u/sporkyuncle

I know I'm just some dude, and everyone has already had all their thoughts on all this stuff. I just felt like adding to the conversation, since I played through it recently.

For context, I originally played Hitman 1 to death when it came out, did some elusives at the time, then fell away and didn't play anything Hitman until I got the full WOA a while back with a number of DLCs, when the game was already pretty well completed-ish (I love that they keep adding on to it and making good changes, though!).

I couldn't resist trying Freelancer and got a little addicted to it, so I've played and somewhat learned practically every map in 2 and 3 before doing their story missions.

When I first played Ambrose, I was like, what the hell is this "cover crab hole" thing, and "cover sandcastle hole," I guess it must be some mission story thing that will be explained when I play the actual map.

Nope, not at all. Extremely strange and feels like cut content that should've been more thoroughly cut. Kind of emblematic of everything about the map.

Ambrose is a weird map. I like it and I don't like it.

I feel like it's more thoroughly the jungle that they half-created in Columbia, the jungle they wanted to make. I love that when you're in the wilderness, you can hide anyone practically anywhere in the tall grass...maybe. I like the risk/reward of hoping someone won't see through that particular patch of grass on their pathing. I like the little town area and all its interiors, and I love the pirate base. Really well designed and put together with interesting things to see and do there. I even wish it was bigger by like 3 or 4 buildings.

I absolutely hate the cave and the ruins base. I know it's always possible to navigate the cave to your objectives even suit only, but it still feels far too dense with soldiers. Just not an enjoyable space to navigate, and compared to the pirate area there's nothing going on down there, just a place filled to the brim with guards and one single objective. Either semi-easy with a disguise (but still can't let your guard down) or a big tense test in patience that ends up feeling tedious.

The ruins feel about the same in a lot of ways. I have a hard time navigating them, getting in and out and around to whatever I'm trying to do. Too dense with soldiers, not enough interesting stuff there to feel worth it. Like if I was gonna compare either the cave or the ruins to Sapienza's virus cave, there's just no comparison, the virus cave is so much better.

I also always have a hard time remembering the path that winds up or down or around to which other location, whether it'll be to guards stopping me from going that way, or to my real destination.

And one of the things I hate the most, even if it's minor, is the lack of easy exits. There's like one permanent exit and the rest are weird hidden keys or little stories? Bleh. I know one is right next to its house, but when it's time to leave, you think I can remember which distant lock icon corresponds to that one?

I really don't enjoy it for showdowns because I feel like the suspect AI enjoys getting lost in the ruins and weaving all around the corridors.

But overall I don't think I hate the map, there's just a little too much decent about it. I don't know, just a strange place.

MiniMax is the company and H3 is the model. They just released it publicly for anyone to use, and it runs on most graphics cards made in the past 5 years. Obviously the 5000 series handles it best, and generation takes a lot longer on older cards, but it still works, due to offloading a lot of its work to your system RAM.

You can do basically anything with it, it's kind of the final breakthrough that was needed locally to compete with megacorporation models. This is because it takes images as references - you can give it a sheet showing a turnaround of a character, front view, side view, back view, accessories, details...and it will understand it and put that full character in the scene doing and saying whatever you want, remaining consistent across many individual generations. Or give it multiple references of what the area and scenery looks like. Or both. Or first frame/last frame. Or continue an existing video.

This is all Seedance 2.0+ level stuff, and benchmarks put it at basically Seedance quality. It feels better and more coherent than Sora ever did, and again...you can use it at home, offline, on your own PC, for only the cost of your own home electricity. It puts the same load on your PC as a demanding video game, it's not sending/receiving anything from a data center or anything like that.

The only thing limiting people from making their own full-on Marvel-competing films at this point is time. Yes, you're generating 15 seconds at a time for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes (depending on your settings and desired quality). No, it's not gonna be perfect the first run or perhaps even the 20th run. But with dedication and a few skills in video editing, you can make anything.

There are enough orbiting technologies to shore up its shortcomings too, things like re-casting the audio it generates to sound like a specific character's voice with another tool, or generating music to span across generations with Ace Step 1.5.

If you want to see examples of what you can do with it, just google for H3 MiniMax examples reddit. Lots of memes right now, and the model contains a lot of built-in knowledge of various properties like Seinfeld, so people are generating new Seinfeld episodes and such.

But I just wanted to share this for those who didn't know about it yet. Just, something to know about for the next time you hear about "AI is dying" or "it's all gonna go away, any second now."

I mean hell, this might actually go away any second now, banned by governments, for just being too good. Just lucky at the moment that tech hobbyists operate quickly within their own little niches faster than the general public finds out about such things.

We get posts at least once a month where someone asks for great AI art, often with predisposition to say "that's boring, that's generic, that doesn't have any soul at all." Sometimes not, sometimes people are willing to take a closer look, and that's appreciated.

