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getvalentined · 20 days

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Thinking about Vincent's involvement in the Queen's Blood storyline and how it's the perfect explanation for everything going south with the game in fairly recent history even though the game has canonically been around for decades. It's genuinely so clever, I'm in love.

So, for anyone who hasn't done the full questline, Vincent is the highest ranking Queen's Blood player in the entire game prior to facing off against the Shadowblood Queen herself and the completion of the questline. (After this, ranks are adjusted worldwide because of game mechanics; Nanaki is rank 10 in the QB Arena at Gold Saucer.)

A lot of people have poked fun at this, like Vincent apparently learned the game really fast and was just naturally really good at it—but no, actually, Vincent played the game before. He's this good because he was champion level back in the 70s, back when he was human.

We know this to be the case because when you match against Lidrehl, he says "the Emerald Witch sleeps in Nibelheim with a monster of chaos, and that is where it will remain." This means that Vincent already had the card when Hojo killed him. It's not clear how the Emerald Witch came into his possession, but you don't make his rank without being a very active player, so it's clear that he was very prolific in the scene back then!

And back then, it was just a game. No mysterious deaths or disappearances. The myth of the Shadowblood Queen and the Emerald Witch was still there, as Lidrehl developed the game based on the story, but everything was fine.

This is definitely because Vincent was active in the scene, and he had the Emerald Witch. The Rebirth Ultimania implies that the Shadowblood Queen is a piece of Jenova (which I thought was pretty obvious since she calls Cloud a "puppet" and he's also apparently the only one capable of facing her head-on), and the Emerald Witch is the soul of a Cetra that serves as the silent warden to her imprisonment within the game. (Imprisoning monsters in cards is not new to the series, either, since FF8 literally allowed players to turn monsters into cards rather than fighting them.) Vincent being so active in the circuit allowed him to spread the Emerald Witch's influence through the scene and kept the Shadowblood Queen quiet, reminded her to keep her head down, kept her from trying anything at risk of being spiritually shitmixed again.

But then Hojo killed Vincent, and the Cetra warden Emerald Witch was in his deck, and that deck was tucked away with his things in Nibelheim. And so she spent thirty years unable to perform her ongoing duty to assure the safety of the planet. This time allowed Jenova the Shadowblood Queen to regain the power and confidence to manifest and start wreaking havoc again, finally building up enough strength to directly possess her current holder—during the period that Sephiroth is calling for Reunion, which presumably helped to really draw her back to full consciousness.

There's a whole detailed storyline here that makes perfect sense, with Vincent's murder literally being the catalyst leading to the resurrection of the Shadowblood Queen, and Hojo never having a clue what he'd done.

This is super interesting to me not only because it actually showed some of the more far-reaching consequences of Vincent's death, but also because it indicates that Hojo has unwittingly been Jenova's most loyal emissary for decades. He gave her his wife, his son, himself—and the first murder he ever committed served to imprison the only power holding a piece of her thought lost to history at bay, allowing her to manifest decades later with her own will and personality completely intact, something that she can't do through Sephiroth.

As it turns out, Hojo and Vincent have been opposing forces in supporting fate's "chosen ones," the forces around them capable of choosing the final fate of the planet, for much longer than either of them ever thought.

Still not a huge fan of the card game itself, but I adore the way it's been woven into the story, and strengthened it as a result.

#vincent valentine #professor hojo #queen's blood #final fantasy 7 rebirth #ff7 rebirth #ff7rb #ff7 rebirth spoilers #fandom ramble

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duskdog · 1 year

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You know, fandom seems to talk about Wrathion's past mistakes a lot, but I don't often see anyone discuss his visits to the August Celestials during his legendary questline. Like, sure, people occasionally bring up his attitude towards Tong, but how many current players were there to experience (and still remember) the rest of that quest? When I think of Wrathion, I think first of the whelp who literally dropped to his knees before the Red Crane of Hope, who poured out his heart about the visions he'd had -- how terrified he was that the Legion was coming, about the "rivers of blood and cities in ruin" that would result if he wasn't able to somehow, some way, stop this from happening, and about how the only thing sustaining him was the tiny sliver of hope that he might actually succeed. This is a young dragon who foresaw something that absolutely shook him to his core, something he would do anything to try to prevent... and who felt he had almost no support, because it seemed he was the only one taking the threat seriously while everyone around him was busy fighting one another. His fear, his burden, was so great that the Red Crane himself even admitted that Wrathion needed his blessing of Hope "more than any I have ever met".

We can, of course, debate Wrathion's methods. It's fairly obvious that he didn't fully understand the lessons the Celestials were trying to teach him -- at least not at the time. It's also undeniable that he made some pretty terrible mistakes along the way. And I can certainly understand the argument that his attitude in Dragonflight is just too annoying for some people to stomach. But the thing that always brings me back to Wrathion as Aspect is the knowledge that he actually cares about Azeroth. From the moment he was hatched -- even before -- he carried the burden of Earth-Warder, and he took it absolutely seriously. Neltharion took an oath, and he broke it -- broke beneath it, I would argue -- and Wrathion clearly believes that it's his own responsibility to bear the immense, crushing weight that his Aspect father/grandfather, and his entire flight, proved unable to bear. All those black dragons betrayed Azeroth, tried to destroy what they were sworn to protect, and here's Wrathion -- first a whelp and now a drake, all alone, without Neltharion's colossal size, strength, and power, without the support of a dragonflight behind him, without the support and trust of the other flights, without any true home or safe harbor, without the regard of the mortal races that he's trying to protect -- doing his best to fulfill an oath that he personally never actually took, only inherited.

Given that knowledge, I actually think Wrathion has behaved with remarkable restraint in regard to Sabellian's sudden appearance as a rival. Has Sabellian even given us the slightest indication that he actually cares about the sacred charge of the black dragonflight? He's certainly older, wiser, and steadier, and maybe he's done a good job of raising his kin and keeping them safe in Outland... but does he care about Azeroth? Because he certainly hasn't been there when it needed him... and yet he was perfectly willing to risk reappearing just in time to claim the Obsidian Throne.

#wrathion #world of warcraft #the trials themselves are also great #i could write an essay on Deathwing as the personification of Wrathion's fear #And the Red Crane reassuring him that he's not his “father”#the celestials did not dismiss Wrathion #even when he clearly wasn't understanding #they showed patience with him #IMO they understood that their lessons would sink in eventually

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crimsonedquill · 1 year

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Hey! I'm in great need of angst right now. :) Would you like to write Sebastian x f!reader (not Mc) fic where reader is a friend with Seb and Ominis for years and has feelings for Sebastian as long but now is hurt/jealous of Mc being so close to him? Sad or happy ending up to you, thank you!

Lost Love (Sebastian Sallow x Jealous f!reader)

WARNING: Angst ahead

Did I stay up all night to write Sebby angst when I was supposed to be sleeping? Why yes, I did! Let's be real, since MC is basically a gaslighting bitch for most of Sebastian's questline, that angle was too good to pass up. Thanks for the prompt 🖤

“What do you think of them?” you asked your friends as you made your way back to the common room, your bellies deliciously filled with food from the start-of-term feast.

“The new fifth-year?” Ominis asked. “I can’t say I envy their position. Starting this late must be rather daunting, especially in a completely new environment.”

Sebastian chimed in, “I’m quite eager to get to know them, actually. Did you hear they got attacked by a dragon on their way here?”

“Somehow I find it hard to fathom that to be the only reason for your curiosity,” Ominis responded, the skepticism audible in his voice. “You probably couldn’t keep your eyes off her during the sorting ceremony.”

“My, the slander. Y/N, you didn’t see me looking, did you?” Sebastian turned to you with a grin.

Your eyes shot up, the question catching you a bit off guard. “Uh, no, I don’t think so –”

“See?” Sebastian said, turning to Ominis triumphantly. “Now, of course, were she to actually have caught my attention, I’d say you can’t blame a man for having good taste –”

The two continued bickering, but you didn't hear them. Something inside you stung, and you knew what it was. The truth was that you had seen Sebastian looking at the new fifth-year – in fact, you were pretty sure you’d witnessed him practically undressing them with his eyes. You wouldn’t put it like it bothered you… after all, you’d known the handsome Sallow boy to be a flirt ever since he was chasing girls back in Feldcroft – but still… it bothered you.

