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barilleon · 1 year

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Three "P"s for Writing NPCs

I’ve been thinking a lot about NPCs, especially within the context of fifth edition (which is where most of my freelance time is spent). Much like a playwright, adventure writers have multiple audiences. The playwright is writing for a director, actors, and eventually the play’s audience. An adventure writer is writing for the game master and the table of players that the GM is running for.

We want a character to be memorable, but so much of that memorability for players won’t have anything to do with us. It’ll be in the voice the GM uses, potential quirks or mannerisms, or a situation created by the die.

For example, one of the most defining features of Knives Out’s Benoit Blanc is his voice, which is all in Daniel Craig’s portrayal. The original screenplay had something else in mind entirely.

Like a playwright, our job as adventure designers is to understand our NPCs as smaller parts of a larger machine. They serve a purpose and are grounded in the reality of the world we’ve built. But they also have to have some kind of pull to them that compels a GM to use them in the first place.

Now, an actor will spend hours upon hours reading through a script, highlighting lines and analyzing their beats and subtext. A GM won’t do that. They need to embody multiple characters in a session, so hey don’t have the time to do a bunch of dramaturgical work to understand every NPC in the adventure.

I say let the GM handle things such as mannerisms, personality, and quirks of speech. As writers, we should be giving our NPCs three things:

A Purpose

A Place

A Pull

Purpose

This is the most important, in my opinion. If an NPC doesn’t have a purpose in the story, they become frivolous, and they’ll likely slow down play. Here are some examples of game-related purposes:

Giving a quest

Teaching a skill

Offering aid

Acting as an obstacle

Showing your players what to do by example

You can also give your character more narrative-focused purposes as well, like:

Reinforcing a theme

Acting as a foil for a PC

Forcing your players to consider their actions

Illustrating consequences of a potential course of action

The best NPC I’ve ever written was S.A.M. for MCDM’s The Workshop Watches (which you can read for free!). S.A.M.’s purpose was very clear, considering it’s not just an NPC— it’s also the dungeon!

S.A.M. acted as the major obstacle for the party throughout the adventure. But on a narrative level, S.A.M.’s questioning of the party’s actions is meant to call the players to do the same. S.A.M.’s arc as a SMART Lab-turned-bipedal robot reinforces the theme of the adventure: how do we define personhood, and what rights are inalienable to those who have it?

Place

A “place” in the story is how the character is grounded in the world. A good character fits into the world you’ve created, because the circumstances of that world have allowed that character to exist in their current form. This connection to the world helps inform the NPC’s decision-making process.

D&D 5e often uses the “Personality, Ideal, Bond, and Flaw” system to give an NPC a place. When players pick up on one of these four traits, they can leverage them to get what they want from an NPC (thereby fulfilling the NPC’s purpose).

S.A.M.’s place in The Workshop Watches is as a curious observer. It does not understand itself or the outside world, and therefore it is bound to make a lot of well-meaning but deadly mistakes.

You can think of the “place” as the stakes this NPC has in the current story. Your NPC might have a son who is fighting in the current war. Maybe they’re a farmer who resents the culture of adventuring that has made their home too volatile to grow crops. Maybe they don’t care if it’s a noble king or a tyrant or the Devil Himself who sits upon the throne so long as they have enough food to take home to their dog.

Pull

“Pull” is something that makes the GM interested in digging into this character. I’ve found the more invested I am as a GM in the NPC I’m playing, the more my players respond to that character. Also, since GMs are players too, as writers we should make NPCs that they are interested in playing.

So how can we make an NPC that excites a GM? What is the “pull” that’s going to work for this?

I like to use the word pull because the thing that grabs me most about a character is tension. The character may want something that conflicts with their place or with their purpose. S.A.M.’s purpose is to stop the party from getting to the deepest part of the lab, but S.A.M. also wants to be helpful and make new friends (who just so happen to be interested in exploring the lab). S.A.M. wants to go out and see the world, but its place is in the lab. It doesn’t know how to exist in the world. It doesn’t understand basic concepts like, “people die when they are killed.”

One character I loved in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist was Fel’rekt Lafeen, a good-aligned drow gunslinger who serves in the mercenary group Bregan D’aerthe. In Fel’rekt’s story I saw a trans drow who had found his family in the mercenary group. He is fiercely loyal to his found family, but sometimes his job causes him to act against his alignment, something he resented. As a transmasc dude, the themes around Fel’rekt resonated with me, which is, I believe, why players at my table always end up taking a liking to Fel’rekt. I was pulled to his story, and it makes him seem more real in my eyes and my players’ eyes.

Using This as a GM

When I run a major NPC for my tables, I take note of that NPC’s Purpose, Place, and Pull and use them to build out the parts of the character that are my responsibility to build. These responsibilities include creating mannerisms, voice, and speech patterns and improvising their decision-making.

I run S.A.M. like a stereotypical robot: stilted speech with alien inflection, no contractions unless it learns them from the players, and a large vocabulary from the corpus of academic texts it must have been trained on.

One of the quirks I give Fel’rekt is mirroring (something I do with my guy friends). He is always trying to mirror the mannerisms of the other men of Bregan d’Aerthe. He uses expressions he learned from Jarlaxle and his friend Krebbyg. I always describe him doing the same or similar actions as any of the drow he happens to be with. One day when I run Dragon Heist I hope he’ll find a player character to bond and look up to enough to mirror.

Final Thoughts

There are a few other tricks we, as writers, can communicate our NPCs without entirely stepping on our GM’s toes or making them read a ton. Good character art is one of them. Character portraits are just as much a tool for GMs as words.

I try to write art briefs for character portraits that will communicate personality just as much as appearance, which was the case for Bard-Core Brawlers. The portraits for Trifling, the all-girl punk band, showcase the individual styles and personalities of the band members. And Leonardo Boia knocked it out of the park; these pieces help focus my portrayal of the characters just as much as the descriptions I wrote.

Another thing I’d like to see in NPC writing is barks! Like video game barks. Open your NPC’s section with a short quote, maybe an opinion they have on their place or something that demonstrates their pull. I really like how some of the abilities in MCDM’S Flee, Mortals! packets have names that could effectively be used as barks. Queen Bargnot’s abilities have names like “Get in here!” and “What are you waiting for?” This signals to the GM that the queen says these things when activating these abilities, which is delicious flavor baked into the stat block.

#ttrpgs #dnd5e #my blogs

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yugiohcardsdaily · 1 year

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SO I was trying to say something with this, but I never got it out all the way and I've lost my motivation to work on it. Still, I'm posting it in its incomplete state. Sorry.

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Related to my last God of War post, I think there's some important things to acknowledge in regards to the storytelling across the entire God of War franchise. It's like, what, 15-20 years old? Or at least around that age at this point. The way narratives in games were told in 2005 and the way they are told now are different. The way characters are allowed to express themselves has changed, too.

In 2005, it was more common and acceptable for a male protagonist to have his wife and/or child threatened and/or killed as motivation for his quest. Kratos's story is also largely inspired by that of Heracles, better known by his Roman name of Hercules. God-induced rage/bloodlust led him to murder his wife and child, which leads him to be indebted to a god in an attempt to atone for his sins, though for Kratos it was multiple gods and he was more driven by a need for vengeance than pure atonement.

In the main Greek Era God of War trilogy, Lysandra and Calliope are less characters and more plot devices, because that's all they needed to be. The story was about Kratos killing Ares, and then killing Zeus and any god or being that stood in the way of that. Typical hack-and-slash platformers with over-the-top gory kill animations, scantily clad ladies, and a raging, overpowered vengeful hero with a tragic backstory. That isn't to say there wasn't decent storytelling at certain parts. That part is at its strongest in III, in my opinion.

The other three games of Greek Era God of War (Ascension, Chains of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta) provide glimpses into a life before Kratos made that big mistake in a moment of weakness. I mentioned this in that post about Lysandra. Ascension shows us a couple of interactions with Kratos and his wife and daughter, and although these are illusions created/performed by the Furies, he isn't fully aware of this in the moments he's caught in them, so his behavior is genuine. He is an affectionate father and husband and expresses this mostly through touch and action more than words. It's worth noting the necklace and ring he uses to ground himself belonged to his daughter and wife, respectively, gifts he gave them if their descriptions as "spoils of war" are to be believed. These expressions of love are seen again in Chains of Olympus with the real Calliope, though words would've been helpful in explaining to Calliope why he had to betray his word and leave her when he just promised he'd never leave her again. If he stayed, Persephone would have gladly made the sacrifice meaningless as she used Atlas to destroy all of existence, so to save Calliope, he had to hurt her. The game even forces you to push her away, which is probably the only time (minus when he unknowingly killed her, of course) he ever physically harmed her in her entire existence. And in flashbacks, we see another act of love in that Kratos is the one who made Calliope's flute himself. That she has it in Elysium, in death, gives weight to how much it means to her, and I'd like to think she eventually understands her father's actions and forgives him for breaking his promise, perhaps by the time she reappears in III alongside her mother in Kratos's psyche to lead him to forgive himself.

Before I turn to Ghost of Sparta and focus on his relationship with his mother and brother, I want to point out when Ascension and Chains of Olympus came out, since I mentioned the original God of War of 2005 was kind of a product of its time. Prior to the Nordic Era games, Ascension was the last GoW game created, releasing in 2013. Chains of Olympus came out in 2008. I think it shows the writers were trying to prove, even only three years after the original game, that there was more to Kratos than we speculated, that he wasn't just a violent avenger with a typical tragic backstory, but a genuinely good father, and they tried to make his daughter more than a simple plot device driving his actions in life. This is extended in Ascension, but surprisingly less so despite how much later it came out. It might've been nice if Lysandra got a name-drop in either of these titles or the main trilogy, too, but I digress. (At least those manipulating him and writing him know he loves her enough that she'd be at important events in his life, like with the King of Sparta...)

Something that never changes about Kratos's character is how much his family means to him, which we see stems from having lost his in childhood in Ghost of Sparta. His brother Deimos was taken from him when he was too young and weak to really do anything to stop it. His mother disappears from his life and ends up in Atlantis in her old age somehow, but regardless of that, life for a Spartan boy wouldn't really allow him to remain with her, anyway.

[to be continued, maybe, someday...]

#not duel monsters #god of war #long post //

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l8rose · 1 year

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So I played through Hogwarts: Legacy and gotta say... most of the reviews are BS. The game is honestly closer to a 3/5 as all it’s got going for it is that it’s Hogwarts. It’s also a lie that the core gameplay will take you 30 hours, it’s closer to like 10-15 hours. I’ve avoided most of the stuff about this game prior to playing it because I was so excited for the concept of going through a wizarding school experience but the reality is a lot more disappointing.

Sure, the gameplay is kind of entertaining at times (it’s like Dragon Age: Inquisition meets Force Unleashed but without the lightning spells) but almost every side quest was the same. Find a person - suprise, they’re actually already dead! Take these things - cabbages usually - to this other place! Kill these bad guys in this place that looks like every other place. The controls are dumb - for example the lock picking mechanism is bad for thumbs and controllers. The game eventually boils down to a lot of repeated content. Some of the puzzles are pretty fun but there are quite a few that are glitched (I had to roam around one Merlin puzzle spamming Repairo because apparently the rocks were invisible or phased into the ground).

There are also only a few characters that that you can get attached to.

And I don’t mean that you can only interact with a few (because that is also true, Hogwarts has a freaking small population) but that most of them seem annoying or parodies of people. Tolerable at best. I had a hard time liking any of the characters except for maybe Ollivander and Logdok. It was also kind of weird that there were so few important wizarding families from the books. I get that they want to move away from the ones we know but fairly certain those families would be somewhat important in the wizarding world even in the 1800s.

I do think my favorite part was one-shotting things with the killing curse and having the surviving enemies cower was a nice touch. Was just a little odd that none of your professors or fellow students brought up the issue of you using an unforgivable spell or that you were transmuting enemies into exploding objects.

Obviously, there is no morality system or really, even a friendship system. It’s just follow along on their quests which don’t give you a common sense option for a response (like holy shit, I get writing characters being determined but even if you pick the “snarky” answer, the story still keeps on cruising along). You are forced into doing what the character wants, regardless of your “choice”. Heck, as far as I can see, the only difference in the endings is who is standing there (with some extra lines of dialogue).

The ending honestly reminded me of Mass Effect 3′s original endings, only I didn’t get to choose my favorite color this time.

#hogwarts legacy #hogwarts #gaming disappointment #kind of bland #gaming #so glad I didn't pay full price #more like hogwarts letdown #bad ending is a blink and you miss it #but otherwise the same #and then you win the house cup #yay #the house cup

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arenamains · 2 years

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This new Switch version is clearly just a port of those and while the almost 20-year-old graphics have been spruced up slightly the low-tech facial animations rob a lot of the dialogue sequences of their full impact. Surprisingly, KOTOR is in a similar position to the GTA Definitive Edition trilogy in that the only proper remaster it’s ever had is on smartphones.

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The level design is very simplistic, with little mechanical difference between the desert sands of Tatooine or the thick forests of Kashyyyk, but the game does its best with the technology of the time – even though it’s obvious that if it was made now it’d be a semi-open world title, not just a series of maze-like rooms pretending to be a whole planet.

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That means you’re free to wander around the various locations with your crew, talking to whoever you want, engaging in side quests, and making moral decision that tip you towards the light or dark side of the Force. Whether you’re new to KOTOR or one of the millions of fans who already know and love it, there’s a great adventure ahead of us.In most other respects the game operates similarly to Mass Effect, which was always something of a spiritual sequel, given that BioWare did not work on the KOTOR sequel. We’re still early in development, but we’re happy to finally have announced the remake and hear the PlayStation community’s thoughts on what you’re excited to see. So, what’s next? Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake is a tremendous undertaking, encompassing almost every aspect of the original game. We’re proud to be collaborating with Sony Interactive Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games to bring this dream to life.

