The long cutscene intro, the pyrokinesis, the soundtrack. All that's missing are Chris and Wesker being shirtless and all three of them being a hundred feet off the ground.
I've been replaying Elden Ring again (got 500 hours I think) and I'm having a blast. But as I move into the character storylines, I'm just reminded that I think they're some of the weakest we've seen from Fromsoft. The questlines themselves get a lot of shit for being a little...arcane and difficult to figure out without guides but I think a lot of them just end really poorly.
Blaidd: Dead
Alexander: Dead
Goldmask: Dead
Sellen: Horribly mutated
Melina: Dead
Bernhal: Dead
Blaidd and Melina are okay, because a major part of their storylines is fate and Blaidd especially cannot exist unless he fulfills his role. Something you've just taken from him. Alexander decides to challenge you to a fight, that's okay I guess. At least he goes out on his own terms. Sellen's just feels like they're trying to hit a quota because we don't even know who turned her into a graven school. You just come back one day and she's a fucking rock. Goldmask and Bernhal both just feel like afterthoughts, especially Goldmask since he just turns up dead for some reason. Fromsoft gets a big pass on this since they don't exactly make story heavy games but they're worse than Game of Thrones with the "Death = Good Writing" shit.
This all leads me to Millicent. Oh Millicent, dear Milly, born a wee little toxic baby and perfect clone of Malenia. Her story is one of my favorites because she's a traveling NPC and you meet her randomly because you're both ultimately heading to an endgame area. But then, literally 10 feet away from the boss door to Malenia, she decides that she's had enough of being alive and wants to pull out the needle that's keeping her horrible space disease from coming back. Now she says that she doesn't like what she's turning into but that just doesn't feel like enough of a justification to throw away your life. Moreover, we're robbed of an interaction between Malenia and her little rot baby, which would probably have been good since Malenia is a surprisingly layered character despite only having 4 lines of dialogue. You want to talk about unfinished, you want to talk about cut content. That storyline is it. Unlike Melina, you don't even get more breadcrumbs later in SOTE since Malenia and the Haligtree are nonentities in that DLC.
I'm reminded of Lucatiel in more ways than one, espcially since Lucatiel was also a few feet from her goal before she bowed out of the story. But her quest felt more conclusive since you knew exactly what was happening to her and the good ending is that if you had summoned her those 4 times that she's not going hollow just yet. Millicent doesn't get that, you're just forced into a bad ending out of nowhere. Is it that it's a bad ending that bothers me? No, it just feels like a wasted opporunity. If, for example, Milly died during the boss fight and then we see her one last time after. Or even that her needle gave you some kind of actual gameplay advantage against Malenia in some way, that would feel more thematic or earned.
Here's my brilliant theory: The items inside Faroth were meant to be in Redmane Castle but it was changed before the end of development.
I don't dislike Meli, I think she's a cool character but I feel that her narrative purpose is that she's a deconstruction of the Merlin archetype. She's Stannis' wizard advisor who has almost consistently given him bad advice.
With that in mind, it's weird seeing people postulate on her visions with any kind of sincerity. Everything she says has only been true from a certain POV. Now the show leaned into her being partially wrong and used that for character development but obviously TWOW will probably go a different way.
This is going to be less of a rant and more of semi-coherent stream of conciousness.
You know happy endings? When the hero wins, the villain is defeated, and peace is restored to the land, at least until the sequel? Every story can't have a happy ending, or at least shouldn't have an ending that goes against the tone that was set. Should something ever have a bad ending? Sure if you can make it feel satisfying.
A good example of a bad ending is The Mist. The heroes have escaped the store now controlled by a cult and are driving out into the unknown, hoping to escape. In the movie, the main character mercy kills his group to spare them from the monsters, only to find that the military was seconds away from rescuing him. So the world is saved but it feels like a loss.
A bad example of a bad ending is Repo Men, because the entire second half of the film did not happen. You feel cheated at the end because literally nothing has been accomplished. That's not satisfying. I once heard it described that the story of a hero is the downfall of the villain and as obvious as that might sound, I thought it was profound. If the antagonist of a story wins at the end and suffers no real lasting consequences, then the story is incomplete, it needs another hero. If the hero dies, that's perfectly fine a lot of stories do that, but if the hero fails then that's just abominable, it's the antithesis of a narrative. Even removing an antagonist, a story should end with a conflict being solved. It can't just stop or else it's incomplete. Actual human reality works like that, you may die in a war but the war will eventually end with someone who considers themselves to be good claiming victory.
So many stories end on "Happily ever after" not because they're immature or simple, but because it's just the natural conclusion. They get to the point.
I noticed it during my most recent defeat of Morgott that the sky was suddenly very overcast and muggy, like it's about to rain. All over the world, the visuals of the game looks noticeably more bleak after you're told you can't enter the tree. I think the Erdtree dims a little too. But none of the wikis state a skybox change happens until Farum Azula.
But I seen it, I learned it all with me own mind.
Kagurabachi is actually quite good, you know it is because you very rarely see a rant about it on this find subreddit. But I've decided to rock the boat and talk about something that has been bothering me for years.
