#this cutscene isnt long but it tells so much about the characters and its very cute

[snakeeyesdraws]

Overly Analyzing the Super Mario 3D World story intro

So I've been playing Super Mario 3D World a lot, and since I haven't seen many people talk about the opening cutscene, I wanted to do that since it contains a lot of very cute animations!

This will kinda be a scene by scene analysis with me just pointing out things I like, but if you'd like to see the full cutscene in better quality than my screenshots, you can watch it here!

The scene starts off with all of the main playable characters going for a walk under a starry sky filled with fireworks. I know blue/yellow Toads have been staples of Mario games now, since they colour code the main characters and Mario is obviously red, but its does delight me that Blue Toad is just invited on this little walk with them.

(Also if you listen closely, you can hear Mario say "Ah Princess, what a beautiful evening!" and I thought that was cute)

Their walk is interrupted by Toad noticing something offscreen, and they run ahead to see a broken pipe in the middle of the path! Mario and Luigi closely examine it, and then we get...

ACTUAL PLUMBING FROM THE SUPER MARIO BROS!

Real talk, the more the series goes on the less relevant their status as plumbers often becomes, so anything that references it or shows them actually using their plumbing skills makes me so happy. And their tools are colour coordinated!

A bunch of power ups and the green Sprixie Princess pop out, and we get some classic 2d artwork, which I absolutely adore. More of this in every 3d game, please.

The ground and pipe start rumbling, and this is where I really wanna focus on the character animation of the main four here. All four of them start looking around for the source of the tremors, and we see both Peach and Luigi lifting their hands up, Luigi looking more anxious.

Bowser suddenly pops out of the pipe and roars, startling all four main characters. We can see very different reactions from all of them.

Toad and Peach jump before covering their ears, very clearly intimidated by Bowser's roar.

Luigi is the only one to fall over completely from Bowser's appearance. He stays on the ground and holds one hand up in front of his face, flinching when Bowser roars. Dude is clearly terrified by Bowser.

Mario does jump in surprise when Bowser pops up, but he's the only one who doesn't cower when Bowser roars. Instead, he immediately gets into a confrontational pose, with one hand held out protectively towards Peach. This isn't his first time dealing with Bowser, obviously, and his instincts are to prepare for a fight and to protect Peach.

However, Bowser's target this time isn't Peach, but instead the green Sprixie Princess. A lot of people poke fun at the set up for this game - "if Princess Peach isn't in danger, why do any of them care?" - but I always like when Mario & Luigi and the others try to rescue others simply because it's the right thing to do.

Bowser turns to glare at Peach and Mario, taunting them to react. Peach and Mario are both upset by the capture of the Sprixie Princess, but neither react too strongly to Bowser. Both of them have interacted with him enough to know what he's like.

Conversely, both Luigi and Blue Toad react much more when Bowser turns to them. Blue Toad stumbles onto one foot, while Luigi cowers back further, keeping his hand raised defensively, which seems to be a common mannerism of his when he's frightened. Bowser seems to be grinning a bit more in this pose, as if he knows he can get a bigger reaction out of these two.

When Bowser disappears down the pipe, all four of them regain their bearings and jump back up, reaching out for the green Sprixie Princess.

Peach is the first one to rush forward to the pipe. She sort of flounders on the edge of the pipe before she slips down it - yeah, I don't think she had a game plan there outside of trying to rescue the green Sprixie Princess. But proactive Peach being included on the adventure is always a win!

Before Luigi even lands his startled jump, Mario is already rushing forward to follow Peach down the pipe, and Toad is right behind him. I'd say it's out of mostly courage on Mario's end, and mostly out of loyalty to the princess on Toad's.

Then we get to my favourite animation of this scene (can you tell I'm biased?)

While Mario and Toad follow Peach down the pipe, Luigi pulls himself together and slaps his cheeks twice to hype himself up. It's one of my favourite quirks for characters to do, and it's doubly endearing on characters who are timid in nature. Luigi was arguably the most started and scared by Bowser's appearance, but he knows he has to do something! Totally adopting this as a common mannerism of his

Luigi then follows the others down the pipe, and they travel to the first world of the game, bringing the opening cutscene to a close.

Fun fact; since I've only ever played this game solo, and since I main Luigi, I assumed that his animation of landing on his stomach outside of the pipe was unique to him, since he's established as quite clumsy.

But in 4 player mode, you can see all of them coming out of the pipe together, and Mario lands on his stomach too. Just thought that was a cute detail.

So that's the opening cutscene of Super Mario 3D World! It's not terribly complex, but I've always adored it for showcasing a lot of personality with the main characters, and since I didn't really see any discussions on it, I wanted to highlight it!

I do recommend you watch the cutscene since a lot of the nuances and details can't be shown in screenshots - or better yet, play the game yourself! It's a ton of fun ^^

#snake talks #Super Mario #Super Mario 3d world #smb #mario #super mario bros #woke up with the urge to info dump about this game so. here we are #this was fun too do!! I might do more of these :] #just as a character animator I really care about and love small details like this #this cutscene isnt long but it tells so much about the characters and its very cute

[anantaru]

so guys 🙋🏻‍♀️🌸 i have finished the entire new quest at last and omg 👼🏼 like this was outstanding!! you see, what i really enjoy about star rail is that it gives me similar vibes to hi3 in terms of the darkness in the plot, since hi3 is my favorite hoyo game i always love seeing stuff from it or just similar instances. SO YOU KNOW FOR A FACT I WAS SO HYPED WHEN ACHERON SHOWED UP 🤺 especially with the hi3 story with kiana as the mc being over and although i still love hi3 the most, kiana, mei and bronya, that trio, they were all the best characters together AAAARGHHH I SWEAR AND JUST THE ENTIRE STORY LINE WAS SOOO GOOD, I miss them all together as a trio and especially kiana, the best hoyo MC FOR LIFE. 🙋🏻‍♀️🩷

also 🤠 ^^ that frame with sunday and dr ratio like 😙😙 WAS SO FUNNY I HAD TO SS IT. 🤺

the amount of cutscenes we got to see again was so fun, it felt like watching a movie slowly unfold while you got to be a part of it 🩷 you can tell that hoyoverse gets better and better with each update on whatever game and that the cutscenes are always so well done (i always liked them but the constant upgrades ??? insane) 🙏🏻

+ the acheron one shotting aventurine lmao 🧎🏻‍♀️ it was my favorite though ngl HAHA 🙋🏻‍♀️🩷 no matter how much i like aventurine as a character, MEI OMG MEEEIIIIII 👹🩷 SHE WILL FOREVER BE MY LOVE LIKE I KNOW ITS ACHERON BUT YOU GET WHAT I MEAN !!!!! 🙇🏻‍♀️ LIKE THE CUTSCENE WITH HER HORNS OH MY GOOOD THE NOSTALGIA LIKE YES GO OFF SHOW THEM

also guys, idk but aventurine's boss fight, 🤠 i personally expected more like it was so easy to beat ?! I THOUGHT I WOULD STRUGGLE BUT HE DIED PRETTY QUICKLY BUT ITS FINE, I STILL LIKE HIS CHARACTER 🌸🙋🏻‍♀️. + i was happy hoyoverse showed us his backstory and took their time to flash it out and not gloss over it in idk one/two scenes, but they really took their time with it which was amazing 🩷

also jade looks so cool as well! the design is very pretty and i can't wait to see diamond too, or the rest of the ten stonehearts but they're hyping diamond up so much like another emanator?? yes please, i'm all in🧎🏻‍♀️🩷

this entire quest gave me movie vibes, you were on edge the entire time and even during side quests you had to take, it was still very intense. it actually took me quite a bit to finish it of course since i'm someone who doesn't skip dialog, but it was so worth it and the best way to relax after a long day of moving my body 🩷 just laying in bed, playing while drinking tea!!

what i wanted to say too, guys honestly sunday is not okay HAHAHAHAHAHAH 🌝 I MEAN LIKE you guys🧎🏻‍♀️, that shiver in his voice at times and you can tell he low-key doesn't even know how to handle all of that either, of course, for one he looks like everything is accounted for while in the other, he sounds like he's losing his mind and can we blame him ???? when he went "why did you kill her" and lowkey cussed gallagher out i was like damn 🤠 okay 😏 HAHA + i'm somebody that doesn't think too much about theories, instead i love eagerly waiting for the next patch!! so i'm excited for what's coming 🩷 + robin's song slaps.

last but not least 🤺 you see, gallagher wasn't really somebody i was very interested in, but damn the second he turned dangerous and spicy i went oh my oh hey what's up ?? 😏 giggles HAHA LIKE WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEN WHO ARE JUST SUDDENLY EVIL AND IDK MAYBE HE ISNT COMPLETELY RIGHT AAAAAA OOOOO UUUU WWWWW AAAAA but anyways, 🌸 the last cutscene low-key hurt me like what do you mean sunday gets off screened while i was saving up for him for what? 👹 ever since fuxuan like how can you do this to me + no way they're dead dead 🤠because the last conversation aventurine had with acheron was very important to the next patch i'm pretty sure! 🩷

all in all guys!! 🩷 this quest was beautifully done, it had a lot of hard, dark stuff and it reminded me a lot of hi3, that's why i give it a 10/10, very well done. 🌸🩷

#، 𝜗𝜚 —￤ yoru plays [honkai star rail] ⋆ #honkai star rail spoilers #hsr spoilers

[stonyponyofficial]

violer ive always wondered & ur the best person to ask. is there transphobic jokes in adam sandler jack and jill

hello io!!!! you've activated my "she talks about adam sandler for way too long" cutscene so i hope ur ready for that! this is going to lead me to rewatch Jack and Jill (2011) starring Adam Sandler, just so i can give u the full answer bc my Adam scholarship needs to be THOROUGH do u understand???? i hope u can live with the knowledge that uve made me do thjs. also i forgive u. this is a pride month post now btw.

Adam Analysis beneath the cut. tl;dr umm probably not as much as u would imagine like it could be So much worse but its. kinda okay at points too? Theres Nuance.

so even if u havent seen all of Adams many films like i have, maybe ur the average person whos probably only seen 10 or 20 of them who knows. u could probably imagine the kinds of jokes he tells. just general mean spirited ribbing towards anyone who isnt adam or like adam right? standard fare for mainstream movie comedy. so when it comes to Jokes Adam Tells About Women, we basically get two categories: jokes for women adam wants to have sex with, and jokes for women who Adam thinks are undesirable and does not want to have sex with.

when it comes to jokes about trans women, or the closest depiction of trans women an adam sandler film is going to get, they more closely align with the ugly woman jokes, except they arent really seen as women, so the joke is just kind of "ur a man!" when its literally a male friend of adam's in a dress pretending to be a trans woman, u know? not fun (btw friend of adam is the new horrible slang for id'ing other gay people tell everyone u know). there are only a feeew instances from what i remember of a stock crossdresser/trans woman joke character even being in a Sandler film, and usually u can like feel the disgust everyone has for these characters for like the 10 secodns theyre on screen to be joked at.

in Jack and Jill however, theres like.. kinda none of that. like shes jacks twin sister at the end of the day and everyone gets along with her because shes family even if shes loud and annoys people. spoilers for... jack and jill... but the whole plot is jack learning to love his sister again and not be annoyed by her very presence, learning the importance of family along the way. the jokes are mostly "god i hate my loud and annoying twin sister" more than anything. from what I remember anyway (this is before my rewatch btw this is just preliminary info jeez), the jokes are more aligned with undesirable women jokes toward jill than flat out transphobia (say, "ur even manlier than ur brother wow!" vs "u are a man") anyway i will now be watching Jack and Jill (2011) starring Adam Sandler so ill be right back.

okay hi. so they definitely characterize jill as being i guess the larger presence of the two, like they show a home movie montage of the two growing up and thats continually the joke in those clips that shes just "more than" jack. hairier, fartier, stronger, but also more emotional and familial, as in wanting to be close with her twin brother than he would like to be with her. in these ways shes made to be both more masculine and more feminine than jack. although shes made to be more masculine, as the film defines it, it then has many moments where its like "yeah despite her just being adam sandler in a dress, shes 'actually a woman'" like, if anything these moments are transphobic in that they ask "is Jill a guy?" and usually the answer is "no of course not shes a real woman not some man in a dress!" not said with such explicit terms but it's then implied by asking the question that it would be worse if the answer was yes. the first of these woman affirming instances is the honestly the best, so i will describe it for u thus, because youre here for analysis that is also just plot summary Goddamn It.

so theyre all in a movie theater when jill gets a call and starts talking really loudly, annoying everyone as the film has her do. jack calls her a psycho and she starts crying and runs out of the theater. one theatergoer remarks "way to make a chick cry, dude." and another inquires, "that was a chick?" and as jack runs to get jill he pours his popcorn on the guy and shuts him down like "yeah that was a chick!" like in one light its just the film reminding us and affirming and that she is in fact a real, normal cisgendered woman through adam owning this guy epically, but if ur absolutely insane you could see this as the biggest Adam Sandler Trans Ally W if there were to ever be one. just. compared to everywhere else that couldve gone, its. good? to see adam actually defending the "man in a dress" comedic character for once. even if it had to be him in the dress while being 100% cis, actually, for him to cool it with the transphobic remarks.

another moment is when jill is lifted by her soccer team to celebrate her helping win a match... yeah dont worry the context wont help... so as shes being lifted someone looks under her dress and is like "yeah shes not a guy" and gives another guy money like they made a bet? probably the weirdest example. but then she also makes sure to mention later that she does have periods so we all know the character of Jill Sadelstein played by Adam Sandler from Jack and Jill (2011) starring Adam Sandler twice, is in fact a real woman. idk like its playing into the comedy of this just being adam sandler saying that and like "haha hes not a woman" but idk if i would call that transphobic, one could perhaps say hes doing drag for this movie and like drag performers play with that all the time right?

idk it feels like the movie hairspray where the role of the mom is played by a man in a dress where that's just kinda the joke about it the whole time but it's still drag and kinda taken seriously?is that transphobic? eh probably a little. if anythjng it just feels like a drag performance in kinda poor taste where ur waiting for him to say the things he's said before about man in dress characters and then. he just doesn't?. uhhh llike later on theres a part where jack dresses as jill to try and fool al pacino who is in love with jill btw. al pacino is in love with jill but she doesnt like him back so she wont go meet him. anyway jack is getting changed in the bathroom and theres an attendant there who sees him come out full jillmoding. he proceeds to grope jacks fake melon boobs to adjust them and gives an approving italian hand smooch 🤌 mwah u know. its a little okay. i like it.

um there is also a moment where the joke is that pretransition caitlyn jenner is there, but its 2011 so she hadn't come out yet. its jarring and feels very transphobic bc they deadname her, but it was before she came out so that was... just her name at the time. so its okay, but feels wrong. a very strange coincidence for some of the only transphobia coming from this movie when it could have it fucking everywhere to be completely unintended and the result of someone just transitioning after the movie was done being made.... didnt know where to put this observation but it had to be known.

