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humornaut · 1 year

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Analysis of Pyrefly Forest; Part 2 of Who Listens to Sunny?

Hey all! I've recently become pretty obsessed with focusing in on specific parts of Headspace to figure out what they represent, and as part of that, I really want to go over one of my favorite short and sweet segments of the game, Pyrefly Forest. I want to note that this post will almost read as a follow-up to my first post about Black Space, though I will cover the relevant parts of that analysis here, so don't feel pressured to go back and read that. I should also note that this analysis is going to dive fairly deep into personal interpretation at parts, and you may disagree with some of the conclusions I come to, which is very fair, because honestly, this analysis has me feeling a little delusional at times, but heck, it's all in good fun anyway when it comes to analyzing a game I love! Omori Spoilers Ahead!

Connection to Black Space

The first thing I want to get out of the way before really diving into the actual interpretation of the forest itself is it's connection to Black Space, and specifically the Spider Area. If you haven't read my previous analysis on this topic, the thing that is important to note from it is that the memory that Headspace Basil gets back in this area of Black Space is the memory of Sunny talking to him about his fears in regards to the Lake Incident, in which he almost drowned after a spider landed on his shoulder causing him to fall. Real world dialogue and scenes imply that Sunny didn't talk about these fears with the rest of his friends, as Hero doesn't realize that a spider is the reason that Sunny fell in the first place when the topic comes up, and neither Aubrey or Kel ever acknowledge Sunny's fears with regards to drowning or spiders in the relevant scenes.

Pyrefly Forest is home to one of the very few new picnic conversations that you can access upon completing the Hikikomori route. In it, Kel has Basil try and talk some sense into Hero with regards to Hero's fear of spiders, though it doesn't really work. What is relevant about this picnic conversation, though, is that the dialogue that Basil uses when talking about Hero's fear of spiders here is identical to what he says in the Spider Area (unique parts about Sunny's Lake Incident not withstanding).

In the picnic conversation:

Vs in Black Space:

Summary of Pyrefly Forest

As far as gameplay is concerned, Pyrefly Forest serves as the transitionary segment between the playground hub area of Headspace and the Sweetheart portion of the game. It highlights not just Sunny's own conquered fear of spiders, but Hero's unconquered fear of spiders as well.

Ignoring the side content, the main thing that you are doing here is completing the minecart track so you can ride that through the forest to get to Sweetheart's castle.

Pyrefly Forest's Real World Inspirations

Pyrefly Forest as a whole, as noted by the wiki, appears to be inspired by the day that the group went beetle catching in the photo album. One of the photos added to the album after the completion of the Hikikomori route even references this by copying one of the real photos, replacing the beetle Mari found with a spider. It's also interesting to note that this is the only new photo in the album post-Hikikomori route that is a copy of a photo from the real world album, rather than a completely new and unique image.

I think it is interesting to note that Sunny appears to associate this memory with spiders specifically, rather than beetles. In fact, beetles don't appear at all within Headspace. You can even see in the photo album pictures that where in the real world, the focus was on Mari taking care of a beetle that surprised the group, Headspace puts the focus on Basil taking care of a spider that surprised the group, showing that Sunny may have relied on Basil to help him with his fears, especially when it comes to spiders.

One of the photo album images for this day has Basil noting that Sunny looks "sleepy" in the background of an image of Kel.

I really wish I could see a clearer or more high definition version of this image, but to me, Sunny appears to be holding himself or a tree while staring up at something on another tree. All things considered, Basil may be misinterpreting Sunny being afraid of a spider as him being sleepy. This may have even led to Sunny opening up to Basil about his fear of spiders overall. We know that in the current day, Basil is able to tell that Sunny is scared during the bathroom scene, despite Sunny not really emoting fear when you look into the mirror during that scene.

In addition, both picnics in Pyrefly Forest have tofu as their healing item, which as I've noted before, is a food associated with Basil. Obviously, within Headspace, the food is associated with the Sprout Moles, but I do think that it is interesting that tofu is used for these picnics, rather than in the Sprout Mole village picnic, or even somewhere within Sweetheart's Castle.

The Sidequests of Pyrefly Forest

There are three sidequests that the player has access to within Pyrefly Forest, and I think that all 3 are worth mentioning for different reasons, so I'd like to go through them separately.

Fascinating Literature

This sidequest is initiated by speaking to Demi at a bookshelf in one of the side areas that you need to go to get a rail segment.

This sidequest of the three is the most up-front with it's interpretation. Basil and Sunny had a relationship in which, at the very least, Basil would recommend books for Sunny to read, while Sunny would read them. Demi even has a passing resemblance to Sunny, so I think it is pretty clear that this sidequest is referencing that aspect of Basil and Sunny's relationship.

A Good Listener

Right off the bat, we can tell that this quest is also related to Sunny and Basil, as it's title is directly lifted from how Basil describes Sunny in the photo album. It involves finding Candlie's missing teddy bear and returning it to her. The missing Teddy is found in the Fanmail Graveyard section of Sweetheart's Castle, and is acquired after a fight with it as a Rare Bear enemy.

It is easy to see the teddy bear as representative of Sunny, while Candlie represents Basil in this quest, considering the quest being about the teddy bear being a good listener to Candlie, but I think you could very well make a very different interpretation of this quest with everything else going on in this segment of the game.

The first thing to make note of here is that Sunny is the one associated with owning plushies, not Basil. In Sunny's backyard, in fact, he even owns a teddy bear that has been abandoned to the elements.

Keeping in mind the references to Sunny talking to Basil about his fear of spiders, this side quest could actually be representative of how Sunny would come to view Basil as a confidant as well. This is definitely delving into some deep personal interpretation/headcanony territory, but this could even represent how Sunny would deal with his own worries prior to when he began opening up to Basil, by venting it out to his stuffed animals, but the Lake Incident and the trauma associated with it was too much for that kind of thing to work, leading Sunny to open up about it to Basil. The fact that Teddy attacks you during this sidequest certainly could imply that Sunny doesn't exactly have a positive opinion of it. The fact that Teddy was lost could also reference the fact that Basil is lost within Headspace and you are trying to find him.

On the other hand, we could buy into the more obvious interpretation of Candlie representing Basil and Teddy representing Sunny here. The Teddy attacking you could just represent how Sunny does not have a positive opinion of himself or his actions. The fact that Candlie is a candle is also fairly specific for Pyrefly Forest, as lighting candles is what allows the player to avoid groups of spiders, possibly referencing how Basil would take care of and relocate spiders that Sunny was afraid of.

You also get a little cutscene of Candlie hugging Teddy when you bring him back. This is interesting, because it's one of the few times we actually see a hug represented through the sprites in the overworld (also seen with Omori & Mari, Hero & Mari, and Basil & Sunny), and it's applied to such a small little sidequest.

You also get a rubber duck that doesn't like you as a reward. I'm not sure what that's supposed to represent.

Weeping Willow

So this quest is the one where you have to fill out a jokebook and have Hero tell jokes to the titular Weeping Willow to cheer her up (the jokes are too embarrassing for anyone else to say). When you finally can get her to laugh using the construction joke, she bestows upon you the "LOL Sword", which is a weapon that can be used by Hero and allows him to start the battle happy.

The LOL Sword is a very unique weapon for Hero. All of his other weapons take the form of kitchen tools, while this one is an actual weapon. In addition, the way that this weapon works allows Hero to start the battle Happy, even against enemies that would usually set Hero in a state of fear. This would seem to imply that the way Hero deals with his fear of spiders is distracting himself through humor, though we don't see this in-game when a spider is encountered in the real world.

I think that an interesting idea here is that humor is how Sunny may have dealt with his own fears, prior to the Incident. Obviously, the way his fears manifest in the current day is a bit more extreme than they likely manifested themselves as prior to the Incident, but they still existed following when he almost drowned in the lake pre-canon. In the Lost Library memory for the construction of the treehouse, Sunny appears to make special note of how much time has passed since Mari has climbed down her ladder, perhaps indicating that Sunny is not willing to climb up the ladder himself at this point in time, due to his fear of heights. If you buy into the idea that Sunny opened up about his fears to Basil, I think it could become easy to imagine Basil doing things like telling jokes to Sunny as he climbed the ladder to the treehouse to distract him from his fear of heights, which would have been enough at that point in time, even if it didn't end up being a permanent solution. And if you buy into this interpretation and want to dive into delusion with me even further, the fact that the joke book is too embarrassing for anyone except Hero to read could represent that Sunny was too embarrassed by his fears to open up about them to the others. The fact that it has to be Hero specifically is relevant, as Hero himself doesn't really have any shame in expressing his fear of spiders.

One last thing to mention here is that originally, one of the books that Sunny would own in the Hikikomori route was titled "Weeping Willow", which would have tied back into Basil and Sunny's reading interest, and a weeping willow is a type of tree, which has some pretty specific connotations in OMORI.

Lost Forest

The final thing that I feel is relevant to note about this area is the connection to the Lost Forest. Overall, the Lost Forest portion of the game is more to set the player up for the existence of a Truth that has been forgotten, as it wasn't really mentioned during the previous night in Headspace. Since I'm focusing more on Basil right now, I won't go too in-depth on this very interesting area, but there are some notable things that you can see and find. You are able to find a "Pearl" item on the dock in area 3 of the Lost Forest, which could be seen as representing the gang's hideout, as well as this being the only time Pearls appear in the game outside of Sweetheart's Castle, which is a location that I've noted before as being fairly connected to Sunny and Basil's relationship.

Stranger appears at the beginning of the area, then appears again alongside an apparition of Basil in the fifth area of the Lost Forest before disappearing. There is also a hanging Mari from the Fishbowl Area of Black Space that Appears in the final room as a WTF Event. I find this interesting, as that area of Black Space heavily focuses on Sunny and Basil's relationship. The OST for that area is White Pillars (also the 143rd song on the soundtrack), which has so many different things that it could refer to. One interpretation that I like is that the "White Pillars" that the song refers to are the hanging Maris that appear within that area of Black Space, as well as here. The metaphorical "White Pillars" that has allowed Sunny to force himself to forget and live in delusion all goes back to Basil's lie. Sunny wouldn't be able to live within Headspace and forget his crimes if everyone knew about them. The presence of a hanging Mari from the Fishbowl Area here, of all places, plays into that interpretation, as this is the room where Daddy Longlegs discusses the creation and purpose of Headspace. It makes sense for a reference to that to appear here.

Conclusion

Like I said at the beginning of this post, a lot of my analysis of this area goes back to personal interpretation, and even I can see that there are parts where I'm stretching a bit, but I do think that at the very least, the sidequests and other details of this area allow you to build a solid reading on this portion of the game being about Sunny and Basil's relationship, which will be expanded on right after with Sweetheart's Castle.

The fact that both "Interesting Literature" and "A Good Listener" are both accessed through areas that you only have to go to due to the rails needing repaired could even represent how Headspace itself is breaking down and that to repair it and continue or break the delusion, Sunny has to expose himself to reminders of his relationship with Basil.

Also: something that I didn't mention in my previous post on this topic. While I do believe that Sunny did come to see Basil as someone he could open up to, I don't think that Sunny ever would have told him about his worries with the violin. Basil is the one that had the idea for the violin in the first place, and I don't think Sunny would bring it up to him due to his known drive to avoid disappointing his friends. I think that that actually adds to OMORI's tragedy: the two people that Sunny could open up to about things were the two people that Sunny would see as being most disappointed in him for wanting to quit, eventually leading to the incident.

#omori #omori analysis #omori sunny #omori basil #omori sunflower #sunnflower #sunflower omori #pyrefly forest #lost forest #this analysis is kind of delusional #you have been warned #daddy longlegs #omori stranger #sidequest analysis #interesting literature #a good listener #omori demi #omori candlie

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wings-flames-and-thirium · 2 years

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Hi (shy)

Can I request for a villain x reader(I don’t mind the gender) hc, they comfort reader after they had a bad day sfw please

I really need it

Thanks

—— shy anon

a/n: I’m really sorry you’re not feeling well anon. i hope these headcanons can cheer you up a little. don’t forget to take time for yourself and be kind to yourself, even in these trying times. you’re strong and i believe in you! so without any further ado, let’s see what the villains would do to keep you safe and sound.

pairing(s): various villains x gender neutral reader

warning(s): none

Tomura Shigaraki:

The great leader himself even experiences days where he feels like the world is turning against them

To be fair with him being the most dangerous criminal on earth he already feels like everyone is against him, but not when it comes to you

With so much change and uncertainty in his life, you’re the only thing so far that has been consistent, staying by his side through everything

So when the darkness came to haunt you and you became a little more distant from him he gets slowly concerned

Not that he would tell anyone but everyone could notice that he is looking out for you and partly lingers at your door

If it’s getting too irritating for him he’ll be more directly, entering your room with an additional blanket and flopping down on the bed

You’re a little confused at his actions but as you grasp that he actually just wants to try and be there for you, your heart is warming up a little

“I’ll be okay Tomura.”

“I hope you, you’re my player two after all. Losing you would be devastating for the further gameplay.”

You two find yourself sitting in silence for a little until Tomura quickly disappears into the lounge

He comes back with little snacks and drinks and also a portable console so you two can just sit back and relax together

Shigaraki won’t be a man of many words, rather relying on actions and distractions to help you out

But when you eventually end up draped over his body, fallen asleep while he still plays his game, he tends to soften up, thinking you don’t notice

He’ll look at your sleeping body, carefully brushing any hair that fell into your face away

Leaning down for a soft kiss on the forehead, you can hear him whisper “I will protect you player two, you’re mine and I won’t let anything happen to you. No matter how many times the heroes try to beat us down.”

Dabi (Touya Todoroki)

Dabi would be the type to bring you meals when he noticed that you forgot to eat or skip meals

He isn’t a man of many words but he knows that his presence is comforting for you

So when he sees that you’re having a hard day, he’ll try and get you away from the League’s hideout

He’ll take you through the city and lead you to his favorite place: the harbor

At night, this is where he usually comes when everything gets too much, so bringing you here, means that he trusts you

He instructs you to sit down and when you lean against him, he tries to talk to you

Although he isn’t great at comforting, he’ll offer his ear whenever you have something that weighs on you

“You know, whenever I get dark thoughts or bad memories re-emerging, I come here to watch the stars. They shine the brightest against the darkest times of the night, guiding us when we feel like we’re lost. Sometimes I feel lost, and their light is what guides me back to the here and now.”

He wraps an arm around you without stopping eye contact with the sky. “You also don’t have to go through anything alone. We may be a group of misfits in the world of heroes but we all have your back. You can also count on me.

