break out of the poor kid’s facade. For all his life, he has been praised as nothing more than the descendant of his grandfather, even by the likes of Kukui, who claims that he has the potential of becoming a fine Kahuna much like Hala. We don’t know much about Hau’s long-term goals, which would paint him as either spoilt (which is far from the truth) or is simply aimless in life- confused, deep down his chipper smile. The child is lost.

I don’t know about you, but, from what I can see, there are also signs of depression being spotted around here and there, especially in his dialogue within PokeMas, and that his “happy-go-lucky” attitude is his way of coping. He just wants everything to stay the same- nobody to weep around or leave him, and stay living their best and cheerful lives under the Alolan sun- but that’s not possible. Around 50% of the things he does, he does so in order to appease everyone’s expectations of him; Guzma even comments on how him partaking in the island trial is not completely his decision and that it wasn’t necessary, even if he was Hala’s grandkid.

Adding to the above, he also has a tendency to blame himself, highlighted by the time Lillie got kidnapped right before the games’ climax, so that checks “confident” off our list.

Speaking of the anime offhandedly mentioned earlier, Hau doesn’t take losing very lightly, as well; breaking down into tears after a fight that doesn’t end in his favor. This could be tied to the games, where it was said that Hala, when Hau was no older than a toddler, had burst into a screaming fit of rage and, in turn, terrified his grandson- so much that the child had been inconsolable for the longest time. Ever since, Hala had become “too soft” on Hau, but, as seen in the anime, the damage had already been done, and is, perhaps, the reason why Hau is afraid of losing; in a subconscious level, he doesn’t want to see the horror he had witnessed at a young age.

I also want to speak of his unseen father here, in light of his actions affecting Hau’s present mannerisms, the divergence of his anime and gameverse personas, and his Lonely marking. In the games, he was more or less of a deadbeat; leaving Alola behind in order to escape the life of being under his father’s shadow, unaware/uncaring that he had doomed his own son to this same fate in the process. While we don’t know much about Hau’s mom, the only mention we ever get of her from the kid himself is how much she had punished him in a “press-A-and-you’ll-miss-it” line of dialogue... Martin, we have a therapy partner for ya.

In the anime, it’s a little different; instead of getting up and leave Alola behind alone, he took Hau with him this time. While this kinda blurs the prerequisite of a harsh home life predisposing one to the Lonely, bear in mind that, during his time abroad, he had been separated from his home, loved ones, and all that he was familiar with, and probably found it a bit challenging to mingle with people possessing values and ideals so different from what he was raised with. Now, yes, this could be more linked to the Stranger, the feeling of “standing out a little too much from the crowd”, but who’s to say that the feeling of not belonging in a new environment has to be strictly bound to a single entity of fear?

#NATDEXERS DNI #I BEG YOU #TMA #The Magnus Archives #Pokemon #Pokemon SM #Hau #Rival Hau #Avatar of the Vast #TMA The Vast #The Vast #TMA The Lonely #The Lonely #A; The Vast #M; The Lonely #Longer statements #babeh....#Archivist Quanta

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xb-squaredx · 5 years

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Astral Chain Review: Popo’s Bizarre Adventure

Life can be funny sometimes; I started out 2019 hoping that I could play a certain PlatinumGames-developed Switch exclusive, and while I did eventually get such a thing, it wasn’t Bayonetta 3, but instead Astral Chain. The last time Nintendo and PlatinumGames worked together on a brand new IP we got The Wonderful 101, one of my favorite games of all time, so I was pretty pumped about Astral Chain from moment one. A game where you control Stands like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but you’re a hot anime cop! The kinda game you didn’t know you needed! Now that it’s finally here I can definitely say with confidence that I really love…like half of this game.

C.O.P.S: ANIME EDITION

The world of Astral Chain is in a bad way. Set in a future with Earth on the brink of collapse, most of the planet has been corrupted by the Astral Plain, an alternate dimension. With the remnants of humanity confined to a man-made island, an elite police force, Neuron, investigates the invisible cause of the world-ending corruption, Chimeras. Armed with enslaved Chimeras of their own, Legions, Neuron fights back against Chimera attacks, all the while searching for a way to save the world before its too late. Players take the role of a newcomer to Neuron, rising up the ranks alongside their twin sibling, mastering their Legion as various villainous factions seem intent on bringing about the end of the world.

I’ll be blunt here: Astral Chain’s story is passable, but didn’t do much for me. It’s not exactly bad, but predictable and doesn’t really take many risks. The game has an anime aesthetic, and in many cases seems more content with paying homage to various sci-fi anime than telling a unique story, so I’d say it’s quite by-the-numbers. That’s certainly fine, but what really shines in most Platinum titles are their larger-than-life characters, and I find them lacking here. Most of Neuron gets the shaft as time goes on, with only a scant few characters getting much development. Maybe I’m a tad spoiled by the likes of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but the fact that so little of the incidental dialogue is voiced also keeps most of the Neuron officers from sticking out to me. Some characters, like Hal, Marie and Kyle, DO stand out and are pretty great, but that’s about it.

Thankfully, everything else about the game’s presentation is stylish. From the UI to the enemy intro cutscenes, to the sound design and battle animations, Astral Chain is a delight for the eyes and ears. The futuristic setting allows from some sleek visuals, and the lighting and particle effects stand out among most Switch titles. I’d daresay that at times, Astral Chain is Platinum’s best looking game. This does come at the cost of performance though. The game is locked to mostly 30 FPS, though you’ll see some dips in some frantic moments, but not too often. Resolution can also dip in some instances too, the performance at its worst in bigger areas with tons of NPCs around, but most combat sections cut down on clutter and the performance remains solid when you need it, so it mostly works out. Music’s also pretty stellar, and completes the anime-aesthetics with legit opening and ending themes too. Looks can only do so much though, but Platinum is never one to get by purely on outward appearances.

CHAIN PAIN

Combat is where Platinum shines, and that’s definitely true for Astral Chain, though you do have to wait a lot longer than usual to get a good feel for what the game’s trying to do. The first few hours leave a pretty bad first-impression honestly, with lackluster combat options and clunky movement, but once the game shows it’s hand everything starts to really click. By the endgame you’re drowning in options, to the point where it would have been overwhelming if the game threw it all at you right at the start. Best to ease players into the game, but it’s risky to not start the game off on the right foot.

The defining feature of this game is controlling two characters at once, your officer and their Legion. At the start, your officer’s options are limited, and Legions mostly attack on their own, but over time you gain more Legions to swap between on-the-fly, as well as more manual actions you can perform alongside them. Sync Attacks, for one, require you to tap the Legion button at specific points after attacks, which will have the two of you team up for big damage. Your officer gains a shape shifting “X-Baton” weapon that can take a few different forms to vary up their own combat, but the five Legions you gain are your most important tools. Sword, Arrow, Arm, Beast and Axe; each Legion has their own uses in and out of combat and in many cases feel like extended nods to Platinum’s entire back-catalog. Sword can enter Raiden’s Blade Mode from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to cut enemies on a specific axis, or sever connections between specific doors or objects. Arrow can take out enemies from afar, or be brought in for an over-the-shoulder shooting experience right out of Vanquish. Arm is like an extended nod to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, pounding foes with a flurry of punches, as well as being able to pick up and throw objects. Beast is just Bladewolf from Revengeance, letting players ride atop it for mobility, and digging up items or following scents like a real dog. Lastly, Axe is a powerhouse that also grants players a powerful barrier that can protect them from various hazards. Certain enemies require specific Legions to take out, and with all five at the press of a button, things can get hectic, but in a good way and advanced players can do a lot with all of these tools.