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We’ve been working closely with Lucasfilm Games on classic Star Wars games for years, and that experience has instilled in our team a deep love and respect for these timeless titles, as well as a unique perspective on how to carry them forward into the modern age. And just who is Aspyr? You probably know us as the studio responsible for bringing multiple Star Wars games to modern systems, including Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Star Wars: Episode I – Racer, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and, yes, the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic! Their knowledge and passion for these characters, this story, and this world is unmatched. We’re rebuilding it from the ground up with the latest tech to match the groundbreaking standard of innovation established by the original, all while staying true to its revered story.Īspyr has assembled the very best talent from across the industry to create Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake – industry veterans who have worked on great RPGs, as well as some members of the original Knights of the Old Republic development team. With Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake, our hope is to give both series newcomers and long-term fans an experience that can live alongside the very best modern releases. And even as Star Wars travels to new horizons, we know the community is as eager as ever to return to this iconic era of storytelling and action. Why remake Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic? Well, nearly 20 years after it first debuted, the original KOTOR is still one of the most beloved games of all time. A diverse cast of characters to meet, multiple planets to discover, challenging battles to fight, and cinematic storytelling that responds to the choices you make - it’s no wonder that to this day KOTOR remains one of the most celebrated video games ever made. The original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was a truly groundbreaking achievement: an award-winning RPG of incredible scope, immersion, and ambition with an epic narrative to match. If you’re not familiar with “KOTOR” - as you’ll see fans lovingly refer to it - then you’re in for a treat.

#Star wars old republic

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shihalyfie · 2 years

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What’s one key recurring aspect of the series you’d like to see improved or changed?

As an example I would really prefer there to be a story where the royal knights don’t act as enemies towards the main group, because while they do make for strong opposition, I feel it’s gotten absurd how often they’re cast in that role, especially LordKnightmon and Dynasmon.

Unfortunately I feel like the Royal Knights' status as antagonists probably got sealed the moment they got associated with Yggdrasil (and I suppose Lucemon before it) on the grounds that if you're going to start having "false god" figures in Digimon, you probably don't want to start implying that Organized Religion is Unambiguously Good, Actually -- the only story as of late where they were all put in a benevolent position was the Xros Wars manga, which explicitly relegated Yggdrasil to background lore and allowed them to act independently.

To be honest, though, I think this is the problem with having large groups like the Royal Knights/Demon Lords/Olympus XIII; they're really cool to have in the null lore or as background characters, but they threaten to eat up the narrative when placed in an anime or game. As much as I love Cyber Sleuth, this is probably one of my biggest complaints about the original game; it's not that I disliked any of the Royal Knights characters on principle, but it was very conspicuous to have an effective fetch quest of gauging the interests of the entire group while you're probably more distracted by the emotional conflicts within the main character group (meaning Alphamon/Omegamon/LordKnightmon end up being the ones you pay attention to the most because they have personal connections to the main cast). On top of that, a group that big inevitably means likely conflict between each other, so X-Evolution, Savers, and Cyber Sleuth all end up being about that.

So I guess my answer is that, being someone who likes this franchise because it does something different every time, I'd like it to do things free from being tied to the recurring roles in the first place. I think the Royal Knight characters -- especially the ones that haven't had representation in anything other than that context (I mean, Magnamon and Dukemon's most famous roles are definitely not as Royal Knights) -- would be allowed to better shine if treated as individual characters rather than forced to only appear when the rest of the group does, and in ways more true to their individual profiles and lore. Or, to be honest, it's sometimes even refreshing to just have them break null lore for the hell of it. Sistermon Ciel definitely is not known for having road rage, but it's not like there's much to complain about that portrayal on my part!

#shiha's ask box #jollyshitshow #digimon multi series talk

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satoshi-mochida · 3 years

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Some thoughts on my last Gamefly rental, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.

*Though most people are familiar with DBZ, especially the three main Sagas in this game, given how often they’re played out in games, I’ll put a spoiler warning here just in case. Also, I didn’t try out the DLC stories, yet, so this will just be about the base PS4 game with it’s current updates. I may buy the game and try those out in the future. I also say a lot about the game.

The game spans from the Saiyan Saga to the end of the Buu Saga(not counting DLC). Pretty much every important scene is played through, though a few parts are skimmed over or skipped, like:

Goku traveling Snake Way, his brief fall into Hell, and training with King Kai(shown a bit and mentioned but not playable)

Piccolo using Hellzone Grenade against Android 17(you can have him learn the move and do it yourself, though).

Future Trunks’ battle with Cell where he found out the speed-loss disadvantages of Super Saiyan Third Grade(that moment isn’t shown or mentioned, though he does still fight Cell in that form)

Vegito still attacking Super Buu after being turned into candy(which means we don’t get to see him beating Super Buu up as a high-speed jawbreaker). Also, Goku and Vegeta freeing everyone trapped inside Super Buu happens offscreen.

And possibly a few smaller moments. They aren’t too important in the long run, though, plus some were probably for better pacing or something.

There was some added stuff, too:

Several times, you’ll be able to meet, and occasionally do sidequests for, several older Dragon Ball characters, like Nam, Eighter and Launch.

A new fight for Goku against Kid Buu to end the main story before he launches the Super Spirit Bomb at him.

There's a fairly small amount of playable characters(who can also be put in a party as Support Members):

Goku

Gohan

Vegeta

Piccolo

Future Trunks(Android/Cell Saga and Epilogue, only)

Gotenks(only in two battles against Super Buu)

Vegito(in one battle against Super Buu, which, considering how powerful Vegito is, is more of an epic beatdown than a fight)

And a few characters that are support only:

Krillin

Tien

Yamcha

Chiaotzu

Goten

Kid Trunks

Android 18

All characters, Main and Support Only, have a ‘Super Attack Skill Tree’ that you can use Z Orbs that you find/earn to give them new skills and attacks. What you can get increases based on the character’s level and story progress(example, you can’t get Super Saiyan 2 for Gohan until he unlocks it during the fight with Perfect Cell).

Throughout the game, you’ll collect ‘Soul Emblems’ to place onto several ‘Community Boards’ to increase various ingame bonuses, like more EXP or cooking benefits. You get Soul Emblems both from the main story and side quests. They can be leveled up with Gifts to increase the Community Level, giving more bonuses. This seems to be the best setup for all of the emblems that I found.

At campfires and at Goku’s House, you can make food from items/materials you have to give yourself a stat boost. And Chi-Chi can be asked to make the party Full Course Meals at her home, which also increase the Base Stats of whoever eats them.

A certain filler episode from the original series where Goku and Piccolo are forced to get a Driver's License also happens in this game(though unfortunately without the outfits they wore in said episode). After doing so, you unlock the ability to make cars and battle walkers from Bulma, as well as Time Attacks for both types of vehicles(which I didn’t do much of).

Like the first Budokai game, this one has story’s events shown in cutscenes, which the later ones just had them happen in dialogue to speed things along, probably. And they did a really good job of animated said scenes, matching the look and feel of the series VERY closely.

The flying also feels well done, and true to the series. Aside from flying normally, which is fairly slow, you can hit L3 to start flying faster, at the cost of your Ki slowly going down and not being able to sense Ki with R1. This is the best way to travel the the large maps. Goku and Gohan can also use the Flying Nimbus, though you can’t pick up items that you need to hit Circle while doing so. Also, ramming into weaker enemies while flying will defeat them instantly and give you EXP. It’s a bit hard to aim yourself at enemies correctly, sometimes, though.

Going underwater functions the same as flying, except with an air meter to keep an eye on. If it runs out, you get kicked back above where you entered the water as the only penalty. Take a peek down under whatever bodies of water you find; there’s always stuff to see and collect, depending on the map, especially on maps with oceans.

You can also dash on the ground by hitting L3, and unlike when flying, you can still sense Ki while doing so.

I feel like this game’s flying controls are about what it should feel like for a Superman game. Probably might need a few tweaks to fit more with that series, but this feels like a good base for that kind of game.

The game’s many maps are pretty large, with lots to see and explore, including towns, caves that you need to be a certain level to enter, materials to gather, fishing spots, and more. They include plenty of well known DBZ locations, insulting Kame House(and the ocean around it), West City and Capsule Corp., Korin’s Tower and Kami’s Lookout, and so on.

Floating around these maps are enemies you can fight. They grow in strength as you do/the story progresses. If you’re strong enough and are fast-flying when running into an enemy, you’ll defeat it and gain EXP right away.

Speaking of Korin’s Tower, you can eventually unlock the ability to grow Senzu Beans there, which fully heal you. Once they’re unlocked, they will gradually grow and can be collected from Korin, with a Senzu Bean icon appearing next to it on the World Map if there’s any available. He will hold up to 9 at once, so check back once in a while.

Fishing is pretty easy to do; just hit one of the face buttons(X, Triangle, Square and Circle) when the marker is in a marked area, then hot one again when the closing circle is within another marked circle(this might make more sense when you see it yourself). You’ll get items for cooking from fishing, and some sidequests need them, or just certain types of fish, to clear. An amusing detail when fishing is that Goku and Gohan, even when he’s a teenager, use a fake tail as a lure while Vegeta and Piccolo fish like normal people(I forgot to check and see what Future Trunks does, but probably the latter).

After clearing the Frieza Saga, you can collect the Dragon Balls on Earth during Intermissions. They give off a small orange slow when sensing for Ki, and you’ll hear a low humming sound when you’re close to one. You can get several different wishes from them, with three of them always being for Z Orbs, Zeni or Rare Material Items. Other wishes are reviving certain dead characters to fight them again, and can only be done once, unlike the three listed above. At first, you can only make 1 wish at a time, but as the game goes on, it gets upgraded to 2 then 3 wishes at once. After making a wish(s), you ‘ll need to wait 20 ingame minutes before the Dragon Balls can be found and used again. They seems to have a couple set locations on whatever map they end up on(two locations are west of Orange/Satan City, for example).

Speaking of Mr. Satan...I know that his actually Japanese stage name, but I always end up calling him Hercule due to hearing that for so many years(and just liking how that sounds better). Also, ‘Satan City’ just sounds really funny. XD

You probably won’t need to really grind in the base game; you should get enough experience from doing sidequests and story events to get by. Gohan especially; he ended up quite a few more levels than everyone else just from the story EXP alone, and his Unleashed Potential ‘form’ from Elder Kai makes him do quite a lot more damage. Also, gained experience is shared among all party members, even those not currently set to fight.

One of the sidequests you can do throughout the game is defeating ‘Villainous Enemies’, who are fairly strong, and are covered in a red aura. You should at least be at or around their level before fighting them, since you can’t run from fights in this game. It may be best to do them during Intermissions when you can select your party members, and bringing someone who can stun with Solar Flare(like Krillin), can be really helpful.

In the epilogue/postgame, in addition to being able to play as Future Trunks(talk to him outside of Capsule Corp.), you can also use his time machine to redo Boss fights, and do any sidequests you may have missed.

The game’s opening has the old opening for the show, ‘Cha-La-Head-Cha-La”, and this is the first time I really listened to it. It’s really good, and kind of reminds me of the opening to Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, too, for some reason.

There’s a few parts where there’s some nice attention to the series’ details:

At several story points when Saiyan characters are healed, like with Senzu Beans or the healing pod on Namek, they gain experience, while others, like Krillin, don’t get that bonus, which does make them, admittedly accurately, start lagging behind in strength.

If you use Ki Sense on Androids, and a certain researcher in Capsule Corp., you won’t see anything emitting from them.

If you have Piccolo and/or Android 18 in your party while eating a Full Course Meal from Chi-Chi, they won’t eat any of it. Saiyan characters(again, forgot to check Future Trunks) eat it ravenously(even Vegeta), while human party members eat normally.

Only Goku and Gohan can use the Flying Numbus.

These aren’t really important observations, but some events in the game made me think:

Did Piccolo destroying the Moon to stop Gohan’s Great Ape form have any effects on Earth? Or did nothing really happen?

How in the world did Supreme Kai and Babidi survive being so close to Majin Vegeta when he used Final Explosion while Piccolo and Krillin hightailed it out of there with Goten and Kid Trunks?

I noticed a possible(intentional) goof at the end. In the cutscene after beating Kid Buu and going back to Kami’s Lookout to reunite with everyone, Dende is a kid again for some reason. Apparently, both the original anime and manga made this goof too, so maybe it’s a nod to that? It is kind of jarring, though. XD

A couple technical issues I found were that sometimes when loading a map, and in some battles later on, the game would hang for a couple seconds, and one time it crashed while it was loading into an area after traveling to another. Thank goodness for autosave. Also, be careful using the stronger version of Goku’s Spirit Bomb attacks; it caused major lag for me a couple times.

This ended up being one of my favorite DBZ games that I’ve played, close runners up including

Budokai 3

Budokai Tenkaichi 2(mainly for just how many characters that one has, including most of the movies from around that time, outmatched by Budokai Tenkaichi 3, which I didn’t play)

Legacy of Goku 2(I didn’t get the chance to play Buu’s Fury back then)

Next game being sent is: Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel

#Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot #Dragon Ball Z #Thoughts on my rentals

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scoutception · 3 years

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Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation review

The original Dragon Quest was an extremely important and influential game that built the foundations to the Japanese role playing game genre, but was an extremely basic game that would end up outclassed by nearly any other RPG on the NES released afterwards that wasn’t completely incompetent, and while Dragon Quest II improved upon the foundation of the original, namely in terms of party progression, it was also a rushed, unbalanced, overly difficult and overall tedious experience. Despite its importance, Dragon Quest’s third installment would have to be a significant step up, and as luck would have it, it was, becoming another of the most legendary and important RPGs ever made, and firmly cementing Dragon Quest as a series that would stay around even to the present day, and how exactly this came to be is what we’ll be looking at today. The version I played was the SNES remake with a fan made English patch, so many of the names in the screenshots won’t match up with official translations. Other options are the Game Boy Color version, which was officially released in English, and even has a bit more exclusive content, namely a very time consuming sidequest and a bonus dungeon related to it, the Ice Cave, and much more recently, the mobile/Switch version, which is also available in English, and is based on the SNES version, minus some of its exclusive content. Be warned, there will be spoilers.

Story: In an unnamed land, geographically similar to the real world, the archfiend Baramos has appeared and unleashed monsters to plague the land, with its people’s woes ranging from groups of bandits robbing kings and kidnapping citizens, to monsters impersonating rulers, to entire towns being wiped out by the forces of Baramos, who ultimately plots to destroy the entire world. A hero from Aliahan, Ortega, once set out on a journey to slay the archfiend, only to fall in combat with a dragon over a volcano. The child of Ortega is thus given the task of slaying Baramos themselves on their 16th birthday, with the help of a group of adventurers recruited from Aliahan’s tavern.