Dabi starts to lean on you too and whether you want to add something to his words or start opening up about why you have been feeling out of it lately, two things are for sure: Dabi and the stars are there to listen

Twice (Jin Bubaigawara)

Twice would be the one to try and distract you with whatever he can think of

Food, games, silly videos he found online, he’d be happy to do what he can because your smile is what gets him through the day during bad times

Whenever he would be scared of splitting apart, you would get him anything to contain these raging voices inside him

A bag and a tight hug to “hold him together” was all he needed to calm down and he’d adapt that same concept to you

He’d go for some of the best hugs you’d experience, waiting for your frown to turn upside down

And even if it doesn’t come immediately, he’s patient so he’ll hug you some more just to make sure

He’ll keep you close to him and will talk to you about whatever comes to his mind to get yours off of any negative thoughts that threaten to overtake you

With Bubigara by your side, you know that you won’t get a lot of time to think about what got you down in the first place

He’s a spark of joy, just like you are for him

Spinner (Shuichi Iguchi)

Lizard boy would take an indirect approach to comfort you

He knows what it’s like to feel lonely and like no one is on your side

Comfort for him always came in video games so apart from Shigaraki, you would be his favorite person to play them with

He would get comfy with you on the couch, letting you settle in between his legs so your back is against his chest, maybe he’ll even let you wear one of his hoodies for more comfort

He’ll lean against you while you make it further in the game you’re playing, making sure you feel safe within his embrace

Eventually, he will offer to get some snacks for the both of you too, maybe feed them to you if he feels encouraged enough to do so

I think he’ll be a little shy to show you his feelings but when you’re with him you can feel at home

You two will quite certainly end up passing out on the couch or in his room after beating the game and Spinner’s arms will be around you, holding you close to him so you can listen to his heartbeat

Mister Compress (Atsuhiro Sako)

Since Compress is an entertainer, that would be is the first bet as to how to cheer you up

As he quickly finds out, however, this doesn’t always do the trick, so he likes to spoil you and take you out to the fanciest restaurant or bar he as a villain can attend

He would do anything to make you feel like royalty, being a gentleman and treating you to any food you would like

In the privacy of the hideout, he’ll make sure that you also feel amazing

He would invite you to shower with him and then settle down by the TV or in his or your room

He’d try to shower you in affirmations, saying what you really need and want to hear

Kurogiri

Kurogiri’s main purpose was to serve Shigaraki, but after everything, the League itself has become his home and family

He’s grown particularly fond of you ever since you joined and when he sees Shigaraki being a little too harsh to you for his liking, he likes to take matters into his own hands to makes you feel better

First, Kurogiri would send you off to get a shower. It can get crowded and the hot water is sparse as the night continues because the other members will take their showers, so he advises you to get in there first so you can have all the hot water to calm down.

He sets out a dark purple bathrobe for you to put on and snuggle into and once you get out and get back to the lounge, you’ll find a small candle being lit and set on the bar

You sit down on one of the chairs and watch as Kurogiri fixes you your favorite meal and drink, the smell alone easing you

“Eat up, I’ve made it from scratch, just how you like it”

You dig in and finish it without a single bite left, sighing while Kurogiri takes the plate from you “It was delicious thank you”

Kurogir hums and finishes cleaning the plates before he moves away from the bar

You follow his movements, a bit perplexed as he disappears into one of the rooms

Soon, he emerges with a big, fluffy blanket “Come on (y/n) let’s get you to your quarters and into bed, you’ve had a long day.”

You followed him without protest, your eyes already getting heavier.

Once in your room and on the bed, you lay down, Kurogiri already has the blanket ready as he puts it on you, the soft fabric and weight soothing you further

He sits down at the edge of the bed and without any words, you crawl over to him, your head resting on his thighs. You just needed the contact right now, you didn’t know if you could stand being let alone just yet.

“Do not worry, my dear (y/n), I will not leave you.”

And Kurogiri held his promise, as when you fell asleep on his lap, he did not

Overhaul (Kai Chisaki)

Kai isn’t the greatest when it comes to giving comfort

He loves you but being the leader of the Shie Hassaikai and constantly keeping his business going is tough and he noticed that it takes a toll on your relationship too

I imagine that he would take his time when he finally does get the time and treat you to a bath together with him

He likes to stay clean and when he gets to rinse off after a hard day of work together with you, it makes the cleansing experience much better in his view

You two take turns washing each other, using a nice shampoo to scrub the dirt off your tired bodies

If he wants to take even more care of you, he’s the one washing your hair, massaging your scalp as he works his conditioner into your hair

He would also give you a massage since you’re already sat with your back facing him

During an intimate time like this, he would dare to expose his hands and touch you with his bare fingers while massaging you and you love it

It’s that little extra thing that shows you that he cares about you, even if he can get pretty distant because of work

“You’re my one and only, my angel, never forget that.”

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thesolferino · 3 years

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⤷ note: apologies for losing your request, anon, but thank you for requesting! this is my first time writing a full fic in second person, so bear with me, and i hope this is what you were looking for <3

The Great American Bake Off

pairing: corpse husband x gn!reader

word count: 3.6k

genre: fluff

summary: you’ve been jealous of rae and her closeness with your boyfriend since the dawn of time, but things change and friendships are made once she comes over for one hell of a cooking video.

Corpse, among many other things, was a man many wished to have.

It’s the truth; even if he didn’t have a YouTube channel through which millions kept up with everything from horror stories to Among Us gameplays, people would still turn heads and whisper whenever he spoke - that attention more than multiplied when he started blowing up and his social media presence grew.

With growth come numbers, and there are always people behind said numbers. Through them, Corpse makes wonderful friends - through them, you had met him, too. All the way back, during his horror narration days, you had grown to like him - really, who wouldn’t?

A DM you once sent after a few drinks, when you claimed to your friends you’d get the “deep-voiced man of your dreams” you often talked about and they, in turn, challenged you to message him, was nothing short of a joke and the idea of him responding was merely a pipe dream. What you hadn’t expected, however, was a response, which wrecked your brain at noon the next day, where your head throbbed with embarrassment, guilt, pride, happiness, a melt of hatred and gratefulness for your friends, panic and the remains of alcohol that tugged at every part of your skull.

It had turned out to be more than a great idea, though, because for the next few weeks you were constantly talking. You learned so much more than he let on in videos, and during late night calls you found out everything from his favorite clothing brand to his favorite color to his thoughts about his own mortality and then back to his favorite cereal. Audio calls and short voice messages turned into hours long FaceTimes that led you from friends to something more. And after a year or so of dating, you packed your bags and made it to sunny San Diego, ready to lay in his arms and sweat bullets.

Safe to say Corpse’s social media presence had its good sides. However, with all good things come bad things too, and you weren’t sure if the bad things were bad at all or you were simply too jealous.

Corpse made wonderful friends thanks to his YouTube channel. He met people he could confide in, meet, people he could talk to about his worst problems, people who would listen - he met people he could have fun with, with who he could forget all about the real world and his own issues, and simply laugh his heart away, play games until the late hours of the night.

If he had to name his closest ones, they would have to be Dave, Loey, maybe Mykie, possibly Jack, and Rae. And that is exactly where the root of the problem stood.

Rae is beautiful, and everyone who denies it must be either dumb or blind. She’s drop dead gorgeous, and funny, and kind, and smart, in a way that made you want to rip your hair out. You wanted to hate her so bad, because the jealousy ate away at you like a damn disease, but you couldn’t, because she was perfect Rae, and as much as you hated the fact she seemed to be perfect inside out, you just couldn’t hate her as her. It was impossible, you concluded.

You convinced yourself you weren’t jealous every time you heard him yelling or laughing at her from his office room - or at least you attempted to do so. Your lunch would turn sour and end up forgotten because you’d be way too focused on listening in on what he was doing and trying to make out what she was saying to even eat at the same pace you previously were. Jealousy ate away at you, no matter if you admitted it to yourself or not.

It didn’t go unnoticed by Corpse, of course. On one late night when you couldn’t sleep and neither could he, as per usual, you turned on a random comedy that you half-heartedly paid attention to, his fingers combing through the knots in your hair peacefully and the slow pace of the movie lulling you to sleep slowly. That is, before his phone rang and lit the mostly dark room. You managed to sneak a glance at the notification before he had, and the familiar bitterness seeped between your ribs as always upon seeing the name displayed at the top of the message, more than awake now.

You visibly stiffened when he laughed at the message and typed something back, shifting your head in his lap as some subconscious attempt at getting him to pay attention to you instead. He put his phone down and you huffed, eyes locked on the TV screen as you pretended to be extremely absorbed in the movie even though you weren’t quite sure of the difference between the protagonist and antagonist anymore. His hands didn’t return to your hair, and that somehow made you even more annoyed.

“What’s up?” Corpse quietly spoke up, barely over the volume over the already quiet movie.

“Nothing.” You said, quicker than you wanted to, and you bit your tongue in cringe when you realised it was an awful lie. Corpse seemed to think the same.

“That’s bullshit. Seriously, what’s wrong?” He asked, and was met with pure silence. In reality, you were hoping he’d simply never realise you were somewhat jealous, because you knew you were being stupid and unreasonable, but you couldn’t help wanting him all to yourself. Admitting it out loud made it so much more real, and so much more embarrassing that you would rather bury yourself alive than admit to being jealous of Rae, of all people.

After a few seconds of silence, save the laughter of characters on screen, he spoke again.

“Are you jealous?” The hint of a teasing tone in his voice made you want to rip your hair out of your skull. Was it really that damn hard to believe that yes, you were jealous of an extremely close friend of his? Was it a crime?

The clenching of your jaw seemed to give Corpse enough of a response, and his hands returned to running themselves through your hair as he giggled to himself.

“What’s so damn funny?” You borderline spat, causing his movements to halt for a second before continuing with even louder laughter.

“I don’t know, just the idea of you being jealous of Rae is so funny. I’ve noticed the way you roll your eyes whenever I text her in front of you. You’re not exactly sneaky, you know?” His words made blood rush straight to your face, cheeks heating up in embarrassment. How long has he known this for?

“Sorry. I don’t…” you exhaled and attempted to smile. “I don’t know what’s up with me. I’m so jealous nowadays. I don’t even know why.”

“There’s enough of me to share with everyone, no worries baby.” he replied, teasing tone still yet to dissipate as you slap his knee in mock offense and he starts wheezing.

“Absolutely not! Fucking excuse you, I’m not sharing with anyone!” you gaped at him as he kept laughing.

That was the end of it - or at least Corpse thought so. Needless to say, he was wrong.

Your mood would instantly turn sour whenever he’d laugh at one of her messages, and you attempted to push down every eye roll whenever he’d sit on his phone, between your legs, back turned to you so you could see everything, and open Rae’s DMs again. Sometimes you managed, sometimes you couldn’t help it, but you did your best to do it whenever he wasn’t looking. Because you truly knew you were being unreasonable, especially whenever you have to relay situations like how he had to postpone a date one time because Rae asked him to play Rust for a bit longer and you almost ripped all your hair out of your skull in frustration back to your best friend who just turned Rae and Corpse into the villains in the situation because that’s what best friends are supposed to do.

Not like he was going out of his way to talk to her a concerning amount, they mostly talked in groupchats and on streams and that was only a few times weekly, but it did absolutely nothing to calm the green monster growing stronger in you every day, fed by every laugh she got out of him.

The green monster fucking loved it when Corpse excitedly announced to you that he’s finally meeting his friends for the first time, and by friends meaning Rae, Sykkuno and Karl. You, however… were far from impressed.

He paced around the room in excitement, a mix of obvious anxiety and joy evident on his face, and he fiddled with the strings of his hoodie with shaky hands as he very proudly announced that he would be the second tallest person in the room through a blinding, pearly grin, and seeing him so electrified couldn’t help but make you shut your jealous thoughts up, even if just for a little bit, and mirror his grin back to him.

What did, however, make you as anxious as him was when he announced they’d a) be coming to your shared apartment and b) making a cooking video - it sent you into a panicked mom mode as you dusted every corner of every room and vacuumed everything from the kitchen to the balcony and Corpse did nothing but record you as you anxiously rambled and laugh at you from his place on your bed.

When the dreaded Saturday finally came, and the first person to arrive, Sykkuno, rang your doorbell, you squeezed Corpse’s hand to stop him from nervously toying with his rings and opened the door, and you greeted the man like he was your own brother and not a person you’d seen probably a total of three times through the computer screen and someone who’s seen you maybe two times, from the pictures Corpse sent him, in your best attempt to make both of them more comfortable. It actually kind of worked - turns out Sykkuno is a pretty affectionate guy, too, and a conversation started as soon as he stepped in. Corpse gave you a look when you pulled away from Sykkuno’s half-hug, and you almost laughed out loud at the irony when his phone lit up with a notification from Rae announcing she was almost there at that exact moment.

She had kept true to her word; ten minutes or so later, another ring was heard and you gestured to Corpse to open it this time as you gave Sykkuno his cup of water and resisted any and every urge to roll your eyes or do something otherwise bitchy and stupid. Corpse did as told, and you watched them hug and listened to Rae squeal in excitement through the open door of the living room and decided to plaster a smile on your face for as long as you could muster before you remove yourself from the situation when they start filming.

Unfortunately for you, the first person she locked eyes with was exactly you, and they lit up an even prettier brown (if that was even possible) as she beelined to you and you barely got a greeting out before she engulfed you in a large hug, arms wrapping around your neck as she swayed both of you side to side.

“Oh my God, you must be Y/N! I’ve heard so much about you, it’s so nice to finally meet you!” Rae cheered into your ear before she finally pulled back, before shooting an infectious grin at you that you couldn’t help but return back.

“All good things, I hope.” you chuckled as she moved to greeting Sykkuno, and nodded her head with an enthusiastic giggle of her own. You eyed Corpse for a second who simply leaned against the door frame, watching the whole thing unfold with somewhat of a proud smile on his face, before Rae turned back to you and your attention was on her again.

“Of course! Corpse is very much a simp for you, you know that?” She said and both you and Corpse laughed, especially him, who nodded his head in agreement as she sat back down, still beaming at you.

“Well, I’m happy to hear that.” you respond before turning back to Corpse. “Where’s Karl at?”

“He’ll be here in half an hour or so, he only landed recently.” he said. You nodded and moved to sit on a nearby chair to leave space for the guests on the couch.

Karl ended up arriving in twenty minutes and apprised everyone of the information that “his taxi driver is a psycho that, apparently, doesn’t fear stop signs or the police” before setting up the camera in your kitchen and tried his best to attach lapel mics on everybody (admittedly, it took way longer than it should’ve, but he eventually managed and that counted as a win in his book). You reluctantly agreed to be the judge of the finished product when they’re done cooking, and Karl was there for the purposes of being a cameraman and making jokes off screen so he agreed too, albeit way more enthusiastically than you.

The two of you sat behind the camera as the three of them lined up, Corpse wearing a mask and his signature eyepatch (that he didn’t really need, but those two did their job in preserving his privacy) and introduced what they were doing. Corpse was obviously very anxious, hands fidgeting constantly and shivering like a dog after a bath despite the hoodie he was wearing in 100 degree weather because of the shower of sweat that was now drying on his body, and that was partly why you were there, supportive smiles, encouraging cheers and all.

