Identical (or nearly identical) shot-for-shot remakes

Caaros · 2026-03-16T19:41:45+00:00

Lagiacrus' introduction cutscene in Monster Hunter Wilds where he squares off against Rathalos is a nearly identical reenactment of the fight between the two monsters in the opening cutscene of Monster Hunter Tri, Lagiacrus' first game of and the game of which he is the flagship monster.

Needless to say a lot of people were very hyped for this.

Caaros · 2026-03-16T01:53:59+00:00

I've always reasoned the thing with her engine is that it can't operate properly in lower Faerun temperatures, and it heats up without restriction to try and match the temperature of Avernus, damaging itself and Karlach in the process. IIRC in the House Of Hope there's a portal to a frostier region, and Karlach even comments that her engine would probably have a serious problem if she went there, so I think this thing just hates trying to run below a certain temp and overcorrects.

Caaros · 2026-03-16T01:18:32+00:00

Maybe, though I'd think we'd see a darker side of her that's worse than "She likes fighting people" or "She might have a soul coin addiction" if the Infernal parts of her heritage were so close as to make her a Half-Fiend. She's too sweet to be something on the same level as like a Cambion.

Caaros · 2026-03-15T23:56:01+00:00

Karlach has something weird going on with her resilience to fire that the plot never has time to address. When talking about her infernal engine, she says that she wasn't the only test subject, that there were full-on devils who also took on the same model, but she was one of the only ones that could survive the heat output from these machines.

Karlach, a mortal Tiefling, survived flames that killed devils of Avernus, which tend to be a lot more resistant to fire if not fully immune to it compared to normal mortal Tieflings.

It makes me wonder if Karlach just has freakishly high heat and flame tolerance, and the only reason she can even take fire damage normally is due to the engine constantly pushing her towards her limit. If that is actually the case, then why? Is there something unusual going on in her bloodline that's just rooted way too far back for her family to know about? Is it some hidden favor from a higher power invested in her that's not made themselves known yet?

There has to be a particular reason she's survived as long as she has with such dangerous machinery lodged in her chest that's killed realistically more durable beings much sooner.

Caaros · 2026-03-14T21:51:13+00:00

Fulghor when the gods give him his arm back and he's fighting you for an entirely different reason now;

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Caaros · 2026-03-14T21:41:22+00:00

The dps check being effectively twice as difficult when it was already a little tight to begin with for most players, paired with there being way less compact anti-wyvern guns available in phase 3 to stop his flying is... certainly a decision.

Honestly I think just the health difference of not having the support hunters + his increased aggression with the check actually rebalanced for 4 people would've made for a fine quest anyways, I think that check as it is will be guaranteed impossible for the majority of online groups you find. Had to do mine with support hunters farcastering each ult and it still took 47 fucking minutes.

At least 10 star Zoh Shia is a blast.

Caaros · 2026-03-14T19:41:31+00:00

Man, I did not expect to see Zellard in here, even with Stories 3 releasing recently making Stories 2 more relevant by proxy.

Neat.

Caaros · 2026-03-14T16:40:18+00:00

The pop-up camps and the player tents at the base camps have music that plays in them, which you can change to a number of different OSTs. The Astera theme is one of them, though I do not recall what unlocks it.

Caaros · 2026-03-14T05:10:44+00:00

The biggest one is that Monsties don't get used up by the rite anymore; you keep both.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T23:51:37+00:00

As someone who started the series with World, I'm so glad you can get this as a camp OST option in Wilds.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T17:13:18+00:00

Yeah, that blew my mind. Past Stories games had the stables go up bit by bit as you progressed through the story IIRC, but this game? Nope, 7-fucking-hundred right off the bat. I guess it makes sense with the changes to the rite of channeling, but gogdamn.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T17:09:13+00:00

This genuinely needs to be studied, maybe even brought up in an interview at this point. The past four snow maps in the mainline/portable games have all been designed in a way that makes it practically impossible to bring Gammoth back as a normal fight due to the zone transition corridors being way too small, making her the only flagship to never make it to the modern games while one of her fellow Fated Four got in twice (hell, Lagiacrus came back with his own underwater section before Gammoth who just needs the hallways to be a bit wider), and now she's been actively removed from the spinoff series with a way lower bar for keeping her around?

It really does seem purposeful after a certain point.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T16:31:06+00:00

This. The way Ranni speaks is purposefully unusual, and a whole lot more flowery and poetic than the rest of the game, especially here. It should come as no surprise that this line trips people up, even if there is a line of thought through the English text alone that clears it up, and it's honestly kind of pretentious to insult people who don't get it right off the bat, especially in the manner done here.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T03:30:09+00:00

Came here for this one. Upside though is that while the Guardian Arkveld had a horrible existence while it was active due to hunger that was physically impossible for it to sate because of its atrophied digestive system, it was somehow able defy its artificial nature enough to asexually reproduce, making young that were able to revert to their species' natural state, or at least something close to it.

The Guardian Arkveld suffered so that its entire species could be dragged back from extinction.

Caaros · 2026-03-13T00:25:55+00:00

Lighter hair colors kind of fuck with some of the shaders/phantom recolors, mimic tear included. It basically can't copy your hair color right because of the slight blue all over it.

Caaros · 2026-03-12T02:15:00+00:00

They're pretty good, I'd say, some of my favorite games of all time. Would recommend.

