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spinningbuster98 · 7 months

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The Omega nest is a genuinely creepy area: it's noticeably darker than others and has a legitimately creepy theme that doesn't exclusively consist of just beeps. The absence of many enemies here, which may emphasize the fact that this is the territory of the planet's apex predator (and a detail which Samus Returns completely missed, among other things), truly drives home the point of this being a dangerous place

I just hope you know that Omega Metroids have a weak spot on their backs so as to save missiles otherwise you'll either have to furiously grind for them or backtrack aaaaaall the way back for a Missile Recharge. Cute

The final Metroid Nest is genuine horror material: really creepy music, not a soul in sight except for the Metroids, that fucking scene where you see that Metroid Egg and then suddenly the Metroid Counter jumps up with that unsettling jingle playing, it's all fucking fantastic stuff Then there's the fact that most of this place is artificial. Is it a lab? The Queen, the oldest member of the species and the only one capable of reproduction, is in a lab? Is it just a coincidence? Are the Metroids an artificially created species? Are they connected to whatever civilization keeps making those Bird Statues?. Metroid as a series is often praised for its environmental storytelling and Metroid II is where it truly starts

The Queen herself is another shit fight, a battle of attrition where you'll hope to kill her before she kills you. The secret of rolling into her mouth to lay bombs in her stomach helps a lot but you're not gonna know about this on your first playthrough!

Then we see the Baby hatch and everything about the ascent on the planet's surface, with that peaceful music and the stars in the sky is really memorable and beautiful. Of course as we all know Samus Returns dropped the ball big time here (though not with the actual hatching of the Baby, that was done justice and is in fact the best version of that event across both remakes and the original), while AM2R gives us a beautiful night sky to contrast how it was daytime back at the start of the game to truly indicate how long Samus' mission has taken. This is where Samus officially becomes a character: before this she was just little more than another player avatar, much like Link. Here however she's making her first indipendent choice that goes against what the game up until this point had been about

So I guess there's one last thing to discuss, one bit of discourse which I no longer see people bring up thankfully but one that has always grinded my gears: is Metroid II a commentary about genocide of sorts?

I mean...it technically is a game about genocide in the sense that the goal is to kill every Metroid on the planet

But is it an actual THEME? Does the game comment on it in any way?

Many people seem to think so, saying that the game is one big commentary on how what Samus is doing is essentially evil and her sparing the baby at the end is her realising that.

I've seen people claim that Samus Returns, by making the Metroid battles cooler from a visual standpoint through stuff like the Melee Counter spits in the face of this theme by making the act of killing the Metroids fun, thus "romanticizing genocide"

No really

That's a take I used to see floating around on Youtube and the Subreddit back when the game was new

Let's put it like this guys:

does any other game in the franchise act like what Samus did in this game was bad or evil or problematic or whatever?

Because I've seen people act under the impression that only starting with Other M did the series start treating the extermination of the Metroids as a good thing

It has always been treated as a good thing by the games at best, as a neutral thing at worst

Does Samus show any sign of regret about what she did when she recounts this game's events in Super's prologue? No

Does the game try to paint the cloned Metroids in Tourian, or the Mochtroids in Maridia, who are literal failed experiments living what is essentially a miserable life having being dumped there by the Pirates for being failures, in a sympathetic light? No you kill them all just like any other enemy, you're even forced to in Tourian, and the game only focuses on the Baby because that's the one Samus cares about

Does Samus show any regret for her actions in Fusion during any of her monologues? No. Sure that game's events are set into motion due to her actions in Metroid II, but if we're gonna use the argument of "If Samus hadn't killed all the Metroids, thus screwing up SR388's ecosystem, then the X would never have returned" then we should also take into consideration that, had the Metroids never been exterminated, then the plethora of parties trying to use them for their evil ends (which includes a segment of the Federation) would have had even MORE legs to stand on, so the argument of practicality is of no use here I'd say.

Moreover Samus sure as shit doesn't cry for all those poor little cloned baby Metroids that are blown up when the BSL's secret lab self destructs: that's technically another genocide happening, yet all Samus and the general plot focus on is how fucked it was of the Federation to bring back the Metroids

Do the Prime games ever try to paint the Metroids in any sympathetic light in any of their scans and whatnot? Not to my knowledge, you blow them up with no second thought

Now I'm not saying that the series "encourages genocide" or whatever, or that one can't make theories about this or that

But just because a media has an element that would logically be considered questionable, especially in a realistic context, that doesn't always mean that it takes a specific stand on it

Sonic the Hedgehog features a bunch of teenagers and kids fighting against an evil scientist who has no qualms about using lethal force, and this is often shown in very lightearhed, fun ways, with the characters often throwing jokes around and laughing

Does this mean that Sonic "encourages child endangerment" or whatever? Same deal with Mega Man who is a literal robot child going all alone against a mad scientist, killing other robots such as himself, which for all intents and purposes should be traumatizing in several ways yet it's never brought up

I know that saying "it's not that deep" is often arrogantly used to stop interesting discussions...but in this case it truly is not that deep

It's not that the aforementioned series encourage child endangerment or whatever, they're highly fictionalised! It's not to be taken literally

Similarily the Metroids are not an actual animal species, at most they borrow some general elements from insects like ants or bees, but they are 100% made up, so if the games don't put any real emphasis on the fact that killing them all should by all means be very questionable (because it should) and actually kinda says that it was for the best sometimes, then it's not that the games are saying "yeah killing whole animal species is cool bro!", it's simply not to be taken too literally.

Besides Metroid on the whole is not a particularily complicated series.

No I am NOT saying that "lol it's just a bunch of pixels with no story", or that there can't be hidden depths in the narratives (there are), I'm saying that, as with all Nintendo series, the plots are generally rather simple and "in your face", usually standing out for the ways in which they are told rather than the actual texts

The Prime games have great worldbuilding and the scan logs bring a whole lot of depth, but the actual stories are really, really simple good VS evil affairs. Metroid is a simple series, it never deals with complex ethical or philosophical questions such as "is it right to kill an entire alien species just because there are evil beings out there who wanna use them for their own gains? What fault do the Metroids have in all of this?"

Would it be interesting to have a game that tackled with these issues? Maybe, though I'd have my reservations

And honsetly do you really think that a 1991 Nintendo game for the Gameboy would actually try to tackle such an ethical quandry? Really?

As I said earlier: not even Super followed this idea and that's the direct sequel!

And let's not say "Yeah but Super was directed by Sakamoto, who didn't work on Metroid II plus he's a hack"

Super Metroid's producer was Makoto Kanoh

Kanoh was the scenario writer for the original Metroid and a designer for Metroid II

He was basically Sakamoto's boss during Super's development and had worked on Metroid II. Plus Super was also supervised (to my knowledge) by Yokoi. You'd think that if it truly mattered to Metroid II's story that Samus' actions in that game be framed as truly harmful and problematic then at least one of them would've insisted about having Super follow up on that in some way

So if you're gonna criticise some games for not putting the events of Metroid II under a really negative light then do it with EVERY game after this one, not just with Samus, Returns or Dread or even Othe M (as much as it pains me to defend the latter)

Or y'know, don't take it too seriously :/

#metroid #metroid ii #my gameplay #Youtube

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bogunicorn · 9 months

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Speculation about Astarion from where I am right now (which is maybe a couple hours into Act 2, as a good-aligned custom PC who's slept with him a couple of times). Please don't spoil anything for me if I'm right or wrong! I want to be surprised, I just have Thoughts at this juncture.

So, Tav is flirting with everyone, she's in a "fling" with Lae'zel, but she actually slept with Astarion after the Grove and fucked him again later. And he's, like, he's friendly with her. Their relationship isn't AMAZING, but it's fair, he's generally willing to go along with her.

But he started doing this... thing. He's overly complimentary and sappy. And when she was like "you're fucking with me", it was like he switched tactics on her, but after he outright admitted that he was feeding her pickup lines that worked on Cazador's victims, his dramatic flirting whenever she talks to him definitely feels different. He also keeps trying to talk her into entertaining the idea of taking over the Absolute's cult, trying to play on her desires to be a good person who does good things to convince her (poorly) that having her own thrall army is the best way to do that.

It all sounds incredibly fake. It's giving, like, Sexy Evil Advisor. Which is a cool angle for him, and I like it, but it's definitely driving Tav away from him, because now she's thinking... well, did you sleep with me because you like me, or because you're messing with me? Are any of the nice things you've said real? Are you flirting because you're enjoying my presence or because you're trying to soften me up so I'll go along with your shit?

I'm honestly wondering if Tav really is the first sentient person he's ever fed on, or if he told her as much because looking needy and sad will play on her sympathies. I do genuinely think that Cazador is evil as fuck and that Astarion obviously longs for freedom, I don't think he's lying about any of that. And I'm sure he did make Astarion eat rats or whatnot. But Astarion's strength is his ability to manipulate how people see him, I think, and to make himself seem like an asset to the most powerful person in the room.

I also wonder if this storyline, at some point, will result in Astarion getting Tav&Co to take out powerful parts of the cult's leadership and then trying to snatch power for himself. I'd love to see a good Astarion betrayal.

And I do really really want to do an evil playthrough with someone who happily goes along with his ideas.

I also wonder if he goes this hard on the evil advisor schtick if you don't sleep with him or let him feed on you. Like, does he see that wholehearted attempt at intimacy as a foot in the door (if you're otherwise a goody-goody)?

We shall seeeeeeeee

#bog post #bog plays bg3 #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #astarion #i've already made a couple of evil PCs just for fun #one is a magic user #the other is a ranger #maybe when i'm done with tav i'll play one of them and see

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paxesoterica · 4 months

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More on SRW 30 (some light spoilers).

The combining robots resolved their existential crisis, and the party gained their service along with a giant robot ninja (who sometimes transforms into a wolf), but it was a somber occasion due to the need to fight one of their former comrades.

Since then, the party (which I stuck with the default name of 'Dreikreuz', but in retrospect probably should have renamed 'LGBTQ Community', and I'll probably do just that on a 2nd playthrough) has investigated several timespace rifts and recruited a handful of characters from previous Super Robots Wars games, many of whom have their giant robots use Taoist magic for their special attacks (as one does). Mikazuki from Iron-Blooded Orphans and Ultraman from...Ultraman were also briefly spotted but then vanished.

Having filled out the party's ranks, I proceeded to Gibraltar so the party can start doing space missions and hopefully recruit some Gundam characters. The boss there seemed dangerous, but for all his braggadocio, he turned out to be a coughing baby when pitted against the party's hydrogen bomb of spirit commands that raise accuracy & evasion, support attacks, swanky new attacks for the main mecha and ship, and the occasional tactical retreat to bait him into closing the distance.

Also, I might be misinterpreting things, but I keep seeing hints that our ship captain, who has vowed to achieve world peace by unifying Earth and fighting anybody who's against that, *might* be secretly a little evil, which, I hope not, but I guess we'll beam saber that bridge when we come across it (no spoilers on what her actual deal is, please).

So, good times.

On a more serious note, I am sympathetic to folks who wish the game had just a teensy bit more structure. Like, having a choice between a couple of missions in the beginning, and then moving on to the next set once finished is one thing, but after the captain, Mitsuda, rallies the troops with her talk of uniting Earth, a whole bunch of missions open up, and you're not really given any guidance on what to do, except for the numbers denoting enemy strength in a given mission.

I think the game would have benefitted from a mandatory non-combat mission at this point, one which debriefed the player on actual strategy, like noting that there currently seem to be six major obstacles to uniting the world peacefully that must be resolved:

The resurrection of the Kikaiju Army and their new, unknown master

The suspected role of Excellent Inc. in the wave of robot crimes

The ongoing conflict with space revolutionaries like Neo Zeon and Zanscare

The emergence of kaiju and other inexplicable phenomena seemingly centered on the city of Tsutsujidai

Hostile extraterrestrials like the Wulgaru

And the increasing appearance of holes in spacetime that deposit new weapons in the world

Laying it out like that, I think, would have been beneficial for players who might otherwise be overwhelmed by all the choices before them (like, for example, prior to actually initiating missions involving the spacetime stuff, you're not really given any incentive to do them, unless say, you were already aware due to meta reasons that they're a good way to recruit more mecha pilots).

Other than that nitpick though, I am enjoying myself.

#text #videogames #mecha #super robot wars 30 #srw

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borisbubbles · 3 years

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Character analysis: Vivienne de Fer (Dragon Age Inquisition)

So, if you’ve wondered where I popped off to the past two months or so, I’m going to give you an answer - I finally bought Dragon Age Inquisition (legit on my gaming wishlist since its 2014 release) and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.

The main draw to this game however, isn’t so much the gameplay (if you want a game that feels similar but has better gameplay - Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is what you’d want instead), but the storytelling and particularly the character development are top notch. All nine companions are fascinating and fleshed out in such a realistic manner I’m still gasping in awe on my fifth playthrough. Thus, a post on it is in order. It’s a bit different from my usual content, but don’t let that discourage you - clearing my head from Dragon Age will allow me to let Eurovision back in and continue my unfinished 2020 ranking. In this post, I will be analyzing one of DAI’s most interesting characters - none other than Madame de Fer herself, Vivienne. Now, I’m under the impression that this is a rather unpopular opinion but I absolutely love Vivienne. And no, I won’t apologize for it. As a Templar-thumping elitist with a icy, sardonic demeanor the sheer ‘Idea Of A Vivienne’ is meant to make your head spin. Dragon Age has always been a franchise in which mages are a socially surpressed group and to be confronted with a socially confident enchantress who likes Templars and seemingly supports the social shunning out of her own ambition is the walking embodiment of flippancy.

and yet, I feel a lot of sympathy for Vivienne.

Yes, she’s a bitch. She knows she’s one and she’s a-ok with it. I won’t argue with that. Sadly, the “Vivienne is a bitch” rhetoric also drastically sells her short. Vivienne is highly complex and her real personality is as tragic as it is twisted.

Madame de Fer

So let’s start with what we are shown on the surface. Vivienne is a high-ranking courtier from an empire notable for its deadly, acid-laced political game. She seemingly joins the Inquisition for personal gain, to acrue reputation and power, and eventually be elected Divine (= female pope) at the end of the game. She presents herself as a despicable blend of Real Housewife, Disney Villain, and Tory Politician, all rolled into one ball of sickening, unctuous smarm. Worse, the Inquisitor has no way to rebuke Vivienne’s absurd policies and ideas. You can’t argue with her, convince her to listen to your differing viewpoints or even kick her out the Inquisition. She has a way with words where she can twist arguments around in such a fashion that she lands on top and makes the other person look like the irrational party.

“Thus speaks the Inquisitor who has made so many mature and level-headed choices so far. Such as releasion malcontents upon the population without safeguards to protect them should they turn into abominations. Very wise. I rearranged some furniture. Lives aren’t thrown into jeopardy by my actions. Perhaps a little perspective is needed.”

She’s Cersei Lannister on creatine, Dolores Umbridge on motherfucking roids. If you look at merely the surface, then yes, Vivienne looks like the worst person ever created. I love a good anti-villainess however, and she’s definitely one.

Yet, she never actually does anything ‘evil’? Yes, she is ‘a tyrant’ as a Divine, but 1) the person saying this is Cassandra, whose dislike for mage freedom is only matched by her dislike of being sidelined 2) Divine Vivienne isn’t bad to mages either? (hold that thought, I’ll get to it). She never actually sabotages the Inquisition, no matter how low her approval with the Inquisitor gets. She never attempts to stop them, no matter how annoyed she is. She’s one of the most brutally honest companions in the cast, in fact. (It always surprises me people call her a ‘hypocrite’ - you keep using that word and it doesn’t mean what you think it means.) The ‘worst’ display of character is when she attempts to break up Sera and the Inquisitor and even then - are we going to pretend Sera isn’t a toxic, controlling girlfriend with a huge chip on her shoulder? I love Sera, but come on.

Vivienne is a character where the storytelling rule of Show, Don’t Tell is of vital importance. The Orlesian empire is an empire built around posturing and reputation. Nobody really shows their true motivations or character, and instead builds a public façade. It’s like how the Hanar (the Jellyfish people) in Mass Effect have a Public name they use in day-to-day life, and a Personal Name for their loved-ones and inner circle. Vivienne’s ‘Public Visage’ is that of Madame de Fer - this is the Vivienne who openly relishes in power, publicly humiliates grasping anklebiters with passive-aggressive retorts, the woman who is feared and loathed by all of Orlais, and this is the Face you see for most of the game.

The real beauty of Vivienne’s character and the reason why I love her as much as I do (which is to say - a LOT) are the few moments when - what’s the phrase DigitalSpy love so much - Her Mask Slips, and you get a glimpse of the real woman underneath the hennin.

This is the Vivienne who stands by you during the Siege of Haven and approves of you when you save the villagers from Corypheus’s horde.

This is the Vivienne who comforts you when you lament the losses you suffered.

This is the Vivienne who admires you for setting an example as a mage for the rest of Thedas.

This is the Vivienne who worries about Cole’s well-being during his personal quest, momentarily forgetting who or what he is.

This is the Vivienne who, when her approval for the Inquisitor reaches rock bottom, desperately reminds him of the suffering mages go through on a day-to-day basis because of the fear and hatred non-mages are bred to feel towards them and how this can spiral into more bloodshed without safeguards.