They were making Mexican ground beef tacos, and despite knowing Corpse can barely make a sandwich without setting at least two dishes on fire, you still cheered him on proudly and repeated he was part Mexican himself roughly 5 times a minute, claiming he was going to kill it.

“Kill it? More like kill one of us- CORPSE watch what you’re doing with that fucking knife! You’re proving my point!” Rae yelled at him as he giggled in delight, watching the woman gape at him in pure horror and Sykkuno watch his movements completely entranced as he played with the knife in his hands.

“You’re just mad that he’s going to make tacos fifty times better than you.” you said to Rae, chewing down on some M&Ms that Karl and you shared (both of you decided on a genius plan - you’re going to eat the whole bag before they’re done with cooking so you can claim you’re full and therefore can’t eat the atrocity that will most likely be the tacos).

“Don’t gas me up like that, Y/N, you are well aware I’m shit at cooking. Expect absolutely nothing from me.” he replied over the sizzling of the meat on the pan, throwing a whole spoonful of chili powder into it, earning loud yelling and scolding from your side and loud laughter from Rae.

“HALF A TEASPOON! Half a teaspoon, how have you not remembered this already?! We’ve made tacos a million times now, oh my God, you’re actually stupid.” you yelled at him, arms flailing in the direction of the seasoning to emphasise your ‘half a teaspoon’ point as Rae doubled over in laughter and Sykkuno looked into the pan with a concerned and somewhat afraid look. Just as he peeked in, the overwhelming smell of chili powder started biting away at his eyes, and he jumped away with a yelp.

“Jesus, Corpse!” he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes with his forearm as the whole room burst into laughter and Corpse suspiciously inspected his beef.

“What were you saying about your ‘Mexican king’, Y/N?” Rae asked, pulling out a few tortillas and putting them on the table. You huffed, grabbing another handful of M&Ms.

“Giving him up to God. He’s the only one who can help, at this point.” you said. She giggled in response and Corpse let out some sort of protesting sound and waved his knife around in complaint. “I don’t know who this man is. He broke into my kitchen and now I’m here.”

“Hey, I pay half of your rent!” he said, and you were about to reply but Rae dropped her meat into a pan full of overheated oil, and a loud hiss and some sort of a scream overtook the room as a cloud of steam shot into the air and she frantically looked around for the wooden spoon so the meat wouldn’t stick to the pan. You simply sat and laughed, eating the candy like it was popcorn and you were watching a shitty cooking show - it wasn’t that far from reality, really.

“Um, I just realised I don’t make many tacos, actually.” she said as she helplessly stirred the meat, turning to you with pleading eyes. “What seasoning even goes into this? Y/N, will you help me? Let’s team up against Corpse!”

You tilted your head in thought, but before you could even speak, Corpse spoke up.

“That’s not fucking fair, that’s-that’s against the rules.” he turned to you. “You won’t betray me, right?”

You laughed at him, adjusting in your seat. “I gave up on you ever since you added, like, 3 kilos of seasoning into the meat for no reason.” then you turned to Rae. “Sure, let’s do it, babe.”

Their loud yelling immediately started mixing, Rae’s cheers contrasting Corpse’s protesting. She stuck her tongue out at him meanwhile Corpse shot her the middle finger, and she turned back to you with a grin.

“Alright, what do I put in?”

Roughly twenty unnecessary and extremely long minutes later, the tacos were done, two each for each of them. Rae’s looked the best - probably because you guided her through the whole thing - next to Sykkuno’s, whose you were genuinely intrigued to try. While Corpse was arguing with Rae, he burned roughly half of his already ruined beef, and Karl made the very nice observation that it looked like a bird shat in a tortilla, which you proclaimed as the highlight of the video.

Since you and Karl claimed you were full, the three of them simply swapped tacos between each other as to be unbiased, and the two of you watched in amused suspense. You were actually quite interested to see what the end results were - you were first anxious and quite annoyed you even had to participate in the first place, because it meant losing your mind from jealousy, watching Corpse and Rae giggle and act all domestic while cooking, but jealousy simply dissipated somewhere half through the video as you watched the three argue if cheddar cheese belonged on tacos or not and Rae laugh at every stupid joke you cracked. Now, you sat, fully immersed as you stared at Sykkuno’s face; the poor guy ended up with the misfortune of having to try Corpse’s taco first.

“Zoom in, zoom in!” you whispered into Karl’s ear who complied and zoomed into Sykkuno’s face. He bit into the taco, chewing for a second before his face twisted in disgust and you began wheezing when he grabbed a tissue and spit it out, immediately grabbing his glass of water. Rae laughed at him as well, mouth full of his one, which she claimed she actually liked but it wasn’t as good as the “Y/NRae-co” as she proudly called it. Corpse silently ate Rae’s taco and refused to give a review on it because he was upset he got defeated, but the fact that he scarfed down the whole thing in a minute or so was enough of a review.

“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.” Corpse exclaimed when he saw Sykkuno’s bite in the tissue, grabbing the second taco he made and biting down on it. The whole room burst into laughter when he roughly swallowed, tears obvious in the one eye that showed, because of the overly spicy beef.

“What are you motherfuckers laughing at? It’s not that bad, I stand by tacorpse.”

“Tacorpse is actually genius. The one good thing you came up with during the entirety of this video.” Rae said and Corpse mumbled a fuck you in response.

“Well, I think we can all agree that me and Y/N’s taco was clearly the best.” she said, clasping her hands together.

“I actually think mine was better.” Sykkuno said, to which she pushed his plate out of the frame.

“Nobody asked you anything.”

“Don’t bully Sykkuno, I’ll fucking kick you out.”

“Oh yeah? I’m pretty sure Y/N would kick you out before they’d let you kick me!” Rae said, accusingly pointing her taco in Corpse’s direction.

“Alright, let’s wrap up the video.” Karl laughed behind the camera, and the three of them all turned to properly face it and end the video.

“Thank you all so much for watching, this has been an… interesting video, to say the least. Uh, thank you to Karl for filming this whole disaster, thank you to Corpse,” Rae gestured in his direction, “for lending us his kitchen, thank you to Sykkuno for probably getting us more views on this video, and also a big thank you to Y/N, Corpse’s better half for making this video way more interesting and helping me make probably, like, the best taco I’ve ever made.” she grinned and you shoved a peace sign in front of the camera.

“If you liked this video, check out Sykkuno and Corpse’s channels, they will be linked down below, and please click like and subscribe to support the channel! Again, thank you all for watching, see you later, bye!” she finished, and with that, Karl turned the camera off.

Silence engulfed the room. You sighed.

“Alright, who’s gonna clean this shit up?”

#corpse husband x reader #corpse husband x y/n #corpse husband x you #corpse husband x female reader #corpse husband fanfic #corpse husband imagine #corpse husband fluff

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fereldanwench · 2 years

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CyberAsk 2077

I was tagged by the lovely @pheedraws! Thank you!

1. When did you buy the game? July 2. It was my gift to myself for getting a job in late June--It was during a Steam sale. I got a few other games, like Disco Elysium, as well, but I haven't really been able to get into anything other than Cyberpunk since I got it.

2. When was the moment you knew you loved the game? I think the moment I realized it was something really special was when you met with Jackie at the noodle stand after the scav mission--I remember being really enthralled with how alive he felt with his subtle animations, like wiping his mouth as he ate and the way his jewelry moved. I almost felt like I was talking to a real person--Not just a well-written and designed character, but a person.

But the moment I knew I loved the game was probably after things go to hell during the Heist. The music and the tension and the atmosphere were just unparalleled to anything I've experienced in a video game.

3. Which character did you romance in your first playthrough? As far as I'm concerned, I romanced Goro. I just didn't get an awkward first-person POV sex scene, lmao.

(I did technically do both River's and Judy's romances just because they were available to me, but I reloaded after I finished them and officially took the platonic route for both.)

4. Whose your favorite NPC? I mean. Obviously, it's Goro. 🥰 But shout-out to (in no particular order) Jenkins, Jackie, Misty, Vik, Evelyn, Judy, Panam, Hanako, Oda, Rogue, Johnny, Regina, and Wako because they all inspired and compelled me in some way and contributed to an amazing experience.

5. Did you have inspiration in mind when designing your V(s)? Not really. I knew I wanted her to have cyberware and scars, and I knew I wanted to give her an unnatural hair color, because I've never done that before--In most of the RPGs I've played, I've always found it kind of immersion-breaking, but it made perfect sense in a cyberpunk world. But other than that, I was just letting the CC options guide me, basically.

I haven't really redesigned Valerie (just different hairstyles and cyberware) since I officially made her, but she is technically version 2.0. The first V I made I was trying to get her sharper features to make her look more like an intimidating corpo baddie, and then I realized the nose/mouth combo I liked in the CC didn't really translate how I thought it would once I got in-game. I kinda I ended up making her look "softer" than I originally intended, but as I got more of a feel for her character, that actually worked better for me.

6. What’s your go-to vehicle? Jackie's Arch and the Caliburns. I do have a soft spot for V's car, if only for the personalized dash I don't even see that often because I drive in third-person.

7. What’s your favorite gig/mission/job? As far as main missions go: Down on the Street, Gimme Danger, Last Caress, and Totalimmortal for obvious reasons, I would think. And I love The Heist--I get chills every single time Yorinobu attacks Saburo and You Shall Never Have to Forgive Me Again kicks in.

For side quests/gigs: I really like both quests with the Peralezes. I like rescuing Saul. I don't really like the gameplay of the Delamain mission but I really like the story and potential outcomes for it. And there are a lot of gigs I like, either for gameplay (I like doing stealthy raids a lot) or lore tidbits, but I can't for the life of me remember any of their names.

8. Which NC radio station do you switch to the most? I listened to Body Heat and Pacific Dreams a lot, but I'm honestly kinda sick of all of the radio stations at this point. 😅 I've considered downloading some of the custom station mods to get some more variety.

Tagging @accalia--wolf, @xnever-fade-awayx, @sarasa-cat, @aniston0-0, @roads-rise-to-meet-me, and anyone else who wants to participate! ♥

#t: wench.txt #g: cyberpunk 2077 #oc: valerie v powell #tumblr: dash games

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adastraperfortuna · 3 years

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I Played Cyberpunk 2077

Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.

There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.

And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.

The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.

Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.

One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.

Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.

Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.

It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.

The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.

Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.

Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.

It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.

Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.

NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!

I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.

That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.

Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.

It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.

Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.

I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.

But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?

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toxicnotebook · 3 years

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While I’m here, some thoughts on Age of Calamity:

So, just to start off with: I feel like I am one of five people who got exactly what they wanted with Age of Calamity. When this was originally announced, I was concerned. The BotW DLC already told us what happened to the Champions, so why release a whole game about about it? Plus, the gameplay in the other Hyrule Warriors games wasn’t exactly...the best....

Look, I liked Hyrule Warriors, but I maintain that I only enjoyed it as much as I did because I got it as a gift and didn’t pay for it myself.

BUT THEN they released the demo and I was like “Oh, this is a Time Travel AU that’s going to be completely separate storywise AND they vastly improved the gameplay? HELL YES NOW I’M IN”

I haven’t watched any of the ads for AoC, but if Nintendo really did portray the game as a true prequel, that was really misleading of them. It’s not. It’s a Time Travel AU that’s probably an Everybody Lives AU as well (I’m not done with the game, but like. It’s pretty obvious what direction it’s going in)

WITH ALL THAT SAID, here are my thoughts:

This cannot be overstated: the gameplay is INFINITELY better. Combos don’t feel as clunky, I’m not getting lost in the maps, the addition of the Shekiah Slate adds some much needed variety, there has been minimal backtracking, and the additional challenge maps are actually fun instead of tedious. I don’t know if the fact that Temco had access to the BotW assets meant they put more time in the mechanics, but whatever they did differently this time fucking worked.

Costumes are much easier to obtain (I gave up getting everything in HW original, too much of a grind). Actually, part of the reason I haven’t finished the main story is because I do all the challenges in between chapters. I need my clothes and power-ups, man!

That’s another thing: challenges and upgrading weapons actually feels worthwhile, as does changing your weaponry.

And (so far) all the characters are fun to play! Daruk is my least favorite, but I don’t like slow-moving characters in general soooo. That’s my bias lol.

The OCs are more fun this time around. Egg is cute, the Yiga boyfriends are fun, and the villain is a classic mustache twirler. A significant improvement over Cia and Lana.

Cia was the WORST and her stalker castle was the WORST MAP IN THE GAME god she was so creepy

I’m so glad they kept Link’s characterization of 'Calm and solemn until a battle happens or someone dares him to do something stupid’

That scene where Zelda was going “He’s so far ahead of me :( I’m a failure :(” and Urbosa was like “Listen, he may have a kickass sword but he hasn’t changed a bit” as the camera pans to Link eating rocks on a dare while soldiers cheer him on was Art.

“He’s gonna be a himbo forever, Zelda, you really don’t need to compare yourself to him”

The moment where they implied the Egg has been around since Zelda was a child was weird? Hopefully it pays off somehow.

The fact you can beat up Revali the first time you meet him in the story shows the team knew exactly what they were doing when it came to fanservice

I’m also glad Revali didn’t have his assholery toned down at all. Let the bird be shitty forever, it’s great to have a true jerk hero in a Zelda game.

I do wish they would let you swap costumes for the other Champions. Urbosa’s Champion outfit is nice, but I like the one with the headdress better :(

We can swap the gallery artwork, why can’t I swap the costumes!! Boo hiss

Overall I’m having a good time, and it’s nice to have a game set in this world that’s more lighthearted. I totally get why some people don’t like AoC, but for me it’s a nice campy romp (so far, of course).