Each Legion has their own skill tree that can grant them special moves or increase stats as well, and similar to the chip system from Nier: Automata, players can equip special passive skills onto each Legion, provided they have enough slots open for them. The chain connecting officer and Legion also comes into play too, being able to move the Legion freely and bind enemies up (bringing Wonderful 101’s Wonder Liner to mind), or send a charging enemy flying back with an Irish Whip straight out of wrestling. Legions can’t stay out forever though, their Sync Gauge slowly draining as they fight, huge chunks of it taken out if they get hit by attacks, but it recharges pretty quickly, especially if your officer stays aggressive. Compared to past Platinum titles, there’s a lot more emphasis on using items and having “builds” when going into fights too. Healing items alongside combat-oriented items like drones or shields are encouraged rather than penalized, as is the standard. There’s more I could go into, but this hopefully gives you an idea of how much is going on in this game’s combat. Comparing the first few hours to endgame is night and day, more so than almost any other Platinum title.

Generally, the combat is up to the Platinum standard, but unlike most games by the developer, there’s actually a LOT of gameplay that isn’t straight combat, making this Platinum’s most varied game yet…for better or for worse.

STYLISH BUSYWORK

Here’s where things get kinda tricky. On the one hand, it’s good for a game to have at least SOME variety, right? If a game is nonstop action, it risks becoming stale, so having some slower moments makes the bigger moments more impactful. It’s a question of pacing more than anything else, and unfortunately the pacing in Astral Chain leaves a LOT to be desired.

To say it as succinctly as I can, the levels in Astral Chain drag on far too long. A typical level in Platinum’s catalog is roughly 20 minutes, give or take a bit of backtracking or some story bits. In Astral Chain, a full level, or “File”, can take four to five hours by comparison, and when you lay it out like that, you realize there’s an awful lot of filler to sift through to get to the good stuff. You have investigation sequences that are laughably easy for one. Using discount Detective Vision from the Batman Arkham games, you “find” clues and then fill in the blanks to form a lead, but these sequences are impossible to fail. Solutions are highlighted and even if you come to the wrong conclusion, the game will just correct you and you’ll move on regardless. Then you have platforming sequences that are mostly fine, though hampered by being unable to use the camera most of the time (since the right stick can also manually control your Legion). At times, honest-to-God sidequests can be found that are usually not combat-focused, and we can throw in some awful motion-controlled minigames for good measure. On their own, these extra bits aren’t too bad, kinda boring in some respects but otherwise fine, however for someone who just wants to progress the story and get to the next fight, they become barriers you’re forced to contend with before you can get back to having fun.

Now, a lot of this stuff IS optional, but you’re heavily encouraged to do them all anyway. You get locked out of getting good end-of-File ranks if you avoid optional ranked missions, and you’re given rewards for all of this stuff anyway. They’re mostly cosmetic rewards, but the game still seems to expect you to engage with this “extra” content…to the point that it’s clearly not seen as extra but a part of the whole Astral Chain experience. If you stripped out the non-combat portions, that’s like 2/3s of the game gone and it feels kinda messed up to skip out on so much of it. Rather…maybe the game should have made a point of having this stuff be engaging to do in its own right.

MAKING THE GRADE

I want to stress that there’s a lot I liked about Astral Chain. There’s plenty of charm hidden throughout here, and the prospect of a Platinum game that strives to do MORE isn’t a bad one. I enjoyed having NPCs to talk to, larger areas to explore that weren’t just combat areas, and little touches like getting points for recycling or being unable to jaywalk were appreciated. One thing I never touched on was its ranking system, which seems more emblematic of the issues I had with the game. Rather than rewarding and ranking one’s own play, it awards high ranks more so for variety than anything else. It doesn’t matter how poorly you play (to a point), as long as you do a lot of different stuff it’ll all work out. Thus, the game threw a lot of stuff at the wall regardless of how hard it stuck, and as such there’s a number of great ideas mixed in with some really, really weird ones.

Astral Chain is in many ways an experimental game for Platinum. They seem to be trying to move away from niche action games and offer up more for the consumer, but in doing so I fear they might be diluting their games. I’ve been quite a bit more critical of this game than I expected to be, and in the end I’m more just bummed that I didn’t enjoy it more. This game is the directorial debut of Takahisa Taura, and I can practically feel the passion he had for this product; he likely loaded this game with a lot of things that he personally liked, and it’s clear everyone involved worked hard to deliver the best game they could. The results vary a bit, as we have crisp visuals and unique, deep combat mixed in with some plodding segments that seem thrown in for variety’s sake. Astral Chain is ambitious, but maybe this once Platinum bit off a bit more than they could chew. I’d also petition that this game is a victim of certain expectations of what I think a PlatinumGames title “should” be. It’s possible Taura felt pressured to put in aspects of Platinum’s past output and was afraid to go further and make this game truly something new. I’ll also wager that if Astral Chain is someone’s first Platinum game, they’ll be able to come in with a fresher perspective and might end up enjoying it more than a diehard fan like me. There’s a solid foundation here for any future titles though, and I think this game’s issues could be ironed out if given the chance. At its height, the combat really sells this game for me, and action fans will find a lot to love…but there’s a lot in here that might not scratch that particular itch. I wouldn’t quite call this game the weakest link in PlatinumGames’ chain at any rate, and I remain a fan of the company and their future output.

Shine on Platinum.

-B

#astralchain #Astral Chain #platinumgames #bayonetta #wonderful101 #nintendo switch #action girls #blue beetle #xb-squaredx

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constantlyirksome · 5 years

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Review: All Good Things Must Come to an Endgame. (major spoilers.)

Capping off phase three of the Marvel cinematic universe was always going to be a monumental task. It had to be a film that worked both as a sequel to Infinity War, while also tying together buckets of plot and development from over twenty movies over the last decade. The Russo brothers had to juggle actors contracts being up, coming up with a believable fix to The Snap, while subtly hinting at what might come next for phase four. For the most part they managed to create a thrilling, satisfying movie that had me cheering in my seats, but definitely had me thinking about certain (mostly inconsequential) details that didn’t feel quite right.

Review under the cut.

The Time Heist.

We knew that somehow, no matter what, the remaining heroes from Infinity war would find a way to get everyone back. It’d be a crap end to the franchise if they didn’t, and also confusing considering there are movies planned that depend on certain characters, you know… existing. Time travel was the prevailing theory for a lot of people, and it makes the most sense. Still, the way that idea was used, to go back to key times in MCU that were both infinity stone locations, and places were each character could grow and reflect on the past was beautiful. And it was entertaining as an audience member seeing characters that have grown so much over the years encounter younger, stupider versions of themselves (looking at you Starlord.) The heavy emphasis on the original avengers film in 2012 was important; as that was arguably the first movie that proved a shared cinematic universe could work. As the present day Scott, Tony, Steve and Bruce scurry around the 2012 battle of New York we get a look back at the original six heroes kicking ass, as well as a sneaky view into what happened after. The way they all just took the tesseract, scepter and time stone felt very easy but was enjoyable nonetheless. In fact, the collection of all the stones, barring the soul stone guarded by Red Skull were all collected incredibly easily, so the focus was more on nostalgia than a complicated heist plot.