All Of This being said tho, u kinda need to have adam-vision like me to have a tolerance for his... we'll call them antics. only after many other sandler films did i get to this one and be like "oh wow that wasn't that bad given what i was expecting!" its still not a good movie, but compared to every single other one hes made or been in, its like. definitely in the middle of the pack. if we can take adam sandler acting in drag being the kinda silent joke for an hour and a half its. an okay watch. best watched with friends so u can talk about it/over it if u want. i would perhaps even call it camp at times if i had worse judgement. it definitely could have been worse! then again maybe i truly am numb to adam and i just didnt see anything wrong with it who knows! i am possibly completely full of shit. hope this helps 👍

#violet originals #adamposting #thank u for the opportunity to adampost io :3 i will do it again if we arent careful

[wyndford-dekarios]

looks at you with my big autistic eyes. its my turn to enable blorbotalking can you tell me more about gale & your relationship bc he seems like such a silly pathetic guy

this ask got me out of bed so i could properly type my thoughts out. alright cracks my knuckles (spoilers for the story of bg3 under the cut/suicide mention/sex mention at one point sorry) (not joking this is long) (you give me a vague description of beltboy and then you ask me 'hey so whos your new guy' and i become an unskippable cutscene.)

GODS he really does set himself up as pathetic. he probably doesn't realise it. but your first interaction with him is pulling him out of a malfunctioning portal (which i affectionately call gale% in all my playthroughs) because he's usually better at magic but just this once he got stuck on the other side please pull him out so niceys. and then he talks so so much. whenever you're in the grove and do something nice where the refugees are concerned he's like haha! this reminds me of when i was younger! this reminds me of when i stopped a bar fight! and then also the "fuck that woman" dialogue node when you save a child from getting killed by a death viper because she stole something and gave it back. when you first long rest he tells you to go to hell and then immediately expounds upon his worries concerning the fact that you're all going to DIE (did i mention there's a parasite in everyone's head. there's a parasite in everyone's head). AND HE ALSO INTRODUCES HIMSELF WHEN ASKED WITH HIS TINDER PROFILE. "i like cats and wine and long walks" shut uppp. bites him

and then he eventually opens up to you about something very important to him; he has a condition that makes him eat magic items and he would be very grateful if you could help! he hasn't told anyone besides his cat about this! he Trusts You!!!!! and then you give him a magic item a bit later and GODS tim downie did a wonderful job because the genuine relief in his "thank you" sends me for a loop every time. and with the first magic item hes like mm yes good. with the second he goes ahh mm still ouchies this is worrying. and with the third hes like ok this really isnt doing anything anymore. i have to open up about my condition further.

THEN HE JUST STRAIGHT UP TELLS YOU HE USED TO FUCK THE GODDESS OF MAGIC. AND TRIED TO GIVE HER A GIFT TO GET HER TO PAY ATTENTION TO HIM BEYOND JUST LEADING HIM ON. (THIS BIT INFURIATES ME BECAUSE HE WAS HER CHOSEN AND WITH EVERY OTHER CHOSEN YOU ENCOUNTER IN THIS GAME THE GODS THAT CHOSE THEM ARE VERY CLEAR ABOUT WHAT THEY WANT AND WHAT POWERS THEY GET IN RETURN BUT MYSTRA LITERALLY JUST WORE GALE OUT LIKE A TOY AND DIDN'T COMMUNICATE SHIT AND DROPPED HIM AS SOON AS HE CROSSED A BOUNDARY HE DIDN'T KNOW WAS THERE!!!! I NEED TO KILL MYSTRA.) and this attempted gift now lays in his chest. he basically has been carrying a nuclear bomb around this whole time. in his chest. we learn later that the gift never could have worked because it's not made of the "right magic" (grr) but for now gale's just like "ok. i told you. now if you want me to go kill myself i will" and that basically becomes his entire character for the rest of the game DSFJH he will kill himself at the slightest provocation (this is untrue but you Do get a skill that allows him to kill himself and game over you soon after this so. LOL)

im just gonna attach a video of the next big moment bc i remembered to record it! basically you save the grove of refugees and they throw a party for you and gale asks to meet you after to show you "something magical" and it isn't his penis-

now eventually you run into an old man. which old man? this universe's equivalent of gandalf the fucking grey, gale's old mentor. he comes to tell gale that mystra told him to kill himself. and then gives him the means to kill himself with the orb in his chest. this is the equivalent of your ex giving you nuclear launch codes and telling you to kill yourself by standing in the vicinity of where they want you to launch the nukes. gale is understandably upset but genuinely considers killing himself. because maybe it's what fate wants him to do maybe this is how he Should end. and he's pretty much made up his mind. and it's the player's job to convince him not to.

this culminates with him making his ideal night. because it might be his last one alive. and he chooses to spend it with you. you, who has become so vastly important to him. this is the moment he confesses. this is the moment where i burst into tears because jesus christ tim downie is a good actor. and jesus christ im in love with gale of waterdeep. he gently takes you by the hand, shows you his home in waterdeep via magic. describes what the perfect night with you would be. shows you a slice of his world. laments that you aren't home, or otherwise he would have courted you properly. tells you about his favourite books, how he often stays up reading until the dawn.

then he does have sex with you. but it's either normalstyle or fucking insane symbolism laden bullshit in space. and the symbolism bullshit is so . its so. i should record it some time.

ANYways after that you rock up to where mystra told him to kill himself and you say NO i love you and he goes, verbatim, "no matter what happens, i choose you." and. i keel over and die and burst into tears. and then you make it to act three and you're in the city !!! yippee! and you get to do a love test w him :] and witness a coronation! and somewhere in there you meet his tressym, tara, which i also have a video of-

and THEN you get to go SHOPPING WITH HIM! YOU GO SHOPPING WHEEE he needs a forbidden book to learn about the crown mentioned in the video. and you can either break in from the office of the head librarian or kill the wizard that runs the shop in his own home and work your way down to the book vault. and basically gale wants to take the crown and become a better god than the ones now. i also have a video for this. sorry for so many videos but i think of these moments and my brain fucking turns off. the video is stuttery and jittery unfortunately :( but i cannot change this.

and then after this mystra finally comes into contact with him like "hey i can get rid of that bomb if you give me the crown" and its like HEY WHY ONLY MENTION THIS NOW. HUH. HEY WHY ONLY BRING THIS UP NOW. i need to kill mystra. anyways then you go off and save the world!! and the 'final kiss' tears me to pieces. but i don't have a video of it bc the One time i went to the endgame i didn't think to record it. but then!! after the game he proposes and takes you home to visit his Really Big Family and have a big fat greek wedding. and so basically im in love with him. thank you for your time

#ship: martyrweave

[huntsman-ash]

RWBY V8E4 LiveThoughts

And were back at it again, this week with turkey and Italian preserved sausage as a snack! Lets see what RT has for us this week.

Oh, 20 minutes. Are they normally this long?

Oh, wait, the openings almost 2 minutes long. Thats more like it.

And now to Robyn and Qrow. Seems Robyns actually liking Qrow a little bit now. 

Guess the cells aren’t secured if a fly got into Schnee’s. This a “Fly on Mike Pence’s face” reference?

Qrow sounds more growly again. Did he get smacked back two seasons by Clover dying?

If by “darkness” you mean “Tyrian” then, yes. Also dude, its Clover. He was shit anyway. All the Aces are shit. Dont feel too bad about him.

And he’s got a point too. If Clover had thought with his head instead of his dick (yes, Im sure they were gonna fuck, Fair Games totally a thing), he probably wouldnt be dead now, and Tyrian would be the one with the sword through his chest.

But of course this is RWBY and V7/8 so things cant go their ways.

Ouch. Deep thoughts of Qrow. And some interesting stuff from Robyn too. I still think I’d prefer hopeandharmonizing’s Briar, though.

Marrows glare gives me life. Hare’s just a moron right now though, but thats no real surprise. She’s immature emotionally.  Honestly, shes...kind of like a less bad version of our current President. Always has to be the best at everything, fastest, leader, whatever.

Thats probably why this is grating on her so much. Even though shes TECHNICALLY the Ace’s leader now (I think? Seemed like she was Clovers lieutenant, so by rate of succession she’s in command now)

A glance at the little floating control pad... ��Clerance access only”. Okay, that...seems weird. Shouldnt it say something like authorized personell only? Maybe it means access by clerance only or something.

Then Robyn’s name, and then process ID 4591-27. No idea what thats useful for but its there.

Also Marrow seems to be the only competent member of the Aces rn. 

Ah now we get to see some of the hills around Atlas. For those of you who have seen my headcanons on the Hunter-Killers and their base of operations, Fortress Academy, its out in these hills somewhere.

The music sounds like a boss fight.

The screen on Ren’s hoverbike reads “HVB Rhino” and “HD5800″ I can only assume HVB stands for “hoverbike” and Rhino must be its name, like how the dropships are Mantas. No clue what the number is. 

Also apparently the cold in Solitas is so bad it corrupts machinery?

Ahh, good, some action. Lets see what we get now. Ohh, teamwork. And again, signs that aura allows you to move faster and farther than a normal human

Heh, it really is like a boss fight, like the chase scene at the end of the first Viking level in For Honor.

Oh, and it can call for reenforcements literally out of nowhere? Or is the whole tundra of Solitas just CRAWLING with Grimm?

Yes, yes it did just call for backup, Yang. Maybe these are all forward scouts and ambush units from the Grimmstorm. They did say its the biggest...

Another banger from Casey Lee Williams...

What the hell happened in Solitas to cause this geography? Seriously, its a line of bridges over a gap in two cliffs...that cant be natrual, not that equal in distance.

Man, those bikes didnt even last half an episode...I guess thats fair, they are facing obsurd odds. Or maybe they just want Yang to be the only one with a bike.

And there goes the dropwall. Woops.

Also you can just kinda see it but they bounce off the rock and thats why they slow down. Useful.

Also this part with them falling off the edge reminds me of the ending cutscene of Halo 4s Forerunner level, where Chief flies out of a portal and almost goes sailing off a cliff in a Ghost.  Except here, the bike stays on the land and THEY go off the cliff.

I paused at just the right time cause YANGS FACE XD

Holy shit what are Ren’s weapons cables MADE OF? The one atop him is holding him AND the weight of his two teammates. And the one below has both Jaune and Yang. No sign of slippage or breackage at all. 

Ahhh there’s the whaleship (Monstra? Fuck it Im gonna keep calling it the whaleship). So yeah my headcanon now is the mountain its right next too is Menachite, where Fortress is. 

Oh hey back to the Schnee manor of all things! Does...this mean military invasion of the Schnee grounds. Hey Whitley. Lesbians are here. 

Someone make a video cut of Weiss banging on the door to the “Knock knock open up the door its real!” part of that one song.

Hehehehhe. Nice Weiss.

Also convenient about the house staff. Good thing RT doesnt need to animate them or Willow now...

I hope the staff took some of the silverware and some paintings on the way out.

Why is MAY the one carrying Nora.

Ah so now they’re stuck out there with no cell service. Hehe.

Ah okay so the cold in Solitas DOES eat aura. Good, my headcanon still kind of stands. 

I wonder, does wearing proper cold weather clothing (like bundled up stuff) help? Or does it cut right through...

Why is JAUNE the one hauling the bike? Isnt Yang the strongest? Or maybe they take turns.

Ahhh inter-team talking. Also, outpost. Hmm. Atlas one? Overrun if I had to guess. Unless he saw Fortress. Which I doubt.

I do love the circling shot here, with the light on Yang’s hair and the shadows on Ren. Its...really artistic and emotional. GREAT WORK RT. 

Rens got points. And hes saying stuff I myself have been saying for ages, which is good. I wonder why this is how Ren is now...working with the Ace Ops? Being afraid of loosing Nora? No one tell him what happened last episode.

Also, Jaune’s hair seems to have gotten less crazy in recent episodes. It looks less like a banana and more like a close tactical cut.

Yangs got a point.

Ahhh and now we get to see the inside of the whale. 

SALEM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP SHOWING THE FUCK OFF. SERIOUSLY. WE GET IT. 

...this is gonna be a really criingy torture section, isnt it.

Someones gonna take that “hound didnt break you” line in the WRONG direction 

It is amusing the only thing holding Oscar down is the Hound actually. 

Ah so they’re still searching the remains of Beacon.

Also I like how Salem calls them “her forces” as if its anything but a random bunch of expendable monsters. Like, bruh, you cant search anything with THAT.

Ignoring the boring chat between these two, notice how the Hound’s shoulder literally flexes and shifts when Salem touched it. I dont think this thing is solid at all aside from the head and the bone claws...the whole thing is just amorphous Grimm material that can adapt to whatever situation it requires. A specialist unit. A...Hunter hunter.

Yo what the fuck was that. Magic? Huh. Did we actually SEE magic for once in the show? Only took us 8 FUCKING SEASONS...

Doesnt seem to be anything but an energy blast/pain never firing though. I assume his auras still gone, cause its completely singed his shirt, but it didnt do much else.

...Im not impressed.

She really needs to stop touching his face, its creeping me out.

HAHA SHE CANT DO IT HERSELF SHE HAS TO RELY ON HAZEL BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. I think we know where she stands now, doesnt she...say what you will about her letting Hazel have his vengeance (which is very valid, even he admits hit), but me? I think she A) cant actually beat up on Ozma herself because she still cares and B) shes almost out of magic too. Its weakened as the Gods have been gone and shes been forced to rely on the Grimm and on pawns. Basically, once she and Oz are both gone? That’s it for magic. Remnant will belong to the Grimm...and to technology. 

At which point without Oz around to hold them back Atlas is going to go fucking BONKERS and basically ensure the Grimm get pushed back into a corner and then finally permenantly STAMPED OUT.