But I feel like it's not useful to do that in a vacuum without getting a baseline for what people consider to be good TRADITIONAL art. I feel like for every decent-looking but easy-to-call-generic piece of AI art, you can do the same for traditional. There are plenty of works where half the people will say "this is great and inspiring" and half will say "looks like a normal landscape / still life / portrait, I don't see anything special about it."

I know there's plenty of famous art out there which is widely considered to be great art, and I suppose those could be easy answers...although for me personally, I feel like a lot of "famous" art when viewed through a lens that doesn't know the art is famous could be seen by many to be somewhat generic by today's standards. A lot of artists are famous for pioneering something that wasn't done at the time and then inspired countless copycats, to the point that their own work can now feel lost in a sea of generic work that looks like theirs, if not for the name behind it.

If at all possible, it'd be cool if you could name or link some art which isn't already famous, even though that's tough. I mean for me, I would already sort of break that rule and say that I love Zdzisław Beksiński's works. Though at the same time I will also say that I've seen a lot of AI art that nails the same vibe, too. The AI works tend to look a little less dreamlike and painterly, though, more to-the-point, "this is what you asked for" in a sense. But anyway, that's an aside.

I will look at the examples people give, but I'm not personally here to judge it and be like "boring, yawn, worse than AI art" or anything like that. I just want to see what people come up with, so we have a thread of "the best traditional art" to compare to the monthly threads of "the best AI art." Again, hopefully some unique or lesser-known stuff if at all possible.

Tenebrous Isle: Tenebrous means dark, shadowy, or obscure, which fits the tone of the game.

Queensbury Crypt: "Queensbury" is constructed like a name for a town or a district, but it's literally where the "queen" (or duchess) is "buried."

Nox's Bayou: "Nox" as in a noxious swamp.

Septemburg: Obviously a reference to September and autumn, but I did want to note that perhaps the more obvious name due to Halloween associations would be Octoburg...however, that calls to mind octopus, and associations with the number eight, so I think Septemburg was a good call.

Bone Beach: A simple and obvious name, but I thought it was fun how traditionally, dwarves are obsessed with mining for gold and mythril...however, in a world where bones are currency, then of course rather than traditional ore mines, they'd be mining for fossils!

Coltrane Peak: COLD TRAIN peak. Get it? I have to say, I feel like this area needed a little more motivation behind it...I don't really see a reason why anyone would ever take a train up there other than for sightseeing. I think it needed a small chilly settlement to justify its existence. Or if there used to be a settlement and it was destroyed in the historic crash that led to the ghost train, why wouldn't that have been known about before taking the trip up there?

Astral Orrery: Kind of an obvious name. An orrery is a spinny model of astral bodies, like our solar system. Actually, I hadn't thought about that...can we observe the layout of the orrery to figure out Mina's solar system? Four identical large planets with four moons each, eight smaller internal planets with a ring of eight moons below that, and one medium-sized planet at the bottom?

I don't know that most of the other areas need too much recognition in this way...Backwaters is literally a "backwater," remote, isolated, under-developed. Kindlewood is a cool name for a small town, and there is a lot of kindled fire in the area. Ossex is a reference to the fact that the developers wanted at least one area with "sex" in the name.

Anything you noticed or appreciated in the area design or worldbuilding?

This is information I wanted to know prior to finishing the game and starting New Game+ for the first time, and I couldn't find any good resources online for it. I wanted to spell it out here for anyone else who might be interested.

This comes from playing through the game once without any modifiers active, and 100%ing that game.

You start on the ship at the start of the game as expected. Even prior to the kraken fight, you already possess essentially everything you had when you finished the game:

• You are still equipped with whatever upgraded weapon you used to finish the game; the initial chest weapon choice lets you switch to whichever among the 5 weapons you had unlocked including their upgrades
• You are still equipped with whatever trinkets you used to finish the game, including the number of available/active trinket slots
• You are still equipped with whatever sidearms you had, including dual sidearms, but at 0 joules
• You have the same vial cap as before, but starting with 0 of them, in other words the kraken fight is still weapon only, no sidearms or heals. When Cappy "gives" you the vials from Lionel, you actually get nothing because you still have them; you will have to visit an underlab to refill from zero
• You do NOT retain the bones you had on hand at the end of the game, however you DO retain whatever bones you held in storage as bone stones (in my case, over 60,000)
• You keep all sidearm discovery, all trinkets you found, all upgrades (including better cloaks, dual sidearm permit etc.), and whatever item collection rate you had before
• Your underlab keeps all its upgrades, including stored sidearms and the map at whatever completion rate you had (in my case, every area is still starred at 100%)
• You stay at whatever Bone Up levels you had before, likely 10 in all three, but the cap is increased to 15 for all of them
• All chests remain open and empty, and kear locks remain unlocked
• Stock you bought at shops remains sold out
• The train is already bought and paid for, you just need to talk to the ticketer to start using it; however, even though the game displays ownership of all train tickets, you do need to revisit each train station to unlock them again, other than Coltrane Peak (which leads to the train crash and Thorne fight)
• You keep your minigame records such as the courtyard jump distance record
• Your total time played continues counting up from where it left off

