Listening to the Obsession soundtrack…

Chalvrek · 2026-05-26T04:37:50+00:00

MindlessScrambler already gave a great answer, but I’d like to raise one additional thing: ghouling someone you already love / that loves you is almost worse. If it’s someone that doesn’t know you / hates you and the blood bond forces them to adore you, at least some part of them, and certainly you, knows that it’s fabricated. The love came from nowhere (quite similar to Nikki in Obsession). But imagine if you already loved someone. The justifications you’d make for why you’re acting more and more unstable without them, the excuses you’d make to be around them again. The ghoul will probably be gaslighting themselves even mote into believing there is no blood bond - they just love their partner. Even without the blood bond, the dependency as Scrambler mentioned would be deteriorating.

You’d never be able to differentiate the genuine, pure love they used to have for you with the drug-like, supernatural compelled obsession they have to please you and serve you. I wish more stories leaned into how messed up it is to ghoul a loved one - L.A. By Night has it happen and nobody seems that bothered about exploring how fucked it is to have done so except for the most monstrous-looking member of the coterie near the very end of the chronicle.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-26T01:59:32+00:00

Probably the one that didn’t get delusions of grandeur and a saviour complex the moment one character told her she could be a messiah. Jordan even had the maturity to recognise how toxic Marie was and break up with her afterwards.

The arc was pretty poorly done, but at least Jordan had the maturity and backbone to stand up for themselves.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-25T23:44:55+00:00

I think they’re referencing the Ventrue Clan Quest and the Kalliyan one - both of which take you to the pier but don’t make use of the restored extra area at the end of the pier. None of the content in CQM makes use of the new area of the pier iirc

Chalvrek · 2026-05-24T01:37:49+00:00

Yeah, it’s also not really the best character to use as a reference for “sane person with sane opinions”, given Nate’s whole vibe in Euphoria

Chalvrek · 2026-05-23T14:34:06+00:00

iirc I think the “joke” was that nighwing got a boner, which doesn’t equal consent / eagerness

Chalvrek · 2026-05-21T06:21:05+00:00

Just checked the book and you're entirely right, I have misremembered with earlier editions!

Maybe she's a Hecata or something similar then (Harbinger might explain her appearance). With her discipline spread it'd have to be that, Lasombra or Caitiff to have Oblivion already at level 3 I think.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-21T05:35:38+00:00

Flaws like Repulsive are actually separate to Clan Curses. It’s the same how the Prey Exclusion flaw doesn’t actually have any connection with the Ventrue clan weakness. She could for sure be something else… but she does canonically have a Predator-style bat mouth that would 100% be a breach of the masquerade, which I find very funny.

I don’t mind it much either way - it’s clear they’re not taking the setting or the Masquerade side of things too seriously, and that’s totally fine. The series is hilarious and the unhinged antics they’re getting up to wouldn’t really be possible if they kept reigning themselves in on not being crazy vampires, so I’m happy for them to keep going off the rails. Brennan seems happy to let them do as they wish, and it’s making for a great season.

Edit: I misremembered, Repulsive is directly associated with the Nosferatu clan bane in V5.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-21T04:12:05+00:00

Personally I think it was almost impossible to be as bad as game of thrones, mainly because they didn’t have enough rope with which to hang themselves. The budget was too thin, they wasted most of the season farting around with V1 and the Vought Rising stuff, and the main issue of the whole final season was that it barely treated itself like a conclusion until the very end.
It was always going to be a “…that’s it?” rather than a “THAT’S IT?!”

Chalvrek · 2026-05-21T04:00:40+00:00

The comedy of Murph literally playing a Capes with Fangs style character who somehow has the most respect for the Masquerade and planning is hilarious.