Entering the common room, the three of you stood in front of the fireplace. “Well,” Ominis yawned, “I’ll be taking my leave. I will see you two at breakfast, if you manage to be out of bed before then.”

“Sweet dreams,” Sebastian said with a chuckle, and he stretched his arms as Ominis disappeared off to the dormitory, causing an involuntary twitching in your stomach.

“I should probably be going as well. See you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” you nodded. You watched him walk to the archway, doubt scrambling your thoughts… then you suddenly opened your mouth: “Sebastian?”

He turned around to face you. “Yes?”

The words lingered on your lips. You had been planning to tell him, and now that you were, you suddenly didn’t know what to say. His gaze bore into you, causing you to blush.

“I –” you stammered, “it‘s good to be back, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” he smiled gently. “I’m glad to be here again, with you and Ominis. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

You nodded. “Yes. Eh, goodnight.”

The tension escaped you in a sigh after he left. This shouldn’t be so difficult. After all, the two of you had known each other for years; you had shared everything with each other, from tears and grief to dreams and laughter. Yet in some way, you figured this to be the exact problem – what if the things you wanted to tell him would change all of that forever?

As the days passed at Hogwarts, you found yourself consumed by doubt and disappointment. You had spent the entire summer psyching yourself up to confess your feelings to Sebastian, but now you were starting to wonder if it was worth the risk. Despite your attempts to focus on your studies, thoughts of him kept creeping into your mind – imagining his reaction, the way his eyes would light up if only you had the courage to speak up.

Finally, you decided to take the leap and walked up to him after Defence Against the Dark Arts. Shifting your books in your arms, you flashed him a smile and complimented him on his impressive duelling skills.

“Prewett must have thought I’d gotten rusty over summer break,” he scoffed, “I honestly wasn’t even trying.”

“Sure you weren’t,” you playfully nudged him. “So… uhm, I was thinking – perhaps we could go over our Potions homework this evening, someplace quiet?”

“Fine by me. Did you and Ominis already have some ideas?”

You noticed your throat getting dry, making it more difficult to speak. “Well, actually… I believe Ominis has been otherwise occupied, so I thought it could be just the two of us –”

“Ah, so it’s a date then,” he chuckled, not realising how your cheeks were turning red. “Well, count me in.”

“Great! So –”

“Oh, hang on, I’m being stupid.” He stopped in his tracks, facepalming himself. “I forgot I already have plans this evening. I promised the new student a little clandestine tour of the Restricted Section.”

“M-my, already spreading your bad influence, aren’t you?” you said, your smile masking the pain you felt in your chest.

“Force of habit, I’m afraid,” he shrugged. “It’s all rather exciting actually. I’m supposed to be helping them on some kind of quest – they haven’t exactly told me any details yet, but I’m convinced it’s something truly astonishing.”

“Well, keep us posted, will you?” You pretended to suddenly realise that you’d forgotten your quill in the classroom and told him to go on without you. The pain in your chest lingered throughout the day, like a relentless curse, refusing to release its grip even in the refuge of slumber.

— — —

At first, you tried convincing yourself that it wasn’t anything malicious. Sebastian had always been protective, mainly owing to his sister’s condition, and he was probably just putting in an effort to make the new fifth-year feel at home. Yet you couldn’t help but notice that they were spending more and more time together, to the point where even Ominis started taking notice. You ended up discussing the subject one day on your way to the Undercroft to practice some spells you’d recently learned.

“I suppose it’s a bit curious,” Ominis confessed, following the red glow at the tip of his wand down the stairs. “He’s been rather absent-minded lately – even more than usual, if that is what you mean to say.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” you agreed. “It’s like he’s forgotten all about us – all he cares about is spending time with that… girl.”

You noticed Ominis turning his head ever so slightly in your direction with a frown on his face. Shit, you hadn’t meant to put it like that –

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but you haven’t sounded quite like yourself either lately. Is everything all right?”

“Of course,” you hastily said as you turned the corner to where the entrance to the Undercroft was. You noticed the hidden door of the clock swinging open and were momentarily thankful for the interruption, but your gratitude was quickly evaporated when you saw the person stepping out. MC’s smile disappeared just as swiftly as they saw you. “Oh, er –”

To your own surprise, it wasn’t you who lashed out at them. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Ominis demanded.

Your heart sank when you saw Sebastian climbing out of the clock. He quickly jumped in front of MC, putting his hands up. “Ominis, it’s all right, she’s with me –”

Ominis cut him off, “You brought her here? What right could you possibly have had to do that without telling us?”

Sebastian's voice rose as well, “Oh come on, I would have told you eventually! You’re acting as if I couldn’t tell whether someone is trustworthy!”

“It’s not about trust, Sebastian. This is our special place. You should have consulted us before bringing someone else into the fold.”

“I think you’re a bit overreacting, to be honest.” Sebastian turned to you now, clearly looking for some help. Yet the only thing occupying your mind right now was the sight of MC behind him, their infuriatingly smug expression making your blood boil. You shook your head. “You should have told us, Sebastian.”

Sebastian's expression hardened. “Unbelievable. I expected more from you. Come on, MC."

He took her by her arm and pushed past you, leaving you and Ominis in a charged silence. Your heart felt heavy as you watched them disappear down the hallway, wondering when everything had started to change between the three of you.

— — —

Sebastian had been ignoring you for weeks since the incident at the Undercroft entrance. You had tried to reconcile with him, not because of your feelings, but because you hated the thought of losing your friend. Even though you eventually ended up making up more or less, it became painstakingly clear something was blossoming between him and MC. They were basically sitting together in class all the time now, and after some time he even took them to see Anne without telling either you or Ominis.

It left you feeling like something within you had shattered permanently. Worst of all was that you were utterly incapable of doing anything about it. Ominis was still looking out for you, but you were too embarrassed to talk about your feelings even with him. All that was left for you to do was to let the itchy pain of jealousy keep eating away at your insides.

Then, one day, you found Ominis in a quiet corner of the common room, pale as a ghost and on the verge of tears. After some effort, you managed to learn that he had been convinced by MC to take her and Sebastian to Salazar Slytherin’s scriptorium, and it had demanded a terrible price. Initially, you were just shocked. Then a wave of hot anger washed over you, stifling all other thoughts. Fuck your feelings – this wasn’t just about you anymore.

You stormed out and didn’t stop until you had found MC. They seemed surprised to see you; even more when you backed them into a corner, looking ready to tear them apart. “Y/N, what –”

“What were you thinking?” you seethed. “How did you have the audacity to put Ominis through something like that?”

MC was lost for words. “I – it wasn’t my intention! Sebastian told me it would be perfectly safe –”

“But you don’t know him, do you? How could you, you’ve only been here for a few months! And is it true you cast the Cruciatus Curse on him?”

MC’s eyes widened. “He… he asked me to!”

You didn’t know what you were hearing. However, before you could give them the verbal punch in the face they were so obviously begging for, you heard a familiar voice say your name. You swerved around. Sebastian was standing behind you, but he might as well have been a completely different person; he was clutching his side and his eyes had an unrecognisable darkness in them. “Y/N, leave her alone.”

“Sebastian, you’re hurt –” you said, taking a step toward him, but he interrupted you, “I’m fine. No thanks to my dear friend. Can you honestly believe Ominis would actually have let us die down there? Thank Merlin MC was there –”

“What are you talking about?” you asked, your attitude now a mix of indignation and anger. “He’s tearing himself apart in the common room because of what you put him through!”

“He’ll get over it,” Sebastian huffed, though you could see him shuffling his feet. “It was a necessary evil. I’ve never this been close to finding a way to cure Anne. Y/N, I can’t give up on pursuing this,”

Despite your anger, you couldn’t help but feel some compassion for the Sallow boy in that moment. Perhaps it was just your feelings talking, but you forced yourself to calm down, taking a deep breath before you looked him in the eye. “But Sebastian, is all of this really worth it? For Merlin’s sake, look at what it’s doing to you –”

“I said I’m fine,” he insisted, growing harsh again. “And in fact, I think it would be better if you stayed out of our way from now on.”

“But I could help you –”

“Oh yeah? Tell me, would you have casted Crucio on me if I’d asked you to?”

You fell silent, knowing you couldn't have ever put him through that kind of pain. “No,” you said softly.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Look, Y/N, I appreciate your concern, truly. But I know I can rely on MC here to do what’s necessary. It’d be best for you and Ominis to keep your distance until we’ve been able to figure this out. Do you understand?”