On the surface, it’s still not much more of a plot than the first two games, and for the most part, that is true, but it’s still much more interesting simply because there’s much more going on. Many of the towns you visit are facing some sort of crisis, or have some sort of interesting circumstances around them, such as the immigrant town that slowly changes and expands as the game goes on, making them a lot more fun to discover and explore compared to the towns of the first two games. Additionally, there’s the famous and influential late game twist that strikes after defeating Baramos, namely the reveal of Zoma, Baramos’ superior, and the second world map of Alefgard, the setting of the first Dragon Quest. These two twists are a large part of what made Dragon Quest III so impactful when it came out in 1988, and considering the game presents itself as unrelated to the previous games, and that by the time you defeat Baramos, you’ll have explored the entire world, barring two small locations at most, they hold up fairly well even today. There’s not much more for me to add besides this, however, so it’s time to hop straight to the gameplay.

Gameplay: Dragon Quest III uses the same turn based battle system as the first two games, and besides things like new types of spells and weapons, not too much is changed with the combat itself. The biggest change DQ3 provides is to the party progression system. Instead of the Hero being completely alone like the first game, or gaining two fixed party members in the second, DQ3 allows you to build a party from the ground up, besides the Hero, who’s always required to be in the party, and has the exclusive Hero class, with well balanced stats and unique and useful spells. The party size has been increased to four at a time, and party members can be created and exchanged in Aliahan, with a total of 8 different classes they can be: warriors, slow, yet well equipped physical fighters that act has tanks and heavy hitters, priests, who specialize in healing and support spells and, contrary to most healers in RPGs, actually have decent equipment and offensive options, mages, typical magic attackers with great offensive spells, yet bad physical stats, martial artists, physical attackers with great agility who forgo most equipment and have a higher chance of landing critical hits, merchants, average at best fighters who have supporting abilities like being able to earn extra gold after battle, gadabouts, odd and clownish characters with bad stats besides luck, and a fixed chance to simply goof off and take random actions instead of doing as commanded, thieves, a class exclusive to the remakes, with great agility and several abilities that mainly help with exploration, and sages, who learn nearly every spell in the game, and have a wide selection of equipment options, yet cannot be put in the party to start.

Compared to Final Fantasy I, which had a similar class based party system, and came out only a few months before DQ3, this system actually has quite a few advancements. Most importantly, you’re never simply stuck with the party you start with. As long as you can make it to Aliahan, you can simply make new characters and swap out whoever you’re currently using. Obviously, doing this too much isn’t very practical, considering new members will be behind on EXP, but not being able to permanently lock yourself into an awful party combination is a big improvement alone. Party members who have reached level 20 can also change classes at Alltrades Abbey, resetting their level to 1, and cutting their stats in half, but keeping any learned abilities, meaning, if you were so inclined, you could make a mage with the physical stats of a warrior, a warrior with the speed of a thief, and so forth. Changing classes like this is also the only way to get sages into the party, and even then, only with the use of a Words of Wisdom book, of which only two exist in the game. This lends itself to a lot of creativity, and while I personally didn’t use this mechanic much, only turning my priest into a sage, it’s still an impressive level of complexity for a game this old.

The class balance is also fairly interesting, as beyond the upsides and downsides already listed, classes also level at different rates. Warriors are expensive to equip and very slow, but level the fastest out of the main offensive classes. Martial artists are, by contrast, very cheap, but have the third slowest leveling rate in the game, and the little equipment they do have is usually pretty difficult to get, especially their weapons. Merchants are guaranteed to eventually fall behind if you try to use them, but actually have quite a bit of exclusive, and good, equipment early on, and level the fastest out of everyone. Gadabouts are liabilities, but level second fastest, and can become sages for free once they reach level 20, making them an investment class. Despite how several classes are very obviously inferior in the long run, you actually can get away with some pretty unorthodox party combinations, at least earlier on. Take my party of hero, warrior, martial artist, and priest: very strong physically, but expensive to upkeep, despite the martial artist somewhat balancing it out, and lacking in offensive magic. While switching the priest to sage later on mostly fixed the latter issue, I was still left wishing I had taken a mage with me from the start several times, and yet I was still more than capable of finishing the game. While the difficulty has definitely been lowered compared to the first two games, that’s still a sign of ultimately successful balancing.

For some more combat related changes and improvements, some stats have been added or changed since the first two games. Resilience now determines how many hit points a character can gain when leveling up along with being added to physical defense as before, Wisdom determines a character’s potential magic points, as well as how soon they learn spells, with spells being delayed or expedited by up to three levels, and Luck determines how well a character can avoid debuffs and status ailments inflicted by monsters. Related to these stats, exclusive to the remakes is the personality system, which affects the stat growth of each character, with each party member gaining a personality during character creation or, in the case of the Hero, through a personality quiz given at the start of the game. While this generally doesn’t matter too much for casual play, assuming you aren’t unlucky enough to get the worst personalities on all your party members, it still adds an even greater deal of complexity, either allowing you to try to compensate for a character’s weaknesses, or add to their strengths. You could, for example, give a female warrior the Amazon personality, raising their strength growth, but lowering their agility, wisdom, and luck growth, stats they don’t care about much anyway. You can also change personalities during the course of the game, either temporarily by equipping certain accessories, or permanently by reading certain books scattered throughout the game, which further adds to the depth. It’s a bit overwhelming, but still pretty interesting to see.

Beyond the combat and classes, there’s still a lot of nice things to see. The bag from DQ6, which can hold an unlimited amount of items which can be taken out at any time, has been added, allowing easy inventory management on the spot. The Zoom spell now lets you return to towns of your choice, rather than the last place you saved your game, and while not every town can be warped to, it’s still a massive time saver. There’s a day night cycle, which gradually changes when traversing the world map and affects the state of the towns, and while it isn’t super prominent, there are a few towns pretty heavily affected by it, and you actually get a few ways to manipulate it later on. There’s also a few minigames added, once again exclusive to the remakes, those being the monster arena, where you can bet on computer controlled monster fights for the chance of winning money, and Treasures n' Trapdoors, which is basically a giant board game one of your party members can traverse, with several very valuable prizes available, both from winning and from landing on certain spots on the boards. Despite being very luck based, it’s creative and rewarding enough that the boards are actually a lot of fun to play, and the Switch version lacking this minigame entirely is a big shame. The remakes also added the Cloudsgate Citadel, a bonus dungeon accessible after defeating the final boss, with a superboss, Xenlon, waiting at the end. Defeating Xenlon within a certain number of turns allows you one wish, such as opening up a new Treasures n’ Trapdoors track, or resurrecting a certain character, and thankfully, you don’t actually need to traverse the entire dungeon again to refight Xenlon for more wishes, as a Zoom location is added only a few rooms away.

The biggest improvement DQ3 makes, however, is just how well the game flows. There’s still grinding to be found, yes, but generally, the game goes by much faster. Characters move quickly, the difficulty, as mentioned before, is much lowered, so you don’t need to grind 5 levels just to walk a bit north, and there’s just a lot of variety that keeps the game fresh all the way through, instead of becoming monotonous like DQ2. The dungeons are also much more reasonably designed compared to the giant, nightmarish mazes of DQ2, and while you do get a ship like in DQ2, it comes quite a bit later, keeping the amount of areas now available to explore from being as overwhelming. The obligatory key item fetch quest, this time collecting the six orbs to hatch the phoenix Ramia, is also much more reasonable to complete, with the orbs either being in locations that NPCs directly talk about, or being acquired by fighting bosses. Speaking of which, there’s also many more bosses than in previous games, and while they’re not as frequent as in most RPGs, they still add a nice bit of variety, along with actually being pretty challenging, in a good way. Overall, Dragon Quest III’s gameplay actually holds up very well, and just makes it a lot of fun to play. Even considering this is a remake with a lot of quality of life improvements, I was amazed that this was originally an NES game.

Graphics: DQ3′s visuals are quite nice, as the SNES version was made with DQ6′s engine. To give a comparison, whereas the games using DQ5′s engine were about comparable to the visuals of Final Fantasy IV and V, the visuals here are comparable to Final Fantasy VI, and considering that’s one of the best looking SNES games out there, that’s a pretty big leap. The character designs come out quite well, and many locations have unique looks to them, both towns and dungeons, with the Pyramid and Baramos’ ghastly castle sticking out the most to me. The enemy battle sprites are still great, and are actually animated whenever they attack, adding a lot of life to them.

Sound: As with the rest of the series, DQ3′s soundtrack was done by Koichi Sugiyama, and it’s once again a great soundtrack, even better than the soundtracks of the previous games. From the peaceful Small Shrine, to the iconic Overture, to the peaceful Heavenly Flight, to the world map theme Adventure, to the great final boss theme, Hero’s Challenge, it’s a soundtrack that’s a joy to listen to. It also gives towns different themes for both day and night, which is one of my favorite things to see in games.

Conclusion: Overall, I would give Dragon Quest III a recommended. It’s aged very, very well, and genuinely feels like it could have been on the SNES to start. Between the much deeper, yet ultimately accessible mechanics that give quite a bit of replay value, to much better overall design gameplay, graphical, and sound design, it makes a fantastic entry point for the series, if you have a liking for classic RPGs. Till next time. -Scout

#dragon quest #snes #game review #long post #rpg #square enix #dragon quest iii #jrpg

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365days365movies · 3 years

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March 1, 2021: The Hobbit (1977) (Part 1)

In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.

When I was 9, my school let us read a very special book, originally meant for kids, but beloved by everyone. My folks and I went to Borders Books (FUCK ME, I miss Borders), and we got an illustrated copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I can’t find that book, but if I ever find it again, Imma buy it IMMEDIATELY, I tell you what. And...oh shit, it’s on Amazon for $12?

Well. I just made that purchase, I guess. But yeah, I loved that book when I was a kid, and this was during the same year that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy began, with Fellowship, of course. And I wouldn’t end up watching those until a few years later, but I loved those too when I saw them. And I’ve NEVER seen the abridged version, by the way, I’ve only ever seen the extended editions.

Although, I can’t call myself a hardcore fan. I’ve never read the Silmarillion, for example. Although, weirdly, I wanted it as a kid at some point, so I was almost there. But no, I ended up getting into comic books hardcore instead, so I can’t tell you the history of Tom Bombadil, but I can tell you about at least one of the fuckin’ 87 tieles that the Legion of Super-Heroes has been involved in. I’m not gonna like it though.

...Yes, I will, who am I kidding, I love the Legion. Anyway, I’ve still always been a fan of the franchise, and I was extremely excited when Jackson announced that he’d be doing an adaptation of The Hobbit! Seriously, I WAS FUCKING PUMPED, you have no idea. I re-read the book, I was super-excited...and then Harry Potter changed EVERYTHING. Kind of.

See, Harry Potter’s development as a two films made from one book seemed to kick off a trend. Breaking Dawn and Mockingjay are the two that immediately come to mind, as does this film. However, to be fair...that’s probably a coincidence. Yeah, this film was originally developed as two parts, WAY before Deathly Hallows got that treatment. And even then, Jackson and Del Toro had difficulty breaking it up into two parts, and three ended up being easier. Still...the change from two-to-three does feel a little connected to that trend.

Anyway, in celebration of that decision, I’m gonna break this review into three parts! Yes. Really. I want to see if it works. And so, let’s talk about the other most famous adaptation of this book by talking about its creators.

Yup. Rankin-Bass did 2D-animated cartoons, too! And this was one of their most famous ones, dating back to 1977. But wait! There’s more! This was followed by Ralph Bakshi’s version of Lord of the Rings by a different studio. You know, this one?

Yeah, that one. It was only based on the first two books, Fellowship and Towers. But it was technically unconnected to the Rankin-Bass version. Which is why it was REALLY weird when Rankin-Bass came out with an adaptation of the third book, Return of the King, right afterwards!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. Because both of Rankin-Bass’ specials were animated by a Japanese studio called Topcraft, who’d actually worked with Rankin-Bass for years. But then, they went bankrupt a few years later, and was bought by Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuki, and...Hayao Miyazaki. And it was renamed as...

So, this is a Hobbit adaptation produced by the Rudolph people and animated by the people who would eventually become Studio Ghibli. Well, uh...holy fucking shit. Let’s DO THIS BABY. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/3)

As we’re wont to do in this story, we head to Hobbiton in the Shire, where we meet Bilbo Baggins (Orson Bean). A simple Hobbit in a simple home, with a happy and simple life. But one day, he’s approached by Gandalf (John Huston), who seeks a burglar to help with the mission of a group of dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Hans Conried).

We also immediately start off with two songs from the original book, and I have to say that I like them a but better in the Jackson movies, but they’re still well performed here. Anyway, after dinner, the true goal of their quest is given. Beneath Lonely Mountain, the ancestral home of the Dwarves, there was a kingdom ruled by the King Under the Mountain, Thorin’s grandfather.

Through reading the lyrics of the song “Far over the Misty Mountains,” Thorin tells the tale of the takeover of the Dwarves’ great golden hoard by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo is tasked to help the Dwarves steal back the treasure stolen from them. And, while he’s extremely reluctant to be a part of all this, Gandalf basically forces him to, the pushy bastard. And Bilbo’s Greatest Adventure now lies ahead!

youtube

Speaking of, here’s the song “The Greatest Adventure”, sung by Glenn Yarborough, who is the living personification of vibrato. Fuckin’ seriously, this guy’s voice is ridiculous, but I love it so much. As the night passes underneath Glenn Yarborough’s hypnotically shaky voice, and uncertain, Bilbo stares out at the moon. Once it’s over, we’re on our way to the Misty Mountains.

Bilbo’s having a tough time with the long journey and rough weather, and it doesn’t get much better when they encounter a trio of trolls. They send out Bilbo to try and steal some mutton from them, but he’s IMMEDIATELY a failure, and also manages to tell the trolls that the dwarves are present. Nice one, Bilbo. The trolls catch all of the dwarves, although Bilbo manages to escape.

The trolls argue about how to cook the dwarves, but before they get to do anything, Gandalf shows up and summons the dawn, turning the trolls into stone and saving the dwarves. While they’re initially quite frustrated by Bilbo’s failure, he makes it up by discovering a horde of goods and weapons stolen by the trolls. This is also where Bilbo gets his classic weapon, Sting.

Gandalf, cheeky bastard that he is, suddenly reveals a map that he’s kept secret from Thorin, its rightful owner. Bilbo, a classic cartomaniac, is able to interpret the map. But there are also runes that they can’t quite read. And so, Gandalf brings them to his friend, Elrond (), who’s wearing a sick-ass glittery tiara that’s hovering off his head. How come Hugo Weaving didn’t have that?

Anyway, Elrond identifies the swords that Thorin and Gandalf grabbed as Orcrist, the Goblin-Cleaver and Glamdring, the Foe-Hammer, because FUCK YEAH, BABY, those are some fuckin’ NAMES! WHOOOOOO!