(A highlight was definitely Tony perving on “America’s ass”.)

Not All Hero Arcs were Created Equal.

With the destruction of half all living things the movie was able to zero in on a smaller core cast, and luckily the first six Avengers, the people who have been on the journey the longest, it was a final chance to give them a thoughtful, meaningful farewell. With the addition of Rocket, Rhodey, Nebula and to a lesser extend Carol (more on that in a bit) the original cast were able to close out their storylines. Some of these were more successful, Hawkeye getting his family back, or Bruce finding a balance between beast and man were nice. The Hulk thing was strange and could be written off as a joke, it’s hard to take Bruce or the Hulk seriously as the weird mash-up they ended up as.

Some of the storylines ended, in my opinion, kind of sourly. As soon as Hawkeye and Black Widow rocked up to the soul stone planet, you knew one of them was doomed. Scarlett Johansson rose to the occasion in a big way, as she sometimes falls flat. First as the tired warrior trying to hold down the Avengers after the snap, which was a cool evolution to a character who used to be a loner, then as the sacrificial lamb. It was a truly heartbreaking thing to watch Clint and Nat try to save each other, a final ode to their relationship, which was one of the best in the MCU. When Clint returned to the present without her it felt heavy, so I was frustrated she didn’t get as great a send-off or the same emotional response that the other major death got.

Thor’s fate is already one of the most contentious outcomes on the internet. I hate that basically any development made during Thor Ragnarok has been undone, I wish that the Russo’s had been more faithful to the ideas Taika Waititi and Chris Hemsworth made. But I do believe his current state, as a drunk, overweight recluse, isn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. He did lose everything and blamed himself for The Snap, so to want to spiral, to break down and lose hope, isn’t beyond possibility. The weight gain could be seen as just a punch line, (making fun of people who gain weight isn’t funny or cool) but it’s also a conscious step away from “perfect man, perfect body angel pirate” thing. He still got to play around with Meek and Korg, which was great. I do not believe for a second he would just leave New Asgard and the people he fought so hard to join the Guardians. That’s dumb, but when an actor wants to put a character to rest concessions have to be made. The big issue will be explaining his absence if he’s not in Guardians 3. (He could and should replace Chris Pratt.)

Tony and Steve, Captain America and Iron Man, were always going to be the two characters with the grandest ending narratives. They have led and been the leaders of most movies. They got, in my opinion, very suitable and bittersweet endings. Cap has fought and fought, slowly inching away from the patriot of the 1940s, to see him go back and get the ending he was robbed of when he went into the ice was really nice. The rules of fictional time-travel, not just in Back to the Future, say he shouldn’t have been able to do this. To totally change his past things would change in the future but whatever. Would he leave all the friends he’s made the last decade, to revert back to a more difficult time? That’s for the message boards to debate. He got a happy ending, which is fitting.

Tony Stark has had one of the best character arcs in movie history. From “the merchant of death,” to a hero who was still an emotionally stunted lone wolf, to a team leader who has tried to sacrifice himself at least once in every movie he’s been in. The hero that started the entire franchise in a cave with a box of scraps. He sort of got his happy ending and then didn’t. He got to spend four years happy with a family which is what a lot of people wanted for him. But in the end, it was him that made the ultimate sacrifice. There’s the idea that to have a character suffer for so long to only die at the end isn’t entertainment. But it was fitting, it was emotional and it was beautiful. He had the strength to do his own snap, and then he got to be with his wife, his best friends and his adoptive son Peter one last time. (I thought I couldn’t cry harder than when Peter turned to dust, but the sequel hurt, where the two roles were reversed, way more.) Robert Downey Jr's work, his acting in not just those final scenes but in the whole movie was a master class. Hopefully, Peter and the rest of the world will be able to move on… But I doubt it.

Thanos in Infinity War said to Strange during their first battle “You never used your greatest weapon” which back then was the time stone, but this time it was Captain Marvel. The excuse that she was in space explained why she never helped the Avengers before pretty well but to use that again to explain how little she was in Endgame was a cop-out. The first ten minutes, where they fight Thanos the first time and she put him in a chokehold was so satisfying. The second time when she took the full brunt of a head-butt and not flinch was even cooler. Imagine if she’d had the opportunity to travel to 2012 or even to go collect the power stone. I understand that she has solo sequels pretty much assured, but she definitely should have been in Endgame so much more… and her haircut made her look like Hillary Clinton.

The next generation, Valkyrie, Wanda, Carol, Sam and Bucky all have bright futures, and I think it’ll be very exciting when Disney releases television shows starring some of them.

Fight!

Finally, I wanted to mention how perfect, how epic, how breathtaking that final fight was. Starting with the big three against a no gauntlet Thanos, that almost would have been enough. We got the fan service of Captain America holding you know what, Thor fighting with long hair again. But when Thanos’ army comes over the hill, and then Doctor Strange opes up a hundred portals I screamed. Why neither of these armies showed up in Infinity War is a mystery but it was beautiful all the same. And that sequence, all the female heroes of the last decade (Including Pepper in some dope blue armor) lining up and going ham on their enemies was my favorite part of the movie hands down.

Final Verdict

So the overall feeling as I left the theatre was lots of excitement, and that the journey that the movies and the audience had been following for so, so long had come to a pretty satisfying conclusion. Any problems audiences may have so far seem to be subjective, and could be debated, about Caps goodbye, Thor’s weight, or whatever else. Endgame did an amazing job of celebrating the old movies, and was full of amazing action and fight sequences and left the door open to the possibilities for more movies with some fan favorites.

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ncfan-1 · 5 years

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I’m about to head into the endgame of Blue Lions, and I thought I’d share some highlights from these five members of my endgame team.

- I did a lot more grinding on this playthrough than my Black Eagles playthrough, so Melusine’s stats are a lot higher this time around. Though she did get defense-screwed a bit in comparison to that playthrough, as it’s lower, this time.

- Mercedes gets a Hero’s relic and a holy weapon; she’s so blessed. Also, take a look at that Hero’s Relic. It’s the Rafail gem, and it negates all critical hits and weapon effectiveness. The Death Knight gave it to her at the end of her and Caspar’s paralogue, and if he had that thing the whole time, I no longer have any questions about why he was such a nightmare in Part I.

- Dorothea’s HP is that high without HP +5 from mastering Commoner, or a Seraph Robe. I’m so proud.

- Seteth has been an absolute beast; he crits at least twice in each map battle he’s a part of. I wouldn’t dream of not taking him into the endgame.

- And last, but not least, Flayn. Flayn. Behold. Look at those stats. Look at that spell list. I gave her the boots, so she’s a Gremory with movement of 6, and the Caduceus staff gives her Magic Range +1. She is gonna kick so much ass.

Fun fact: Flayn was actually in competition with Linhardt, Lysithea, and Marianne for the #12 spot in my endgame team. Linhardt and Marianne both have high mobility as Holy Knights, and they both have Physic, which is good. Lysithea’s spell list... Well, everyone knows about Lysithea’s spell list. But ultimately, Lysithea’s too frail, and I’ve already got three units on the team (Mercedes, Dorothea, and Sylvain, of all people) who can use Physic, whereas I only had one healer (Mercedes, again) who could use Fortify. And Flayn’s resistance is excellent on a map where I know she’s gonna need all the resistance she can get.

