#like at least in botw there was a level of free exploration

[annieisyourfavourite]

you know, tears of the kingdom has a LOT of audacity to have me 2 hours in and still in the fucking tutorial world

#mine #totk #oh no it sucks! #maybe it's more fun once this stupid fucking tutorial overworld is done #but right now it's like. aaaaaaallllllll tedium and boring shit #like at least in botw there was a level of free exploration #and if u wanted. u could start doing story shit right away #this shit tho makes me so frustrated i feel like tearing up #and i hate the crafting mechanic.....it's so tedious and imprecise #and it's making me frustrated over and over again realizing #that it's gonna be like. a core part of the game 😬 #i hate crafting games..........

[nazmazh]

So, yeah Palworld.

Despite the tone/direction of the hype, it's not really a replacement for Pokémon.

It is, however a replacement for ARK. And it's been quite good at that so far.

And considering the BS ARK pulled with their pricing and release plans and all that recently (not to mention their apparent utter aversion to optimizing the game even slightly - I'd really rather not have to dedicate nearly half of a hard drive to keeping it installed and updated, only for it to still struggle to run certain parts thank you very much), I know a lot of people that were looking for something to scratch that itch.

It might not be dinosaur-flavoured, but the mons are an appealing substitute on many levels. And the more direct automated use of them in more complex tasks is definitely a neat addition - And that's before even getting into the whole "parody of cute monster taming games" aspect - Which I don't think would have carried a game on its own for me, but is a solid enough flavour element here. Plus, expressly elemental creatures also creates more opportunities for use in the base system.

Also, as a quality of life thing - I really like that within a base, all storage is linked, so you can start building without having to go back and physically carry the materials to where you're using them. Hopefully though, a future update goes even further with this and has a system to link storage across all bases. So that you don't have to run, say, metal back and forth from the one base that produces it to others that have the more advanced production facilities.

Also - Battling/catching is a far less tedious system than KO'ing a critter and sitting there, keeping it unconscious and feeding it (especially feeding it only specific special optimum taming food) for hours to add a new critter to your team.

Something I hadn't thought of until just now - The Breath of the Wild-style movement/stamina system has felt very great! Movement feels speedy enough, the third-person perspective feels good for the sort of things you have to do, and being able to just start climbing is amazing! Something that's definitely lacking in both ARK and Pokemon (well, until you get the right upgrades in Sc/Vi, anyway). Is it the best implementation of such a system? Oh, definitely not, it still feels very unpolished compared to, say, BotW/TotK - But for this type of game, it's a very nice addition.

The actual battle system has very little in common with Pokémon - Not even something like Legends: Arceus. It's definitely much more of a free for all. It's honestly closer to Pikmin than Pokémon, but honestly still closest to stuff like ARK.

Anyway, yeah, it's been a solid zone-out and do tasks while watching YouTube/tv/whatever game, which has been a niche I've needed filled for a while. Much as I love Alan Wake 2 and my old standby Dead by Daylight - You do need to actively pay complete attention to those ones and can't have something else running alongside them.

The actual Pokémon has been sort of filling this role for a bit, but I've reached a point there where I'm just running around levelling my mons, which is fine, but familiar. Palworld is a new world to explore, with tasks that aren't quite as mindless. So it's a nice change of pace for the time being.

My sleep schedule however, is not a fan of the "Just one more thing..." Mentality I get from it (and a much of this whole genre).

------

One last note - The controversies.

Believe me, it absolutely raised my suspicions when I first heard about it overall - How could such a game not be a cheap cash-in? Probably just a bare bones, barely functional early-access asset flip game with a splash of edgy "pokemon (but just legally-distinct enough) but what if guns and expressly killing and eating them" for flavour/a gimmick, right?

But then it seemed like there was an actual game there. Systems had been thought out and appear functional - At least on a level that's on par with other decent early-access games. So, at least so far, it's not a cash-grab rip-off.

When was the other shoe going to drop?

Well, there's two drums people seem to beat loudly right now: "They're ripping off Pokemon and Nintendo's totally gonna shut them down!" And "The game totally uses AI for it's designs!", with a final offshoot of that to the effect of "This company's a scam!"

Well, to that first point - Nintendo is infamously litigious and very quickly moves to take down anything infringing on their copyrights. So, the fact that this game, being made by a "proper" development studio/company (ie: not just a couple of fans working on it as a hobby), which had publically discussed the making of the game over the past few years, made it to the point of early-access release without being taken down - That probably speaks to the "just-legally-distinct-enough" nature of their mon designs and capture systems, which are probably the two aspects most similar enough to raise eyebrows.

Now, certain visual elements do appear to be the same/incredibly similar - But I'm not sure that "facial features being used in conjunction with each other" is something they can copyright. As long as these devs/designers reverse-engineered their own versions of things, and didn't actually just rip Nintendo/Game Freak's models, I don't think there's much that actually is actionable there. The parody element is another angle that probably provides some broad cover as to the design similarity (in that you want people to clearly understand the reference you're making, so you want some similarities).

At any rate, I imagine the most profitable media franchise of all-time is probably gonna be just fine if someone makes allusions to them and their designs in an entirely different game. Pokemon doesn't really need anyone starting a crusade on its behalf, y'know?

To the stuff about the company (Pocketpair) itself. Well, there's a little more meat to those complaints there.

The big one - That AI was used in Palworld's design/development. That appears to be not true, or at the very least, not something that's been confirmed. If it were true, they'd have to disclose that for their Steam store page. So, at least, they did not openly use AI here (and its dev cycle began before the rise of the big AI boom, so it's less-likely that it was used). They'll probably face some sort of repercussions from Valve if they were deceptive about using AI, and there's not really a great reason to not be upfront about it, so, for now, I don't think they have used it here.

Believe me, if I suspected for a moment that AI was being used to cheat artists/designers out if work, I'd be out there, beating that drum too. But, given what evidence we have now, I just don't think they have for Palworld.

That being said...

Their CEO has definitely made some very sus statements about wanting to use AI going forward. Including comments about mon design in-general (nothing specific to Palworld, though, as far as I'm aware). And they have expressly used AI before, in their game AI: Art Imposter - So there is definitely a willingness on their part to use it (Though I'm not sure calling it 'Art Imposter' necessarily constitutes uncritical, effusive praise - But still, they used it in the game anyway). So that's definitely something to keep an eye on.

The whole situation with Pocketpair's other big game, Craftopia being an anime-styled, open world sandbox survival crafting game still in early-access definitely rubs some people the wrong way - Not the least of which are people who have been playing that game and feel as though they may have been playing an elaborate beta test that's going to be abandoned in favour of Palworld. And, like, I do get that - But, so far anyway, development appears to still be proceeding on Craftopia as well. So, I guess you can pick your preference from them - Whether you want the edgy Pokemon parody content in your game or you'd rather just have the "not-blocky Minecraft" type of stuff.

Ultimately, I don't think Pocketpair has any sort of loftier, noble ideals about being a better kind of gaming company or anything. They're certainly not a company that has earned any great leeway or trust from me - But they're definitely not just a cut-and-run scamming asset flipper gaming Steam's storefront.

I won't say Palworld is a "completely unproblematic fave forever" or anything like that, but from what I've been able to find, there's nothing in it/it's development history right now that makes it morally objectionable enough to avoid in my books. It's fine.

It's fine.

Other people might have different standards for what's unforgivable; but, the controversies about it definitely seem overblown or misrepresented - In my mind, at least. Its premise certainly could be alienating to a lot of people - But if you don't want to play it, you don't have to. If you don't like it, you can just say as much. You don't need to build it up into a whole big moral crusade to justify not really feeling like playing it. That's fine.

That's fine.

#Palworld #long ramble #this definitely got longer than I set out to write #ah well

[draquus]

Tears of the Kingdom spoilers ahead:

I am playing TotK for the second time now, and I'm sad because it's a somewhat disappointing experience. The first playthrough, I was really drawn in by the story, and the experience of exploring the depths.

Now, all the tension of the story is just completely gone, because it was all dependent on believing Zelda's sacrifice was a profoundly meaningful thing. But the way the story ends, it just...isn't. She gets to go back, doesn't even remember being a dragon at all. Link gets completely fixed up with no consequences.

I am not, and this is important, complaining about it having a happy ending. I think Link being able to save Zelda is a really important thing, and it wouldn't have been a game I could fully enjoy if he hadn't. I just wish it felt earned. I wish he had to sacrifice something (like, you know, his arm). I wish there had been some connection between him and Raru and Sonia to justify their being able to fix things at the end. Were their spirits trapped somehow, and his freeing them gave them the ability to actually help? (Yes, that is the plot of BotW, but at least it's a plot). I wish Zelda's sacrifice left some mark on her, whether physical or emotional. I wish we had a better sense of how long she was in the past. It kind of seems like it might have been a year or more, but it also feels like about a week. I spent my whole first playthrough motivated by the deep sadness and pity evoked every time i saw the Light Dragon in the sky, but now I just can't make myself care.

And like, I get it, some plots just don't have as much tension when you know how they end. But the whole game is kind of like that. I have no desire to re-explore the Depths, because now I know there's almost nothing there. Once you realize it's just an inverse map, with few points of interest and a lot of repetition, the motivation is just gone. The sky is even worse. I was getting sick of it even on the first playthrough. There are no biomes; there are repetitive enemies, repetitive puzzles, and no story. Part of what made BotW so enjoyable to play and replay was how every new place told you something about itself and its history. For example, the broken guardians were a constant reminder of Link's failure, but they weren't just there. You could see why some outposts had survived, an why others hadn't, just from the placement of the dead (and sometimes terrifyingly alive) guardians. You could see the tragedy of a failed last stand, or a forgotten victory against all odds, written in the world around you. I played BotW at least six times, and it only felt a little overly familiar when I had basically memorized everything. I can't fault TotK for not being that level of amazing (BotW is in a league of its own), but I feel like it doesn't even try.

Now, don't get me wrong. TotK is still a fun game. It's just all the things it does best (the weapons, the building, the different abilities), are not really the things I love about Zelda. I did enjoy the actual dungeons, but they were mostly too short and too similar to the divine beasts. Only two of them (wind and lightning) really had interesting story elements. The things I love about Zelda games are the stories, the puzzles, the atmosphere, and the characters. This game seemed like it had all those elements at the beginning, but none of them really came through in the end.

Also, there is nothing about Raru and Sonia's child. Like, it's fine that he/she is not a major player, but we need to know why. Is it because it's a baby? Who has this baby, and why do we never see Raru & Sonia (the Good Parents) actually taking care of their child? Is (as seems more likely) their child already mostly grown and maybe having adventures somewhere else? Then why is he/she not at all involved in the Imprisoning War? Like, again, I can think of several answers to these questions, but there needs to be at least a hint.

Anyway, I do want to reiterate that this is not a bad game. It's just a frustrating mix of fantastic pieces that don't quite come together.

#the legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom spoilers #totk spoilers #totk #botw

[torchickentacos]

I've never understood Drew snapping in that one scene. Could you try to explain it? You seem to get him well

First off, hello and thank you! I don't know that I get him as much as I just like to poke around his brain and emotions and just don't shut up about him tbh? I see a fucked up fictional guy and explore his emotional issues like a corn maze. See also: Zuko, Clive from PL, BOTW Zelda who I'm counting as a fucked up fictional guy here, et cetera. So anon, I went back and watched that episode, and here are my thoughts. I’m keeping it as close to canon as I can here, though if you’re on my blog you’re likely looking for the ship side of it too. I will touch on that since I do think it’s canonically interwoven with this scene, but I’m trying to mostly focus on Drew as his own character. I do love shipping but more than that I think AG has made characters that stand well on their own, so I did take that into account though he is, in canon, somewhat inextractible from May since their stories are very deliberately playing off of one another. Anyways, let's go, feel free to disagree with me, I'm just some random person with opinions that people trust to go to for information for some reason. And I love it, though I'm not sure what I did to deserve it.

On the surface, it appears that Drew is just unhappy with Absol’s performance. I think we all know it’s not just that, though-but what exactly IS it? I have a few theories, since in the english dub, at least, it’s not clear on the surface level. 

One, and probably the most popular theory I’ve seen back in ye olde pokemon forum days if we’re to not take the explanation of ‘absol did bad’ at face value, is that the stress got to him and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not helped by them likely having to face off. Which, sure, whatever- but Drew isn’t the type of person to let contest stress get to him. He’s about perfected that cool facade, though we are really seeing the cracks in the surface here. I think it’s fairly surface-level to read it as just competitive energy getting to him. 

