#was already invested into the character(s) but i just don't vibe with the ''hey society is back'' as much as with ''society is in fuckin

[laurasbailey]

original anon here, i'm real grateful to you and everyone else for taking the time to respond and share your input!

i'm usually better at distancing myself from online spaces, i've just kinda "relapsed" lately and went on a self-destructive deep dive ☠️ like..."i've been checking reddit", kind of self-destructive. what a long break does to a mf, i guess

i do agree with what you've all said & I'm aware that it's basic common sense in fandom spaces and beyond - if i've been enjoying c3, there's no reason to let someone else's opinion bother me. i think one of the issues is…if there's stuff that i've been enjoying less on my own, and then i see negativity around that same stuff, my brain tends to take it as confirmation that it's true lmao and i find myself suspecting that i would enjoy a sandbox-y vibe a lot, but that's not happening with the characters and story that i've been invested in since the beginning. am i making up problems in my head? definetly, and i'm actually a bit ashamed to admit that, but hey

all that being said, i absolutely love those same things you've mentioned (the focus on the ladies, this romance, the high stakes and having ashley full-time) and more, even as i have less context for it being unusual since it's my first campaign! and i obviously agree that it's not anyone's game but theirs. i wouldn't wish for them to cater to anyone's desires but their own and i'm 100% sure that what i loved from the beginning is common in every campaign - the joy and fun we get watching them enjoy themselves

truly, the negative thoughts are more related to getting too bogged down thinking of the story itself, in a way, and wishing i could see these specific characters chill a bit and explore…so basically the ticking clock problem haha i generally worry they're never gonna get to talking or resolving interpersonal issues before the campaign's over and they're not the main party anymore

sorry for the lenght of this and for bringing it to you out of the blue haha i've been overthinking on loop and since literally no one i know watches the show and i don't want to be annoying to them, i'm annoying on the internet. again, thank you so so much!!

i think i get where you’re coming from and i think you’ll enjoy c1 and 2 if that’s the case! there’s definitely a lot more meandering, and c2 doesn’t even start tackling what i would consider “the main plot” until like 50+ eps in lmao. meanwhile c1 has the high stakes of c3 but the main plot starts early and stretches for a long time.

i think since i’ve experienced both of those campaigns already, c3’s shortcomings don’t worry or bother me enough to care too much. whether the plot “sucks” or it’s “too fast” is really not that deep to me bc i just love the show in whatever form they’re willing to give it to me. it’s still funny, emotional, well-acted, etc regardless, and that’s the reason i watch to begin with, which could be different for you! also i’ve made my peace with the fact that we probably won’t get a ton of character focus this campaign, and while that is disappointing, i think being realistic helped me be chill about it all.

for other people, it’s the opposite and they expect every campaign to be like the one they like and they throw a tantrum when it’s not. if people are content to do that, that’s on them! c3 might not be for you, or you could have more of an appreciation for it after watching the other campaigns. it seems like you’re going to keep talking yourself into not liking it, whether it’s true or not.

you could always try watching another campaign and take a break from c3 stuff? it might be helpful to engage in something else if you’re stuck in a spiral of searching for the negativity. and if you do end up hating c3, it’s not a big deal either. it’s the people who don’t shut the fuck up about hating it that are annoying as hell lmao

#anonymous #ask #no worries at all btw! i’m totally happy to answer asks like this

[twodollarhero]

More like "that demo was sick"-min 4

So I just got done playing the demo for Pikmin 4 and it was like... REALLY cool!

My relationship with Pikmin has always been kinda weird. I've always merely liked the series a lot, when I've always felt that I should love it. On paper, it's exactly what I love about Nintendo: weird, interesting perspectives on a genre that takes a well-worn concept and makes it clean and accessible. Splatoon is the "Nintendo-ified shooter" just as Pikmin is the "Nintendo-ified RTS" or whatever... so why don't I love Pikmin in the same way that I love something like Splatoon? I really haven't ever been able to put my finger on it. My best guess is that I've never really vibed with the world, the story or the characters. Not because the games have been completely devoid of those things, but there's just enough of a wall of glass between it and me to leave my handprints on the windowpane, begging to be let in. Couple that with one or two too many unfriendly design decisions that have long been innate to the franchise and I think I always come away feeling that Pikmin and I would always be like the couple who date, break up and keep trying because - hey, maybe this time it'll work out.