This is the Vivienne who shows how deep her affection for Bastien de Ghislain truly is, by bringing you along during his dying moments. I love this scene btw. This is the only moment in the entire game where Vivienne is actually herself in the presence of the Inquisitor - needless to say, I consider anyone who deliberately spikes her potion a motherfucking psychopath ^_^)

“There is nothing here now” fuck I *almost* cried at Vivienne, get out of my head BioWare, this is WRONG -- people who delude themselves this is an irredeemable character.

So, who is Vivienne really?

Understanding Vivienne requires recognizing that the mask and the real woman aren’t the same person. I think her relationship with Dorian is the prime example of this. I love the Vivienne/Dorian banter train, obviously - an unstoppable force of sass colliding with an unmovable wall of smarm is nothing short of a spectacle. However, there’s more to it than their highly entertaining snipes. As the incredibly gifted son of a magister, Dorian represents everything Vivienne should despise, and should be a natural enemy to her. And yet, she doesn’t and he isn’t.. Their gilded japes at each other are nothing more than verbal sparring, not dissimilar to how Krem and Iron Bull call each other names when they beat each other with sticks. In what I think is one of the most brilliantly written interactions between characters in DAI, I present Vivienne’s reaction when the Inquisitor enters a romance with Dorian:

Vivienne: I received a letter the other day, Dorian. Dorian: Truly? It's nice to know you have friends. 🙄 Vivienne: It was from an acquaintance in Tevinter expressing his shock at the disturbing rumors about your... relationship with the Inquisitor. Dorian: Rumors you were only too happy to verify, I assume. 🙃 Vivienne: I informed him the only disturbing thing in evidence was his penmanship. 🙂 Dorian: ...Oh. Thank you. 😳 Vivienne: I am not so quick to judge, darling. See that you give me no reason to feel otherwise.

Madame de Fer can never be seen directly expressing approval to a relationship between the Herald of Andraste and an ‘Evil’ Tevinter ’Magister’. By this subtle, subtle conversation, Vivienne indirectly tells Dorian that she considers him a good match for the Inquisitor and approves of the romance. It’s one of those reasons why I could never truly dislike Vivienne - between the layers of elegant poison lies a somewhat decent woman who never loses sight of the bigger picture. Not a good person maybe, but not one without some redeeming qualities.

The crux of Vivienne’s personality is that she, like all DAI companions, is a social outcast. She’s a mage in a fantasy setting where mages are psionically linked to demons, and grew up in a country where the majority religion has openly advocated the shunning and leashing of mages (’Magic exists to serve man’ - the Chantry is so, so vile in this game.). Vivienne’s “gift” was discovered so early in her life that she can barely remember her parents. Vivienne grew up in a squalid boarding school, learning from a young age that she’s dangerous and her talents need to be tamed and curbed. She is also terrified of demons, as her banters with Cole point out:

Cole: You're afraid. You don't have to be. Vivienne: My dear Inquisitor, please restrain your pet demon. I do not want it addressing me. Inquisitor: He's not doing any harm, Vivienne. Vivienne: It's a demon, darling. All it can do is harm. Cole: Everything bright, roar of anger as the demon rears. No, I will not fall. No one will control me ever again. Cole: Flash of white as the world comes back. Shaking, hollow, Harrowed, but smiling at templars to show them I'm me. Cole: I am not like that. I can protect you. If Templars come for you, I will kill them. Vivienne: Delightful. 😑

Vivienne’s Harrowing is implied to have been such a traumatizing event to her that she’s developed a pavlovian fear of demons ever since. (Hence her hostility towards Cole.). Vivienne is fully aware of the inherent dangers of magic, and projects this onto all other mages.

Besides, given how Dragon Age has a history with mages doing all sorts of fucked up shit, ranging from blood magic, murder, demonic possession and actual terrorism (yes, *ElthinaBITCH* had it coming, but let’s not pretend like Anders/Justice was anything other than a terrorist), Vivienne’s policies of controlled monitoring and vigilance are actually significantly more sensible than the options of ‘unconditionally freeing every mage all over Thedas’ and ‘reverting back to the status quo before the rebellion’. They’re flawed policies, obviously. When Vivienne says “mages” she pictures faceless silhouettes foremost and not herself. Regardless, unlike Cassandra and Leliana, Vivienne is aware of the fear others harbour for her kind, and how hard it is to overcome such perceptions.

Additionally, Vivienne’s a foreigner. She is an ethnic Rivaini, a culture associated with smugglers and pirates (Isabela from DAO and DA2 is half-Rivaini). This adds an additional social stigma, again pointed out by Cole:

Cole: Stepping into the parlor, hem of my gown snagged, no, adjust before I go in, must look perfect. Vivienne: My dear, your pet is speaking again. Do silence it. Cole: Voices inside. Marquis Alphonse. Cole: "I do hope Duke Bastien puts out the lights before he touches her. But then, she must disappear in the dark." Cole: Gown tight between my fingers, cold all over. Unacceptable. Wheels turn, strings pull. Cole: He hurt you. You left a letter, let out a lie so he would do something foolish against the Inquisition. A trap. Vivienne: Inquisitor, as your demon lacks manners, perhaps you could get Solas to train it.

This is the only palpable example of the casual racism Vivienne has to endure on a daily basis - Marquis Alphonse is a stupid, bigoted pillowhead who sucks at The Game, but remember - Vivienne only kills him if the Inquisitor decides to be a butthurt thug. She is aware that for every Alphonse, there are dozens of greasy sycophants who think exactly like he does, and will keep it under wraps just to remain in her good graces.

Finally, there’s the social position Vivienne manufactured for herself, which is the weak point towards her character imo. Remember, this woman is a commoner by birth. She doesn’t even have a surname. Through apparently sheer dumb luck (or satanic intervention) she basically fell into the position of Personal Mage to the Duke of Ghislain. Regardless, ‘Personal mages’ were the rage in Orlesian nobility, and the prestigious families owned by them like one may own a pet or personal property. By somehow becoming Bastien de Ghislain’s mistress and using his influence, "Madame de Fer” liberated herself from all the social stigmata which should have pinned her down into a lowly courtier rank and turned the largely ceremonial office of “Court Enchanter” into a position of respect and power. This is huge move towards mage emancipation by the way, in a society where, again, Mages are feared and shunned and are constantly bullied, emasculated and taught to hate their talents. Vivienne is a shining example of what mages can become at the height of their power. Power she has, mind you, never actually abused before her Divine election. Vivienne’s actions will forever be under scrutiny not because of who she is, but because of what she is. The Grand Game can spit her out at any moment, which will likely result in her death.

Inquisitor: “You seem to be enjoying yourself, Vivienne?” Vivienne: “It’s The Game, darling. If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d be dead by now.”

Whether Vivienne was using Bastien for her own gain or whether she truly loved him isn’t a case of or/or. It’s a case of and/and. The perception that she was using Bastien makes Vivienne more fearsome and improves her position in the Grand Game, but deep down, I have no doubts truly loved him. Remember, Vivienne’s position at the Orlesian court was secure. She had nothing to gain by saving Bastien’s life, but she attempted to anyway. That Bastien’s sister is a High Cleric doesn’t matter - Vivienne can be elected Divine regardless of her personal quest’s resolution. She loved him, period.

No, I don’t think Vivienne is a good person. She treats those she deems beneath her poorly, like Sera, Solas, Cole and Blackwall (characters I like less than Vivienne), which I think is the #1 indicator for a Bad Personality. But I don’t think she qualifies as ‘Evil’ either and I refuse to dismiss the beautiful layering of her character. I genuinely believe Vivienne joined the Inquisition not just for her personal gain, but also out of idealism, similar to Dorian (again, Cole is 100% correct in pointing out the similarities between Dorian’s and Vivienne’s motivations for joining, as discomforting it is to her).

In her mind, Vivienne sees herself as the only person who can emancipate the mages without bloodshed - her personal accomplishments at the Orlesian court speak for themselves. Vivienne isn’t opposed to mage freedom - she worries for the consequences of radical change, as she believes Orlesian society unprepared for the consequences. Hence why she’s perfectly fine with a Divine Cassandra. Hence why her fellow mages immediately elect her Grand Enchanter of the new Circle.

Hence why Vivienne is so terrified by the Inquisitor’s actions if her disapproval gets too low. The Inquisitor has the power to completely destroy everything she has built and fought for during her lifetime. Remember: Vivienne’s biggest fear is irrelevance - there’s no greater irrelevance than having your life achievements reverse-engineered by the accidental stumbling of some upstart nobody. This is the real reason why she joins, risks her life and gets her hands dirty - the only person whose competence Vivienne trusts, is Vivienne’s own.

Even as Divine Victoria, I’d say she’s not bad, at all actually. Vivienne has the trappings of an an Enlightened Despot, maintaining full control, while simultaneously granting mages more responsibility and freedom, slowly laying the foundations to make mages more accepted and less persecuted in southern Thedas. Given that Ferelden is a feudal fiefdom and Orlais is an absolute monarchy, this is a fucking improvement are you kidding me. (Wait did he just imply Vivienne is secretly the best Divine - hmm, probably not because Cass/Leliana have better epilogues - but realistically speaking, yes, Viv should be the best Divine and it’s bullshit that the story disagrees.)

Underneath the countless layers of smarm, frost and seeming callousness, lies a fiercely intelligent and brave woman, whose ideals have been twisted into perversion by the cruel, ungrateful world around her. Envy her for her ability to control her destiny, but know that envy is what it is.

The flaw in Vivienne’s character isn’t so much the ‘tyranny’ or the ‘bitchiness’ or the 'smarm’. Her flaw is her false belief that she is what the mages need the most. Her belief that her competence gives her the prerogative to serve the unwashed mage masses... by ruling over them. For all intents and purposes, Vivienne is an Orlesian Magister and this will forever be the brilliant tragedy of her character. She was created by a corrupt institution that should, by all accounts fear and loathe her but instead embraced her. It’s that delirious irony that makes Vivienne de Fer one of the best fictional characters in RPG history. the next post will be Eurovision-related. :-)

#RPG #Dragon Age #Dragon Age Inquisition #Vivienne #Vivienne de Fer #Madame de Fer #DAI #Dragon Age 3 #BioWare

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nightshadedawn · 3 years

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Persona 5 Royal Playthrough pt3

I ended up going through two Palaces before I could update y’all. Oh well.

...Yeah, no, quit calling me Miss Special Snowflake's boyfriend. It's not happening.

Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke having a conversation in the laundromat: "It's like he's our mom," says Ryuji... the mom friend.

Every time Morgana is like "I have to turn into a human so no one else can have Lady Ann!" then expects no one else to hear him makes me laugh. Like, bitch, no.

I have the restaurant in my Thieves Den 'cause I like it. Yusuke, Ryuji, and Morgana are there. They're so precious.

I got a three in a row Tycoon on cutthroat!!!

Ryuji and Ann just keep going "Shoulda figured" and other versions of the statement every time I win.

Ann just rejected Morgana's feelings HARD. I am happy.

Ryuji is too good, honestly. Why would anyone not like him? He's... He's always trying to build the team up, make them proud of themselves and what they've done. I will admit that he has his moments of being not a great human, but they're teenagers who were given absurd powers, so honestly, can you blame them?

I didn't know darts was an actual minigame! There's so many minigames. I'm so happy.

I don't like Akechi. I don't know why some people do. Like, his death scene was a bit... too late for a redemption for me, right after he tried to kill Joker, several times. His pain is understandable, but still... I can't.

Their "two sides of the same coin" also doesn't seem particularly fair. It's totally uneven in everything but color schemes.

Guys, GUYS, please, PLEASE decide whether you're going to react to my teasing or not.

"We don't have to deal with them directly," Ryuji says joyfully about the mafia. Oh you sweet, sweet, innocent child, if only you knew what I do.

I literally can't play this game around anyone else because I tend to yell "BABY!" to Ryuji, Ann, and Yusuke and "BITCH" or "FUCKER" to... a rather long list of villains in this game... and Makoto.

I can literally feel Yusuke's anxiety about his painting when you take him to Leblanc to see Sayuri.

How can you say Yusuke isn't gay when he says everything I do is beautiful?

I love Ryuji's 9th social link. It's LITERALLY written like a confession scene. This also means I kinda hate it because... I can't date him.

Also... PRETTY BOY RYUJI PRETTY BOY RYUJI PRETTY BOY RYUJI

I actually kinda thought that the new scene for Ryuji being a crossdresser is kinda funny??? Is this bad??? I wanna see him in a dress, tho. I gotta agree, he'd be a natural. Not the like, painfully obviously not taking it seriously from the dancing game, though.

Though I do think it's valid that he freaks out when two strange adults come up to him and try to take him somewhere, especially in a place known for being shady, and at night.

...When Ryuji complains about it, I do feel bad about ditching him. Then again, I blame the cat.

Ryuji may be my ideal type on paper, but I'm also highly attracted to Yusuke and this is so totally unfair.

*softly chanting* butlers butlers butlers butlers

Don't mind me just... *makes meticulous plot to avoid having Makoto join the team that i may or may not write a fanfic about*

Makoto is one dumbass bitch. Like, honestly, there's nothing she does that's in any way remotely smart.

...I thought I'd just skip Makoto's scenes until she became relevant, but here I am, still skipping her scenes. Does that mean she’s still irreleveant?

"Witch" I suggest, and Makoto complains! "Would you prefer "Bitch"? I can use that too.

I put Yusuke on the team in the middle of the palace through settings, replacing Morgana, who had been standing right behind me. Which made Yusuke stand right behind me. It looked like he was holding onto my waist and standing uncomfortably close. Bro, babe, I love you, but not in front of my boyfriend and girlfriend!

Just accept the compliment, guys, I'm not going to compliment Queen.

...Opening chests with Ann or Ryuji is just so sweet because they're so affectionate and touchy feely. Especially Ryuji.

Math. Fucking. Sucks. I should not have to use math in a game. I hate this. Obviously it's the Palace Makoto comes in that this happened.

Well, I finished the Palace in a day. I love the feeling. But it was getting close there. Joker and Yusuke were down to no spells...

...Yoshizawa hasn't showed up yet. When is she getting shoehorned in?

WHY IS THE VELVET ROOM RED!?

My very first playthrough I didn't execute a single execution except for the first one we have to do. It really screwed me over my second playthrough...

...I broke the electric chair. That's certainly something that happened.

147 games of Tycoon later and I've only been a beggar 31 times in total, versus the pure thirty wins in just Cutthroat.

They're in their summer uniforms and it makes make miss warmer weather already. It's fucking snowing outside. Grrrr.

Beat Kaneshiro! ...Wasn't a fan of his new boss battle. I'm even playing on safe mode! But whatever.

Makoto is a DISASTER at Tycoon. She exclusively got beggar all three times I played with her!

...RYUJI YOU CAN'T SAY SHIT LIKE THAT AND NOT LET ME DATE YOU.

Ann, sweeties, baby, you're doing so well.

She confessed to me, then in the call afterwards it was basically insinuated I proposed... WHICH IS LIKE FUCK YEAH 'CAUSE SHE ACCEPTED IT.

It makes me think of the future conversation where they're talking about marriage.

Anyway, if you haven't noticed, l love Ann.

My next playthrough I'm not gong to date her, though. I'm a completionist and I want ALL of the possible awards. But... I refuse to cheat on Ann. So I'll date everyone else then just hang with Ryuji... despite how cringy some of the date things are.

...If Akechi wasn't, you know EVIL and tried to KILL ME, SEVERAL TIMES, I might, MIGHT, like him. But in truth, I think that's really just the Persona 5: Revival talking. We get... into some stuff during that.

I know that either Atlus or the translators know EXACTLY what goes on in the Persona fandom because otherwise "He's too pretty to be wrong" would not be an option when talking to the newspaper girl about Akechi. I have to agree with her that his looks aren't really, you know, awesome enough for that.

Also, I read it as "He's too petty to be wrong" at first and I think that's an accurate sum of his character.

YO AKECHI-FUCK I HAVE NO NEED TO SEE YOUR ASS LIKE THAT WHEN I HAVE BOTH A BF AND AND GF.

...fucker fucking giving me shit about my fake glasses...

If you COULD date the boy out of mod, Akechi would definitely be the one they were pushing you to date. Like Makoto. Or Yoshizawa.

But hey, at least I get to not be nice to him.

I remember seeing this picture where Ann, Ryuji, and Joker kept going to the movies together and seeing 3D movies, and Joker couldn't wear the 3D glasses properly because of his own. I keep imagining that picture during this event with Caroline and Justine.

You know what? Some people call Joker a loli lover because of them, but nope! He's just adopted two more siblings. That is my stance on it.

FUcking

Fucker

WHAT THE FRRRRRRRR

FUCK YOU ATULS OR TRANSLATORS OR WHATEVER

APHRODITE AND MARS ARE FROM TWO DIFFERENT MYTHOS. Aphrodite is GREEK, Mars is ROMAN. Their reversed are VENUS and ARES. USE ONE OR THE OTHER PEOPLE.

I get very pissed about this, and it's worse with Hades.

7/4 is the day I am screaming at, if you were wondering.