Theory two, I’ve seen people say it’s him getting freaked out and realizing how much of a threat May really is, and this is the moment where he takes her seriously. I think this may play into it a bit, but I do think he took her seriously before this point. This comes after Who What When Where Wynaut (WWWWW) and Spontaneous Combusken, both episodes where she challenges him or is neck-and-neck in terms of banter and conversation. Especially Spontaneous Combusken-in that episode, she’s so good at countering his remarks that he actually chickens out of the conversation (cue “Drew is such a weenie” from Max). Not to mention that in WWWWW she literally saves his ass from death via drowning.I think after that you kind of have to take someone seriously. So, I do think her being a serious rival that he sees as an equal plays into it, but I would not say this was the single defining event where that comes to the surface. However, evidence to support this is here- Solidad says May’s performance in the first round ‘really shook him’, and I do think that plays into it. 

Theory three, the one I find the most interesting. I think that there’s a possibility that Drew is in his head about their rivalry and how that interacts and counteracts with his other feelings for her. Because how do you balance a delicate friendship, a rivalry, and romantic feelings? Not easily, I imagine, and I think Drew bottled up a lot of that and it hit a peak here and spilled out. First, we have him and May in a definite shift at this point. He’s still kind of arrogant, but it’s toned down and they are friends at this point. At the very least, he’s fond of her (source: that frame from WWWWW where he's just looking at her softly, as he does, and tumblr is back to not letting me insert images). 

Actually, scratch that- at this point, it is solid canon he has a crush on her. Solidad does her ‘therapist breaking hipaa privacy laws’ thing and tells may, quote, ���he has feelings for you”. Now, May, along with most advanceshippers (love you guys-not an attack lol), seem to assume that the word ‘feelings’ here isn’t super heavy. I put that down to her being dense though because the phrase ‘feelings for you’ is fairly cut and dry. So, canon-at this point, he likes her romantically, and he’s going to have to face her in the grand festival. I think this is a moment where he realizes those two things may be hard to balance in the future. I think he’s got a lot of anxiety about his relationship with May at the moment, whatever the fuck it is. 

So, let’s move to the actual moment where he yells at her. First off, I think Solidad might have actually made things worse. (I think literally everyone being there was the opposite of helpful, actually- Drew is a weird introvert who probably felt somewhat trapped in the situation, though that’s my interpretation of it). Anyways, Solidad immediately calls him out on his bullshit in front of May, Brock, Max, and Ash, which… way to deescalate the situation there. While Drew DOES need someone blunt like that, I don’t think this was the time for her to do her therapist hipaa stuff and talk in front of everyone about how he felt like he failed (very prideful character). So, that makes it worse. So, he grits his teeth, nods, and tries to leave the situation. However, May catches him and tells him that Absol tried its best and that Drew shouldn’t be angry at it (which I really don’t think he is). And he yells at her. 

It’s the scenes after it that solidify it as him struggling with their friendship/rivalry/romantic thing, though-or at least solidify it as a possibility if we're willing to look deeper than pokemon meant for us to. This theory is mostly cemented by the scene where Ash and Drew talk (sorry, respectshippers-not trying to take over your moment here!). They end up talking about rivalries. Ash says stuff about never talking to rivals about how they train (which. One, Paul foreshadowing. But two, wasn’t that the whole thing with Ash and Charmander’s blue haired cowboy trainer? Darius or something?) Anyways, this scene ends with Drew saying “I hear ya. We’re rivals, May and I.” And the emphasis on their rivalry in this talk is what really makes me think a lot of that anger was misdirected weird emotions he had towards their rivalry in conflict towards his other feelings. Is this a stretch? Maybe, idk, but I had fun and it makes sense in my head. Hope this is what you asked for!!!

#long btw for mobile users #taylor's tag #thank you anon! #ask #asks #contestshipping #may #drew #pokeani #pokemon may #pokemon drew #coordinator may #coordinator drew

[monogramsalarm]

i’m gonna get controversial for a second and rant a little bit, i’m just Frustrated tonight

i don’t like tears of the kingdom as much as breath of the wild.

there’s a lot that i DO like !! the story (or what i’ve seen so far) is good, the building mechanics are fun and i like the idea of having a whole world above and below hyrule!

but what’s got me frustrated is the difficulty.

you can call me bad at games, you can make fun of me for it, but i’m just rlly not having fun with the difficulty of the game.

i’ve had to hand off the game for my brother to help me more times than i should. i’ve sunk 80+ hours into the game and i haven’t even finished the main story! i’m not Good at games, but i’m not Bad at them. but i’m on the easiest difficulty and it just feels like a grueling chore to get anything done compared to breath of the wild.

my favorite part of botw was the exploration. yeah, you’d run into a herd of bokoblins and other enemies while you did so, but it wasn’t as difficult or frustrating as it has been in totk. i feel Defeated by this game. i feel like i can’t play for more than an hour or two before i wanna close it for another few weeks.

i work a full time job, so i don’t have the free time required to level up enough and grind in the game to be able to do what i want and need to do in it to At Least finish the main story.

it’s definitely a difficulty spike from breath of the wild, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is for me. it’s taken the joy outta playing it when i hop onto the game and quickly have to stop and wait for my brother (who works opposite days to me) to be able to help me out with something bc i attempted it five times and couldn’t complete it.

i don’t wanna say the game is COMPLETELY inaccessible to me, bc there’s plenty of the game i HAVE been able to play, but there’s so much i just Can’t Do and it’s frustrating to me and makes me wanna just put it down and walk away :/

#m.txt #idk i’m just rlly frustrated abt the game bc my brother had to JUST do the waterblight ganon fight for me the first time in botw #and i’ve done it myself every time since #but this one just feels like a Chore and i personally am not enjoying it as much and it’s rlly frustrating and disheartening to me #I Don’t Get The Game Bc It’s So Hard And Mobs Are Everywhere And It Feels Like A Losing Battle Every Time I Boot It Up

[mx-unfunny]

Wishful Thinking About Sonic Frontiers (From A Casual Fan’s POV)

(IDW COMICS SPOILERS)

Before we start, I’d like to say that the only “good” Sonic games I’ve played before are Unleashed and Mania. The rest I’ve played are Secret Rings, Zero Gravity, and Lost World. Not the best experience. I am also, by no means, a very skilled gamer. The hardest game I’ve played so far is Hollow Knight, with Breath of the Wild being right under that, so keep that in mind. About this whole rant, I will be talking about what I hope is in store for Frontiers, while simultaneously criticizing past games. Gameplay won’t be too big of a part, as characterization and animation are parts I’m more focused on.

TLDR: I have a lot of hope for Frontiers, and I’m hoping they don’t mess it up. Everything is solid so far, but it could definitely be better. Here’s to a game better than Forces!

Let’s start with the gameplay, and with that, the environment. The environment you play in a game is very important—it sets the mood and establishes the backstory of where you are, and, importantly, the character you play as. Using previous titles, Hollow Knight is in an apocalyptic environment, allowing for a bit more free gameplay as you move between worlds. BotW is in an area well after the apocalypse, however monsters stand at every turn; the fact that it’s 3D gives more opportunities in individual play-styles. If you want to be stealthy, you can crouch, if you’d rather explore, you can get on a horse, and to this day many new things are still being found. What does this have to do with Frontiers? Well, in Hollow Knight and BotW, both have silent protagonists, letting you do whatever you want with them without feeling anything in particular. Sure, Link has a few cute moments and the Bug Knight looks sad even with those empty eyes, but the point still stands. Back to Sonic, he’s an already established character, depending on how good of a writer is behind him, the player will root for him. Back again to gameplay—the Sonic games are fast paced and always have something at every turn. Putting Sonic in a sandbox game and letting him roam free is honestly the best decision, and having linear levels still is great for old fans. However, the only problem I have with actual gameplay is the momentum. I understand that there are two different game-styles right now (action and speed), but the lack of momentum shown is upsetting. Other than that, Sonic’s free! Run around, little dude!

Surrounding collectibles, I am hoping, and I mean hoping, for chao. I know the dude in the most recent IGN video said no chao on the first island so far, but if we can treat them as chao, I’d die a happy soul. And honestly? I think these little rock guys will be the new chao, at least for this game. This is because when you complete a few puzzles, you get fruit-looking items, one was a red heart with spikes, another one was blue, and I’m hoping you can give it to these creatures. Maybe if you give them to the elder one they can create more of the little ones? I’m not sure, I just hope they have a bigger use than just hopping around like the Koroks from BotW.

Finally, before the big stuff, there’s one more thing: music. This isn’t anything negative, in fact it’s very positive. The new music in the Mini Nintendo Direct was absolutely amazing and just what we needed to close off this month besides the IGN video. I’m hoping for more bangers, especially vocal tracks.

Okay. Big thing number one: animation. (I will not compare the animation from Wreck-It-Ralph and the games. I understand that movies have a bigger budget than games, so it’s out of the question.) I… I’m gonna be honest. I despise the animation rigs in Forces. It’s not because it’s bad, in fact it’s pleasing to the eye from a casual point of view—I’m an artist and I know that animation is insanely difficult, but there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything about the animation rigs—more specifically, facial rigs. Can you guess it? It’s a very important part in both media and real life. It’s emotions! Granting your character to portray certain emotions such as sadness or anger is very important in the world of animation. It lets the audience know what the character is feeling and, when extremely expressive, likable or comical. (It’s what made the Adventure games so charming.) In Forces, they… they uh… use their eyelids. And mouths. And… that’s it. It’s the bare minimum in expressions. While the Adventure games were silly with their expressions, overly silly, it adds to the likability of the characters and games, but in Forces they kind of just. Stand there and move their hands a bit. Yes, in-game cutscenes are very different than CGI cutscenes, and the CGI looks quite alright, but compare the in-game cutscenes from Unleashed to Forces! It’s crazy how we went from very clean transitions from one emotion to another, to just two frames of eyelids! I’m pretty sure Forces was rushed because SEGA didn’t care enough, and Unleashed got care put into it (still rushed I think), but the point still stands at the difference. This was what, a whole decade, and the animation got somehow worse? No hate to the animators if they were rushed, but it’s still jarring. (And don’t get me started on the model in Forces, it’s insane how they classic-ed (classified?) Modern Sonic just to cater to “Nostalgia.” That was a one time thing and you know it!) Anyway, there’s hope here. In one leak (a crunchy, 144p, fishbowl leak), we see Sonic land on the Starfall Islands and… what’s this? Emotions? Sadness? Care put into the way Sonic acts? Possibly even a tear I see? It shouldn’t have to be this way, not really—I shouldn’t be going crazy over one small detail like facial animation.

After that is characterization. And… oh boy there is a lot to talk about. I’ll try to talk about Sonic, Tails, and Amy—possibly even Knuckles. First of all, I would like to thank Ian Flynn for practically saving each of these characters in the IDW comics, I know we’re in good hands, or at least better hands than Forces. Let’s start with Sonic. I like to think his peak characterization was in Black Knight, especially the end. (Nooo… this has nothing to do with Jason Griffith being the best Sonic voice ever…) Sonic has a mix of goofiness and seriousness that makes him so cool and awesome. Sonic helps because it’s the right thing to do—everybody around him has benefitted in some way after meeting him. Tails and Amy are more independent, while Shadow and Knuckles get a taste of fun and friendship. Like I said, a cool guy. But in Forces, they’ve driven that cool guy attitude so far into the sky, they’ve dug a grave for Sonic and the rest of his wonderful attributes. In Forces (and Colors and Lost World and—listen, Roger got some bad games), Sonic is so unbelievably cocky, so brash, that it’s hard to process the fact that this Sonic and Black Knight Sonic is the same Sonic! He knows when to get serious, when to get angry, when the world needs him most, but in Forces he’s just sort of… chilling. He’s having fun. It’s also implied that he just straight up kills Infinite (implied, not canon), and while that’s deserved, it’s unlike him to not give his enemies second chances. Starline in the IDW comics did some terrible stuff and Sonic never captured him or killed him! Sonic has a go-getter attitude and is a wonderful person to others, but my man—you are 15. Please use your go-getter attitude and go-get therapy. This is why that 144p leak is so important, there’s a moment of sadness and seriousness that makes Sonic so relatable and likable. It shows that he’s not always jokes and laughter, that there’s still a person under there. I could go on a bit longer, but I won’t.