However, the following things are reset:

• You will have 0/6 spark generators completed
• All rope shortcuts have been reset
• All rock/explosion shortcuts have been reset (for example, access to the bike sidearm in Ossex)
• All pipe shortcuts have been closed off until opening them again
• All spike walls are up again, requiring you to press whatever button opens them
• All mirror shortcuts (colored platforms) have been reset
• All minibosses can be fought again
• Characters who have a sort of "progression" as you encounter them through the game are reset; Vaamir is where he begins in Ossex, and Klumpy will scare you with his jokes again
• Minor quests are reset, though there is generally no reward for completing them, such as the bouquet of flowers quest in Ossex or rescuing Rhene to restore the guild
• Newspapers are reset. I believe they can say different things depending on the order you choose to do the generators in?

The combination of the above results in some odd situations. Legovich's weapon shop is sold out, but the note from his brother is on the floor so you can go fight him immediately if you wish (for no real reason).

I Boned Up attack immediately. The costs for each new level starting from 10 is as follows: 10,000 -> 15,000 -> 20,000 -> 25,000 -> 30,000.

However, even at maximum level in each you are still weaker than you were when maxed out in the first playthrough. How much weaker? It can be hard to say. In the first playthrough at attack level 10 in the underlab training room, a normal whip attack deals 18 damage to boss baby. In NG+ at attack level 15, it deals 27 damage...however, all the enemies in NG+ are stronger. A good bone farming spot is in Septemburg, one screen right and one screen down from the train station. In the first playthrough at attack level 10, the large mouse here takes 4 whip hits to kill. In NG+ at attack level 15, it takes 7 hits to kill him. Enemies also deal a lot more damage, too.

I hope this is helpful for anyone else who might wonder about these same things, or helpful in planning what to do if you want to speed run NG+ out of the gate. For example, it would be optimal if you could store as many bones as possible to have them ready to spend right away in NG+ so you don't have to waste time farming them.

Or is she just like "whichever one's in my left hand is currently Whisper?"

Or does she absolutely have a little attachment to them where she's like "Whisper has a notch toward the tip from when I was fighting that pig guy and Vesper has a little less padding on the handle?"

Title is really all that's needed, here.

Partway into the crypt is a snake asking about a guy in a red shawl. Toward the end of the crypt, you find a chained-up skeleton in a red shawl missing its head. Is this just ambience, or is there something you're meant to do about this? Find the skeleton's head somewhere?

The store page for Wayward Realms says this:

> AI Generated Content Disclosure > > The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this: > > This game uses a Large Language Model to help parse out in-game player character data (quests, allied factions, in-game world events, NPCs the player has interacted with, etc.) to customize quest objectives and reword hand written dialogue to fit that particular player character's playthrough.

However, I saw some discussion in the Steam forums from a representative that said this:

> Let us reiterate as well, the LLM is NOT the VGM, it is only a small part of it. We have switched away from using an LLM for Dialogue curling. Instead we use translation tech to reword dialogue, which gives us much better control of the output without any potential for hallucination.

If the translation software used isn't generative AI, it might be worth changing the store page description, as a number of people are quite against AI usage and might write off the game just due to the disclosure being there. Just, considering the idea that the early access launch period is fairly important for future success.

A lot of what I've seen of Wayward Realms so far has been things like a written novel, a lorebook reading on Youtube, just in general there seems to be an air of back story that needs to be dived into. And I know that was partly the design ethos of Daggerfall as well, and it's important for a game like this to have a solid lore foundation to build everything on.

My question is, do you expect to provide an experience that's just as engaging for those less interested in diving that deep, and the lore is mostly optional? Or would you say the game is not for those people?

For me, I'm fine with getting into lore and books, but a lot of that comes after the game has demonstrated that its world is interesting and engaging enough to be worth spending the time to understand it better. I've seen enough fantasy stories that when I hear stuff like "the Marquis DeBalastos was slain on the eve of Twicemorrow by the servants of the Garfleon Horde" I start glazing over, but personal stories told with fun character writing can get my attention. I want to meet eccentric characters, like a lady oddly obsessed with pillows, or a shy goblin who is bad at hiding an embarrassing secret, not just "slay me 12 skeletons."

Will there potentially be some worldbuilding scenes like those seen in games like Skyrim, where the first time you enter a handcrafted, important town square something might be going on to observe? Do you believe that sort of game design is at odds with the goals of Wayward Realms?

Imagine that tomorrow, Toby Fox makes a public statement.

"Look," he says. "While I'm really happy that people enjoy the characters of the Undertale universe as much as they have, enough is enough. I would please ask that no one draw them anymore, don't draw Sans or Papyrus or Undine or especially Toriel or any of the rest. The exception is AI art, I'm totally fine if you want to generate them...I just would really ask for people's understanding and respect here that we don't want there to be any more drawn depictions of these characters. Thanks everyone, really, it means a lot."

What do you think the internet would do in response to this request?