Like any toxic relationship, Pikmin has done a lot of work on themselves and I really think they've changed this time. Playing the demo for Pikmin 4 has graduated my excitement from a tepid "ah shit here we go again" to actual, factual hype. While it isn't a completely frictionless experience, it solves practically every major problem I've ever had with the franchise and - for once - the glass wall has been shattered and I'm able to tip-toe around the shards on the floor.

First of all, the story setup is actually pretty fucking cool this time around? Look, I get it: diehard Pikmin fans are annoyed that it seemingly retcons the scraps of connected lore the series has had leading up to this point. I can sympathize with that, actually -- it would annoy me if that happened to a franchise whose story or lore I was really invested in. But, looking at it from the outside? I genuinely feel like taking our familiarity with Olimar and using his rescue - and possibly "death"? - as a narrative device to set us out in this new entry is a pretty cool idea! I think it gives people a great jumping on point for Pikmin, which I think absolutely feels like Pikmin 4's mission through-and-through. To the point where they even let you just play as your own character this time around. And while the character creator is simple, I really liked being able to make my own weird little guy for a change. All Pikmin characters look like gross, fleshy homunculi, but this one is mine!

So yeah, I like having my little weirdo here and I'd love to see yours. But it's the new gameplay additions that really turn my crank. The core of it is still very much Pikmin, but they've added some really nice quality of life stuff into this one in addition to just putting together a really pleasurable loop. You aren't just trying to survive and you aren't even really just trying to rescue -- everything you're collecting feeds into satisfying, measurable improvements. Honestly, just the feedback loop that Oatchi alone provides is satisfying enough to carry it for me: rescue enough lost members of your Rescue Corps (or stranded civilians), earn a point of "Pup Drive" and spend those points to make Oatchi even more useful than he is as a baseline, which is already very fucking useful. Uncover raw materials in the world for the weird scientist dude to turn into interesting traversal applications, puzzle solving applications AND player improvement applications, like new pieces of gear that'll allow you to withstand elemental effects. Rather than needing to forage for food every day, you're instead gathering household items in the name of "Sparklium" to repair your ship, which ultimately just rewards you with new cool areas to explore, i.e. it rewards you with more Pikmin 4. And even just in the demo, you've got an expansive little mini open-world to play in that feels super tight and well designed! But that's before you even touch on the caves.

Oh man, the caves. Apparently this is a returning feature from Pikmin 2, but it's been like 15 years since I've played that game so it feels super fresh to me. Even still, according to Pikipedia, Pikmin 2 only had like 14 caves in total. These feel like Pikmin 4's versions of Shrines in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. Little sections of the game that are ripe with rewards, but also super concise little puzzles and challenges that are off the beaten path. And, like Shrines, the sense of elation from seeing one of those blue lids makes me want to stop everything I'm doing to go explore them. The game knows that you'll want to explore them too, by slowing the day's time counter to 1/6th speed. Pikmin 4 has also integrated a system where you can straight up rewind the clock back a few minutes if you want. Like, the game is autosaving every 2-3 minutes and if something crazy happens, you can just rewind back to that previous save state. It's one of those accessibility things that hardcore fans can totally choose not to engage with, but someone like me is happy to have it when I accidentally got all of my Red Pikmin killed and would've been soft locked. It's the little things!

SO ANYWAYS, TL;DR... I really, really dug the Pikmin 4 demo in a way I wasn't expecting. And as someone that was kind of disenfranchised with AAA games - even Nintendo ones - for the first half of 2023... it feels really good to be excited about big budget games again. I love loving stuff.

#pikmin 4 #nintendo

[purityandbeans]

okay,, but.

1) lore/worldbuilding:

this is The reason i watch the mandalorian. I've seen most of the star wars movies, i watched a Small amount of the clone wars, but the Meat of the General Star Wars lore i'm consuming Is in fact from the mandalorian. And what can i say? it's there. It delivers. There sure fuckin are these pterodactyl-lookin dragon-things on this random unnamed desert planet. (is it named? fuck if i know). but more importantly, this sure is the way this group of people Interacts. There are habits and patterns they weave through in their day to day that are foreign to me, there are traditions they hold to and yeah, they may be impractical. They may even highlight Roadblocks that prevent their society from Functioning like the one i live in. If i could not cook someone a meal and see them enjoy it, i Would in fact scream. So much. There's a lot of worldbuilding and lore dumping in the mandalorian. Shallow, matter-of-fact things such as "hey yeah, there's at least one mythosaur on mandalore" to more inference-based things, such as "hey yeah when you're petitioning the covert, it is your turn to speak when you hold the armorer's hammer". Long story short, it's there. It delivers. It is the main attraction for me, and by God does it deliver.