Tails… I love Tails. I just love him. But Forces is… oh boy does it get on my nerves. First it was Sonic and his “torturing,” then Tails ducking and crying out for Sonic. Trauma response, much? /LH /J. I’ll explain why Tails ducking in Forces is different than in the IDW comics. In Forces, Tails helps some people, sees Sonic get beat up, then immediately gives up. C’mon. You can’t tell me he wouldn’t at least try? Sure, he scanned them, but nothing defensive. This whole scene completely undos his character development in the Adventure games. He learns then how to be independent (thanks to Sonic), and starts to fight on his own and be more useful to the team. But here… here he just cowers in fear. He did the same in Unleashed, but he’s still bearable in that game (for the 2 seconds he got screen-time). Let me also bring up the IDW comics—Tails ducks and whimpers out to Sonic before he turns into a zombot. The thing about this is that, really, it’s deserved. Tails has been working nonstop for a cure, helping the Resistance, keeping Sonic in check, yet it was all for nothing as he’s about to be infected. He’s tired, and the last thing he can think about is Sonic as he’s helplessly moved onto the villain side. It’s deserved because as I said, he’s tired, and he’s just a kid. In Forces, he is not shown to be included as much, and because of this, it’s jarring to see him give up so easily. We don’t see him work up a sweat until that point. I’m hoping that in Frontiers, he helps Amy get back to Sonic, all while fighting enemies with her. Maybe we can get more playable characters, like the story switching from Sonic to Tails/Amy and starting them off in a fight scene after they landed. Maybe this could have a coop version as well! If he’s not with Amy, I’m just begging Sonic doesn’t come across him because he’s captured. Weak Tails is not good Tails.

Onto Amy. I’ll be honest, I really disliked her, but this is because her character was all about loving Sonic and doing everything revolves around him. Also, because she is toxic af, she is abusing him and trying to get him to do stuff without his consent. However, Ian Flynn came along and saved her—she is such a good character in the IDW comics (and the Boom spinoffs/series), and I love her so much now! She still has that crush on Sonic, but now she’s responsible and mature, acting as support for Sonic whilst fighting for herself. The IDW comics did what Forces did not. They showed her tired and helpful and trying her best, doing everything she can for the Resistance, and even though she has no telekinesis or power of flight, she’s still very smart and uses her resources. If we get IDW Amy in Frontiers, I will cry with joy.

Finally, Knuckles. There isn’t much to say about him right now, as we got a gif of him… wait. Wait, what?! HE’S GUARDING THE MASTER EMERALD?! No way. No freaking way. From the looks of it he’s waiting for something, and he’s GUARDING. There’s weird lightning in the background and he’s GUARDING. I’m sorry, it’s way too much for me to handle. Goofiness aside, him actually guarding the ME is so important and, like the facial animations, it should not be this big of a deal. It’s my only problem with him in Forces—Amy should have been captain while he goes out on patrol. But anyway, Knuckles has gone through a rollercoaster of characterization. First he was serious and a rival to Sonic, then he was just serious, then he was comic relief, then he was dumb (the series did him justice because he’s funny af in the show), then all of a sudden he’s serious again. Like I said, rollercoaster. The 2nd movie has my heart and soul for making him serious with a touch of naïvety/inexperience again. If he’s not in Frontiers and only the prologue, I hope he gets a long moment to shine. He absolutely needs it.

Like I said before, I could go on and on about the characterization and animation of Sonic. From Adventure to Forces, each character is interesting in their own way and plays very important roles, no matter how minuscule they are. They’re all fun, quirky, compelling, and I think we’re in good hands if Frontiers does well. Thank you for reading if you got this far, and I’d love to hear your opinions!

- Cole

#sonic #sonic frontiers #sth #sonic the hedgehog #rant #tails the fox #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #sonic idw #Cole RAMBLES

[lady-starbind]

POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS RANT

So um... before we begin, Imma warn u dudes ‘n dudets that my rant will NOT be spoiler free so um, ignore this post once you’ve been spoiled OR proceed if u don’t care about being spoiled or not. SO FIRST THINGS FIRST... I HAVE ANCESTOR OCS THAT I’VE CREATED, WHICH I’LL BRIEFLY EXPLAIN: Anne Rose (my persona’s ancestor, sister of a grandparent on her paternal side): Fiery Scottish woman from Galar, has come to Hisui in search of gold.... Instead of gold, she finds Pokemon friends and learns the art of a tailor from Anthea (who becomes her mentor) ...Anne was originally going to be the MC I played as, but I’ll explain later why that is now SCRAPPED. (Rose is her middle name btw, her real last name is my last name which is none of y’all’s concerns lols) Angus Rothes (Timothy’s Very Great Grandfather, a direct ancestor from his Paternal side): Best friend of Anne’s and helps her with her studying for the Pokedex and such. Unlike his descendant, Angus is not near as timid and is pretty social and brave. Probably doesn’t look up to Anne as a mother figure, but she’s definitely his bestie. Angus is around 13 during this timeframe ig Bramble (Fan Ancestor of Thorton, he’s likely related as a Great Uncle of sorts): Bramble is a highly curious boy who loves tinkering with machinery! (...well, whatever machinery can be tinkered with in Hisui ig), Unlike his Atheist nephew, Bramble likely practices Shinto and worships his Bronzong. Bramble is also around 10 years old in this timeline. He has a crush on Anne that is never reciprocated. THERE WE GO, HAVE A PICTURE OF... HISUIAN GROWLITHE AS WE GO ON TO THE NEXT SECTION:

RELATIONSHIP CHART THINGY FOR MY OCS WITH THE CANON CHARACTERS: Anne: Angus = Best friend, Bramble = Close friend and study buddy, Melli = MORTAL ENEMY (lmbo deep down they at least respect the other's abilities.... and do care about the other... at least somewhat? In an odd twisted way perhaps?) Anthe = Mentor, probably teaches Anne how to make clothes? Two are close ...close-ish,

Angus): Anne = Best friend, Bramble = friend and study buddy... lowkey jealous of Bramble's friendship with Anne, Melli = Acquaintance ...he's not a big fan of the guy, Anthe = Probably friends or acquaintances,

Bramble: Anne = Close friend and study buddy ...develops a crush on Anne that is never reciprocated, Angus = friend and study buddy ...can sense Angus' jealousy and he's lowkey jealous of Angus's friendship with Anne,

Melli: Anne = MORTAL ENEMY (mutually respects one another's abilities... though would rarely be humble enough to admit it. Cares about her as well... just another human being ig, human decency if you will. His rivalry with Anne has left him with a scar where she bit him once, and has helped him be more physically tough... might come in handy for protecting his sweetheart/future sweetheart.) Angus = Annoying friend of Anne's ...at least he's not as obnoxious or barbaric though. NEXT SECTION

I HAVE LEARNED THINGS ABOUT THIS GAME I WAS NOT EXPECTING 1# Ingo in Legends Arceus is NOT Granpa/Uncle Ingo... No, he’s THE Ingo! The same fricker that you take on in the battle subway! I knew his clothes looked a bit too much like Ingo’s... I never counted on him being THE Ingo though... Hope he and Emmet can get a reunion soon :’( ....I MUST LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS BACKSTORY IF I CAN!

2# MC-CHAN IS NOT FROM HISUI?! THEY’RE APPARENTLY YEETED FROM A DISTANT FUTURE!? (Hence why my lovely fictional ancestor Anne will likely no longer be our MC rip ;w;) ...I’ve read online that said future is a future beyond the Modern Sinnoh we all know and love?! SO DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME MC-CHAN IS LIKE, BOTW LEVEL INTO THE FUTURE BEFORE THEY ARE YEETED BACC IN TIME BY ARCEUS!? GAMEFREAK AT LEAST LET THEM BE FROM MODERN DAY SINNOH... I COULD HAVE AT LEAST YEETED MY BOI NESTOR BACC IN TIME AND MAYBE HE AND INGO COULD BECOME BROS!!! (Nestor is like... from normal Modern day ig?) I may just say “frick u” and yeet normal modern day Nessie boi bacc in time to Arceus, I believe he’d have lotsa fun exploring a freaking new TIME PERIOD I just love the idea of Nestor’s cousin Neoguri and Ingo’s bro-bro Emmet going back in time in search of their kinfolk. Give them all a happy ending... TwT Ig I need to verse myself with the lore more before I go and make more fanlore but... ig any of u guys who have played, y’all think it too farfetched for a character from normal modern day to be yeeted back in Hisui? Or can I frick the story and yeet a modern day Nessie boi? OH AND HAVE A CURSED HEADCANON BEFORE I LEAVE YOU LOVELY PEOPLE

SO PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TALKING LIKE THIS FRICKER (Melli) IS AVERY’S ANCESTOR... WHICH HAS ME THINKING... DOES HE MARRY A POKEMON?! Now, before you guys throw off at the absolute absurdity of this headcanon, hear me out lol. Avery’s family naturally has like, Psychic powers... You know what else has naturally occurring psychic powers?! POKEMON Remember that lovely scene in DPPt where the player read about people in the olden days, MARRYING POKEMON?! THEREFORE, I HEADCANON THAT MELLI LIKELY MARRIED A PSYCHIC POKEMON, MAYBE A GARDEVOIR AND HAD A FAMILY WITH IT... THUS LEADING TO ALL THE WEIRD PSYCHIC PEOPLE THAT IS FREAKING AVERY’S FAMILY... Now look... I don’t really fancy the idea of Pokemon x Human couples persey but.... I mean, there is canon grounds that this cursed event could have happened. Yes you guys, y’all are very welcome for the nightmares I have bestowed upon you lol.

one thing I do appreciate about Melli, and Imma bet that this is a thing most of the dudes in the Avery family has went through: I honestly thought Melli was a girl before I found clarification that in fact, he was a guy. The same situation happened when I was first introduced to Avery... The men in this family are feminine and elegant no?

#Starbind Rambles #Pokemon Legends Arceus #Pokemon Ingo #Pokemon Melli #Pokemon Avery #Pokemon Thorton #fan ideas #Nestor #Neoguri #Timothy #Starbind #Anne #Angus #fanlore #canon lore #headcanon #cursed headcanon #Pokemon #geez how deep is the rabbit hole for this game?!

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

a love letter to genshin impact (yes, really)

I tend to express my feelings on Genshin as indescribable rage and frustration but...I wouldn't play this game if I didn't love it at least a little bit.

I usually play Genshin with the sound off and with my main team: Beidou, Jean, Bennett, and Noelle. And I'm pretty focused on completing quests and getting the leveling materials for all the various characters I have to raise, considering I've long been trapped in the endless grind of late-game AR. But I'd just fought Stormterror. I was out of resin. So I figured I'd do requests.

Today, I had a request from Sara the bard to get her 10 sweet flowers. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem--except I'd just completed the "cook 20 dishes" BP quest by turning all of mine into Sweet Madames.

Looking for sweet flowers it was then.

Sweet flowers are everywhere. But they're also surprisingly difficult to find. With regional specialties like, say, Cecelias, you've got a pretty strict area in which they can be found and all you need to do is thoroughly search one or two locales. Or they have specific requirements that mean you spend a lot of time teleporting all over the map, like Qingxin.

But sweet flowers...they're just everywhere. The only real way to farm them is to meander around the world.

So that's what I did. I swapped out my main team for my bench team: Xiao, Xinyan, Tartaglia, and Diona. And then I went wandering around Mondstadt, looking for sweet flowers. For once, I had the sound on, and I just...ran around the map, following the dirt roads for the most part and avoiding combat.

It was while jogging around near Springvale that I remembered why I loved this game so much in the first place.

Before I got in deep with the lore, before I picked favorites among the characters, it was the open world that did it for me. Sure, the reason I started playing was seeing a picture of Xiao from the beta and being curious about Ono Kensho's character, but I continued to play because the open world is so goddamn beautiful.

And, yeah, sure, it's a ripoff of Breath of the Wild. Someone I know once called it "Genshin Impact: Breath of the Waifu" and really, he isn't wrong. I just don't think that diminishes how obscenely pretty the game is.

There's really nothing that beats traveling from Stone's Gate into Liyue and seeing the vast marshes and plains surrounding the Wangshu Inn, or climbing to the top of Stormterror's tower and looking out onto the cliffs and grasslands below. I'm on mobile, so the graphics quality isn't perfect, but it's still gorgeous.

And the sound. I usually don't play with the sound, right? But it was with the sound on, only half-paying attention, that I remembered that the game even sounds pretty. Someone put a whole lot of work into the foley for the sfx--how footsteps sound different in puddles or in grass, how there's a specific effect if your character runs through a bush, and how every character's outfit jangles slightly differently. There is birdsong, even, convincing birdsong. Yu-Peng Chen has been in the industry for well over a decade and his music is beautiful, too.