Anyway, he also points them in the direction of the mountain, and shows them hidden features to the map. They head through the mountains after this, and rest in a cave. Unfortunately, this cave is on Goblin territory, and the group (sans Gandalf, who’s disappeared to make out with Cate Blanchett or whatever) is quickly ambushed by a group of now-horned Goblins, who chant their song as they go “Down, Down, to Goblin-Town”. Which is a song that I love, unironically. It compels me to sing along.

The Goblins nearly kill them when they discover Orcrist in Thorin’s possession, but they’re saved by the sudden appearance of Gandalf with the glowing sword Glamdring. He kills the Great Goblin, and the group run out with the Goblins in hot pursuit. Well, except for Bilbo.

Yeah, Bilbo falls into a cavern below the mountain, and the dwarves think him gone for good. However, he’s miraculously safe on the ground, having landed in an underground aquifer, in which lives THE GREATEST CHARACTER IN THE MIDDLE-EARTH FRANCHISE FUCKIN’ AT ME I DARE YOU

And just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about the film version only, I’m talking about Gollum/Smeagol in general. Granted, I don’t want a film starring him or anything (coughCruellacoughcoughMaleficentcoughcoughClaricecoughcough), but I love this dissociative little dude so much. He’s one of my favorite fantasy characters in general, and is also maybe the best example of a sympathetic villain, in film at least.

OK, to be fair, I love Andy Serkis’ version of the character a LOT, like a LOT a lot, and it’s a great version of the character. OK, so what do I think of this version? He’s...interesting, actually. If I’m honest, I kinda like him. This is similar to how I always pictured Gollum when I was a kid.

I mean, listen to this description from the book, yeah?

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face...He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking.

I dunno, that does sound more like this version of Gollum to me, just saying. Anyway, while Gollum is off fishing in the water, Bilbo gets up on the shore, where he finds a little golden ring Not important, just a ring, definitely means nothing at all, NOTHING AT ALL, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

The hungry Gollum (Brother Theodore) happens upon Bilbo, precious, wonders if Bilbo would taste good, and is basically about to kill him for his sweet hobbit meat, before Bilbo takes out Sting. Now afraid, Gollum offers a game of riddles. The two make a deal: if Bilbo wins at a game of riddles, Gollum will show him the way out. But if Gollum wins, precious will eat him raaaaaaaw and wrrrrrrrrrriggling!

The riddles commence, in a super-fuckin’-classic moment, and also ends with maybe the most bullshit moment in all of fantasy lore. After clever riddles with answers involving eggs, wind, and time, Bilbo’s last riddle is “What’s in my pocket?” The fuck, Bilbo, that’s absolute BULLSHIT!

Not that it matters. Bilbo wins, but Gollum goes to find his ring to show it to Bilbo before he takes him away. Thing is, though, that’s what was in Bilbo’s pocket, which Gollum quickly figures out, my precious. He’s about to kill Bilbo to get back his birthday present, precious, but Bilbo discovers the secret trick of the ring: it turns the wearer invisible, AND THAT WILL NEVER BE A BAD THING EVER.

Gollum thinks that Bilbo’s escaped and runs after him toward the exit. This, of course, leads Bilbo towards the exit inadvertently, and he follows Gollum, then jumps over him to get back. To which Gollum screams the following:

Thief! Thief! Baggins! We hates it! Hates it! Forever!

I hear you, buddy. I hear you. Well, once Bilbo escapes, he reconvenes with the rest, and shares his adventure in the cave, but leaves out the ring. And Gandalf seems to know, based on his dialogue. And I checked, and he figured it out in the book and Jackson movie, too. And I gotta say...WHAT THE FUCK GANDALF

I mean...DUDE. CHECK UP on that shit. Do you wizard job, man! If you’d been like, “Dude...you didn’t find a magic ring that turns you invisible, ight, because we’re FUCKED if you did”, NONE OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS WOULD’VE HAPPENED, AND BOROMIR WOULD STILL BE ALIVE

Everybody talks about the fuckin’ eagles, but WHY DO I NEVER HEAR ANYONE MENTION THIS SHIT? Gandalf the Grey: Middle-Earth’s most irresponsible asshole, I swear...

This seems like a good place to pause, actually. See you in the next part!

#the hobbit #the hobbit 1977 #rankin-bass #orson bean #bilbo baggins #thorin oakenshield #john huston #gandalf #otto preminger #cyril ritchard #brother theodore #gollum #don messick #paul frees #glenn yarbrough #j.r.r. tolkien #rankin bass #hans conried

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silyabeeodess · 3 years

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FusionFall Headcanons: Individual Fusions

Since the fusions’ personalities tend to mimic that of their OG counterparts and following the idea that they’re also greatly under Fuse’s control, I don’t know if I’ll have enough to talk about if I were to address each of them separately in their own posts. Therefore, I’m going to bite the bullet and try to go through headcanons on every fusion below the cut. This list may be subject to change if I decide later to include characters that I haven’t discussed much before due to which versions of the game they were added into. Wish me luck...

Ace: Fusion Ace isn’t overly dangerous, so you’ll find him just doing a step up above the small time crime the real Ace used to do, namely the mass destruction of property. Since he actually makes a really convincing double of OG Ace though, he blends in well among Earthlings extremely easily so long as no one traces his fusion matter makeup. He’ll occasionally work with Fusion Father to gather information or run other stealth missions.

Albedo: Albedo’s fusion seems to share his narcissism. Ironically though, without even caring about how much he looks like Ben... he looks more like him than the real Albedo does. He’ll only take advantage of this when given the order to do so. He and Fusion Ben sometimes work together to trick Fusion Fighters by double-teaming on their opponents in combat situations or convincing soldiers that only one of them was assigned to an operation so the other can work freely in secret. He thinks his OG counterpart is a coward and has no respect for him or any other being that isn’t one of his allies.

Ben (and his aliens): Fusion Ben’s “Omnitrix” is honestly more for looks than anything, but that doesn’t mean that every single one of his alien transformations pack any less of a punch. He can often overwhelm his opponents by rapidly shapeshifting, and unfortunately looks close enough like the real Ben to trick Fusion Fighters into doing his bidding or fighting amongst themselves. Unlike OG Ben though, he shows little interest in being an actual leader, instead doing what he can to raise himself up and pinning any faults of his on those under his command. Alien versions split from this fusion share a similar mindset, but are often a lot weaker than Fusion Ben himself.

Billy: OG Billy might not be the brightest, but his fusion is downright savage. Unusually keeping crouched low to the ground, he tends to move on all fours in a simian fashion. He seems closer to the typical fusion monster than actual fusion, with just enough sentience to speak--occasionally--and lead a small pack of monsters at a time. Whether he’s naturally like this or it’s because Fuse is exuding too much of his own will over the fusion is unknown. Nevertheless, that savagery makes his a fierce threat in combat. He also seems to be attached to Dizzy World, likely due to a positive memory tied to the location passed onto him from the real Billy.

Bloo: Fusion Bloo is somehow even more selfish than the real Bloo can act... Outside of his fear and loyalty to Fuse, once his work is done, he does whatever he pleases that he knows he won’t get into trouble for. Strangely enough, he seems to be one of the few fusions who takes an interest in things like eating despite the fact that he has no need to, as he took OG Bloo’s juicebox in “Leaderbored.” His imaginary energy, meanwhile, gives him a jealous streak against OG Bloo: He wants the attention and companionship the other has, even if he doesn’t really understand the latter or why he wants either. Those feelings have boiled down to him wanting to destroy the real Bloo, but a reluctance to honestly fight those Earthlings he sees as “friends.”

Blossom: Unlike the real Blossom and Princess, their fusions actually get along because they’re both selfish and manipulative. The one point where they butt heads is that, because of these same reasons, they rival each other for Fuse’s praise. As of now, because of her powers, Fusion Blossom’s taken the lead. She’s far more cruel than her counterpart, not hesitating to use violence to assert her position as leader of the fusion PPG.

Bubbles: If the real Bubbles is sugar, Fusion Bubbles is poison. She’s the kind of being who would only admire a butterfly if she’s tearing its wings off or an ant under a microscope as she attempts to set it on fire. She fights regularly with her fusion sisters for dominance, but gets along well with the fusion Kankers since she can lord over them easily and shares their overly sadistic streak.

Buttercup: Next to Samurai Jack’s fusion, Fusion Buttercup was one of the first ones made. While too reactionary and quick-tempered to lead, she’s had a long while to get used to how Fuse leads and what he wants, making her one of his favorites. As such, she’s more hesitant when it comes to fighting than OG Buttercup if she thinks that something might please/benefit Fuse if kept intact/alive instead. This includes vital enemies wanted for their information or skill like Dexter.

Cheese: Feelings toward this fusion are... conflicting, to say the least... OG Cheese has caused so much trouble for the Fusion Fighters that a lot of soldiers see a fusion of him as a means of forcing Fuse himself to suffer what they’ve had to deal with--potentially ruining his plans as their Cheese has for them. Sometimes, this happens: Sometimes, it doesn’t. It’s still better to take him down when possible. Fuse hates this fusion, but has also discovered that it wields a surprising amount of power. In the mission “Assorted Cheeses,” this fusion showed that it could split apart into smaller monsters and reform itself similar to Echo Echo’s fusion. How it has this ability remains a mystery, but it’s nonetheless useful to the tyrant.

Coco: Unfortunately for Fuse, making this fusion did next to nothing to help him learn more about or capture the real Coco. Even worse for him, Fusion Coco has a habit of helping his enemies instead. Since she does this through her eggs, he can’t tell them apart from the ones OG Coco drops everywhere. Often, the Fusion Fighters can’t either, so her secret is safe. Her mind is greatly unstable, her desire to do good coming in bursts caused by whatever may trigger them in the moment. Usually, this is if she sees someone in need/danger similarly to how the real Coco’s creator had been--which she subconsciously remembers. The rest of the time, she’s extremely aggressive to her enemies and Fuse makes sure to keep her on a short leash.

Coop: Fusion Coop was created in hopes of him finding a way to finally take over Megas. However, while that’s a work in-progress, his inventiveness has equally been proven useful to Fuse’s forces. He’s a bit of a sloth if he’s not interested in the assignment, but a good threat will jar him back in line. He often serves under the other scientist Fusions like Dexter’s, Mandark’s, and Utonium’s rather than work completely independently. He’s also good at breaking and entering.

Courage: Fusion Courage is probably the most unlike his OG Counterpart; bigger, badder, and always willing to put up a fight. The main thing they share is their skill with computers. According to “Critical Mission (Part 2 of 2),” Fuse put him in charge of one of his main communication hubs as a guard for the Fusion Uplink device. His bite is far worse than his bark, bringing with it an intense fusion matter infection.

Dee Dee: Fusion Dee Dee doesn’t have much to offer Fuse beyond her original purpose, but that purpose is extremely important to him when it comes to the war effort. As of now, she’s still the most useful to him in finding a way to best Dexter and Mandark, since they’re responsible for creating nanos and a good chunk of the weaponry used against him. However, she hasn’t been very successful so far, failing to manipulate Mandark or break into Dexter’s old lab due to the player’s actions. Her greatest strength is her agility, which allows her to slip in and out of trouble when it arrives. If she ever succeeds in serving her purpose, Fuse will likely get rid of her. The more aware part of her self is slow to act the more this becomes clear until his will takes over yet again, and she wants to prove that she can be useful to him in other ways.

Demongo: The power to rob and enslave souls isn’t anything that Fuse would snuff at. With that ability, not only can he copy the strengths of the planet’s strongest fighters through the creation of fusions, he can actually force those fighters to submit to his own will! This, combined with Fusion Demongo possessing both a knack for strategy and love for destruction, made the being an instant favorite of the intergalactic tyrant’s. As such, he’s allowed more freewill than most others, assigned fusions to support him, and regularly given tools or victims to keep increasing his power such as the initial theft of the souls OG Demongo had stolen for himself and the quest to claim the ancient beast deep in the Fissure in Townsville Park. If it weren’t for the Resurrect ‘Ems protecting Fusion Fighters from him as much as their own lives, he’d have an even more insane advantage than usual. Fuse may usually keep him close to his Lair to prepare for his arrival since the demonic creature is such a force to be dealt with, but there’s nothing this fusion would like more than to hunt down every strong foe he can find and prime them for capture.

Dexter (and Computress): Fusion Dexter is a mad scientist with all the self-control needed to make him one of the most terrifying fusions in Fuse’s army. He’s just as skilled as Dexter, but with none of the morality to stop him from taking his scientific endeavors to horrifying extremes. While Fusion Utonium is the one that focuses the most on biotech, that doesn’t stop Fusion Dexter from running experiments of his own on live captives. Furthermore, he’s ruthless toward any subject that fails to meet his desired results, willing to throw them away at a snap of his fingers whether they’re an enemy or ally. Just good enough is not good enough for him, and he constantly seeks to improve whatever he makes for his own satisfaction as much as to please Fuse. He feels he has a kind of secret rivalry with the real Dexter, that helping win the war also will establish himself as more than just a copy of someone else, but rather the improved version. Like OG Dexter, he made his Computress, but he sees her as a replaceable assistant. She, meanwhile, is rather emotionless compared to the real Computress since she wasn’t designed to be a free-thinking AI.

Ed: According to Royal Ed-viser, Fusion Ed is responsible for studying dinosaur DNA to aid in the creation of fusion monsters. This shows a level of intelligence that the real Ed doesn’t, likely run by OG Ed’s passion. He’s possibly been forced to pool all of his focus into a sole purpose to give him that intellect and neglected a lot of the freewill other fusions have. Nevertheless, his intense strength is equally as useful to Fuse for combat.

Edd: Fusion Edd mostly serves under Fusion Dexter or Fusion Mandark, depending on wherever he’s needed at the time. Sometimes, it’s to assist them in their work; Other times, he serves as an independent saboteur. Unlike the real Double D, he has no trouble getting his hands dirty, but does share that see-a-need-fill-a-need mindset--just for Fuse’s purposes instead of any good. As a result, Fuse is often fine leaving him to his own devices when he has no particular orders. He’s an extremely reliable fusion.

Eddy: Fusion Eddy shares OG Eddy’s arrogance, which often puts him at odds with other fusions until they or Fuse remind him of his place. He’s extremely conniving, and holds a ruthless command over the fusion monsters under him, but isn’t very strong himself and will turn tail the moment a situation falls out of his favor. This makes him just useful enough for Fuse to keep him around, but little more. He’d do almost anything to rise up the ranks and become one of the tyrant’s favorites.