#Fire emblem Three Houses #Fe16

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rosecorcoranwrites · 5 years

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Editing Advice Part 3: Rewriting

Last time, we discussed how to address plot holes and keep world building internally consistent. Today, I will share my thoughts on rewriting, specifically on when you should rewrite, and when you should stop. I should mention, though, that parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series can and should be done simultaneously. That is, while you're rewriting, you can fix plot holes and issues with timing, and when you're looking at some inconsistencies in world building, you might find a section you need to rewrite. So the first answer to "when should I rewrite" is "when you have to fix the problems with continuity, world building, and plot".

But what about in general? First of all, what do I mean by rewriting? I'm not talking about tweaking a sentence here or there, or find/replacing a character's name, nor am I talking about changing the details of how a certain magical creature looks or wether the moon should be waxing or waning in one scene. I'm talking about full on changes to scenes, chapters, or entire books. This is hardcore stuff. Fun, but hardcore. First, let's talk about dealing with different drafts.

My Draft Philosophy

While some writers will tell you to completely scrap each old draft and literally rewrite each new one from scratch, I think this is utter madness. First of all—

and I realize I am only one of five writers ever to say this—your first draft is good! If it wasn't, then you shouldn't bother rewriting it and should move on to some other project. Is it perfect? Heck no! That's why we're shiny-ing it up. But it's good. There are good sentences, good turns of phrase, good exchanges and flow. What's more, there is heart; when you wrote it, you were feeling certain things that you won't be feeling if you completely rewrite it. Don't forget that, and don't throw it away.

Well, now that that's out of the way, what should you do with your first, or second, or third draft (did I mention I rewrote my third book four and a half times?). Save them each as a separate document! You never want to write over an old draft, because you might, even years down the line, think back on something that you can reuse from one of those old drafts. I'm speaking from experience here. Just as there are parts of your old drafts that you dislike, there will be parts of your new drafts that you end up not liking as much as what you had previously written. Computer memory is cheap, and writing time isn't. Save everything!

I'll even save each chapter of a to-be-rewritten/edited draft as its own document. This helps me break rewriting into chunks and, occasionally, rethink structure. Maybe the story would flow better if I moved this chapter before that one? Maybe I should break this long one into two short ones (separate documents will more easily show you the word count of each chapter). I'll even do this for particularly tricky scenes, saving only the scene into it's own document so I can really play around with it without fear of altering the rest of the chapter. When I'm done with the scene or chapter, I copy/paste it back into the larger draft of the whole book.

When to Rewrite

But how does one know when a scene or chapter should be rewritten, instead of changed a little. The simple answer is, when you don't love it. When you're reading through your book, happy as a clam, and suddenly there's a part that irks you, or feels off, or is kind of boring. That part needs to be rewritten rather than sent out into the world in a subpar fashion.

Obviously, you'll need to rewrite scenes that contain large continuity errors, internal inconsistencies, or plot holes, but there might be scenes that are perfectly serviceable that still don't sit right with you. They're not as good as they could be, and you know it. Rewriting, to me, is a very personal thing; you might even have beta readers who think your story is fine, but if you don't think it is, then it isn't.

Given the personal nature of the beast, it's hard to talk about it in generalities, so I'll instead deal with examples. I'll use my own writing, since I've done my share of rewrites for a number of different reasons.

Miscast Spells had it's major changes when I went from planning to drafting, so I didn't have too many rewrites, but I did significantly change the prologue; it was actually the last scene of that book that I wrote. Why did I rewrite it? Well, it was boring, so I spiffed it up, added more characterization, and actually showed Emmaline getting cursed during it (yes, that very important scene was not in the first draft!).

I would say I went through about three drafts of Outcast Shadows. The first one existed before I wrote Recast Light, and I didn't know how the trilogy ended. Sebastian had a bit of a different motivation for his actions ( he actually wanted to destroy Chiaroscuro! Yikes!), but when I started writing Recast Light and looking at Sebastian's character, this motive didn't ring true to who he was. This meant I had to do a major overhaul of his storyline, but it was obviously for the best. In the final draft, I rewrote particular scenes—when Sebastian first speaks to Millie in Chiaroscuro, when he explains about the threat facing the city, what happens between him and Alistair in the courtyard—in order to really emphasize character relationships and feelings. I wouldn't say the old versions of those scenes were bad, but they weren't what I wanted for the story overall. I didn't love them, and now I do.

And then there is Recast Light, the problem child. When I say I rewrote it four and a half times, I mean I basically changed half of what happens in the book, significantly, four times, and then tweaked the rest here and there (that's where the half comes from!). For example, in the first two drafts, there was an entire subplot involving Chiaroscuran anarchists; if you've read the book, you'll know that that is no longer a thing (though two of their members, Augustus and the Empress, remained in the story). Why did I cut it? It was random and added nothing to the story; I didn't love it.

Then there was Sebastian, my problem child within a problem child. In the first draft, he slept through most of the book (no, really!), and in the second draft, he was awake, but hardly interacted with the rest of the main characters (he was hanging out with the anarchists). It wasn't until the third draft that he finally joined everyone else like a proper main character. Why did I change it? A better question would be, why did I write it so poorly the first two times. It was so weird and not at all what I wanted that I couldn't let it stand.

Then, I overhauled the entire second half of the book between the third and fourth drafts (everything after chapter seven, for those of you who have read it). None of that was there before the final draft. I'm still shocked by this, and I'm the author! Why did I rewrite it? Several reasons. First, the way the main cast dealt with Alcea in the first drafts was totally deus ex machina. Gross! Second, none of it tied in enough with the first two books. It wasn't narratively satisfying, instead feeling thrown together. Sure, the story ended, but it wasn't how that story should have ended, given everything that came before it. I wanted to bring back elements from the other books so that the trilogy would feel like a cohesive whole.

As a side note, the above example is also a reason not to kill your darlings. I had always wanted a ballroom scene in my books, but could never find a place to put it that made sense. As I was writing my fourth draft, flailing around for a way to fix it, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Eh, why not?", figuring that a ball scene couldn't hurt what was already massively suffering. So I wrote the scene, and suddenly everything fell into place: how Sebastian could naturally meet-up with the rest of the cast, what Alcea's endgame would be, and from there, what the characters would need to do to deal with her. It all fit, and all because I had a silly little pet project of cramming a ballroom scene into the book. Don't kill your darlings; use them.

When to Stop

Hopefully those examples can give you a feel for how to go about choosing when to rewrite, but then there is the opposite question: when should you stop?

This is actually an important question, because some writers never stop, and if you never stop, you'll never publish. Worse, still, are certain writers (usually poets) who continue to rewrite works that they've published! I feel like this is a case of the perfect being an enemy of the good, in that it is almost impossible to actually create a perfect story (there are, in fact, only four in existence: Fullmetal Alchemist, Coco, Erased, and Ghost Trick). What you need to realize is that you aren't going to send a perfect story out into the world and should instead aim to send out the best version of your story.