More Whale insides. Seems like most of its empty grandious spaces. Or possibly muscle? Hard to tell. Either way theres a lot of open air in there...with tight corridors. If you fired a thermobaric warehead into one of the chambers the resulting blastc could possibly blow the doors off and send a raging fireball through the entire thing...Hmm. Filing that away for later.

NEO IS SO SHORT ITS FUNNY TO ME. I know its just positioning BUT SHE LOOKS EVEN SHORTER IN THIS SHOT THAN USUAL.

More note on the Hound; the “flesh” around its right shoulder spike actually sinks down when it stops moving. Its neck shifts and moves too, like the material isnt solid, but recirculating.

I also dont see any eyes. And it looks like it has some kind of...forehead mouth? Def looks like teeth down the ridge of its spine.

Oh boy yeah that...whole thing is basically melting in on itself.

I wont lie; hearing Cinder get berated by CORTANA (and yes, I still hear Cortana in Salem, espeically now that the two characters are kind of one and the same, both megalomaniacal leaders of giant armies, bar the fact that one of them is about a TRILLION times more dangerous than the other because one of them has access to Guardian Custodies and the other one is...well kind of lame and has to have beefy dudes beat up on small children etc) is pleasing to me. 

Get fucked, Cinder.

And THERE is Cortana again too.

Neo Marry Popins’s Ya’lling is fucking CUTE. And I love her little smirk.

Wait the whale’s that close?

..oh my...hold on.

...thats it. THATS ATLAS’S AIR FLEET!?!

12 AIRSHIPS? 12? EXCUSE ME!?

ARE YOU LEGITAMETLY TELLING ME THE BIGGEST MILITARY ON REMNANT HAS FEWER AIRSHIPS THAN THE SMALLEST NAVY ON EARTH HAS FRIGATES? YOUR FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT? THERE HAS TO BE MORE SOMEWHERE. THIS IS A JOKE, A STRAIGHT UP FUCKING JOKE.

...

No, thats...thats it. Thats Atlas’s airfleet. 12 tiny vessels. I swear it was bigger last season...

...HA! HAHA! HA! Oh, Ironwood, and Atlas as a whole...you deserve everything your about to get. I hope you die SCREAMING, and that when your bodies fall bleeding and shattered to Mantle, the people down there will realize that, no. You cant just assume Hunters will do all the work for you

THIS IS REMNANT. ITS KILL OR BE KILLED. YOU EITHER MAKE A FORCE POWERFUL ENOUGH THAT THE GRIMM RUN FROM YOU  OR YOU DIE INSTEAD. ATLAS FAILED. NOW THEY SUFFER.

Emerald stop simpin.

Also that is...the SHITTEST outpost...I have ever seen in my life. My overall thought process of Atlas is...sinking even LOWER than before. 

Though it seems more like a waystation. Bed, Dust, some dudes coat on it. Dead heater. Its probably a rest spot for Specialists out in the tundra.

Ren does the emo sit. Lol. Yang even says it. Brood himself to death.

Alright whats this now...something forcing itself out of the tundra?

And thats it for today! Cool ass concept art at the end there too. 

#rwby #rwby spoilers #spoilers #rwby v8

[ravenaveira]

Ok, time for my review of Kh3 Re:Mind Dlc

This is gonna be long, so be prepared, and yes there will be many spoilers so if you dont want spoilers of the game then you probably shouldnt read this, but if you dont care then stick around.

I will start off with my unbiased and critical opinion.

From the title menu alone you already know what this game is gonna be about. Kairi is gonna be center focus, or should say specifically Sokai, and Riku will be virtually non existent.

Now I know what your thinking, well duh its all about saving Kairi of course Riku wont have that big a role and she’ll be the main focus, and to that I say no shit sherlock I already knew that. My issue isnt that it was Kairi focused because I already knew that and still pre-ordered the DLC, but my issue is what this title screen represents and my fears were proven correct.

Let me elaborate

Riku is just as much of a friend to Sora as Kairi is, from the beginning of the series its always been Sora, Riku, and Kairi, thats the way its ALWASY been. But from this title screen I could tell Riku’s bond with them wasnt gonna be present at all and I was right.

I’ll elaborate further

I know Im jumping way ahead here but bare with me, at the end of the game after Sora rescues Kairi they travel the worlds together, Sora notices he is fading away which is why he goes to the many different worlds he has visited but now with Kairi, spending his final moments with her before he finally disapears.

See the problem? Sora doesnt involve Riku at all in his final moments being alive, he is just completely absent during his entire remaining life. Sora only spends time with Kairi during his final moments, Riku wasnt shown with them once.

I know some people say well we dont know how long Sora was alive before vanishing and he was probably the one who organized the party, but did we see that though? did we see any signs that Sora was alive for more than a day or two? did we see Sora talking to anyone like he was setting anything up? NO, it was all about Kairi and Riku was completely forgotten.

I can understand if Sora wasnt dying then it wouldnt matter how much time he spends with Kairi alone, but Sora was fading away ANY SECOND and he didnt spend any of his remaining time with Riku at all, even at the beach party who is Sora sitting next to alone with before he finally vanishes? Kairi. That is inexcusable and a huge insult to Riku and his bond with Sora, hes just completely excluded, that is unforgivable.

These new added scenes to the ending actually made it worse than the original version of it, before we didnt even know Sora was around for more than a day and just assumed they all had a beach party afterwards to celebrate getting everyone back and saving the world, but now we know Sora was actually around for an extended period of time and made no effort to spend time with anyone other than Kairi, not even his best friend Riku did he spend time with for his final hours, that is despicable.

Another major issue is how Sora keeps saying his journey started with losing Kairi in this game, as if Riku wasnt ALSO lost that day, as if Riku wasnt the reason Sora kept on his journey even after saving Kairi and sending her back to Destiny Islands, as if he didnt fall to his knees and bawl his eyes out finally reuniting with him, as if he wasnt content with spending the rest of his life trapped in the Realm of Darkness with Riku, as if for the entirety of the base game of kh3 Sora wasnt constantly and only thinking about Riku and how many things he wished he could show him.

Apparently in Remind none of that happened, none of that mattered, it was Kairi that was his main motivation, it was Kairi that started his journey, Riku wasnt involved in it at all.

That is a huge issue with this DLC, it treats Riku like a side character and of little importance to Sora, in the base game they handled them fine minus that on instance in the Keyblade Graveyard where Sora says ‘Alone, Im worthless’ even though Riku’s right there but other than that their relationship and bond was handled very well but in Remind? practically non existent.

Now onto the story aspect, if your not into time travel and have trouble understanding the many variations of it then your gonna have a bad time because it gets VERY confusing to follow, which is why you should never introduce time travel because it becomes way too complicated to keep track of and not only that you also have to worry about things like paradoxes, ripples in time, alternate timelines etc. Its a complete clusterfuck to keep up with and manage so time travel really shouldnt have been introduced in this series.

Chirithy tells Sora that no matter what he cant change the past again, yet there are times where Sora does just that so exactly what cant he change? for example, when Roxas appears he asks Sora to do him a favor which is essentially getting the X back from Xemnas in their names. Sora does several things to make this happen and even Kairi gets a couple swings at Xemnas this time but then the two of them are basically caught and restrained inside shadow balls [pause]

See the prob? this is a huge change to that fight, Kairi never took a single swing at Xemnas, she just stood there and got snatched up, Roxas never asked Sora for help getting the X’s back from Xemnas, and Sora and Kairi never got restrained by Xemnas and knocked out.

Chirithy explicitly said Sora cant change what happened and no matter what he has to accept it for what it is, yet here he is, changing what happened. Maybe you could argue well this is an alternate timeline, even if it is that makes all of this irrelevant and means it never happened because the true ending is the one where it didnt happen, making this semi useful Kairi moment really pointless because at the end of the day its not canon, her being useless is the true outcome, none of this matters.

That is extremely disappointing, so even if you alter the past for the better it doesnt matter because its an alternate timeline and that timeline isnt the real one making this whole redo pointless and time consuming for a short DLC that was an extra 30$ to play.

So the time travel is very confusing and even if you follow it, it ends up being very disappointing when you realize none of it matters.

Moving on to some of the tied loose ends, Im glad they explained why Aqua froze up after saying ‘We stand together’ and I like how we get to see how Young Xehanort came to have the beliefs that lead to what he did and also MOMs subtle influence on him succumbing to darkness.

He told Xehanort that he would outgrow the robe and no longer need it because if he was truly powerful then he’d be the one controling the darkness, this leads to Xehanort later begining to travel without the robe and being corrupted. So we know now that MOM also influenced that as well and is very sketchy, even more now than he was before since this action greatly influenced what Xehanort eventually does and all the pain he caused, all of which would have probably never happened if it wasnt for him.

But thats just my theory and what I got from it.

I liked that we got to see Namine for a brief moment where Sora basically brushes her off and completely forgets about thanking her, this is a plotline Im pretty sure at this point is just never going to get resolved. He just tells her to go to the Final World and walks off, which makes no sense because Sora was surprised to see her in the original playthrough.

Another change was Lingering Will dying to protect Sora, again this never happened because Sora was busy fighting alongside everyone in the maze while Lingering Will and Terranort were fighting away from them. After Lingering Will died for him then Sora is pretty much squeezed to death by Terranorts Stand, or atleast knocked unconscious.

So much about these are just so confusing as to how they are happening when Chirithy said the events couldnt be changed I just stopped questioning it.

But atleast this time its made clear that Namine is the one who sent Lingering Will to help everyone and how she did it, so now people can stop saying Kairi is the reason everyone survived because it wasnt, without Lingering Will they would have all died a second time.

Basically the first half of the DLC is just recap with some minor changes and additions to the cutscenes, you get to play as other characters like Riku [optional] Aqua [not optional] and Roxas [optional] but other than that its basically the same thing all over again for the first 3-4 hours of the DLC, that is ridiculous.

The new content finally starts when Kairi is shattered, funny how the game gets good after Kairi dies xD I’ll stop.

Anyway once Kairi dies is when we finally get explorable Scala, but not without having to endure an insane fight with tons of heartless and nobodies and yes its more complicated than you think. It doesnt matter how many heartless or nobodies you kill, they will keep coming until you kill this one red heartless with way more health than your average heartless has.

After that you can pretty much wander around Scala as you wish and this is the only time where you can buy items or food so make sure to do that if your low on items. If your low on money there are minor enemies there that you can kill to get some so take advantage of this opportunity because your not getting another one.

Your goal in Scala is to basically run around, solve a couple puzzles, and get 5 of Kairi’s heart shards, revealed to having to be 7 later on. Sound fun? besides being able to see more of Scala’s layout, not really. But its a good place to take a breather before getting back into the big battles ahead.

Unfortunately your actually forced to fight the armored organization again but thankfully you dont have to do the ENTIRE final battle over, just that one section which I appreciate but wish we didnt have to do any of it at all.

So after we’re done Scala we get in MY opinion the two best parts of the entire DLC. We get to see what was going on with the rest of the keyblade wielders back home and it was INSANE and extremely well done, everybody had a chance to shine.

When everyone was swept away and Mickey was down and out, it was amazing seeing Mickey push himself back up and slowly with what little strength he had take on all the armor organization BY HIMSELF severely weakened, yet still powerful enough to hold them off and stand his ground. He really showed us WHY he is the King, so THAT I really enjoyed. It was extremely well done and one of the most memorable parts of the DLC.

The next part was even more insane and well done, which is us getting to fight as all the keyblade wielders against the armored organization and even get some cool dialog and team attacks in between, it was just amazingly well done seeing everyone work together and switching between characters was just so epic and enjoyable.

Honestly I could play those two parts over and over again and enjoy it everytime, their just that good and the most memorable in the entire DLC.

Coming back with Kairi and killing Xehanort together with all the keyblade wielders including Kairi this time was satisfying to see but it excludes Xehanorts and Eraquses final words, I mean yea seeing Xehanort have a semi happy ending put off alot of people but at the same time, seeing Xehanort come to the realization that he was wrong about everything and giving the Wayfinder trio closure by seeing their master one last time and hearing his apology to them just held more weight to me.

Im not saying I think Xehanort should be redeemed as easily as he was, but I feel like excluding Eraqus and their final words made the ending feel hollow, just ok we beat the bad guy, happily ever after now. Thats pretty lackluster and unsatisfying In my opinion.

Finally the ending....

Heres where Im gonna be biased and give my personal thoughts. Warning if your a fan of Kairi skip to the very end of the review where I give my overall rating

I hate the ending, for the reasons I listed in the beginning but also many others. I get the main focus was gonna be Kairi since the DLC was about saving her, Im not mad about the obvious, Im mad about the execution.

The Sokai agenda was so forced and apparent its not even funny, they shove it in your face so hard yet when Sora is talking with Chirithy he still refers to Kairi as a friend, really? your shoving this pairing down our throats just to have Sora still friendzone her? Im not mad because I dont want them together anyway but I hate the games being played here, you either want them together or you dont, pick a friggin side Nomura.

And while we’re on the subject, I hate, HATE, how this game is so heavily romance focused when Kingdom Hearts was NEVER about romance to begin with, it was always about friendship and bonds. Not in this DLC though, no now its all about Kairi and being with her forever, traveling the world together, holding hands, all this lovey dovey nonsense nobody invested in the plot could give a rats behind about.

Sure people who are into Kingdom Hearts for the romance of course they dont mind, but Im pretty sure MOST people invested in this series are in it for the story, not some stupid pairing, and I HATE how much they shove it down your throat because it is just so forced and obvious what they were doing.

This was all damage control for Kairi, who has been a useless damsel in distress and dues ex machina in every single game shes been a part of. I repeat, EVERY SINGLE GAME SHES A PART OF.

Kh1 - Kidnapped, unconscious, Sora needs to die to save her.

Kh2 - Kidnapped, held hostage, Sora needs to find and save her.

Kh3 - Kidnapped, unconscious, is killed twice, Sora needs to die to save her.

Do you see what I fricken mean? Every fuckin game its the same danm thing over and over and quite frankly Im sick of it. You might as well say this is a Mario game because Kairi is princess Peach always gettin snatched up and Sora is Mario always going through insanely deadly trials to get her back, and then it happens all over again.

This DLC was damage control for that, instead of immediately getting snatched up by Xemnas she actually gets a few good swipes at him to no avail of course, and then she fights together with Sora against armored Xehanort, all of which is just damage control for her not doing anything in the entire franchise and pandering to her fanbase that are constantly screeching for playable Kairi and for her to do something.