Eduardo: Out of all the imaginary friend fusions, Eduardo’s is the one that’s been able to stay himself the most without Fuse finding out about how much freer he is from the hivemind than the others. This is because he’s too scared to refuse Fuse’s orders as much as he often wants to. As such, he helps the Fusion Fighters in secret when the urge becomes too great by leaving clues like in the “Fusion by the Sea” mission arc or slipping up on purpose. He might get punished by Fuse or even destroyed by a Fusion Fighter, but so long as that secret is kept Fuse will keep recreating him due to his raw strength. He doesn’t know why he cares about Earth so much and tries to talk himself out of it, but he can’t help himself.

Father: Fusion Father is equally as deceptive and powerful as his counterpart. His primarily dark form similar to the real Father’s allows him to sneak around on Earth better than most other Fusions--the main difference being that his flames are green instead of red/orange and he doesn’t have as good a control over his skinsuit. He’s even managed to go so far as to establish himself among Earth’s small time crime rings to gain some monetary value and understand more about how the planet works and what the Fusion Fighters are doing. This level of stealth and manipulation makes him a scary threat to deal with.

Flapjack: Being a simple kid with the goal of becoming an adventurer, OG Flapjack didn’t have many great strengths of his own that would be passed onto a fusion of himself. As such, Fuse never put much thought into Fusion Flapjack. He’s weak, but harmless to his own goals. As such, this fusion tends to carry out more menial tasks or is used as a distraction while more powerful fusions aim for their true objectives on missions. When left to his own devices, Fusion Flapjack is more interested in causing mischief wherever he can with a mean streak that his OG counterpart would be ashamed of.

Frankie: Similar to Fusion Mac, Fusion Frankie was created as a means of tricking and luring away imaginary friends. After her defeat in “The Fraudulent Frankie” mission arc though, failing to overrun Foster’s Home and with the imaginary friends now aware and warned about her, she’s been severely demoted. The only reason Fuse bothered to recreate her was because she can direct the Scribble Spawns and Extremospawns best: Another severe failure would likely end in her permanent destruction if she doesn’t prove her worth.

Fuzzy Lumpkins: Fusion Fuzzy doesn’t show much sentience beyond his ability to wield a gun, and is often just used as a distraction or to attack civilian areas without restraint. He’s only marginally brighter than the typical fusion monster, but often much stronger.

Grandpa Max: Fusion Max is surprisingly just as spry and smart as the real one--and unfortunately doesn’t have to worry about any years wearing him down! This makes him a clever fighter that knows how to take down a soldier with or without a weapon. Sadly though, he doesn’t share Max’s patience with anyone who stands against him.

Grim: This fusion’s scythe might not be able to send you to the afterlife, but it can infect you with a strong dose of fusion matter if he lands a successful cut. Effectively, this poisons the body to wear down an opponent, and can potentially take their life if he’s unable to strike them down first. Possibly due in-part to OG Grim’s long life and wealth of memories, Fusion Grim actually recalls quite a bit of knowledge regarding Earth and its history--which has served Fuse well in the search of useful tools or resources for the war effort. He’s also taken advantage of the suspicion of OG Grim being a traitor by tricking others and acting in a way to cement those worries.

Gunter: This fusion’s form was... unexpected, in a good way--for Fuse at least. While never having met Gunter’s past self as Orgalorg, Fuse knows enough about the being to want to untap its power for himself. Unfortunately for him, Orgalorg’s penguin body on Earth has extended to his fusion, as well as OG Gunter’s memory loss from “The Comet” making it nearly impossible for his fusion to also regain memories of that time or summon much of that nature. Only Fuse’s own evil allows a small fraction of “Fusion Orgalorg” to come out. In the very least, Fusion Gunter is steadfastly loyal to both him and Fusion Ice King.

Gwen: Fusion Gwen is a bit of a late creation, made in response to the activation of totems across the globe. Even with her defeat, however, she’s still skilled enough to be useful to Fuse as both a fighter and in the search/destruction of magical artifacts. Since she couldn’t stop the totems from activating, her job is to get now try to get rid of them. She works under Fusion Hex.

Hex: As much of what’s unknown about the realms of magic and the Underworlders to most of Earth, Fuse has no idea what they’re capable of or how much of a threat they may pose to him. His goal is to either take or destroy those forces as a result. Fusion Hex recalls enough of his OG self’s memories to track down various ancient relics, and he’ll often work with Fusion Grim or Fusion Juniper to achieve their lord’s goals. He devotes himself to researching spells and at least trying to match his counterpart is magical prowess, since he doesn’t have all of his memories. If he could, he would kill and steal from the real Hex.

Him: This fusion’s strengths are as mysterious--if possibly a bit weaker than--his OG counterpart. While his dark, magical abilities seem limitless, his state as a fusion force them to focus that power moreso on what he’s physically capable of rather than just summon whatever he wants or use mind control/empathic influence like the real Him can. That doesn’t stop him from playing mind games with his opponents as he beats them to a pulp though. Based on the mission “Doppleganger Gang,” he’s been ordered to capture heroes for Fuse--likely with the intention of feeding their souls to Fusion Demongo as the latter has already taken so many.

Hoss Delgado: Fusion Delgado seems to be regulated primarily to being muscle and one of the main defenders of the massive Dark Engine located in Steam Alley. He talks less than his OG counterpart, but has the same type of cybernetic modifications to his body and knowledge of combat/weaponry. He can best be described as a fusion matter version of a Terminator.

Ice King: Fusion Ice King is even more mentally unstable than OG Ice King, with no sign or even hope of him instead mimicking the trapped consciousness of Simon. While removing his crown seems to dilute some of his power, it doesn’t seem to be the main source of it, but rather a means of keeping strongly connected to Fuse’s hivemind in a kind of dual consciousness. Overall, his only goal is cold, crazed, and poisonous destruction. However, aspects of OG Ice King’s personality surface best in his relationship to Fusion Gunter and interest in... well, Earth’s females. It’s not out of any sense of “love/affection,” warped or otherwise, and he doesn’t care about whether they’re a princess or not: It’s just a thing he remembers from the real Ice King. As such, he’s more likely to capture rather than kill girls until he loses interest because he doesn’t even really understand why he wanted to capture them in the first place unless Fuse or another fusion gives him a reason. It’s all about a moment’s satisfaction that quickly burns out to him.

Juniper Lee: If the real Juniper Lee is a protector of magic/magical beings, her fusion is a destroyer of them: Effectively, an anti-Te-Xuan-Ze. As such, Fusion Juniper’s job is primarily to destroy all sources of magical power and ruin relations between magic creatures and the rest of Earth’s lifeforms by posing as OG Juniper. What she doesn’t attempt to destroy, she tries to take for herself to boost her own power. She’ll sometimes work with Fusion Hex.

Kevin: Just as how fusion matter allowed the real Kevin to be corrupted, it makes fusions of him too unstable to be of any use without turning into a regular monster or opposing force from absorbing combative energies/materials to its makeup. As a result, you get the monstrosities fashioned similarly to his 11 year-old self when he was still struggling with his powers. This fusion is a huge brute with an insane temper, but is always two seconds away from destabilizing if tricked into absorbing the wrong things.

Lee, Marie and May Kanker: Even as fusions these three as inseparable. Since they’re far weaker apart without any notable powers beyond enhanced strength, Fuse has kept them together during all of their tasks. The OG Kankers may be bullies, but this trio has a sadistic streak that’s hard to match. They will always play with and torment their enemies before ending them.

Mac: Due to OG Mac’s close ties to imaginary friends, his fusion was made in the hopes of tricking and luring them to capture--particularly Coco. He’s not the strongest, but can turn wild if sent into a rage similar to how the real Mac gets after eating too much candy. Unfortunately, Fusion Mac was created using one of OG Mac’s backpacks, and after the player takes it in the mission “Pack Attack,” he’s been throwing a kind of permanent tantrum ever since.

Mandark: Since Fusion Dexter is often leading the tech aspect of Fuse’s army, Fusion Mandark comes second with sabotaging or repurposing the Fusion Fighter’s tech--like rewiring Mandroids to make them work for him instead of the real Mandark. He’s as intelligent as OG Mandark with less of the ego, particularly because if he showed it, he’d likely be punished for it. Still, all of that outrage makes him all the more determined when hacking into systems and turning Earth’s machines against itself. If he could though, he’s usurp Fusion Dexter as their lead scientist, and secretly looks for any flaw that might take the other down a peg.

Mandy: Fusion Mandy isn’t known for her strength so much as her intellect and ability to manipulate others. As such, while she’s often working behind the scenes with guards to protect her, she’s still a commanding officer in Fuse’s army with a hunger for power that rivals only her intense dominance of those under her. Beyond seeing the advantages of having Earth’s living manifestation of Death on their side, she’s jealous of the OG Mandy for her authority of OG Grim--unable to enforce that same authority over Fusion Grim due to their ultimate loyalties to Fuse and separate orders. As such, it’s her personal goal to get the real Grim under her control before Fuse consumes Earth. (She has similar feelings regarding Fusion and OG Billy, but not to the same extent since his fusion is less of a challenge.) She views her almost as a rival to steal everything from. Also unlike OG Mandy, who is at least willing to show some compassion to those she’s close to, her fusion won’t hesitate to sacrifice her underlings to achieve victory--following Fuse’s mindset that they’re tools who can simply be recreated if desired.

Mayor: Fusion Mayor is extremely weak, but far more ruthless than the real one. Since he can’t really fight--and the Fusion PPG answer to Fuse directly instead of him--his primary tasks involve poisoning food supplies and similar objectives. He’s small enough that he’s easily able to weave around forces when soldiers are distracted, and his fusion pickles look harmless enough at face value that he’s succeeded a good handful of times at infecting a whole cache of supplies. One on one though, he’s easily beatable and Fuse doesn’t tend to put too much thought into recreating him until he’s fallen out of contact for too long.

Mojo Jojo: At first he was confused, but there were no complaints from Fusion Mojo when his counterpart stole his fusion bananas and gave them to his minions--only for those minions to ally themselves to the former with several becoming Spawn Simians. If OG Mojo is going to sabotage himself, then he can have at it! It makes his tasks creating tech for Fuse all the easier by giving him additional forces as backup. As a result, he’s more concerned about other areas of the Fusion Fighters than his counterpart’s and can’t take them seriously. He’d call the real Mojo an idiot to his face.

Mr. Herriman: This fusion is exceptionally weak, but surprisingly diligent to Fuse despite being based on an imaginary friend. He’s kept in the Darkland for two reasons: To be closely monitored and handle more of the organizational/administrative work behind the scenes. As a result, he’s often silently hooked up to the hivemind to file away and pass along information while other fusions are distracted with other matters in real-time. It’s not the most useful skill for them, but does speed things up. The heavy workload also serves as a distraction in care he does feel a sudden rebellious streak.

Numbuh One: Fusion Numbuh One is a fierce commanding officer, but worse is that he’s maintained a lot of the real Numbuh One’s memories of his time in the KND. Beyond the dangerous of him possibly having important knowledge regarding the organization itself, this has allowed him to plot strategies involving emotional manipulation to attack Nigel and other members of the KND, such as kidnapping Robobradley in “Skunk Support.” He also knows how much guilt Nigel feels over the events of the GKND, and isn’t afraid to use that against him and those he cares about.

Numbuh Two: Fusion Numbuh Two isn’t one for direct confrontations. Instead, he prefers attacking others through subtler means like poison in “Eduardo and the Pirates (Part 4 of 4)” or by sending out fusion monsters in his stead. It might be a problem for Fuse if the fusion wasn’t so good at improving fusion monsters through his technological skills and increasing the defenses of areas he’s already captured by turning them into waiting death traps. This lack of experience, however, serves to make the fusion both weak and overconfident when trouble does arrive on his doorstep.

Numbuh Three: Fusion Numbuh Three prefers to capture her victims when she can rather than kill them. However, this just comes out of a greedy, possessive desire. If she sees something she likes, she has to have it--and that especially goes for the real Numbuh Three’s things. If it’s an actual person in question, she’ll view them as a toy. However, if you play along, you might have an easier time of tricking her and escaping. Just make sure you succeed...

Numbuh Four: Fusion Numbuh Four isn’t very different from his counterpart, just that he’s serving on the opposite side of the war and can always focus 100% of his energy on his missions. This basically makes him a fighting machine, who only seems to get stronger the angrier he gets in battle. He’s often made to fight on the front lines.

Numbuh Five: Fusion Numbuh Five shares a lot of the real Numbuh Five’s strengths, but is far more arrogant She mocks her opponents constantly, doing whatever she can to through them off or upset them. This includes going out of her way to upset OG Numbuh Five by stealing her candy and irradiating it despite it having little importance to the war effort. She doesn’t seem to be as smart as OG Numbuh Five though, since she tried to make an imaginary friend of her own--likely as a minion--when fusions don’t have imaginary energy and was tricked into believing the player was that friend in “Imaginary Reinforcements (Part 4 of 4).”

Princess: While not the most powerful, Fusion Princess’ combined tech and rage make her a fierce foe. However, she often makes sure to let fusion monsters do her dirty work ahead of time or even tries to manipulate Earth’s denizens first with empty promises of gain before trying to get rid of them after their usefulness is up. She belittles other fusions, starting fights with the more aggressive ones before their seniors threaten them back in line.

Professor Utonium: To make himself all the more useful to Fuse--and partly in competition with Fusion Dexter--Fusion Utonium experimented on himself to increase his physical strength and give him tentacles shooting from his back as an additional weapon. While Fusion Dexter focuses primarily on weaponry/cybernetics, Fusion Utonium focuses on biotechnology and mutations. Rather than simply destroy Earth’s lifeforms, he wants to see how they might be further corrupted to serve Fuse. He worked with Fusion Mandark to create the Scribble Spawns and works with Fusion Mojo Jojo to investigate the creation of the Spawn Simians.

Samurai Jack: Noted as one of--if not the--first fusion created, he’s had more than enough time to prove his usefulness to Fuse with great success. OG Jack is a warrior above all others among Earth’s forces, so his fusion plays a similar role. Few have been able to face him in combat due to his strengths matching his counterpart’s: If he had all of OG Jack’s memories, without being controlled by Fuse’s hivemind as much as he is, he’d be pretty much unstoppable. Even still, only those who have some guidance under OG Jack himself can really seem to face him. Similar to Fusion Demongo, Fusion Jack is kept in the Darklands as a means of leading/defending some of Fuse’s most important assignments/strongholds to the war effort.