Thus, if the answer to "When should I rewrite something?" is "When you don't love it" then the answer to "When should I stop rewriting something" is "When you love it". When you read what you've written, or rewritten, and it makes you smile, or get excited. When you no longer feel annoyance or boredom or dissatisfaction at reading that scene or chapter. Again, this is pretty personal, so there aren't any specifics I can give you. Just pay attention to how you feel about your own writing; if you really love it, you probably don't need to rewrite it any further (though you might need two tweak it for continuity and world building and such).

A Few Other Tips and Tricks

Everyone has their own style of taking on the rewriting process. Some people use Track Changes, or different colors of font and highlights. Some people print their documents and make changes on the paper itself with a red pen. I would say to find whatever works for you.

My process is: I usually read each chapter through, changing what I can and marking other things for later review, usually using Track Changes. I will leave myself notes, like, "Check for continuity with Chapter 5" or "Is this clear?". If it's something that irks me, but I'm not sure why, I'll usually highlight the whole section for later review and rewriting. I will then move on to the next chapter and do the same thing, then return to my notes after going through the rest of the book.

When it comes to how to rewrite a scene, I will usually outline my thoughts on paper. I might chart out two possible scenarios and see which one works best, or enumerate how changing one thing will effect the rest of the events in the story. I like writing on paper because it's quick, impermanent, and easily scrapped. There's also something about moving my hands, using different colored ink, and seeing my ideas written out spatially that helps me think. It's a way of seeing the story from a different perspective that I find helpful.

And that's it for rewriting. We've covered the main chunk of the editing process, the hard part, if you will. All that's left is copyediting. See you next time!

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eddycurrents · 6 years

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For the week of 20 August 2018

Quick Bits:

Aphrodite V #2 is pretty damn great. Jeff Spokes’ artwork is instantly compelling, drawing in the reader with darkness and interesting angles into this increasingly enthralling story of a machine cult from the future by him and Bryan Hill.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Avengers #6 concludes the first arc in widescreen fashion. Lots of action and big ideas from Jason Aaron with gorgeous art from Ed McGuinness, Paco Medina, Mark Morales, Juan Velasco, and David Curiel. Again I’m reminded of those early issue of JLA from Grant Morrison and Howard Porter. This has been fun so far and I’m intrigued by what else they have in store.

| Published by Marvel

Beasts of Burden: Wise Dogs & Eldritch Men #1 is a very welcome return, even without Jill Thompson for this go around. The artwork from Benjamin Dewey is beautiful as he reminds us that he’s one of the best nature artists in comics, and possible beyond. His animals are just stunning. The story from him and Evan Dorkin is also interesting, suggesting some arcane traps luring in the paranormal. Great stuff for all ages.

| Published by Dark Horse

Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack #12 concludes the series with an epic battle between the forces of heaven and hell as it teaches us the true meaning of friendship. It’s funnier when you actually read it. This has been an entertaining series from John Carpenter, Anthony Burch, Jorge Corona, Gabriel Cassata, and Ed Dukeshire, with this final chapter also delivering a nice farewell to the movie as well.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Black Hammer: Age of Doom #4 has some very interesting revelations that ultimately only lead to more questions than answers. What’s going on isn’t nearly as cut and dried as we were led to believe last issue and the mystery has just deepened. Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston, Dave Stewart, and Todd Klein have managed to elevate this story higher again.

| Published by Dark Horse

Black Panther #3 finally parcels out a tidbit of what might actually be going on with the series and the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, just in time for a surprise attack and more action. Thankfully, the art from Daniel Acuña is still overwhelmingly gorgeous.

| Published by Marvel

Britannia: Lost Eagles of Rome #2 is even better than the first issue. The mystery deepens as Antonius and Achillia reach Egypt and find incongruities they don’t expect within this province of the Roman Empire. The artwork from Robert Gill (with colours from José Villarrubia) is probably among the best I’ve seen from him, really bringing some very strong work here with backgrounds, vehicles, and character designs that are particularly impressive.

| Published by Valiant

Cold Spots #1 is the start to another horror series from Cullen Bunn, this time accompanied by Mark Torres with the artwork, and as per many of Bunn’s previous tales, this is a great start. There’s a genuinely creepy atmosphere from Torres’ art and the plot of a missing daughter and her child, amidst the spooky maybe-ghosts, is a good one.

| Published by Image

Daredevil #607 gets into how there can possibly be a Mike Murdock running around New York and it’s an interesting and possibly hazardous diversion. Gorgeous art from Phil Noto.

| Published by Marvel

Die!Die!Die! #2 is more entertaining over-the-top humorous action that feels like it’s channelling Garth Ennis. Great art from Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Hunt for Wolverine: Mystery in Madripoor #4 is probably the most succinct in sticking to its plot without real deviation of all of these minis. Basically sticking to the thread of these X-women tackling the Femme Fatales. It’s been a relatively decent story from Jim Zub, Thony Silas, and Felipe Sobreiro, even if the art’s been a little uneven. There’s a really nice sequence of Psylocke finding herself again in this issue, though, from Leonard Kirk and Andrew Crossley that has interesting implications going forward.

| Published by Marvel

Jughead: The Hunger #8 is a great jumping-on point for new readers, offering a bit of a history lesson and summary reinterpretation of the events of the overarching plot of the series to date. Great work from Frank Tieri, Pat & Tim Kennedy, Joe Eisma, Bob Smith, Ryan Jampole, Matt Herms, Andre Szymanowicz, and Jack Morelli.

| Published by Archie Comics / Archie’s Madhouse Presents

The Life of Captain Marvel #2 continues what is shaping up to be possibly one of the defining and quintessential Carol Danvers stories. I love what Margaret Stohl is doing in bringing out the backstory and interpersonal dynamics of Carol’s family. The art from Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Fonteriz, and Marcio Menyz in the present day and Marguerite Sauvage’s flashbacks is wonderful.

| Published by Marvel

Mr. & Mrs. X #2 continues this fun ride, tossing in Deadpool and more of the lesser used intergalactic X-characters. The dialogue from Kelly Thompson is hilarious and the art from Oscar Bazaldua and Frank D’Armata is great.

| Published by Marvel

Old Man Logan #46 begins another arc tying up loose ends before the endgame of Dead Man Logan kicks off. Wrapping reconnecting with Alpha Flight around a horror story evoking shades of The Thing and Slither results in a wonderful story perfectly fitting Damian Couciero’s artwork.

| Published by Marvel

The Punisher #1 is both a continuation of Matthew Rosenberg’s stories and ideas from the last volume of the series and a kind of back-to-basics approach to Frank Castle. Basically, he’s lost the War Machine suit, but he’s still taking on the world-spanning super-villains. It’s pretty epic and this is great jumping-on point. The dark humour is perfect, reminding me of Garth Ennis’ work with Castle, and seriously this is probably the best art that Szymon Kudranski has ever done. Along with Antonio Fabela’s colours, it’s like he was born to draw The Punisher.

| Published by Marvel

Royal City #14 is an introspective end of saying farewell to the past and accepting change to move forward. This has been an interesting series from Jeff Lemire, focusing on his most often used theme of family, and it’s been a good exploration of their different dynamics.

| Published by Image

The Sentry #3 is pretty dark, telling the flipside of the first two issues from Billy Turner’s perspective as he goes about stealing Sentry’s identity. This is almost at Kid Miracleman levels of demented. Jeff Lemire is playing with some interesting ideas here, beautifully brought to life by Kim Jacinto, Joshua Cassara, and Rain Beredo.