My dad asked me if the other students think Joker's stupid because every time I answer a question right they get all surprised.

I don't really like Makoto, as I'm sure you've noticed, but she was super nice about Ryuji's special move idea. And that put her ahead of Akechi in my book.

TESTS ARE NERVE WRACKING EVEN WHEN THEY'RE FICTIONAL

Yusuke and Ryuji are good boys, the best boys. And they're so awesome about their special move.

AND RYUJI OFFERED MONEY FOR YUSUKE'S FOOD. And implied that he did it before???? Ryuji, you best boy.

This boys' outing DOES make me happy, though. Like, insanely happy. Dunno why.

Maybe because Joker gets to be so flipping cheesy.

...fuck you, Yoshizawa.

HONESTLY WHAT THE EVER LOVING--- Grr. Too many choices while with her. Too many. OOC Joker when with her. 0/10.

I LOVE THE FESTIVAL PHOTO

And you know, it's really hard to choose between Lala-chan and Ann, but... GONNA TAKE ANN ON A DATE

Got her some flowers. Lets see if we can give them to her this time!

"Such a good FRIEND." Babe, we're DATING. For like, TWO WEEKS NOW.

AND I DIDN'T EVEN GET TO GIVE HER FLOWERS

Ann called Yusuke a pretty boy, but then she's missing out on the REAL pretty boy, Pretty Boy Ryuji.

Ryuji, why're you so worried about other girls when you've got ME?

"I like the shade." "What are you, moss!?" Oh, admit it, Ryuji, I'm growing on you.

Cargona. Snrk. Gods, I love you, Ryuji.

Dome town with Ryuji! "Isn't it all couples?" That's the point!

I COULD GIVE RYUJI THE ROSES!?

Sadly, I bought those for Ann. Ryuji, you get the noodles.

AND HE FUCKING LOVED IT.

"It feels like I really captured Ryuji's heart!" FUCK YEAH I DID

Gonna give Yusuke the bracelet when I get the chance.

Why is everyone color coded in the chat room? Kawakami, Akechi, Mishima, and the reporter are all ORANGE. What's the point? Well, Akechi's more of a golden orange, but close enough.

While Mishima is not my first choice for a date, he's definitely not my last.

...But the boy really needs some fucking sleep. He's not drawn with the bags under his eyes, but I can see them!

It's not fair that they give Akechi a kicked puppy sprite. I'm... goddamnit, they're trying to make me not hate him.

When Makoto doesn't know something, I'm brought great joy.

NO DAD MAKOTO IS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND ANN IS AND SHE IS LITERALLY R I G H T T H E R E

First day in Futaba's Palace! I've gotta say, this is my second favorite palace. Kamoshida, Futaba, Madarame, Sae, Okumura, Shido, Kaneshiro, Holy Grail. In that order. I HATE Kaneshiro's place and dealing with the Holy Grail. But whatevs, man. I love this game. (Vanilla, at least, this one is still on the fence)

I found out a cool little thing. On the uphill sand slopes in the town (don't know about anywhere else) if you're running and turn back quickly, Joker will do a little animation to steady himself. It was cool and made it seem, I dunno, more human? Anyway, while I was admiring this, Ryuji and Yusuke just stood at the top of the slope and Ann followed me while I was running. Best girlfriend ever.

Kin-Ki is looking pretty kin-ky if you know what I'm sayin'

Please don't murder me because I do terrible puns.

*we fall through the trap door* *Ryuji starts screaming* Same, baby, same.

...Makoto is seriously annoying. Like, she's got no business acting as familiar with Futaba's situation. The one who WOULD be the most familiar is Yusuke, and I'm glad he recognizes that. It's not the exact same, none of their stories are after all, but I feel like those two get each other better than even Ryuji and Joker understand each other.

Yusuke and Ryuji's special attack is THE BEST

Ryuji and Joker getting up close and personal in the shadows. All those fanfics coming true, man.

I thought Futaba was sloth, not wrath? Why are her Will Seeds called Wrath?

Beat it in one day! It's so satisfying to watch all those achievements when I leave the palace.

You know, I'm thinking of wearing the Christmas outfits for the final battle. Just to be kinda funny.

Spending a relaxing day with Yusuke after going through Futaba's Palace... kinda want to take him to the bathhouse to check out that new scene, but I also REALLY wanna feed the boy... gonna feed the boy.

Apparently I can only make 'decent curry.' Which is fine. Because "I" can't make curry at all. Joker, you've done much better than I.

THE DATE CHANGE SCREEN HAD A RAINBOW AND RYUJI WAS COMING OVER ON THE SAME DAY FUCK YEAH MY BISEXUAL BABY

...Broooooo, the way you talk about your manga is how I talk right before I start shipping.

Took him to the bathhouse, 'cause I don't gotta worry about Mama Sakamoto feeding him.

...Can I take Ann to the bathhouse?

Asked Ryuji to move in. He was all up for the idea until he remembered that I live in an attic.

I'm Charismatic now!

...I was all hoping Ann would stop by but then Akechi asked me out. Laaaaaaaame.

Ryuji's smile is so fucking cute.

...I say we just be honest, and everyone's so fucking stupid about it until Makoto explains it. This pisses me off. They're not that dumb... At least, they weren't until Makoto showed up.

Futaba's hiding in the closet. ...I've spent too many weeks making jokes about closets to not have a joke about it.

Really, Yusuke? You see those books and think she can't understand?

...Wait, that sassy tone of voice... You were TRYING to pull a reaction of her. I knew I shipped those two for a reason. OTP and BroTP. Doesn't matter, they're both awesome.

I love you Ann, but I don't think your situations were the same at all. It's not like both are valid and bad, but... different.

Joker is SO fast compared to the others, especially when he's speeding.

What the...

Holy fuck...

JOKER IS TOO EFFING COOL

THAT MOVE TO GET FROM THE ENTRANCE TO TO TREASURE DOOR? Awesome!

Damn, Joker has my heart too.

I kinda wish we could see Futaba's costumes in her Persona. That would be pretty neat.

The moment right before Wakaba appears is so aesthetically pleasing.

...Futaba being happy is almost enough for me to accept Maruki's offer, and I haven't gotten there yet.

Ryuji and Ann keep smacking each other out of their ailments. Like, you guys just love each other so much! It's awesome.

Joker has lackluster responses to Wakaba... I'm hoping that isn't one of those "Answer these wrong and you break her!" things... Not that I think I was, but still.

I liked Futaba's new animation for when she defied her mother.

I wish the anime looked more the cutscenes. I'm trying to rewatch the anime so I can pinpoint specific moments for future editing purposes, but it's kinda painful.

1- This is the SECOND TIME you've landed on Yusuke while running from trouble.

2- YUSUKE LET GO OF MY GIRL

No Makoto, I don't want to go see Futaba with you! I can go see her myself.

So, I like Takemi's new voice with her lines during this scene.

Sure, she collapses every so often and sleeps for a while. Stays like that for a few days. Sorry that I put her into a coma for a month, Boss...

SHE LOOKS SO CUTE WITHOUT GLASSES

Guys, we have a month. Stop worrying.

THE TWINS ARE SO CUTE WHILE HANGING ONTO THE BENCH PRESS

Damn, Joker's dying to the amusement of two little girls.

I'm kinda disappointed I didn't get results for all that training. But I liked the scene.

Yusuke just casually be lugging bigass paintings around.

Taking the girls to the church may have been one of the funnier moments. These cement them as Joker's little sisters. With Futaba. Damn, Joker, you got no brothers.

Yusuke promises to come by every day and we can tell him to take his clothes off. ATLUS, you have some EXPLAINING to DO.

..And Yusuke took it and ran with it. My sweet summer child, I don't think I could handle you in as little as possible on the day to day.

"The heat induced delirium made me think outside the box." Same.

Guts takes sooooooooooooo long to level up.

"Punish me more" he says, as if Takemi won't do it.

"Good god. Well, none of my medicine can cure THAT." AT LEAST WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME PAGE

BATHHOUSE WITH YUSUKE

Awe, he had fun. :)

#Persona 5 #akira kusuru #shuann #pegoryu #pegoryuann #persona 5 royal #yusuke kitagawa #ann takamaki #Ryuji Sakamoto #Pretty Boy Ryuji

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unproductive-software-blog · 3 years

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Demons’ Souls’ Final Question: What About The Future?

I’ve been pondering how to end my first playthrough of Demon’s Souls. My quest had been so clear at the start: as a temple knight, it was my duty to serve God in banishing the demons and their soul arts by sealing the Old One.

However, I began to question my purpose upon discovering the Talisman of Beasts on Scirvir the Wanderer’s (Black Phantom) body. It revealed the church’s God and the Old one to be one and the same. Magic and Miracles but two applications of the same power, both with the potential to harm and help others.

Later, I had made the decision to kill Yuria the witch, simply for being a witch. This seemed a good idea to me at the time, but upon rescuing Yurt the assassin, enabling him to kill two people in the Nexus, I had to reflect (after killing him, of course). Why would I kill an enemy of the church whom I knew nothing about, yet tolerate the presence of a murderer who claims “Human lives are not so precious as you might think” for so long?

Last night I fought Maiden Astraea, a former saint who became a demon in order to use her power to cure the sick. Astraea cursing God for dooming people to suffer resonated with me deeply, and her suicide once she realized my victory was inevitable pained me greatly.

Returning to the Nexus, the Old One can be heard crying out, the path between our worlds re-opened. Saint Urbain seemed to show his ignorance of the Old One’s true nature in claiming it sounded like the cry of a hungry child, but Sage Freke, the magician and enemy of the church, came with a plan ready: take the old one’s power for our own, and presumably, use it to do good. (This is of course, how i frame the decision given my character. Sage Freke seems pretty solely dedicated to the pursuit of science, not necessarily concerning himself with its application.)

For a moment, my choice seemed clear: become an all powerful version of Maiden Astraea. An Archdemon that performs miracles. A force of nature which serves to mend the world. The game however, provides King Allant (the main villain, a king who awakened the old one in the first place) as an example of what happens when one tries to take on such responsibility. Though Allant’s influence on the world is unquestionably an evil one (you basically spend the whole game trying to undo his influence) his son, Ostrava, speaks nothing but praise, faith, and love for his father as a human. At first I thought he may be biased or delusional, but this can be disregarded, given his later acknowledgment of the necessity of his father’s demise (going so far as to kill himself to keep from stopping you). How, then, does a good king turn evil, if not for some inherently evil soul magic? The answer is the Fat Official. The demonic bureaucrat. He embodies all 7 deadly sins, and is the last person you’d want in a position of power. He is not an inevitable part of society, but he is inevitably hidden within governments as large as the United States, and likely even Japan. Hell, most businesses employ these guys as managers, ever been to Stonefang Mines? The point is, no one man can exert the level of influence as King Allant without a massive hierarchy of power between himself and the people, it’s just unmanageable otherwise. The dream of doing the work of Maiden Astrea on the scale of something like a God or even a King is not possible without some of these goons getting involved somewhere, and as the game tells us (I think in the fat official’s hat description) the appearance of these middle-managers is what seemed to herald the age of demons.

What, then, am I to do? The Shrine of Storms and Storm Ruler provide evidence that hundreds of years ago, a whole other nation rose and fell with the use of Soul Arts. If I simply seal the Old One, am I dooming mankind to repeat the cycle once again? Am I forsaking future generations of people that could use the power of Demon’s Souls to advance science to some sort of utopian future? Leaving our world stuck forever in the dark ages? Lost, I return to the words of Saint Urbain: the Old One’s cries sound like a hungry child. I believe Sage Freke says when you rescue him, that the Old One is like a gaping maw, perpetually consuming additional souls. Hunger, scarcity, or perhaps, the hope of a future with less of these struggles for our children, the Old One embodies them all. It is need itself. So how do we choose to see that need? As something to be overcome, or something to gently lull back into peace? I choose the latter. It strikes me as somehow less cynical to choose to soothe people’s suffering in the present, and be the best person I can be, in the hope that the next time the Old One rages, another hero will have the strength of heart and peace of mind to do the same. We can never conquer this reality, but we can slay the demons where we see them cropping up. We can work toward a society which produces less illness, less brutality, less hopelessness, and less abuse, by working to limit the ability of any one False King or Fat Official or Fool’s Idol or Adjudicator to exert dominance.

Break the cycle of violence, and trust that this will make the future one of increased peace. Never perfect, constantly struggling, and embracing every minute of it. If a game this hard can be fun, so can a life of slow, dedicated work for a better future.

#SoundCloud #demon’s souls #game analysis #demons souls #demon souls #from software #dark souls

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cassyapper · 3 years

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OKAY IVE ACTUALLY PLAYED TWO SESSIONS SINCE MY LAST POST SO IM GONNA COMBINE THEM HERE SORRY FOR THE LENGTH BUT,,IVE COME SO FAR I DONT WANNA STOP NOW

this is gonna be very messy cause i WILL be jumping back and forth as things come back to mind so uhh pls enjoy this absolute ramble <3

anyway. i continued playing omori and boy do i have some Thoughts

so first session; i went through the pyre(something i forgot the full name sob) forest/sprout mole village/sweetheart’s castle in one go and let me TELL YOU. DOING THAT WAS FUCKING INSANE I WENT NUTS holy shit.

so anyway.

pyre forest!!!! the lil race against the big spider coming after u for disturbing the smaller spiders mechanic was very fun i had a lot of fun figuring out the best routes to take. i know normally mechanics like that lead to ppl getting frustrated cause u have to keep retrying but i had a lot of fun!!!! sum annoyance but good natured type, th kind that just makes u try harder u know? i just enjoyed it JKFN;FN; candles in the foggy forest....now That is an aesthetic

the rare bear scared the fuckin shit out of me i remember it didn’t attack me straight away so i was like “aw (:” but then when i press x on him it takes me to a BATTLE SCREEN AND SUDDEN THAT MF IS TERRIFYING I WAS LIKE WHWHWHWHWKJDNJ. very funny i honestly wished i recorded my reaction

also omori is afraid of drowning...................................i am breathing heavily. i think whatever happened to mari is related to at least one of the things omori is scared of. so either heights, spiders, or drowning it seems. spiders doesnt seem super likely as a contributor to her death, and while falling from a height is more realistic, such a senseless way of dying doesnt seem to rlly fit ? with the vibe i get from the kiddos in the real world. which makes me think maybe drowning/otherwise suffocating is how she died...but we’ll see. also due to the forgotten library part, we know omori explicitly feared spiders/drowning before mari died so it’s also probable im jus talking out my ass here but still,,,,thoughts

also this motherfucker?

literally fucking terrifying. IT’S BODY IS MADE OF SUCC’D SPROUT MOLES...i still have no idea what exactly it was doing to them but jesus h christ!!!! evil and fucked up. do not feel bad for curbstomping it

sprout mole village!!!! very cute, im v excited to send that one dude his brother’s care package. i like how, when theyre not lost, sprout moles can be real endearing lil guys,,,theyre not my fav lil enemies but (:

also for some reason omori is the first game ive played where i really care about getting achievements ? so i literally did the back and forth on my save file just to get all the season sprout mole achievements JKDJFJ;. i ended up sticking w spring tho before moving on for real cause spring is my fav season irl (:

also i felt SO BAD for cutting down that one sprout mole’s chistmas tree he was just trying to celebrate but i wanted to see that present and coincidentally becoming a christmas ruiner was an achievement so all’s fair in love and war i suppose

ALSO. th fuckin plant monster thing under the scientist sprout mole’s room. major little shop of horror vibes from the design, absolutely adored it!!!!! originally i did just cut the wire holding the piano over it, ending it in one go, but i was very curious abt it so i reloaded a save file to actually fight it and

i know it only spread that gas to make the kiddos happy cause being happy reduces attack i think ? it decreases attack/defense but seeing the kiddos smile so much was nice (:

however

omori...sunny....son boy.........u good ?

and now. sweetheart

the way the sprout moles completely adore and depend on sweetheart gives me such awful evil vibes and combined with such a luxurious background was fucking incredible

sweetheart herself, speaking of. bitch (sorta affectionately, certainly not derogatory)

i talked to every sprout mole in the audience before taking my seat and i literally dont know why. even when i picked up the pattern of where the unique dialogue could be found (usually the sprout moles farthest right) i still talked to all of them......just in case ? i have no idea. i dont know why i did that. i feel it’s important that i note it tho