Stickybeard: Fitting of a fusion based on a pirate, Fusion Stickybeard’s main objectives involve attacking and pillaging from soldiers. Most of his targets are those stationed away from the main bases, but he will occasionally steal from more important locations if given the order. His work has caused a lot of trouble from ruining supply lines to robbing integral information to the war effort. In the mission “Fusion Pirate’s Pillage,” he even managed to steal items for nano creation before the player stole them back.

Tetrax: OG Tetrax’s intergalactic mercenary experience made his fusion just as tough to beat. Not only can he handle fighting against Earth’s forces, but he also can direct some of Fuse’s allies like the Ectonurites. Never losing his cool, he’s a strategic, ruthless general to the end.

The Scotsman: Since this fusion’s sword doesn’t have the same magical properties as his OG counterpart, he’s mainly used as a relentless force of muscle--enough so to even gain a reputation among Earth’s soldiers. His Fusion Blade contains stronger concentrations of fusion matter than usual and therefore can infect victims with each cut like Fusion Grim’s scythe and Fusion Jack’s sword can. He often serves under Fusion Demongo, acting as an extension of the latter since he can’t often leave Fuse’s Lair.

Toiletnator: This fusion is one that Fuse looks at and goes, “Well... you exist.” He doesn’t have high expectations of Fusion Toiletnator, so he just lets another fusion give him orders for mostly menial tasks when needed. He’s not as clumsy as his counterpart, so he’s actually quick to get his tasks done.

Vilgax: While Fusion Vilgax is a powerful force to have on his side, Fuse really just savors having him due to how insulting he knows it is for the real Vilgax. Fuse never thinks of most other lifeforms as much more than bugs to stomp out before he absorbs their words, but he’s actually had a few run-ins with OG Vilgax during previous conquests to think of him as a very annoying gnat. Therefore, while he entrusts Fusion Vilgax with serious missions, he’ll also sometimes cause him to suffer in particular when he’s frustrated or if he knows OG Vilgax will see it as a means of showing off his power like a megalomaniac.

Wilt: Out of all the imaginary friend fusions, Wilt’s is the most difficult to control. He’s just too much like his counterpart: Overly apologetic with a strong desire to show kindness whenever he goes. Fuse constantly destroyed and recreated this fusion because he couldn’t follow through with orders--and may have deemed him too much trouble to keep around were it not for his borderline desperate sense of loyalty and the cybernetics that Fusion Mandark would later give him. Beyond an increase of strength, these cybernetics serve a double purpose: They aid in enforcing Fuse’s hivemind for Fusion Wilt in-particular and serve as a means of altering his persona by catering to the role of the evil Lord Snotzax, which OG Wilt took in the episode “Make Believe it or Not.” Even still, you’ll find that Fusion Wilt’s dark side isn’t so dark. The mission “Fizzy Rox and Roll” shows him only stealing candy. The worst he’s seemed to have done was set up Gooby Traps in the “Xtra Large Fusion” mission arc before going into hiding. As such, he’s pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to leading Fuse’s army.

#fusionfall #headcanons #fusions #individual fusions #fuse #video games

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loopy777 · 3 years

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Return of the Jedi is often looked upon as the weakest of the original trilogy. If you share that opinion, what do you think would have improved it? Aside from the Ewok thing, I think they could have gone with a different climax that doesn’t involve a second Death Star (maybe an old timey ship-to-ship style battle with the Executor but in space?)

Yeah, having another Death Star is definitely a bit tired. I appreciate that it came with a bunch of different visuals thanks to its half-finished nature, destroying it didn't involve another trench run, and it allowed for the biggest and most technically accomplished space action of the entire series (they did that all with real models and compositing! CGI may look nice, but it's easy), but having another super-weapon -- never mind the exact same thing as the first movie -- feels lazy.

In the early drafts, the creative team had been toying with something involving the Imperial Capital, but the action never really went beyond Death Star-esque space stations and a forest moon. I think something could have been done with the capital planet itself, but that would have required more budget than George Lucas wanted to spend, and his vision possibly wasn't even technically possible at the time.

Also, I do agree that that Ewoks are perhaps a little too kid-friendly. I think the theme works, with the 'primitives' defeating the more technological Empire, and I even think it was implemented in a believable manner. But the whole 'teddy bear picnic' look of it (as Carrie Fisher called it) was probably too much for the aging primary audience, never mind the adult fans, and there didn't need to be so much silliness and comedy with them. It's the same thing that sunk Jar-Jar and the Gungans in Phantom Menace- cute bumbling critters are fine, but then the audience isn't really going to warm to them winning a war. I don't mean that the fight needs to be all gritty and violent, but leaving the slapstick to just Wicket and letting the other Ewoks looks like experienced guerillas would have probably accomplished a lot in endearing the idea to the audience.

More than the teddy bears, though, I think the look of Endor's moon itself doesn't meet Star Wars standards. It's just a forest, the same thing you can see in any low-budget fantasy movie. Sure, there are a few more redwoods in RotJ than in LotR Knockoff #47, but it's still a step down from what came before. Tatooine was probably the most boring-looking planet before that, in terms of environment, but the sci-fi civilization built on the desert made it interesting. Endor's moon is just a forest and the Ewok treehouses. There's no wow-factor, especially after ESB upped the game from the first movie.

Overall, though, I think the main problem with RotJ is one that isn't really visible on the screen. It's the primary culprit behind the lack of enthusiasm people feel for the movie, IMO.

I'm talking, of course, about the pacing.

The first part of the movie, the rescue of Han from Jabba, feels like a stand-alone adventure more appropriate to an episode of a TV series. It has nothing to do with the conflict with the Empire, and has this slow rollout of the cast that definitely feels like it's reintroducing the audience to them, an odd choice for the last movie in a trilogy. Nothing is accomplished by it except reestablishing the status quo, getting the whole cast ready to return to the real story. It's the most visually impressive location in the movie, with the rancor and all the alien costumes, but in the end Luke just fights his way through it. Throwing Luke and company into something a bit more involved, like if Jabba was meeting with another crime lord and Luke played them off against each other or something, would be a bit more engaging. But that would still leave this section of the movie feeling separate from everything else. I'm not sure how to solve that, as it is a bit of business leftover from ESB that has to be tided up in some way, and it's a good example of why playing things by ear can be really hard even for people who are good at it.

The next major problem with the pacing comes on Endor's moon, when Luke and company spend so much time meeting the Ewoks. I don't think it's a long time in actual count of minutes, but it's a slow bit that's probably more drawn out than it needs to be. The original Star Wars was a location-hopping adventure with wonderfully-paced forward momentum buoyed by some fun moments of natural downtime. ESB was a chase sequence spiced up with the ramping romance between Han and Leia, with Luke's powering up and exploration of the Force inter-spaced, culminating in the heroes suffering major dramatic defeats. But RotJ starts with a side-quest, then Luke gets the truth about Vader in a good scene that's still just people sitting around and talking, and after a speeder bike chase (that again is probably too long) the heroes take their time becoming friends with Ewoks in a forest. Star Wars was exhilarating before this, and now it's laboring to the finish line while dithering to clean up its own subplots.

(Note: I do NOT advocate avoiding the due diligence of cleaning up subplots in order to try to maintain a propulsive plot, and the final movie certainly isn't the place to be throwing new subplots in. That's how you get Rise Of Skywalker, and no one wants that.)

When the big finale starts, with Luke confronting Vader and then the Battle of Endor kicking off, the pacing finally gets back on track, IMO. George Lucas knows how to edit together an action sequence, if nothing else, and knows when to cut back to the slower but more emotionally meaty Luke-stuff with the Emperor.

However, I do think the parts with Han and Leia can come across as a little rote, since their action isn't really tied to any story or character arc for them. It's functional enough with them both leading the rebellion, but there's nothing particularly dramatic about it for them, and they're just busting one small bunker, compared to Lando taking on the big examples of Imperial might, the Death Star and the Executor Super Star Destroyer. Han and Leia don't even get to fight one of the big walkers, they just fight the smaller chicken-walkers! And I think Lando's role does feel more like part of his character arc, with him being a respectable leader for the good guys in a nice uniform, and using his cleverness to keep the fleet alive long enough to assault the Death Star.

But, strangely, the moment in the whole Endor battle that feels the most like a culmination is when the Executor Super Star Destroyer is destroyed, and none of the main characters are even involved in that! Sure, blowing up another Death Star is fine, but we've already done it. No one has blown up a Super Star Destroyer before, and that got built up through the whole previous movie.

Fortunately, everything about Luke's big climax with Vader and the Emperor is functionally perfect, and that's the part that people were most interested in, so I don't think that RotJ really stumbles at the end. It succeeds and does deliver a lot of what people had come to like about Star Wars. It just doesn't do it as intensely or smoothly as the previous efforts, so it feels weaker.

So if I were to try to create a 'stronger' RotJ, I'd probably shave the Han Rescue down to a quick action-packed prologue, do the Vader=Father explanation for Luke as a mix of Obi-Wan's explanation with a trippy Force Vision Quest with some interesting visuals, then have the Rebellion assault the Imperial capital in a mix of space and ground battle. I'd get rid of the whole concept of the forest setting and the spear-wielding primitives, since that's the same metaphor as the Empire and Rebellion, anyway. I'd also make the Rebellion fleet smaller and more desperate, connecting it clearly to the losses from the previous movie, and the attack on the capital is some kind of desperate last ploy, motivated by some kind of time limit. Luke still confronts Vader and the Emperor alone. For Han and Leia, I wonder if -- instead of simply having them fight -- they could maybe rally some downtrodden local citizenry to help take down or turn off some big Imperial Plot Thingy, giving them a chance to show leadership and unite the Rebellion with the people it's been fighting for, or something like that. Han could even tell the locals about the Force, something they've never heard of, living on the capital. And Leia gives them the chance at freedom.

Hm, perhaps the first assault against the Imperial Palace fails at first, with a bunch of Rebels dying but Leia and Han escaping, leaving Lando and company stranded in space with the baddies? Then Leia and Han need to find an alternate way to accomplish the goal, giving the 'meet the locals' sequence a bit more intensity and a time limit, but still serving as a bit of downtime between actiony bits. Or the final half of the movie could be all action, with the relative downtime being Luke's part with the Emperor and Vader in the palace. (This is the kind of thing decided in the editing room.) Then the Rebel assault can be continuous, and about to lose when Han and Leia show up with reinforcements. Movie audiences love that. They turn off the Imperial Plot Thingy. Then Lando lands the decisive blow on the Executor, which crashes into the Imperial Palace just after Luke escapes in the wake of Vader's death.

Anyway, that's all off the top of my head. But you see where I'm going with this. Keep it moving, keep it intense, keep it new and interesting, don't get too hung up on the Vietnam War metaphor that inspired certain themes, and try to put more characters arcs into things so that Harrison Ford doesn't spend the next 30 years talking about how much he wanted his character to die.

Maybe we can have a village of Ewoks living in the capital sewers, along with other Downtroddens. There's no reason not to have any teddy bears.

Star Wars is supposed to be fun, too. And a little silly.

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derpcakes · 4 years

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So we watched (nay, Experienced) the BBC/Netflix Dracula series

Brought to us by everyone’s favourite team, Steve Moff and Mark Gatiss, promising to be an innovative and exciting new vision of the classic novel

Boy it was definitely something!!!

First I will say: obviously Moff is not my favourite TV writer and my fam and I did go into this with a bias. I’m happy to report, though, that it’s going to be one of these shows that haunts me forever, because if it had just been bad I could have said “bleh” and deleted it from my brain. But because parts of this were genuinely cool, interesting, and fun, and parts of it genuinely had potential, all the bits that were bad stand out as so much worse and the whole thing feels as cursed as a 500 year old undead count.

Things that were enjoyable and well put-together:

Van Helsing has been gender-swapped into a vampire-hunting nun and her cat-and-mouse game with Dracula is rife with belligerent sexual tension. I was ready to hate this, and ready for like, Sherlock and Irene Adler 2.0, but their dynamic was actually pretty fun to watch! Their power balance is kept even throughout most of the show, and Helsing is never struck down because of ~womanly failings~ or infantilised. She’s consistently really clever and, even if there are some cringey one-liners, I found her and Draccy’s playful quest to murder each other one of the most fun parts of the show. It could’ve been better, but it was enjoyable! (I also like how Helsing isn’t Young and Hot, but is a capable older lady, and her actor and Draccy’s even seem about the same age. Amazing)

The second episode is a spooky murder mystery/horror mini-movie on a ship, with a cast full of interesting characters who all had different things going on and different relationship dynamics that were compelling to watch. There’s even an interracial gay couple! And they’re like, written pretty sympathetically and to be layered and flawed in ways that didn’t feel too stereotypical! And they don’t die first!! Wack! I understand the bar is on the ground, but it’s still worth a mention

Some fun with vampire lore: Draccy absorbs knowledge and traits from people he drinks blood from (which is how he learns languages. Get Duolingo, dude, stop eating people), leading to the intriguing suggestion that myths like “vampires will die in sunlight” and “vampires are afraid of holy symbols” have kinda become real to him even if they don’t literally work, because he’s swallowed so many people to whom these superstitions and beliefs were law. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been done, but groundbreaking or no it was kinda neat

Things that were not enjoyable and well put-together:

EVERYTHING ELSE

Episode 1: a weird speedrun of most of the original novel, feat. weaponised nuns and a weird fixation on whether or not Jonathan Harker and Draccy boned. They did not. Dracula pops out of the body of a wolf and he’s Whole Ass Naked. Him and Van Helsing have a power play where she stands just on the threshold of a convent and calls him a little bitch, knowing he can’t come and get her. A knife is licked.

Episode 2: aforementioned cool ship horror story. Definitely the best ep. It really makes me think about hbomb’s critique that Moff is pretty good at doing standalone stories (and pilots), but when things are tied into a bigger narrative things get zonkers.

Episode 3: Things Get Zonkers!!

Let me just. Okay. I have the most to say about this one because this is where things really got batshit. And yet, also really boring? How does that figure? Anyway:

Dracula emerges from under the sea and finds that 123 years have passed and he’s now the star of a Modern AU. Upon setting foot on British sand he is immediately accosted by what appears to be an anti-vampire task force. There’s a helicopter. It is later explained how they knew to pounce on him at this exact moment, but holy god it was wild to watch the entire British Secret Service descend on this one wet bastard in a suit

The editing shifts aggressively in the direction of Sherlock. Mark Gattis is there playing an amazingly annoying character. There’s a fuckign.... Underground Secret Society devoted to studying vampires and they put Drac in a Designated Glass Prison for Smug Geniuses (also as seen in Sherlock). Van Helsing is dead but her great-great-grand-niece is played by the same actress and. Okay. Van Helsing, vampire hunting nun, possesses her descendent and rises through the ether to roast Drac one last time, and he’s DELIGHTED TO SEE HER AGAIN.