Doubt plagued your mind. Perhaps it would have been easier to believe him if he didn’t have that strange look in his eyes – that deep hunger of a predator which had smelled blood and would stop at nothing to reach it. But either out of love or some naive belief that you could save him if he got too close to the edge, you just nodded.

— — —

You told yourself that it wasn’t you. That it was just some wild goose chase, a hunch he was chasing after in the hope that it could finally be the miraculous means to save his sister. When he was done with her, he would simply cast her aside and come back to you. But you knew he wasn’t that cruel, and it also didn’t explain why it felt like he was slipping away from you as the days went by, to the point where you weren't even sure if you could call him your friend anymore.

Every now and then, you would hear about his escapades. Apparently, he had gotten into trouble with his uncle when he got caught using Dark magic, and he had been banished from seeing his sister after that. It broke your heart to see the handsome boy you used to harbour a secret crush on turn into a mere shadow of his former self, an obsessed mind constantly whispering to himself about revenge and “showing them”.

And then you reached the edge.

A few months had passed when Ominis came up to you, looking completely disheveled and out of breath. “Y/N – we need to get to Feldcroft, now.” he said urgently.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, feeling a foreboding sense of dread.

“Anne sent me a patronus. It’s Sebastian – he’s gone down into the tomb with MC and that infernal artifact. I fear he’s planning to use it.”

You wasted no time in summoning your broom and helping Ominis to mount it. The two of you flew to Feldcroft as fast as you could, fears about what you’d find there running through both of your minds. As soon as you landed in front of the tomb entrance, you both drew your wands and stepped into the darkness, determined to find Sebastian as soon as possible.

You were horrified to find a battalion of Inferni waiting for you down in the cavernous corridors. The two of you fought ferociously, and eventually you managed to battle your way into the final tomb chamber. You saw Sebastian standing in the middle, seemingly captivated by the artifact in his hands. MC was standing a few feet behind him. Upon seeing her, your vision went red around the edges.

“You!” you screamed, leaping forward. “You let him on! All of this is your fault!”

You disarmed them without much effort, all of the rage you’d been keeping inside bursting out in a loud roar. They had taken everything from you, and they would pay for it. You lifted your wand, prepared to cast a curse at them –

“No, leave her alone!” Sebastian yelled, and suddenly everything happened at once. The only thing you remembered was something striking you in your side and the world around you going dark.

The next thing you knew, you woke up in a bed, surrounded by an collection of pastel colours. You groaned and sat up against the pillow, causing a figure sitting next to the bed to turn his head towards you. “Y/N, are you awake?” the voice of Ominis asked.

“Just about,” you said through gritted teeth as you felt the pain radiating from the sore spot in your side. “How did I get here? Where’s Sebastian?”

Ominis took a deep breath. Clearly he had not been meaning to tell you all the details so soon, but to his credit, he wasn’t sparing you from them either. “It was all really chaotic. Sebastian hit you with a Blasting Curse, and you were knocked unconscious. Then the situation quickly spiralled out of control. His uncle arrived and attempted to take the artifact from him… he didn’t take that well. He… ended up casting the Killing Curse.”

Your head started to spin. That couldn’t be, right? Your best friend, the one you’d known all your life… a murderer?

“Where is he now?” you asked. “What happened to MC?”

“Don’t you worry, I warned her to keep her distance if she wanted to avoid incurring my wrath. As for Sebastian – Anne and I discussed what to do about him and… well, we decided not to report him. What he’s done is unforgivable, but the guilt alone will be enough suffering for him to bear.” He paused for a moment. “Of course, I couldn’t fault you for disagreeing.”

You stared up at the ceiling. Everything felt so surreal – it was like you were living a bad dream, struggling to wake up. In the end, all you could muster was a sigh. “Oh, Sebastian…”

Ominis put his hand on your bed. You shifted your own hand towards him, the tips of your fingers touching his. “You cared for him as more than a friend, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I think I still do,” you confessed. “Even after everything… I don’t know. I was going to tell him, that I’d had this crush on him for the longest time, and that I wanted us to be more than friends… it pains me now to think I might have been able to prevent all this.”

His grip on your hand was tight, and his voice was heavy with sympathy. “You couldn't have stopped him,” he said. “Don't blame yourself. He chose his own path, and nothing could have changed that.”

You turned to him, tears brimming in your eyes. “I know,” you whispered. “But it still hurts so damn much.”

He didn't say anything else, but he didn't have to. He leaned in and held you close, and you finally allowed yourself to break down. Your tears flowed, a mourning of not just lost love, but also a broken friendship.

#hogwarts legacy #harry potter hogwarts legacy #harry potter #sebastian sallow #ominis gaunt #sebastian sallow x reader

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tainbocuailnge · 2 months

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i tend to hone in on the dark knight questline when it comes to translation differences in ffxiv because it has perhaps the largest difference between languages in the game, at least as far as I've seen, and it's also one of the cases where the german script (generally known for sticking pretty close to jp) also does its own thing. I actually went over the entirety of both en and de versions of it again the other day because I'd been meaning to translate it for comparison and one thing I noticed this time is that en actually has more lines, as in, optional lines when you talk to characters after they gave you the next quest objective that in german would just repeat the last line they said, in english would say something different. the journal entries changing depending on whether you have the job crystal equipped or not is also unique to the english version.

it's interesting because to me it shows that they really felt incredibly strongly about their take on dark knight and put a lot of serious effort into pulling it off. it's actually improved my opinion of english drk a little because clearly someone really believed in what they were writing here and used absolutely everything they had available to try and make it work. but even with that extra text to work with I still think the german version delivered their concept better and had a clearer vision of what they wanted to say with these quests. because the english team are just not as good at writing as they seem to think they are.

in my recent replay of stormblood in german there were so many scenes that made me think "you know what, maybe stormblood isn't as bad as I remembered it being", and then when I went to double check the english version of that scene it actually was as stupid as i remember it being. and often the thing that makes it stupid is like, lyse displaying confidence and competence in de but talking herself down in en, or yotsuyu pointing out the systematic failures that brought her where she is in de but indulging in personal sadistic tendencies in en. and making your antagonists dumber and more evil is one thing but the fact that they also made lyse sound so insecure and incompetent at so many points when she's the main character of the expansion, it's just so baffling to me. are we supposed to believe she can lead the resistance movement or not?

so knowing that de will generally be closer to jp than en is but does occasionally have major deviations of its own, and seeing all these stormblood scenes where one of the big glaring differences between en and de is that en keeps dumbing down and vilifying (female) characters that have more nuance and with it more thematic consistency in de, that leaves basically two options. either the japanese script had that nuance and the english translators were so full of misogyny that they decided to remove it, or the japanese script didn't have it either and it's the german translators that decided to not hate women actually. and while i don't know enough japanese to be sure, listening to the jp voicelines does give me reason to believe that the jp script is harsher to yotsuyu than de at various points, so it's probably a bit of both.

so, yknow, I can't make a sweeping statement of being against major script changes in localisation in general without being a hypocrite because the de script has at multiple times done its own thing in a way that i consider either an improvement or at least an interesting alternative of roughly equivalent quality. but that's also exactly what my problem with ffxiv localisation is, that when the en script has major deviations it's almost always some stupid shit like adding gendered slurs (they love calling a woman a bitch or a whore in english it gets really glaring when you start putting individual lines next to each other) and transphobia (matoya does not make fun of alphinaud looking like a girl in german) and removing instances of characters openly saying they care about something (thancred calling ryne his daughter in every language but english) and generally destroying all character voice, and when de changes things it's like, well written and makes sense even if it's different. so the en team looking down on the script theyre translating and changing it is hubristic overconfidence but when the de team does it they actually have the writing chops to back it up

#efksiv

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theminecraftbee · 8 months

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I know that currently the hyper fixation is on Decked Out 2, but I remember you talking about Vault Hunters a while back and I finally got Prism to work so I wanted to know if you have some sort of guide to getting started in it? ^^;

oh, yes, absolutely! i'd LOVE to do a starting-out guide, i had one ages ago but it's very old information so it's not particularly good.

first, follow the steps to download - you said you had prism working so i won't go over those here, but my biggest "troubleshoot this way" is allocate more memory to java in prism's settings if the game won't launch, that's gonna be your problem like 80% of the time. also, i still get rare crashes (often if i've had the game open a while it's probably the known java memory leak problems), game will normally restart fine in that scenario, and the backups automatically run every two hours.