#age of calamity spoilers #aoc spoilers #legend of zelda #hyrule warriors

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polkscastle · 3 years

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That New Pokemon Direct, Though (My Thoughts)

Pokemon is now 25 years old!! With this momentous occasion, we have received a new Direct video about Pokemon's up-and-coming developments!! It came and went in a snap but, still gave us a look at a brilliant and shining future, while providing a taste of a legendary history. My Thoughts: ----- New Pokemon Snap: I don't believe I have ever talked the Pokemon Snap revamp on this site so, here we go. I've never played the original Pokemon Snap game so, I have no personal nostalgia for this spin-off. However, I am kind of excited for it. I think it could be a full little side adventure. No battles, no enemy teams, no big save-the-world journey; just looking for Pokemon doing fun Pokemon things and taking pictures of em. Sweet!! I may or may not actually buy it on release (I'm trying to be tighter with my budgeting). Still, I hope it turns out to be fun for a lot of people. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl: OoooooooooooooOOoooOO!! THIS IS IT!! We've finally got some Gen 4 love in here!! No joke, Generation 4 is my all time favorite era of Pokemon. Diamond was the first main game I ever played and was what really drove me into becoming a full on Pokemon fan. This maybe fueled by blind Nostalgia but, SWEET ARCEUS, I AM HYPED AS HELL!! That said though, I do feel I need to address some criticism/concerns I have as well: - I will count myself among those who expected GameFreak to give us the same game story of the originals delivered with the graphics/art style of the current generation, like with previous remakes. Color us surprised when we're shown gameplay footage and see the return of chibi-fied overworld characters and grid-based environments. Now this really isn't an issue for me. I don't need the end-all-be-all of video game visuals as long as the game can still function properly. Honestly, I kinda missed the little blocky little overworld people. They were cute. Still, it's bit weird that the main games of the two most recent generations have consistent full scale models and more organic environment layouts but, these remakes appear to be recreating the old games' style as closely and as strictly as possible. Why this is, maybe explained more by my next point. - Despite being co-directed by Masuda himself, the remakes are not being developed by GameFreak's staff but, by a partner company, ILCA. This has me concerned. Not that I think that they'll do poorly or change the games in any bad ways. They're already working off of a solid template. However, that is my concern. That since they're not the usual staff, they're going to be too cautious with changing anything from the original games. Whether out of reverence to Masuda and GameFreak or, out of fear of the nostalgia blinded fans, they'll stick strictly to adapting Diamond and Pearl exactly as they already were. I know that is kind of the point of remakes and remasters (giving old and new fans another chance to play the original) but, since I've already played the originals, I wouldn't mind some alterations. I like it when a remake can look at its older self, keep and enhance what was great about it, change or take out what doesn't hold up well anymore, add some new things for little spice, and ultimately give its consumers a fresh new take on a older property. Things like the Delta Episode (a new epilogue adventure building off the old main story) were my favorite parts of playing through Alpha Sapphire. So, I am hoping for something like that to appear in these games. However, this is just the announcement. I can't truly say that GameFreak/ILCA sticking so close to originals (if that is indeed what they're doing) is a pro or a con for these remakes until I play them. And yes, I will be playing these remakes because my love for Gen 4 is that strong!! One of my main boys isn't a Luxio for now reason!! Heck, I've even thought about streaming my playthrough of it!! Nah, never mind. No one would watch that. Still, I am a bit disappointed that I won't be able to explore a full-scale, open area Sinnoh region... ...unless... Legends Arceus: OH MY... okay, just listen. Within the back corners of my mind, this is the Pokemon game I always wanted. A Pokemon adventure taking place in a far earlier time in the world's history; SIGN ME UP!! Years ago when I tried coming with ideas for a fake Pokemon game, my biggest idea was an adventure that was half set in the past (time travel shenanigans. I blame Pokemon 4ever and its steampunk Pokeballs). So far, I love what I am seeing of the game. The old world versions of the Gen 4 protagonists look great and, I'm stoked to see an untamed version of Sinnoh. What's the story? How does Arceus come into play? Could the story possibly be about the older conflict between Dialga and Palkia? This actually gives me hope that Legends will continue on as a series with the other regions!! Possibly even one for Johto that depicts the story of the Legendary Beast Trio... ...please? No major criticisms or concerns so far, except maybe two. First is that, from what we were shown in the trailer, the game still needs polishing. The overworld Pokemon animations look a little janky to me. Second, and by far the most important thing, is HOW DARE YOU MAKE THE STARTERS THREE FAVORITES OF MINE!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE!!!???? ----- TLDR; I thoroughly enjoyed the new developments shown in this Direct but, I'd still like to keep up an attitude of cautious optimism for these new releases. They may not end up being perfect but, I'd like to keep hoping they'll still be enjoyable to play. Thank you for stopping by, Friends. Hope you're all staying safe and well. Have a wonderful day. ^w^ (*sigh* that was a long one. Thank Arceus, I no longer have to deal with all those nagging REMAKE GEN 4 comments ever again... ...they've already started screaming about Gen 5 now, haven't they?)

#pokemon #pokemon direct #pokemon brilliant diamond #pokemon shining pearl #new pokemon snap #pokemon legends arceus

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rayless-reblogs · 4 years

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the effect of The Caligula Effect

I just beat The Caligula Effect, a game I heard about years ago, but always understood to be a semi-bad Persona clone full of angsty-looking high school kids with superpowers. But I was eventually convinced to play The Caligula Effect: Overdose, an expanded rerelease that allows the gamer not only the opportunity to play alongside the Go-Home Club – a group of students who are searching for a way to escape the virtual utopia that entraps them – but also the chance to simultaneously join the Ostinato Musicians, another group of students who are determined to preserve the utopia and their idealized lives within it at all costs.

I'm a big fan of Persona, and this isn't the first clone I've played. Last year I tried out Falcom's Tokyo Xanadu. As far as I'm concerned, neither game approaches the quality of the latter three Personas, but in terms of visuals, gameplay, and story, Xanadu has Caligula pretty well beat.

I like Xanadu. But between the two, Caligula is the one I like more and care much more about.

Justifications below the cut. Also some extremely vague spoilers.

The Bad: The Caligula Effect has major shortcomings in many, many areas. For me, the battle system is clunky and bland (though if I raised the difficulty, I might find it more interesting). The character models are awkward. The environments are repetitive and the levels are too long. And as far as battles go, you are literally just fighting other students – no interesting monster designs anywhere. Those are a few points, but there are definitely more flaws that could be gone into.

But if you've followed me for a while, you know that the games that end up grabbing my attention aren't necessarily the most deserving. So here's what I like:

The 2D art is lovely. The characters have changeable portraits based on their emotions, as per Persona, but the menu features two full-length portraits for each character, Go-Home and Musicians alike. The elegant, silvery art style is gorgeous, and it's a shame it wasn't used more prominently and creatively, rather than the awkward 3D models. The main visual motif is flowers, and to that end each Go-Home member has unique (and highly symbolic) flowers associated with them. When they access their superpowers, each of them is shown with a stake driven through their heart, surrounded by their flowers – a striking and unusual effect. The desaturated colors in the characters' designs make their flowers stand out all the brighter.

And definitely check out each character's status screen because their portraits hint towards their true personalities.

Speaking of which –

Caligula mimics Persona's Social Link system (it doesn't use the term Social Link, but that's what I'll use here), allowing you to grow closer to your teammates on both sides of the ideological conflict. Not all of the Social Links are written equally well – some are more interesting than others – but a number of them are intertwined (even across both teams in the Overdose release) and become very engrossing as you try to figure out how events fit together. And who these people you're working alongside really are.

Like Persona, several of your teammates are motivated by personal trauma. As great as Persona 3 is, it can start to feel ludicrous how many of its characters have dead parents. (In fairness, their traumas aren't just that they have dead parents – but most of them have at least one dead parent and it gets old.) In Caligula, the traumas feel varied and more unexpected, touching on subjects I haven't often seen in JRPGs. For example, I guessed Mifue's trauma fairly early on, but was surprised at how seriously it was eventually depicted. I thought I figured out Ayana's quite quickly, only to have my theory pulled out from under me. Izuru's Social Link ended up shocking me at one point, then made me more thoughtful as I listened to him analyze himself. I've heard Kotono's arc wasn't universally liked in Japan, but I was really happy to see her specific backstory handled, even if it made her more complicated than a typical pretty girl in a high school game. And when it came to Shogo's, I immediately started to downplay the seriousness of his past – only to be proven quite wrong.

And it's not just the heavy stuff. Going through characters' Social Links (and talking to them on the game's texting feature) often changed how I felt about them. When I first met Suzuna, I was instantly fed up with her timid personality and thought I was going to hate her. She ended up being one of my favorites, the change not so much due to big story events but because of small details about her personality. I disliked Ayana and Naruko early on, but softened as I got to know them. This is especially noticeable with the Musicians. If you only encounter them as the Go-Home Club, they'll be rather flat, easily dismissed antagonists. Getting to know them on their own turf reveals characters who are often as fleshed out and interesting as the main cast. And again I was surprised at who I ended up really liking, like Sweet-P and Shonen-Doll.

Another, more subtle, thing I enjoyed – in different Persona games, a number of your teammates are very cool people. Eriko's mysterious and interested in the occult, Mitsuru's this unattainable school celebrity, Akihiko's a star boxer, Ann's a professional model, Yusuke's an artistic prodigy, Rise's a literal teen idol. There are certainly talented people among your teammates in The Caligula Effect, but for the most part, you're all nerds and losers. And that goes for the villains as well. Most of the characters aren't that socially impressive, either because of their personalities or they have very powerful reasons for turning away from the mainstream. And while many of them grow and change, they're not really wish-fulfillment characters.

One last thing I want to touch on – this virtual utopia our characters are struggling in is rather deceptive. Everyone within it takes on the role of a high schooler, but this doesn't always reflect who they are in reality, adding another layer of interest for me. Without going into specifics (because one of the most fun things for me was trying to figure out who people really were), a (vague) number of these characters are adults, not teenagers. And many of them are motivated by very adult concerns, such as dissatisfaction with their professions and questioning their positions in their adult lives. One of the main tensions of the game is whether it's better to direct yourself as an adult in the often-disappointing real world or whether it's better to remain a child free from responsibility in the virtual world. Despite all the game's high school trappings and tropes, I found myself wondering who the intended audience really was.

Caligula's main story is pretty flat and basic, much less sophisticated than the plots of the Personas or Tokyo Xanadu. But because of the characters and the multitude of B-Plots you go through with them, the game still has a compelling, and even adult, quality.

It's not a great game. I can't stress that enough. The first handful of hours are terrible. I think one reason I'm so into it is that I entered the game with very low expectations. But its characters have a lot to offer, and for me that ended up being the heart of the game. So I liked it.

#the caligula effect #lucid #suzuna kagura #(being the pictured characters)#meta #rayless reviews #i'm not going to do game reviews as a regular thing #but i had a lot of thoughts after beating this game #and may post a few more thoughts in the future #persona #tokyo xanadu #mine

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destiny-smasher · 5 years

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Off the Hook

(copied from my Twitter thread here) So, yea! @SplatoonNA 2 has ended its run of content! A solid two year run! At this point it's possible I've played it as much as I played the original game, maybe even a bit more. But compared to a lot of people I've known since it's release, I'm definitely more of a casual fan. It's a fun game oozing with aesthetic and has one of the most solid gameplay foundations I've ever seen -- EVERYTHING about the game's mechanics culminates into a multi-layered experience where single, co-op, AND versus are designed to facilitate fresh shooting gameplay. EVERY single second of playing Splatoon multiplayer entails making choices. The story/Octo exp. have so many great level designs. Multiplayer and its ranked modes require different strategies. Salmon Run is THE most hardcore co-op I've ever seen. It's such wonderful game design. With that being said, now that #FInalFest #Splatpocalypse is over and the 2nd #Splatfest cycle has come to a close, I want to talk a bit about the single most important aspect that has impacted my life regarding the game: #OfftheHook

Rewind back to when these two were first introduced: I was unconvinced that I would enjoy or care about them as much as the Squid Sisters (who are actually, like, cousins? I think? nvmd) But two years later and these two warm my heart in a way VERY few fictional duos do. What's most interesting to me about this is that while there IS a decent amount of in-game banter between the pair over the course of the past two years, they have SO MUCH less actual character development/narrative than other couples (they are a couple don't at me)

Honestly, a lot of my affection for them has grown from the way the in-game presentation leaves enough context for us to read inbetween the lines regarding how well they know each other, how much they care about each other, how much they respect each other despite competitions. Seeing their interactions both before and after the #FinalFest, brief as they were, really solidified how these two VERY opposite personalities have had a positive influence on each other, even if we haven't necessarily witnessed it firsthand. I think this is part of what makes them so valuable in the mainstream (?) media -- they are a power couple who is ALREADY happy, proud, living their best lives for and with one another. In the current climate of the world, that's inspiring to see, whether you're 15 or 33. We still don't know much on the details of their backstories but we definitely know that Marine comes from a very bad place and Hime comes from a very privileged one, and their relationship seems to have helped them both grow into better people. Everything about their designs, their personalities, their CONCEPT as a BAND and how they function/perform their roles within it, everything about them embraces that sort of "opposites attract" aesthetic and I am all about it. While Callie and Marie are cute and great and I like them, I ADORE Pearl and Marina, because they went the extra mile to not only flesh them out as characters but ensure everything about their presentations, personalities, etc. embraces that "opposites attract" concept. 'well cool that's great and inspiring but yea lots of things do this so whatevs' Yea, you're right, but lots of media do not do this while also basing their entire core visual, gameplay, audio design SPECIFICALLY AROUND two sides battling against each other. EVERYTHING about Splatoon is about ___ vs ___ From the hosts welcoming you when you boot up the game, to the different modes you play, to the way everything is presented, to the AUDIO stylings of Off the Hook, to the core concept of the Splatfests themselves. And at the end of the day, it is fucking NICE to see the end result of ALL OF THIS ___ vs ___ be embodied by two characters who represent that who LOVE EACH OTHER no matter what and who make each other better because of those differences and not despite them. Yea, the Squid Sisters did this but to such a simpler, more surface level degree. They were the beta. Off the Hook is the fully realized version of it. If you don't believe me just LISTEN to Squid Sister songs versus Off the Hook. LOOK at the character designs. Read the dialogue. The fact that Off the Hook has hosted actual real life concerts - IN THE REAL WORLD - isn't just some indication of "people be horny for pop idols" (I mean that IS a thing, separate discussion I ain't educated enough on to get into), it's because they KNOW they have a good thing

Splatoon isn't just for kids, it's also for adults who are nostalgic for the aesthetic of BEING a kid, and the fact that Hime (20) and Marine (18) are young adults -- INBETWEEN kids and adults -- cannot be a fucking mistake, either. Anyway, this is all to say, I am so impressed in a way I rarely am in that the Squid Research Lab was able to take the mechanical design philosophy of Splatoon 1 and EXPAND upon it, fucking OWN IT 100%, make sure that everything about Splatoon 2 embodied the concept. Green versus Pink, Pink versus Blue, Gold versus Silver, Ketchup versus Mayo, Chaos versus Order, we can have fun arguing over the most mundane preferences or the most basic, broad-sweeping aspects of existence, but at the end of the day we CAN be better for it. We CAN be made better, we CAN grow, not despite those differences but BECAUSE we hash them out, because we argue, make our cases, see the other side's passion, etc etc. It's my favorite message/theme any piece of media can discuss and Splatoon 2 causes such an emotional reaction from me because the CRAFT of it is so passionately detailed and embraces this theme in every. fucking. layer. of itself. So yea, #Pearlina is a goddessdamn inspiration to me that I will probably carry with me for a very long time, and Splatoon as a franchise is so fucking impressive for how young it is. I hope the years to come incite as much warm fuzzies as other long-time Nintendo series have. The fact that the final artwork we got shows the pair swapping the iconic components of their attire -- their headgear -- is just such a beautiful and fitting sendoff that wraps a lovely bow on the whole thing. As far as I'm concerned, they are now engaged, will happily wed.