| Published by Marvel

Shadowman #6 has some truly beautiful artwork from Renato Guedes, as this arc of Jack falling through time visiting the different holders of the shadow loa takes an interesting turn in ancient history.

| Published by Valiant

Shanghai Red #3 is probably the best issue to date, as Molly reunites with Katie, recriminations are hashed out, and we get a bit of a tour of Portland. Christopher Sebela, Joshua Hixson, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou have tapped into something unique here, and this tale of revenge and some of the lesser told side of American history is incredibly compelling.

| Published by Image

TMNT #85 brings Leatherhead back into the fold, with very interesting and potentially dangerous ramifications following the war between the Utroms and Triceratons. Brahm Revel’s clothes-peg take on the Turtles is an interesting visual choice.

| Published by IDW

The Thrilling Adventure Hour #2 I find better than the first issue. The humour hits home a bit more for me and the leads of Sadie and Frank don’t seem nearly as insufferable as the first issue. The art, though, from MJ Erickson and Brittany Peer is just as good as the first. Entertaining stuff.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Venom #5 is another great issue. The mythology-building in this series is just incredible, growing Venom and his world into so much more. Donny Cates, Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, Frank Martin, and Clayton Cowles are creating magic.

| Published by Marvel

West Coast Avengers #1 is a great debut, filled with action and humour, as this highly dysfunctional team comes together. It’s nice to see Kelly Thompson doing more Hawkeye and Hawkguy, and the collection of characters coming together to make up the team are bizarre and fitting, carrying on a few of the themes and plot developments of the previous Hawkeye and America series. Though you needn’t have read any of that before you pick this up. Making it nigh unmissable is the gorgeous art from Stefano Caselli and Triona Farrell. This is fun.

| Published by Marvel

Witchblade #7 returns for its second arc, continuing the extremely high level of quality that Caitlin Kittredge, Roberta Ingranata, Bryan Valenza, and Troy Peteri set for themselves.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

X-Men Red #7 advances us a bit further as the X-Men attempt to uncover evidence of Cassandra Nova’s influence on the world and thwart her attack on Atlantis. Tom Taylor has definitely been taking a slow approach to unfurling this story, but it has allowed for the beautiful art from originally Mahmud Asrar and now Carmen Carnero & Rain Beredo time to breathe.

| Published by Marvel

Other Highlights: Amazing Spider-Man #4, Avengers: Wakanda Forever #1, Barbarella #9, Bedtime Games #3, Betty & Veronica: Vixens #9, Curse Words Summer Swimsuit Special #1, Days of Hate #7, DuckTales #11, Gasolina #11, Hack/Slash: Resurrection #10, Hit-Girl #7, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Coronation #6, Lumberjanes #53, Mammon, Mickey Spillane’s Mike #3, Night’s Dominion - Season Three #2, Old Man Hawkeye #8, Quantum & Woody! #9, Red Sonja/Tarzan #4, Redneck #14, Stairway - Volume 1, Star Wars: Darth Vader #20, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra #23, Sullivan’s Sluggers, TMNT: Bebop & Rocksteady Hit the Road #4, Wasted Space #4

Recommended Collections: Avengers: Back to Basics, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Cloak & Dagger: Predator & Pray, Deadly Class - Volume 7: Love Like Blood, Giant Days - Volume 8, Jimmy’s Bastards - Volume 2, Li’l Donnie - Volume 1: Executive Privilege, Lockjaw: Who’s a Good Boy, Postal - Volume 7, Sex Criminals - Volume 5: Five-fingered Discount

d. emerson eddy too wonders where all the cowboys have gone. Is it a nefarious plot from some shadowy organization? Or are they all just at the Calgary Stampede?

#This Week in Comics

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster

https://ift.tt/3jFtUYS

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

Since his creation by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in the mid-60s, Quicksilver has been a fairly important part of the Marvel Universe. The mutant speedster started as a member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, then became one of the earliest members of the Avengers. Over the decades, he’s married into the Inhumans, joined various X-teams, been a mentor to the Avengers Academy, and had his parentage retconned several times over.

He’s never been the most popular character in the Marvel Universe, but due to some legal complications, he became the focal point between two rival movie studios. It’s those complications that make his appearance in the fifth episode of WandaVision such a huge deal.

But let’s get to where this all started. As hard as it may be to believe now, b ack in the ‘90s, Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy. One way to get some money together was to sell the movie rights of its various characters to whatever studio was willing to pay. After all, shared cinematic universes weren’t really a thing back then.

Not every movie got made, of course. There were instances of studios sitting on rights and not doing anything for so long that they had to give them up. For instance, New Line Cinema had the rights to make a Venom movie, albeit one where they couldn’t reference Spider-Man directly in any way. Such an idea was worth a laugh in the ‘90s, but Sony actually pulled it off 20 years later, so go figure.

Studios would only have so much time to make a movie before the rights would revert to Marvel. By the time Marvel decided to get into the movie making business themselves and kick off the MCU concept, the field had settled. Sony had the Spider-Man franchise and had just finished Sam Raimi’s initial trilogy, preparing for a fourth movie that didn’t work out and would ultimately be replaced by a reboot. Universal had a complicated hold on the Hulk that lent itself to a unique partnership with Marvel. Fox was able to make the X-Men a successful franchise, but had less success with two attempts at the Fantastic Four franchise.

Essentially, the entire Marvel Universe had to be categorized into different properties. A lot of these were pretty easy. Doc Ock? He was clearly part of Spider-Man’s corner and could only be used in Spider-Man movies. Dr. Doom gets around as a villain in the comics and fights just about everyone, but at the end of the day, he’s grouped in with the Fantastic Four and could only be handled by Fox. But it wasn’t as simple for other characters.

One major complication was what to do with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Which corner of Marvel did they truly belong to? They were technically under the X-Men umbrella as the mutant children of Magneto. Quicksilver himself was a major member of X-Factor.

On the other hand, the two were also huge staples of the Avengers. They were Avengers longer than the likes of Hulk and Black Widow. Scarlet Witch was even the centerpiece in one of the most important Avengers storylines of the early 21st century.

20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios finally came up with an agreement. Both sides had the rights to the Maximoff twins, but the Avengers movies couldn’t describe the two as mutants or mention Magneto and the X-Men movies couldn’t bring up the Avengers or, uh… Yeah, this was pretty much on Marvel’s side to be creative.

Around the same time, each studio cast their Quicksilvers. Marvel had Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Fox had Evan Peters. Marvel cast Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch while Fox declined to actually use the character, likely due to how hard to write her powers could be at times. The most they did was include an unnamed little sister for Quicksilver, but director Bryan Singer insisted she wasn’t Wanda.

LAP 1 – CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Fittingly, with each studio having their own speedster, there was a race to be the first to get their Quicksilver on the big screen. It was really Fox’s race to lose, considering X-Men: Days of Future Past was the seventh X-Men movie and the most the character has ever gotten beforehand was an Easter egg namedrop on a computer monitor in X-Men 2. At least Days of Future Past was going to be released nearly a full year before Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Marvel still won the race, though. Weeks before the release of Days of Future Past, Captain America: The Winter Soldier hit theaters with a post-credits scene that revealed Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver and Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff to the world. And while they were indeed showing off their powers in those brief moments, it wasn’t because they were mutants, but rather had been altered by Baron Strucker and HYDRA using Loki’s scepter from Avengers.