so, your technical steps are out of the way, and you want to start playing! there are two options: play a normal world, or go into the world settings when you create it, select the world type (the place you'd select a superflat world in vanilla), and switch it to 'sky vaults' if you want to play skyblock.

in general, i recommend playing sky vaults if you particularly like running vaults, if finding chromatic steel is your least favorite part of the game, if you enjoy building farms for materials, and if you want more of your resource-gathering to be tied to vaults or farms. i recommend playing vanilla if you like mining, if you want more breaks between vaults to find materials, or if you don't particularly like building farms and want it to be easy to play the altar without having to build any.

speaking of, once you're in your world, it's time to choose your difficulty settings! there are several gamerules to tweak these with. they're in your vault guidebook - not the quest book, but the black and green book. if you have cheats on (which you probably should), you will be able to click these settings in that book instead of running commands! it explains them there. personally, for a beginner, i recommend vault difficulty at easy or normal, i recommend vault mode as casual, and i recommend vault crystal mode as normal. vault loot is the one that is the most variable - personally i always play on either plenty or extreme, but that can make the earlygame go fast, so feel free to play it on default!

once you've decided on whether you're playing sky vaults or regular vault hunters and you've chosen your difficulty, my first recommendation is to follow the questlines in the quest book. until at least about level 20, most of the questlines do a pretty good job showing you what to do when. however, certain decisions aren't laid out, such as what skills or mods to take! that's because there aren't usually too many wrong answers on those, although if you want my OPINIONS on those i can give them in a different post in more depth.

however, as a general rule: you will want heal as one of your first skills, strength is good earlygame as well. mod-wise, when you'll need pickup upgrades for your pouches depends on when you start breaking chests with tools, you'll get a feel for it. now that pouches are unlocked by default though your first mod is a personal decision, just don't pick SNAD, lol.

additionally look up the recipe for animal jars and the animal pen, for some reason the game doesn't teach you those exist. animal jars work by shift-right clicking adult animals of the same species, putting them in the jar. you then place a pen, and put that jar in a pen. you can now feed the animals to breed them on a cooldown you see when you shift, and you can also swing your sword at them to kill them as though they are actual animals. this is a convenience that is much easier than having an actual giant pen of animals and i recommend using it. also having giant animal funny.

make pouches as soon as you can afford them in normal worlds; in sky vaults, rush finding enigma chests (the dark black/purple ones), which are rare but can have free pouches in them. earlygame pouches are basically extra shulker boxes but they get better powers later, use them.

early vaults are always very easy monolith vaults; it is always more worth it to light the couple of monoliths you're being asked to in order to complete vault than to pure loot.

however, bailing a vault isn't a failure; better to bail than to die, after all!

keep everything, but if that's overwhelming you and your storage, know that only vanilla materials are ever asked for by the altar, and even vault or mod recipes typically only require materials added by that mod, vanilla, and the vault hunters modpack, so you can throw out any and all decorative blocks. or don't! i don't i just dump them in storage but i have storage that can best be described as 'overkill'.

even if you unlock the vault compass first, you NEED a method to your vault navigation so you don't get lost and check rooms you've already checked. personally i turn right in the starting room, go straight until i hit a wall, go one row further away from the starting room, go in a straight line the other direction, and then unless i'm rushing for a specific room in a raw vault, i'm not normally efficient enough that i'm not ready to bail by the time i'm in front of the starting room again. however you may have a method that works best for you! mine probably works a little bad if you don't have a compass! just know some vaults are square, some are diamonds, and some are circles, so fancier patterns won't always work.

hopefully that's enough to get started! i hope you enjoy!

#answered #vh talk #vault hunters

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three--rings · 8 months

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Starfield Tips/Things I Wish I Knew Earlier

Starfield is honestly amazing if you like this kind of game, but it does seem to be pretty invested in letting you figure out how it works on your own by experimentation. And it's very easy to overlook features of the game.

So...

The traits that give you parents, a fan, and a house are really neat. You get some cool stuff from them. I only did the parents but damn I'm glad I did. So consider these.

You can make your spacesuit and helmet automatically disappear if you're in breathable atmosphere/in a settlement. This way you don't have to worry about taking them off and on and potentially leaving your ship without them. And you don't look like a dork in town. The option is in the inventory page for each of them.

You can boost/sprint when floating. This is important in the Certain Plot Relevant Places.

There is a part of New Atlantis called The Well with a bunch of people and shops and you get to it from an unmarked elevator behind Jemison Merchantile in the Spaceport (or the unmarked elevator in the MAST transit station.) I played 30 hours before I found this out.

Read the skills closely, including the locked ones. Multiple times I put points in the wrong thing, thinking it would let me do things, when that was actually a different skill elsewhere.

Don't avoid the UC Vanguard questline. A lot of people I think are avoiding it because it's joining the military on a side that is a little sketchy/sus, but there's a lot of reasons to do this EARLY.

There's a museum you go through that gives you the entire lore background and recent history of the world

There's a flight simulator "test" you can take as much as you want to practice the space combat.

The storyline is REALLY REALLY good. (um, warning for horror elements) There are two different quest lines it opens and one also opens access to joining the Crimson Fleet faction.

7. When you upgrade your pilot skill it unlocks using thrusters in space flight. These let you maneuver without moving forward, so you are way more agile in combat. Use RB with a controller, IDK what the keyboard thingy is. But they're actually great. You hold down the button and then move sideways or up and down. Makes moving to new targets much better.

8. Weapons have different levels. Base which just has the name and then Calibrated, Refined, and Advanced. So pay attention and pick up the higher level ones. If you get a good advanced gun early you can use it and upgrade it for EVER. There's also rarity levels, which is the colored things. But that's about bonus effects. So you might get a really shitty gun with a Legendary bonus effect and it's still trash. If you get a high level weapon with a good bonus effect TREASURE IT.

9. Certain quests give you really good items, including SHIPS. IMO the best ship to get is the one from the Freestar Rangers.

10. Once you get a house you can build in it just like in an outpost. Also you can drop things from your inventory into an outpost or a house and then in build mode move that item around onto shelves, etc.

11. There is Universal time and Planet time. So if you wait or sleep, depending on where you are that may count as more time passing than what you chose. All shops refresh their money and inventory in 48 hours UT, but on Jemison, for example, that's only 24 hours of planet time.

12. Ship building can be intense and intimidating but it's really really worth it. You can always cancel out and undo what you did, so experiment. And when in doubt, add more engines, lol. (But really you want to add cargo space ASAP and then you need more engines, and then you end up wanting whole new ships.) Different ports have different makers of parts, and the best items are in the home port for each brand.

13. Unlocking the Ship Targeting skill is a game changer for space combat. It lets you lock on and then slows down time while you pummel the enemy's ship systems. If you take our their engines, and they are alone you can then dock with them and fight them and take their ship. Space piracy FTW.

14. If you get contraband avoid cities. Go to the Wolf System to The Den to sell it. This is very lucrative. At the slight price of your personal integrity.

15. As a general rule if something is sucking, you need to find the skill for it and invest points in it. This is true for piloting, scanning, boost packs, etc. They really made the skill trees count and be necessary in this game. Also surveying planets is really good XP actually. To help you get those points.

16. Speaking of surveying, if you are trying to complete a planet you need to visit all the biomes. If you click on the planet it will tell you the percent complete of that biome before landing. If you have one lone fauna left that fucker is probably in the ocean so look for COAST.

17. When placing outposts make sure there's not a lot of annoying mountains in it, and also you really want to prioritize sites with He-3 because you need it to really do anything. (Helium, iron, aluminum are the most important to build with.) And you have a limited number of outposts without taking a high level skill to get more.

That's all I can think of for now.

#starfield #threerings plays starfield #apologies for the formatting tumblr sucks

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rawliverandgoronspice · 9 months

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It would have been so neat if the fight and the questline for the Gerudo desert had felt more personal, like Ganondorf being petty, or him trying to draw them back under his rule. Maybe have the final enemy be a more gloomy looking creature. Or have symbols around the temple showing off the male Gerudo kings of the past? The temple being the main home of the kings? Filled with their graves. Have the quest-points, like walking through the desert be hinted to be the trials the Gerudo king had to go through, and that's why it was hidden. Tell us that the redeads this time around are of the traitors who followed Ganondorf? Make the anomaly the Gerudo suffer more personal as well, the sandstorm was just a harsher rehash of the one from Botw. What if the town had more gloom veins spreads throughout? Or what if the town itself was "unharmed" but everything around it was absolute chaos? Imagine encountering a phantom Ganondorf on the throne, all boney taking back his "birth right"? You have to defeat him before you can start the quest to open the temple.