LMAO SO WHEN SPROUT MOLE MIKE DID THE MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR YE OLD SPROUT MOLE

I LITERALLY FELT SO FUCKING BAD LMAO I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD NO!!!!!! I DID THAT!!! I KILLED HIM!!! OH MY GOD!!! I WONDER HOW AWKWARD OMORI KEL HERO AND AUBREY FELT IN THE AUDIENCE HOLY SHIT THEY HAD FRONT ROW SEATS TO SPROUT MOLE MIKE’S MOURNING!!! MY GOD FJKFN;;

also sprout mole mike describing 3′7″ inches as ”towering” was the FUNNIEST shit i have ever seen. also i have to wonder, since sweetheart made up the whole show of sweetheart’s quest for hearts in the first place, if she was seriously down to marry a sprout mole if one suited her fancy. jus v funny to me honestly. SPEAKING of sweetheart’s dating patterns I NOTICED THOSE FEM SKELETONS IN THE DUNGEON!!!!! BI SWEETHEART!!!! SHE’S JUST AS DOWN FOR GIRLS AS SHE IS BOYS

i know TECHNICALLY not everyone is in the dungeon for failing to be a good enough suitor but STILL...COME ON. THIS WAS BEFORE WE KNEW THAT. SWEETHEART BI I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

anyway

when the lights when out and lightning struck the third contestant, i knew Immediately something was gonna go down. and when the mustache sprout mole was like “oh yes!! u!! in the striped pjs!! u absolute beast ur perfect!!!” i KNEW hero had just been selected as the replacement i was goign completely fucking nuts i was like OH MY GODNFNG; HIS HEART IS ALREADY TAKEN BY MARI!!!!!!! STOP

i ended up taking so many screenshots during this part cause i was going feral so here take a glance just cause i love, uh, hero

OUR HERO IN SHINING ARMOR DJLBH;KFJB

also GOD FUCKING DAMMIT IM SHORTER THAN HERO

hero shaking on the stage when he was introduced...oh my HEART....IM SO FOND FOR THIS BOY WTF!!!!! DKJDN;N

this is not really NEWS to me since it’s implied hero is tall but like come ON..... sorry just every time i find out a character is explicitly taller than me i need to huff about it, moving on,

HERO FUCKS

sorry i just have so many screenshorts during this aprt cause i was going fucking crazy but

literally terrifying! sweetheart bathes in that shit!! christ!

is blood good for ur skin? i imagine, so long as like...gore isnt in it and it’s solely blood it cant be BAD necessarily......but good ? regardless very fucked up. besides the fact that well, uh, BLOOD, blood is also sticky as hell. ur telling me sweetheart willinglhy bathed in that shit? disgusting. at least thin it out

anyway I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THE PUZZLES AT SWEETHEART’S CASTLE....FROM THE DUNGEONS TO THE KITCHENS TO THE BALLROOM TO THE LIBRARY TO THE GARDENS JUST EVERYTHING!!!! IT WAS SO FUN I ENJOYED FIGURING IT OUT SO MUCH IT WAS LITERALLY DELIGHTFUL...I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH THE GAMEPLAY IS SO FUCKING EPIC I LITERALLY HAVE SO MUJCH FUN.......OH MY GOD I JUST. INCREIDBLE!!!! FUCK

also the lil sir maximus bit.........i honestly felt really awful over having to kill them ): i think i even tried running once but it wouldnt let me...it hurt man ): they were just a family....

um but anyway,

i think it was rlly sweet how aubrey protested to the wedding cause she was worried abt sweetheart,,,like i cant rlly explain it idk how to put it into words,,like sweetheart is clearly not mentally well and having an episode, and aubrey being the only one to say “hey what ur doing is self-destructive and isolating” just mmmh. she cares a lot,,,and *i* care aubrey

also sweetheart’s battle theme fucking SLAPPED...SO GODDAMN HARD IM STILL QUAKING OVER IT....FUCKING BANGER YO!!!!!! INCREDIBLE

ah but alas

BASIL........I NOTICED THAT IT WAS HIS GHOST/SHADOW DURING THE EXIT FROM OTHERWORLD AS WELL BUT JUST FUCK

im so worried about basil ):

and it being so obvious that none of the others can see...........them asking omori if he’s okay.....oh my god. i go nuts

and then...the forgotten library part

i literally cried, again, oh my fucking god

these kids loved each other so much they ADORED the time they spent with each other and im QUAKING to know WHAT HAPPENED TO MARI......HOW DID THE FALLOUT GO. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

i know there are multiple endings to this game and on god i am not QUITTING until i get the happiest ending there is for these kids im literally a goddamn fuckign mess oh my god

MARI SHWOING UP IN THE LIBRARY AT ONE POINT AND LEADING OMORI...........IM LTIERALLY GOIGN INSANE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HE LOVED HIS SISTER SO MUCH HE’S SO CLEARLY LOST WITHOUT HER I CANT FUCKING DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

GOD

okay sorry i just. ive said ti before but the grief in this game is so real and palpable and it aches, it aches so bad. also the white egret orchids in the library...i see u

but regardless.... session two real world electric boogaloo

LOVE that kel is like “so i need to run errands but u wanna come with me right? of course u do!” like fuck i rlly do. kel is just so delightful i would literally do anything to spend time with him

ALSO i noticed u can just refuse to open the door both times kel’s knocked now and it makes me wonder....if u could choose to ignore kel ? and then venture out urself or just ? i wonder what would even happen if u chose to not open the door. im CERTAINLY not doing it myself at the very least not this playthrough but i am curious...i bet that’s how u get a bad ending, by not talking w kel

but anyway....

aubrey and her gang not saying anything in the pizza parlor........i jus think abt that is all

ALSO!! pet rocks!!!!!!!!! LOVE this lil thing it’s so cute. jus rock paper scissors it babey

speaking of lil bits, love all the mini quests in the real world...it’s just rlly fun and builds up this cute lil town........it also makes me think that whatever happened to mari cant have been anything except an accident, bc no one comments on what a tragedy it was to omori. like if it was murder, there’s no way such a horrific situation wouldnt engulf the town for a bit and sweep over it for weeks at least, but that just doesnt seem to have happened. this is def me reading too into it tho;; point is neighbors nice (: also i got the seashell necklace and i go apeshit

ALSO......THE FUCKING...........CHURCH. I VISITED WITH KEL ON A COMPLETE WHIM CAUSE I WAS CURIOUS IF THE PASTOR WOULD TALK MORE ABT AUBREY BUT NO. INSTEAD HE TALKS ABT THE WEIRD VIBE FORM THE GRAVEYARD HE’S GETTING!!! AND THE DUDE WHO CHILLS IN THE GRAVEYARD SAYS SHIT ABT THE SPIRITS GETTING READY FOR SOMEONE TO JOIN THEM!!!! BITCH WAHT THE FUCK

THERE’S NOF UCKING WAY THIS ISNT ABOUT BASIL. THERE IS NO!!! WAY!!!! I SWEAR ON GOD IF BASIL DIES I WILL LOSE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ESP CAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY HE COULD DIE EXCEPT SUICIDE THAT’S WHAT IT HAS BEEN IMPLYING OVER AND OVER I GO NUTS I GO APESHIT NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK

OKAY SORRY I JUST. HHHHHHHHHHH

baby has acquired baby

kel’s family is rlly cute,,,,v heartwarming. i trust them

i do worry abt like...the stark difference between recognizing kel’s accomplishments and hero’s...i just idk. i just keep thinking abt that bit in kel’s story abt hero’s depression when his parents focused on hero and ignored him, and i just. kel’s family is good People but i worry if kel has a good support system...i jus........): i am watching

ahh THE BASIL MISSING PART MADE MY HEART LITERALLY FUCKING DROP..I WAS SO FUCKING PANICKED I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD THIS IS IT BASIL IS DEAD

THANKFULLY HE WASNT BUT HOLY GOD HOW THAT WHOLE SITUATION PANNED OUT MADE ME GO NUTS!!!!!!! BASIL...AUBREY...HER GANG.......FUCK OH M YOGD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

THANK G O D I SNOOPED AROUND KEL’S HOUSE BEFORE LEAVING I WOULD HAVE H A T E D TO FIGHT THEM ALL AT ONCE IM GLAD I WAS ABLE TO JUST PEPPER SPRAY THEM JESUS CHRIST

oh my god kim like asking for aubrey all concerned before deciding to trust her and leaving.....kim i diagnose u with lesbain

the whole fucking. basil almost drowning scene. i seriously feel like ive changed like as a person over it. i am thinking . i am thinking. i am only evee thinking about mari and how omori just loved her so much and how the thought of her gave him strength. th pic of her ghost holding omori’s hand in the water made me cry

MMMM BUT. HERO!!!

I DIE I DIE I DIE HE’S SO PRETTY FUCK ALSO HIM PICKING UP BASIL WOOOOOOOO THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT YEAHHHHHHHH

god i feel so bad about leaving aubrey tho. shes so clearly not okay and she so clearly did not mean to push basil in and oh my GOD I JUST...PLEASE....PLEASE CAN WE JUST TLAK TO HER I NEED TO TLAK TO HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO FUCK

the ghosts of omori and aubrey on the swings made me cry out like i had been physically assaulted

AHH BUT THEN TAKING BASIL HOME AND WHILE HE’S IN HIS BED HE JUST SAYS “oh sunny...there’s not way out of this...is there?” I LITERALLY GO BUCKWILD APESHIT INSANE STUPDI!!!!!! BASIL YOURE PUTTING UP A LOT OF ALARMING FLAGS HERE!!! PLEASE DO NOT FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK. CHRIST. HELL. SHIT. THIS GAME IS DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY

GOD

oh my god but the day ending with hero and kel sleeping over at omori’s house...im kdnd im jkdim im not uhm okay THEY BUILT A BLANKET FORT PLEASE..I LOVE THEM

goddd hero going into the piano room....playing sum........and then asking omori abt the song he and mari used to play on violin...and then THE TITLE SCREEN MUSIC STARTS PLAYING....HI. HI HELLO HI YOU CANT FUCKIGN DO THAT HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YOUFBJFGJNGN;EJNE; IM GOIGN NUTS

also the name omori comes from the piano.............interesting...i wonder why sunny likes being called omori in the dreamscape...

god but omori not having a srs hallucination cause he’s w his friends and he feels safe...im gonna sob

However. i did glance into the bathroom mirror. AND INSTEAD OF THE EYE MF IT’S A DISTORTED AS HELL GHOST MARI???IM SO FUCKIGN SCARED. IM SO SCARED. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK? CREEPY AS HELL!!!

ohh my god this GAME

so finally i ended up in whitespace again. do NOT like that omori is completely alone in the world!!! what the FUCK!!!!!!!! I AM SO SCARED AT ALL TIMES. im literally about to go play sum more tho after dinner so i will see what happens. god i jsut......this game is so fucking good it has me by the balls dude. SO glad i decided to play it bruh

anyway thanks for reading all of this if u did, it’s an absolute monster ik and ur a real one

#cass cries #omori #omori spoilers #more like cass goes CRAZY this is so long #also id dint proof read this sorry </3

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years

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What is your opinion of KOTOR 2? Favorite things about it, least favorite things about it, characters, etc.

Alright, it’s time for another video game review, so an early reminder, spoilers abound for both KOTOR1 and KOTOR2. There’s a cut of course. Overall, I thought it was a phenomenally well-written game and one of the greatest pieces of media to exist in the Stars Wars universe (although I haven’t read any of the Expanded Universe books so keep that in mind), and as is the usual case for Obsidian particularly in this era, developer constraints created a beautiful mess.

Before we can talk about KOTOR we need to talk a little bit about Star Wars and what it meant as a film. The original Star Wars isn’t a very creative story, it’s largely a conventional Hero’s Journey. It’s a pastiche of early adventure stories in a science fiction setting, but with the added benefit of video and sound effects to really make it come to life in a way that was only possible in the imagination of readers. This gave the series a wide deal of appeal. Folks who grew up on the 1950′s Flash Gordon serials or WW2 dogfight films could see a film with those things they loved from their childhood with a high budget to bring those things to life. Science fiction fans could visually see elements of their favorite books brought to life on the silver screen. Fans of movies can appreciate the cutting-edge (for the time, although I love me some practical effects in film) effects and the unfamiliar elements of science fiction with the familiar trappings of an adventure tale.

KOTOR was something similar for the video game industry, particularly for the fans of Baldur’s Gate. The ability to create a Jedi character and go on a journey like the Bhaalspawn did in Baldur’s Gate was something that appealed to a significant number of RPG fans, and the critical success of the Baldur’s Gate series brought a lot of money and prestige to Bioware. Fans of RPGs and Star Wars got to see their medium and interact with it in a whole new light. Much like A New Hope, KOTOR1 was largely a traditional story where Darth Malak is an evil guy without much in the way of redemptive qualities. The two major wrinkles were that you could play as a Sith and have some moments of true player cruelty like ordering Zaalbar to kill Mission, but this makes sense for an RPG, having no player choice in a game really makes you lose the lightside/darkside dynamic. Of course, the bigger and more interesting drift from a traditional Star Wars story was the Revan twist. This took advantage of both the slower pace of games to spend time with your PC and form a connection, and the nature of Western RPG’s where the player envisions themselves partially as their avatar onscreen to make the reveal hit home. Ultimately though, the Star Wars morality was upheld. The Jedi were the unequivocal good guys, the Sith were the unequivocal bad guys.

KOTOR2 decided to put the Force under the microscope. It had started in 2003, so Episode II had already come out, and this idea of the prophecy of Anakin bringing balance to the Force, and what we knew of the Jedi in the original Star Wars trilogy who were reduced to hermits hiding on the fringes of society, really gave the impetus to examine this idea of the balance of the Force as not necessarily benevolent. It’s not evil, per say, it’s just indifferent to the people that die to make it happen. So the game became a self-critical examination of the core structures of the Star Wars universe. The Sith are usually thought of as the bad guys, and a lot of that holds true, domination, subjugation, power, betrayal, all that nasty stuff aren’t really conducive to most conceptions of goodness, but are the Jedi good? Does their passivity lead to injustice and terror being wrought on others because the Jedi failed to act. That was the question behind the Jedi involvement in the Mandalorian Wars, was the Exile correct in going off to fight them or were the Jedi Council who forbade them correct? As befits the folks who wrote Planescape: Torment, the game has two journeys, one through the game world and the plot that unfolds and another more deeply introspective.

I’ll put the things I don’t like about KOTOR2 first because the list is small but it is worth noting. The game is very clearly a rushed product and it shows. The cut content shows a great deal of lost potential, and the bugs could make the game at times completely unplayable. The game suffered from the accelerated development, having barely half the development time, and you can see where the seams show. The UI is clunky and gets cluttered when you have to manage items. Level design is similarly a nuisance, as they are big sprawling expanses without a lot of content in them. Part of that is a necessity to the mechanics, smaller levels would have other encounter designs being agro’d into it, but the levels are still expansive, empty, and a slog to get through. The Peragus mining facility is too large by half, and there’s a lot of backtracking in these levels. Since side quests encourage finding a doodad or killing a few key figures scattered around a map, that means a lot of trekking through these big levels to find one particular item or enemy locked in a corner somewhere. That can be very tedious, particularly on repeat playthroughs. At times, it feels like legging your way through a swamp to get to the next piece of delicious content.

Which is a good segue into talking what I like about the game, because its writing and characters are superb. The character companions are twists of classic Star Wars archetypes. Atton is the scoundrel Han Solo non-Force user type, but ends up having a disturbingly dark backstory where he was a Sith interrogator and feared his own Force-sensitive nature. Bao-Dur is a man haunted by the weapon of mass destruction he created, a tech-head who ends up hating his most momentous creation but feels the need to use it yet again. Canderous has become the new Mandalore and is desperately trying to revitalize his dying culture because he’s been so broken by Revan’s departure. The Wookie life-debt is so toxic that it breaks Hanharr and Mira in their own ways. Visas is a Sith whose will is shattered. Each of these characters are fundamentally broken (save for the droids, unless you count the physical need to reassemble HK-47 as broken), and the Exile draws them to him or her. Through discovering more about them and resolving it, the Exile awakens the characters’ connection to the Force, oddly ironic since the Exile is cut off from the Force and is only rediscovering it. Like most Bioware RPG’s, you the player through your character guide the growth of these characters and form a relationship with them, or use them for your own ends.

Kreia, of course, deserves her own paragraph. Kreia is the Star Wars Ravel Puzzlewell, an embittered woman who wants to destroy the cosmic chains of the universe and loves the player character in a deeply obsessive way, one that’s played completely straight in how it makes the player uncomfortable. She is deeply resentful of the Force and wants to destroy it, and through the Exile, who managed to cut themselves off so utterly completely in a unique way, she sees the path. Of course, the reason why the Exile cut themselves off was the mass death at Malachor V was so overwhelming that he or she would have otherwise died. Of course, her obsession and overriding mission cares little for the Exile’s own pain, and so the manipulations begin, using you to lure out and destroy the Jedi and the Sith, and in the end, you disappoint her, either because you don’t learn her lessons or she discovers that the only reason you were the way you were was because you were afraid. She still is obsessed over you, though, and so when you finally confront her, she obliges that affection to explain everything, unusually honest for a woman whose Sith name is evocative of the word betrayal. And fortunately, she allows something that most monologue villains don’t allow, a means by which to tell her she’s full of shit. Certainly, it’s a little weaker coming from her as an option to you rather than the player character saying it themselves, but I think it’s stronger, since so much of the ending had to be cut anyway it reinforces the ambiguity of it, that the ending is what you believe. Personal belief has always been important for the Exile and Kreia/Traya, and letting that transfer to the player is, while perhaps not the most ideal, completely valid given how rushed the development was.