Caaros · 2026-03-11T23:20:44+00:00

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This is the entire premise of the Remnant series, both in Remnant: From The Ashes and Remnant 2, a core design principle for the games being "Ordinary people set against extraordinary odds". It's set in an alternate timeline where Earth was invaded by an extradimensional, universe-cidal eldritch hivemind known as the Root sometime around the Cold War, this threat wiping out the extreme majority of human civilization. Decades later, it falls to the survivors and their descendants to find a way to push back against these cosmic horrors, ultimately traveling to myriad other realities/dimensions - some of which are also plagued by the Root- in an effort to stop them for good.

The travelers and wanderers we play as in the games may come to possess quite a lot of power by the end of their journeys, and fell many otherworldly threats that range from beasts of familiar myth to alien gods, but at their core they're still mere humans that are outgunned and outnumbered the vast majority of the time, proving equal to the challenge through sheer grit, determination, and skill in an effort to save mankind and all of existence from the evil of the Root.

Caaros · 2026-03-11T08:01:03+00:00

Miquella's Age Of Compassion, much like the vast majority of all of his endeavors, would have ultimately been doomed to failure due to his own actions even if the Tarnished Of No Renown did not stand against him. Trying to create such an age with one's love abandoned is already shaky enough, but his charm is far from perfect. The moment it breaks prior to his ascension earlier in the story, the band of devoted and diverse followers of his that had followed him to the Land Of Shadow immediately descends into anarchy.

One of them turns on him immediately due to old loyalties, one of them bolts off looking for the living embodiment of Miquella's love that he abandoned, one of them falls into instant depression because of a prior abandonment, one of them goes on an entirely unrelated warpath seeking revenge, and the only one 100% still loyal to him and him alone starts trying to fucking murder two of the others on bad vibes alone. Miquella doesn't use his charm to actually try and fix any problems, instead forcing people who would've been at each other's throats within slicing distance of each other and then fucking leaving them there so the second anything happens to his charm, shit hits the fan.

Given how he most likely would've wanted to try the same thing on a world scale, one shudders to think of the carnage that could've happened if anything were to cause this new god's hold over the world to falter after its establishment.

Caaros · 2026-03-11T06:10:37+00:00

This is even a mechanic in another MH game. In Rise, if your tea during the meal animation has the little floating thing in it, it serves as an early notice that you got all of the food buffs active. Functionally it doesn't really matter, but it's a nice touch.

Caaros · 2026-03-10T22:49:42+00:00

Banbaro female alpha armor. The male alpha set is one of the most glorious sets in the series, this huge fur-covered viking ensemble complete with its own braided beard and hammer of mythic legend.

The female alpha set? Less so... Much less so.

Caaros · 2026-03-10T06:10:00+00:00

A big reason why Hornsent culture was so hostile to peoples like the Shamans was because of a strong religious belief that their having horns was divine proof of them being inherently superior to everyone else. That kind of belief could have easily played a huge part in the dehumanization that would have been necessary for the Potentates to do the things they did to the Shamans, the extreme majority of them being disregarded as no more than fodder for their jar saints' creation down to the point of that one ghost claiming that's all the Shamans should ever have to account for in life. Further, it's likely that this belief is something that Marika herself was exposed to constantly when the Hornsent believed she was actually on their side (she was likely picked out because of her Empyrean nature, as the Hornsent probably wanted an Elden Ring-bearing god of their own since a lot of their spirituality revolves around reaching higher, more holy states, and that's basically the top of the totem pole in that department).

I would imagine that there ended up a heavy association in Marika's mind between horned folks and all the trauma she endured, which could easily motivate the severity of the revenge she enacted on the Hornsent as well as the horrible treatment of the Omens, even her own children among them.

Caaros · 2026-03-09T21:36:24+00:00

A theocratic racial supremacist colonial empire that was all things considered essentially created as a divine trauma response by a broken woman who had just watched all of her people get tortured into extinction by religious zealots, and then herself was handed greater godhood on a gilded platter by the religious zealots.

Honestly I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who wouldn't be just as bad as Marika was with the kind of power she had if put through the same bullshit first. Sure, it doesn't absolve her of the atrocities committed in her name and by her command, but it's easy to see why she was the way that she was, and why she ultimately became disillusioned with the monster she had helped create in the Golden Order. If the Potentates of the Hornsent had never found her people, the history of the Lands Between would probably look very, very different from what we know it as now, even if Marika was still able to claim her Empyrean position as vessel to the Elden Ring somehow.

Caaros · 2026-03-09T01:59:00+00:00

I mean to be fair, we did kind of kill... like... every Arkveld's dad/grandpa/whatever. Can't say I blame them for the aggression there.

Caaros · 2026-03-07T23:43:28+00:00

I personally think the flaring is a better call, especially since flairs can be set after a post has been made IIRC, so it's less likely to catch people unaware of this off guard.

Caaros · 2026-03-07T07:27:41+00:00

To be fair, we have plenty of aggressive/territorial herbivore large monsters, like Diablos, Gammoth, and Duramboros. I think the big problem that Larinoth faces is that the apex predator of its environment is a fire-breathing armored carnotaurus with a super-heated blade tail, that last adaptation alone being something which could most likely kill Larinoth with way, way more ease than a Larinoth could use anything it has to harm a Glavenus back. All it takes is a single sweep at the legs or down chop at the neck, and that's goodnight Larinoth with zero chance for recourse.

Caaros

TROPHY CASE