I mean, yeah, I completely and utterly agree. Again, what a shame to bring back a human Ganondorf, the first time since OoT that he exists next to his people, and not to exploit the hell out of that juicy tension and explore what their relationship looks like, what a king should be to the gerudo people.

And if we really want to go down the route of the gerudos being 100% always used and abused by his thirst for power (boo boring, tensionless and gendered in a uninteresting way but okay whatever), we should have gotten a good look at what this abusive power grab looked like by having this violence being replayed in the present, and commented upon as a clear parallel.

I think having the prisons in the Depths under Arbiter's Grounds was actually pretty interesting, and one of the rare cases of wolrdbuilding that did something for me, since their role is so... undefined. Like I'm pretty sure the intent was to showcase a way Ganondorf was cruel to his own people, but at least it's something! Would have loved for this to be a point of interest connected to a larger of story of the gerudo struggle, either against the outside world or against itself.

(another thing I never mentioned, but when the game began to mention pirates, I got so excited for the perspective of this being a nod to the MM's characterization of gerudos and that we would have to fight the equivalent of the yigas but for gerudos that would be loyal to Ganondorf and fight us. But. No. :( )

#asks #thoughts #totk #totk spoilers #gerudos #gerudo #thanks for the ask!!

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sailorgundam308 · 6 months

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Wow. I didn’t expect my blurted out rant-ish analysis of Karlach would resonate so much. I had the feeling the fandom would just bash my head in (actually ignore me lol) but it was just an impression. Turns out a lot of people noticed the (darker) layers in Karlach too.

The day after posting that I read an interview with Karlach’s actor(tress? how gender work in nouns, help), where she mentioned this inner darkness and I felt less crazy for thinking so. I also noticed I didn’t emphasize Karlach’s manner of ptsd - because oh boy, she has some (and who fucking wouldn’t, the Blood War is no simple war, it’s fucked up and it has been going so long it changed the topography of Avernus completely - insane stuff).

It’s something I kept thinking about, how it makes so much sense she is singing, moving, dancing and vehemently (desperately?) pushing away any negative thought. Of course some of this is pure real joy to be out of the Hells, but Karlach’s insistence in not thinking about what she’s been through, pushing any and all questions or comments tav makes about the dread of her predicament, this seemingly incessant need to move, joke, talk… It can ALSO be her anxiously trying to shut up her mind so she doesn’t THINK.

Is it her right to do so after all the shit she’s been through (and especially cause she knows she’s on borrowed time in the Material Plane, and doesn’t want to waste it)? Of course. But it also seems like a method of suppressing humongous trauma - unprocessed, raw and too dark for her to face. But as anyone who has had a traumatic event or period in their lives knows, trauma tends to not stay quietly in the forgotten corners of our minds. On the contrary, it tends manifest itself, to return with a fucking vengeance the more we ignore it and often blows up right in our faces.

We see a bit of that in the massive breakdown Karlach has after killing Gortash. She vomits it all, anger, fear, sadness, jealousy, self pity. All valid emotions. But emotions she refuses to acknowledge until then. One burst would probably not be enough for her to process all of it, though. And unfortunately for Karlach (and my sorry ass who’s still sour with her questline) she doesn’t get that much time or opportunity to deepen this journey.

To sum it up: Her own personality, which is belligerent by nature, plus the shit pile of trauma atop trauma she’s been through obviously changed her, made her carry a heavy burden that shaped who she is in the aftermath. Then, on top, she grasps desperately on the “good side” of everything as a lifeline, because if she doesn’t, shit’s gonna go down pretty damn fast.

I’m not into simplistic characters, nor in those that are too obvious (yeah, like and edgy goth bitch). Maybe that’s why I keep focusing on this darker, complicated bits of the characters I like, to justify myself lol. Karlach at first seems to be extremely obvious (and in one sense she is), but sometimes I think SHE is actually the one donning the most perfect mask amongst all the companions.

There’s much talk about Astarion trying to seem worse than he really is (which I agree with to an extent), like he’s putting up an act. When I think about this, I can’t help but also think that Karlach’s one is way more deceiving (perhaps because she wholeheartedly wants to believe in it). Crazy, layered stuff.

Like a mad lasagna.

#karlach #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #spoilers #opinion #just thoughts #about a red tief girl #and how little we actually get to see of her story #unfortunately

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aha-chuu · 1 year

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Kaveh's Odd Desert Connections

Kaveh... Is weird. I hadn't thought that much about it until I very recently caught up with the Dirge of Bilqis quest (the new desert one with Jeht) and watched Ashikai's latest theory video. This post is just meant to gather my thoughts and share what I've learned.

So first what sent me down this rabbit hole was finding this during the desert quest:

In case you missed it in that wall of text, this record is addressed to "Mehrak". We know due to leaks that Kaveh's very cute briefcase is called Mehrak also.

Unfortunately,,, desert lore is like that and is pretty hard to untangle. These records recount the fall of Gurabad and the story of Liloupar - basically, they tell a story of a ruined civilisation from thousands of years in the past. Knowing the actual contents of them isn't really necessary to follow this post, because Mehrak (and by extension Kaveh) is only namedropped this one time out of all the records.

But we can theorise a lot just from this single mention. To me, there are two possible explanations for why "Mehrak" comes up in these records whilst also being Kaveh's present day briefcase. The first is mildly boring but kind of funny: there is no true connection between Kaveh's Mehrak and the Mehrak mentioned, Kaveh simply named his cute techno briefcase after a historical figure because he thought it would be cool. Kaveh is smart and does work on projects in the desert, so it is not outside the realm of possibility that he might learn of Mehrak and use the name. It makes him look a whole lot more nerdy, which I find amusing.

The second possible explanation (and pls do provide your thoughts if you have any other ideas) was provided to me by a redditer (PinkPrimrose05). Their theory is that Mehrak is in a similar situation to Ferigees, who I will remind you is the Jinni near the end of the Dirge of Bilqis questline. They were a person at a certain point in history, but has since been trapped in a mechanical construct. They cannot die until we release them.

(I apologise for the poor quality, Ferigees is inside that yellow mechanism.)

This has many more implications, since (if this is the case) Mehrak's current form does not really match the other ancient desert technology. Well, perhaps it has some similar patterning, but it definitely looks significantly more modern than other technology from that time -

(I could not for the life of me find a good model image for this, so sorry Kaveh's arm is in the way.)

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier - we know from leaks that Mehrak has some level of sentience, in that it has expressions (little pixelated anime eye reactions) and responds to Kaveh's instructions without necessitating verbal or physical inputs. This makes the Jinni idea seem more likely, since they also have sentience.

Okay, so maybe the briefcase has a rich history from the time of King Deshret. So what? Kaveh probably found it in the desert and repurposed it for his own needs - perhaps due to errosion Mehrak has no memory of its past life. Since the technology does not quite match, or at least not totally, perhaps Kaveh created the briefcase around Mehrak (as well as an architect he is also a student from the technology darshan, after all). Or maybe he just made additions. What does it even matter aside from being an interesting tidbit?

Well, then I watched Ashikai's latest video: https://youtu.be/h5rNMYwWjfA. It's not necessary watching to understand what I'm about to say, so I'll summarise some of her thoughts very broadly: she brings up the idea that rather than Alhaitham being the Deshret parallel as we all thought, it's instead Kaveh. If you would like to hear all her thoughts as to why that could be, I recommend watching the video.

This does not mean that Kaveh IS Deshret, or even that it's a reincarnation situation. Just that he could be a parallel, or have more connections/knowledge than we might realise. Kaveh is an interesting case from a meta perspective also, since he has had a strange amount of unnecessary story presence for an unreleased four star. He is in the archon quest and Alhaitham's story quest and in neither is his presence at all justified by narrative - Alhaitham's quest could easily end fifteen minutes earlier, and Kaveh adds literally nothing to the archon quest aside from some nice levity. Some lore relevant significance might explain this presence past just "oh, well Hoyo wanted fanservice".