It was also damage control for how non existent their relationship was and what a joke its been since Kh1. They arent fooling anybody because thats exactly what this was, otherwise why you have to try so hard to CONVINCE us how important she was to Sora? why did Riku have to get sidelined so much just to boost Kairi up? why’d Sora completely disregard Riku as a part of his journey? why did Sora not spend ANY time with ANYONE for his final moments alive? its so obvious why. The only way to convince anyone shes actually important and relevant is to play down everyone else or exclude them entirely.

Congratulations, you got your wish, good for you fandom, but at what cost?

The time they spent forcing so much Sokai could have been used to tie up way more loose ends than there were but nope, gotta squeeze in that Sokai, thats what yall really here for right? fuck off.

The two best moments of the game was so short lived its not even funny, this DLC was full of so much padding in the first half, forced romance and pandering for damage control they forgot to actually make this a decent DLC.

Since I recorded my gameplay from start to finish I can actually tell you the amount of old content vs the new

3-4 hours of mostly what we already seen with a few changes, I only died twice

1-2 hours of new content, probably less because I got lost and died alot

That is unacceptable, 30$ for only 10% new content? that is a robbery.

Not only that but the worst part is the Limitcut episode, databattles have always been optional for competative players who like the challenge. Now you are FORCED to fight these INSANELY hard bosses, all 13 in order to get the final bits of the aftermath of the story.

WE PAID FOR THIS, this wasnt free we PAID for it and yet we’re basically told ‘Hey if your a casual player and want the rest of the story? well you gotta fight 13 of these insanely hard databattles that used to be optional but now their madatory for you to get the rest of your moneys worth. Too difficult? cant do it? well too danm bad, get good or go home we got your money already so screw you guess you’ll never know’

That is a fucking robbery and a huge slap in the face to people who are invested in the story, not proving their the best by fighting insanely difficult battles no matter what difficulty your on. It wouldnt be an issue if this was always the case, but these battles were always OPTIONAL for competetive players to do if they WANTED to, but now its mandatory and if you cant do it then oh well middle finger to you.

I couldnt even beat Vanitas, I fought him first and then Luxord and I couldnt beat either of them so I just said fuck it and went on youtube to see what I paid to see for free. 30$ wasted on a game I cant even finish, your out of your fucking mind if you think thats fair and excusable.

Thats why at the end of the day I give it a 5/10, its not good but its not bad either, its just decent. But if you asked me if it is worth the time and money? fuck no, my advice? watch other youtubers play it and keep your 30$

If you want it just to play as some of the characters, experience the new content for yourself, and play the databattles then by all means get it.

But if you think thats not enough for you to spend 30$ for then dont get it.

Overall Re:mind gets a 5/10, useless padding for majority of the first half of things we’ve already seen and cant skip because theres new scenes mixed in, forced romance that nobody but shippers care to see, severely lacking new content, and unfair extremely hard mandatory databattles just to see the final aftermath of the story which is kind of important setup for the next game.

Fuck this DLC, this was my fist time EVER buying a DLC for ANYTHING and thanks to this its probably my last. So thank you Re:Mind, for ReMinding me why I never bought DLCs in the first place.

Ps - Im so glad playable Kairi was optional, thats one of the only things this DLC did right.

#kh3 remind spoilers #kh3 #kingdom hearts 3 #anti-sokai #anti-kairi

[placentaur-archive]

why is specter knight the best knight (though more seriously tell me about how you see his relationship develop with plague knight)

see heres the thing both of those questions constitute equally long rants SO shit goes under a cut

[[MORE]]

why specter knight is the best knight (or more accurately, why specter of torment is the best shovel knight campaign):

STORY IT'S GOT SO MUCH STORY AND THE PACING IS ACTUALLY GOOD. both plague of shadows and shovel of hope have story to it too obviously but in SoH the pacing is kinda really..... not good. it's a big cutscene in the beginning and then a lot of meaningful dialogue at the end (not to say that dialogue wasnt good, the ending of SoH is what made me wanna see more of this game and sparked a 6 month hyperfixation). but like during the main part of the game the plot kinda gets lost. no one in the villages really talks about shield knight or the enchantress (save for a few people who congratulate you on beating a specific knight or the one dude in the armor outpost that says it was taken over by the order which is kinda rlly easy to miss anyway). so unless you're finishing this game fast enough to remember the original first cutscene it's not rlly gonna stick. PoS does a better job with pacing but the story itself is,,,,, not super interesting. it's just a dude who wants to make a potion so he can get super strong and impress his crush. the plot sorta does pick up 2/3s through the game after mona leaves the potionarium but ultimately the game is just About One Thing (SoH is also like this). SoT on the other hand has MULTIPLE plot lines that develop almost simultaneously. you've got specter on a mission to serve the enchantress that develops in the actual levels, you've got donovan's flashbacks to his quest with luan which happens in between levels, and you've got specter dealing with reize when you're in the tower. you could even say red's whole deal is a plot line because eventually if you're good enough at the game he does get his wife back and thEY DO A DANCE FOR YOU AWWWWW. but in the end all these plot lines come together (yes even red's if you collect all the skulls) and it's a big, narratively satisfying, emotionally crushing ending and its GREAT. the way that SoT develops characters that even SoH couldnt (cough cough shield knight) and gives us insight into the past and why things turned out the way they did is like,,,,, it's perfect okay

ALSO YOU GET TO SKATEBOARD ON YOUR SCYTHE HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT

how specter's relationship with plague develops:

I did a thread abt this on twitter a LONG time ago but I'm too lazy to find it bc finding old tweets is even harder than finding shit on tumblr so here's a list of events

- specter and plague dont know each other very well at all, specter just beat plagues ass that one time and now they work together and probably havent spoken since bc they both think the other is kinda weird

- plague during PoS is in the lich yard on his way to beat specter's ass so he can get a thicc thigh goth gf and finds the phase locket aka the locket luan gave specter. except plague doesnt know any of that shit he just finds a relic and hes like "oh cool I can sell this to chester for something useful"

- specter post PoS finds the locket missing and is real mad abt it

- however post PoS is also post SoH which means the tower of fate has fallen and the enchantress is no more which is Bad News for specter bc the enchantress was the only one keeping him alive oh god oh fuck

- so after a lot of back and forth with him, black knight finally convinces specter to go see plague knight bc plague is the only one who might remotely know what to do about this

- specter reluctantly goes to the explodatorium and plague and mona (who he's already kinda friends with so it relaxes him a little) agree to help him out

- somewhere along the line though specter finds out it was plague that took the locket and sold it to chester and now The Bird Man Is Dead To Him and he stops going to see him for help

- plague feels bad about it so he tracks down who has the locket now (shovel knight) and gets it back for specter

- specter gains 2% respect for bird man and when plague asks why the locket is so important to him specter very briefly tells him abt luan (mostly just "it was given to me by someone close to me, that person isnt around anymore so this holds a lot of sentimental value")

- time passes and they start seeing each other more often, even outside of when specter comes for treatment. they start learning about each other more and they learn their insecurities (theyve got shared insecuries about their appearance and their names, both of them are very against taking off their mask around anyone)

- one day specter decides fuck it and tells plague his name. plague can't reciprocate but he appreciates it

- they start taking to hanging out on the roof on what's left of the tower since no one goes there anymore and they can be alone together

- one day specter decides he can show plague his face and once he does plague gets very excited and is like "oH SHIT IM SENSITIVE ABOUT THAT TOO" and rips off his mask without thinking and suddenly they're both just kinda looking at each other and they realize they look a lot more similar than they thought and no one says anything for a few seconds before plague gets nervous and puts his mask back on and the moment is passed

- over time they get more comfortable around each other, specter doesnt mind as much when plague calls him donovan and he can show his face to him when they're in private together (and plague takes off his mask sparingly around him too)

- one day plague decides hes ready to tell donovan what his name is and he begs him not to tell anyone or even use it on him in private. specter says he doesnt have to tell him but plague insists that he wants to (I wont say what it is here bc it's just a dumb hc name and it doesnt really get used at all bc specter mostly just keeps calling him plague kkskgkdg)

- but that level of trust is there now!!! plague tells specter that no one else knows this much about him, not even mona

- and specter realizes he's been keeping information from plague and if they're gonna air everything out then,,,,,,,, well he might as well tell him fully about luan and reize and everything else that happened

-that night is rough for the both of them but it's also cathartic knowing they can trust someone enough to tell them about this

- eventually plague and mona come to the conclusion that to keep specter's soul stabilized they cant keep treating him forever because specter is going to live indefinitely and plague and mona are very very mortal SO the only way to keep him semi permanently tied to this world is to bind his soul to something else

- specter wants to bind his soul to plague knight

- plague is like NONONONONO I am NOT having that responsibility and I am NOT letting you die as soon as I do and convinces him to bind his soul to the phase locket instead

- I haven't talked about him at all here but by now specter is definitely dating propeller and has been for a while so whether u wanna see plague and specter as dating or just super close friends is up to u anyway I love these idiots thanks for coming to my tedtalk

#ive been writing this ask for like an hour please take it #asks #sk

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Hiveswap  Review (Spoiler)

We’ve been waiting an awfully long time for the Homestuck Adventure Game. First kickstarted in 2012, it’s gone through a troubled development cycle between 3 studios and.... yeah, you get the drift. Even in its final form, Hiveswap has gone through numerous unexplained delays (most infamously the last minute January Launch Month delay), and the development team for it had been very tight-hush until the end of August when a final release date of September 14th was announced. 

Now that Hiveswap is out, we’re able to see for ourselves what the development team has been working on. Does it hold up to expectations? Does it make up for the hard delays and extremely concerning lack of communication? 

Those are answers you can only decide for yourselves. What I will say, however, is this: Hiveswap is a charming and visually stunning introduction to the Homestuck world, that combines only the best of Homestuck’s humor with a new calmer, more curious and coherent setting.

It’s a shame, then, that the content of Act 1 isn’t a little bit longer. However, the gimmick of combining any item with each other and getting a new description will draw out the length for any lore completionists.

Before I start gushing about my feelings on Hiveswap, I’d like to point out something that REALLY soured the game for me: The cutscenes have a processing power so high that most laptops - including my own -  aren’t able to handle them. I don’t understand this, because a 2.20ghz processor can handle the game like a breeze. I’ve had no trouble running Hiveswap. But as soon as a cutscene plays, it ends up taking a processing power that would burn a computer which can play Overwatch. What’s going on here? Why are cutscenes like this? Is it something to do with the Unity engine? Surely another user has figured out how to compress scenes without losing their quality!

So, I had to watch the game be played in its entirety by @neproxrezi, only returning to my own game to test out as many combinations as possible. 

To make this easier for myself, I’m going to split off Hiveswap into a few categories:

Story and Characters - Hiveswap Act 1 is extreeeemely short, like 27 minutes long if you do an ameteur speedrun. On the surface, not a lot happens, but it serves as a compelling introduction to the Hiveswap world. You start off as Joey Claire, a young dancer of multiple schools with a hatred for pogs, Bubsy, and her entire life circumstances. Joey works with her brother to hide from a bunch of monsters that have invaded their home. Shenanigans ensue, mostly pigeon-related, and using Jude’s cryptic advice Joey figures out how to retrieve the attic key. Once in the attic she uses a precious heirloom key, which looks suspiciously Cherub-like, to open a SNAKE PORTAL..... Joey is transported to the world of Alternia where she meets a self-loathing rustblood of the bottom rung of society called Xefros, and explores the house of his controlling and paranoid Revolutionary moirail Dammek. Then Joey gives Xefros some words of encouragement and saves him with the help of Dammek’s lusus, then they ride into the distance while dodgy heiress Trizza Tethis takes a selfie over the burning neighbourhood. It’s all pretty basic, but a natural stopping point and setup for act 2 that makes me devastated I can’t go and play it immediately.

When you dive deeper into the game, usually by clicking on everything you see and combining as many items as possible, you can learn a lot more about these 4 characters. Joey in particular gives the audience plenty to think about once you start messing around with her; combining the green Cherub key with items will often leave her reminiscing about her absent mother, and clicking on Jake’s items strewn all over the place will show how she resents his constant absence fom her and Jude’s lives. There’s plenty of information about Rose’s mom, too, who’s their drunken babysitter and.... even now, not the best stand-in for proper parenting. I’ll talk about these two more later but it makes me curious about their circumstances in Homestuck. Meanwhile Joey and her brother Jude aren’t as close as they could be. Joey’s alarmed by how cryptic and secretive Jude is, wrapped up in his conspiracy capers, and she has great difficulty undertstanding him or having a normal conversation. This is highlighted when she assumes he wouldn’t have any care for his mother’s heirlooms if they didn’t have anything to do with aliens, and when she unlocks the Cherub portal despite his warnings because he never told her of its dangers. Joey does think about this distance between her and Jude, especially when locked on the new world. 

Xefros, meanwhile... everything you click while in Alternia - whether as Joey or as Xefros - will usually have information about Dammek. Xefros is clearly used to being messed with by Dammek’s "tests” and revolutionary spiel , which seem to be a more extreme and warped version of Jude’s conspiracy capers.  Inspection of his house will paint a picture of Dammek as having a very cluttered mind, hyperfocused on his goal without seeing any of the world around him or understanding the needs of his puppydog moirail Xefros. Now, Xefros himself is extremely passive and will do whatever other people tell him, which is kinda Tavros-like but more extreme. He doesn’t have any care for what happens to himself so long as he’s impressed those around him, and it’s not until Joey tells him how cruddy this is that he gets slightly relaxed and more optimistic. It’s ironic to see how Dammek and the Alternian revolutionaries end up falling into the same heirarchy that they strongly oppose. It shows the Revolution might be a joke, one of many others the Highbloods have quashed before.

As for Jude..... I wonder what’s going through that boy’s head? We barely saw him and yet he made a strong impression of his personality.

Gameplay - Hiveswap doesn’t have any “gameplay” in the traditional sense, unless you count the snake game. Instead it has a series of puzzles. They aren’t very difficult, but it’s more the funny dialogue you can read while playing. I’m gonna talk more about the humor in a few seconds, but the way you can combine any item with any other item must have taken soooooo much time from the writers, especially Cohen Edenfield. I wonder if this was always going to be the case in the original game too? 

There’s not really any failstates for hiveswap. You can get eaten by monsters if you dick around on your way to the attic after the big fight, but you’ll just respawn where you were before. It’s not a game I’d choose to “play”, exactly. It’s more of a visual novel. 