Genshin Impact may be a predatory gatcha game designed to make you spend money on increasingly overdesigned anime characters, but you cannot convince me that it wasn't made, at least a little, as a labor of love.

And I think it really hit me, how close this game is to my heart, when I was running back into Mondstadt to give Sara her sweet flowers. Most of the time, I just teleport in, like most people probably do. But I'd spent my time walking places like I had in the early game, before I'd unlocked all the waypoints, so I decided I'd go in from the waypoint on the shore.

Jogging over the bridge and seeing Cider Lake, then running through the gates and hearing the guards say something about Mondstadt as I passed them?

It felt oddly like coming home.

I'm resisting the urge to talk about how ridiculous this feels to me, how absurd it is to have such an emotional attachment to a video game. A free video game, and one that gets a lot of flack for being a BoTW ripoff, fairly easy to play, and inherently fanservice-y.

But I don't think it's that absurd to be so attached to a game I've poured hours of my life into. And I think there's value in a game that can make people do that, spend hours and hours in a lovingly made escapist fantasy.

It's not a perfect game. Genshin is weakest when it becomes too much like real life--when commissions feel like chores, when there's an endless to-do list of things to get done before the week ends. The wishing system becomes a chore too, because you have to desperately find chests and complete quests not because the exploration is fun, but because you need primos and the banner is ending soon dammit, Kazuha why won't you come home--

But even with its technical flaws and the corporate nature of a gatcha system, Genshin is still a damn good game. And I love it for that.

#genshin impact #long post #yeah i'm just rambling on this one #i spend too much time complaining about this game tbh

[harmonyjade]

I don’t even care if genshin is a botw clone

it doesn’t have the annoying ass mechanics that botw has that made me stop playing

I hated the weird mechanics with the bombs and the magnet and just that whole ui bar thing

hated that I was forced to run around naked because it’s raining and oh no don’t get hit by lightning

my weapons breaking constantly

never having any arrows or bows

finding a chest with a new weapon means nothing to me because it’s gonna break anyway

oh I can’t pick it up because my inventory is filled because of course it is, you need ten billion weapons to do anything because they all fucking BREAK

never having enough health or stamina for anything

high level enemies everywhere and you don’t have enough weapons to break fighting it

those annoying robots that shoot death lasers and there’s no way to fight it normally without frame perfect timing

the forced survival mechanic with the temperature and how you can’t go to certain places because you’ll freeze to death or bake to death

finding all the korok seeds is annoying

I hated it

yeah it’s looks pretty but I’m not having a good time

It was interesting to explore for a bit, but it got old real fast when I keep dying all the time and seeing cool boss like enemies that I know I can’t fight

and I’m going through all of this with controller drift

also people just running naked right to the castle and fighting ganon right away and beating the game in like....an hour, kinda made it all meaningless to me as well

like if that’s possible, why even bother with the rest of the game

at least with genshin, there’s a variety of playable characters

I can play as a girl right at the start

I can level up and get stronger weapons that won’t break

I feel like I have more direction with what I should be doing

the cooking mechanic is straight forward and easy

I can play it on my ps4 which I just like way better

and also it’s free, so I don’t have to feel bad

and I’m having a way better time

but that’s just my goof ass opinion

#genshin impact

[violet975]

Random thoughts.

So i replayed BOTW a while ago for the first time and decided to write down some of the random thoughts that i get while exploring Hyrule, here they are.

… A lot of these things gave me some fanfic ideas and I hope that they will do the same for someone more competent.

It's realty in character that the response to being asked why you took the man's torch is either to bludgeon things to death with it or to be a pyromaniac.

When the tower pedestal shines, Link instinctively leans back for a second before diving right back in because curiosity kills the cat.

The message from the slate/tower is to watch out for falling rocks which either means that 

1: zelda is writing them (and has a fair bit of free reign still).

2: the ancient Sheikah could see the future.

3: Ai to the likes of Fi.

Ganon kinda reawakens when the towers are up so maybe he was resting and building a body until he was interrupted here, which could be why his form later is such a hodgepodge of the Blights?.

Link is not too naive since he kinda clamps up in his answers to the totally unimportant old man.

Did Link briefly make eye-contact with the camera when he got the spirit orb!?

Link is a bit freaked out in his "How did you know!?" Response cas now he knows something major is up when the old man directly mentions the spirit orb.

Again, in character that you can choose to be an impatient brat with the "paraglider please?" Or inquisitive when Roam points out the slate.

Either run out of temper with the "that wasn't the deal!" Or be resigned with "so I need more now?" When the old fart sends you off to the other three shrines.

Ohh, another adrenaline junkie option with the "got it!" Over climbing the tower for a good view or a Deadpan "are you joking?".

"Or so i heard quite some time ago.. I do not know if it actually works as such" so they did not get teleporting to work before? or he just didn't learn how it was done.

So the monks, according to how the Triforce signs they held, apparently associate Power with Magnesis, Wisdom with bombs, Stability with stasis and Courage with cryonis?

The monks dissipate into green specks like Ganon’s soul does under the castle!

I'm not into men but damn if Link doesn't look good in the Warm Doublet.

Oh. My. God, he was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule!!!!!

Link is such a dumbass, you get to ask Kass "are you a ...bird?" As if the man isn't standing right in front of you. No shit Sherlock! What next, is that a recorder?.

OhhohoHO! You either say "no(, i have not heard of them)" or "Ancient songs?" As if you do not initially realize why they are thought to be ancient which either is old memories warring with the now world or Link not realizing what impact The Calamity had on culture.

Another flat-faced sarcastic remark everyone!

When Manny mentions that his job is checking for beauties/sus people you can either be a dumb dunce and ask about the said beauties or a little menace with "sounds though".

Manny is an Incel, talks a big game and puts himself on top of a pedestal alongside being demanding and a creep.

Does Hateno not have a goddess shrine? Just the ~Evil~ one?

There is a pair of rusty knights sword and shield by the leftmost part of the walkway of Fort Hateno. Some knight probably died laying there, watching out over the field of guardians having been/being purged by Zelda.

A traveler (Chelessa) is interested in history and wants to question Impa about it, and is on her way to do so in fact. . Describes her personality as very pleasant, that must be wrong.

The Yiga know exactly how Links first waking moments played out so either they have extensive knowledge about his character and the setup of the Shrine Of Resurrection or Ganon was watching in on Zelda's call and relayed it to a minion in the clan.

"Hero boy" - derogatory.

Arrow in the eye of the bridge at the entrance of Kakariko, the Yiga are petty and I love it.

Piano's (the painter) hair bun thing that is styled like a pencil has paint on the tip... this man painted with his hair.

So the great fairy Cotera makes it sound like she will enchant your gear because you rejuvenated her, not because you bring the materials to do the enchanting.

The levels of enchantment seemingly depends on physical closeness to the Fairy (blow< indirect kiss< kiss < sex)

She can not enchant beyond Lv 1 without her sister's help, so they share power?

Paya specifies that they have watched over the Orb since the grandmother of the grandmother of Impa, that's 9 whole generations of long lived Sheikah! roughly 1000 years of recorded history!

Again with Link being a dense Shonen protagonist with "where is it?" Or a sly bastard with "really, though?"... maybe so that she would want to prove it ;) 

…”I'll answer you some day, just not today!”

Either Paya is just not ready for that or she is so nervous that she did not think about the fact that her own grandmother was in the room when she said it!

“Served the royal family in secret” so it's not common knowledge that the royals have a village of Magic ninjas!? No wonder it took a damn demon to topple it instead of rebellion or infighting... probably has been like this since the old old king banished 'em.

"The royal family was destroyed, and the members of our tribe scattered."- okay so it was probably some Sheikah that either thought the royal family was completely extinct and either fled or, according to this next bit- "Sadly, there were some who swore allegiance to Ganon at that time. They joined together as the Yiga Clan, seeking out all who opposed Ganon... cutting them down, one after another." 

So from that we get to know that not all Sheikah deserters became enemies (unless the Sheikah dislike defectors enough to hunt them down) and others who either joined an existing opposing group or simply up and created the Yiga clan that then aligned itself with Ganon... probably under either the belief that Hylia's line was extinct and that it was join or die or because they wished to spite the goddess and her followers.

I actually like this way more because it makes no sense that the Yiga could survive before the Calamity when the Royals would have an entire damn country and anbu black-ops to hunt them down with.

"Master link, now that you are awake, you are surely the most formidable opponent standing against them!" Either hero worship or the Sheikah are freshly out on capable warriors with Ninja magic tricks, probably the latter which would explain why the world isn't infested with Lynels or why hynoxes haven't just trampled every settlement.

"No doubt they will come for you, employing whatever underhanded methods they can device" 

oh come on! Do not tell me that i'm stuck with the goodie two shoe ninja clan!? Underhandedness is your bread and butter! No wonder you served the royals in secret because you and them by proxy would have been a laughingstock otherwise!!!

"The great fairy Cotera... few remain who know that this village was built under her watchful eye." So the village is fairy new and the Yiga came about before Kakariko or it is old and so well protected that they can't get in... at least not easily.

"The mysterious power of Cotera is that of sacred protection..." so the Great fairies are linked to either Hylia or the gods, good to know.

So it’s not that Cotera “-would be happy to help” but, instead “i can't think of any reason why she wouldn't be happy to help you”. so either she only directly helps men or the earlier "you can put your trust in the great fairy" means that she judges more favorably for the chosen hero.

"I heard that the weather is going to be beautifully tomorrow... to bad you won't be alive to enjoy it"

So they have weather accurate~ich prediction? through magic or old time methods?

Again: Hero boy - derogatory... It's a common nickname for Link within the Yiga.

The lush green shrine could tell that a buck was on it, so the platforms are most definitely scanners.

A travelers sword by a campfire at the foot of mount Lanayru, so someone either took a swim and died to the Lizardfo, dramatically quit or got killed in their sleep.

Love the effect when you have metal weapons on the ground and swing a ThunderBlade!

You automatically reflect the Octorock's rocks, goes faster if you do it manually.

There is a hollowed out part of a hill/mountain with a lot of fic potential to the North-West of the Sword by the campfire.

Located where the lines meet if you draw a line to the right from Rabia plain and up from Trotter's Downfall.

Koko of Kakariko has been deceived by my cunning and slight-of-hand. 

Yes, Sagessa (woman by the lake of the Dueling peaks stable), there is, in fact, something "quite romantic" in Link's "endeavor" to save Zelda, thank you for noticing!

The chests inside the shrines can only (non-violently) be opened by use of the Sheikah slate so why not steal a few? prefect safe-keeping for more stuff to keep in Links house.

Dunce moment everyone! 

The Yiga traveler tries to seduce Link and you either go with "OK..." so he either has no damn idea about what is going on or is just not good with women? 

Orrrrr you go with a straight "I refuse!" cas you see through their ruse and want to rub their face in the dirt!

According to Mina the Hylian, taking out two Bokoblins is considered as great martial caliber which both she and her traveling companion could not do while decently armed.

Best way to deal with a guardian scout when you have weak weapons: hit with electricity, switch weapon, hit 2-5 times, switch to electric, repeat.

When you first enter the area around Hyrule Castle, smoke Ganon throws a fit until Zelda slaps him away. 

This either means that Zelda canonically gets a larger workload from there on and out or that the both of them push harder against each other every time you get close.

According to Zelda's diary, Link was assigned as her guard after the champions had been appointed.

How Link was focused on her yet did not voice his thoughts apparently "makes my imagination run wild!". Either romantic or dense.

Link admits to staying quiet because of the pressure of being the boy chosen by the sword. 

King Rhoam mentions that he decided to honor THE royal family's traditions by naming his daughter Zelda, and that he is "not a man accustomed to frivolous musings". 

Basically confirming that he is not the parent of royal blood.

They probably knew about The Calamity for a good while cas the page after zelda's naming speaks of the fortune teller, probs 3-8 years since Zelda was described to already have vast interest in the relics.

Pikango gets up at 10 past 5, I spent the night watching him and Beetle sleep.

According to all known laws of aerodynamics, Rito should not be able to fly, is Revali's gale then just an absurdly strong variation of some kind of sky Arcanum that all Rito possess? Do all the races possess one as Well?

Slimes ate the Bokoblins in the tree base at the center of the west Hyrule fields.

Savelle is a helpful guy without a pension for violence.

Munk Shae Loya is just flexing on all the other Munks, those old farts need to sit down while he's been squatting on one leg the last 10'000 years.