LAP 2 – X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Fox got their chance later that year with X-Men: Days of Future Past. Overall, Evan Peters’ Quicksilver didn’t get too much screen time, but he was definitely considered a highlight by fans.

Referred to as Peter Maximoff in this continuity, the speedster is a little more laid back than other characters in the X-Men series. Not only does his power give him a feeling of casual superiority over others, but the unbelievability of it all makes him feel almost untouchable. His high-speed crimes would come off as more of a myth that nobody with authority would logically believe. He’s recruited by Xavier, Wolverine, and Beast to break Magneto out of the Pentagon, which he does for the sake of the challenge.

It’s there that he shows his stuff in a slow-motion segment set to Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” displaying seemingly endless charisma as he protects his allies from armed prison guards and spends his perpetual head start straight-up fucking with their would-be killers. It’s a fun moment in a film about dystopian genocide and Peters makes Quicksilver really likeable.

He doesn’t really get to do too much otherwise, though he does make a remark to Magneto hinting that the Master of Magnetism is his father, but that’s as far as it ever went.

LAP 3 – AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

2015 gave us Avengers: Age of Ultron, which opened with the Avengers crushing the remnants of HYDRA while Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch got away. Still, Quicksilver was able to scrap with the Avengers and start up a rivalry with Hawkeye while Scarlet Witch could screw with Iron Man’s mind and increase his paranoia to dangerous levels.

In the comics, Quicksilver has been best defined in an issue of X-Factor where he described his demeanor by comparing himself to someone stuck in line at the ATM, having to wait behind an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re doing and keeps taking forever. That’s his every waking moment and Taylor-Johnson certainly tapped into that with his performance.

WandaVision: How Monica Rambeau Fits in the MCU

By Delia Harrington

WandaVision: The Endgame Is In Sight

By Don Kaye

In terms of action, Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver wasn’t quite as fun as Peters’, but he had his moments. The closest thing he really had to the slow-mo rescue scenes was a short sequence that had him punch Captain America and foolishly attempt to pull Mjolnir out of the air. There was a feeling of playfulness underneath the character’s resentment at times, but he wasn’t quite the goofball of Peters’ version.

He also didn’t come off as ridiculously fast as the X-Men Quicksilver, even though that was probably for the better. Sometimes a speedster can be impossible to write for and believe in. Taylor-Johnson’s version was still impressively quick and a danger to any enemy, but he didn’t come off as unbeatable.

Unfortunately for this version of Quicksilver, his relationship with Scarlet Witch was arguably his undoing. The Quicksilver of the X-Men films wasn’t held down by his siblings and got to stand on his own, but MCU Quicksilver was treated as an extension of Wanda and her story. That made him expendable by the time the movie was ready to wrap up.

The Maximoff twins went from being Ultron’s lackies battling against the Avengers to betraying Ultron and joining the good guys. In the end, Quicksilver sacrificed himself to save Hawkeye, and despite his gift for speed, it was a believable death, and felt far weightier than the way such character exits had been approached in the past.

As far as the MCU was concerned, Pietro Maximoff’s story was over. Wanda, however, had a new life waiting for her as an Avenger.

LAP 4 – X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

In the X-Men universe, Quicksilver showed up again in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. It took place about a decade after Days of Future Past, reminding us that Peters’ Quicksilver is like thirty years older than Taylor-Johnson’s Quicksilver. Ah, these X-Men movies and their screwy timeline.

Quicksilver’s arc in this film ultimately showed the innate problems of the later X-Men movies. When Magneto joined the mad mutant Apocalypse as one of his Four Horsemen, Peter Maximoff finally realized that Magneto was his father and tried to find him. This led to another fantastic slow-motion scene where he single handedly evacuated the X-Men’s school during an explosion to the song “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics.

But Quicksilver’s larger arc in the movie remained unsatisfying, and he and Magneto never came to terms with the question of their relationship. Peter may have survived the final battle with Apocalypse, but he also was ignored in what should have been his big moment. Magneto and Quicksilver’s relationship was a card only Fox could have played and they fumbled it. It remains a missed opportunity for both characters.

Funny enough, around this time, Marvel Comics was going the opposite direction and placed a narrative wedge between the characters when Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver discovered that Magneto wasn’t actually their father after all. Though at the same time, it came across that Scarlet Witch may have altered reality to make that true. Regardless, it looked like Marvel was trying to go out of their way to sever Magneto from the twins’ existence.

FINAL LAP – DARK PHOENIX

Outside of a hilarious cameo in Deadpool 2, the Fox version of Quicksilver next appeared in 2019’s Dark Phoenix, the final film in the main X-Men franchise. Quicksilver only has about two and a half minutes of screentime. Halfway into the movie, he makes a slow-motion run at Jean Grey, loses his footing, tumbles, and is forgotten about for the rest of the picture. And his connection to Magneto? Never even mentioned.

Back in the MCU, Pietro remained just a memory, one more trauma stacked upon trauma in the life of Wanda Maximoff. There was already the death of her parents and the horrible experimentation. Soon after, there was the trauma of the innocent blood on her hands, her incarceration, and her role in the death of Vision. It wasn’t until the third episode of WandaVision where Wanda even talked about her long-lost brother.

Wanda could puppet Vision’s android corpse and surround herself with people forced to be friendly to her, but the horrible loss of her brother was something she couldn’t undo. Or it was something she refused to undo. While we still don’t get the reasoning behind what’s going on, the Evan Peters version of Quicksilver popped into Westview, NJ to see his long-lost sister, all while acting like Uncle Jesse from Full House.

We have four episodes to go, but we’re left wondering what this truly means. Will Peters’ Quicksilver outright be a replacement for the disgruntled counterpart who died at Ultron’s hand? Will the joke run its course and he’ll be sent away where he came from? Will this be the big moment that instigates the existence of mutants in the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe, giving credence to the overused internet joke of Wanda demanding, “No, MORE mutants!”?

Whatever it is, it’s a special moment. The Evan Peters Quicksilver not only finally has a super-powered relative who seems to give a damn about him, but as the first link to the X-Men in the MCU (big or small, we’ll see), he finally gets the spotlight he deserves.

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

Now let’s see how long until Deadpool finally shows his scarred face.

The post A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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jmsebastian · 6 years

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Dragon's Dogma, Open World Gaming, and a Fool’s Errand

Open world games just really aren’t for me. This is something I started to finally realize during my playthrough of Breath of the Wild. Tying the do-what-you-feel approach to a series I’ve enjoyed as much as Zelda seems like it would be the magic formula to allow me to finally understand the major appeal of these types of games. Sadly, that did not happen. It was an enjoyable enough experience thanks to its leanings on classic Zelda mechanics and some more modern action game tropes, but I just did not care very much about exploring the world at large. Unlike games such as Skyrim, which have huge worlds filled mostly with empty landscapes, at least Breath of the Wild had stuff in it. There were tons of people, lots of collecty things to pick up for obligatory crafting, horses that still can’t compare to Shadow of the Colossus’ Agro more than a decade later. I cared about none of it. Everything I did in that game was with the singular purpose of beating it so I could say I did. I should have learned my lesson.