Humor - Oh boy. This is where Hiveswap wanted to nail it so, so bad. And its effort was valient to say the least. Joey’s dancing was some visual feel-good humor, all the 90s gimmicks in her room (especially the not-so-subtle videogame posters) had me clicking on them with every item i could find in the house, xefros in his entirety was a well of dark humor that pushed the game’s atmosphere back to its homestuck roots, and Byers - so true, so brave - he is the best item in the game. The funniest scenes for me were the Pigeon sequence with Jude, and Joey’s acrobatic pirouhettes away from Dammek’s terrifying lusus :P

I do have some criticisms for the humor. While combining everything with everything is a lot of fun, it’s not necessarily... funny. Like I didn’t get a lot of laugh-out-loud moments with the combinations. Often I found jokes were either too long-winded beyond their expiration or the punchline was just very awkward. This is a small criticism considering no other games bother to do this, but considering hiveswap act 1 is just an hour long if you DON’T do this, the game’s padding could have been more entertaining to say the least. counting on this gimmick when the humor isnt the best in the world, it’s a veeery risky move. 

Graphics - okay, let’s put this out there: hiveswap without a doubt is one of the most visually stunning indie games out there. It recruited the help of many artists from the fandom itself, like adrienne garcia, angela sham, dammek the tumblr user, rah-bop, shelby cragg... For the most part the game looks great. The drawings on the short panel-based animations look wonky sometimes especially when compared to the beautiful opening animation, but it’s a small criticism. 

This has convinced me that the move from 3d to 2d has seriously benefitted Hiveswap. I mean, look at this:

then look at this: 

it’s a whole WORLD of difference. I seriously do not think Hiveswap would have made a good impression if it had released in the crappy-looking state the 3D studio had produced it in. The game would have not looked like homestuck, and not been able to pull off any of the animated feats in the final product. Why were they going with that art style in the first place??? It was a waste of time money and effort. I guess that the 2D team was slowly constructed over years of producing homestuck flashes and paradox space content? Many people key to the current team were in high school in 2012.

Music - Led by James Roach, he worked closely with Toby Fox to really nail Hiveswap’s soundtrack. It’s short and loops an awful lot but I never found it boring or annoying to hear. It’s quieter and more subtle than Homestuck’s loud, rambunctious music, but each character has their own theme and leitmotif. The music changes to create a good atmosphere for each room. It’s not the best work from either artist, but it’s very good as a videogame soundtrack.

Dedication to the source material - While Hiveswap has adapted away from Homestuck’s crude humor, I feel it keeps the best and throws away the worst. Hiveswap being E10 rated made some people suspicious because of how sweary and dark Homestuck is, but Hiveswap has already shown its guts and some very effective dark humor. I wonder if Act 2 will have the same rating?

While the atmosphere in Half-Harley Mansion isn’t the most Homestuck in the world, Joey’s introduction is a nice homage to how all homestuck characters are introduced.  And.... you can’t ignore the insight it gives into Jake and Roxy. More specifically, Grandpa and Mom. 

So, it’s revealed in Hiveswap that Jade’s Grandpa had a wife and two kids before encountering her. What does this say for Jude and Joey’s situation post-hiveswap? Did he lose his two kids, and decide to build a new life in the pacific with Jade? Did he see her as his second chance?   It sort of puts a damper on John’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa seemed happy living alone, and Dave’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa was a clearly loving father. As it turned out, ‘pa severely neglected his own kids after the death of his wife, probably because they reminded him of her. But maybe Jake lost his two children and decided not to make the same mistakes with Jade? That’s why he took her to the island with him instead of siccing her on Roxy again, although Roxy had her own hands full.  Yeah, talking of B1 Roxy, it’s quite interesting to see how she had changed between Hiveswap and Homestuck. Joey saw Roxy in a very different light to Rose; she saw Roxy as very kid-like and sincere, but extremely negligible due to her drinking. Most notable difference is how Roxy here obviously hates cleaning, but by the time she mothers Rose, she takes perfect care of their house. I wonder if this is another effect of Jude and Joey’s theoretical departure from the mansion? If, like Jake, she saw Rose as a sort of second chance? It’s a shame how that turned out.  Yknow, im gonna laugh and cry if it turned out Jude or Joey killed Ana Claire with guns as a baby, like Jade and Jake before them

As for Alternia it was chocablocked with references to Homestuck, from the hierarchy to the Condesce to Doc Scratch to FLARP. Yeah, this is when Hiveswap went from an adventure game to a Homestuck game. I haven’t got much else to say here other than that I’m excited to see how Alternia differs from our impressions of it, and how the infrastructure of the peter pan society works.

and, of course, it had the best possible refrance:

CONCLUSION: Hiveswap has shown its guts to the world, and made a positive impression. I’m disappointed by how short it is, but that’s only because I want more. 

Idk what’s going on with all the bugs such as the resolution glitch or the cutscene processing, especially cos Hiveswap went through an extra 9 months of “bug testing”.... wouldnt most people have gotten this bug the first time they launched the game??? wouldnt they have noticed the cutscene fuckery?  these glitches have resulted in  many people getting refunds. the only reason i didnt do the same is because i want to support this game, and i want to play it again in the future when the bugs are fixed or i have better hardware.

hopefully hiveswap act 2 won’t be followed around by the same issues, same lack of communication, same lengthy development that act 1 has suffered. if it comes swiftly, and if hiveswap act 2 makes as good an impression as act 1, then I feel we’ll have something truly special on our hands. 

Story and characters: 4 hats outta 5 - short but sweet

Gameplay: 2.5 hats outta 5 - glitchy and contentless with no fail state, but this isnt necessarily a bad thing Humor : 4 hats outta 5 - sometimes missed the mark but a great chuckle for any player, fan or noob Graphics: 5 hats outta 5 - e c s t a s y Music: 4 hats outta 5 - does the job, does it well Dedication to source material: 4 hats outta 5 - best of the old, best of the new. 

FINAL SCORE: 8/10. All it needs is to finish, then it’s already better than Homestuck... 

#hiveswap #homestuck #gaming #adventure games #steam

[extradan]

I finished Before The Storm

I really enjoyed the episodes and I really felt things during the third episode

But I feel kinda disappointed, the third episode was,,,,, really really short

And figuring out that the entire game just lead to telling Rachel the true or not as the final decision was kind of... a really big bummer, there wasnt really much to it, if i knew that these what the gmae was trying to lore me into, I’d feel like playing the game would be the waste of my time, understanding that my progress would be nearly as useless to come up with whats in the end.

I dont know, the end just left me empty, nothing to carry from, I didnt feel anything, I wasnt excited, wasnt sad, wasnt happy, wasnt intrigued or thrilled 

It felt like all the cut scene that came after the final decision could have been playable, but instead they just skipped a huge portion of what the game could have been and wrapped it in a video

I dont even feel like any of my inmportant relationships within all the characters in the game mattered in any way, the game didnt spesify them at the end

I was mean to my mom at the very first episode, and I dindt get to see how my relationship with my mom resulted at the end of the game, neither my relationship with David, the game in episode 3 tried to strike fear into me while making me to decide between taking his card or not, which i did allthough I really disliked him and didnt let him control me throughout the entire game, and I did keep the post card because i agreed to have a good relationship with david as long as hes willing to put effort into it, I didnt get to see him put his trust into me and I didnt get to see the result of my decision, it was just him engaging Chloe's mom, which im convinced it will be like that no matter what you choose

The only relationship between me and the characters that I got to see in the end scenes was Eliot, I dont even care about eliot! eliot meant nothing to the story or to me throughout the entire game, I didnt even recognize him at episode 3 and his only final approach to me was extremely toxic and god awful, why sohlud i care if he ripped a picture of me and himself?? why was it so important to skip everything else but the relationship between Eliot and Chloe??

The only minor relationship that isnt even with me that I was at least happy about is Ethan and the girl being friendly and happy together, which I was trying to help ethan to get in a better place throughout the game and prevent him from becoming a monster by giving him a happier life and someone to support him and help him

I feel like I could still help Rachel forgive her father after telling her the truth, but it just wasnt there 

the thing I was expecting about the ending the most was to link itself to the present of where the first Life Is Strage is occurring at 

The entire game i was like “no way they are not gonna make the final cutscene of Before The Storm about Chloe entering the school bathroom and being threatened by Ethan and getting shot, which was the most important highlight of how the original game started off, the biggest part of the game that determined the end of the original game

It doesnt tell why Rachel has gone missing from the city which I assume they will put it in the bonus episode “farewell”

it has so many plot holes and so many things that you did throughout the game that just meant nothing after all, Rachel wasnt even shown to get to see her mom which she was looking for the most

I thought the game was more about explaining how the storm formed, and not the adventures of Rachel seeking her mom who only got relevant in the third episode and gone away with a bitter to no potential to existing in there but to lead to choosing the relationship between Rachel and her father, James

The ending didint feel satisfying at all, it had nothing to it, I feel like being pulled by my hair and spitted in my mouth

Niether Damon gets what he deserves 

Its just so incomplete

Honestly, saying out all these stuff, the ending was just garbage

Im truly disappointed since the series are all about choice making, which all of your progress, all what you do in the game is to find out what happens in result to your actions, and its just nothing, there nothing there, its just nothing! you did all this, for nothing! why even be worried about your playthrough! 

I must admit that I did have a lot of fun playing the game and I could be playing the game non stop until I get a severe headache because it was interesting, but knowing that it was all for nothing, really ruins the experience, like eating your most dream like favorite food but instead just spitting it out after every bite

probably the worst part of it for me is that its in no way made a complete link to how the storm was formed, It;d be so much interesting if the entire game was about befriending with someone so perfect that they are the storm, that THey are the flauge, I felt like the entire game was trying to lead to the big twist that Rachel only manipulated you and created the catastrophic storm she caused, hell itd be cool if she had abilities like max, liek controlling the weather, and have her emotions control the atmosphere and causing the entire storm, making you realize that you helped that storm and put you through the shocking reveal

Its just so easy to make ends really great, im sure its extremely common for the basic human being to think through a great satisfying ending, if thats not true that I must be some kind of a super human, I feel like I could write the game myself and make it amazing 

I feel like no care or love or thought went into the last episode and the ending besides the very beginning

I just dont understand how people just give up so easily on things like that

I would understand if they just got tired at the very end of creating the game so they just didnt want to think through the ending anymore, but if you came up with the idea to create a sequal to a game, you probably must have thought of the biggest highlights and the shocking ending right before development 

idk man

the end really ruined it for me 

it sucks 

neither the symbol of the crow meant anything, I thought itd mean something since Chloe’s dad was explaining that the fire is attractive but the fire in its real form is jealous and it devours if you get close to it, and I thought the crow would be the symbol because crows are attracted to shiny things, which I assumed that Chloe is the crow in the story, and Rachel is the attractive fire that only at the end it destroys all

but no

whatever man  

#life is strange #before the storm

[tumblunni]

OKAY SO THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG

Man it REALLY sucks that the only place you can’t take screenshots is in the cutscenes. SO MUCH GODDAMN PLOT HAPPENED!! I’m gonna try and sum it up! basically ORESHIKA GOT REAL

* Okay so to recap what’s happened before: we’re a magic cursed clan of zombie doods who need to defeat Abe No Senmei to break the curse. We can each only live for two years, so the game is built on hundreds of generations of this family marching into death over and over again until eventually some great great grandkid might get a normal life back. But oddly enough it isn’t actually as super dark as expected, cos you dont really have any personality or bonding scenes with the family members. I kinda stopped getting very upset after the first three generations, now theyve just become a bunch of numbers that i have to selectively breed to make a better next generation. Seriously its been OVER 150 CHARACTERS SO FAR and I’’m only around 2/3rds through the game! And like the plot also seemed super simple and it didn’t feel like anything was gonna happen to anyone outside of the backstory?? I DIDNT EXPECT IT TO GET SO REAL

* Abe No Seimei is a cool smarmy ass jerk villain with a neat design and a weird ancient japanese hand puppet. like this really funky cool wooden mask thing with a giant wig that I legit thought was an actual demon attatched to his arm until it started having clickitty clack face animations. I got REALLY UNUSUALLY SAD ABOUT THAT! Cos seriously abe no seimei is just.. weirdly.. nice...? He keeps telling you how to defeat him, he waits to do all his evil plots when you’re there to watch him, he literally sends you letters to come to his grand feasts celebrating each evil plan. And its so fuckin mysterious and getting to know him is really the only thing driving the plot forwards, cos none of your characters have actual voices. And like.. he’s this immortal guy who seems like he wants to die, and he’s deliberately playing the villain so you guys will be motivated enough to find out a way to do it. And like HE HAS ONLY ONE FRIEND and its HIMSELF DOING A STUPID PUPPET PAL VOICE. i’m really abnormally upset that onigashira isn’t really alive! His cute comedy sidekick doesnt exist! MR SERIOUS VILLAINMAN IS DOING THAT VOICE ALL ALONE IN HIS STUPID SAD HOUSE why do i want to hug this horrible jerkface

* Okay but then the other mystery we have is the character Nueko, who’s a weird demigod of some sort who can reincarnate in human form. She’s the one who gave us our magic zombie powers in the first place, she’s got the power to DIE HORRIBLY REPEATEDLY AND FEED PEOPLE HER BLOOD in order to cure them of deadly diseases and bring them back to life and stuff. And this actually becomes a gameplay thing! You can repeatedly bring her back as a new human reincarnation, and then her special skills let her shield allies from damage at the cost of basically going poof back to the heavens again. Its a really useful relief from the punishing permadeath! While not being overpowered cos she can only save one person per dungeoncrawl, and you cant reincarnate her again for a while afterwards. Anyway she keeps popping up every now and again like ‘hey guys i slept off that last death’ and being a super helpful badass team mom and such. But then THE PLOT STARTS HAPPENING EVERYWHERE Cos it turns out she’s got ~magical anime amnesia~ and doesnt understand her demigodness any better than we do. But wtf why does this evil sorcerer man keep implying he knows some secret about her...?