Chork of the Tabantha Bridge Stable is drunk.

Toren is either naive or a simp for the Faireys.

If you have the Hylian hood equipped with no weapon while riding at max speed then your cape will flap.

"Sweet boy..." "...I see now that my first impression of you was correct. You most definitely are pleasant to look at." 

So link has some kind of presence/soul-thingy that appears pleasant to mystical creatures? Might be the spirit of the hero or this link in particular.

The Fairy Kaysar makes Link blush! No player input needed! We’ve found one of his types!... either that or he's just shy.

The fairies almost never use normal materials to enchant, it's always either monster parts that don't dissipate or things that grow in magical arias.

The Sheikah towers are sturdy as all hell, the Tabantha tower did not even get a scratch from a giant fucking pillar falling on it.

Okay, am I just crazy or is a Lizardfo and a Moblin holding a class for 5 bokoblins just to the left of the Tabanta fairy fountain!?

Lester, the wise curry rice guy at Rito Stable, describes Link as sunny boy, another point to the soul/aura theory thingy.

Phontos laughs to hide the pain.

According to the story that Kass sings. 

Calamity Ganon was the result of sealing the enemy at its source.

It fought not only the spawn of the Goddess and the bearer of the Spirit Of The Hero but also the army of Guardians and the Champions that piloted the Divine Beasts for quite some time, as implied in the "and the guardians protected them throughout every hour".

So what i get from this is that the attack 10 000 years ago was the first sighting of what we know as calamity Ganon. 

It was also far stronger than the one that attacked 100 years ago which implies that that one was either a rush job or that Ganon bounds had been tightened, both of which would drive him to seek out other methods like corrupting the Guardians.

...And the Guardians are apparently powered by the ancient blue energy which was, time-line wise, first shown when the Golden Goddesses created the world.

No wonder that Ganon was capable of doing this since he most likely is running on fumes, spite and the power of the Triforce which likely is made of/channels said energy.

According to the rumor mill, you need the blood of the Hero in your veins to wield the Master Sword, if this is accurate then that means that Fi is sentimental or that Link has magic blood.

Wildberrys are fucking massive.

Genli (the salmon child) is a cunt, one kid was crying about someone Vah Medoh killed and then Genli is all like "no don't stop it, if you do then i have to go to class again!", She would fit right in with today's youth.

Monk Akh Va'quot has the best position so far, he is just done with your shit.

"You adventurers are Crazy" -> "you're right"

You get nothing if you melt all the ice by the Tabantha tower! You lose! Good day sir!

Monk Daka Tuss got bored during his self-inflicted quarantine and started stacking his arm bands.

Tula (the bathing Zora) said "wow either you are a Hylian or hideously deformed"

Phura has vandalized and mounted one of the spirit frog statues above her door.

Okay but the fucking noice that comes out of Bolson when you buy everything!! It's as if you just walked up and twisted his nuts with the power fit to shield block a Lynel’s charge.

Is the flower by Link's bed a Korok version of a Silent Princess?

The monsters of Hyrule are show to have interest in consumption based on three accounts. 

1: the Bocoblins and the Moblins by Hateno bay steal cattle. 

2: Hynoxes carry around warriors foodstuffs. 

3: Moblins (or at least the ones by the camp near the Serenne stable/forgotten temple) have a resting animation where they dig through the dirt and stuff something down their goblet.

...not to mention that nearly every camp has a bit of meat roasting by the fire.

Koyin has joined the fan-club!

God, the Naydra snowfield is fucking loaded in chill-shromes!

Stasis is perfect for looking for ingredients in forests, just open it, look around and bam! No more hidey hoe.

Why no shiny text for hylia's statue!?

I really do not like that they changed Naydra's colors when the malice was removed, they were so cool and then bam! White! White is not the color for ice and cold!

When praying by the spring of wisdom you are facing Hyrule castle, the same with courage and power if my memory serves me right.

...The master Torch

The Katona Aug shrine is just fucking mini-golf, how is that meant to prepare the hero?! Imagine how that Monk goes to the afterlife and has to look his fellows straight in the eye and admit that he was so lazy that not only did he make the hero play golf, not only was he so lazy that he made the Hero play mini-golf, but that he was so lazy that he did not even make a course! It is literally just a straight line!

Robie wants to see Links scars to verify that he is who he says that he is, Robie was likely one of the ninja that took Link to the shrine of resurrection.

Oh and Robin has two interesting sketches in his lab, the first is a detailed graph of a Sheikah tower so those were likely known about long before Link activated one (the one closest to Robin would be the one covered in malice and guardians so he could not have gotten enough detail from that one).

And the other is a sketch of what I believe is either a tier 2 or tier 3 guardian scout. Now, how can Robin know how that looks if only Link can/could enter shrines?

The Sheikah shrine that has the Barbarian helm is located at the end of the Sinai maze, did they just plop the shrine down there and steal the treasure of the ruin to later present to the hero?

There is one usable room in the citadel.

There is no compendium slot for the malice eyes that litter Naydra, Hyrule Castle and the Divine Beasts.

You can change the element of already elemental slime, not just the neutral kind.

Those head-spitting fuckers inside the divine beasts! They are partially reanimating mobs! So it's not that the Blood Moon is the time where Ganon is at his strongest, it's just where he chooses to revive everything.

The edge of duality can also be found in the shrine at the top of the dueling peaks.

#botw #lore #fanfic ideas #the legend of zelda #breath of the wild

[vgwriter]

Breath of the Wild: A Review

A Little History

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out in 2017 to universal acclaim and helped to successfully launch the Nintendo Switch. While that is far from a surprise, (the Zelda series is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful franchises of all time) Breath of the Wild does take the series in a much different direction. It's focus is almost completely on exploration and is the most nonlinear of the series. It is the second biggest jump the series has made outside of going 3D. So, does it work? Well, the rest of the world and their mother seem to think so but here's my take on this game.

What I Loved

*SPOILERS*

#1-A Story to Remember

It seems odd to focus on the story when the game doesn't but behind the vast world and great characters is a subtle yet amazingly well executed story. The player finds Link in a DBZ healing pod after he is just awakened from a hundred year slumber of healing. He is told by the disembodied voice of British Zelda to defeat Calamity Ganon but wait, there's more! Turns out Link has amnesia from the fight he had 100 years ago trying to protect Zelda. After obtaining the Sheikah Slate (the games multi-tool), the player discovers there are photos Zelda locked in the Slate to help Link recover his memory. This is how the story is unfolded for the player. The struggles of the Five Champions and Princess Zelda are seen through flashbacks that explain how Hyrule went to sh*t. It is a simple and traditional method but it is effective when coupled with the games minimalist piano soundtrack and isolated atmosphere. It gives a heartbreaking insight into just how lonely and broken this version of Hyrule is and how much Link and the others lost.

#2-The Puzzles

The games dungeons are split up into two catagories: shrine and divine beasts. The shrines are smaller and have a variety of challenges in their 120 locations while the devine beasts are 4 large challenges with several moving parts. Most shrines are designed to be easy to follow but still make the player feel creative. This feeling of creativity stems from the developers themselves that made each level doable in multiple ways. Each dungeon is designed to test the players use of the games mechanics, the player can play it how it was designed or try to tackle it from another angle. One example from my personal playthrough was using a bomb arrow to light fire because I couldn't figure out how to light a torch through a gate. It worked but probably not the way it was designed to. While not every shrine has a variety of ways to solve them (mostly the trial by combat shrines), they are all intriguing challenges designed with fun in mind and feel rewarding when completed. The divine beasts are a similar story with a few minor details. The player must first find the map of the dungeon and then go about reclaiming terminals to free the divine. The map is a 3D rendering of the dungeon with an interactive portion that moves key parts of the beast around. This was a great design choice because it challenges the player to think of the dungeon as a moving puzzle and to consider how moving the pieces will help them advance to the boss.

#3-The World and Character Design

To say the world is stunning is an understatement. The design of the enviroment feels so natural to explore and interact with that finding Koroks is like spoting cognitive distortion in a high school drop outs racist rant on Facebook. I usually find map towers annoying in games like Assassin's Creed but in BOTW they are better integrated into the games exploration. Some towers are actually challenging to climb if Link doesn't have enough stamina or if the player just throws him onto a tower without looking for enemies first. They are like little challenges all their own and it is a great take on something that has been bland and stale since it was first introduced (to me at least) in AC1. Outside of the towers is the vast world that pulls the player into it with rewarding exploration in cute and helpful ways. The shrines are an obvious reason to explore but there are also Koroks, fun and unique side quests, and just cool stuff to find as well. The variety and density of things to do justifies the games gigantic map. It is one of the few games to live up to the idea of an open-world and keep it interesting throughout a 100 hour playthrough.

The art design, oh my cel shaded god, it's amazing. I'm not gonna pretend like I'm some art history major but the regional designs do some pretty interesting things with the enviroment. The five peoples in Hyrule have all appeared in previous titles but have been tweaked in some way for BOTW. The Gorons have a theme of raw strength throughout their entire section of the map, from their weapons to the steel planks on the streets of Goron City. The Rito's design is more centered on their freedom and ability to fly with the entire settlement resembling a nest. Seriously, everything has feathers. The Zora have an elegance in everything they own from the large city built from one large carving to the silver weapons. The Gerudo seem to be a shell of their former selves like the Hylians with ruins surrounding their two settlements. Their quality in construction and bejewelment of everything that shines shows what matters most to them, beauty and effectiveness. The Hylian design is European with a mix of far east in certain pockets. Hyrule castle is a great dungeon that actually lives up to the title of castle. Kakariko village is a weird area that doesn't fit into the Hylian design but c'mon, you can't go wrong with far eastern architecture. Each region has its own design that both fit its surroundings and its people and feels natural, like the people and land are truly living together. It's impressive that Nintendo was able to pull that off because it is not easy to do.

The characters are simply iconic, mostly. The four champions don't get a lot of screen time but they use what they have effectively. Daruk is a stubborn strong man with a great admiration for strength and brotherhood. Mipha is the white mage of the group with a thing for Link (which I prefer to Zelda). Revali is the arrogent prick of the group that comes around eventually. Urbosa is basically the group mom, being the most mature out of everyone. Each of these characters are simple but fill their role effectively and are all quite likeable (even Rivali). Their present day counterparts aren't as memorable though. I mean, outside of Sidon. Sidon makes me feel like I can do anything just by smiling. But everyone else I had to look up for this review. Yunobo is some shy kid that finally lives up to his potential. Teba is a proud warrior but really not that memorable. Riju comes close to being memorable but I still had to look her up. Outside of the champions and their descendents, Kilton made an impression on me. The Bolson company had one of my favorite quests and some of the funnier cutscenes. Each side quest character has that quaint old fashioned rpg vacuum writing. They all live in their own world and interact with Link for one reason.

Overall, the characters and how they interact with the enviroment are what make this game a masterpiece. The mechanics and story are what make it a great game but the world design is that extra step where most great games stumble to me.

#4-The Combat

The combat is simple but has a multitude of uses against the games enemies. Link has three moves: attack, shield, and shoot. Everything beyond this simple moveset depends on how the player equips Link or uses the Slate Ruins. If an enemy is mostly ice, fire weapons are super effective and vice versa. Thunder disarms anyone, including Link. It gets better than simple elemental weapons. If you bring a cucco to a battle and an enemy hits that cucco, a swarm of bird will rain hell on that unassuming bokoblin. Seriously, that alone gives this a 5/5! Also, the enviroment can be used as a weapon if it's set up correctly. If Link fells a tree and lines up the path right, it will attack the enemies. There is just so much to do in this game and it all works off of three simple actions. Perfect.

#5-Misc.

Some other things that stood out enough to mention but not enough to make a paragraph. The crafting is useful and not intrusive. Link can buy a house, which is always fun. The outfits are all great designs and useful in their respective enviroment. There are throwback outfits from previous titles (mostly through amiibos) and that is always cool. Zelda became a scholar and that was a great take, not just on Zelda but on the idea of fictional princesses in general. Link can cut grass. The variety of weapons is astounding. Oh, and uh, all this fits on a small little card no bigger then the last knuckle of my thumb.

What I Didn't Like

#1-The Weapons Fragile Weaponinity

The weapons break way too easy. That's it. That is the only thing I have to complain about this game. That shouldn't be all I have to complain about. I should have two more points to make at least but I don't. Nintendo has made a masterpiece.