The other Sith Lords are fascinating concepts of evil and personal belief as well as well, and really show the Dark Side of the force in a parasitic, corrupt sense and the horrible ends of taking belief to its extreme. Darth Sion is the Lord of Pain. He cannot die but he feels pain constantly, making eternal life not a blessing but a torture, though in it he found a twisted source of enlightenment. His pain fuels his anger and hatred (key ingredients of the Dark Side) and so he persists solely through the Dark Side. Darth Nihilus, on the other hand, had his body obliterated by the Mass Shadow Generator, and so persisted as a wound in the Force, consuming Force energy to feed his relentless hunger. He is not a human anymore but a force of endless consumption that cannot be satiated, this hunger pain pushes him past his own mortal existence but which can only consume, not live. This perfectly illustrates the Dark Side concept of pursuit of power even past the point of sustainability, for Nihilus will continue consuming until all existence has been eaten.

The game is dark and moody, as you explore a shattered galaxy. In the original game, the search led to the Star Forge and the revelation that you the player was Revan. The sequel shows that there was no grand conspiracy; the act of Malachor built Nihilus and Sion and the player themselves was something that you did. It was not a conspiracy of Jedi but rather the after-effects of a particular action, much the way Lonesome Road had the Courier’s delivery of the package to Hopeville to be something that destroyed Ulysses even though you never met him. The Mass Shadow Generator was meant to save the galaxy from the Mandalorians but birthed a new, more powerful tragedy. Bao-Dur even wonders if the subjugation of the people under the Mandalorians was better than the power of the Mass Shadow Generator, a powerful moment ordered by just a mere single Jedi, built by a mere tech specialist. In true Planescape fashion, a personal apocalypse is a galactic apocalypse and vice-versa. Torment lingers over this game, in the broken characters, in a parallel journey both outward and inward. In many ways KOTOR2 was Planescape: Torment in the Star Wars universe, albeit with its own personal flair.

Alright, that’s a good review. I can do character analyses of some of the major characters if you want.

Thanks for the question, Messanger.

#star wars #knights of the old republic 2 #video game reviews

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divine-motion · 4 years

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finished prototype again (people who don’t care about Edgy Kirby Game scroll on) and i got very caught up on two of Alex’s lines because i’m obsessed with this dumb video game now and i over-analyze things constantly so get ready for incoherent rambling in the Keep Reading

so the two lines are (they’re from memory and i don’t think the subtitles showed them so they might not be completely word for word): 1. “I hope destroying these things (the Bloodtox) is the right thing to do” and 2. “Damn you, Taggart. Damn you for making me do this (destroying helicopters and killing pilots to keep Taggart from evacuating)”

like, the first one is like... he’s choking and dying from the Bloodtox as he’s saying it but he knows it’d probably be a good way to fight the infection and he, Literal Virus and Bioweapon Made To Kill is wondering about what the Right Thing to do. even though if he doesn’t destroy them then he’ll die. another reason i wish the first game was much more character-driven rather than having the cutscenes’ dialogue mostly be “hi alex, do this thing, ok bye”. also couple this line with saying that Dr. Alexander J. Mercer “mistakes” were unforgivable so does he consider his own existence a mistake?? alex do you need therapy or like a juice box

ok now the second line is gonna be an Unpopular Opinion. so these pilots are not attacking, they’re just flying off to help Taggart evacuate on his orders, and once the mission ends, alex says that line. i don’t think he feels pity for the marines because they’re “just doing their job” or whatever since he knows the military is bad (he has a lot of them in his head now after all), so here’s where i’m gonna go real edgy with my interpretation: alex just straight up doesn’t like killing people. yeah this might be dumb but i dunno, he just sounds tired and lamenting that he’s being made to do this since they’re just trying to get away, and considering that the whole game forces him to fight for survival wherever he goes whether it’s the infection or blackwatch or the marines, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched? i know he talks about consuming people feeling “right” to Dana, but that’s eating, and it’s for a purpose - finding out the truth he wanted so badly. like. if he does dislike killing, that line would carry some more weight, you know? he was literally made to kill, and there he is, damning someone for making him kill. he does still think killing people is a very good problem solver, though, don’t get me wrong, he probably doesn’t even know there are other ways of solving his problems. also don’t mention the killing of karen parker to me because i honestly just find that gross. game has three female characters in total and they’re 1. sister who gets kidnapped, put in a coma, and then forgotten about rest of the game, 2. crazy creepy virus lady in Skin-Tight Science Suit and 3. ex-girlfriend who betrays you for Very Good Reasons and was clearly in a lose-lose situation, being pressured from all sides and resisting the best she could, who you then get to kill as a Reward for doing side missions. like, captain cross can infect you with a parasite and be forgiven easy peasy but karen has to die despite that her and cross are guilty of the same thing... plus on my first playthroughs of prototype i never got that scene (first got it today actually) so i was blissfully unaware and thought she just got out of the city safely and thought Good For Her!! ugh, at least they don’t show the killing. they could’ve had a side mission where you go see Dana and Dr. Bradley Ragland again to make sure they’re both okay, explain things to Dana, have a bit of Emotional Weight, and instead they waste time on that??

a final point before i end this silly post: i always thought alex was super angry all the time back when i first played it and now that i’ve played it again, i don’t see it. in game the only time he even gets full-on raging is when he’s chasing Taggart, and he gets hissy with McMullen and Randall obviously, but otherwise his dialogue is mostly like “i don’t know what’s going on but i guess i gotta kill??”, and even when he’s searching for Dana he sounds more distressed than angry. he is just an awkward 3 week old virus whose confused face is a frowny face. he’s a virus. he doesn’t know how faces work. he shouldn’t even have one!!

anyways. this isn’t me saying “your headcanons/interpretations of the character is bad”, i do think that the game tries to paint alex as a blank slate of sorts so of course people are going to have very varying grasps on his character, i just thought these lines were interesting! i love monsters who go against their supposed Inherently Evil nature. so, in conclusion, prototype 2 was a mistake

#prototype #[prototype]#prototype 2009 #alex mercer #lovi speaks #i am really inconsistent with my capitalizing here but oh well #i did say it was gonna be incoherent

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kisant · 4 years

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I’m reposting my old devil survivor 2 meta because my old url got hijacked by a spambot and the old post apparently shows the spambot as the original op.

I’ve finished Yamato’s route, so here is a bit of analysis about the route, Yamato and team Meritorious. (the only other route I’ve played until now is Daichi’s freedom route, and I’m probably going to go for the Anguished One’s in my next playthrough)

It does have a fair share of good points, despite other characters trying to paint it (and Yamato) as “evil”.

I definitely don’t see Yamato as evil. Yamato is a harsh, but fair person, and so is the world that comes from his viewpoint. The good points about Yamato’s meritocracy is how individualistic it is. It’s a world and a society that truly rewards and recognizes the individual and their efforts, regardless of familial ties, gender, race, influence or any other factors that would keep them down in the normal world. Yamato’s meritocracy breaks every glass ceiling keeping talented people from reaping the benefits of their talent and efforts and grinds them to dust under its feet.

In that kind of world, one gets exactly what one deserves according to their talents and effort. It’s a world that would be very driven to progress and innovation, while Ronaldo’s egalitarianism would likely run into the same problems as real world communism, in which people like Fumi would get saddled with an unsatisfying job for the “benefit” of the many without being able to use her real talents to make the world a better place. Ronaldo’s world would either stagnate or rapidly run out of resources because the talented and competent people can’t get their due, because if they were allowed to it would make them “better” than others and we can’t have that.

So Yamato’s vision would work far better in the long run, since it’s basically all the good points of capitalism without the trappings of corruption and nepotism, as incompetent people wouldn’t be able get a position of power like they do in the real world and would be replaced with people who actually deserve the position. It would be far more efficiently run than Ronaldo’s vision.

Also, since it’s a true meritocracy, people WOULD get the same opportunities at first in order to be able to develop their talents and would get new opportunities according to that. Geniuses could get to the highest positions, people within the normal parameters (competent but not super geniuses) would likely be the middle class, and the truly lazy and incompetent would be the ones that get fucked at the bottom of society.

The main con of it is that it’s still under Polaris rule and that it was achieved by changing human nature through basically brainwashing humankind into a mindset Yamato approves of.

It could also go deeply wrong in which it could become a very unempathetic, dog eats dog world but I think the ending itself and Yamato’s and team meritocracy’s character developement during the game proves otherwise. During the ending, it’s true that we get shown callous behaviour towards the weak, incompetent and useless, but the people who get screwed are shown to be corrupt, like the former who politician offers to use his “connections” in exchange for food, or the commander who got his position through nepotism and caused many deaths because of his incompetence.

We also get shown that people are still capable of rational behaviour and camaraderie with the child’s group. They are people who work together under the most effective leadership (the child’s in this case) in order to survive the demons, while still caring about each other, even making their attack plan in a way that maximizes the chances of survival of their weaker team members as much as possible. So no, human empathy and kindness hasn’t been obliterated in a meritocracrit world.

There is also the character development team merit goes through, especially Yamato’s, Fumi’s and Keita’s, who all become more caring, open-minded people by the end of it. (Makoto’s development is learning to stand by her beliefs and making herself be heard by Yamato instead of blindly following his orders.)

Yamato was very messed up before the events of the game. He was basically raised in isolation from the rest of society as a living weapon and was expected to sacrifice everything else that he may have wanted to do with his life or for his own in favor of a society and people he wasn’t even allowed to get to know. No wonder he is a cold, detached, abrasive and overly pragmatic person before and at the start of the game, he has no social skills outside of the ones required for his top secret military job that he has been doing since he was incredibly young. He actually came out of it surprisingly sane, functional and open-minded in spite of his incredibly fucked up upbringing.

Yamato feels stifled under that world order, resents the society he is expected to sacrifice himself for, resents the unkowing civilians who are able to have careless lives because of his and his family’s efforts and sacrifices, and especially resents the lack of acknowledgement of everything he does because of the top secret nature of it. If the public must be kept ignorant of the existence of demons and magic, then Yamato’s efforts are also meaningless in a way, since nobody would know of them or recognize them. He hasn’t been given any reason to care about civilians or their society before, since it has never done nothing except take from him without giving anything back, and he says so when you recruit him back in Daichi’s route.

However, that outlook does change a lot during the course of the game, mainly thanks to Hibiki. Hibiki turned his entire worldview upside down, first by being a civilian (part of the group he considered to be unworthy by default and was ready to sacrifice for his plans) who suddenly kills the first septentrione and turns into the best of his agents in less than a week. Hibiki is also one of the few who understands Yamato and keeps up with him, and he manages to get through to him and truly become his friend and the only person he fully trusts.

Hibiki also has the benefit of coming from a normal upbringing and offers to show Yamato what he had missed of the world because of his isolation, and Yamato trusts him enough to agree, trusting that Hibiki would actually have something valuable to teach him, to show him that there is worth in civilian society. And that trust is rewarded in the takoyaki event, in which Hibiki convinces him to try something new that he wouldn’t have otherwise because of his prejudices against normal people and civilian society, and he ends up loving it so much that his idea to reward the people who joined him in the meritocracy route is to make tons of super fancy gourmet takoyaki for them. His relationship with Hibiki makes him expand his worldview and change into a more open-minded, compassionate person who is willing to spare and turn to his side even the people who initially opposed him, including Ronaldo, who had vowed to kill him and destroy all his ambitions.

If Yamato was alone, his meritocracy would have been a very harsh, unempathetic one, but Hibiki provides very needed balance, and it shows when he recruits the other characters back onto the team, recognizing their value and their talents, making them willing to fight and put in effort for their future instead of simply giving up. Yamato already gave talented people their due and he wasn’t a bad or unfair boss, as shown with the JP’s agent that failed his mission when he didn’t punish him for it. He is not one to take his frustrations on people who are already giving their all but simply don’t have the talent for it, he simply assigns them missions and positions according to their level so that they won’t fail at those. And if they would later show improvement, they would get promoted.

Furthermore, Yamato is also conviced later to allow Makoto to protect civilians because there may be more people like Hibiki among them, people who would flourish if given the right chance. Before the game, the idea would likely never have crossed his mind and he would have dismissed them as useless and deserving no help or protection.

Another thing that I really love about Yamato is that he is NOT an egocentric jackass hellbent in securing his own position at the top of the world. His objective is not create a world in which HE rules, it’s to create a world in which the most deserving person is in charge. He accepts that someone else may get his position eventually, and he is not above having to work to keep being the best and strongest possible leader. If someone else turns out to be better suited for his position, Yamato is willing to step down from his throne, and that makes him a far more honorable and moral person than Ronaldo could ever hope to be.

(My opinion on Ronaldo probably deserves it’s own post, since this one is already long as fuck, but it can be summed up with hypocritical, murderous, short-sighted, self-serving dick who sees the world in black and white and himself as the great hero who can do no wrong, and thus everyone who opposses him must be evil and thus killed for the sake of his vision. He is the true megalomaniac, not Yamato).

Fumi and Keita also grow a lot as people during the game. Fumi is also a naturally cold, pragmatic, results-over-everything-else kind of person, but she also learns to put people’s lives and safety before getting results during her fate events, destroying her machine once it puts Jungo in mortal danger in spite of destroying the data of her experiment along with it, thus putting Jungo’s life over the knowledge she would have gained. And she also reconsiders the words of her foster parent about the value of free time and culture, and makes sure that Jungo was healthy and well and that her experiment hadn’t injured him or seriously messed him up.

And while Keita does keeps seeing individual power and strenght as the be all end all, he also learns to make friends (even if he is really tsundere about it) and reconsiders his approach to include defending his friends as a way of self-improvement. If more people in the meritocracy have Keita’s new outlook, or grow into it, then it won’t be that harsh of a place to live in, even if they are rude to the people they perceive as being weaker than them. (pffft meritocracy would end up being a world of tsundere)

After all, meritocracy doesn’t mean that you are not allowed to help the people who are under you in the hierarchy, just that you are not obligated to do it. Human kindness, empathy and camaraderie are not incompatible with meritocratic ideals, as shown with Makoto and the group led by the kid. Meritocracy rewards individuality, talent and hard work, and it’s up to the individual if they want to help another person who may be struggling or not. It doesn’t turn people into unfeeling robots that only know how to cackle evilly while stomping on the necks of the people who are weaker than them.

#devil survivor 2 #desu2 meta #yamato hotsuin #meritocracy route

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.10

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 6, everything became terrible in a hopefully-mostly-deliberate way as Keebo took over as protagonist. Tsumugi pandered to the audience by trying to twist the story to be all about them and not this story’s actual goddamn cast, then completely forgot about that moments later as she forced an arbitrarily cruel final vote on the students that has nothing to do with actual hope and despair, apparently Kaito’s efforts in trial 5 suddenly mean nothing because it turns out the audience is totally okay with unfair executions after the mastermind broke the rules, and Keebo kept spouting a familiar meaningless buzzwordy hope that didn’t address any of his friends’ actual reasons for being in despair, which the audience lapped up because they’re morons while Keebo utterly failed to consider that maybe what they want from him isn’t actually a good thing.

Keebo’s already chosen to become the first arbitrary pointless sacrifice of the vote, and the Mass Panic Debate we just finished was supposedly him trying to inspire one of the others to do the same, even though he wasn’t even shooting his hope at them.

“Nekomaru”: “Even if you won’t give up, as long as you don’t sacrifice someone el—”

Not giving up is the definition of hope! Doing anything other than that should not be necessary for hope to “win”, you arbitrary fucking murderer!

But one way or another, whether due to Keebo’s nonsensical Hope Bullet efforts or not (I’d very much like to think not), Maki chooses to sacrifice herself.

Maki: “If Keebo and I sacrifice ourselves… then Shuichi and Himiko live, right? Then they can… survive this absurd killing game…”

Of course it would be her. Her backstory meant that she’d never cared all that much about her own survival or her own suffering, so if she can die to let at least Shuichi and Himiko live, then that’s no real loss, right? Kaito only helped so much with her sense of self-worth… and maybe his influence has been dampened right now because of all the bullshit Tsumugi has been spouting.

Shuichi: “Maki…?”

There’s a very subtle wavering to Shuichi’s voice here beneath his surprise. He can’t bear the thought of losing her too, and it’s this pain that’s going to lead to him figuring everything out and fighting back.

Maki: “I don’t want this killing game to end with despair. That would just… piss me off.”

Tsumugi: “Even if you only feel that way cuz I wrote you like that? Just like with Kaito…”

Tsumugi’s still bullshitting about the Kaito part, but otherwise what she’s saying is not entirely wrong. Despair being bad is self-evident and you don’t need to be written a specific way to think that. But the feeling of needing to “defeat” despair is something that’s still a part of Maki being manipulated, not by the way she was originally written, but by that Flashback Light in chapter 5. Maki still can’t quite see that to its fullest extent, despite having long since realised that the main point of that Flashback Light was to manipulate her into killing Kokichi.

Maki: “Even then… I’ll choose that ending if it means I can kill you. Even if I have to sacrifice my life, I will kill you!”

Now that’s something that’s how Maki’s always been written. Deal with problems that have no easy solution by killing them, and definitely kill the big evil mastermind no matter what you have to sacrifice to do so. Maki Roll, can’t you see that this is exactly like what you were trying to do for the first half of Kaito’s trial?

This would at least be Tsumugi’s writing backfiring on her, if this “punishment” she was going to receive was actually death. But since it’s not, she’s quite happy with Maki choosing this, and guh.

“Makiiii”

“my darling assassin T_T”

“That’s my Maki.”