That something is the character of Hiyuki Kagari. We meet Hiyuki fairly early into the story, like right after Sojo has been dealt with. She's presented as one of the strongest fighters the Kamunambi have and they want her to apprehend Chihiro. So they have a fight and it's established that her flame bone power is pretty potent. We see glimpses of that over the next couple arcs but we never really get that moment where it really feels like she's a big deal. What I'm saying is that Hiyuki has not really shown why we should be so impressed by her, which is fine. It's still early in the story I suppose. But then she sits out the Kamunabi Raid, which is clearly the most significant part of the KGB. Contrary to the memes, she's not literally sitting it out, she's udner orders to protect anothr sword bearer, but that's just it: When your hero group is keeping it's big gun away from the action, it feels less like they're a big gun and more like they're a backup plan at best and a liability at worst. Hiyuki's been getting a lot of glaze in the most recent chapters because it turns out she's a once in a millenia prodigy from a big wig sorcerer family and might actually be the most significant person in the story who doesn't have a sword.
I hate to do this, but I must reference Gojo seeing as how she's the closest analogue in the story and, let's face it, JJK and Kagura have the same readerbase. Gojo fought Jogo in chapter 13 of the manga, and before that he had fought Sukuna and embarassed both of them. Gojo's powers and why exactly he's considered the strongest and most capable sorcerer are established right out the gate, so now the story has the freedom to work around that and show the consequences of such a person existing. Hiyuki does not have this. She had a play fight with the main character in chapter 20 and then very briefly got to smack around some goons and aura farm on Yura during the Rakuzaichi, but otherwise she's just kinda there. The narrative is telling me she's important but not showing how.
I've always felt like the problem with Kagari is that she feels like the main character of a totally different story whose making cameos in this one. I think she's too overpowering a presence to share the spotlight with. She's apparently too strong to be apart of the plot and has to be written in absence to maintain drama but she's also a key figure that keeps getting her can kicked down the road. "Oh next arc she'll be there" "Next part will be very important for Hiyuki" "She's going to be important at the end."
On the bright side, the manga isn't ending anytime soon so one day we'll all look back at times like this and laugh...I hope.
We're past "the laptop doesn't exist" and now rolling into "Hunter did all of that but he's cool and funny so it's okay."
The bar is in hell
So there I was in the Frigid Outskirts, using my Curved Dragon Greatsword to 4 hit the kirin. At one point I was down to one HP and a reindeer was charging in at me, I use the charged R2 to hit him with a shockwave and then it's off to Lud and Zallen.
I've been fighting these fucking cats for 2 days now and I kept getting dicked by their big leaping pounce. To make a long story short, I went without a shield and just went straight dodging. Killed Lud, got halfway through Zallen. Then I get the dreaded "Dragon curved greatsword is at risk".
Just a few more hits and I got him
"Dragon Curved Greatsword is broken"
I'm fucked. I start running away, keep in mind the big cat is right behind me and can 2 hit me. I have no choice but to cycle through my weapons and find something, anything I can hit him with. Longsword, nothing, red iron scimitar, might as well be hitting him with a pillow, Santier's Spear! I still have to suffer through the full combo but it'll have to do.
2 more dodges, 3 more attacks and it's over. Pretty sure my heart stopped at one point.
Never again. All I wish is that I remembered to record it
Context: Destiny 2 just announced End of Service with one last big update happening mid-June before being exiled to the backburner. Paul Tassi is a YouTuber and Go Figure is a gun that was "sunset" (removed).
Instead of approaching this with any kind of tact, the dev team just give one word replies and dismiss anyone asking for the shit they removed that they didn't pre-approve of coming back.
We all know the legend, the only reason scouters exist is to showcase how stupid the idea of ascribing a number to any of these characters is. Now while that is true, honestly I just think it's cool.
Power levels are a better way to handle scaling than "This guy beat this guy in a fight". They also don't leave a lot of room for debate about how much progress has been made since a certain arc. Goku was 500 at Raditz, 8,000+ for Nappa, and either 15 million or 150 million for Frieza. Boom, there's your objective power scale growth
What's really funny is that despite DBZ having that backstory that the levels are a joke, it's also the only story I know of that's done it right. 7 Deadly Sins did numerical power levels and it was the most forced and nonquantifiable thing I've ever seen. Meliodias is as strong as the plot needs him to be, same with all those guys.
Bloodborne has some of my absolute favorite sets in Soulsborne history. The Hunter set and Eileen's are *mwah* beautiful. But I get tired of black and brown, blue is my favorite color. Hell I'd even take a red.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how much I wish they put in some kind of color changer system. I imagine it'd be easy since there are so few sets.
How are you faster than my fingers? I can't block. FUCKING STOP MOVING
Okay Edward, >!you are now an Assassin go kill Woodes Rogers. Now go kill Roberts, your archenemy. Don't worry about getting an actual pre-fight interaction with him. Cool, now go kill the Governor who has accomplished literally nothing in the last 6 years. Congratulations Player, you've finished Black Flag.!<
I've been replaying Black Flag since before the remake had come out and I just wanted to rant about this. Aside from all the sailing, the last Sequence is pathetically short compared to how much breathing room you had at the start. I think it's a consequence of the Age of Piracy fizzling out on a rather anticlimatic note, unlike a lot of the other time periods where it all ended on a bang. Roberts is especially disappointing as a fan of the man himself, but his real life death was pretty lame too so I don't take it personally. I'm not sure how you'd improve it, maybe find a way to make it feel like I'm not just tying up loose ends for a story that's all but concluded.
"Theon Turncloak" is pretty hard if I do say so myself.
I hope this doesn't sound super insulting because I love the man's content but I'm a new viewer and whenever I go through the archives, the things I click on always say "Originally streamed Feb 2019" or something to that effect. Bro was on fire.
Was there something in the water?