The Score

This game shouldn't exsist, it's too good. The gameplay is simple but versatile. The enviroment is peaceful and relaxing while also being desolate and dangerous and this makes it fun to explore. The story and the enviroment fit so well together and compliment each other every time they connect. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a 5/5 and the definitive way to make open-ended games.

#legend of zelda #zelda #botw #nintendo #video games #reviews #spoilers #5/5 #prince sidon #lady mipha #mipha x link #urbosa #daruk

[endwalkr]

this is an ask based thingy but im really in the mood to infodump so im just gonna answer them all under the cut !

Favorite video game?

starting off with the absolute hardest question huh? i can’t possibly name ONE favorite game of mine because i adore my favorites for many different reasons. my overall favorite video game is ffxv or botw. ffxv because it has brought me so much joy for such a long time, and because i have such a connection with the characters. botw because i was actually in the fandom when it first got announced in 2016 so i got to be there when the hype was at an all time high– and finally being able to play the game after waiting for so long was an unforgettable experience. i have more favorite games but ill talk more about them in the ‘’special place in ur heart’’ question.

First console you owned?

my first console wasn’t a console. my friend and i used to play on her nintendo dsi all the time and at one point tiny little me reeeally wanted one of my own so i saved up and got one in [redacted] when i was 7. my first actual console was a wii though, we got that around the same time.

A game that holds a special place in your heart?

ffxv and botw mean the absolute world to me, but super mario galaxy and skyward sword are very important to me too. skyward sword is the game that got me into zelda which got me into anime which got me into final fantasy etc etc etc.  super mario galaxy was the first non-mini game collection and more adventure story-ish game i played. i was so proud when i beat it for the first time and mario was my first ever ‘’fandom’’ :’) 

Favorite video game character?

bro. i cant pick just one so i’ll choose one per game : prompto, ryuji and link. they were all my comfort characters at some point and i projected like crazy onto them. this doesnt mean that i wouldnt absolutely die for noct or zelda. 

Least favorite video game character?

i dont think theres anyone i distinctly dislike? i always talk about hating ardyn but that’s because he’s just a salty bitch. as a character i think he’s a great villain and i rly love him. i honestly always end up liking everyone somehow, maybe there is someone i just forgot about but i cant remember at all. 

Favorite genre?

adventure games, or action rpgs. 

Video game character you’ve had a crush on?

every character ever, but i distinctly remember the moment i fell in love with prompto sjghfkshd i was watching a playthrough of xv in december 2016 because i didnt have a ps4, and the guy got to the scene in galdin quay where the bros learn insomnia fell. i had watched about 6 hours of the game by that time and wasn’t particularly interested in the characters but not uninterested enough to drop it. i hadnt even gotten a good look at the characters faces yet, so when the camera zoomed in on prompto when he said ‘’might not be save for us here!’’ i noticed he had freckles. oh god. oh fuck. oh my god hes fucking cute. oh my god better watch 30 hours of this game now

First video game you remember playing?

wayyy before i got my own gaming systems, my then-best friend had a gamecube in her attic. i was around 5 or 6 at the time. whenever i was over at her house and we didnt know what to do, she’d sometimes propose to play ‘’mario kart’’. important is that we are dutch, and i was a literal child. i thought mario KART meant it was a fucking card game, so i always declined whenever she asked. on one fateful day, i finally gave in and was pleasantly surprised it was in fact not a card game, but a viddy game. so we played mario kart double dash. (…i had never played a video game in my life besides browser flash games and was Very Very bad)

Age you started gaming?

so i played my first video game that i didnt own when i was about 5 or 6. then i got my first supply of games at age 7/8, but i dont really consider that time to be when i started ‘’gaming’’. i’d say that was when i started mario galaxy, so i’ve been playing video games for real (ie. story adventure games with boss battles) for about 6 years now.

Hardest video game you’ve played?

this is gonna sound stupid, but the witcher 3. there’s like 7 difficulties and i played on the EASIEST and still had a hard time, i just couldnt get used to the combat. i had the same problem with assassin’s creed syndicate, but after about 10 hours i actually knew what i was doing, and ive played the witcher longer than that and still am clueless. this is kind of an unpopular opinion but i dont particularly like that game

Video game you’ve spent the most time on?

i guess i am what you’d call a casual gamer; i really like video games but during a normal school week i only game for like 2-6 hours. most of the time i dont play for like 2 weeks if im busy. gaming has kind of taken over my life not because i play so much but because i get so emotionally invested lol i’m currently on summer break and even now im not playing a lot because of exhaustion and executive dysfunction. this derailed slightly but the game i’ve played the most despite my casual gamer status is …. … …. ffxv. surprise, right? the runner up is botw, but xv wins by a landslide. 630+ hours. botw is 350. my main save in ffxv is almost 200 hours i think. damn. i really managed to keep myself entertained with that game… (………i was thinking recently, since the loading screens in xv are so long, how much of this total amount was spent watching screens. i imagine it’s several hours, especially if you fast travel a lot.)

Most embarrassing gaming moment?

many moments in my gaming experience are embarrassing, but a more recent one: i was in xv’s postgame, beating some dungeons on my new save file. i had just finished daurell caverns and hadn’t saved in about 2 hours. (uh oh) i was driving around in the regalia type d and got to the big cliff near lestallum, and remembered someone made a gif of jumping in there so i wanted to try it too. i imagined the game would just put me back on the road, like it does when you crash into something. except it didnt. i got a game over. where was my last save? 2 hours back all the way in hammerhead. yippee.

Scariest video game you’ve played?

i never play horror games, cuz for me games are supposed to be relaxing experiences. no hate towards horror games of course, they just stress me out. the only time ive played horror is when friday the 13th was for free on ps+, and my friends really wanted to play it. (theyre kinda addicted to it now. huh) they had already gotten over the initial fear of having jason chase you, but i was still terrified. i can play the game without getting scared now tho. the horror sound effects just rly freaked me out at first jhsdkghsd

Most memorable gaming moment?

playing breath of the wild for the first time, or beating it for the first time. both experiences were filled to the brim with excitement and nostalgia. seeing botw as a blank slate, a world for you to explore, having no idea where you’re going… that was pretty incredible. now i know every nook and cranny of the map, so i wish i could play it for the first time again. i was so incredibly immersed. beating it was insane. i cried for 30 minutes and the end wasnt even sad, i was just so amazed at the fact that i was really here, playing breath of the wild, it was really real. the fucking main theme in the background (which i cannot for the life of me listen to without crying) didnt help with my emotions sgkdjh

Video game character you wish you could meet in real life?

…………..its prompto again. maybe 2017 me …. was .. kind of a kinnie

PC, Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo?

i dont care about console wars at all, but i think hardware-wise, pc is the best, because if you have a good pc you can basically do anything. i however do not, so i just play on consoles. ive never particularly liked xbox, so i only play ps4 and nintendo. not the switch though. its kinda petty, but my best friend and i really dont like the switch djghks

Gaming company you’re most loyal to?

none. i used to call myself a nintendo nerd (oh my god…. i m. gonna die) in like 2015 but since the switch came out and since i got a ps4 they kinda lost me. i still like their game series of course, but as a company i don’t care for them. the only reason i see square enix as one of ‘’my’’ gaming companies is because ffxv took up like 70% of my gaming experience, but besides final fantasy i don’t really love them too much either.

If you could only play one video game for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

atm i’m really into ffxiv because theres just so much to do, but that’s just a new, possibly temporary interest. if i had to choose, i’d say botw. maybe i’d say ffxv, but i feel like running around doing nothing in that game isnt very fun, because the world is sorta empty after completing every quest and getting to level 120. in botw, just fucking around on your horse is still really relaxing and nice. 

Do you use strategy guides?

yup. in certain games i try to avoid them but i usually end up stuck or in need of advice. i couldn’t have gotten so many p5 trophies if not for the internet lol

How often do you use cheats?

never, simply because the games i play often do not have cheats. unless im playing the sims and are in need of a motherlode, i dont use them.

Competitive or single player?

single player. im bad at video games and like to do stuff at my own pace. online multiplayer can be fun every now and then in games like mario kart 8 or splatoon, and i also like teamwork stuff like ffxiv or comrades. but ultimately, i prefer playing on my own.

Video game character you want to/have cosplayed?

have never cosplayed, dont have plans to either, but it would be fun to cosplay link. omg. i just remembered i have that fucking chocomoogle shirt… sorry link im gonna slap on some sasuke hair, black jeans and ugly sneakers 

Ever go to a video game convention?

i have not, i have however gone to three (3) video game concerts which is basically the same thing. 

Hardest boss fight you’ve been in?

the hardest bosses for me are usually the ones with a gimmick. you have to use a certain item or tactic to beat them or something. other hard fights for me are when you fight someone with a similar skill set. (in ffxv, this happens twice, once with the iggy-noct sparring match and once against ardyn. somehow, the final boss was easier than getting the prince to eat vegetables.) i don’t know an actual example of THE hardest boss fight ive been in though. at the time, the first bowser battle in mario galaxy was the hardest thing in the universe and i got stuck for like a month. currently, i’m having trouble with the riku-ansem fight in kh1. 

Video game you wish you could burn from your memory?

the zelda cdi games? no, i dont really know. i dont hate a game so much that i’d want to forget about it altogether, but i dont exactly love ocarina of time that much. it hasnt aged well and playing it on the gamecube for the first time in 2015 wasnt a good idea. im sure it was revolutionary at the time, but i cant handle the outdated controls gsdgksjs 

Favorite gaming series?

see, i love ffxv itself more than the entirety of the zelda series, but i dont love ff as a SERIES more than the zelda games. so if were talking series, zelda for sure. i fucking love those games and they mean a lot to me. 

Do you skip tutorials, or find them useful?

i often skip them because i cant pay attention, but then find that i need them anyway. so i usually do skim through them. 

Best online gaming experience?

one really good one happened a few days ago in ffxiv, some guy and i exchanged emotes for like 30 minutes and it ended with us becoming friends on psn :’) ppl dont usually emote back at me in that game so this was really wholesome and nice gjshksdj 

Worst online gaming experience?

i dont really have a worst? theyre more annoying. think try harders in gta online killing you 15 times in a row because they want to show you how good they are or something. magically, online gaming hasnt been too hard on me (mainly because i dont game online that much)

Why do you game?

it brings me joy. it’s a fun way of relaxing, while being stimulated at the same time. games have meant a great deal to me the past 6 years and i wouldnt want to lose them for the world.

#uh. i really just spent and hour and a half writing this down but ya #i love ya video games #personal #long post #like. really long

[bluebellss1]

I’ve been kind of thinking about the Breath of the Wild vs Skyrim debate. I personally think that the world exploration in Zelda is a lot smoother, and the climbing mechanic is amazing and something that Skyrim totally lacks. Trying to scale a steep mountain in Skyrim is a glitchy nightmare unless you go up the path that you’re ‘supposed’ to.

The BOTW world is also a lot more diverse with all the different ecosystems and climates. Wandering through Skyrim when you’re not following a particular marker/quest can feel a bit more empty (even though it’s still really fun and atmospheric). The dungeons in Skyrim are also a lot more repetitive (‘wow, I wonder if there are draugr and frostbite spiders in this cave’). The fetch and retrieve quests can also get very tedious and repetitive after a while. The puzzles in Zelda are a lot more unique and often have multiple different ways to solve them, depending on how crafty the player is. With Zelda there are hundreds of valid ways to approach and solve a problem or area. And there are also Skyrim’s infamous glitches, Skyrim has a lot more bugs. Some are silly and just a bit of fun, but some are potentially game breaking, so it’s important to save often so you don’t lose hours of progress. I also think that the combat system in Zelda is more intuitive, and timing those parries, backflips and flurry rushes is so rewarding. Your combat prowess in Skyrim is limited by a levelling system rather than pure technical skill. Even a pro player can lose to a stronger enemy if they haven’t been level grinding enough.

However, despite all of this...I think I actually prefer Skyrim. In Skyrim, your character is a complete blank slate, and there is more roleplay potential. In Zelda, you’re Link. Swinging your sword at friendly NPCs has zero consequences because that isn’t something that Link would do, and stealing isn’t really an option either. I feel like going into and exploring houses in BOTW is super boring because everyone’s door is open to you 24/7 and there’s nothing worthwhile in their houses besides a recipe book or a very simple diary entry. You can’t even jump on their beds. At least in Skyrim you can cause some havoc, steal some shit, throw stuff around, and read some interesting texts. In Zelda, getting kicked out of Gerudo town doesn’t really have any consequences either. You don’t really get hurt or roughed up, and nothing is stopping you from doing it again and again. These things have more weight in Skyrim because you can become a wanted criminal and accumulate a bounty for your head.