“Assassiiiiin”

Maki has fans. Her fans seem somewhat possessive of her (although at least she doesn’t have the total sicko that Shuichi has). It also seems that some of them are hung up on the idea that she’s an assassin and don’t see her as so much more than that, as if the only reason they like her is a shallow “hurr durr schoolgirl assassin hot”, rather than any of the many things that have been compelling and interesting about her character and her arc. She deserves so much better than this.

“ALL OF THESE TEARS”

“;_; i’m gonna cry…”

At least a few of them are actually having meaningful, human reactions to this – a character they love is going to sacrifice herself for her friends! This is sad! …or, well, it would be if the sacrifice was at all meaningful and not completely arbitrary, but, you know.

“Another hope loop?”

This might finally be a vague allusion to other seasons we haven’t seen. I can kind of imagine a “hope loop” becoming the fandom term for one particular way in which the meaningless arbitrary hope ending was once resolved, but it doesn’t sound like it’s referring to DR1 or 2 specifically.

“Shuichi looks yummy <3”

I’m going to keep giving you updates on this one person just so you can keep seeing how much of an absolute creep they are.

Tsumugi: “I told you over and over there’s nothing for you out there.”

Keebo: “No, once the audience sees this ending, I’m sure they’ll help us.”

Oh, poor naïve Keebo, thinking that the audience is a force for good and actually gives a fuck about any of his friends when they’ve been watching them die. When they’ve been doing this for fifty-three seasons and keep wanting more. This ending right now is not meaningfully different from any of the previous ones and is not going to change anything about the audience’s behaviour at all, Keebo.

Shuichi: “It’s because of hope that this whole thing is happening!”

But Shuichi gets it! He’s figured it out! I also love the emotion in his voice here. All of Shuichi’s (English) voice acting in this last part of the trial we’re entering is just fantastic.

The music used for Shuichi’s Rebuttal Showdown here is Clair de Lune again, which is lovely. It’s like that’s become less Kaede’s song and more just a song for Shuichi’s sadness over losing his friends.

It’s a neat twist that the last Rebuttal Showdown is against the game’s actual protagonist. This is possibly the easiest one in the whole game, with Shuichi’s words coming in completely horizontal, unmoving lines. He’s just explaining the plain truth of the matter. He’s not wrong and he’s not trying to get in anyone’s way; he’s about to fix this whole ridiculous mess.

Keebo: (Shuichi… why? Is this the power of despair? Or…)

Yes, Keebo, despair is clearly so powerful and so evil that it dares to make Shuichi not talk like hope is the best thing ever. It couldn’t possibly be that Shuichi’s actually making complete sense and isn’t in despair any more and you should listen to him.

Buuut, Keebo’s only bullet (or, well, blade) is still just “hope”, so he still thinks that’s the only possible solution to this situation.

Keebo: “Despair takes everything from people! Even their strength to press onward! That’s why it’s not possible for despair to be better!”

Keebo, you absolute moron, this isn’t about which one is better! Obviously Shuichi knows that hope is a better feeling to have than despair, because he’s not an idiot! But no matter what Tsumugi’s trying to make it sound like, this isn’t about proving any kind of point like it was in DR1; this is about what happens next. This is about whether the outcome of the vote, regardless of which meaningless label is slapped on it, is something we’re actually okay with, including the fact that the killing game will keep happening if we do this.

“Shuichi is the cycle of despair?”

“What are you saying, hat boy?”

“What if Shuichi is the mastermind?”

“You’re slipping up, detective.”

“Fire, Keebo! I’ll allow it!”

Aaaaaand the audience has suddenly completely stopped caring about Shuichi as a character because he dared to say a bad word about hope. This is again not remotely what an actual reasonable, human audience that’s been enjoying this story up until now would ever do, and this time it can’t just be the cherry-picked minority of despair lovers, because this is the people who are rooting for “hope”. A reaction something like “well, he’s kind of got a point, but I still want more killing games…” would be reasonable, but not just immediately denouncing him the moment he questions them. Did they not even care about Shuichi at all during the five chapters they’ve seen of him and the arc he’s had?

Shuichi: “The people watching probably feel the same way… They want hope, too.”

Oh, Shuichi, you are giving them far too much credit. You’re assuming that the “hope” they’re obsessed with is actual hope that will inspire them in their daily lives. It sure would be realistic and understandable and relatable if that was the actual way the narrative was portraying this, but it really isn’t.

Shuichi: “Even if it’s fiction, everyone wants to feel hope… It gives them… courage.”

That should be how this works. And I love that Shuichi clearly understands this on a personal level. Now would be a very relevant time to remind everyone that Shuichi’s Likes in the report card are listed as “Novels”. Which means that, most likely, he always used fiction to give himself courage, especially when he had so little courage on his own in the first place! Shuichi understands better than any of these one-dimensional morons in the audience exactly what gaining real hope from fiction really feels like!

Shuichi: “While they ignore all the tragedies that we had to suffer to get there!”

Keebo: “Shuichi, that’s—”

Monokuma: “Then let’s start the Voting Time!”

Hah, Monokuma sure does jump in quick. He’s afraid of Shuichi pointing out what’s really going on here and how real all their suffering is and making the audience realise that maybe they shouldn’t actually want this after all, isn’t he.

Shuichi halts them to ask what the “punishment” for this vote will be, because he’s already figured out what it is. If we’d been playing as him, we’d have seen plenty of inner monologue of him slowly realising this and piecing it together as Tsumugi rambled on and on. But since we’re not seeing inside his head right now, all Keebo has seen is Shuichi being almost completely quiet and then suddenly jumping in with a fully-formed theory explaining exactly what’s going on and why this vote is bad. Shuichi really does look like a hero from the outside.

Shuichi: “That’s what Rantaro was talking about.”

…

Rantaro: “You wanted this killing game, so you have to win no matter what. …No matter what.”

…

Shuichi: “Something similar must have happened in the last killing game, and he was given a choice. He sacrificed himself… and was forced to participate again.”

See, Rantaro wasn’t the only survivor of his killing game. There were two actual survivors who got to escape into the outside world just like Shuichi and Himiko hypothetically would here. Rantaro just sacrificed himself to allow for that. (In my headcanon, those two survivors were both girls and kind of reminded Rantaro of his sisters and that’s why he chose to do that.) It’s still a stretch to think that Rantaro would ever have thought of that as “wanting” this killing game like his message said, though, so I still think that line was mostly there just to make chapter 4’s opening stinger mysterious.

But man, spare a thought for Rantaro’s two friends who survived and escaped, dreading to watch Rantaro go through this again while having forgotten about them, but watching anyway because they have to know what happens to him… and then seeing him be the very first one to die. That has to have been awful. I hope that when Shuichi, Maki and Himiko do escape, they find those two and every other pair of survivors from each past killing game and start some kind of big therapy group to deal with their trauma together and share stories of their lost friends and reassure themselves that they’re all still real.

Shuichi: “Tsumugi will still be the mastermind, Keebo will still represent the viewers… and Maki will be the new Ultimate Survivor. The killing game will begin again.”

Even if Maki wouldn’t necessarily die in this outcome, the fact that she’d lose her memories of everything in this killing game and forget about Kaito and Shuichi and be reset back to the guarded, lonely, self-loathing assassin she was at the beginning would still be awful and unacceptable. Especially since Kaito was one-in-a-million and the next game probably wouldn’t have anyone willing to help her out of it again.

It’s a little odd to think that Tsumugi would still be the mastermind? I always assumed Tsumugi wasn’t the mastermind of Rantaro’s game, simply because if she then also masterminded this game as well, it’d ruin the mystery for the audience. Unless she usually cosplays as some made-up character and this is the first time she’s ever played as herself (or at least someone who looks like herself and superficially shares her nerdiness but is less terrible and murdery).

“Izuru”: “Then it’s despair? You’re going to choose despair to end the killing game? …How boring.”

“Celeste”: “But this is fine. Our audience loves despair, so this will please them too.”

Will it? I mean, maybe it would if it were actual despair, since there’s emotional investment you can get from that even if it’s nothing but painful emotions. But what’s actually going to happen with the “despair” outcome of this vote is simply Shuichi, Maki and Himiko (and apparently Tsumugi) continuing to live isolated, boring lives in the academy without any more killings. That’s not a despair ending, that’s a boredom ending. Precisely the kind of thing the audience shouldn’t want.

Keebo: “Then… hope has to win this game, too. If we continue to win for hope, then this killing game will surely end someday!”

Keebo, dude. You’re going to continue doing the thing that Shuichi has just explained is exactly what causes more killing games to happen… and then you’re just going to hope that eventually they’ll stop happening anyway? You are not being very smart right now. If you’re going to hope for something to happen, you should also at least act in a way that might help make it come true, otherwise your hope is useless.

Shuichi: “When Maki said she was going to sacrifice herself just now, I thought… Why? So many of our friends have sacrificed their lives. Why Maki? Why now? Why do we have to go through it again…? The sorrow of losing Kaede… and Kaito… Why do we have to feel that sadness over and over and over again…? Why do we have to bear that burden…?”

I love Shuichi here so much. I love that he’s realised what this means and that it’s cruel and unfair and wrong.

Shuichi: “Well, I don’t care how much the audience wants it, I’m not gonna feel that way anymore! I don’t want anyone to feel that way anymore!”

I love that he’s realised that the audience wants this from him and how fucked-up that is! I love that he’s thinking that not just for himself, but for every hypothetical character in future seasons who’d ever have to go through this same pain if they don’t end this right here!

I just… really wish that that actually seemed like what the in-universe audience wanted at all. Some people were sad when Maki offered to sacrifice herself, but not a single person was thinking “oh man Shuichi’s going to be devastated to lose another best friend” and empathising with the pain Shuichi’s feeling here and enjoying doing so in that immersed, in-story way. Instead, they just immediately stopped seeing him as a person the moment he spoke out against them and their precious “hope”.

The thing is, I’m still enjoying Shuichi’s emotional pain here! Of course I am! Because I care about him and I’m empathising with him, and all of this is making me want him to succeed and get what he wants and never have to feel like this any more, even as I’m enjoying that he’s feeling this way right now.

And, see, while the in-universe audience are obviously inherently more twisted than an out-universe audience because the people they’re watching aren’t really fictional and they know this, that doesn’t have to automatically make them this kind of one-dimensional asshole who can’t even empathise with the characters or engage with this like it’s a meaningful story at all. Things could still have been made to work while having them basically respond to Shuichi and his story like those of us on the other side of the real fourth wall.

Enjoying actual genuine fiction requires suspension of disbelief, compartmentalising away and ignoring the knowledge that it’s all made-up, so that you can get invested and care about what happens. So in a similar way, it might be just about believable if we could be shown that this in-universe audience has instead been suspending their knowledge that it’s real, compartmentalising away and trying to ignore the fact that real people are suffering, so that they can still enjoy this and keep watching despite knowing that people – uhhh, characters, definitely not real people – are going to die. Then they could have been reacting to this approximately like a real person watching genuine fiction would (you know, with actual investment in and empathy for the characters), until Shuichi blows the lid off their wilful ignorance right here and forces them to confront their awfulness.

Shuichi: “Even if this is fiction, even if we’re all fictional… The pain in my heart is real! The sadness I feel when I lose the people I love is real!”

I am so, so glad that he’s realised this! This is one of my favourite moments in this trial and completely restored all the faith first-time-me had lost during all the ridiculousness of last post. This is exactly what we need to be talking about and really should never have stopped talking about – the fact that of course they’re still real people regardless of how fake their memories were. They still really felt all that pain, and they still really meant everything they did for their friends, and they still really died, regardless of the “writers” that were sometimes pulling strings behind the scenes.

And I adore the way Shuichi calls them “the people I love”. He’s not talking about specifically romantic love here, because he doesn’t have to be. Of course he loved them anyway regardless of what kind of love it was; they were his friends and they gave him all of his strength and meant everything to him. If anyone tries to use this line as proof that Shuichi must have had romantic feelings for Kaito as well, they’re completely missing the point. Using the word “love” in a platonic sense will always melt my heart and it’s especially so in this context here.

Although, while Shuichi is using this pain of his to prove to himself that he’s still meaningfully real, I do wish there was a little bit of time spent on the realisation that, since they all must have felt the same way as him, his friends must have been real, too. Being deceived into thinking they were just lies was what caused Shuichi to fall into despair, and there’s no way he’d have been able to climb out of that despair and talk so passionately about losing his friends if he didn’t truly believe once again that their lives were worth exactly as much as a “real” person’s. He has definitely figured this out by now, but it’s kind of a shame he never directly mentions it.

Shuichi: “I won’t forgive this game that treats us like toys. And if this is what the world wants… then I reject that world! I’ll fight the world that inflicts suffering for entertainment!”

Shuichi is being such a hero and Kaede and Kaito would be so proud to see him like this!

And it’s still inconceivable that seeing him like this isn’t what the audience wants. This is a far more inspiring and meaningful story than any of the nonsense Keebo has been spouting. They should be cheering Shuichi on, not Keebo – even if that means cheering Shuichi on against themselves.

“What are you saying, detective?”

“Forget about Shuichi.”

But nope. The audience doesn’t care about him. Now that he’s speaking out against them, they’d rather just drop him entirely.

“You’re in despair, right?”

“It’s okay to feel despair sometimes…”

Yes, clearly the only reason Shuichi is saying this is because he’s being controlled by that super-evil force known as “despair”, not because he’s right.

“C’mon, Keebo! Attack!”

“hurry up and refute it!”

“Force hope through!”

And of course, they just want Keebo to yell more words about hope at Shuichi, because doing that will totally change his mind and make him think inflicting suffering for entertainment is okay. Yelling emptily about hope can achieve anything, right?

“The big reveal, at last.”

Uhh, no? What does this person even think the “reveal” is supposed to be – the fact that these characters aren’t actually fictional and that watching them suffer for entertainment is fucked up? That’s not a reveal, that’s something that should have been apparent from the start but everyone has been wilfully ignoring. (And it’s something that everyone should now be forced to confront whether they like it or not, but apparently almost nobody is.)

“mmm… shuichi’s eyes ^q^”

This “fan” of Shuichi’s is still here. And they still don’t actually give a fuck about him and haven’t been paying attention to anything he’s been saying or feeling at all.

“Why have we been doing this…?”

You! You, right there, are the one sensible actual human being in this whole stupid audience! This is what everyone should be thinking right now – realising that Shuichi has a goddamn point and that this whole practice is vile and that if they actually care about any of these characters at all then they should want what Shuichi wants, which is to end all this and never have another killing game again!

“something’s different, right?”

“Are they blaming us?”

These ones are more ambiguous, but it is possible that these two people are also vaguely starting to realise that what they’re doing is not okay. Maybe.

Tsumugi: “It doesn’t matter what you do. No matter what a fictional character does or says, it’s just fiction to the outside world.”

See… based on the audience’s current comments, it’s really seeming like this is actually true, in this world. Those three just now are the only comments during this part that give any sense of people actually listening to Shuichi’s words. The overwhelming majority are like the ones I quoted at the beginning, complaining about Shuichi’s outlook and wanting Keebo to “fix” things for them.

Shuichi: “I… refuse to vote.”

Tsumugi: “Refuse to vote…?”

Keebo: “Monokuma said that if we don’t vote, we’ll be killed for breaking the rules!”

Shuichi: “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”

And here’s this rule which has been vaguely a thing in the background of all the Danganronpas but was pointedly highlighted at the beginning of almost every trial in this one, making it kind of obvious it’d somehow be important later on. It’s also quite relevant that Monokuma’s declarations of this rule always explicitly said that not voting would result in death, not just “punishment”, because it means Tsumugi can’t suddenly pull a loophole and pretend this still just means they get forced into another killing game.

(Although that’s only assuming that the audience still cares about her following the rules, which, ha fucking ha.)

Shuichi: “If this ends without a single vote being cast for hope or despair… The audience would hate it. They’d never accept an ending like that… So I abstain! I refuse to give the outside world the ending it wants!”

I appreciate Shuichi’s determination and willingness to give his life to end this killing game for good and give a huge fuck-you to the audience… but honestly, it’s kind of flimsy that this would actually achieve that. It’s hard to believe that, over fifty-three seasons, there haven’t been a few kind-of-disappointing endings here and there (even accepting that this audience laps up meaningless buzzwordy hope-versus-despair nonsense like this). But surely the occasional boring ending would only make people shrug and hope the next season is better, and it’d take several in a row for them to finally think things will never get better and the show might as well just end.

Which, to be fair, might have been happening already if this season took longer than usual to come out and some people weren’t sure it ever would. But that apparent fact was buried in some obscure audience comments and wasn’t something Shuichi seemed to notice, so he shouldn’t be nearly so sure that this would work.

Plus, it shouldn’t only be about the ending – the rest of the story is a part of the story too. The other trials in this game have mostly been fantastic and there should be no way the audience wouldn’t want more of that kind of thing, no matter how disappointingly it ends!

…This should also still not actually be a disappointing ending at all, because look at what an amazing hero Shuichi’s managing to be! He’s willing to give his life to stop the real villain behind all this – not some meaningless concept of “despair”, but the people who actually wanted him and his friends to suffer! This is still something that it should be possible for the audience to accept makes a good story, despite the fact that they themselves are the villains in it.