* THE PLOT TWIST SHE’S HIS MOM HIS MOM and seriously I LOVE ONIGASHIRA SO MUCH its like Nueko: What did you say?! Onigashira: *literally looks out the fourth wall* Did you hear it, kids? He totally said “waaaah, mummy, I missed you so much”, right! Literal actual player prompt: Yes/No Bunni, of course: SLAM THAT YES And oh god its just so extra funny cos Seimei actually doesnt even deny it?? He cracks a semi genuine smile and just looks embarassed, its so weird cos its like the only time he hasnt been all smug grumpy asshole. And I mean if it is indeed true that Onigashira is just a puppet, then the whole thing was his genuine feelings from the start.. ... though also DOES THAT MEAN SEIMEI CAN SEE THROUGH THE FOURTH WALL its weird how thats MORE SCARY than the literal demon doing it! like i feel like the game wants me to be scared of onigashira but he’s just SO CUTE AND FUNNY and I really dont want him to be imaginary okay. can we adopt him after we defeat seimei :(

* BUT ANYWAY UMM Yeah, Nueko is actually his mum despite looking younger than him! He kinda inherited her reincarnation power in a broken way, cos he’s half human. Instead of experiencing multiple lives whenever he chooses it, and getting to nap in the clouds in between, instead he just CANNOT DIE NO MATTER HOW MUCH PUNISHMENT HE TAKES. Seriously he introduced himself by setting himself on fire, burning to a crisp and then growing back his skin right in front of us, just to prove it! I can honestly relate to this guy going mad if he’s had to put up with this super crappy immortality that he never even asked for. And also its gotta sting to see that his own mum gets to stay more youthful looking, lol. i mean he’s pretty bishie too right now, but I’m assuming he’d actually continue to age and thats gotta suck!

* Oh and there’s this really cool element that all the bosses that Seimei summons to figth you become new powerups for Nueko! Its an early clue about their connection- at first she’s like WTF WHY IS THIS HAPPENING, but then it turns out these bosses actually originally were her familiars and she left them to look after her son. So they’re still loyal to her original command until she defeats them in battle. Also the WAY these familiars get used is EXTRA SUPER COOL! They’re sealed in magic tattoos all over her body, so she gets more sweet ink every time you reach a storyline milestone. And then she doesn’t just summon them or just boost her stats, she friggin GROWS MASSIVE MONSTER ARMS ALL OVER THE SHOP! Like I was so worried when her design looked all fanservicey at first, but then she’s never degraded in any way and she gets this super disservice power lol. I can’t imagine any smut fanfiction with her! “Yes hunny i will take off my bra and then BRING OUT THE CRAB ARMS” She grows fuckin CRAB ARMS! And snake heads for legs! She can shoot different demons out of all of her limbs and grow giant horns and wing hair and breathe fire and holy fuckin shit yo. And she’s really fuckin terrifyingly stoic badass even before she unlocks her powers! She could probably crush your head in her palm and not even need the crab. basically I Love Strong Mom

* Oh and apparantly Nueko’s husband was another god who got erased from history? Literally nobody is able to say his name, it comes out as garbled scribbled out text. And at the moment its ambiguous what happened, but it might be possible that he was actually sniped out by his fellow gods for being TOO GOOD. Like, he wanted to make peace with demons and give a bigger share fo divine power to humans, and everyone else was all ‘BUT THE STATUS QUO’ and stabbed him in the back. possibly? Maybe? ITS ALL SO MYSTERY!!

* so ANYWAY ANYWAY a required other thing for explaining the EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE MOMENT is that there’s this duo of minor helpful npcs i never mentioned before, cos i honestly didnt think they were gonna be important there’s this justice-powered cute princess who’s determined to do political stuffs to clear your clan’s name and let you back into your former land, though all you really see of it is that she makes a few sentences of progress every time you get back from a story dungeon. And then there’s her grumpy ass bodyguard who’s kinda your rival? he’s always hating on you while she always supports you, and its like he’s jealous cos he has a crush on her and doesnt want commoners talking to his precious princes. And blablabla ‘i am the only one strong enough to protect her GRARR i need to get stronger how did you defeat me’ yadda yadda. Except you dont even get to fight him, again its just like one sentence every story dungeon where he says he was totally gonna rescue the magical artifact you beat him to. Even tho he doesnt do it no matter how many years pass, lol So yeah we like.. didnt really even know them very well, but also they felt like this comforting constant that would never leave? GuesS WHAT THE EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE BIT WAS

* Okay so HEY SEIMEI KIDNPPED PRINCESS LADY HAHA JUST AN ORDINARY DAMSEL IN DISTRESS PLOT we’re TOTALLY gonna successfully get her back, this is probably just filler... HA... HA... HA...

* The rollercoaster of emotions begins! Hey onigashira might actually really be alive! Apparantly this puppet mask is haunted, or something? like onigashira is the name of a whole set of masks that give you super power if you wear them, but turn you beserker loopy demon man. Though they dont seem to be sentient or anything and also like nobody else seems to be able to wear them without losing their humanity?? So like did seimei escape the curse by wearing it as a hand puppet instead? or is the puppet not connected to the masks at all? Or is it gonna be something lame like seimei was never in control of his actions and the puppet is sentient and is the real baddie? COS I LIKE HIM BEING THE CUTE COMIC RELIEF YO Oh, wait, like.. maybe its something like seimei is possessed by the mask but the mask isnt really alive and like.. doing ventriloquism is just his random symptom of this ambiguously defined madness? Like instead of going beserker it made him ‘give in to his instincts’ in a different way, so he stays mostly in control but involuntarily expresses his true hidden feelings through the puppet. Hence why it is the best and cutest goofball who encourages him to be honest and hug his mom. OR JUST I DUNNO I JUST KNOW I HAVE MY FAITH SLIGHTLY RESTORED THAT CUTE SIDEKICK MIGHT BE REAL AND I CAN ADOPT HIM

* but hey guess what happened right after that happy moment of wow cool yay in the middle of me being like ‘yay seimei is so cool yay onigashira is actually gonna play a bigger plot role than just a sidekick and may actually be his own separate character’ SUDDENLY THEY KILL THE SAMURAI And like OHHH NO they dont even JUST kill the samurai I was still thinking the moment was cool!! Seimei throws a second mask on him and curses him to fight the party and i was just like WOW YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD and WHAT A COOL BOSS FIGHT CONCEPT And like I was proud of myself for sweeping the fight super quickly?? I just thought he’d be fine once we got the mask off??? BUT NO HE’S FUCKIN DEAD WE COULDNT UNDO THE CURSE WE JUST HAD TO KILL HIM AND THEY SHOW HIS VERY GRAPHICALLY BLOODIED CORPSE and like his whole plotline got cut off with no resolution?? he only existed to die here?? THE WRITERS NEVER HAD ANY INTENTION OF LETTING HIM CONFESS HIS PRINCESS LOVE. AND HE ALSO NEVER MADE UP WITH US AND LEARNED FROM HIS RIVAL PLOTS he just died really sadly and then like FOR THE SECOND TIME ONLY IN THE ENTIRE GAME we had an actual dialogue choice to decide the personality of our hero first time: lol onigashira mommy jokes second time: pick one of three ways to try and soften the blow as you tell the rescued princess that her childhood friend and crush just died horribly :(

* :(

* the one I picked was telling her he died saving her, not that he was the one being mind controlled to threaten her. :(

* I DIDNT EVEN LIKE YOU GRUMPY DUDE BUT YOU DESERVED BETTER THAN THAAAAAT

* look can i just headcanon that he became a guardian spirit like my characters can do if they get that rare random event. or like.. geez.. why couldnt nueko use her ressurection powers on him if she could do it for us?? they should have at least had a line of dialogue saying something like ‘it cant be done cos his soul was corrupted by the demon power’ or something...

* MAY YOU RESOLVE YOUR DAMN PLOTLINE IN THE AFTERLIFE, GRUMP FRIEND

* also seimei I am fuckin pissed. you have been promoted from trash boss who i kinda wanna give a hug to the same thing but without the hug now. you dont even deserve your sweet sidekick! IM TAKING YOUR DAMN PUPPET PAL, SHITTY POOP MAN i fuckin SWEAR if this game doesnt end with me ripping that puppet out of his hands i am gonna throttle a bitch

* ALSO I FUCKIN SWEAR IF THEY PULL A ‘PUPPET PAL WAS THE REAL VILLAIN AND SEIMEI WAS BRAINWASHED’ I AM GONNA DOUBLE CHOKE YA inm gonna fuckin build my own puppet with animatronic stranglin’ hands

#bunni plays oreshika #I WILL NOT CEASE IN MY ENDLESS BELIEF IN PUPPET PAL

[muckkles]

furnacelayer replied to your post

“this is the week of me barfing up andromeda critiques at anyone who...”

please tell me why to not buy this game

here’s something wild: im not actually gonna tell u not to buy it? i think if u wanna play and make ur own opinion thats good. its also still a mass effect game so even if u just wanna play to see some of ur favorite aliens or get to know the new characters thats good. i also have friends who are enjoying the game more than i am so its rly a matter of personal preference/taste. 

that being said, heres a long long LONG list of my Andromeda Opinions, under a cut for major spoilers. some are big things and others might seem nitpicky to u. keep in mind that i havent finished the game yet! but i have completed a good bit of it and i think im close to finishing the main storyline. i may add more to this list as i play more or as i remember more so maybe check back in a couple days for edits?

im gonna start with a list of things i actually like about the game cuz thats shorter and less spoilery. its mostly aesthetic/minor things tbh:

its a pretty game even if some of the textures dont always load properly. nice landscapes and whatnot to look at

driving the nomad is an upgrade from the mako and very fun. ive never gotten stuck somewhere in my vehicle. jumping around is also fun and the height u jump makes sure its hard to get stuck as well

u can give the nomad a paint job!

i like learning about the angara’s history and culture (angara are the new aliens. jaal is an angara) and i like that half of them have australian accents

theres little things that help u get to kno ur crew better. they send u emails and theres a crew message board in the common room that they talk to each other on. theres also plenty of convos to overhear on ur ship and in ambient dialogue as ur out n about. also ur crew has a specified spot that u can find them at for cutscenes with them but other times youll find their hangout spot changes around the ship which is cool it makes them seem more like real ppl

drack is good and my grandpa

theres a good amount of female turians, salarians, and krogans hanging around. also a larger variety of skintones (cute purple salarians!!)

explicit confirmation in an overheard conversation that some asari use he/him and/or gender neutral pronouns. angara also apparently have a range of pronouns they use to identify themselves (although u dont hear them of course :/)

when u look out the windows of ur ship u actually see the planet ur orbiting which is a neat addition. also the layout of ur ship is one map so no more elevators!

if youve never played the first three mass effect games (And thus have no basis for comparison) i can see how it could be a decent and fun game on its own

ok now on to things i dislike. i guess i’ll divide it by category? less spoilery stuff first but youve been warned:

general glitches - im sure youve heard of some or probably most of these. im only going to list the ones ive personally experienced. some of them have been almost game breaking and not in a good/funny way. im mostly mad about them cuz im playing on ps4 and console games are supposed to be, in general, much less glitchy than pc versions. And Yet..

npcs will randomly appear out of nowhere or slide into place from off screen

often characters skin textures lag or dont fully load

suvi has been sitting in midair instead of standing in a couple cutscenes for me

twice when kallo has stood up theres just been a giant dent where his right ass cheek should be???

the classic bioware “ur character is drinking but the cup is missing or in a weird position” glitch. im actually sort of fond of this one

i dont think they developed animations specifically for the angaras’ skeletons cuz when they cross their arms it just.. doesnt work right. they cant reach. their hands just sort of phase through each other in the middle of their chest.

one time i entered the escape pod room on my ship and the door closed behind me and wouldnt reopen so i had to load a save

a couple times ive had to talk to ppl for quests but the person isnt there when i get there. its just a floating quest marker. so i have to reload the area/my save

theres a side mission i cant complete cuz im supposed to kill all the kett in this one area but one of them just disappeared out of existence before i killed it so. the quest is just still there unfinished and its driving me crazy. 

on a planet named havarl which is a jungle world theres a layer of darkness at the forest floor indicated by how when somewhere is rly dark ur flashlight will automatically go on. one time i emerged from an area and my frame rate fell dramatically and i started moving rly slowly. at the divide where the darkness starts there was just a textureless black sheet across the whole world that looked like solid ground but i could fall thru it to the real ground. i tried reloading the area and my save multiple times and it didnt fix. i thought my save was permanently broken but then i restarted my ps4 and that did the trick

i rly dont think these can be explained away as andromeda being an open world game cuz like dragon age inquisition was open world and made by the same company and has similar sized areas with very minimal glitching (on console). the only major one i can even think of that ive experienced with inq on console is the one where if u start dialogue with someone in the middle of a jump u start hovering in the falling animation after but that is resolved quickly by just jumping again (i believe. i do remember its not permanent) 

combat - its pretty typical of an open world over the shoulder shooter tbh. theres plenty of cover and enemies can flank you. theres more options for melee which is cool. nothing else of note on that front except ways they messed it up which include:

for some reasons bullets move rly slowly?? might be a glitch but i have a friend whos complained about this too and i rly noticed after she mentioned it to me

you can only “equip” three different powers at a time?? u can save ur fave combinations and switch between them but honestly it sucks

u cant order ur squadmates to perform certain powers or if u can i sure as fuck havent figured out how

ryder is always on the left side of the screen which means ur always facing right in cover and cant peer around corners on the left of boxes and things?? its rly annoying

this one is just personal preference. i happen to dislike it overall but i understand why other ppl ive talked to like it: you no longer are set in one class. you have the ability to change at will any time. you can also spec in every single biotic, tech, and combat power. pros: u can respec and experiment without starting a new game. if u care more about taking ur fave characters along than strategy, u dont have to worry as much. which brings me to cons: if u enjoy the aspect of picking ur squad to make up for ur characters weaknesses and use strategy in that sense, this kind of renders that unnecessary (unless u just choose to purposefully limit urself). this also means that every single ryder is technically a biotic which sucks storywise imo cuz some ppl will choose not to ever use their biotic powers and that? doesnt make sense to me from a story perspective. i like the idea of choosing whether or not ur character is born a biotic so that its integral to ur individual roleplay/story/etc 

dialogue/writing/general story stuff - hoo boy. suffice to say this game does not live up to the original trilogy and fails in some areas where they Tried to make it better. more details:

a lot of the dialogue just Does Not Flow in the way im used to from having convos as shepard. ryder is bad at transitioning topics 

speaking of the way ryder talks, how awkward they are is like painful. major secondhand embarrassment and not in an endearing way. like in a wincing at the dialogue way. 