Through the lens that their is some sort of Deshret -> Kaveh connection happening (and I say this so so loosely), his connection with Mehrak might have a more sinister implication. Deshret allowed, through his own ignorance, the Jinni he intended to protect on behalf of the Goddess of Flowers to be enslaved. He also lied about the Goddess' death to the Jinni, and it is largely due to their contract with him that their entire civilisation fell apart. An important note about Ferigees and Liloupar is that both crave an existence outside of their prisons - Ferigees purposefully trapped themself inside the mechanism but found the experience torturous, and Liloupar returns to Gurabad. If Mehrak is another trapped Jinni, Kaveh might be accidentally mistreating it.

However, I like the idea that Mehrak and Kaveh are friends much better. Its expressions are often positive ones, so even if it's forced to listen to Kaveh because he has its name, it doesn't seem too upset about it. Also, another part of Ashikai's video posits that Liloupar so quickly accepts the traveller because they have resemblance to Deshret (a whole other rabbit hole, watch the video if you want to know). In this same thread, Ashikai brings up that Kaveh looks very similar to the traveller, so I think that perhaps Mehrak (either knowingly or not) connects Kaveh to its previous master, which could explain why it listens to him so well.

Overall, I find this connection very intriguing and I'm excited to learn more. There is definitely something there, but whether or not it will be imprtant I do not know.

#genshin impact #kaveh #mehrak #kaveh's briefcase #genshin leaks #dirge of bilqis #lore #theory?#long post #also i had unrelated kavetham thoughts about why alhaitham has deshret's eyes #but is not revealed to be connected to him on a story level in any way #if kaveh has the connection instead and then has control of mechanisms #and alhaitham's burst looks exactly like the ASIMON attack which is a desert mechanism #idk there is a fanfiction there i swear to god #also more story esque leaks incoming but not really #kaveh is by leagues the main character in the 3.6 event #so next patch is truly his patch #so hopefully we'll get lots of info

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mute-call · 3 months

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alright working poppy playtime stuff. forgive me for having written this last night when i was half a sleep & also i haven't looked up the lore yet oopsie 🤷‍♂️

alr so steve is an employee in playcare or whatever obviously. i think he maybe does a couple things. potentially some general childcare (focused in the playhouse i'd imagine), but also i think he's potentially a mechanic for the miss delights. it's about time steve gets to actually know something about animatronics etc. so he's not quite a teacher, bc that's already taken, but he still does a mix of interacting w the kids & working in the school.

fritzy's one of the kids in playcare. i do like the idea that they get close & steve makes efforts to adopt him (with fritz's complete approval)

i need to go look up lore about playtime jeremy & that whole thing, but either fritz is involved in "testing" in some way which interferes with the adoption or steven gets killed before the adoption can go through. if it's the former, i imagine steve might get Got trying to rescue fritz / smthin like that.

either way, steve's gonna kick the bucket. sorry, steve. maybe it won't be so bad as you say <3 ---

cue.... bobby bearhug time! im picturing something like what we see of dogday. human-sized, still plushie looking, but idk. steve's bearhug can look little a fucked up as a treat (like his canon freddy suit etc).

their pronouns are now he/she/they!! wild amalgamation of steven & bobby's character. which "personality" is dominant depends on the circumstances, but in general they also feed into each other. for example, bobby's a little more helpful and well-rounded, and steve's a little more "!! ^_^" and scared of being alone.

speaking of....

i think if there were a "questline" involving steven it would be to either jailbreak fritz or get steve to chill the fuck out. bc i think his post-death love for fritz would ratchet up into potentially unehelpful levels (not letting fritz leave for "his own safety," hostility to intruders, etc etc.) full mamma bear mode. fritz isn't in danger, but i think he'd be a little,, distressed, about his dead dad slash mascot friend looming over him 24/7

you can grab fritz and run (+1 fritzy to your inventory!) for a bearhug boss fight that leaves everyone (except you, probably) pretty unhappy

you can also try to help steven stabilize & regain more of himself & chill out & be Normal /lh . that's the good ending

and then catnap kills him

#if this has any similarities to d.saf no it doesnt <3 /lh #v; into the playpit

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imsobadatnicknames2 · 8 months

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Your top five (5) favourite moments in games you've seen/played/read? (Either moments in TTRPGs, video games, or just really good design decisions in either that you enjoyed. Deliberately open-ended so you can pick :3)

Ooooo I'm excited to dig into this one.

1. This one is gonna be a little cliché but... The whole conversation with The Master in Fallout 1. Fallout 1 was probably THE game that first got me to really start consciously thinking of the potential of videogames as an artform, and to this day I still consider it (along with some of its sister games like Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, etc.) to be one of the best-written CRPGs of all time, and the fact that if you've put in the work you can beat the final boss entirely by talking to him (which has been like, standard fare for CRPGs now and it kinda already was by the time I first played the game, but was a first for me anyway) blew my tiny mind at the time.

2. Another Fallout 1 one (can you tell this game was extremely formative for me?), which is a little bit more personal but also will kinda require me to spoil a HUGE chunk of the main quest, so... Yeah.

The initial inciting incident that drives the first half of Fallout 1 is as follows: The main control chip for your Vault's water purification system is broken. You've been sent to find a replacement, and there's a hard time limit to do so before the Vault's clean water reserves run out and everyone dies of dehydration.

It isn't even really a questline as much as it is a big mystery (i.e. it isn't like in New Vegas where your initial objective is to find Benny and there's a pretty explicit breadcrumb trail of quests to lead you to him, Fallout 1 gives you gives you a couple initial nudges in the right direction but other than that there isn't an explicit series of quests that will lead you to the chip, you're kinda just thrust into the world and left to your own devices to ask questions and investigate)

Eventually you find out there is a vault under the Necropolis with a functioning water purification system, but there is a big problem. The Ghouls that live in the Necropolis used to get their water from a water pump, but the pump has been broken for a while, and they've been using the vault under the city as their new source of water, so they need the chip too.

In my first playthrough I found out about the Necropolis water chip with just a few days left to recover the chip, and the way I ended up dealing with this problem was the first time a game made me feel like a scumbag lol. At first I tried to resolve the situation ethically. I met with the leader of the Ghouls, we talked about it, and he agreed to let me take the chip if I helped repair the town's water pump.

I made my way to the pump (the town was already occupied by supermutants at this point, so it wasn't easy) and then I just. Wasn't able to fix it.

And I was scared that if I took the time to find a way to do it, I was gonna run out of time to actually take the chip back to the vault.

So I ended up deciding to steal the chip, telling myself that I was just gonna take the chip, take it to my vault, and then once the time limit wasn't a concern anymore, I'd come back and help them with the water pump.

But then I just kinda felt ashamed and I kept avoiding coming back because I was afraid that everyone in town was gonna be hostile or treat me as a thief or something.

And by the time I actually brought myself to go back, I found everyone dead.

Tbqh I don't know if all the Ghouls dying is something that only happens if you steal the chip, or it was a scripted event that always happens due to the supermutant occupation (in the second half of the game supermutants start slowly wiping out settlements). All I know that when I entered the town and found every ghoul I encountered out on the street dead I just. Left without exploring any further and never came back in that playthrough.

It's a moment that still sticks in my mind over a decade later.

3. A TTRPG one: I've talked A LOT on this blog about how Mausritter is my favorite TTRPG ever. It was my second non-D&D TTRPG ever, it was the game that definitely convinced me to switch over to the indie scene, and there's A LOT of things I love about it, but out of all those things I want to focus on a single line that fundamentally changed my brain chemistry as someone who was still learning about TTRPGs: "Dice are dangerous, clever plans don't need to roll". As someone who by that point was still stuck in the D&D-induced mentality that almost every action needs a dice roll, that single line completely changed the way I approach that particular genre of dungeon-crawling TTRPG both as a player (each dice roll you need to make represents a potential point of failure, minimize the number of dice rolls you need to make by using the tools at your disposal in clever and creative ways to stack the odds in your favor and avoid/bypass/simplify risky situations with uncertain outcomes) and as a GM (asking for dice rolls is best reserved for situations where the players are just trying to brute force their way through a problem in a way that has a significant chance of failure and fully exposes them to the potential risks of said failure. If they're using creative thinking and stacking the situation in their favor to avoid the potential risks of their actions or reduce the chance of failure, you should just let them automatically succeed without rolling anything)

4. Another TTRPG one, this time from Troika!, My FIRST ever non-D&D TTRPG. The reason why I tend to not be that much into RPGs which include dozens of pages of worldbuilding about their setting, no matter how cool or interesting, is because Troika! (and later Mausritter) made me fall in love with the kind of RPG that effectively manages to do all the worldbuilding it needs to do through stuff like random tables, class descriptions, items, etc, and my favorite example of this in Troika! is the Derivative Dwarf character background (although honorable mentions go to several others, like the Wizard Hunter, Yongardy Lawyer, and Monkeymonger)

Like, in this one character background description, Troika! manages to paint a more unique, interesting and compelling picture of what its version of Dwarf society and culture are like than many fantasy RPGs do in several pages.