Keebo: (Hope… won’t end the killing game? If that’s true, then this feeling that I must win for hope is…)

Geez, Keebo, glad you’ve finally caught up with us. It really should not have taken you this long.

It’s pretty neat that the “lying” mechanic as used here with Keebo isn’t actually lying – hope is just a concept, it’s not even a fact that you can lie about. Instead, it’s representing Keebo finally choosing to ignore and go against what his inner voice is telling him to do. The only weapon he has is hope, but that doesn’t mean this is the only choice he has.

“What are you doing, Keebo?”

“Hurry up and side with hope.”

“COME BACK HOOOPE”

“it’s hope again, right?”

And of course, the majority of the audience is not happy about this. Really, though, Shuichi has already ruined their hope ending by pointing out that this “hope” is arbitrary and cruel, and no amount of empty yelling about hope from Keebo could change that now even if he did keep listening to them.

“show us maki roll!”

This single comment here is the closest anyone in the audience ever gets to even vaguely acknowledging Kaito’s existence, since they’re using the nickname he gave her. And the utter lack any other mention of Kaito from the audience is quite clearly another thing that is completely Unrealistic and Wrong. Kaito was the best, and a significant amount of the audience should have been invested enough in his story and his influence on Shuichi and Maki to still be occasionally mentioning him here.

“i wanna break Shuichi’s fingers <3”

I sincerely hope that when Shuichi gets out of here, he ends up absolutely nowhere near this person and they never figure out where he’s living. Geez. Go and re-examine your life, you sick creep.

Keebo: “I may be a robot, but the thought of my friends dying still fills me with sadness. I don’t want anyone else to feel this way!”

You know, if they’d actually done anything at all with Keebo’s issues about being a robot, it could have worked pretty well in this trial. He’s always been struggling to fully understand the feelings of “real” humans, and so he should have also struggled to justify to himself that his own feelings matter even though they’re just being “simulated” by computer software. But he still feels it, so it still matters, robot or not. That’s exactly the kind of argument Shuichi had to make to himself to justify that he’s still real. Keebo could have been the perfect person (among those still with us) to help Shuichi and friends come to terms with the existential issues that this trial has given them! If only Keebo had had an actual proper character arc about accepting himself as just as much of a person despite being a robot, and also if only he’d ever been trying to give his friends actual hope during this whole deal. His character has so much wasted potential.

His protagonist status wears off here, which is an appropriate moment for it to do so. All he was ever meant to do as the audience’s protagonist was to keep the cycle going and keep more killing games happening, and now that he realises that, he doesn’t want to be their protagonist any more.

“gonna dismantle you, Keebo.”

Oh boy, here’s some foreshadowing to what they actually end up doing, because apparently none of them ever really cared about Keebo as a character or a person.

“WTF? You already killed each other?”

As if the fact that the murderers were all participants of the game makes everyone in the game a bad person and therefore it doesn’t matter if they suffer and die? As if most of the actual murderers were even bad people and not good people desperately trying to save everyone and/or being manipulated into it? Yeah, no, sure, this was all just a meaningless slaughterfest and so it’s totally okay for them to all continue to die.

“the questionnaires were pointless?”

I mean, it’s not like you guys ever affected Keebo’s actions in any meaningful way up until now anyway; I don’t know why you’re so disappointed.

“Shuichi has a point.”

Hello, sensible person! I don’t know if this is the same person as that one from before, but it’s nice to see at least a tiny, tiny fraction of the audience getting it. It really is such a tiny fraction, though – the vast majority of people are still just complaining about not getting what they wanted. And I’d like to just put this down to the fact that the people who are realising this are also nice enough to then stop watching and stay out of the comments section – but, no. The comments section is exactly where these people who’ve realised this should be, because they should be trying to persuade everyone else to agree with them and realise that this is fucked up and no longer want this!

Shuichi: “New characters are created just to show the outside world a fictional hope. They get written into these killing games, forced to betray one another…”

I appreciate how Shuichi is describing them as being “created”, because it proves that he now understands that this is exactly what happens. This has nothing to do with the pregame assholes who auditioned and wanted this; they just donated their bodies. The characters who are actually in this killing game never wanted any of this, yet they were literally created to suffer. That is not fucking okay and Shuichi will not let it continue. No-one else will ever be created for that purpose. He and his friends are the last.

Shuichi: “To end this killing game, and end it forever… We will reject Danganronpa!”

This whole speech here accompanies Shuichi’s protagonist status switching back on, and it has pretty nice dramatic effect. He’s being a hero!

Shuichi: “Tsumugi… you were right. I’m weak. I’m weaker than anyone else… If I didn’t have my friends, I’d be useless. That’s true even now!”

It’s lovely that Shuichi is okay with this. He realises that this is the character Tsumugi wrote him to be… but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still who he is, and it doesn’t mean he’s not real.

But he’s still not giving himself enough credit at all. Yes, he’s only able to be strong when he has friends to rely on and inspire him, but all that potential strength is still right there inside him, ready to be brought out by the right people! All he needs is a little nudge in the right direction, from the right kind of heroes.

Shuichi: “If Keebo and Maki didn’t stand up… I would have ended it all right then.”

It’s really sad to think what Shuichi probably means when he says “end it all”. Kind of like the way he once said that Kaito “saved his life”, without ever properly elaborating on what he meant by that.

But still, Shuichi – Keebo and Maki may have chosen to sacrifice themselves, but you’re the one who used the pain of that to realise that you’re still real and figure out what everything meant. They weren’t trying to encourage you to do that, or even to be strong at all, when they made their choice. That all came from you, and from your own strength that you’ve built up through Kaede and Kaito’s belief in you. You’re not as weak as you were at the beginning, not by a long shot!

Shuichi: “But it’s because I’m weak and because I lost my way… that I finally realized. I finally realised how cruel this “hope” really is.”

It’s cruel because the best way to write a good story is to have characters that are weak and suffer like Shuichi has been. The most inspiring type of heroes who give people the most hope aren’t the ones who are perfect and invincible, but the ones who struggle and suffer and yet still manage to win in the end. Shuichi has realised, because of his own suffering and the fact that he’s managed to claw his way through it anyway, that this is the kind of thing the audience should want to see, because it gives them the hope that they can overcome their weaknesses and struggles in the same way. A storyline like Shuichi’s should be exactly what the audience wants and exactly why this has happened so many times to so many real people who didn’t deserve to suffer for this.

I say “should be”, because this isn’t even remotely what the in-universe audience actually wants to see at all. It’s honestly bizarre how obvious the divide is between what Shuichi is describing as a genuinely inspiring engaging fiction that should be the reason the audience keeps wanting this, and the one-dimensional idiocy that this nonsensical audience apparently wants instead. If the out-universe writers are able to write Shuichi talking about the audience wanting this kind of story, they should also be perfectly capable of writing the audience actually wanting it! This shouldn’t be difficult.

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[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #class trial #commentary

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airlock · 5 years

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airlock grades the Gharnef archetype

so, I got a random hankering to start a text post series where I launch myself off on reviews of each character from a certain villainous archetype in Fire Emblem -- and hey, it’s a reasonably nice time of the year to be doing posts like these, what with that new upcoming entry that we learn more about each day, isn’t it?

to kick off the festivities, I’m doing one of my favorites -- let’s see who wore the heavy robes better!

(do note: under cut are spoilers for... everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might like. you’ve been warned! but if you’d still persist, you childish sword lord, then come along and meet my challenge-)

the man himself

(6/10)

although the execution suffers from myriad flaws -- of which several can be touted to stem from storage space limitations in FE1 and FE3, but are inexcusably retained in the remakes -- it’s not for no reason that this fellow spawned a lengthy line of imitators.

the detail of his backstory and motivation is brillant; he’s a perfectly understandable villain without being remotely redeemable -- a much-needed class in antagonist writing for more recent entries of the series. he’s also effective as a terrifying, genuinely threatening villain, implacable and powerful.

unfortunately, however, his excellently written characterization is largely confined to flavor; it fails to inform his actions or the flow of the plot, and so, he tends to come across as a plot device instead of a character. even his takeover of Khadein is written very powerfully for something that isn’t seen and barely influences any of the game’s events. and although his sheer ambition in withholding Falchion to eventually betray Medeus ends up coming across as a plot action instead of something steeped in his essence. and this all to say nothing of his second appearance, where he fully forgoes being a character and behaves indistinguishably from a non-sentinent madness-inducing talisman.

overall, he’s a splendid concept for a villain that is ultimately laid low in execution, largely because, back in his day, the text wasn’t big enough to comfortably carry him, and the more recent incarnations were ineffective in expanding it despite having more than enough room to do so.

I also docked a point or two for being an antisemitic/anti-roma stereotype in his earlier incarnations, what with the hooked nose and rare darker skintone; the remakes thankfully eschew this by swapping out the nose and making the skintone outright inhuman, but the more recent Heroes design, while an improvement on many fronts, seems to roll back on this one.

church gharnef

(6/10)

unlike the above-mentioned, this one was in a remake that changed a lot of things; I mention this as a healthy preface to the fact that I am only familiar with his more recent incarnation!

like Gharnef above, he’s an unforgivable, but genuine villain; while a lust for power is hardly fresh as far as motivations go, the game does reasonably well at establishing that he’s already powerful and influential, and has fallen to cruel orthodoxy in a bid to eliminate threats to his power at all costs -- in other words, his characterization is timelessly realistic.

unfortunately, however, that much is all text, if not outright fanon; the story proper restricts him to behaving as an unconvincing cacklefiend playing at a kidnap-the-princess plot that the princess in question should’ve been too strong and too smart to fall prey to. making Celica a somewhat willing hostage instead of a helpless captive was a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t cover the distance; it would have been far more interesting if Jedah had gotten the chance to overpower Celica in the arena of genuine manipulation through theological debate -- and on the other coin of things, I’m sure his preying on Celica’s fears would seem a lot more organic if not for how dedicated the game is to telling her that she’s wrong before she even takes the steps across the point of no return.

he’s much like the original Gharnef in being an intriguing concept that falls flat on execution, although with both of those qualities amped up -- even more interesting in theory, even flatter in practice.

discount gharnef

(2/10)

sorry not sorry for nicknaming him that!

I believe I’ve said it a number of times and I’ll say it again: Manfroy is a manipulative villain in a setting full of people who don’t need manipulation to make bad decisions and ruin their own lives. he comes across as a plot device at the best of times, and as a null factor at the worst of times; he brings nothing to any cutscene that he appears in.

Seliph’s visit to the Yied Shrine alludes to his backstory -- that which he shares with the rest of the cult -- but this instance is even poorer than previous examples at establishing a plot presence; it not only fails to inform Manfroy’s choices in any interesting way, but it’s also outright contradicted by his actions sometimes (cfr: withholding the Naga tome, in a move that brings Gharnef’s playbook to mind but makes no sense at all for Manfroy).

points have been docked again for racial stereotyping, also; the sprite alone doesn’t make it very evident but he’s also got a face that can be used as a fishing pole.

irrelevant gharnef

(1/10)

Veld is a step beneath even Manfroy, as yet another pointless manipulative villain -- notorious for stealing a slice of agency from one of the far more genuine antagonists of the setting -- who doesn’t make his presence felt at all. I was halfway tempted to consider Raydrik the actual Manfroy here, even.

he retains one point only for not being a racial stereotype, for once.

the absence of a gharnef

(wha?/10)

Binding Blade, for all its highly repetitious usage of archetypes (being, in fact, arguably responsible for making them a thing in the first place, where they were previously just repetitive Kaga quirks), seems to have eschewed the Gharnef. this actually somewhat works in its favor; although the game’s plot is ultimately one of the shallower ones in the series, the lack of a core manipulative villain puts the focus on the self-interested factionalism that each country suffers from as they fail to mobilize a resistance against the primary villain. so, overall, an approach that would have worked out great in Jugdral.

monsterfucker gharnef

(8.5/10)

where Binding Blade had succeeded in building a plot that doesn’t need a Gharnef, its prequel was successful in the opposite: creating one of the most effective incarnations of the archetype to date, and making him front and center, to boot.

although all Gharnefs thus far have been manipulative villains, Nergal and his cronies are the first ones who show true skill in manipulation -- as in, conning people into acting against their interests, in situations where they otherwise would not have. through this, he cements himself as the primary antagonist and driver of the plot, where his predecessors were content, if dishonest, in serving a greater evil. and he brings very perceptible weight to the position, specially in the scenes where he presses the buttons of the heroes; although he fails to ultimately discourage them from defeating him, it comes across as a result of heroic strength, not of ineffective villainy.

that said, however he shimmers and shines as the heavy, he’s somewhat held back by his backstory -- one that only partially succeeds at informing his actions (however compelling it is when it does manage to do so), and worse, is largely locked to second-playthrough bonuses, where the story would’ve benefitted much more from naturally doling out his secrets along the way.

I also docked a half-point because the pseudo-turban and goatee arguably veer into the racial stereotype territory again, although he at least has the point-for of not having an outright gonk design (even when the turban goes off). I should be clear: it’s not that I oppose having nonwhite/nonwestern elements on an antagonist at all, it just comes across rather poorly when certain elements are only seen on antagonists, and especially if it’s always on the ugly ones.

twink gharnef

(10/10)

Lyon is the apex of plot-driving gharnefs, plain and simple. undeniably sympathetic, but impossible to save, whether he’s too far gone or was never redeemable to begin with -- and in fact, this ambiguity is easily the most brillant aspect of all of the writing in Sacred Stones.

he’s characterized effectively from wire to wire: his appearance, mannerisms and fond flashbacks do an excellent job of disarming the player while setting them up for a staggering plot twist, but the game is also not too hesitant to bring the plot twist to fruition and saves enough time to keep building on him past the point when the big secret is out -- sidestepping a pervasive trap that otherwise often causes plot twists to weaken stories. and all the way to the end, it’s difficult to narrow his character down to one narrative that doesn’t feel strictly like a personal interpretation; there are as many Lyons as there are players, right down to the point where he comes across differently depending on whether you’re playing as Eirika or Ephraim!

there’s also credit to be given to the remainder of the cast that effectively props him up; because he has underlings that behave strongly on their own motivations -- and sometimes beyond even Lyon’s control -- he spares himself from behaving as a plot device to focus fully on serving as the genuine core of the story as a whole. I suppose he’s a good delegator if nothing else, eh?

depression gharnef

(4/10)

unlike the above, Sephiran fails crucially in one regard: he’s set up as an extremely endgame plot twist, which, coupled with a frantic, breathless third act that insuffices to fully explore the implications of the reveals it dishes out, causes his reveal to land closer to shock value than to the completion of an arc.

while his backstory is breathtakingly fascinating, it serves exclusively as a footnote to eulogize him with; it’s not just that his actions don’t seem to be informed by it, but rather that his actions completely lack weight in the plot, making it even somewhat arguable to class him as a Gharnef at all. in Path of Radiance, he only appears as an irrelevant mystery, and Radiant Dawn coming out to accredit him for some number of Ashnard’s deeds fails to budge that one’s sheer weight and doesn’t change perspectives.

it’s quite a shame, because in concept, he could’ve been the next Lyon; but the execution is painfully fragile, and amidst the complex web of characters and plots in Tellius, his greater-scope motions fail to be felt whatsoever until the late chapters of Radiant Dawn’s Part 3.

DIWNLF gharnef

(0/10)

(that’s “dad I would not like to fuck”, incidentally)

it’s not for no reason that this guy is the only major antagonist that Awakening doesn’t let you trip over still alive and kicking somehow. he is 100% plot device, adds nothing to the story or to any single scene that he appears in, lacks in personality, doesn’t present any sort of challenge that isn’t erradicated without fanfare by the protagonists, and doesn’t even have any sort of a backstory.

and he’s a racist stereotype on top of all that, so he doesn’t even get a mercy point like his similarly irrelevant predecessor from Thracia 776.

I have not played the game with this gharnef

(??/10)

I don’t even know if he counts; I see a lot of back-and-forth in that regard.

anyways, what do you all think? “oh my god someone finally said it”, or perhaps “I will kill you but not as hard as you assassinated my favorite antagonist”? if the upcoming Three Houses is to have a Gharnef, do you have any hopes for what they’ll be like? this is all nice and open to replies and reblogs, folks! don’t be shy! yes.... do it... succumb to the temptation.......

#airlock grades the villain archetypes #Fire Emblem is tagged in this post

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satchaccuss · 4 years

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SWJFO sure FEELS short at least.

This, like much of everything else I spew, is a rant. Sry.

Oh and there will be spoilers ahead for the game, so: sry.

Finished Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order yesterday (2019-12-01) and am now in the regular post-playthrough depression that always hits when finishing a game with no replay-value. Ooooh! Yeah I know some are gonna be mad at that, but it’s MY truth! The fact that the game doesn’t even have a new game or new game plus mode really drags. I bought it 2019-11-18, but because I was busy it wasn’t fully downloaded until 2019-11-22 and then I didn’t start playing until the next day and let’s say I then played maybe 3 hrs per day, let’s say everyday...then the game is around the 25 hrs mark, however: did I feel like it was time well spent? No. Did I feel satisfied with the ending? No.