#Pearlina #Off the Hook #Splatoon 2 #Final Fest #Pearl and Marina

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killscreencinema · 5 years

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Final Fantasy XV (PlayStation 4)

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A Final Fantasy for fans and first timers... is the first words we’re greeted by as we boot up Final Fantasy XV, ya know, the one with a hunky all male cast of four who look like a K-pop band.

Though, to be fair, as far as equality in sexual objectification is concerned, it doesn’t take long before absurdly scantily clad ladies show up in the game in the form of Cindy, a friendly auto mechanic, with a distinct Southern twang, and a penchant for prominently displaying her decolletage*; and Aranea Highwind, a Dragoon and, I can only assume from her outfit, S&M enthusiast.

*To elaborate on this point, Cindy has a tendency to move in very unnatural ways during conversation, such as bending or leaning forward, like she’s practicing her Maxim cover pose, which serves no other purpose than give the player a good look at her cleavage. While this is an unfortunately common trope in anime and video games, it bugs me... not because for SJW reasons, more because NOBODY MOVES LIKE THIS!

Anywhoozles, I guess my point is that before this game was released, it seemed like there was a lot of bitching about the main boy band cast, but let Cindy and Aranea serve as reminders that Final Fantasy XV is an anomaly in an industry that normally caters predominantly to straight males.

End of rant - on with the review!

Final Fantasy XV, released by Square Enix in 2016, starts off with the main character, Noctis, crown prince of the kingdom of Lucia, setting off on a road trip with his buddies... his entourage if you will... as one last hurrah before he gets married to the lovely Lunafreya. While gone, though, the capital city of Insomnia is attacked by the evil Niflheim Empire, the king is assassinated, and a power Crystal is stolen for an unknown, likely destructive, purpose. To retaliate against the Empire, Noctis and friends travel the countryside in search of the Royal Arms, powerful relics left by previous Lucian kings, as well as the blessings of the godlike Astrals in order to gain their assistance in the battle ahead.

Say what you will about the bro-ness of it all, the plot is nice and simple, with a fairly clear goal and memorable if somewhat archetypal characters. Noctis is the reluctant hero with a destiny; Ignis is the snoody intellectual; Gladio is the surly tough guy; and Prompto is the wisecracking lovable loser - the “Ducky” of the group, if I can borrow a reference to Pretty in Pink that only people may age will maybe get. We’ve seen these characters in hundreds of other stories, but darn it if these protagonists don’t have a charming dynamic with each other that makes bantering fun to listen to (although it gets repetitive as they’ll often repeat the same conversation loops throughout the game - I can’t tell how many times I’ve heard Prince Noctis suddenly whine that it’s too hot before Gladio curtly replies, “Then lose the jacket.”).

The only character I didn’t feel worked as well is the villain Ardyn. He looks douchey enough, with his MRA fedora and an outfit that looks like a Goodwill vomited on him, but I never felt like I had a clear understanding of his motives nor his connection to Noctis, until its the information is dumped at the climax of the game, and even then, I could barely hear what the hell anyone was saying because the music drowned out the dialogue. What I could glean of Ardyn’s motivation seemed kind of weak though. The moment you meet Ardyn, he seems like a harmless weirdo who wants to help, but everyone in the Noctis’ party is immediately wary of his intentions for no real reason except the video game knows he’s the villain. I feel like reveals such as this are more effective the closer the villain is personally to the protagonist. Had Ardyn been a trusted chancellor of Noctis’ father, and even a beloved mentor for the prince, masquerading as an ally and one of the few survivors of the Imperial attack, only to betray Noctis as a crucial moment (along the lines of what happens in Altissa that seals the deal as far as Ardyn’s role in the story goes), then I would have felt more investment in this conflict. Such as it is, I didn’t really give a shit and that’s kind of where the story slowly fell apart for me.

What I did enjoy all the way through was the gameplay. This entry of Final Fantasy dispenses with turn-based combat altogether, instead leaning hard into full-on real time fighting reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts. While it’s fast paced and fun, the Final Fantasy fanboy in me still misses the good ol’ fashion slap fight combat the series was built on. I certainly hope this style of fighting isn’t going to be what we get for the FF7 remake.

One of my favorite aspects of the combat is how summons work in the game. As you build alliances with Astrals, you can call on them during battles to assist you with a massive attack so powerful it leaves total devastation in the surrounding environment (which is a beautiful touch). However, you can summon them at will, as the option to summon them only pops up if you meet certain requirements during battle. For example, if Noctis’ HP is critical and the battle has been going on too long, you may or may not get the option to summon Ramuh (the wizardy lightening god). While it’s good that the player can’t use these summons whenever they want, as it would GREATLY Nerf the challenge level of the game (these attacks will often end any boss fight instantly), it’s also rather frustrating figuring out how to trigger the summon if only so you can see the cool animation. Thank goodness for YouTube, I guess!

I really dug the familiar modern aesthetics of our world mixed with a fantasy setting of Lucis. This is nothing new in the Final Fantasy series, as both Final Fantasy 7, and to a larger degree FF8, both effectively achieved this mix. Speaking of which, the overall throwback to earlier FF games are nice, such as the idea of an evil Empire equipped with magical technology that they use to dominate the world ala Final Fantasy VI (my personal favorite of the games btw). Seeing Magitek engines and troops with modern graphics almost makes me pine for a remake of Final Fantasy VI... though I worry such a thing might take the magic out the experience of playing the 16-bit game.

Anyway, while I liked the world of FF 15... I feel like we barely scrape the surface of it. Whereas in nearly every game in the series you are eventually able to travel the entire world at will, visiting every nook and cranny, with Final Fantasy XV, you’re limited to Noctis’ kingdom of Lucis, a watery Venice-like city called Altissa, and... that’s about it. It just feels very, very... small. Also there are invisible barriers, and in a post-BOTW world, this is unacceptable. Granted this game was probably already nearly complete by the time of Breath of the Wild’s release, nevertheless, games like Skyrim and the entire Elder Scrolls series existed and had little to no invisible barriers. So my point is this: invisible barriers are obsolete. If you consider you game “open world”, artificial barriers shouldn’t exist. I should be able to jump my Chocobo over a goddamn road barrier like I’m Evil fucking Kenieval, not suddenly have my leap impeded by nothing, forcing me to find a more inconvenient, circuitous route to my destination.

Anyway, once you begin getting used to the overworld, at some point during the story, the game thrusts you on “rails” and it’s good-bye open world, hello unwelcome Final Fantasy XIII style corridor gameplay. You can go back to the open world at any point, but that doesn’t make finishing the game any less of a tedious slog. The game’s momentum comes to a HUGE halt once Noctis is completely separated from his friends and is left wandering the bland, dark corridors of an Imperial lab for what feels like a goddamn eternity.

So I guess what I’m saying is Final Fantasy XV, an otherwise excellent game, really shits the bed at the climax, but is ultimately still worth checking out.

#final fantasy #final fantasy xv #final fantasy 15 #noctis #gladio #prompto #ignis #rpg #jrpg #role playing games #square enix #ps4 #playstation 4 #sony #video games

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pagerunner-j · 6 years

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Before I begin, the obligatory disclaimer: the following is a bit of a feelings dump, and it’s more personal than I meant to get, especially since I’d intended to avoid posting personal stuff here at all. When I say “please don’t reblog,” I mean “PLEASE LISTEN THIS TIME AND DON’T REBLOG.”

But there’s a lot I’m trying to process about last night’s story, the friction between narrative and game mechanics, and the emotional repercussions of this sort of scenario. It’s been a long build-up that all kind of came to a head for me last night. Ergo, this post.

To give proper context, though, I need to back up a bit to the first campaign and explain why Percy’s second death, brief as it may have been, was ultimately worse for me than the first.

—

2017 did not start well. One January day I got a call from my audibly ill father saying that both he and my mother were in the emergency room. She’d been admitted for congestive heart failure. He was diagnosed within the day with what turned out to be stage 4 colon cancer. He’d been avoiding appointments, ignoring symptoms, and putting off the inevitable, until the doctors went in only to find that the tumors had spread to the point that there was nothing they could do. I still have a clearer mental image than I’d like of my dad’s scars, along with bags and tubes hanging out because what was left of his system couldn’t do its job anymore. They stitched him back up as neatly as they could, but there was no fixing the real damage. It was done.

I didn’t have much room to breathe for quite a while. My life was pretty much consumed with trying to figure out how the hell to handle any of this. I did manage, for better or for worse, to keep carving out a little bit of time each week to watch Critical Role, because I needed something good to think about while everything else was falling apart.

Unfortunately for me, it took less than two weeks between the day all that began and the final battle with Raishan.

I was braced for possible bad outcomes, considering the severity of the fight, but what I wasn’t prepared for was for someone to get felled in a way that was basically mundane. Sure, it was a dragon that did it, so much of the situation was fantastical: an enormous mythical monster, and a swipe of larger-than-life claws. But what I had to deal with, because it was, of course, described in detail, was an evisceration. It was, to be blunt, my favorite character getting his guts ripped out. And because Pat had to go and up that ante, writer that he is, I found myself sitting numbly through a scene afterward of Kerrek beside Percy’s body, trying uselessly to put the ruined mess back together.

I still can’t think about that scene without feeling sick. I couldn’t even feel properly relieved when Percy got revived. I wanted to. Obviously I was glad that he was there for the rest of the campaign, because I wanted to see his story find a less abrupt end. I just didn’t feel any better about the idea that well, sure, he got a magic fix. It just kind of ended up spotlighting the futility of what I was staring down.

My dad died in May that year, on a Thursday night. I got home very late after hours of trying to deal with things, and found myself alone, overwhelmed and unsure what to do with myself. For lack of anything else better to do, I pulled up that night’s VOD. I couldn’t really focus on it; I kept drifting out and only sort of coming back to. I let the episode keep running for a while, though, at least wanting some friendly voices to listen to.

Then I realized what everyone was doing, and I looked at the timestamp, and I counted backwards. And I froze.

While the party was playacting at speaking with the dead, I was sitting in a hospice room listening to my father pleading with us to let him go.

I only got a few seconds further in before I stopped the video and turned away.

Despite the fact that I’ve watched almost everything Critical Role has ever done, I still have no idea how that episode ends.

—

After all this I went in for my own medical tests, since my own heretofore-handwaved-by-my-doctors health concerns suddenly seemed more pressing. It turns out, unsurprisingly, I inherited all the fun stuff. Fortunately, none of the growths were cancerous yet, because at least my unfortunate genetic legacy is something that, with proper screenings and care, it’s possible to stay ahead of. But I was told they’d need me to come in in another six months, and probably every year after that forever — or until something finally goes nuclear, whichever comes first.

Guess we’ll see.

My shorter term problems were enough to deal with on their own. The day after the test, I found out I was losing my health insurance. Two days later I found out I was losing my job. Everything since has basically been trying to patch things together from scraps. Sometimes things are sort of okay. Sometimes it’s a bottomless pit of uncertainty. Obviously, nothing in the wider world has exactly improved since, either. In sum total: fun times, especially considering I was already struggling with severe anxiety before all this began.

I wasn’t really sure how to emotionally process the ratcheting stakes in Critical Role at that point either. When you’re still watching the show because you need a breather from months of continual crisis, but your beloved characters are facing down things like, oh, a dread god and the very real possibility of everything going straight to hell, it’s…not exactly something you can turn to for relief, per se. I kept on going, because the bright spots were still so good, but I can’t exactly say I was enjoying myself for significant parts of the run, either. It was also where I started to feel a very real frustration with D&D and the inherent capriciousness that can creep in.

In short, I desperately, desperately did not want this battle to go wrong. I didn’t want to have to face a story that I’d become so invested in going completely south not because it necessarily made narrative sense, but because the dice (as they always have the opportunity to do) said “fuck you.” Yes, the feeling was probably more selfish on my part than anything else. But I still hope it’s understandable for emotional reasons, and it also got me thinking again about the entire logic of “that’s just how the game works,” and how far you can run with that before you finally trip and hurt yourself.

I’ve always had problems with a few common things in game design. One of them — usually less of a problem when we’re talking about high-level D&D, although it can still surprise you — is when things arbitrarily become harder in the game than they would be in real life. (Floor/jumping puzzles in video games where you can’t step diagonally For Reasons, I’m looking at you.) Another is any kind of gameplay mechanic that robs you of your turn or otherwise puts you out of play. Varying degrees of success or failure is one thing, but I could never understand what’s ever fun about being stopped from participating in the thing you’ve come to do. Still, one way or another, there are so many ways for that to happen. Failed dice rolls, getting stunned or disabled, outright death: there are so, so many ways.

And it’s one thing if that’s happening during the course of, say, an everyday board game, but it feels different if it starts changing the course of a full-blown story.

Part of this is the editor in me talking (who will have words with me about this post, I’m sure), because she has Opinions about it all. She always wants to keep the story on track, not go off on useless tangents, and not drop things without getting proper resolution. She’s big on structure and pacing, suspicious of too much chaos. She does not get along well with D&D. This isn’t to say that this forms the entirety of my opinion, mind; I can still appreciate the way the game works, and the fact that so many interesting and unexpected things can be born entirely because of the random element, improvisation, and decisions you have to make in the moment. But dropped threads, unfinished plots, interrupted ideas, the things that get lost, or the characters that do…those can end up haunting me.

Honestly, and this is probably always going to be a fundamental disconnect between me and any D&D game: I’ve discovered both through watching CR and playing the game a bit myself that I don’t really care about the game as much of anything except as a skeleton for storytelling. If it supports the narrative, if it gives structure, if it enables activities, if it provides opportunities for play, I’m all for it. If it yanks the rug out from under you just because, again, the dice decided to say “fuck you,” or the rules get weird, or there’s something else that just doesn’t mesh between player and scenario and/or DM, I have a harder time with it.

And it’s crushing when stories I care about collapse or turn sour because the game says so, and for reasons that feel almost cruelly arbitrary — particularly when I’m getting more than enough of that in real life.

So for CR, the ending of campaign 1 was an exercise in protracted anxiety. I was in a space where I needed something to work out, but even the entertainment I’d been turning to was becoming dangerously precarious. Wasn’t the best feeling.

In the end, luckily, it ended about as well as it could have: not without consequence, but without everything crashing down. I felt relieved, and satisfied, and glad we got a chance for resolution with the characters we’d been following for months. If anyone had to permadie, the character who was already bound to the goddess of death was not a shocker, and in many ways it’s the kindest choice; he got more resolution than any human being in the real world ever will. It barely even registered as a sad ending. I envied him, really.

I’ve watched far worse go down.