On top of that, I feel like the NPCs in BOTW are also really boring. The most interesting ones have been dead or sealed away for 100 years. I really like Prince Sidon, but after defeating Vah Ruta he doesn’t really say or do anything else. I understand that a similar criticism can be made of Skyrim, every video game character gets boring once all their options have been exhausted and they have nothing new to do or say. But the characters in Skyrim just feel a lot more human and have more interesting motivations/backgrounds. Skyrim also has more story and more lore. I understand that BOTW took a step back from linear storytelling so that the player had more free roam, but the story is very basic and kind of meh. BOTW doesn’t really have a sense of completeness with the lack of post-game, but that is apparently because Nintendo rushed the game out to debut on the switch.

On top of that, BOTW lacks a proper antagonistic presence. Ganon has been reduced to a mere force of nature, he’s not a character so much as he is a blob of generic darkness, or a natural disaster. I personally feel that the Yiga clan was the biggest letdown though. In the flashback where they try to kill Zelda they felt genuinely menacing, but throughout the game they were very quickly flanderized into these cartoonish, looney tunes-like figures that are stupidly obsessed with bananas. The Master Kohga battle was pretty easy, and he was also more of a joke than a proper antagonist. We don’t really know much about the Yiga and their motivations either. They fall flat as villains and don’t seem to serve any purpose other than “Link must die!!!1!1!” Honestly, with their hyperfixation on bananas I’d argue that the Yiga are basically one step up from the minions in Despicable Me. They’re both mindless, cartoonish, non-threatening, ‘evil’, and obsessed with bananas.

Skyrim is more complicated in that there’s the civil war where you can understand the motivations from both sides, and also various factions and organisations across the land that have their own antagonists and traitors that you have to deal with. Plus, there is just something really fun about running around, bargaining and pledging your soul to various demons (the daedric princes) in exchange for special weapons/gear, as well as praying to various divines for different blessings. If you want to sacrifice the priest to the cannibals to get Namira’s ring, go for it. If you want to save the priest, barge into the cannibals’ banquet and slaughter them all, fucking go for it. You want to sacrifice the priest, accept the ring from them, and then slaughter all the cannibals anyway? Nothing stopping you bro. The characters are more human, the villains and conflicts feel more grounded and human as well. This makes it a bit more immersive in my opinion. Not to mention Skyrim has mountains and mountains of elder scrolls lore, and you could honestly sit there for hours reading all the ancient books you come across if you wanted. I also feel that Skyrim has more replayability. There are so many different magical races with different strengths and weaknesses you can play, as well as different skills you can focus on. The game can be experienced completely differently depending on if this time you want to be a stealth archer, a warrior, a mage, an assassin, a master thief, or if you want to focus on smithery/alchemy/enchanting, etc.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about the BOTW vs Skyrim debate as I was playing Skyrim today. My character was camping outside the cottage of this Vampire couple who ran a lumber mill, waiting for the perfect opportunity to slit the neck of the male vampire I was contracted to kill. I ended up picking the lock and killing him as he relaxed alone in his cottage. I had spent several in-game days scouting the area out, where I found out that these vampires fed on travelers and stuffed their remains in their shed. After killing him, I rummaged through the drawers and stole all the gold I could find, and then disappeared into the night. I couldn’t help but make the mental comparison to BOTW, where there is honestly absolutely nothing to do in the houses of NPCs. You can’t really rummage through their things and find out that they’re secretly part of a cult or whatever, and you certainly won’t find any interesting secrets in their diaries/sheds. It just kind of clicked for me that the NPCs in BOTW are extremely simple and uninspiring, and have almost no connection to the main story. Meanwhile the political turmoil in Skyrim affects all the NPCs, and the vampire I killed even complained that they weren’t getting as many travelers to feed on because of the civil war. You’ll walk past a priestess of the divine Talos, who will mourn the death of her daughter, who ran off to join the stormcloaks before dying in battle. A homeless beggar will tell you his stories of glory from the war before he lost everything overnight and fell into poverty. When I talk to NPCs in BOTW, they just say stuff like “I like chocolate!” “Monsters are scary!” and “Don’t step on my flowers!”

#personal #skyrim #just my opinion though #i love botw but the npcs just aren’t good #it just seems that none of the npcs in botw are even affected by the war #even the divine beasts are more of a bother than a legitimate threat to them #also the botw soundtrack is good but like #the skyrim soundtrack is so epic and iconic at this point #the booming choirs of the dovakhin theme to the symphonic ambience of the music you hear when walking around #it’s just so timeless and classic #when you’re walking around skyrim you see the npcs struggling to make ends meet #and you can see how the war and their poverty is affecting them #they all look relatively worn and tired like actual people #in botw everyone is just thriving #no one seems to be that stressed by all the surrounding monsters #it’s like zelda is the only one actively suffering

[doubleddenden]

Now, for some trailer predictions: take a shot for every one I get right.

1. European based, most likely the UK. There’s been way too many kingdom based rumors going around, and while chances are these are all fake, I can’t help but feel there’s a source to these flames. If not the UK, I’ll say Italy.

2. A grab bag of Pokemon shown, in terms of newbies most likely just the title legendaries (a dragon and a unicorn maybe?) and starters (a sheep of some kind probably) but I think a few past regional Pokemon (besides the obvious Pikachu) will pop in the trailer. I think we’ll get a BW2 esque Pokedex with stronger influence from the new gen and plenty of old gens to keep people interested. I’ll bet Lucario and Eevee pop in one or two frames. The biggest bottles will be popped if an Eeveelution and a corgi are shown.

3. The beginning of the trailer will probably pull a Sun and Moon and have some transitions to show us how far we’ve come. There’ll be some live action “HEY POKEMON IS STILL COOL” type stuff with some kickass music we’ll never hear again.

4. There will be at least one character shown that the fandom will either declare the new generational dilf or milf. Most likely some handsome male professor because Sycamore and Kukui have a track record and Nintendo likes trios. Professor Aspen, calling it.

5. The fandom will be shown the male and female trainers and the girl will be cute and the guy will probably have something weird about him.

6. We’ll get sweeping shots of the region and little to no explanation, but it will look the best in the series to date. My guess is that the style will be like a hybrid between BOTW in terms of environment and SM/USUM in terms of character design, although I would like a nice dip into gen 6 and 5 style with older protagonists.

7. Will not be open world but will hint at a larger scale of exploration. I think we’ll finally get a free controlled camera and probably have a scale of exploration like KH. Not quite Xenoblade Chron. 2, but confined rooms and tunnels- in terms of level design anyway- with lots of space.

8. Rose and Violet versions. Crown and Sceptor, King and Queen, these sound nice, but ultimately I think they’ll try to avoid these names simply because they’ve been hot topics in false rumors. Plus if the whole kingdom-based UK theory is true, it would align with the War of Roses (minus the red and white roses) and Shakespearian bullshit, align with traditional naming schemes of warm to cooler colors or similar naming styles (Red and Green/Blue, Gold and Silver, Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond and Pearl, Black and White, X and Y, Sun and Moon), and probably will be a decent yet classy callback to Red and Blue.

9. Probably will be lucky to see much beyond an initial showing of the first reveal, but I think there’ll be hints and shots that show a more natural wild environment. Think of Let’s Go, but without the bullshit ball mechanics.

10. October release. I’d normally say November, but Idk, my gut’s reacting to something here. 

11. No new info until May.

#pokemon

[glassandmetalwings]

Wings Plays BotW, Day Thirteen

Stuff, and also not stuff! Mostly me wandering Hyrule today, but some stuff got done.

Spent forever trying to find enough Warm Safflina to level up my gear. At one point was in the completely wrong area. But it happened eventually, and now I have Flameproof and Unfreezable-things which made the rest of the day easier.

Walked up Champion’s Gate with no intention of entering that labyrinth, but at least saw the stuff.

While paragliding in the desert, I hit an air pocket that was too warm for even the Gerudo Gear? Idk what happened but I got out of there.

Decided to go after the Royal Stallion, because why not? It ended up...a lot easier to catch than expected. Way easier. Like the moment I ate my first bit of stamina-increasing food it was suddenly willing to listen. Rode back to Outskirt Stable to name them Yarrow.

...Or I tried, at least, only to realize I somehow only had 19 Rupees? The only explanation I can think of was that I bought Ancient Arrows earlier in the day and didn’t noticed how much they cost. But some quick selling to Beedle and everything was good. Yarrow also now has the Royal Saddle and Bridle.

After that I basically decided ‘I’m safe from all the elements, I’m going to explore’.  That ended up being most of the day.

Started with the Hebra Mountains. Found a shine I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get to (in ice water under a rock-help?). So many Pebblits, too.

Got the last piece of the Xenoblade set! I mean, I don’t need it because I have the Zora Armor, but still.

Met a lady who offered to critique my shield surfing. Turned her down because I haven’t done any yet.

Wolves are rude, but I like that if you kill one the rest of the pack decides not to mess with you and run off with their tails between their legs. Plus free Prime Meat, so...

Found...two of three secret hot springs? That was cool.

I’m getting braver about fighting things, especially when I have the elemental advantage (srad: Flameblade or Ice Spear). But I did also just take on a bunch of Black Lizalfos because they were there.

Made it to the very top left corner of the map!...And found a Major Test of Strength. But did take out a big Lizalfos/Moblin camp just before a blood moon (then ran like no one’s business).

Found a shrine where I had to roll a snowball through a maze, letting it pick up enough snow to open the door to the shrine. That was cool. I felt smart.

Saw a White-Maned Lynel at the Tabantha Snowfield. Gave it a lot of space.

Saw Dinraal! Which prompted me to travel down Tanagar Canyon because why not.

Found the statue of the Eighth Heroine by complete accident! I should see if I can start that quest.

Finally realized there are two tiers of Wizzrobe, after trying to shoot a picture of an Ice Wizzrobe I needed for the Compendium, only to discover it was a Blizzrobe. I have to say, when you aren’t in danger of being turned into a Linksicle they’re really pretty with the glowing robes.

Did a little (read: two times) farming for Farosh’s parts. Got a scale and a horn shard. Should really get another horn shard for the sake of leveling up clothing.

Had to go look up how to fight Rock Octoroks because they were getting annoying.

After a bit of trial and error as to where I was supposed to wait, I managed to get one of Dinraal’s scales, unlocking the Spring of Power shrine. Except it’s also a Major Test of Strength. But at least all the Springs are out of the way.

That’s about it. It’s nearly midnight, so I may do a round or two of snowball bowling (I feel like I should get the Luminous Armor just because). Maybe tomorrow I’ll devote myself to actually trying to take on big enemies? I’m getting better at not just avoiding them (minus horse-mounted Bokoblins), but the only way to really stop avoiding Hinox, Talus, and Lynel (and Guardians) is to actually try taking some on. It’s not like I lose much in doing so, right?

As usual, suggestions and hints are welcome! I don’t always reply but I like to hear your ideas!

#wings plays BotW

[st33d]

Sandman

I’ve tried a lot of sandbox games over the past year. Mostly driven by acquiring a PC and leaving my Mac to its scheduled obsolescence. Playing games on a Mac is like playing Doom on a calculator. You celebrate that it works, it actually works, but it usually fails to be more than a proof of concept. When I switched back to a PC I discovered an entirely new realm of stubborn design. At least it wasn’t getting slower with each update and it deigned to play all manner of toys. Being quite turgid for roleplaying games I set about catching up with every RPG the Mac had denied me and checked out some more for good measure.

A common feature I discovered in many of these games is what I call the Back Breaker. You lift the game up high, then crash it down over your knee, broken. You are now free to explore the game how you choose - all of its secrets are laid bare. A lot of people get very upset at the inclusion of Back Breakers in what they hope will be a game with an ever ascending skill requirement. The notion that the audience is primarily there to explore is an insult - where, they ask, is the game? Personally I like this feature, I like that the end game is to become a god. This is why a lot of you will disagree with my assessments.

Skyrim

The sticking point for many people with this one is the combat. It’s dour grey-brown landscape invites a comparison to Dark Souls (I’ll get to that one in a bit) so people like Matt Lees will remark that Skyrim is an inferior counterpart. If you’re looking for tight combat in Skyrim, then like a 1st edition iPhone 5, you’re holding it wrong.