Did I want to keep playing? For no reason? F*ck No! I mean I already got every secret and collectible before the final mission, so there is literally no reason to keep playing! This is the reason why dark souls has new game and new game plus modes, there is nothing to explore and do if you have already done it all! But if you get to play the game again, while keeping all outfits and weapons: you get some damn fine looking shots of your character looking awesome during boring-ass scenes you’ve already seen before! Honestly, the story was kind of meh in the end and the outfits were too few and the ponchos didn’t make any sense and the fact you don’t get to customize the colour of “you know what” until basically the end of the game just sucked all in all! Why wouldn’t you implement a “new game” mode in a game like this?! (I’m pretty sure the first one is just called “new game” and then the one after that is called “new game plus”, I think that was how dark souls did it at least, I can’t speak for the other games in the series tho it could have changed).

Seeing Cal wearing the outfit I chose and using the lightsaber I customized throughout the entire games cutscenes would be a much needed alleviation of a moderately boring story honestly... (But why can’t I change Cere’s saber piece on the other side?! I had to pick her piece for the other side too to make it look cohesive, and I didn’t like that, I didn’t want that, but it looks dumb otherwise!)

Yeah yeah, it isn’t as short as a usual indie-title, but it isn’t a Fallout game for sure, I mean I am still playing Fallout 4 every now and then because of all the shit you can do and all the different perks that can change your playstyle too... and because you can customize your character to look how you want and say kind of what you want and have it kind of matter and... *sigh*.

Why is this Star Wars game so good but so bad at the same time?

I liked that you could change the buttons... I didn’t like that you couldn’t re-bind all things to new buttons. I mean having the shoulder button be block/parry only works in dark souls where the shield actually felt like it was there and oh it’s hard to explain, but it didn’t work for me in this game, so I re-bound it to the B-button and made dodge the Y-button. However, I didn’t know that the game f*cked itself and took away the “drop ledge”-button as well when I changed B. Luckily I, through my massive brain’s incredible problem-solving skills, managed to figure out I could manually re-bind the drop-button to my dodge-button (Y). I did google it first tho and got no useful information: instead I got a f*ck-ton of same-y sounding whining about pc-keybindings, which, for a console-user like myself: is f*cking useless! Apparently not a single other soul had had my issue! In the end, like I said, I figured it out, but still: The fact that the game didn’t warn me that I had consequently un-bound another command as well when changing the dodge-button was really shitty. Oh well. ...the game making X and B (because of my changed buttons no doubt, but still), the way to do double saber attacks was f*cking hilariously dumb tho and the fact that I couldn’t change that attack to other buttons really irked me let me tell you! I had to release the camera and steer sticks both during the fight that the game wants you to do it to push both X and B at the same time to perform the stupid attack! I literally could never do it again after because it was a hassle to let go of the left stick to awkwardly hold the controller somehow and push X and B down at the same time, my word! A useless attack since I could never do it smoothly. Not really the games fault, but still. Anyway...

...why was Cal a ginger?! You can’t have a ginger wear a red or pink outfit! It clashes! Couldn’t they at least have made his hair more of a brow-ish shade to ensure it would go with most colour-schemes. Ginger doesn’t go with red or orange because it is red-ish or orange! Then again: colour-wise most of the ponchos didn’t work with the under-outfits either so, gah! Who designed the cosmetics in this game!? It never quite looked right to me.

...why was Anakin in it? I fail to imagine Anakin letting the empire murder children for no reason, yeah yeah: he murdered the kids in the temple that one time, but... he came back to his senses to rescue his son in the end tho right, so... Yeah ok, maybe not, but... I just don’t understand how torturing the kids make them inquisitors either, wouldn’t they just kill themselves right when they had the chance instead of actually doing the empires bidding after all they’d been through because of it? If Trilla was so angry at Cere for letting her get captured at all by giving up her potential location, why did she join and why did she stay? She could’ve killed her at practically any point, but didn’t and then she ended up dying in the end while kind of maybe kind of “forgiving” Cere anyway... I am confused as to how murdering force-users and kidnapping them and torturing them is even a viable plan at all, but then again I ain’t evil so... Sure sure, less potential jedi and all, but if one can turn to “the dark side” at any point then you can get off of it too at any point can’t ya? and if the kid was tortured to join you and stay, wouldn’t they be more likely to just f*ck off your “dark side”-shenanigans the moment you are out of earshot? Yeah, they make it sound hard, but I have no idea how this shit is supposed to work in the first place so what the heck do I know! Why is the “dark side” a thing in the first place? I thought the force was an all powerful omnipresent-kind-of-thing that moves through everyone and everything, why/how does it have a “dark side” if it is everywhere at all times? Technically, wouldn’t the ppl NOT force-sensitive and the ppl NOT using the force be the ones on the “dark side” of the force? They are the ones that don’t affiliate with it and can’t “feel” it after all... Technically the ppl on the “dark side” aren’t actually on a “side” of anything, they are just happening to use the force for evil. I can perhaps understand why the idiots in charge want something to blame, like our religious ppl inventing the devil, but the ppl that actually feel the force would know that there’s no such thing as a “dark side” of the force, right? And yet everyone, even Luke in that second new movie was all like “Oh my gawd Ray, you went immediately to the dark side, whine whine whine!” But the whole thing with you Luke was that you embraced balance, right? I mean you were all: green lightsaber but all black outfit and was so badass when ya rescued Han! It wasn’t Anakin that brought balance to the force like the prophecy Obi had had said: it was his son that managed it, right? Or was that retconned? ...anyway.

I feel like swjfo was so short and for the amount I paid for it, it sure as shit doesn’t feel worth it in the end. I mean, I was so shocked when I started up the game and was gonna load my save and saw that we were 54% or something through the game and the main story had barely picked up any pace!

This definitely felt more like a prequel to another, better, more story-rich and exploratory game.

I hope that they are making the next installment where we as Cal explore balancing the force and get to use force-lightning! (I was so disappointed you never got to learn that in this game, it would have been cool... if the game was longer and there was more to do and more things to fight and such!) The fact that Merrin joined so late in the story was dumb, but a hope that they will make the next installment where we together with her and the other crew get a bigger cooler ship and get to explore the world to get rid of the empire together and learn about the force and such too together and maybe romance her or something too I guess, but a male option for the rest of us that don’t want to see that straight shit would be nice too of course. But if their story progresses nicely and their chemistry grows naturally, I wouldn’t necessarily mind in the end if they go steady with each other.

Seriously tho, a warning from the game that there would be no more perks to be unlocked when I’d unlocked all of them would’ve been nice! At least an option to sink the extra points you could still get into health or force-meter or lightsaber attack strength, (kind of like in Asscreed Ori where ya could add points into increased arrow-damage or melee-damage of a small percentage indefinitely almost. I was literally expecting that to be the case with this game but nope!). Anyway, the second game should focus on us and the crew expanding our operation of defeating the empire by: gathering allies and tools and experience too I suppose and it should also focus on Cal beginning to research mastering all aspects of the force, maybe together with Merrin. Merrin herself should learn about the world and also learn it really wasn’t the jedi that were the cause of her loss and pain and grow as a person and grow closer to the og crew too. Not sure how to end that game tho.

The third and last installment should be one where we actually get to eradicate the empire and actually rebuild the world and potentially the order too. One where we get to actually find balance and get to use a red lightsaber and use force-lightning too without being evil! (That might be more of an end-game goal for the second game tho: Cal masters some of the many aspects of the force and gets to use force-lightning, but not enough to satisfy us maybe, so there’ll be a reason to play the third one or something lol). So: use a red lighsaber and more cool force powers including force-lightning and “master the force”, all the while also working to finish eradicate the empire. Maybe some world-building choices where we decide if or how the new jedi order should be and we become a council member and do council business and such. It could end with the entire world open too us, with little quests of minor significance but it’s something to do scattered around the planets and places on the planets, we get to “build bridges” with the ppl were are to protect as part of the new jedi order and heck, let me decide what should happen and then you just make the game for me yeah Respawn?

...anyway, final thoughts:

I am done with the game and have no reason to keep playing it. This makes me kind of sad, but in the end: the story was unsatisfyingly short and uninteresting and the ending left much to be desired. But! There is very minimal hope (knowing EA) that there will be more to come. Let us hope.

End of rant.

#swjfo #swjfo spoilers #starwarsjedifallenorder

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kiibearer-a · 5 years

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AND NOW FOR MY IN DEPTH REACTION POST TO KH3 IN ITS ENTIRETY:

( jokes on me I actually made this in depth )

What the absolute fuck was that. It’s not even meant in hostility, I just don’t at all get what any of that ending meant or what it was supposed to represent or support. I’ve spent all day thinking WORST CASE on what was possibly going to come of that ending. Was Sora going to die? Was Sora some how in relation with the Master of Masters, was Sora going to be Norted and made to fight everyone and it was their turn to fight against him—like all of these possible scenarios that could have been REMARKABLY worse than what we got. And frankly, I don’t even know what we got. I have no idea how to break that down and make anything from it, because this ENTIRE GAME just completely negated all the years of Sora’s journey in the span of two hours. There was just...so much unnecessary digging at all these holes that had been already been too deep that looking at this as a whole is just so exhausting because I don’t even know where to start. I can start by saying, none of this will probably change my interpretation of Sora or his motivations or his drive? It didn’t matter. The story absolutely did nothing to absolve a lot of the overarching and LOOMING impressions that it was giving, so, it just...doesn’t change Sora. WHICH HERES THE SCOOP ON SOMETHING I LITERALLY WAS PLANNING ON DOING THIS WEEK

( because I have no way to reorganize this, here begins the list of frustrations I guess : )

01. Sora’s resolution—So a big thing that really bothered me this game was this intense reminder that “Sora is nothing without everyone else”. Throughout the series as a whole, more specifically KH1, CoM and DDD, there are a lot of themes of this SCRUTINIZING “teasing” to Sora’s character that he is useless and incapable without the aide of others. Honestly, it’s more fair to say that Sora being the main character is whole heartedly an accident. It’s fair to call him dull, ordinary, unimpressive and unremarkable. But what captures so much of his character and WHY he is the main character is because he is all those things and that’s what makes him remarkably amazing to those around him. He exceeds every and all expectation because people think him incapable when he is profoundly capable, even by the thinnest of margins. His confidence only grows with others beside him. Sora is extraordinary because in every instance he faces, he overcomes the odds because he believes in how capable he is to solve it. He will do anything to fix a problem, he won’t stop until others are helped. And all of these things are also FLAWS. His flaws are his strengths because he’s learning how to grow from his mistakes and his failures. And from the previous settings of hearing people tell him how incapable he is because he’s not as good, not as tough or as smart—he grows because he’s trying to CHANGE to be better. And the same thing I have heard throughout the majority of this series is people telling him “Don’t ever change.” Sora has changed. He’s grown self-conscious, he’s anxious and hesitant. More reliant on others than himself. Because he’s been so stunted by this need to remain who he is, but unable to change and evolve from all the hurt and suffering he has endured and taken for others. And never got the chance to evolve from that AT ALL, this game. I was half expection with worlds like Tangled, and San Fransokyo, and the small hope of Moana that characters like Rapunzel, Hiro and Moana could show Sora that in these moments of weakness and incapability, just because you are alone or abandoned or scared and hurt, these things do not define who you are and who you are TO OTHERS. They test you to grow and change and believe in the way that you can make differences and learn from those mistakes and put downs. And Sora didn’t get that at all. 02. Kairi— First and foremost, I personally would want to apologize to every Kairi player there is because what Nomura did to her was awful. What has happened to Kairi this entire SEIRES, was awful and shameless and I’m just...really frustrated that I don’t have more sympathy to care for her the way I want to. She has been a bone for Sora to follow the whole time, she has been a fridge, she has been a set piece, a plot device, a plot foundation—all while never being able to control her own agency in the process. Every decision is made for her, and every decision she makes does not feel like her own. Her relationship with Sora feels so...stagnant despite all this pressure between their bond and their intertwined destinies. There is no foundation because we don’t know who the hell Kairi is. We don’t know what she likes, where she came from, what she wants because anything scripted will tell you “Sora”. And from her, Sora is her personality in these games. And it’s absolutely UNFAIR. The entire ending I sat there thinking, “Neat everyone is just...catching up like old friends, after you know, Sora seeing the one person he’s fought so hard to protect and keep safe just shatter in front of his eyes....AND NO ONE IS THE LEAST BIT CONCERNED, MUCH LESS SORA HIMSELF?” I felt Naminé had more people that cared about her than Kairi did, because in this strange pocket of tethers Kairi ONLY had Sora. She hardly interacted with Riku, or gave him the time of day, despite him also being a part of their friendship. She didn’t deserve ANY of that. She did not deserve to die to be Sora’s motivation for saving the world from darkness, and Sora shouldn’t have “died” at the expense of saving her. They have done enough for each other to prove their bonds and their ties that they didn’t need this self sacrifice to solidified what they meant to one another. Whatever the relationship between them, be it romantically inclined or not, they genuinely failed her. They failed to give Kairi the resolution she needed : which what to not be DEFINED by who Sora was to her.

03. Xenhanort— At this point I’ve fought them so much I don’t even care. I can genuinely say with @dawnbreaks as my witness, I did not die a SINGLE death this entire playthrough. Not once. There felt like little challenge, the stakes didn’t feel as severe as they maybe should have been and for all the work and effort anyone has put in to trying to understand what happened, and why we were fighting; there was no result satisfying that felt good enough to explain that. Why at the very end, did the organization members get agency and then were killed? Why at the last minute did Xehanort, a man HENOUS ENOUGH to spilt a boy apart and leave him for dead, kidnapper of several people who he in turn forced himself into vessels, a man PREPARED TO PURGE THE WORLD ANEW, suddenly changes at the presences of fwens and just STOPS. I get that “Oh this is a Disney title and we can’t have him going murder spree on everything”—LIKE ITS A TAD LATE, but wHY would you reform him. His actions are WHAT DEFINED HIM AS THE VILLAIN. He was cruel and uncaring, and intending to let everyone UNDERSTAND THE CASUALTY OF HIS SACRIFICE BEING NECESSARY. ...I hate when villains are shafted in their own cruelty because of a good triumphing evil. We know the difference and I’m sure the villain knows the difference in context. What makes a good villain is when their context can justify the reasoning behind what they do, it shows their motivations and their strive towards their goal ; often parallel to the hero. And most good villains don’t simply CHANGE because someone asks them not to. Otherwise why be a villain at all. 04. Sora’s Death ?— I love Sora. With all my heart and soul, I GENUINELY love him a lot. He has been a character who has been there for me through a lot of hard times, he’s been someone I aspire to be like and a character I have treasured DEARLY. At this point, I would have rather Sora stayed dead. At the first point in time when he ended up in the Final World, I would have rather that’s where he stayed. Aside from the fact that his story is becoming a dead horse beaten, sometimes death in stories happen. They are sad and upsetting and all around unfavourable, but his “death” was so...unnecessary. Much like Kairi’s. There was absolutely no reason for it to have happened to either of them, much less at the expense of EACH OTHER. It’s not romantic, it strengthens no bond and there was no WEIGHT behind either sacrifice. It was just to kill time. A brilliant example of a death made fair was Noctis. Noctis is another character who I truly love, who I enjoyed every step of his journey and in the end was absolutely devastated to lose. But his death MEANT something. Because I played an entire goddamn game that showed what he gave toward that sacrifice and how he went from a self-preserving child to a KING, who knew the sacrifice that was meant for not just HIS people but THE PEOPLE to survive. It was a death that was beautiful and tragic because it FUCKING MEANT SOMETHING TO ME, as a player, and watching Sora die for Kairi meant NOTHING. And that sounds so cruel and unfair, but its because she too died for nothing. She was not stopping Xehanort from anything. She was not a means to his end. She was not a driving force that could contain or deny his success. She was a girl who has and ONLY has been define by her relationship to Sora, and was used a pawn to motivate him, when he didn’t need it. And for Sora to do the exact same thing, after people who have fought themselves back from the brink for and with him, to let him just WALK away to retrieve her, and then just blink away, not only denies everything I did in this game. But it denies everything that Sora has done for her and that he’s meant to do for her. IN FACT, I plan on making a verse with the intention that Sora is dead. Because the idea of Sora even trading himself to restore her once sealing Kindgom Hearts is a far better outcome than just TRADING life tokens and waking up in a FFVX ripoff. I don’t understand what this game was trying to explain, narratively. Combat was fun. Seeing old characters rendered in the new engine was nice. Watching how more animated Sora was and over all his look and mannerisms and just following his journey again was comforting. But what did I do? And why. There was no point to anything that I just did in games prior, because all of it is gone in this one. And that’s really disappointing after waiting 13 years, to beat a game in five days.

#♛ . BE BACK WITH ICE CREAM / .ooc #//MAJOR KH3 SPOILERS #//KH3 spoilers #welp . here it is.#I am just...beyond words right now and like heres a lot of them #Seriously . please do not read this unless you've completed the game or have an understanding #i'd rather not be responsible for spoiling it #TDLR ; I'm probably gonna make a new verse in a couple days #my activity is coming back and I'm gonna get to things more proper and do some clean up #but like...good lord friends #what the heckie

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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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