5. Back to vidya games, one of my favorite videogames of all time was this one time I was playing Dwarf Fortress in Adventurer Mode. I was fighting a Cyclops, and I managed to cut off his arm, only to see the cyclops (who up until that point had been unarmed) pick up his own severed arm and start bludgeoning me to death with it. It was the moment that really made me realize the true scope of that game's potential for emergent gameplay. Because it's like. The cyclops being able to do that wasn't an explicitly scripted interaction, it's not like Toady decided to intentionally code in the ability for characters to use their own severed body parts as weapons, it was just a natural result of characters being able to pick up miscellaneous objects to use as weapons and a severed arm technically counting as a miscellaneous object, and I think that makes the resulting interaction a thousand times cooler than if it was something someone intentionally coded in.

#ttrpg #vidya games

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hareofhrair · 2 months

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Typed out a whole long post on reddit that it won’t let me post for no apparent reason, so y’all have to read it instead. It was a response to the question…

Imo, Dragon Age 2 was worse (because it just wasn’t *finished*) but DAI had some pretty glaring flaws. People have mentioned the gameplay issues with things getting annoyingly mmo-like, and the terrible war table timer, a lot of the fights being unnecessary slogs or just annoying to fight- the fear demons that teleport in front of you, knocking you over, then stun you while you’re still in the standing up animation comes to mind.

But for me the biggest problem was a culmination of writing problems that had always been present, but compounded as the series went on. It’s always been a bit… I don’t know if centrist or just contradictory is the better word.

The writing of inquisition is very concerned about *judging* or punishing the player’s negative moral choices and this has an impact on the consistency of the writing, even for people who aren’t interested in engaging with the ethical issues the game presents, because it’s afraid to give you consequences for your actions or allow them to make major impact and it goes out of its way to try and justify any choice you make as morally right or at least pragmatic in a very surface level way. This is consistently teeth grindingly annoying if you’re playing a “good” character/aligning yourself with the elves and mages, because the game is constantly finding an excuse to interrupt whatever you’re doing to say “but what about the Templar’s feelings??? QmQ” or “Did you consider… some elves are really rude???” or “This one mage did something Bad(tm) therefore it’s actually reasonable and right to want to murder all of them!” It also undermines player choice if they want to be evil or self serving, since it’s constantly bending over backwards to tell them how right and just and good their choices are. The writing itself won’t commit to a moral position because it’s too afraid of contradicting the player, and that makes it impossible for it to actually bring any of its themes to a satisfying conclusion.

(It makes this worse by choosing to really backseat the darkspawn storyline in favor of the templars vs mages conflict, which is annoying for multiple reasons, not the least of which is because they can’t bring it to a real resolution without drastically altering the worldstate and having to create two separate storylines- something inquisition is desperate not to do because of money and time restraints. You just can’t do meaningful branching narratives in a triple A setting as this whole series really illustrates- so they just pivot away from it into the *bullshit* with Tresspasser which I will get into in a minute…)

DAO handled the moral issue at least slightly better, I think. There were consequences for deciding to be an asshole at least. I was recently playing a Dalish elf and slogging through the Sacred Ashes questline getting more and more resentful as they essentially forced my character to Become Fantasy Catholic, so I dumped dragon blood in the ashes just to be spiteful… with Leiliana and Wynn in my party. Whoops. In case you haven’t played DAO, there are multiple big moral choices you can make- among them deciding to defile the mortal remains of Fantasy Jesus- which will cause your party members to leave permanently or straight up try to kill you! They have firm personal morals, and if your actions go against those morals they won’t just tolerate it.

Unfortunately, there’s a reason DAO connected such a major party breaking choice to the unavoidable-if-you-want-the-best-ending Player Has Become Catholic quest. These games have some issues with religion.

On the surface, it wants to pretend all the different religions are equally valid and it’s not taking a stance on which one is *real.* Wink wink nudge nudge. Then in practice it trips over itself to provide proof the Christian analogue is real. From finding Jesus’s ashes which have magic healing powers in DAO to Corypheus in Inquisition confirming the blight really was started by Tevinter mages desecrating heaven and pissing off the Maker, which up till then at least had a plausible deniability veneer of “this might be church propaganda, we don’t know what really happened.” And the games will *consistently* assume you are fantasy Catholic 90% of the time, *even if you’re a dwarf or an elf or FUCKING QUNARI*, the only concession being essentially flavor text dialogue where, if asked directly about religion, you can tell people their god is fake in the rudest manner possible. You are either catholic or an asshole, that’s it. Inquisition really knocks it out of the park though with making you *literally* the leader of the titular fantasy catholic inquisition. You can protest throughout the game that you’re not actually fantasy catholic, but this doesn’t have any meaningful effect on anything, and you obviously can’t just choose *not* to lead an explicitly religious order of a faith you don’t actually ascribe to.

This isn’t just me ranting about how much it sucks to be Assigned Catholic At Character Creation (though it is) it’s about how consistently the game renders player choice meaningless. And I fully believe it’s an extension of the already discussed issue with being terrified to contradict player choices or have to account for them in gameplay. It’s just that it treats believing in the Christian analogue as something *default,* standard and unobjectionable. “Of course our players will be Christian. Everyone believes in god! They’d only choose *not* to be as a fun wacky role playing experience! Which means acknowledging those other religions is optional and we can cut it for time.”

Which brings me to *fucking* Trespasser. First of all, and totally besides discussion of the writing, they released DAI without its actual ending, and then released the ending nearly a year later, as PAID DLC. That dick move alone engendered a Lot of negative feelings about the game, even from people who loved everything else. And then there’s the actual content…..

I actually just decided it’s too goddamn much to get into for a reddit post that probably no one will read. Short version- remember the religion problem? And also the bending over backwards to make the player feel morally justified for hating the elves and mages problem?

So it turns out not only is the elven religion *not* real, it was actually just a bunch of evil elven mages doing a slavery! You know, just like the empire of slave owning evil mages we already had? Remember Tevinter? Yeah, turns out that happened twice. Fuck mages, am I right? Also the racist egg you’ve been trying to make friends with all game has, apropos of absolutely nothing, decided actually Fantasy Islam is the biggest threat to the elven people right now (not the civil rights issues or the slow cultural genocide or anything) and he needs to blow up the world before the elves become muslim.

I don’t even know where to go from there frankly! What else can you say! His entire justification for turning against the player and wanting to tear down the veil is wanting to “save” his people (people he has spent the entire game calling inferior and not real elves) by…. Killing them all! Which will fix them, somehow? The specifics aren’t important. All that matters is it’s better they die now than join a different religion. As for everybody else on the planet? Well, we already established he’s racist, not giving a shit about destroying all the non elves is actually perfectly in character. No notes there.

Uhg. I’ve gotten very off track. Trying to bring it back in-

The dragon age series has always been over ambitious in trying to center player choice, stumbling into the same pits Mass Effect did when they simply didn’t have time or money to implement branching narratives, leading to games that talk a lot about how your choices matter while actually giving them very little impact. Origins came the closest to that goal, giving you more choices than most games of the time for how to approach problems. But as the games went on and the team was expected to continue accounting for those choices going forward, it became increasingly avoidant of giving the player choices that had any actual significant impact on the overall worldstate. Combined with a growing reluctance to be perceived as punishing players for in game moral choices (potentially alienating players when they needed to be as broadly appealing as possible because capitalism) and the writer’s centering an explicitly christian perspective as default, these problems snowballed and by Inquisition became very difficult not to notice, creating a choice driven rpg where you can’t make meaningful choices and can’t role play.

