A Place To Ramble!

One of them, however, is due for a recharge. Its battery dwindles, and as the hours tick on, it feels its processes begin to slow. Its gyrostabilizers begin to fail, but before it can fall, it is caught. Its comrade extends its arm to catch it. The first’s power is draining still, but it was ordered not to abandon its post. The second, seeing this, pulls its ally close. Placing its head on its shoulder, it holds up its fellow mechanoid, keeping it from falling over and damaging itself. The first begins to enter self-charging, and while its basic subcore isn’t capable of much beyond combat, there’s a sense of gratefulness that courses through its circuitry, as well as something… deeper.

The mechanitor opens the autodoor the next morning to find the two militors leaning against the wall together. One of them is still active, and it gently taps the butt of its shotgun against its fellow machine, which rapidly springs back to life, fumbling with its own gun before hastily saluting its master. The mechanitor giggles. She seems to understand.

Check out YIIK I.V. (not a sequel, just an improved version of the original release) if you get the chance. I'm not completely done with it but I'm having a blast. Reflecting on some especially bizarre moments from it. This game is really cool and has a lot of meaningful & important things to say. Especially good commentary on how disgusting true crime culture is. Killer surrealist visuals & storytelling all the way thru. Unabashedly experimental and weird. I'll probably talk about it again when I finally finish it but man it's a good time.

@clockworkcat99 the battle system is totally revamped and focuses on strategy instead of minigames, using cards that simultaneously act as armor, spells, and passive buffs! Some dungeons have been shortened and the level up system was streamlined a lot, and there’s a lot of new music

As for story changes, it adds new characters and leans into 3D animation over the old VN style and I’d say it helps a lot. It gives the models a lot more expression and helps frame things differently when you can see how characters react to stuff beyond preset expressions. We get to see more perspectives and Alex feels closer to a villain protagonist than in the original

They do still use the vn style at times and I love when it gets pulled out for comedic effect:

@floweramon I’d say it’s good but like. Very niche? It’s not straightforward, it’s abstract and gets confusing, but I ended up enjoying it while realizing “okay yeah this is a game for a specific subset of people”, since not everyone wants to sift through the lies of a pretentious hipster who thinks he’s better than you while experiencing a surreal nightmare hell world

And for the plagiarism part, I’d say it’s kinda unfair to call it that? They quoted a section from a popular Murakami book and added a page full of credit to things they referenced to make sure people got their intent was homage, not theft

I’ve gotten to chat with the lead dev on call a couple times and it’s been neat!! I really liked getting to learn about the development process and how with the original version, the studio knew they were inexperienced so they just went along with any suggestions they got, but this time around they decided to stay true to their vision and make it just as weird and surreal as they wanted while putting their skills they’d learned to use.

I love seeing posts like this so much, like I remember one where someone played disco elysium and thought the game crashing when they talked to measurehead was to establish what an imposing presence he has

I love how much they emphasize Alex as just being this unhinged weirdo who’s actively making bad choices, and I liked how the benevolent psychosis ending was like a forgiveness arc rather than redemption arc, it was really sweet and felt fitting

Also!! I can’t get over the junctioned self dialogue that implies when he was a kid, Alex got jealous that Allison was paying more attention to her boyfriend than to him, so the logical conclusion he reached was “I should kiss her boyfriend”

I.v. genuinely is just such a cool like. Movie! It's a good piece of art instead of being a kind of confusing piece of art. I think the emphasis on how stunted and bad of a guy Alex is helps a lot, and the added sections in ng+ (I don't have to be coy, i don't think. In yiik iv 2) really highlight this theme of ignoring your grief and using unhealthy habits to process it. Michael's diary notes and just kind of everything regarding Alex. I'm gonna pop some yiik 2 spoilers under the cut

In the second mission of Flipsville Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, there is an area on the wall of the large town-like planetoid where the player character will stand sideways instead of sliding down after reaching it in the way shown in the footage. From there, a precise backflip can be used to skip to a later planetoid of the mission.

pls tell me the hm ap/tot fandom is still alive.. are you guys out there....

I wrote these out a while ago for my own use, and never posted them. But, as some people expressed interest, HERE THEY ARE! I'm gonna put them below a read more, because there's a lot of them. I have more on other psychic weirdness that I might post if people are interested in these.

(A reminder: Psykers are canon. There were psykers in fallout 1.)

This mural seen in the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials in Super Paper Mario presents a very interesting piece of lore continuity between two separate timelines in the game that is never explicitly stated. While the mural at first glance simply depicts King Croacus IV, the boss of Chapter 5, with his Pure Heart, it is apparent upon closer inspection that while he is red, the flower in the mural is black. This is because it actually King Croacus I, the great-grandfather of the boss fought in-game.

It is established in two separate places that: -The Ancients created the Pure Hearts 1,500 years prior to the events of the game. -The Floro Sapiens have their own calendar according to which the game takes place in the year 1626. King Croacus I ruled from Year 1 to Year 496.

Cross-referencing these two gives the result that 1,500 years before the game was the year 126, within the reign of King Croacus I, so he would have been the one in possession of the Pure Heart at the time assuming the murals were made at the point where the Pure Hearts were given out to their guardians.

All of this can only be gleaned by the players cross-referencing the dates on their own instead of ever being explained in-game.

Lawful good is about working to further the goals of an ideal and considering the larger-scale consequences of your actions, it’s only boring if you misinterpret it as “I’d never break societal conventions” or something like that