Meanwhlie, i was also thinking that even though it would be tough to say goodbye to these characters, it could also be a refreshing reset. We’d get new characters needing to find out who they are, what they want, what they’re good at, how to relate to each other, how to begin. Smaller stories, with not everything having to be about the END OF THE WORLD (again). Lower stakes. I was fine with the idea of lower stakes for a while, and less threat of impending death and pain.

Well. Like I said. It was an idea.

That brings me around to Molly, and to story decisions and gameplay decisions that both broke my heart seven ways from goddamn Sunday.

—

It took me a while to come at this part, because it took some time for the thought to crystallize that I wasn’t only reacting to the rolls of the dice in last night’s scenario. That was part of it, absolutely. Luck is a thing, strategies work or don’t, fate is capricious. I wish that several things had played out very differently, and I’m especially upset that the way things fell out, it stopped a story in its tracks that had barely even started. (I’ll come back to that.) So the start of the thought was still game vs. narrative, and it’s part of why I wrote that whole run-up you just read.

That said, the more I poked at it, the more I got upset that we were playing out a scenario like this at all.

I was thinking aloud about this in another post, but to preface it a bit better: There’s an entire meta level to three players being gone last night that everyone knew about. I understand the impulse to avoid metagaming, but it also creates some odd situations, like everyone trying (and failing, because — yep — the dice said “fuck you”) to investigate the area and find out why their friends were gone. So we had to start with a big, clunky process of the characters figuring out what the audience and the cast already knew: that Matt had written Jester, Fjord, and Yasha out by having them get kidnapped. The story is streamlined enough. The gameplay around it, not so much.

But here’s what I got hung up on once it all sunk in: why did this have to be the story in the first place?

I’m not thrilled with how a situation that arose in real life because of pretty much the prototypical joyous event (i.e. a new baby) and something that had been mundane on the show until now (Ashley being away) got turned into a brutal story about a triple kidnapping and trafficking, which promptly resulted in a death. And it says a lot about the underlying plot they’re dealing with, which is not something I’m sure I’m willing to ride with much further. I’ve been leery for a while – starting off with mutterings about an evil god only a few episodes in put me on edge from the start – and then there’s the political unrest and the religious conflicts and people disappearing…it’s all going somewhere really unpleasant really fast.

It’s also derailed a story I wanted, which hurts like hell.

We’d barely even gotten to know Molly. Molly had barely even gotten to know Molly. We got tantalizing hints, and plenty of suggestions that there was more to discover — probably an entire character arc’s worth of material. And then…this. My inner editor? Yeah, she’s screaming with frustration. In any traditionally structured narrative, this would not have happened, because even if a death was in the cards, ether it would have been timed differently so that you could get further down the road with him, or if the character was always meant to die early, any decent edit would have trimmed out most of the details that suggested at things that never got payoff. But it’s D&D, and so it’s the push-pull at work: game vs. story, plus a(n un)healthy dose of “unavoidable meta circumstances vs. the apparent need for A: drama and B: to barrel right ahead into a crisis even though there were other choices that could have been made in the light of said meta circumstances.” And…here we are.

Here we are, with a dead character who should not, let’s be honest, be dead, and a story left hanging, and far fewer obvious options for fixing it than we had at any such crisis point in the previous campaign, and lots of miserable, hurt people.

One of them being me.

—

There’s a reason this shit hurts. Personally speaking, it would hurt even if I didn’t have over a year’s worth of unfortunate circumstances making narrative swerves like this even harder to take. It hurts because the story and the characters are so engaging, because they’re worth the investment, and, yes, because when things go wrong, sometimes they’re for reasons that make me want to flip a goddamn table. And yes, maybe it’s silly to get worked up when they might — might — be able to do something about it. But we can’t count on it, and so yes. It hurts. It hurts to have a source of joy becoming something else, especially when there were so many other options. It hurts to watch favorite characters get hurt and killed, yet still be expected to write it all off as “that’s just how the game works!”, as if having emotions about it is a weakness and to be scorned.

Honestly, I found myself screaming “FUCK THE GAME” aloud last night (and probably upsetting the neighbors), which sums my feelings up succinctly enough that I should have started right there. :\

But…again, here we are, and here I am, struggling with feeling hurt and sad and exhausted with so many things veering toward pain again when I was hoping for something different, and writing big long word-vomits of posts about it.

Because D&D.

(Memo to Editor Brain: I’m tired, and I’m not going to give you another three hours to edit this post into something more manageable, so you will just have to cope. Not everything or everyone gets good endings anyway. Apparently.)

#cr talk #cr spoilers

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kylydian · 6 years

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Impressionism in Breath of the Wild

2017 was a year FULL of incredible soundtracks. The amount of experimentation that occurred in game music this year was off the charts. Believe me, we’re going to be touching on all of these games eventually as there’s simply too much good information to pass up. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is probably my soundtrack of last year, and truthfully, it’s why I decided to start this musical journey. Breath of the Wild does an insane amount of good for the video game world, but how does it do it? And what inspiration does it draw from to do this? Let’s talk about Impressionism to find out.

Let’s get a timeframe of this concept first. Impressionism falls at a unique place in music history, and can be viewed from a few different perspectives on the timeline. Many subscribe to the idea that it falls as an extension of the Romantic Era (Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler, Wagner etc) and took harmonic extremities of the time to a new level by doing (somewhat) away with common music theory practice in western music. Others view it as a kind of bridging the gap between modernism and classical music innovation of the 1900s. But it could also be viewed as the start of modernist movement, as the Impressionists were trying to break away from the shackles of the common man’s music. I like to think of it in this last way, even though the true answer is that it’s probably a combination. Regardless, there’s only two Impressionists in music history that we talk about: Ravel and Debussy. Going even further, I’d even say that Ravel blurred the line between Romantic and Impressionist.

Again, I want to state that Impressionists were trying to break the shackles of music history.

So, what is impressionism? The quickest explanation is that it’s painting pictures with music. Say that you want to paint a picture of a morning sunrise, what would it look like? Well, it would look like a morning sunrise. You’d be able to see it physically and say “Man, that’s a nice morning.”

This is what impressionists did with music. They would write music that would describe locations, people, or ideas through music alone. Using melody, harmony, rhythm and motifs they wrote music that was meant to describe something. By saying this, it makes it sound like all video game music is impressionistic, but it’s important to note that’s not accurate. Impressionism is more concerned with how the piece feels evocatively, rather than focusing on traditional music techniques. There’s a very particular feel that impressionism seeks at all times. It’s better to think of impressionist music asking ’Musically how does this feel?” rather than asking “How does this sound?”

So again, you’re probably a bit confused. Video game music exists to accompany gameplay, so of course you’re going to write music to the feeling of scenes, characters, locations etc. I would think of the separation in this context as impressionism describing experiences, while traditional video game music heightens experiences. Music in video games is meant primarily to heighten the experience for the player.

So. Zelda.

Zelda has a huge musical history of heightening player emotions through music. My god they have a practically non-stop touring orchestra that only plays Zelda music. The only other series I know that has this is Final Fantasy. Zelda music has been written to accompany every aspect of gameplay and story, and people will fight tooth and nail on what their favorite track, OST, or musical cue is from the game. From the huge sweeping orchestral scores, the beautiful melodies, and the implications behind them, it’s hard to argue against Zelda having some of the best video game music. I can talk about any Zelda soundtrack and tell you why it works from a traditional music standpoint, but in the end the answer just boils down to a few things.

· Memorable themes.

· Emotional connection to gameplay

· It’s simply good music.

So, what does Breath of the Wild do? It gets rid of a lot of themes, has silence for a lot of the soundtrack, and is considered by many to not be good music.

Damn.

So. Impressionism in Zelda.

Breath of the Wild reworked EVERYTHING about the Zelda series. You’re given all of your tools in the beginning, you’re told to go kill Ganon instantly if you’d like, or you’re told to go in a direction. But you don’t have to follow this. You have an enormous landscape to explore that sprawls forever. Gone is the world music, gone is the character music, gone is the Ocarina or other instruments. It’s just you and the wild. Visually, no longer do you see a mountain off in the distance and ignore it as background information. Instead you might think “Oh. I can go there if I want.” So, you go there in silence. You start climbing the mountain, encounter snow that quickly turns into a winter veil. And suddenly you realize that music has been playing for who knows how long. The music is far in the background, almost as far back as the mountain was when you first noticed it. There’s no singable melody, but it wouldn’t be called pure ambient music either. This music isn’t accompanying what you’re doing, where you are or who you’re with. It doesn’t do any of that. Rather, if the mountain had naturally occurring music, what would that music be?

It would be the music of a mountain.

This is Impressionism in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s music that you can’t sing, music that you might not notice, but music that describes your experience.

Impressionism describes, themes heighten.

This is the exact experience I had when the soundtrack really clicked for me. It’s music that entirely describes the Breath of the Wild experience. On a mountain, what would you hear in nature? Probably wind, snowstorms, footsteps, and animals among other things. As I mentioned in a previous post, sound can have musical qualities, but isn’t in and of itself music. Music can be written through sound design, but these occurring sounds wouldn’t be music. How would these sounds be translated into traditional music? I think the answer is through Impressionism. The music at this point in the game was answering the question “What would the naturally occurring music on this mountain be?” And much of the soundtrack is structured around these ideas! There are more traditional tracks in the game, but most of the environmental music is this way.

However, environmental music isn’t the only type of music that employs these techniques. A couple of the battle themes use similar ideas too. Take for instance the Guardian music. It starts off with a very skittish piano solo, and then brings in some more instruments at seemingly random intervals. It occasionally has a full sound, and features many syncopated rhythms. This is definitely battle music, but it doesn’t really feel like it accompanies battle. I’ve heard many people describe this music as frightening, and I think that’s very accurate! Guardians are something that you don’t really know a lot about, and even late in the game they can kill you extremely easily. Every time you encounter one of the large, quick ones, this frantic piano leads us into battle. And the piano sounds scared, mirroring what you’re probably feeling and doing as you try to distance yourself from the guardian to form a plan of attack. And throughout the track, it maintains a sense of fear, but the repeating piano starts to seem a bit braver as well and have staying power. The music appears to get more comfortable as you make it longer in a fight. Which is really neat, because the longer you make it against a guardian, the better you know how to fight them and the higher your chance of victory, meaning that even though the fear of death is still there, you know you’re capable at that point. The music reflects on this feeling. There’s some other stuff that happens in this music, but we’ll talk about that at a later date.

The music is battle music, but in no way is it traditional.

The harmonies and melodies used by impressionists were very unique too, and in listening to the music, the compositions reflect this. There’s long pauses between notes, harmonies move in parallel fifths or fourths at times, or there might only be a few notes. Scales used are often non-traditional and often have no resolution.

The Impressionism in Breath of the Wild has a strong impact on the overall game score. There are definitely other examples of impressionism in game music, but I think this is one of the best. I truly believe that a score like in the Zeldas of old simply wouldn’t work in this case. Location specific music wouldn’t make sense in most places, and an abundance of character themes would clutter the score. Even themes that represent feelings or emotions such as The Song of Healing, The Song of Time and The Song of Storms are absent. A few of these unique mainstay themes are used at different moments in the score, but overall they’re replaced with short ideas or musical cues to represent the same feeling.

I believe that Impressionism has a huge, and mostly unexplored place in the video game music world. Impressionist ideas shouldn’t be placed into every soundtrack, because the ideas won’t always fit. But in making games that feature exploration, or games that have a lot of ambiguity, I think Impressionism is an excellent technique to provide a bit more wonder and uncertainty to the world.

This might have been a lot of confusing information, especially for non-musicians, so here’s a short breakdown.

For Developers

· Game music often heightens the experience for the player, Impressionist game music describes player experience.

· Impressionism is a powerful form of music used to evoke emotions, ideas or pictures through sound.

· Impressionist music can be used for both specific and non-specific location music, but I find it to be most effective for non-specific locations.

· Impressionism is best served alongside a world that allows the music to accompany the world, and the world to accompany the music.

For Composers

· As with any genre of music, the best way to understand is to listen.

· Look for locations in the game and score that can describe rather than accompany.

· Impressionistic cues can be especially powerful, and often shouldn’t sound out of place next to a more standard soundtrack.

· Experiment with scales and harmonies outside of the common practice period.

It’s important for both developers and composers to remember that if the music sounds right, it probably is right. It’s hard to break molds of what we’ve already established, and that’s why we’re encountering a lot of backlash from much of the Zelda fanbase. What these people don’t understand is that if we had a score similar to Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild wouldn’t make sense. The gameplay, story, graphics and world design of Breath of the Wild are all very Impressionistic as well, so it only makes sense to have a soundtrack that partially follows in the steps of Debussy.

This isn’t to say that Impressionism is the only style used in Breath of the Wild. We’ll be revisiting this game very frequently to explore other musical styles, and we might even do some analysis of the music at some point to find out specifics of what makes the music great.