you cant choose to not be an awkward buffoon?? there are very very rarely dialogue options that make u seem competent or confident which sucks if thats the kind of character u wanted to go for. ryder is also kind of a weenie. they dont have the complete respect of their crew (good example, the argument cutscene on the tempest after u recruit jaal)

90% of ur decisions are boiled down to two dialogue options the “logical” one and the “emotional” one altho sometimes they seem to be flip flopped?? even in the paragon/renegade system u often got a third more neutral/sarcastic dialogue option and in dragon age inquisition (i kno i kno different series but same company and dialogue wheel mechanic) there was always multiple ways to respond to things with different personalities/characteristics

ur decisions straight up dont seem to have any consequences. like worse than usual for a bioware game. theres one cutscene where two of ur crew are arguing and u have to pick a side. i expected to have to cajole the one i didnt pick into being my friend again after but nope they just went on talking to me like nothing had happened. 

theres a couple times where the game doesnt allow u to disapprove of something that seems like a rly bad idea/thing depending on how u want to roleplay?? spoiler example: peebee reanimates a remnant observer to fight for u and ur only two dialogue options are in support of it and ur not given the option to say ummm what the fuck were u thinking??

ur introduction to the angara ppl rly rly lacked the significance it should have had. like u discover a new species, land on their planet, are there for all of 5 mins, and then suddenly youve recruited one to ur crew and ur on ur way again. then if u go back the nexus literally no one says anything or makes any sort of big deal about the fact that u made first contact with a new species!! like wtf!! i think theres like one line of brief congrats from tann and thats it

speaking of that. theres a real lack of diversity among sentient/sapient life in this game. theres a handwavey reason for the quarians/volus/batarians/elcor/etc not being there (their ark was delayed) and then the game only gives u two new species and only one of them is peaceful. so overall its just humans, salarians, turians, asari, krogan, and angara. plus the violent enemy, the kett.

god the cutscenes leave so much to be desired. the other mass effect games were so cinematic and engaging in comparison. im sure youve seen ppl complain about the lack of facial expressions and body language in literally any character (most noticeable in humans tho) but like. i just started a new me3 playthrough a few days ago and the first 30 mins of that game are so much cooler than any cutscene ive seen in andromeda so far even with the worse graphics

the trans npc that just. deadnames herself out of nowhere. to u, a stranger

the fact that gil is the only fucking gay man in the game and a major part of his personal story involves his best friend who is a straight female fertility expert/doctor/whatever who apparently constantly guilt trips him about not having biological kids and i guess bioware didnt see how this could possibly be homophobic or just generally offensive

miscellaneous - just general pet peeves i guess:

why the fuck do all the asari in this game have the exact same face

the sexual dimorphism in the angara just. kills me. at least the women dont have boobs.

u can choose music for ur room on the tempest but it wont fucking keep ur music on so u have to turn it back on every time u enter

god the game just dumps so much shit at u at once at the beginning of the game. its very overwhelming and honestly i still barely kno what the fuck im doing

i liked the cc at first cuz i think my ryder is good looking but after listening to one of my friends i actually agree its very restricting for a roleplaying game in 2017. u can rly only adjust preexisting features rather than completely switch them out. this is somewhat fogiveable tho since theres the issue of ur twin and parents having to look like u

personally i feel like peebee is very annoying which is a major disappointment cuz im rly gay for her whole aesthetic

the game is supposed to be all about exploration but two of the main worlds u explore are just a desert world and an ice world so. not much to see tbh. i will say that i had a lot of fun exploring and traversing habitat 7 (as brief as that is), havarl, and kandara so far tho. theyre the ones that actually feel alien but habitat 7 and havarl have relatively small maps

bioware decided to only create like 6? maybe? i havent counted but around that many different alien animal species to populate the worlds and be predators and theyre the Same on every fuckign planet even tho theyre all in different solar systems. i would have preferred it if there were even just like 2-3 animals that were unique to each planet cuz at least that makes sense.

have i said ryder is a weenie and a buffoon already

why can i still not kiss any salarians or krogans. bioware im comin for u

#reply reply #meggie speaks #furnacelayer

[skrunglebeasts]

okay, so final fantasy 15 is still sticking with me, so im going to type up some words about it theres probably gonna be spoilers

keep in mind i went into this game with really low expectations. i fully expected to dislike it completely and i was pleasantly surprised to find i actually enjoyed the game enough to finish it all the way through. whats good in it is really, really good and that makes the bad bits that much more irritating to deal with

the world itself is probably one of the most engrossing things about it! its so rare for games to actually meld fantasy into a modern equivalent setting that manages to balance the two aspects in such a fun and interesting way i loved the open world parts and, honestly, if they ever just pulled a skyrim and made an open world game where you play a custom hunter, i would be all over that! i havent enjoyed a game world quite as much as i loved this one in a long time, even if the lens its viewed through is kind of not that great i still think the reasoning behind not including a female character in the party was skeevy (and is also directly contradicted twice in the game itself, so good job on that), the party honestly manages to be fun in most of their banter and its likely just having them around and seeing all the ways they interact with each other that makes the banter work so well. it really feels like youre in the country of lucis and like youre on something that is equal parts epic quest and roadtrip. there are also chocobos, which doesnt really have to do with anything, save for the fact that theyre loveable

and thats where all the strongest parts of final fatnasty 15 are! theyre all in lucis and the countryside you get to explore and dealing with their banter, but it all falls apart when the other parts of the game come into play. primarily the story

the story itself isnt bad as a concept, but the presentation needs so much work. plotholes sprout up almost as fast as side quests and the open world nature of the game doesnt lend well to any sort of urgency in the story telling. and i think the creators of the game realized that because once you set sail to altissia, shit goes south REALLY fast

now, this wouldnt be such a big deal and that sort of tonal dissonance isnt uncommon in video games. but theres usually events leading up to it! hints of something bigger or something terrible happening that will eventually be a problem you have to face directly. but when the death of a major side characters has nearly no emotional impact compared to a main character merely being injured (albeit permanently injured) something went wrong. lunafreya’s death is supposed to be this big deal that really hurts noctis, but none of that in-game hurt carries over at all. this is a video game. im supposed to feel something. but they completely and unironically fridge luna as development for noctis and all it left me with was a feeling that i wanted to skip the cutscenes where noctis bemoans his loss for a character who felt flat. and this happens TWICE. noctis dad dies on screen, but he does it to silenced footage from an apparent tie-in movie called kingsglaive or whatever. taking credit from a movie and putting it into the game is just sloppy.

in comparison, when ignis goes blind, that SUCKED. i knew, from having ignis around, that he relied on his eyesight for clarity in the world, that he felt it was his duty to provide perspective and guidance for noct. its a symbolic and physical loss and it has real impact. but it also happens off-screen and that takes away some of that blow. its the same with gladiolus and his scars. we know he has them and they arent stopping him. why do we have to wait for DLC for that? these are things that could have happened and SHOULD have happened during story missions and taken a while to have lasting impact. instread, all the big injuries and revelations are rushed as quickly as possible into the second half of the game, which i spent barely any time in, compared to the multiple hours i spent running around in lucis

and you can get back to running around in lucis in the form of a time traveling dog. or maybe its just reliving memories? its hard to say, but the game specifically puts in a mechanic that allows you to go back and play what is definitely the best part of the game because, not only do the rest of the story chapters not allow enough for you to do to properly level up for the end game, it also just isnt as interesting. the slough thats chapter 13 has gotten a lot of criticism, and rightly so, because its just so time consuming, mind numbing, and boring compared to being able to just hop into my flying car (which i unlocked) and take off for a ride when the party heads for altissia, i was expecting another territory like lucis! a huge, sprawling area, maybe about the size of one of the states/provinces/area in lucis that i could explore via car. i was expecting more roadtrip, more varied architecture and environments, but instead i got this small area that i was done with inside an hour before moving on to the next story mission and then it gets exploded

and that was just incredibly disappointing. it also set the bar from there. everything save for one or two set pieces (the fight with hydraean, the fight with ardyn at the end) and story moments (gentiana freezing ardyn was....pretty cool B) that and the reveal of the world of ruin really did leave me in awe) from the fall of altissia onward are neat in concept, but also disappointing in the sense that it feels like there should have been more, both while experiencing it and leading up to it. and for a ten year development time, there really should have. maybe they should have taken that budget they wasted on a movie and an anime and actually made the story feel complete

and the thing is, it didnt have to end up like this. the story progression could have felt natural if it ended up leading back to cape caem being where you wake up in the world of ruin and youre forced to make a trek back to the capital. gather your allies that youve made along the way, actually be a king, and lead everyone on a final assault on the capital to take down ardyn. or, at the very least, let us see iris, who is apparently now known as “The Daemon Slayer” what sort of badassness did this girl get up to that got her a nickname like that??

oh well. hopefully the fanbase does its thing and makes some fanfics where the story actually flows well. hell, maybe i should do that! be ready for my 15 chapter fanfic about umbra the dog saving the world

#yackety yack #final fantasy xv #oof this went on longer than i meant it to

[wupassman]

Reviewing SweetStoryBro’s Review of the Shenmue story

https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro/status/831177322803892225

Some first ofs:

I am writing this directly adressing Sweetstorybro because it feels more natural and less impersonal to address him but that doesn’t mean it’s not intended for anybody else. I am one of the big backers (toy capsule set pledge) so I have a lot to say about this game I fought 14 years for to get that Kickstarter.

I am sorry if this may read a lil bit like a scatterbrained person wrote this. I basically take notes as I listen and since I managed to lose my write up for the first half of the podcast I had to rewrite that from memory too.

I really like the effort and research you put into this, while in places I can add something overall this is very sastisfying for a long time fan and definately a pretty goddamn complete rundown of what the story is about and how its executed. That being said generally if there’s agreement there is not a whole lot more to add so if I don’t outright disagree you can assume I agreed.

Let get to it then:

I think you did a really good job at explaining in which way Shenmue surpasses your average gaming experience, while its clearly a game it kinda goes past playing but experiencing. As you pointed out this game can be a very different experience for each player based on how hard they are looking to find connections and generally explore the world (and progress the story at just the right pace as to not miss a single cutscenes XD It’s not too easy to make a 100% run but if you do, things like Nozomi moving isn't as much out of the blue, yes she basically leaves as abrupt as he does but it's foreshadowed during the convos with her). Yu indeed built a very lifelike world with tons of lil details and NPCs that felt real. I really like how you brought up that book explaining what Yu was trying to do with this world. That was a thing I fan haven't heard of before. Indeed it is a very key aspect to differentiate between japanese and chinese, which of course becomes a much bigger deal in part II even, when Ryo is removed from his stomping grounds but in Hongkong. It's actually p interesting how a game about chinese culture was kinda a main idea from the beginning, as he was inspired to be making Shenmue (then Akira RPG/Project Berkley) many years prior, when he travelled China in order to research martial arts for Virtua Fighter.

As this is a perfect segway I’ll be skipping ahead a little bit here and talk about the fighting system.On of the main genres I always played were fighting games so I personally appreciated the super simplified VF fighting system (try VF3TB from the same time and youll know the difference) and being such a player I wouldnt even have thought of wanting to play this with analog stick. Golden rule of fighting games: dpad = accuracy, analog = wishy washy. That being said I am not at all opposed to change it up for Shenmue III and make it feel more like Sleeping Dogs. After all back in the day it was a different controller not quite as handy for 3D games (the lack of a 2nd stick means a lot). As long as the fighting is tight and responsive it works for me either way, iof there is a change that needs to happen it’s the camera. I am not really holding it against the game cuz it’s really old but the camera screw ups during fights could leave you clueless which way youre facing at times.

I wouldnt worry too much about the thing with the chapters. The games don’t equal chapters. It’s more like arcs/themes (as you later said when talking about the PostMortem). From basically the very start Shenmue was supposed to be split into 5 games and as of yet the plan/hope is that the final game will be Shenmue V. Shenmue I was only 1 chapter but Shenmue II was 3.

At the risk of completly blowing any kind of credibility I might have and just come off as a crazed fanboy: The pacing of Shenmue I had purpose. It very much corresponds with the mental state of Ryo. Feeling of grief and feeling lost. Shenmue I basically is about running into a brickwall and trying a different path until at the end he finally finds a way to get his passage to China. Until then his plans were shattered and ruined a couple of times and it weighs on him. And it should weigh on the player too. It’s part of how you manage to get this deep connection to the character because you as a player are forced to live out the day as is (or just go for the blocking out that your dad was killed and spend all day in the You Arcade). this is further emphasiszed that in Shenmue I theres rarely ever good weather and most of the soundtrack is depressing too. The days getting long is absolutely intentional. I can see how this might not be the most fun kind of gaming for a lot of people, but this is why different games exist. Shenmue’s job is not to appeal to players who can’t enjoy a game where shit doesn’t explode every 5 seconds. It is important to tell people who are interested so they know what theyre in for but its not actually a negative for the game itself because it actually perfectly fullfills what was required for this part of the story.

There is no way to talk about this without explaining how this correlates with the 4 themes Yu brought up and why Shenmue II is such a change of tone. It’s not just the fact that Hongkong is a bustling metropolis. It is very much the fact that due to the unseen part on the ferry and much more so because of all the masters and other freaks he meets in Hongkong that he opens up more. Again the change in tone of Shenmue II is also accompanied by visual and audio cues. THe soundtrack of Shenmue II is overall more upbeat, depressing themes do play in the more run down quarters but overall the game sounds cheerier. Likewise its not just that Hongkong of course is a much more colorful place than the suburban area he grew up in. It’s also basically always sunny in SHenmue II. Granted it makes a lot of sense due to the different seasons the game takes place in but of course with a highly artistic work like this, this is not a coincidence.

Let’s move right into the next part here. Yes Ryo behaves like a jerkass towards a lot of his peers. While there is a chance that the Voice Acting has some to do with it (No dissing Corey Marshall, the man is a hero!) it is still fully intended for him to be as cold and brooding as he is. You can tell by the face animation, which is p goddamn good for a game that old. Every Shenmue player made jokes about how Ryo’s happy face looks the same as his angry face. His moments where he is at least not totally miserable are rare and special. He is consumed with grief in Shenmue I. Shenmue II is about moving forward from that. HENCE DEPARTURE. not just locally but mentally. I really need to compare the interactions he had with the 2 most important females in his personal life.