And she has cancer, right, so her blood is poisonous when Draccy tries to bite her, but in the end, right, the end of the episode, right, the final shots of the show, he comes to a place where he’s willing to die, and she’s already dying, and so he drinks her blood and they die together on a table while cinematic metaphor vision shows them having sex in the middle of the sun

There was a badly CGI-ed vampire baby. Jonathan Harker falls from a tower and a scene later they flash back to this event by reversing the footage of him falling down, meaning we just see him go VWOOP up through the air, bouncing off the wall on the way. Van Helsing says the words “come boy, suckle” when she’s goading Drac into drinking her blood. The show sits in a weird middle ground where the characters talk about sex a lot (”dID yOu HaVe sExUaL iNterCOURSE with COUNT DRACULA?”) and Drac is clearly meant to be super magnetic and sexy but the characterisation and cinematography is not horny at all. People have these sexy-type dreams of their lover of choice when Drac is drinking their blood but even those are very boring and weirdly chaste, except of course for the final one where, if I can take the chance to remind you, Van Helsing and Dracula have symbolic Mind Palace sex inside the centre of the solar system

I can’t speak too much on its quality as an adaptation since I actually haven’t read the book, but splitting the story so that some characters (the Harkers, Van Helsing) existed in the time the story is set, and some (Lucy, Dr Seward) exist in The Modern AU felt very strange. Was there any reason to set the third episode in modern times, apart from the fact that I guess they wanted to do their Sherlock thing again? Or, perhaps, because they wanted to do their Jekyll thing again?? Oh my god, that’s what the editing reminds me of - the small clips of Jekyll I’ve seen. The zooming. The slow-mo. The emphasis on The Monster Man’s weird goddamn teeth

(Also, I don’t really feel qualified to dig too deep into it, but I will say there felt something a bit uncomfortable about Lucy being black in this version, while also being written to be very promiscuous and vain. idk. Also, since it happened in an ep of Sherlock as well, “weedy white Nice Boy rescues the Very Cool woman of colour he has a tragically unrequited crush on” is now an official Moffattis trope)

Count Moffatula is an experience. Its pacing is buck wild. The speeding through the original plot and the mish-mashing of elements in the Modern AU section feels like another expression of contempt for the source material on Moff’s part. Someone says “reality is overrated” in a show set in the 1890s. Draccy quotes a Beatles song. He also makes quippy allusions to having eaten various famous figures and basically winks at the camera every time. Granted, this wasn’t as obnoxious as I was maybe expecting, but there are still too many lines of dialogue where you think “oh, the writers high-fived each other after they wrote that one, huh”. The fact that Moff has such vitriol against fan fic writers is more and more grating every day because this is so, so clearly a zany-ass fanfic that he happens to be getting paid for. The costumes are nowhere near as nice as they could have been, and Dracula’s cape looks like his mum made it for him for the school play in which he is playing Dracula.

This show is So Much. Watch it to share in this fever dream. Or don’t, and save approximately 5 hours of your life. God. 5 hours. Who was I before Count Maffatula. Who am I now. Why was his cape so bloody ugly. Why did they bone in the centre of the sun

#i'm ascending from my body #count moffatula

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mllemaenad · 5 years

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Why is everybody keep forgetting that elves had quite some forces and were not some helpless souls? Why do ppl forget that it's their own racism that initially caused the war in the Dales? Why everybody dismisses Minaeves' story about how her clan treated the unwanted mages? I mean Chantry sucks big time, but can we please stop making elves into some magic creatures that only do good. They do not. None of the races and religions in Dragon Age is perfect, yet one has a particular bias from fandom

Hi Anonymous person.

Um. Sorry, but … what? That’s … a lot of vitriol. I’m … going to do this point by point.

Why is everybody keep forgetting that elves had quite some forces and were not some helpless souls?

No one is claiming that the elves were ‘helpless’ in the sense that they were children, or somehow unable to fight. Elven sources are a bit spotty, for solid ‘in universe’ reasons, but there’s enough on the Emerald Knights to understand that they kicked some serious arse.

But. By the time Orlais set its sights on the Dales, it had already steamrolled over a bunch of other nations, effectively doubling its original size.

The grand nation of Orlais occupies a full quarter of the Thedosian continent and extends its influence far beyond its shifting borders. In ages past, Orlais flexed its military muscle, threatening territory belonging to Nevarra and Tevinter and outright invading Ferelden. One could argue that the Emperor or Empress of Orlais, regardless of competency, is the second most powerful person in Thedas – the first, of course, being the Divine.

…

Together, the two [Kordillus Drakon and Area Montlaures] transformed Orlais from a few squabbling clans controlling their own city states into an empire. Hand in hand, they conquered well into modern-day Ferelden and Nevarra, stamping out any worship of the Old Gods as well as lingering Alamarri and Ciriane Deities.

– World of Thedas Volume II

Sure, we have an account of the massacre of a pacifist nation (note that they are also vilified by the text, even though they are literally ‘helpless souls’ being overrun and slaughtered by an empire), but that is going to be the exception to the rule. Most of these ‘squabbling clans’ would have had warriors and fortifications. It didn’t matter. Orlais invaded, defeated them, forced them to convert – and absorbed the survivors. The Orlesian empire is The Blob.

Do you … not get how massive this thing is? A quarter of Thedas is under direct Orlesian control. That’s what came for the Dales. An almost endless supply of soldiers and weapons and supplies against one newborn nation. That’s what’s so scary about empires, once they get going: they can take the resources of the people they conquered yesterday – including the bodies of the actual people to be used as soldiers or workers – and use them against you today.

So yeah: big picture, they were ‘helpless souls’ being knocked down by the biggest bully in Thedas. They put up a hell of a fight – even took Montsimmard for a while – but they didn’t have the resources of an empire to sustain them, so they were screwed.

Why do ppl forget that it’s their own racism that initially caused the war in the Dales?

Okay so … racism. I feel like I keep saying ‘empires are bad’ and ‘conversion by the sword is bad’ and … these are somehow controversial statements that people want to refute? That’s … just a little bit scary, you know?

The elven people quite famously worked with humans. Specifically with the Alamarri rebels who took down the Tevinter Imperium. You know: Andraste?

At Shartan’s word, the sky

Grew black with arrows.

At Our Lady’s, ten thousand swords

Rang from their scabbards,

A great hymn rose over Valarian Fields gladly proclaiming:

Those who had been slaves were now free.

– Shartan 10:1.

– Dark Moon

There’s even a whole fucking verse about Shartan and his people making a bloody suicide run on the entire Tevinter army to try to rescue Andraste:

The Liberator drew the blade at his side

And charged the pyre, the freedom of the Prophet before his eyes,

But from the legion came a storm of arrows

Blacker than night. And the disciple who had fought side by side

With the Lady fell, along with a hundred of his People.

And among the Alamarri ten thousand swords fell to the ground in a chorus of defeat.

– World of Thedas Volume II

That’s pretty heroic! And pretty tragic! Elven slaves and human rebels standing side by side, fighting an empire. Winning, in the end, although at great cost. And yet what you’re trying to tell me is that the elves are ‘racist’ (also: not a great word to use in reference to an oppressed people because racism requires social power) rather than, say, justifiably worried about the growing power of a nascent empire?

He [Kordillus Drakon] began his holy quest at the ripe old age of sixteen by taking to the battlefield. At the time, each clan had its own variety of the cult of Andraste, its own rituals, traditions and versions of Andraste’s words. Young Drakon unified them by the sword.

– World of Thedas II

Orlais is aggressive and fanatical. It is running around slaughtering people who disagree with its religious beliefs. If you are a non-Andrastian nation sitting more-or-less on the Orlesian border, watching other nations fall and be forcibly converted – and those people just believed different things about Andraste – you have to know what’s coming. This really only goes one way. Are you really going to call closing your borders and prepping for conflict ‘racism’? Is that really the word you want to use?

Halamshiral, “the end of the journey,” was our capital, built out of the reach of the humans. We could once again forget the incessant passage of time. Our people began the slow process of recovering the culture and traditions we had lost to slavery.

But it was not to last. The Chantry first sent missionaries into the Dales, and then, when those were thrown out, templars. We were driven from Halamshiral, scattered. Some took refuge in the cities of the shemlen, living in squalor, tolerated only a little better than vermin.

– The Dales

Relations broke down completely when the Chantry sent missionaries. Because of course they did. The fact that Orlais fundamentally does not believe in religious freedom is the very thing that the elves are afraid of. It is also, you know, a pretext. Provocation meant to push the elves so they start something and Orlais can say it was their fault. There is almost always a pretext. The empire says it’s coming in to resolve a local conflict, or they’re dealing with an incident on the border, or they’re ‘liberators’. And then they stay. And they take.

Do you really mean to blame the elves for being conquered?

Why everybody dismisses Minaeves’ story about how her clan treated the unwanted mages?

No one has forgotten or dismissed Minaeve. Everyone is keenly aware that – on a meta level – Bioware did some quite ugly retconning in Inquisition to make both elves and mages look less sympathetic. Many people have noted that Minaeve’s story is the exact opposite of Lanaya’s story, and that neither Velanna nor Merrill talk about anything like that. Nevertheless, it is raised at least three times in Inquisition: by Minaeve, by Vivienne and by The Iron Bull. So yes, that is a deliberate retcon made at a late stage in the series in order to allow people to do exactly what you’re doing: yell that the elves are ‘just as bad’. It’s gross.

In universe, of course, it’s worth noting that Minaeve was seven when this happened. Whatever it was, it was terrible – but it may not have been what she thought. It’s also worth noting that the Dalish are wandering nomads with few resources, under constant threat from humans in general and templars in particular, and if they did find themselves forced to throw one mage child to the templars to protect the rest – that is fucking horrible, but says more about the world Orlais has created than it does about the elves.

But I have to ask – why do you think it’s so important that everyone remember a twenty-second pro-templar conversation with a minor character, instead of extensive conversations about elven society and losses with Merril and Velanna? Those are two grown women who have lived their whole lives as Dalish and have a keen understanding of the culture of their clans. Or whole novels about Fiona and Briala, respectively the leaders of the mage and elven rebellions?

I know the novels are supplementary material so I’m certainly not blaming anyone for being unfamiliar with them. But if there were things I wish people could always remember when talking about the elves – it would be those stories of oppression and revolution.

I mean Chantry sucks big time, but can we please stop making elves into some magic creatures that only do good. They do not. None of the races and religions in Dragon Age is perfect, yet one has a particular bias from fandom.

It’s … interesting that you brought ‘race’ into this. Because I didn’t. I haven’t been writing criticisms of ‘humans’. I’ve left the Rivaini alone; usually mentioned Fereldans favourably; I haven’t been talking about Antiva or Nevarra. They haven’t come up.

I was talking about the aggression of the Orlesian empire and its Chantry. The elves were brought up as possibly the people who have lost the most to Orlesian aggression. They’re certainly the best sourced of those people. I’ve talked about the Chasind and Avvar where I can (humans!). I’ve talked about dwarves and Qunari. I bring up the Daughters of Song and the Disciples of Andraste where I can, because I have references for them. I know that a whole lot of other cultures were destroyed by Drakon and his Chantry – but alas, I can’t say anything meaningful about them because there are no codex entries, in game dialogue or other reference materials for them.

Of course the elves are not ‘perfect’. While Zathrian’s rage is understandable, his decision to keep the curse going even when it began to threaten his clan was terrible. Merril’s clan was far too easily led to bully and exclude her; they were her family and someone should have stood up for her. Historically, the Dales probably made a mistake staying out of the Second Blight. I mean – I get it. The Blight softened up Tevinter enough to let the rebels take it down. It could have worked again against Orlais. But in retrospect – bad idea. Didn’t work.

Those are just examples. Of course there are more. But it doesn’t matter. That an elven character fucked up at some point does not change the fact that they face racial persecution as non-humans (and are pretty clearly coded as a combination of indigenous, Jewish and Romani people), that they face religious persecution as non-Andrastians and that the Orlesian empire stole their land and forced them into slums.

And I note all of this because of the … tenor of your Ask. Had you said something like “This elven stuff is great, but I’d like to chat about how the dwarves are basically facing an apocalypse and no one will help them, and also wouldn’t a story about a casteless revolution be great?” I would have said “Yes! Let’s talk about that!” Had you said something like “Isn’t it fucked up that the Qunari are treated largely as savage invaders, operating as an ‘Other’ it’s okay to hate?” I would have said “Yes! Yes, it is!”

But … this reads like a list of ‘reasons why people should stop pretending the elves don’t deserve to be oppressed’. And … somehow equates ‘Orlesians’ with ‘humans’?

I mean – surely you aren’t saying that our sympathies should not be with the frequently enslaved minority group who are forced to live as second class citizens in appalling slums, and who have been forcibly converted to a religion they don’t want to follow … but rather with the empire that took everything from them?

Because … I really hope not.

#dragon age #chantry critical #Anonymous

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chartreuse-gale · 4 years

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Dragon Warrior/Quest ramblings/collective review

I rant about the Dragon Quest franchise a lot.

Two of my video game pet peeves are when people laude the original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest as ground breaking (it’s not, see Wizardy/Ultima), or the great grandfather of JRPGs (it’s not, see Hydlide/Dragon Slayer/Fantasian/) I’m generally not a fan of silent protagonists. I rarely identify enough with a character to feel like I’m “in” the game, so I prefer to be playing the role of a character with some kind of dialogue and a personality. Every dragon quest (that I’ve played) has a silent protagonist. That said, I do have some love for the series. I’ve suddenly found myself interested in giving Dragon Quest XI a spin, but instead I went back to Dragon Warrior IV. I remembered liking it as a kid and I’m happy to say I’ve been having as much fun playing it now as I remember having back then. Here are my thoughts on the dragon quest games separated into the ones I’ve finished and the ones I haven’t (mainline only).

Games I’ve Finished

Dragon Quest: This is grinding the game.