#Nintendo #The Legend of Zelda #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #Video Games #Video Game Music #Indie Music #Impressionism #Indie Game #Game Developer #Video Game Composer #Composer #Kylydian

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springawoken · 6 years

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No One is As They Seem- An Analysis of Undertale’s Ruins

It’s no secret that Undertale is one of the most popular games of the last decade. It’s touched hearts, touched lives, and made fans all over the world recontextualize their understanding of what it means to play a video game. As anyone who has played the game will tell you, the reasons for this can only be gleaned by actually playing the game, so go ahead and buy it on steam for $10 and make your life a little bit more meaningful. This post will only cover the first area of the game, the Ruins, so you’ll be able to understand it even without playing, but I still recommend you play the game before reading. This piece is, at its most basic, an analysis of this area and how Toby Fox uses all the (free) tools at his disposal to create atmosphere in his game. The very first thing that stood out to me about Undertale as soon as I booted it up was the cheery chiptune soundtrack. Though the first three notes of the melody are simple, an octave up followed by a fifth down, we already hear dissonance creeping into the accompaniment with dissonant harmonies. These first few moments were far too subtle for me to notice on my first trek through the game, but in retrospect I see that the connection between the broader themes of the game and the musical choices is too spot on to be a coincidence, namely that people are not always as they seem. The melody established in this first number, called the “Undertale” theme by most, is elaborated on and experimented with throughout the rest of the game, but its theme is most often used at safe zones, or anywhere that feels like home. The brief introduction introduces you to the War Between Monsters and Humans, and explains that your character has fallen down a mountain into the Monster World. After this, you are escorted to the menu, where you name your character and, after a slightly unsettling transition, begin the game. You gain control of your character and are greeted by pixel graphics and utter silence. Past a hallway, you encounter a door, and a happy looking flower named “Flowey the Flower.” Immediately, super chipper music kicks in to let you know “Don’t worry, this guy is super nice and cool!” The theme is set in a major key, high above where music usually is played, to emphasize this. The theme also directly references the F.U.N. song from Spongebob, as if to further drive this point home. All seems to be going well until… well, until Flowey tries to kill you. The happy music is replaced with silence and aggressive text scrolling noises as Flowey laughs at your imminent death. Just as all hope is lost, though, you’re saved by the anthropomorphic goat Toriel, and are greeted with the best theme in the game, Fallen Down. Before we continue, let’s analyze the quick 1-2 punch that’s pulled with the music and character development here. Gamers are used to music playing over just about everything in an RPG, so its absence through the first room of the game is noticeable, or at least was to me. The silence is uncomfortable, just as it would be if you were to fall down a hole and wind up in a dark scary place. A talking, smiling flower would be a welcome sight in such a situation, and the music reflects this. Flowey’s betrayal is a gut punch because we’ve been trained, as gamers, to believe that what we’re shown through character design and music is what it seems at face value. In this case, though, the cute flower is evil, and the mildly creepy Goat Mom is on your side. Flowey bucks many trends when he stops his happy theme dead in its tracks and tries to kill you. When Toriel appears to save the day, her theme at first might seem like a trap as well, meant to lull the player into a second twist, but the music tells us otherwise. Whereas Flowey’s theme is obnoxiously cheerful after a while, due to the high tessitura, “Fallen Down” is played in a soothing middle register, with much softer instrumentation and a triple meter. The song is reminiscent of a lullaby, with plenty of repetition at regular intervals to comfort the listener. It is also more fully realized than Flowey’s stark, heavily EQed melody and accompaniment. After this encounter, Toriel leads the protagonist through the beginning of the ruins, where we hear the second most important theme in the game, what I call the “World” theme and ostinato. This theme is repeated and expanded upon throughout every area of the game, with one exception, as detailed in Jason Yu’s Undertale Leitmotif analysis (linked below). When we first hear it, though, all we can tell is that it creates a good deal of mystery. The melody is seemingly always ascending higher and higher, creating an atmosphere of constant anticipation. It creates a great background to explore and solve puzzles against as you navigate your way through the ruins, both with and without Toriel. This is the atmosphere we have throughout the entire first area, with the exception of a few joke tunes (brushing over them for time), and the battle theme, which we’ll get to now. Undertale has a slightly different encounter system than most other Role Playing Games. The gist of it, to wildly simplify things, is that every encounter can be resolved either through combat or through peaceful means. The challenge comes not from the attacking, but from the defending, which takes place in a “Bullet Hell” like screen where your heart must avoid enemy projectiles. The battles are always intense, and the “Enemy Approaching” theme demonstrates this. The tune is brisk, with a good old accent on 2 and 4 from the powerful percussion. It creates a constant feeling of anticipation, keeping you on your toes, ready for anything. This tune, though, is only the generic enemy theme. Boss themes are where things get fun. Your first boss encounter, after plenty of fights with frogs and butterflies, is with a sad ghost named Napstablook. As we’ve covered, no one in Undertale needs to die, and Napstablook is one of the enemies that sold me on that concept. In fact, it’s so hard to even take damage in his fight that the first time I played, I felt bad even thinking about killing him. His personality is so lacking in self-esteem that one would have to be truly heartless to do anything but cheer him up. This was coupled with his theme, “Ghost Fight.” This theme is a jaunty swing number, accentuating the fun of his battle, with a fascinating reverb effect on the off beats. It truly sounds like you’re fighting a sad ghost. As Napstablook does progressively sillier things, one can’t help but smile. After beating Napstablook, the emotional core of the game begins. The player reaches Toriel’s house, at which point she gives him a home, a bed, and some Butterscotch-Cinnamon Pie. The music that plays over this sequence, fittingly, is called “Home,” and utilizes the Undertale theme liberally. It is a gentle guitar track, almost like a lullaby. When the player finally goes to bed, the instrumentation changes from guitar to a music box. This instrumentation choice in particular was what struck me most about this moment, and genuinely made me tear up. The gentle nature of the track contrasts sharply with the severity of the moment. It brought to mind what this poor child must be feeling, having been given solace in a foreign land so far away from home. When the player asks her to go home, Toriel becomes agitated and runs to the basement. The music cuts away as the player descends and Toriel expresses her fear and concern for the player’s safety. She decides to seal the Ruins off so that the child can never leave. The only choice is to fight her. Right? Cue “Heartache,” my personal favorite track in the game. The motif of 4 16th notes followed by an 8th is repeated later in the game at another pivotal moment, but for now all the player knows is that things just got crazy intense. Part of this intensity comes from the fact that this is the first track written in compound meter, which immediately ramps up the interest curve for this fight. This track also is the most complex of anything we’ve seen in the game thus, with a virtuosic quality to its rhythms and incredibly quick harmonic motion. The most fascinating part of the track for me is the pseudo-ostinato Toby creates with the low bass tone every beat, almost emulating a heartbeat. This motif carries through the entire song, being present even as the supporting harmonies fly up and down the staff. This song is EPIC, and really makes it seem like Toriel means business now. As has been the case this whole game, though, things are not always as they seem. This fight is a crash course in narrative through gameplay, so let’s talk quickly about something that Toby Fox does to completely mess with the player and make Toriel a fully fleshed out character at the same time. Every enemy up to this point in the game has allowed you to spare them by dropping their HP low enough, and then hitting the yellow “Spare” button. With Toriel, though this is impossible. When you get her to about ¼ hp, your next attack will kill her no matter what. ACTing, which has been the other way to spare enemies in this game, also does nothing to turn the Spare button yellow. As it turns out, the only way to make Toriel sparable is to choose the Spare action repeatedly, until she gives up out of love for the player. Everyone I’ve ever met who played the game blind, including myself, killed Toriel on their first run because we couldn’t think of anything else to do. The plot twist that most of us realized on our second playthroughs is that, despite the epic boss music, Toriel will not attack you if there is any chance of you dying. This is something that triple A game designers might take note of. In Undertale, characterization and gameplay are one and the same. As we can see just from the first area, Undertale is a game that makes no moves lightly. Every choice, be it in the graphics, music, or gameplay, is a conscious choice that adds to the world-building and character development. This aspect of the game is what is so endearing about it, because everything, especially the music, feels like it was made with love. Unlike Wagner’s operas, which use rather heavy handed methodologies to enforce the meanings of their leitmotifs, Undertale’s messages are simpler and subtler, leaving far more room for interpretation while being simultaneously more enjoyable to explore. Those who fail to see video games as a consummate art form need only look to this classic game to see all the ways in which games can express our human condition.

Leitmotifs in Undertale: http://jasonyu.me/undertale-part-1/

Full Soundtrack on Spotify and at the following link: https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/album/undertale-soundtrack

Purchase the game on Steam!

#undertale #music #wagner #leitmotif #analysis

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schraubd · 6 years

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David's Personal Top Ten Video Games

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It is a personal list, reflecting the games that have stuck with me the most over the years. I'm not enough of a gamer to claim it is anything comprehensive, and it has a strong bias to the sorts of genres that I like. Nonetheless, I'd stack these games against any that have been made in my lifetime. Anyway, without further adieu ....

Honorable Mentions:

Portal 2: How can a game with virtually no “dialogue” (if that means conversations between two characters) have some of the best spoken lines in all video game history? I have both the original and a capella versions of the Turret Opera on my iTunes (yes, I have “Still Alive” as well).

Railroad Tycoon II: A brilliant simulator that makes you actually feel like a turn-of-the-century robber baron (by far, the game is most fun to play when set in the late 19th century). If every man goes through his “trains!” phase, this was mine. As in real life, I am not good at playing the stock market.

Horizon: Zero Dawn: Robot dinosaurs! Incredibly, Horizon: Zero Dawn takes a core concept that sounds like word association from an over-caffeinated twelve-year boy and makes an entirely serious game about it—and it works. It works so well, in fact, that I loved it despite the fact that the plot and entire world-building background centers around my single greatest phobia (no, not that—being alive for the extinction of humanity).

10. Sid Meier’s Gettysburg: I find it odd that very few games have sought to replicate Gettysburg’s spin on an RTS—focusing combat around regiments rather than individual units and prioritizing morale over raw numbers. But the thing I like best about Gettysburg—and sadly it’s mostly unique too—is in how it concentrates on controlling territory (and terrain). Many RTS games, for me, might as well have a blank screen over 80% of the map between my base and my opponent’s base. You build up your force, and then try to swarm your opponent before he or she swarms you. But in Gettysburg, the goal of missions is not “wipe out your opposition”. It’s to capture and hold a ridge, or dig in and hold an exposed farmhouse.

My only critiques are that I want this game to be bigger. I want it to encompass dozens of map spanning the entirety of the Civil War. I want to be able memorize even more obscure Union and Confederate generals and wonder if they really were “mediocre” or if that was just a game balance decision. The random battle generator is okay, but this game screams for user-created expansions which I’ve never been able to find.

9. Crimson Skies: A pulpy fun flight simulator taking place in an alternate history 1930s where America has fractured and Zeppelin travel rules the day. The game doesn’t hesitate to lean into its concept (phrases like “broad” and “floozy” abound), and it does a great job world-building in a relatively short period of time. Somehow, I could meet an enemy “ace” for the first time in the middle of a mission and yet still feel like we had a history of epic dogfights together of which this was only the latest. Meanwhile, each of the locations the game takes you to (Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest, Hollywood, the Rocky Mountains, and New York City) are a blast and a half.

A sequel, High Road to Revenge, was released on Xbox and leaned a little too hard into the arcade-y elements (power-ups, automatic evasive maneuvers with the press of a button, and so on). But the original PC game was just right—planes flew exactly like how someone who knows nothing about planes thinks planes fly, which is just perfect. You felt like an ace pilot because of your skill (even though behind the hood the game is really holding your hand). Piloting a gyrocopter through half-built New York City skyscrapers, or a prototype single-engine through the Hollywood "O", is great. Doing it to evade local security, then doing a loop and turning both guns on them -- well, that's the cat's meow.

8. Mass Effect (Trilogy and Andromeda): As far as I’m concerned, the definitive space opera (even muscling out Halo). Fabulous voice acting (listening to Martin Sheen play evil Jed Bartlett is one of the great joys of my life) and memorable plot lines pair with a morality system that at least inches away from “basically decent person or utter asshole.” The universe feels genuinely alive, like there’s an ecosystem and civilization that you’re very much apart, but also moves in your absence.

I can’t really separate out the core trilogy games from one another (each sequel seemed to simultaneously step slightly forward and back), which is not I think an uncommon position. What may be more uncommon is that I think Andromeda stands right in there with the core series. Yes, it was disappointing that it took us to a brand new galaxy and only gave us two new species (while eliminating many of the more backgrounded Milky Way aliens). But I was much more disappointed that there will be no DLC or sequels to continue the story and tie up loose ends.

7. N and N++: There can’t be any serious controversy that N is the greatest Flash game ever made. While Flash demands simplicity, N is not so much simple as it is elegant. It is the perfect balance of speed and control, thoughtfulness and twitch-trigger reflexes, serene relaxation and butt-clenching tension. Once you master the floaty physics and the unique enemy styles, you will truly feel like a ninja—stripped to its core essence and deprived of all the usual but unnecessary bells and whistles. A virtually unlimited supply of levels guarantees you endless gameplay.

And so it is unsurprising that N was one of the rare flash games that made a successful jump to a full true game (in the form of N++), one that has a strong claim on being the greatest platformer ever made. The developers were wise not to disturb the basic formula: run, jump, and slide around a level, dodge obstacles and traps that will kill you instantly, reach the exit. Repeat ad infinitum. But N++ adds just a splash of additional flavors and spices into the mix. A perfect trip-trance soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly (and may single-handedly stave off keyboard-smashing frustration). A few new enemy types that deepen the game without ruining its austere grace. And perhaps most importantly, it adds a bunch of extra, semi-secret challenges (which can be used to unlock still more levels) waiting for the very best-of-best players.

Of all the games on this list, I might be in absolute terms “best” at N++ (there are a non-trivial number of levels in the game where I have a top 100 or even top 10 score on the global leaderboards). And yet there is not the slightest chance that I will ever perfect this game, or even come close to it. Nor is there any chance I will become permanently sick of it. A simple concept, executed brilliantly. The perfect N++ level is also the perfect description of the game.

6. Final Fantasy IX: The question was never whether a Final Fantasy game would make this list, only which one. I’ve long had a soft-spot for FFIX, which I feel is often overlooked inside the series (in part because even on release it seemed players were already looking ahead to the Playstation 2). Yet it’s hard to find fault in Final Fantasy IX as an emblem of a straight-forward JRPG. It has a moving story, fun gameplay, beautiful music, loads of quests to do and places to explore, a fabulous supporting cast (Vivi might be my favorite Final Fantasy character ever written), and a lead character you don’t want to punch (*cough* Final Fantasy X).

Final Fantasy IX is often described as “nostalgic”, and despite the fact that it was only the second game in the series I had ever played, I got that feeling instantly. Try listening to the soundtrack for “Frontier Village Dali” without feeling a little melancholic. You don’t even have to have played. But I recommend that you do.

For the record, my ranking of Final Fantasy games that I’ve played goes: IX, VII, XII, XV, X, XIII.

5. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood: One difficulty in judging games within a series is how to compare an earlier game which still had some rough edges but represented a quantum leap forward versus a later game which didn’t do anything super-novel but tweaked the formula to perfection. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Now, for me, this is an easy call for idiosyncratic reasons—I played AC:B before AC II, and so I experienced the former as both the perfected model and the quantum leap forward as compared to the original game. But I respect that for those who played the series in order, this is a harder call.

What should be easy for anyone is to agree that together, Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood represented the AC series reaching its full potential. Ezio continues to be the best protagonist the series has seen to date. Renaissance Italy likewise is the ideal setting for both AC’s vertical and horizontal platforming elements and its shadowy-conspiracy/secret-history plotline. As a franchise, Assassin’s Creed really launched the parkour/open-world exploration genre, and Brotherhood was the first game where every single element of what that genre could be came together. Other more recent games have been tons of fun (Black Flag and Syndicate are I think highlights), but these two games are the reason this series is so iconic.

4. Might and Magic VI: The same problem posed by AC2 versus Brotherhood emerges with Might and Magic VI and VII—except here, I did play them in order. Like the previous entry, I do think that VII ultimately improves upon the formula set out in Might and Magic VI. It’s more versatile, has more replay value, a touch more balanced (and that’s not getting into ArcoMage) … all in all, probably a better technical game.