It insists you take it seriously over an unskippable introduction to the most tired hook that any roleplaying game can throw - the prison break. After shaking your screen as hard as it can with an assault by a dragon you are thrown into a scant and confusing interface in a land of ugly robotic people who are super fussy about what time they’re willing to sell things. On my 1st playthrough it got dark, so dark I couldn’t loot the mages I was killing for their expensive robes. I quit and rerolled a khajiit, purely because the wiki told me they had nightvision. It wasn’t until much later I discovered that there were many means of creating light, some of them causing fantastic AI behaviour (I nicknamed the spell Magelight; aggro-ball). Some short way into the terrible main quest line I thought, “sod this”, and went in search of the mage college to learn how to blow things up like some of the monsters were doing. This haphazard adventure was some of the best gameplay I’d ever encountered. A scared lowly girl-cat, picking her way through a hostile landscape in hope of learning real magic. Typical that when I finally arrived at the college I encountered the first blatant design wall in the shape of an unclimbable pillar that the college sat on. I barely had the mana to cast the spell that would prove me worthy to train there. A few hours later I was the archmage of the college. It would take many more hours before I mastered glitch-riding: taking the cereal box collision space of my horse and rubbing it against the prettiest parts of the scenery until it yielded to let me ride vertical. Out of the many hours of play the only real low point was getting turned into a vampire, I had to look up a wiki on how to cure it and reload many times because the quest to stop vampirism is broken.

There are many Back Breakers in Skyrim - I chose twin dremora lords that I chain-summoned to lock up the AI. But truly it is Skyrim’s pretty mountains and their unresolvable collision meshes that are the best. Only after hours of play does one develop an art for sniffing out details that defy edge-case-programming. Skyrim is a perfect mess. I know why they keep re-releasing it, they got lucky. One need only play the Dragonborn DLC to see Skyrim at its worst. It is a hard game to recommend, for it is not really a game, it is a thing both ugly and beautiful.

% out of 10

The Witcher 3

“Stick with it”, they say. Few games deserve such an epithet as this one. The controls are fiddly. One’s inventory is so dense with options that I didn’t realise that my potions refilled themselves until I’d nearly finished the game. After which my character sported full-body-priapism as I quaffed every decoction available. The turning point from hating this game to loving it was a side quest where a character caught Geralt off guard when being subject to the witcher’s advice - the townsfolk declared him a freak not because he was like Geralt, but because they were intolerant of homosexuals. I then got drawn further into the man’s drama. Every single story this game presents is trying to be Not So Simple. It’s a manifesto that leaks into the game’s bestiary that tells you not only what a monster likes for dinner, but your best tactics for killing it. But then, it’s Not So Simple as killing a monster, there is always another layer to each story.

It took at least three score hours of gameplay before I started skipping some of the many cutscenes. One of them was the infamous sex-on-a-stuffed-unicorn. It was a fault of the main storyline being so lackluster. I never really cared for Ciri, I found her even more fiddly to control than her tutor. But the extra layers that surround it: the Bloody Baron, stupidly shagging Keira Metz, the numerous detective scenes - they all carry this game. It is a shame it takes a few hours for it to reveal itself.

I must commend the map design for being sensible enough to be broken into several parts. You first explore a tutorial village before moving into war torn Velen and its haunting soundtrack. Here you work until you can gain passage to the north, the islands, and your home. Many sandboxes simply give you one map to conquer and contort it to stop you wandering into the final challenge. It’s refreshing to move on to a clean map, full of new challenges and surprises.

I couldn’t be arsed to play Gwent.

Trophy out of Archgriffin

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This game has three stages: Delight, Depression, and Exploration.

Delight

Oh wow, there’s so many things to do. And so many things interact with one another. The sense of discovery comes not only from reaching new locations, but also finding new ways for elements to interact. Of course wood burns. Of course burning creates an updraft. Of course metal conducts electricity. Even after many hours of play there are still new things to find. So strange that the game is as dense as it is... empty.

Depression

Ugh, I don’t have a horse and I’m in yet another blank area. Ugh, I lack just enough stamina to climb this mountain, I’ll have to start all over again. Ugh, I can’t stay in this area because I take damage and the food I eat to stop it only lasts ten minutes. Ugh, I complained about all of this online and everyone keeps saying, “I don’t have a problem, the game works fine for me, Git Gud.” As often as I meet people who have played this game in excess of 100 hours, I also meet people who have played it for less than 10. If you are unlucky, if you don’t make the right connections, if you don’t stumble upon the right thing, this game is truly depressing. Made more so by the amount of people who cannot fathom why anyone would have trouble with the game. And yet there are many that do. It is not really that they need to be better at games, it is merely because they have not found the Back Breakers. Or worse, they do not appreciate them.

Exploration

After needless hours of collecting (grinding) you find yourself in possession of armour. You upgrade the armour again and again and suddenly the cloud of depression is lifted (if it was ever there). You are free to explore any edge of the island, you simply need to wear the right threads. At this stage of the game you have found many secrets but still keep finding more. Korok seeds, the OCD baiting puzzles, become a delight to find. It’s hard to remember the game ever being frustrating, but it remains in the back of my mind. Zelda BotW has a hump, a hump that some people will feel very aggrieved to surmount. Do not be surprised when you hear of someone bouncing off this game - it really is torture for people with precious little play time or patience.

Perhaps I should say something about the shrine dungeons or the 4 beast dungeons. They exist. There, I said it.

96 out of 120

Path of Exile

I tried this many years ago on my Mac using some sort of Windows executable wrapper. It did not work. I tried again when I got my new PC, I was underwhelmed. I tried yet again two weeks ago - holy shit this is the best action RPG I’ve ever played. The fact that it’s also free is sort of a weird blessing. You can only buy cosmetics and extra slots, so it even has a total lack of pay-to-win going for it. At least they get to keep expanding and updating it, which is probably why my recent play through was so smooth.

Diablo 2 is one of my all time favourites. It’s a concise loop of murder, loot, sell. But not without flaws. It has cruft, tedium, and imbalance in spades.

Path of Exile shuffles the formula and bets the whole thing on loot. Skills are loot. Money is loot (you pay with scrolls and item modifying tools, no gold). Equipment is loot. Yet playing it like Diablo is quite a silly thing to do - you get almost nothing from items you try to sell to vendors, so you no longer make trips back and forth with junk items. Leveling up is spent on a massive passive skill tree shared by all the classes, so the game sees no need to forestall leveling because it’s not the gatekeeper of mechanics. The items are. This occurs by way of gems that you socket into items, a bit like Diablo 2 and 3, but instead of boring damage bonuses you get entirely new mechanics. If you play with several characters in the same league they can share these items as well (providing they are strong enough to wield them). A mere ten levels into the game I had a full on rave of undead surrounding my witch character like she was the hottest new DJ at a halloween party.

I refrained from playing on hardcore because the game is online only and my internet sucks, but the game does boast a challenge that is mandatory hardcore. A multi-part dungeon that rewards you with a new section for your skill tree. Complete it without dying and you get to specialise. This is further complicated by deadly treasure rooms you must salvage keys from in order to unlock the many chests at the end. This was quite an exciting challenge with real stakes and real swearing when I let my greed get the better of me.

So what of its flaws? It takes a few goes to shake off the Diablo conditioning, so it’s not until you hit act 2 and try again from scratch that you figure out a strategy for building a character. The passive skill tree has a handy search feature and after I typed “minion” into it I was determined to carve a path through the best parts. If you don’t plan your route, you miss out on your mana rocketing back to full, your health restoring, or in my case: zombie disco. It’s online only and if you insist on playing over the weekend it can be a very choppy experience. The chat is a sewage pipe, a stream of edgelord douchebaggery. Go into the options and turn it off. I’ve yet to meet anyone that wants to form a party and every time I look at it I’m certain I don’t want to. There’s little to say of the story, it’s not bad though. I appreciate that it doesn’t try to get in the way like Diablo 3′s did. Perhaps if they had taken their loot thesis a step further they could have buried it in the game’s items. Then all this hoarding would have expanded into something like an archaeology dig. A missed opportunity.

O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O out of Shiny Armour

Shadow of Mordor

It’s quite cool and exciting to begin with. We’re in Mordor with lots of grim orcs and cool cutscenes, and... is that a bush? Oh okay, it just popped into existence. Nevermind. Well at least sneaking around is fun... my finger hurts a lot though because they want me to hold down the trigger button for ages. Yeah, ganking orcs is cool, it’s real fun shooting them in the head... oh, I have to do these crappy sword fights where I only press two buttons throughout the whole thing.

This game is like someone who seems fascinating and pretty from afar, but soon as you talk to them at length you begin to realise that they’re quite boring. They just say the same thing over and over. It’s a sausage party that gets slowly more off putting as I play. The developers don’t even seem to know that women exist outside of being trophies or reasons to be angry about stuff. The main draw in this game is apparently the battles with the orc leaders, which I found to be the most boring part of the game. I hated the sword combat and it kept dragging me back to it. After doing every arrow and dagger challenge I could find on the map I left the game and never played it again.

Gollum out of Mordor

Dark Souls

in my game Ending I structured the second level so that the player would step forward and get a slap to the face in the shape of an unfair death. This was my opening salvo, death is your education. So after persisting with Dark Souls I’m somewhat nonplussed. I get it. By repeatedly killing the player they form a mental map of the area. By repeatedly killing the player they encourage experimentation.

Except that this doesn’t always work. There has to be some investment on the behalf of the player or this magic completely fails. If the player feels like they can walk away, they will. And they do. It’s why I believe Dark Souls is such a hit with game reviewers, they are beholden to persist, and in doing so the game makes a believer of them.

I on the other hand couldn’t care less. A tedious march through the same janky fights to get to the same boss I still don’t understand is nothing more than that. I tried a variety of combat techniques, from trying to interrupt attacks, to blocking, to evading, all of it very unsatisfying. What little progress I made illuminated the premise, to internalise the map and hone my skills, but I was not impressed. I enjoyed not one second of it, I only endured. I experimented and I explored, but never was I delighted.

The very worst thing that Dark Souls has given us is complacency towards killing the player. I have heard designers remark that it didn’t matter that the player died in that spot in their game because Dark Souls kills the player all the time. It makes me want to shake them. Dark Souls does not kill you all the time, it kills you for a specific reason. See, I get it, I get Dark Souls, I just don’t enjoy the combat.

Soul out of Estus

Divinity Original Sin 2

I had the worst time with Divinity Original Sin. My two characters insisted on bickering and ruining every conversation - no matter how many times I reloaded a scene they would find a way to trash it. I eventually found myself locked out of every quest in the game and unable to fight my way past monsters higher than my level. I was playing the game to forget about a failed relationship where my ex would find excuses to start arguments. It was about as bad an experience playing a game I could ever hope for.

To say the sequel is an improvement is true. To a point. Somehow I’ve done it again and gotten trapped in an area with no quests to advance and monsters too powerful to fight past. I’ve muddled my way past some really irritating quests with obtuse requirements that I’m told can be solved in many ways. Except that when you fail to chase a particular lead it’s really frustrating to have to try a dozen different tactics to shake out a solution. It feels like I’ve picked up my PC and I’m rattling it over my head until the game agrees to let me move on. People keep telling me I can solve situations in dozens of ways, but all of them seem very specific and very intent on being a dick about it.

The combat is as amazing as it is chaotic. Environmental effects are at the fore, making it feel very D&D-like as you slow people down with oil and then ignite the oil and so on. The story I felt was okay, but the tone is all over the place, making it impossible to give a shit. Some nice touches with elves gaining visions from eating flesh and anyone can choose perks for talking to animals - but I found it more infuriating than cute after searching an entire island to solve a riddle, only to have a rat explain to me that I had to talk to some NPC again in order to shake, shake, shake out the solution. For every ounce of fun I got two ounces of frustration and misery.

1 out of 2

Dungeon World

Out of all the table top roleplaying games I’ve tried, this one was the most robust for casual play. Especially seeing as roleplayers are the most unreliable people on the planet. The resolution system it employs forces a plot twist every time you use it, so it’s impossible to plan anything. It’s not for everyone, you end up with a very gonzo story without the fiddly depth that other roleplaying games manage. On the other hand it’s a dream to be the Games Master and watch a story unfold instead of meticulously planning it and seeing a conclusion land that tears apart your ideas instead of adding to them. I wrote a full guide of how I run this game over here. The campaign is effectively a sandbox, I let people explore and fill in the map as we go - which is why I mention it. I’d like a computer game that approached it this way, not like Dwarf Fortress where a randomly generated overworld is dumped on you. Instead I’d like a piecemeal discovery of the world, one that reacts to the tensions you’ve created. Perhaps I’ll have to do it myself.

Story out of Players