#dragon age: inquisition

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3gremlins · 9 months

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okay so somehow my thembo druid managed to Steven Universe their way to the "good" ending with astarion's romance (after quite a LOT of save scumming and everyone applying skill buffs to them, because we are not good at persuasion checks in this house) and it *is* worth it but getting there was so hard.

a lot of the guides i looked at mentioned the global consequences of the end of the pale elf questline but not the personal ones (for the romance/astarion) so i've written out each of the possible endings if you want to go in knowing/with a plan (and also drew little comics)

spoilery thoughts, art and path recs behind cut ⬇️

i tried all the other options you can do with the end of his personal quest all of them SANS ONE are fucking tragic, so when you get to that one persuasion check absolutely do not fail it whatever you do (unless you like tragedy, then you do you ofc).

you've got a chance to save post cazador fight/before the important cutscenes so def do that!

major spoilers below here ⬇️ .

. i was kinda gratified that despite all appearances my "kind to children and animals, maybe a bit naive" druid tav was actually the right choice to get him there (and not an evil/morally grey aligned character as i've seen a lot of people say they're going to romance him on).

like not compromising on their values was what did it, not just letting him do whatever he wants (i did try the worst path first which felt bad b/c it went against my tav's core hard lines so glad i re-did it instead of writing it off)

here are the choices:

bad ending #1 -> prevent him from doing the ritual but fail the persuasion check (that convinces him it's not really what he wants). he gets real upset at your lack of support, tells you to go fuck yourself, and leaves permanently :c bad ending #2 (worst one imho) -> help him finish the ritual. the power consumes him, he loses all sense of self. all your other companions hate it (take big relationship approval hits), you have to kill the gur* on your way out. you will either have to break up or become his spawn (he will esp hate you and himself if you do the latter), his personality completely changes and it's really fucking sad (upside, he's very powerful now so i guess if you want him to be tankier purely for combat...) T.T

bad ending #3 ->*same as #2 except on your way out, you side with the gur instead and have to kill astarion. he will be permanently dead :c

the one good ending (for ast/romance) -> prevent him from doing the ritual by convincing him that it's not really what he wants (this is the persuasion check that you cannot fail). you get some lovely closure scenes with him afterwards and the rest of your party approves (he will be stuck w/vamp weaknesses for post endgame stuff probably)

so yeah there's lots of ways this can go off the rails, the core thing with his romance is pretty much giving him back his agency but also being willing to stand up and be the guard rail when he gets tempted by things that are objectively bad for him (he's def got a self destructive/addictive streak).

It was a bit difficult to navigate b/c he does like it when you do low-key crimes early on (stealing, lying) and protecting him (the gur hunter, the other vamps) so you need a bit of that to win approval i think? but at the end of the day, your tav having integrity and believing he's got integrity and making him believe it is the more important thing.

it was hard but totally worth it, his funny little squawks when he realizes you like him are so sweet and cute 10/10 will probably romance several more times lol

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dazzlerazz · 1 month

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Temple of Roots - A Critique? A Discussion?

I've finished the Temple of Roots and had time to gather my thoughts. This is in no way an objective overview, just my thoughts after playing the game for about 300 hours and comparing the Temple of Roots to the rest of Palia. My word isn't law, and it's possible that I may even change my mind in the future, nothing is set in stone after all. My experience may not be your experience, and that's perfectly okay. Obviously contains spoilers for the entire Palia temple questline, the mini questline up to the temple, the temple itself, its story, and so on

To start, we'll be talking about what leads up to the Temple of Roots

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I've always had a struggle with keeping my attention when reading large bits of text, especially when I'm in a hurry. This applies to the notes left behind by the humans as well, I didn't read them too thoroughly but just enough to locate the hints, which I thought were pretty neat. I specifically enjoyed the Galdur heads as sort of computers, it once again reaffirms to us as a player outside the game that humanity from long ago was very dependent on their technology and it was used for far more than just keep civilization running

I enjoyed the scavenger hunt that leads up to the Temple of Roots, it was quite unique compared to other temples which are just "talk to this character and put the flow in the door and go inside", I think it's perfect for a Final dungeon. I specifically enjoy it being Einar and Hekla considering their ties to Old Humanity. Before the update, I thought it would probably be Tamala with Hodari and Najuma, and I was pleasantly surprised that I was wrong. I was eager to see what their roles in this new temple was going to be

The temple? Stunning. Beautiful. So visually appealing I stopped quite a few times just to admire it. Unlike other temples, it genuinely felt like many, many millennia had passed, and Palia had begun to retake what was once hers to begin with. Nature taking back what was lost and growing between the cracks left behind, there's something beautiful in that. I kinda wish the temple was even bigger in its map because I kinda wanna see more of this in the game

The idea of using your pickaxe against a door was a new idea that I really enjoyed, the previous temples wanted you to make use of our tools and it does that near flawlessly. The water temple with the watering can, the fire temple with the bow, the air temple with your glider, it really helps you to understand that your tools are just that, TOOLS

Now here's where things get a bit weird, and where my critique begins. Hi, if you've read this far!

I think the temple of roots has a lot of wasted potential and opportunity. Not was it the shortest temple itself (this can technically be explained away by the small questline we did to get here, I know), but I felt it was also lacking in its story explanations

I came out of the temple of roots more confused than satisfied. In fact, this entire experience can be chalked up to that: Ultimately Unsatisfying. It feels like all the budget went into the scenery for the WOW factor instead of for the actual narrative. That the only good memories I will have of this place will be in its setting, not in its story

The story of the temple of roots also suffers from the way that Palia is structure. Hekla tells us we need to be quick, but there's barely any urgency factor that isn't self-inflicted. This is a relaxing game, you're supposed to take your time with it, but when you prioritize taking your time over something you SPECIFICALLY say *will be time sensitive*, you come to a point where it's unnatural and immersion breaking. Immersion is not the end-all be-all of gaming, everyone's experience is going to be different, but it seriously takes people out of it when they're told one thing, but then shown another

A very minor nitpick here is that there was no music at all to go with this. Music also isn't everything in a game, but music can shape how we experience the media around us. Instead of music that instilled in me a need to rush, all I got was occasional bird chirmping and the sounds of my character's own stomping

I didn't mind the parkour section all that much, but I do wish they were more clear about where the buttons were, but it wasn't bad for what it was. The way to get there? Amazing, it really felt like I was crawling in between the ruins of an ancient factory long since consumed by the world around it, it was immaculate

And I'm sure I'm not the only had something to say about the ending. I liked the idea of talking to a giant head, the effective beating heart of this destroyed Galdur factory. The Gardener's story is a sad one, and it tries to make itself feel better by doing what it was meant to do. Its sudden change of tune after registering what Einar is was a bit confusing at first, but after finishing the temple it makes sense

And the giant speech at the end? I enjoyed it very much. What I did not enjoy was Hekla having to come in and "make things better" after it feels like we, as the player, FAILED. That if Hekla hadn't been there, then Einar would have been lost forever. This is unsatisfying, but in a slightly different way, it could have been better

I believe that, instead of just making the player feel useless in that instance, show us more of the Gardener hearing us out, and being uncertain. Have the Gardener more openly contemplate the things we have said to it, to actually consider our opinion instead of saying "you bring up some good points, however no, lol" and then have Hekla clean up the mess. Maybe instead of making us feel like Hekla did all the heavy lifting, maybe make it feel like Hekla sharing her memories with the Gardener be the final nail that helps change the Gardener's mind. Make us feel like we did something in a game that does that everywhere else instead of making us feel like we actually, legitimately, failed Einar. These temples are about strengthening your bonds with these characters, not breaking them apart. It feels like that I didn't do anything at all here that Hekla and Einar couldn't have done all on their own, I'm in the back seat instead of at the wheel

All's well that end's well, but I believe that the core story of the temple could have been kept, just that it went about a few things I found unsatisfying, narratively incomplete, and honestly? Rushed as hell

I have high hopes for Palia's future and I'm eager to see what S6 continues to do. The Temple of Roots was quite different from the other temples, both in good ways and in ways I'd consider to be less than stellar. I wish it was done just slightly differently to make it just that much better, at least for me

Thank you for reading! I had a long discussion with a few of my Palia friends about this to try to nail down how exactly it made me feel, thank you to them as well!

#razz rambles #long post #god such a long long post #palia #palia game #palia mmo #razz plays palia

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