But Might and Magic VI is for me iconic—it may well be the first RPG I’ve ever truly loved (and given the way this list is stacked in that direction, that’s saying a lot). Virtually all the things that characterize what I love in games today, it had in at least skeletal form. Open world exploration? Check: It was the first game where I felt like I was a true pathfinder—meticulously crawling over every corner of the map to find each obscure bandit’s cave and goblin fortress. To this day I still have the lay of the land in Enroth basically memorized. Overly detailed worldbuilding text to read? Absolutely: my obsessive-streak came out in reading every single artifact description, conversational option, and quest backgrounder (it is canon that Enroth, and the entire planet it resides upon, was blown up in a magical explosion—a fact I’m still resentful towards 3DO for long after it disappeared into bankruptcy). Slight genre-bending? The splash of Sci-Fi onto the fantasy setting was delightful to discover for someone who had never played any of the prior entries in the series. And some of the music—well, the White Cap theme is a thing of beauty, and on my computer “Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ” is still listed as “Church Dungeon Music.”

3. Heroes of Might and Magic III: If comparing earlier, more revolutionary games against newer more polished ones presents a problem in the Assassin’s Creed and Might and Magic series, it presents no trouble at all in Heroes of Might & Magic. That’s because the third installation in the series both represented a huge jump forward from what came before and is unquestionably the best entry in the overall sequence.

Sure, some of the expansions are a bit goofy, but they still work—sharpshooters and enchanters are massively overpowered, but they’re generally used in missions that would otherwise be impossible. But the main campaign is fabulous—a surprisingly intricate and interwoven plot that bridges Might and Magic VI and VII compliments outstanding strategy gameplay. And that doesn’t even get into the acre of standalone maps provided, plus countless more available on the web thanks to a map editor so intuitive, even I can use it (I’m terrible with map editors).

As a result of all of this, Heroes III is maybe the only game on this list that can compete with N++ regarding infinite replayability. This is fortunate, because—given the fact that Heroes III was a full-budget release and was not supposed to be “simple”—it ages incredibly well. Even the graphics hold up (no need for that remastered remake—which doesn’t even include the expansions!).

2. Witcher III: As you may have noticed, this list has a strong bias towards RPGs. My preference is toward “Western” RPGs (which have a go-anywhere/do-anything exploration mentality) compared to “Japanese” RPGs (which are more linear and story-driven), but Witcher III does an incredible job of synthesizing the best of both. It has a huge open world to explore, one that feels alive and dynamic—but there is also an incredibly rich story filled with deep, well-written characters (of which Geralt—the player character—is but one).

Gameplay-wise, Witcher III really hits the perfect balance. I simultaneously felt like the biggest bad-ass in the room, but also like a single slip in concentration or bit of overconfidence and my corpse would unceremoniously end up at the bottom of whatever cave I was in. But Witcher III particularly stands out in how it subverts certain common RPG tropes. You are a hero, but you’re not particularly well-liked. You’re a powerful warrior, but you’re still ultimately treated as a pawn in larger political machinations. Your interventions do not always save the day, and sometimes don’t even make things better. If a mission starts with a villager worrying that their beloved has gone missing, nine times out of ten that person has been devoured by a monster well before you ever get there. While many games claim to place the hero in difficult moral dilemmas, Witcher III is a rare case of following through (some games might give you the choice to let a trio of witches eat a group of kids whom you recently played hide-and-seek with, but few make it so that might actually be the more moral of the options in front of you). There’s even a quest where you help a knight rescue a lady in distress from a curse, then lecture him that he’s not entitled to her romantic attention as a reward (talk about a timely intervention in the video game genre!). Over and over again, the game reinforces the message that being really powerful and doing “the right thing” isn’t enough to fix a fundamentally broken system.

Most impressive is the emotional impact that Witcher III dishes out. Sometimes this is a result of rich character development that pays off over the course of the entire game (as in “The Last Wish” quest). But sometimes it shows up in even relatively minor sidequests—the epilogue of the “Black Pearl” quest was one of the more brutal emotional gut-punches I’ve experienced in a video game. Ultimately, this was a game where one always felt like each character was a person—they were imperfect, they had their own interests, hopes, dreams, strengths and foibles, and while you were a little better with a sword and gifted with some preternatural abilities, you were still only one player in a much bigger narrative. As a result, Witcher III might well be, in my estimation, the perfect RPG.

Oh, and Gwent is ludicrously addictive. Let’s not forget that.

1. TIE Fighter: I don’t think this list has a particularly “modern” bias. Still, there’s something impressive about the number one game on this list also being the oldest by some measure. TIE Fighter originally came out in 1994, and the definitive Collector’s Edition was released in 1995. It is, to this day, one of the best games ever made. And that’s not a retrospective assessment. Star Wars: Tie Fighter holds up even played right now.

For starters, it is one of the few elements of the Star Wars universe to get the Empire right. I’m not saying that the Empire is the real protagonist of the series. I am saying that they wouldn’t view themselves as evil—as much as naming spacecraft “Executor” and “Death Star” might suggest otherwise. TIE Fighter is quite self-assured in presenting you as being a force for law and order in the galaxy, battling not just seditious rebels but pirates, smugglers, and other anarchic forces that threaten to tear civilized life apart.

Let’s start with something often overlooked in TIE Fighter: the music. It’s probably the only context that the phrase “kick-ass MIDI soundtrack” makes sense. But that’s not even the half of it. The iMuse system dynamically and seamlessly arranges the musical cues to reflect what’s going on around you in the mission—you can literally follow important mission updates (e.g., a wingman being shot down, or reinforcements arriving) simply by the way the melody shifts. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anything quite like it since. To this day, the number that accompanies an incoming enemy capital ship fills me with exhilarated dread.

Gameplay-wise, TIE Fighter is almost shockingly rich. The core mission requirements are challenging, but by no means out of reach. But embedded in each level are a series of secondary and secret bonus objectives. These unlock a parallel plot of the Emperor’s Secret Order—but always present a brutal risk/reward calculus. That’s not unrelated to the fact that you’re often flying, well, TIE fighters (not noted for their durability)—but the challenge extends well beyond physical peril. TIE Fighter actually gives you an “invincibility” option if you want it, and yet even with it on some of the later missions and bonus objectives will strain every piloting skill you’ve ever developed.

Most importantly, the secret objectives usually are more involved than “blow up everything in sight.” They reward initiative and exploration. Maybe your primary mission objective is to destroy a rebel space station. But just before it goes down, you spot an escape shuttle fleeing the station. Take it out? Maybe—but maybe the occupants are VIPs best taken alive. So you switch to ion cannons and disable it for capture. Yet that extra time you just spent has given the rebels enough breathing room to summon reinforcements—now an enemy cruiser is bearing down on you. Take out its missile launchers and clear path for bombers while praying that your own Star Destroyer will arrive soon to back you up. All on the fly. All while dogfighting starfighters, dodging mines, giving your wingmen orders … it’s insanely, beautifully chaotic.

Did I mention this is all happening in 1995? 90% of games released today don’t have that kind of depth or spontaneity. In terms of playability, replayability, and just plain fun, TIE Fighter stands alone, and unchallenged.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2HbDTEl

#games #lists

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gushingaboutgames · 7 years

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Sega Dreamcast

I hated middle school. There’s a whole swath of memories I’d rather do without as far as the years 1999 through 2002 are concerned. There is, however, one memory I hold near and dear to my heart during this time frame. After reading about it in magazines and being really excited for it, my mother took me to Toys’R’Us one evening to get me a Sega Dreamcast. We brought that puppy home with a copy of Sonic Adventure, hooked it up, fired it up, and took it all in. As the opening cinematic played on my TV, Mum said “It’s like playing a movie!”

Boy, if we only knew what games would go on to look like now.

The Dreamcast was, and to this day remains, my all time favorite console. It’s the swan song of a company that was perhaps a bit too ambitious for its own good, a marvel of gaming technology many years ahead of its time, and home to some of the best and most unique games to ever come out.

At the time of its release, the Dreamcast was the most graphically powerful console on the market. Sony’s Playstation boasted 32-bit graphics, and the Nintendo 64 had double that, at -wait for it- 64 bits. Dreamcast had double of that: 128 bits of beautiful graphics, thanks to the GD-ROM, a proprietary disc format born from squeezing every bit of memory out of a regular old CD as was physically possible, before DVDs and Blu-Ray became as ubiquitous as they are today.

Even the method of memory storage was unlike its competitors; the standard memory card for the Dreamcast was the Visual Memory Unit (VMU), a cross between a memory card and a Gameboy that let you manage data and download minigames to extend the functionality of many games. The only other thing like it that I can think of being made is Sony’s Pocketstation, and that never saw the light of day outside of Japan. You would not believe the number of button-cell batteries I burned through caring for Chao on the go.

Of course, all of the fancy tech and cool gadgets wouldn’t amount to much if the games on offer weren’t fun at all. Tiger’s Game.Com bragged of being a versatily console and handheld device, but the games for it all stank like a fragrant dog poop laying on the sidewalk on a hot Floridian summer day. Thankfully, fun games were something the Dreamcast had no shortage of, even in the brief few years that it was on the market, a slew of which I’d like to bring attention to.

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2

Maybe they haven’t aged as well as I’d like to think, but DAYUM if these weren’t some fun games back in the day. Sonic has always struggled with 3D, but the first attempts at true 3D Sonic games remain quite novel. The first Sonic Adventure had different play styles for each character, some of which were great (Sonic and Gamma, for me at least), others...not so much (the less said about Big, the better), in addition to, for its time, an intricate plot with each character’s story intertwining and playing out differently depending on which character you’re playing as.

Sonic Adventure 2, meanwhile, streamlined the gameplay and improved upon some of the first game’s flaws, cutting out the non-platforming related stages (aside from the treasure hunting stages, which are a touch better than in the first game). It’s story was also very compelling, being one of the darkest storylines in the entire series; government conspiracies, weapons of mass destruction, fucking murder! Maybe that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think we can all agree that SA2 handled “dark and gritty” a lot better than Shadow the Hedgehog’s stand-alone game.

Both games also featured a mini-game that could prove to be just as addicting, if not more so, than the games proper: Chao Gardens. Chao were little, adorable water monsters that players could raise like virtual pets, their popularity likely owed in part to the ubiquity of other virtual pets like Tamagotchi near the end of the millennium, as well as how easy-going and casual raising a Chao was compared to a Digi-Pet that would not wait for you to clean its shit up: you can enter and leave Chao Gardens freely, and you wouldn’t have to worry of your Chao dying of neglect in your absence. There’s also very deep mechanics at work for raising Chao, with their growth and evolution depending heavily on how well you raise them, what animals you give them, and what fruits you feed them, all so you can have them participate in races. The aforementioned VMU also expanded Chao functionality considerably, letting you raise them anywhere you wanted.

Shenmue

My relationship with Shenmue, these days, is very much that of a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, Shenmue popularized two aspects of gaming today that I loathe; Quick-Time Events, and over-blown game budgets (this game would’ve had to be bought by every DC owner TWICE before it could break even). On the other hand, there’s no denying that this game was a labor of love by Yu Suzuki. The attention to detail in Ryo Hazuki’s hometown of Yokosuka is staggering. Everything you can imagine can be interacted with, down to the last dresser drawer in Ryo’s house. Every resident of Yokosuka was unique from the others and had their own behaviors that they would go through, unlike every other NPC in the town, or other games for that matter. The story may be a tad formulaic, and most of the voice work left something to be desired, but the world of Shenmue was one that was very fun to explore.

Plus, this game introduced me to Space Harrier. If that’s not a good thing, you tell me what is.

Jet Set Radio

I had to convince my mother this game wouldn’t turn me into a graffiti-painting delinquent. It was a hard sell, but it paid off, and boy am I glad it did.

Jet Set Radio is very much unlike other games, then and today even. This was the game that helped to popularize cel-shaded graphics; the thick black outlines around the character models made this game look like an anime come to life, and eventually paved the way for the wicked-awesome graphics we see today from Arc System Works with Guilty Gear XRD and Dragonball FighterZ. The idea of playing a roller-blading hooligan throwing tags around the city and evading the police was also unique, and kept players on their toes as techno music accompanies their shenanigans. The game was a bit on the short side, but was challenging and fun enough that multiple playthroughs were warranted.

Making my own graffiti tags was also quite the timesink.

Phantasy Star Online

I may be a late bloomer to the Phantasy Star series, but it has become one very dear to me for helping me meet some of my closest friends (Hi, Tara!).

Phantasy Star was a series of JRPGs by Sega meant to compete with other big franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The original PSO, on the other hand, is an online multiplayer dungeon crawler that would change the course of the series from that point forward. As interstellar colonists investigating mysterious phenomena on an alien planet, players would delve into unique locals with characters they would create themselves to slay monsters, collect valuable items, and unravel the mysteries of the planet Ragol.

The original PSO is also very notable for its attempt to break the language barrier with a unique conversation system. While good ol’ fashioned keyboards remained in vogue, players also had the option of constructing sentences to transmit to other players in the area or party in those players’ native languages. Using this system, you could send a message saying “Help! This dragon is too powerful!”, and your friend in Japan would read it as “助けて！この龍は強すぎる！” It may not have seen much use, since players are more likely to congregate and play with those that can speak a common language fluently, but it was very kind of Sega to provide the option.

One thing that gets me straight in the feels is something from the original beta trailer for this game: “The world of Phantasy Star Online lasts for an eternity!” It is not uncommon for trailers and developers to hype games up with hyperbole (just ask Peter Molyneaux), but this is a statement that has held true for PSO! Even after the last official server for the last iteration of PSO shut down in 2008, private servers continue to run the game to this day, ensuring that the world of PSO truly remains eternal. Even with a proper sequel Phantasy Star Online 2 proving to be a pop culture staple in Japan, the original PSO remains one of the most beloved and enduring MMOs in history.

Skies of Arcadia

I’ve got friends who would skin my hide and leave me to hang like the Predator if I didn’t mention this.

Just about every console since the NES has a JRPG, and the Dreamcast is no exception. While Phantasy Star shifted towards MMO territory, those hoping for a sweeping single-player adventure still had Skies of Arcadia. As the daring sky pirate Vyse and his motley crew of adventurers, players fought to stop an evil empire from awakening an ancient evil while flying across a world of floating continents in a kickass airship. This game is among the most challenging JRPGs in the genre; a clever mind and strategic acumen are needed to survive battles with other pirates, monsters, and rival airships. The world of the game is also incredibly beautiful; I personally think it has much in common with Castle in the Sky, my favorite Hayao Miyazaki film. The soundtrack compliments the game incredibly, and is a joy to listen to by itself.

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There are plenty of other games that made the Dreamcast incredible, but this article is long enough as it is, so I’ll have to give those games their proper due later. Suffice to say, though, the Dreamcast is a historical console that remains one of the most beloved in the history of the medium, not only by myself, but by hundreds of thousands of gamers the world over. It may have only been on the market for a few years, but it is said that the brightest stars are the ones that burn out the quickest.

And make no mistake, the Dreamcast is one of the brightest stars there ever was.

#dreamcast #sega #sonic #phantasy star online #skies of arcadia #shenmue #jet set radio #9/9/99

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