Fast forward several months and I’d begun to itch for a new fantasy adventure. There are more types of these games than I could ever play, so there was some care taken to ensure that I chose wisely. Reviews, game play samples, wiki entries all helped lead me to choose that next game. That’s why Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen now takes up a substantial amount of space on my hard drive. On the surface, it was exactly what I was looking for. You can customize your character to a large degree. It has fantastic animations that feel responsive without being finicky or making the combat too easy. There’s still weight to your actions, so you can’t Bayonetta your way out of trouble or anything, but it is much faster than the From Software games of the world. So, perfect then. Fantasy hole filled.

Dragon’s Dogma is an open world done very poorly. The point of the game, at its most basic, is that you have to kill the dragon that stole your heart (which sounds suspiciously similar to the 1996 film Dragon Heart, but sorta kinda reversed). Having your heart stolen somehow makes you an Arisen rather than spelling your instant and everlasting death. Being Arisen means it is your destiny to kill the dragon to reclaim your heart. There’s no way around saying it, it’s a stupid premise. First, as an Arisen, life seems exactly the same save for everyone now calling you Arisen and the huge scar on your chest. With no practical difference in life pre Arisen and post, there’s simply no inherent reason to pursue getting your heart back. The game makes that your goal, so it’s your goal. Unfortunately, there are a lot of less clear cut goals in between.

For all its problems, at least the game’s framework is concrete. It’s easy to understand, and that’s a lot more important for games than is often acknowledged. Maybe some players don’t need the game to provide motivation through narrative, but if I’m going to spend a lot of time leveling up and fighting the same battles over and over again, it would be nice if it felt as though what I was working toward was going to pay off. Dragon’s Dogma made almost no effort in this regard.

At more than 30 hours in, I didn’t feel as if I’d learned anything that brought me more understanding of what was going on. In those 30 hours I fetched some herbs to heal local sick people, went to an outpost so that a Hydra could be triggered and I could lop one of its heads off, learned about the slave class called Pawns (whose lack of free will and incessant need to repeat themselves was profoundly disturbing to me), chased a boy around a village with no endgame, and murdered a fort full of goblins that were maybe somehow in cahoots with the dragon that stole my heart? At no point did I feel like I was doing anything of my own volition, but instead was just carrying out tasks handed to me by middle managers who didn’t want to bother putting in any effort for anything. If my character’s life was this unfulfilling, that makes the lives of the Pawns that served and died under me even more tragic.

The focal point of the numerous problems that arise comes from task management. Games like Dragon’s Dogma don’t know when you’re going to do any particular task, and it’s crammed with so many tasks and subtasks that there’s a need by the developer to bring how the game manages task out into the player’s face. That means I see little bubbles above the heads of people I need to talk to (as towns are filled with people who have no value to me as the player and simply exist to make the town feel like a town). It also means when I talk to them, a graphic appears and a sound effect plays alerting me that a task has begun. When I complete the task, my screen is splashed with experience points, money earned and more sound effects disrupt the natural ambiance of the scene to tell me I did a good thing. It’s a Pavlovian trick and robs me of any genuine sense of accomplishment.

This is not motivating, it’s demoralizing. The sheer number of things to do feels insurmountable. Since their relevance is impossible to know when undertaking a request, you sorta just go through them in order. They take you back and forth across miles of terrain, so even accomplishing something small takes a significant amount of time. Typically you’ll do something like seek out a witch in a forest. Part one of that quest is to find the witch. That means running around a shrouded wood until you uncover the witch’s house. The second part of that quest is telling the person who told you to do it that you did it. There’s a certain realism to this that, I can’t deny, has a certain charm. That charm quickly fades when you realize that you’re running back and forth along the same path, listening to the same information be mindlessly told to you, with the same enemies popping out to attack you “unexpectedly”.

This world is huge, yet the space between major points is bogged down with filler.

There is fast travel in the world of Dragon’s Dogma, thankfully. Unfortunately, you can’t really access it until you make it a good way into the game and can purchase the items that let you warp to certain places you’ve already been. It’s on you to investigate the items you can buy from vendors in order to discover that you can fast travel at all (there is an even worse fast traveling mechanism built into the original version of the game that’s not worth explaining for its lack of usefulness). Fast travel helps make things more bearable, but the fact that it needed to be included (and then improved for the PC release) highlights just how much of a wasteland the game takes place in.

The expansiveness of the world makes for another problem, which is that it’s very difficult to tell if you’re within a reasonable level to kill the enemies and beasts you stumble across. Even the weakest enemies are hard to kill alone. This is done to keep players from steamrolling their way through the game and to account for the possibility of three Pawns accompanying the player at any given time. For any enemy of reasonable strength, you’ll have to chip away at their health bar, focus on areas of weakness to gain an advantage, and manage the battlefield for extended periods of time. Isolated, this makes for interesting scenarios and is the most enjoyable part of the game, by far. It is taken to the extremes much of the time. The amount of damage you deal to enemies that are in your league and those way out of your league is difficult to determine even several minutes in sometimes. This means you can get yourself in unwinnable scenarios pretty quickly if you aren’t careful. God forbid you chip away at a Manticore for thirty minutes before realizing you’re not where you’re supposed to be.

Running into obstacles too difficult to tackle at the player’s current level can be a great way to guide them through the game’s intended route, but it’s at odds with a game that is supposed to allow you to do what you want when you want to do it. Most of the time, fights are really only difficult because you’re simply outnumbered or the mythical creature has a seemingly limitless supply of HP, and not because the enemies themselves are tricky to figure out or have complicated move sets. The flexibility of the combat allowed for through the Vocation system, the target points that exist for the larger enemies, and the adventuring party nature of combat all feel like elements meant for a game more like the original idea for Shadow of the Colossus than an Elder Scrolls style open world RPG and makes it feel as though progress is never really being made.

The dots represent the number of health bars this guy has.

There’s no easy cure for this sort of design. Dark Arisen has an additional component, Bitterblack Isle, that feels like the counterpoint to the main game. It offers a nice respite from the mind numbing openness by being more focused and self contained. You are taken there and you just have to dungeon crawl and kill everything. You are free to explore, but progression is more carefully planned and feels both genuine and rewarding. Sadly, Bitterblack Isle’s difficulty as a whole makes taking it on in the early game a pretty extreme exercise. I spent roughly half my time playing on Bitterblack and it was ruthlessly punishing for my characters. By level 30 I managed to find a bit more success, but getting to that level on Bitterblack alone would have meant cheesing the easiest of the island’s enemies hundreds of times. Given the choice of doing that or doing the main quest, I felt forced back into the main quest where I could get experience for far easier, if crushingly boring tasks. This pretty much killed any motivation I had to keep playing.

I probably had the most fun decking my character out in equipment more than anything else.

Maybe that’s my problem with open worlds. For all there is to do, games like Dragon’s Dogma seem to rely purely on the will of the player to push them forward, even when their designs seem to actively discourage moment to moment enjoyment. There’s something exploitative about the genre that just rubs me the wrong way. It’s not fair to make me be a messenger boy for an hour just so you can reveal some more details about a plot that barely holds together when it’s finally all presented. No reward in these games will make filler worth it. Games being big for the sake of being big live on the idea that value lies in the sheer amount of time that can be spent playing it, and take it to their most fallacious logical conclusions. I can only hope that in the future I’ll see the warning signs earlier.

#dragon's dogma #capcom #dark arisen #rpg

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