2) cinematography

now i'm gonna be frank - i know Nothing about filming shit. Nothing. What i do know about is making shit up based on Vibes so you sound like you have a point. The camerawork in the mandalorian Definitely exists. It is There and it gets the story across and i have Some issues with it - but it's more pacing and probably belongs in category 3) writing, except i already know that that shit's gonna be long and i Don't want to exacerbate it more than i have to. There is too much combat per episode in season 3 than there strictly Needs to be. I get that mandalorians fight, i get that like. So much of their culture is built around that and that so long ago in the sith wars or whatever they invaded the rest of the galaxy and there were crusades and it was a Whole Thing. But (and i know it wasn't) it *feels* like either half of each episode is eaten by "oh we gots to fight, here is how we go fight, here is the fight" with various "surprise, fight time!"s sprinkled in. It just gets to be gratuitous and unnecessary and yeah, it may be the only relevant to the story thing happening in the lives of the mandalorian(s) at the time - but there are ways *around* that. My personal favorite is, if your character isn't by themselves telling a compelling story, you can shift the pov to a new character and show how the otherwise predictable plot affects them - and shift back later. They kind of do a similar thing by interspersing a second, loosely related plot with the first - but they're too loosely related and it feels jarring to swap back and forth. They're two completely different worlds, two completely different stories, they exist independently from one another and it leaves us with a kind of mystery getting chopped up by all the mandalorian action and stuff that would be Otherwise dropped to tell a concise narrative - were the show not originally about it. so we'll use that to segue into...

3) writing

the writing in the third season of the Mandalorian isn't about anything. Yet. Ok, it's about Din Djarin going to mandalore and finding a new home for his covert and in the case of bo katan it's about finding purpose - but that arc has pretty much sailed and we're back to square one with "what is the moral". In season one, the large takeaway i got was "no matter your lot in life, you can still function with a moral compass". In season two, it was about finding purpose in family. Season three is about... mandalorians. There is no consistent moral or theme to tie things together. There is no emotional pull or weight, there is nothing to invest us emotionally beyond "hey look, grogu does cute flip and Paz is a dad." and "damn i sure hope these mandalorians don't die in their next fight."

Because of this dearth of a theme, and to have some emotional investment in the story, the story has a second main plot. I don't want to call it a side plot, because it takes a Significant amount of runtime and only Loosely relates to the main plot involving the mandalorian covert. But it has this second main plot in which a Friend of moff gideon's is slowly fucking with shit and doing spy things in the new republic's requisitions office, and it's a compelling story. I very much enjoy how the main character of it is someone we see through many side characters' eyes - it paints them as distant and cold and calculating and is the Perfect setup for some behind the scenes villain shit and i am Here for it. We got to see her get close to someone she Knew could easily become a threat and then essentially kill him to protect her own back. Was both good writing and good characterization.

And especially with the end of the latest episode being "hey, mandalorians abducted moff gideon" - I can see how the two plots fit together down the road. But it's a Real fuckin stretch right now, and as i mentioned before - it's Very jarring.

What else is jarring is dialogue choices. Every episode has one or two lines that have stood out to me as "inorganic" and by god this last was no exception. In the aforementioned scene the episode ends on, the last line (or pretty close to) is something along the lines of "Do you mean that mandalorians took moff gideon?" in response to "hey there's beskar embedded in the fucking wall of this dead in the water prisoner shuttle". Now, there are two problems with this. First, yes. It's beskar. The episode gives no reason to doubt that that's the material. Mandalorians - to my limited knowlesge - are the only group of peoples that Use beskar. If a serious question is to be asked here, it shouldn't be "is it mandalorians?" because, yes. Beskar means mandalorians. That's a stupid question. If you need a question in the script, you could ask "are you sure it's beskar", because beskar is very rare and finding a shard of beskar in some random space shuttle would be Very Odd Indeed and Maybe cause to double check your readings. And if you need to spell it out to your audience that "hey, this means mandalorians took moff gideon", don't frame it as a question, it is demeaning. Have the person say "ah, must be mandalorians then" or something - treating it as a Logical Conclusion rather than a theory to field. Second, if over the equivalent of a phone call there is reason enough to doubt that mandalorians left beskar in the wall, don't ask if it's mandalorians. It's not a logical conclusion. It's juet bad.

4) conclusion

when season 3 picks up, i will be very excited. If it picks up. Which it might not. If it doesn't i will cry. But i don't know where i'm going with this, i think ibjust wanted to gut it a bit because it could be better.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorion spoilers #the mandalorian season 3 #star wars #mandalorian #writing criticism