Strategy is almost nonexistent in the battle system outside of “Grind XP to LVL UP/Gold to buy better equipment”. You have 1 character and you never fight more than 1 enemy, so all fights are one-on-one. There isn’t any equipment with special traits or functions (just better Attack/Defense). You get access to a total of 6 spells in the game: Heal Heal More Heal Most Hurt Hurt More Hurt Most (these last 3 are usually a waste of MP) The plot is linear (except for potentially at the very end of the game). At least there’s a decent amount of exploration. Worse than Final fantasy I and Phantasy Star I by far, but to be fair, Enix did better with Dragon Quest II, which beat both of these competitors to the punch. Dragon Quest II: So much better than the original.

The grind is mediated by choices that matter in regards to equipment and combat. Also, you have an actual party this time (of 3), Also, Also, you can fight multiple enemies at the same time. Dragon Quest II added a much wider variety of spells (buff, debuff, and elemental damage spells); Equipment that had special functions when used as an item in combat (e.g. the Lightning Staff can cast whoosh), and a smidge more plot. Many people say more grinding is required in II than in the original, but I would argue that Dragon Quest I is nothing but grinding whereas Dragon Quest II breaks up the monotony with a dose of strategy. Comparable to Final Fantasy I. Far worse than Phantasy Star I. Dragon Quest V: Decent.

Also the first game originating on the Super Famicom (although we didn’t get an official English translation till the DS remake)

Allows for a party of 3 (4 in the DS remake). Considered groundbreaking by many for it’s monster recruitment system but it wasn’t the first game to have one by any means (Megami Tensei beat it by 5 years and Wizardry IV by 4). The game is divided into sections based on time periods as you grow from a kid to a teen to an adult, which is a cool way of pacing the games content, and gives you a little more perspective on the setting than you typically get in a Dragon Quest game. Characters are mostly boring outside of one (or two) of the love interests. Did I mention this game has love interests? I think I would have liked it better if there was only one, because it punched me in the heart for not picking the one it leads up to as the primary love interest (who also happens to be the canon one). Has really frustrating setting/plot-gender dynamics with two characters late in the game who I won’t name because spoilers.

Games I’ve Played but haven’t finished

Dragon Quest III: My least favorite game in the series (out of the ones I’ve played).

This time you have a protagonist and you can hire adventures to join you on your quest. They are all nobody characters. Their personalities are assigned at random, and (from what I can tell) only effect their growth. There’s no fucking dialogue with them (which is something I expected after DQ II). Personalities and seeds are fucking annoying, because both of them are random, have huge differences in their effects, and their effects make a huge difference in character capabilities, so it makes me want to spend hours saving/reloading until I get the effects I want. Fuck this game for introducing seeds to the series which appeared in many Dragon Quest games after this (thankfully I haven’t run into personalities again yet). Often lauded for having the “groundbreaking” option of changing character classes/jobs. Yes this came out before Final Fantasy III (Japan), but I would like to make the following points: - Final Fantasy I let you pick your character classes (which came out beforehand) - Final Fantasy III had a class change system you could actually make use of throughout the game (unlike DQ III where you need to get about halfway through the game first) - The original Wizardry came out 7 years earlier and also had a much more accessible class change system than DQ III I played very little of Dragon Quest III (I dropped it before even getting to my 2nd town). Two great thing about this games: It’s the first in the series to give you the option of playing as a woman, and I heard it’s the game that introduced the casino/mini games to the franchise. Dragon Quest IV: This game is Great! Also, Unlike the first three games in the series, Dragon Quest IV might actually be groundbreaking. You ever play Wild Arms I, II, or III? Did you enjoy playing through the prologues that introduce your early party members? Well Dragon Quest IV does a similar thing: The game is divided into chapters. Each chapter has a different protagonist. In their chapter you play them as silent protagonist, but when you encounter them later in the game they have dialogue. This does a lot to develop much of the cast, because you can see how people react to/talk with them and later on you can see how they engage with the player character (who you’re actually introduced to last). The cast is great and falls into a mix of both very old school and very uncommon tropes for a JRPG: You have an aging knight who goes on a mission to rescue children and then goes on a journey to find more about the ominous forces behind their kidnappers (Ragnar). Then there’s a princess who wants to go on an adventure against her fathers wishes so she kicks a hole in the wall of her room and jumps out of the castle (Alena); she’s joined by a young priest (Cristo) and an elderly mage (Brey) employed by her father, who give up on bringing her home and instead ask to travel with her to help her out. Next you have a merchant who wants to raise enough money to buy his own storefront (Taloon). After that you play a Fortune Teller (Nara) who travels with her dancer sister (Mara) on a quest to avenge the death of their father (an alchemist who was murdered by his apprentice). Each chapter ends on a climax related to motivations/goals of its lead character and each chapter shows more of the world/gives out more info on what is going on behind the scenes. While you actively control the primary characters of a chapter other characters are either controlled completely by AI (in chapters I-IV), or loosely follow a tactical strategy you select (chapter V). I’ve been getting on fine with it, but this might be a deal breaker for some. The music is better than any of the Dragon Quest games I’ve finished (and what I’ve heard from any of the ones I’ve played, but not finished). A remake of this game has an interesting flaw: they cut all the party chart dialogue from the foreign language versions of the DS version; so if you don’t know Japanese, you’ll probably miss out on a lot of character interaction with that version. (I heard this had something to do with concerns that the game wouldn’t make enough sales to cover translation costs of the party chart [which was reputedly two thirds of the game’s script]). Dragon Quest VI Honestly I’ve barely played this one. You have actual characters for party members (a big plus in my book). I’ve heard there’s a job system as well. Plot/setting seem decently interesting on first glance. I might come back to this one later. Dragon Quest VIII I got about halfway through this one.

They included a character-specific skill tree system which is cool, except that there are objectively best routes to take for some (possibly all?) characters and these best routes are not even close to obvious from the outset. It introduced a pretty fun crafting system.

There’s a decent cast of characters, but they don’t have quite enough going on for my tastes (my fave is Yangus). Plot has an interesting premise, but feels very barebones, and the environments/towns/npcs aren’t very interesting (maybe about as good as DQV, but worse than IV).

This game gets lauded for the 3D models of characters/enemies, but honestly I’ve never been a fan of the character designs of Dragon Quest (especially the monsters), so I feel pretty “meh” about it outside of being able to see your party members in combat (for I think the first time in the series), which is very nice. The music is very ambient a lot of the time. It does a good job of fitting melancholy moments, but doesn’t do such a great job of building excitement during battles and high-tension events. Dragon Quest IX This game feels a lot like Dragon Quest III.

You don’t have any actual characters, you just recruit them and use them in battle (no meaningful intraparty dialogue, character development, etc.) I think I played around 10-20 hours before dropping it.

Final Thoughts

Dragon Quest games vary from game to game in terms of gameplay mechanics, but they vary a great deal more when it comes to characters.

If you like having a lot of control over your party composition and don’t care about having characters with personality, you might like Dragon Quest III, V, or IX.

If you want a party comprised of characters who interact, have personalities, and might even develop over time, you might like Dragon Quest IV, or (sort of) VIII (I haven’t played much of VI, or any of VII or XI, but I heard they also fall into this camp). If you want to play an old school, 8-Bit JRPG that launched a spectacular franchise, might have actually been ground-breaking for its time, and is still fun to play today, check out the original Phantasy Star. . . . . . . (at least, for me it’s still fun to this day) [notes: - edited some typos, and mistakes most notably regarding the Hurt series of spells in Dragon Quest I - Revised some word choices - Added a comment about being able to see your party in combat in Dragon Quest VIII]

#Dragon Warrior #Dragon Quest #Dragon Warrior IV #Dragon Quest IV #Dragon Quest II #Dragon Warrior II #Dragon Quest III #Dragon Warrior III #Dragon Quest V #Dragon Quest VI #Dragon Quest VIII #I'm generally not a fan of silent protagonists

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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285. Sonic Universe #12

Knuckles: The Return (Part 4 of 4): Echoes of the Past (Part Four)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

Things are certainly dire, as both teams of heroes (minus Julie-Su and Ray, still up on Angel Island) have been captured by Finitevus and the local Dark Egg Legion chapter. Finitevus gloats about how well his plan has gone, that he found the Legion when he was investigating the very same ruins that had Knuckles so confused, and from there orchestrated an alliance between himself and them, so they could capture Angel Island for Eggman/the Iron Queen's regime and Finitevus could study the Master Emerald at his leisure. After monologuing a bit at the furious Knuckles, he takes his leave to go oversee Angel Island being reeled back into the Great Crater, something which… really should be more stunning to everyone involved, if you ask me. I mean, literally the past several centuries of echidna history have been irrevocably shaped by exactly this concept, returning the island to the planet's surface. Dimitri did his whole godhood insanity thing entirely because people didn't agree with his plan to set this in motion, and perhaps even more importantly, his plan was shown to have failed in an alternate timeline, causing the island to crash into the earth and kill everyone on it. Apparently, this entire time they shoulda just been using regular ol' chains to do the job! Imagine after so many hundreds of years of this being an issue, Finitevus really did just accomplish the task with some random chains. But anyway, Finitevus leaves the prisoners to the overwatch of Bill, who so far hasn't said a word during Finitevus' speech despite his former friends being among the imprisoned.

Oh no! Whatever horrible tortures are about to befall our heroes? The torture of having their shackles fall off harmlessly, as it turns out. Yeah, of course Bill didn't just turn evil for no reason! Though he does appear to have some beef with Vector, remarking angrily that he'd have preferred if Vector stayed chained up. Man, what in the world did Vector do in the past that pissed off so many people? Barby demands an explanation, with her dialogue vaguely hinting that she and Bill were possibly involved romantically, so Bill explains that several months ago when Eggman began pushing in this region, the other platypuses decided they wanted a little taste of that power and began demanding to join up. Bill couldn't talk them down, so instead, he went to Eggman and voluntarily joined his cause, becoming outfitted with cybernetics along with the other platypuses, hoping to manage the situation from within. Apparently he never found a chance to tell his former teammates that he wasn't actually evil after all, but he's been doing his best to mismanage the campaign in Downunda without seeming too suspicious. Everyone is pleased and relieved, and he urges them to quickly make their escape so he can play it off as having been overpowered while separated from his backup. Thrash happily obliges, and reveals his own special power - yelling so loudly that it can break down doors. The fight against the Legion in the crater quickly commences, but Walt encourages Knuckles to head back to his island while they carry on the fight here on the ground. Vector can't see a way to get back up without their warp ring, but Mighty apparently has an idea of his own.

I just need everyone here to remember that according to canon measurements, this island floats forty-three miles (69 km) in the sky. Yes, I realize that's only the case because Penders didn't create his units of measurements with sanity in mind. No, that does not mean I'm ever letting this fact go. It's also worth noting that this entire arc portrays the crater as not looking much bigger than like, a mile across at the most, but the island is forty-seven miles (75 km) across at its narrowest. I mean, we already knew that no one pays attention to matters of scale in these comics, but still, I notice, and it bugs me to no end. Consistency, people!

Anyway, Mighty tosses Knuckles alllll the way up to the island, as the fight continues to rage on the ground, and he hops up over the edge just as Finitevus is about to put his grubby hands on the Master Emerald. No sign of Julie-Su or Ray anywhere, huh? Knuckles is immediately ready for a fight, but Finitevus tries to talk him down, actually apologizing for forcing him into the role of Enerjak before. Knuckles still isn't buying it, but then Finitevus hits him with the bug guns - Dimitri actually wasn't the first Enerjak. Finitevus claims to know everything about the echidnas' history, the fact that Enerjak goes back much further in their history, the true history of Albion, the origins of the mysterious ruins in the desert, even some secret about Aurora and how she may not even be a real goddess. Knuckles is clearly torn for a split second, because damn are those some juicy-sounding secrets, but he's shaken back to reality when Finitevus tries to pull the "We're two of a kind, you and I" trick and promises, if he joins him, to give him "anything he wants." And what does Knuckles want?

Finitevus is not amused by Knuckles' defiance, and turns the fight around on him while mocking his childish desires. Hilariously, he actually does the cool-guy thing of catching Knuckles' punch in his own hand, which seems badass until you realize we're talking about the guy with spikes on his fists. I can only assume Ian forgot this little detail, or else the rest of this issue would just be Finitevus yelling in agony at the two brand-new holes that had been punched into the palm of his hand. Knuckles powers up with the energy of the nearby Master Emerald, while Finitevus summons his… I dunno, dark black evil-guy energy or whatever, and they go head to head, Knuckles reciting Tikal's prayer for strength, while Finitevus puts a new twist on the same chant.

I actually don't get Ian's fascination with Tikal's prayer at all. It's always recited verbatim from the version of it in Sonic Adventure, but personally, I always felt like it was strangely translated in that game, not really making a ton of grammatical sense, or any real sense at all, really. I mean, the chant was originally just supposed to describe the relationship between the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds, but that's not relevant at all in this universe given the vastly different origins of both - the Master Emerald in the comics isn't a direct counter to the Chaos Emeralds like in the games, but one giant Chaos Emerald itself. I dunno, maybe this is just a nitpick, but it still confuses me.

Finitevus is impressed by Knuckles' display of raw power, but decides to end the fight quickly, and pulls out one of his warp rings, encircling it around Knuckles midsection and happily threatening to close it while Knuckles is still only halfway through. However, at that moment Julie-Su finally makes her entrance and shoots Finitevus in the shoulder, distracting him long enough for Knuckles to grab him and make good on his promise to throw him off his island. That doesn't seem like a proper solution to this threat at all, but eh, whatever, Knux is happy with it I guess. He, Julie-Su, and Ray all head back down to the crater, where the Downunda Freedom Fighters have finished running the Legion off for now, and say their goodbyes. Barby makes a remark that her father would have been proud of Vector, hinting at yet more unexplored history between him and the others, but he still refuses to explain further when Ray tries to pry. Thrash leaves through a warp ring of his own, making some odd comments about how it would be such a shame if the rest of the echidnas were to be wiped out - this guy really doesn't like echidnas for whatever reason - and with the threat settled, Knuckles and his friends finally head back onto Angel Island for some peaceful rest.

Yeah, gee Vector, I wonder why no one found a body? I mean, it's not like Finitevus has demonstrated that he can warp himself to safety mid-fall during literally the previous big battle against him or anything. Of course, he's safe and sound, and heads back to the crater once it's clear to watch the island's departure and muse to himself how his plans aren't through yet and he's ready to kill Knuckles when he next gets the chance - anything to put him closer to the Master Emerald. Let us know how your quest to off one of the comic's most popular characters goes, buddy!

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #su 12 #writer: ian flynn #pencils: tracy yardley #colors: jason jensen

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