The first one is obviously Nozomi: These conversations are awkward for more reasons than just them sucking at talking about their feelings (which btw isnt just them being teens but really very much them being japanese in this era too). Keep in mind both are aware of the feelings the other one has so they have a very close relationship. You’d think close enough for him to actually tell Nozomi what hes on and about to do in order to find the killer of his father. He doesn’t He’s very sparse with the information he shares which is entirely rooted in the fact that revenge is highly egoistical (heres a theme that gets such importance placed upon in Shenmue II). That doesn’t even mean hes an egoist, cuz he is not. He is just super preoccupied with his grief and aparently nobody really knows how to help him finding a better way to deal with it (given his age that makes sense too, no complaints there). As I mentioned earlier tho it depends on your play how many scenes with Nozomi you’re going to see (the Shenmue Passport cd is a good reference). Also since it wasn’t actually out of the blue that she would be going to Canada soon it is quite understandable she has a hard time telling him about her feelings too. This is not only a well known story beat but IRL youd think whether you wanna tell someone you love them when you know for a fact you’ll be moving overseas anytime soon. Especially when you consider the circumstance that if Ryo wasn’t on his revenge trip he’d assume his role as patriarch of the Hazuki Dojo.

Now lets fast forward to disc 4 of Shenmue II (THIS GEM!) and inspect the interactions Ryo has with Shenhua. These are amazing. They’re literally the best conversations Ryo has in all of the 2 games. Shenhua’s cheery and innocent, good natured personality makes it exceedingly hard for him to be the brooding jerkass anymore. A lot of that has to do with all the people he met who became his friends/mentors in Hongkong/Kowloon. He grew because of them. But Shenhua’s personality helped a great deal too. All of the sudden there are no distractions. Just the environment and her. What else would he do but chat with her? If you havent played Shenmue II I implore you to just youtube the conversations he has with Shenhua and compare with Nozomi yourself. It’s like night and day and p much the ultimate signifier for his growth throughout the progress of the game. Now this is venturing a into fan theory territory: the fan base is p much split down the middle of what kind of romantic role Nozomi is going to play in Ryo’s future. To me shes the child hood love interest that never became more due to him being preoccupied and her frankly not actually being available either. It would seem sensible to accept this as a chance missed as a part of moving on. I am positive he is going to end up with Shenhua as she resumes transforming him from this brooding dude preoccupied with revenge to a guy who truly internalises the lessons he learnt in Hongkong and adds a big helping of humanity to it. 

Not to excuse his behavior towards Ine-san and Fukuhara-san (because you rightly identify them as cold) part of that is also rooted in japanese culture. With Iwao’s death Ryo became the patriarch of the family. Ine-san may scold him but in the end it is not her place to deny him. Likewise Fukuhara-san was Iwao’s student so that kind of transferred to Ryo now. The bigger point here is that he abandons his responsibilities for them. I don’t think it’ll have actual negative impact for him in story, but there is likely going to be a moment of awakening that it is high time he returns home and takes care of the martial arts school.

I am sorry this actually took a 2nd day to finish but I got busy watching Collisions 2017. I only listened to it once but in seghments. Since I am such a huge fan of the game I wanted to be fair and not overanalyze your review and find nitpicks where there arent any.

While the individual play style is entirely up to each player it is my recommendation for everyone playing this, it to give it time. Let it breathe. Just waste your time away doing fun stuff. You’re going to miss out on a lot if you’re playing it in the way youd play most linear games where you just resume with the next goal in the main quest like crossing of a check list. You are not supposed to leave this early. During my fast plays I still never finished before christmas. At best I managed a jan 15 arrival in Hongkong just to see if I manage to arrive on my own birthday lol. But in all seriousness the time limit for this game is so goddamn long because you arent really suppoed to rush through this too fast. Leaving by the middle of January or even by the end of it makes for an overall better experience IMO (lol I just heard the 10 hours thing and I damn near lost it haha. look as I said it’s ok to play it any way you see fit, but seriously 10 hours literally means just the main quest. no goofing off. You’re missing out on stuff and an overall more majestic experience is all I am saying) To me the harbor segment was super fun cuz it was cool figuring out how you get the most out of each day, incl at least some good toy collecting and maybe training (usually didnt need that anymore at this point). By no means I am trying to tell you to like an aspect you didn’t, but to me this very much comes down to how deep you immerse yourself in the world. If you let the time go by slowly (dont run basically😉) such things as working have a deeper impact on how you experience it - then 2h lunch break still feels like 15 minutes. It was literally the opposite for me in that the harbor is when I am p much forced to move the plot forward instead of just goofing off so much. I know people who share this kinda play style feel the same way that the harbor is - to us - where it really picks up.

Before my review of this is over I’d also like to personally recommend the japanese dub over the english dub. Yeah the english dub feels weird at times but this is also intentional. A good comparision to that would be the lines in the Spartacus TV show. Just like that one was speaking latin in english the Shenmue dub was speaking japanese in english if you get my meaning. The VAs talked about this on the SEGANerds podcast during the kickstarter. Of course due to having played it so much it works for me but it’s easy to tell the difference. At the same time I can not praise the english VAs enough for being incredible heroes who promoted the Kickstarter hard, it was amazing. I love all of you guys. Thank you for your passion. Will def play Shenmue III in both japanese and english to honor all of you!

I warned ya it’s prolly a lil bit all over the place. Anyway thanks for the review. give the man a follow: https://twitter.com/sweetstorybro

[tumblunni]

Bunni continues to play Richard And Alice! Random thoughts and stuff!

* I’m really not good at point and click advantures, so i dunno if my opinion is very valuable, but this one just seems... not good, gameplay-wise. The sections are all different lengths and difficulty levels in each chapter, and not in a fitting way. Like so far the only one where I had to combine two items was the first chapter, it took me ages to figure out what the game wanted me to do with the bedsheets. And then the second chapter had like zero point and click at all, you just had to find one toy brick and stick it to block one hole, then it was just story cutscenes. And now in chapter three we have a suddenly huge snowfield to explore with your painfully slow walk speed, yet there’s only like one thing you need to find and just... I’m getting surprisingly anxious worrying if I missed something cos i only found that one thing! There was a whole section i didnt explore cos i didnt realise you couldnt go back outside after you managed to open the door. And what was with the misdirect of Alice saying ‘maybe i can reach this window if i have something to stand on’ and then instead she just shot off the lock on the door? Does that mean there were multiple solutions to this puzzle and thats why the place was so huge?

* Anyway, the story continues to be intriguingly good! I continue to be really engaged in poor Alice’s journey through this post apocolyptic snow world with her lil son, and I continue to be really worried what happened to that son, since this is a flashback and Alice met Richard alone... Also I like the continuity that Barney is continuing to talk about the close call they had last time with a monsterous bastard who kidnapped them. This poor lil 7 year old is struggling to keep up and struggling to keep smiling so his mum won’t be sad, and its just SO COLD and he doesnt understand why they left ‘the safe house’ because he doesnt understand they were prisoners there. And god, its so sad cos you can understand how Alice might be getting frustrated with him, and you can understand that she KNOWS she’s being irrational, but she’s just so scared that she sucks at keeping up a brave face for her kid. But I think she’s doing a great job, she’s way more of a badass survivor than anyone else would have been in this situation! And Barney is being incredibly good too, he’s being really patient and obedient to his mum and he’s a really considerate kid, he gave his mum his toy car cos she was getting sad remembering when her husband was alive and they used to ‘go on adventures’. (”But we’re on an adventure now, mummy!”)

* And MAN I am REALLY WORRIED for this poor kid, he’s been showing signs of getting sick as they were travelling the snowy wasteland and I hope they can at least get a break now they’ve found this abandoned house to sleep in. BUT NOPE! Alice finds mysterious scary notes with some sort of log of... people...? It definately doesnt feel like just someone recording visitors or survivors they met, its got a weird sort of... priorities, to what was written down. ‘Fem. caucasian. 20s. Compliant. 65lbs.’ And then what struck me as especially weird was that someone would classify a kid as ‘Female. age 7. 21 lbs’ instead of like.. actually writing that it was a kid. This is someone seeing these people as.. merchandise. You never really get an answer in this chapter but I think it’s someone who was offering survivors fake shelter and then cannibalising them T_T The chapter just ends with Alice finding an ambiguously scary room with a bloodstain, but this is the only shelter they have, so all she can do is lock the door again so her kid doesn’t see, and barricade the front door in case this cannibal cult comes back for their home base... *shudder*

* But also seriously, why did I collect like five other red herring letters as well as the cannibal one? And a rusty saw and ammo for a different gun. Was that JUST red herrings or did I miss an optional puzzle?

* Its actually a weird relief to get back out of the flashback and back to our slightly-less-horrible horrible situation in present times. Sure, Alice and Richard are locked in prison, but in this apocolyptic scenario its a relief to be somewhere where you get daily food and working electricity. There’s even a tv that only sometimes doesnt work! And they have each other, and they’re building up a nice friendship now, and it just feels quite optimistic. Richard’s even getting a bit of a crush on Alice, even though the attempts at flirting between the two of them are failing horribly cos they’re both total goobers. i dunno, if they do get together in the end, I totally wouldnt mind it! I dont think its really necessary though.

* Aww but the more we learn about everyone’s backstory, the more I really wanna hug em! We still dont know very much about Richard, but we’ve learned now that he had an ‘average childhood’, at least, by his definition. And he lived in some sort of small country town, and he joined the army in order to see more of the world. But it went really badly and he got sent to prison for rebelling against a superior officer who made a clearly immoral order. JUSTICE FOR RICHARD, GRARR!! And then Alice continues to be way more well developed and interesting, even though I do still feel sympathetic for richard, yknow. Just a lil frustrated that it took us so long to even hear that lil bit about him, when he’s supposed to be the ‘main character’. Seriously he seems like just a framing device for us to talk to alice and see her flashbacks! Anyway, now we’ve learned that Alice didn’t have much of a childhood, because she was hospitalized for a long time. And she talks about how she felt like a burden and felt suicidal and how she never even got to make any friends til she grew up and became a lil more healthy, and then she sorta ended up in an unplanned pregnancy with the first man she ever dated, and never had a chance to pursue her dream career and just... wow Alice dear god, someone up there in the heavens hates you! God, I hope this game has an actual happy ending, please! And also it makes me EVEN MORE WORRIED about what happened to her kid, now im starting to worry if maybe he inherited her childhood disease and like.. it only first started manifesting during the apocolypse and she wasnt able to find a doctor in time.. or something... MAN THIS GAME IS GIVING ME A MILLION WAYS THIS SWEET BOY COULD DIE

* Oh but one random complaint... much as I care about Barney, he kinda isnt a very well written character. They fall into a lot of super outdated ‘fake movieverse child’ cliches instead of like.. bothering to listen to what actual kids talk like. He’s always using that fake cutesy talk like ‘i made you a waffle but i eated it’. Its rather jarring! ...but still I WILL DEFEND MY VIRTUAL SON FOREVER dont you dare kill him off just because his dialogue is poorly informalized!

* The next chapter is kinda boring, its not really even a chapter but just an intermission to show us some more gameplay and nothing else. Richard and Alice do nothing but have an awkward fetch quest to find enough stuff to make a pole to reach the termostat outside the jail cell, and then after all that it ends up failing anyway. I guess at least we do get a bit of character development cos we get to see them both frustrated and having a bit of an argument, then making up again, and etc. But meh, bring on the next actual plot flashback!

* “Why does Daddy live in the ground?”

* thats it im done this is how bunni is slain fucking hell

* god, I dunno if I made the right choice but I chose to be honest with the kid and try and explain what death is. I got to hear the backstory of how the dad died, so i THINk that was the right choice? It seems he died back when barney was too young to even really know him. It was at the start of the apocolypse and the family was doing semi okay living in a shared shelter with a bunch of other people. But then it was the start of government aid breaking down and society crumbling, and a gang stole the last food ration pack from them and the dad thought he could reason with them. And its just so sad cos Alice is thinking of all the ways it could have been prevented! ‘We’ve gotten used to surviving with less now, what if we’d just let that food go? we could have lasted’ And what if they’d shot first and asked questions later, instead of trying to be diplomatic. And apparantly back then things were a little less abd so there actually was a trader they could have got more food from, but resources were limited so they decided it wasnt worth it at the time. And the after the gang killed the dad and some of the other leaders of the shelter group, it seems like things just collapsed in a power struggle and thats how Alice ended up alone... And you just have this sad sidequest to gather flowers for his grave and then Barney is all ‘i dont really know him and i dont understand so i feel bad that i cant cry’ and then he’s asking if dead people can hear you from down in the ground. And I picked being honest again, and Alice didnt say yes or no, she just admitted that nobody really knows what happens after you die, and you have to choose what you want to believe. So Barney chooses to try and tell his dad about how they’re having a good day playing in the snow on this adventure, and Alice tells him that Barney’s grown up so big and strong, and Barney says ‘Yeah! Strong like a lion! Or you, daddy!’ and BUNNI’S SOUL SHATTERS INTO A MILLION PIECES

* i am gone i am deceased at this deceaseness aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

* And there’s like an optional note you can find that tells the story about some unnamed kid who was living alone with their friend Lucy and they were trying to survive without any adults to help, and its all SCARILY VAGUE and I hope we get to learn more about them later cos it just says how the same gang who killed the dad was just.. ominously circling around the area and Lucy was acting weird and then dissappeared, with a letter saying she chose to leave for [insert name of far away settlement here] but it was really suspicious and the unnamed kid thinks that the gang was threatening lucy and they must have kidnapped her and faked this note and then the diary just ENDS it just ends with the kid talking about how much they love lucy and cant live without her and we dont know if they found her or if she even really was kidnapped?? ITS SO VAGUE! its so vague that honestly im only just assuming the diary writer was a kid too, i mean maybe they were lucy’s parent or sibling or something? or maybe both them and lucy are older? but the way it was written sounded like they were like early high schoolers or something (then again this game is bad at writing kid characters so maybe not) I MOURN FOR YOU, UNNAMED DIARY PERSON AND LUCY OF MYSTERY

* OH GOD DOOM when it went back to modern day, now its got all mysterious and weird and sad too, AAAARRRGH the heroes are still in prison, but the guards have stopped coming to their cell and theyre stuck here scared and worrying and you dont know if the obvious has actually happened... i mean maybe the prison has been abandoned or everyone died and now they’re stuck here locked in their cell and AAAA eventually the cold will start seeping in and kill them too and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

* okay im gonna go get back to playing this game

#bunni plays richard and alice