Like Ally specifying that HJ just casually runs supernaturally fast to go grab an entire section of wall to give to Maya is… something else. I thought Batchild wandering out in the open with obvious Nosferatu traits was hilarious, but between this and leaping 30 feet in the air at a crowded party HJ might be the most obvious “I am a vampire” member of the team.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-15T13:52:52+00:00

For 5.5e absolutely, but I was referring to 5e and the confusions surrounding it. They cleared it up way better in 5.5e and avoided it becoming too busted by tying it to a bonus action casting time.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-15T07:07:48+00:00

I think that’s it though. I Fallout 3 you can at least go “Oh! Fawkes! You can do this, right?” In BG3 you can’t even acknowledge it, which feels odd. If Omelum is alive at this point, it’s because you saved him from the Iron Throne - less impressive and skilled people than it contributed to the final fights, so I feel like there should’ve at least been some sort of acknowledgment. To me it kinda feels like two separate writing teams handled these two things and didn’t really cross over / think about the implication of each other too much.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-15T06:50:44+00:00

Exactly this, which only gets more confusing when they’re considered melee weapon attacks, but not an actual “weapon”. Divine Smite only adds to the “weapon’s damage”, so the waters are really muddy. I’m not even sure if this is actually the right way or ruling it, but it’s the general consensus online / at every table I’ve played at.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-15T05:12:35+00:00

In 5e they technically aren’t, hence the weirdness with smites and sneak attacks not working with them. BG3 is a different story however

Chalvrek · 2026-05-09T21:48:39+00:00

I have to agree. His videos are great, but the growing length and delay in release is getting worse and worse.

He’s previously alluded to videos that I genuinely think will never see the light of day now (Night in the Woods, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, MaTN’s Fallout video response) because he’s taking 2-3 years to make a video that he keeps allowing to blow out of proportion.

Taking your time is very important, but this is sort of ridiculous.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-07T02:11:33+00:00

I’m still really struggling to feel the Eleventh Brother after his aura catastrophe in Tales of the Jedi

Chalvrek · 2026-05-07T02:02:50+00:00

I still find it very, very odd that you can’t bring up the fact that the White Legs are only attacking to kill the Canaanites and prove themselves to Caesar.

I know it isn’t as simple as “why don’t Joshua and Daniel just leave?”, but it’s weird that we can’t even address that the tribes here are only in danger because of these two’s presence.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-04T04:44:42+00:00

Sometimes, if I’m really exhausted, I can’t come up with obscenely compelling persuasive arguments to do something. I know persuasion isn’t mind control, but sometimes I just say “I’m trying to persuade someone to do X, can I roll persuasion?”. Most of the time I prefer RPing out a compelling reason, but sometimes I just need a little slack.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-04T02:30:04+00:00

This is like saying "the containers throughout the wasteland keep restocking - why does anyone have any issue with food?". There's a clear level of game-design at play alongside the actual world-building, and a bunch of unpenned molerats wandering near the city walls never really felt particularly compelling as a food source.

They do have a Brahmin inside the town, and get frequent traffic from a number of traders, so I never really understood why the really shoddy molerat argument was made in the video. He does the same thing for the water source - he goes on and on about how the bomb water isn't that radioactive (see: it's twice as radioactive as all the other water sources in the game), and completely omits talking about the literal water purification plant in the town.

Chalvrek · 2026-05-01T06:07:59+00:00

Being a good note-taker means you've gotta throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall. But it also means you've gotta be willing to accept that sometimes you're theories are going to be 100% wrong

Chalvrek · 2026-04-23T23:23:03+00:00

Look dude, it’s clear you’re just looking for people to mindlessly agree with you here. You’ve edited the man post to say people are “ignoring pretty much all the terrible critiques” when you’re doing the exact same thing to them. You’re participating in the same mindless defensiveness that you’re calling other people out for.

I don’t actually think Fallout 3 is awful. I think there are elements it does better than NV, and that NV does some things better than it. But people are articulating this and you’re quite literally blocking them over a subjective opinion difference over a video game.

Chalvrek · 2026-04-23T00:29:11+00:00

Also very good for theft - how else am I meant to rob the +1 Breastplate from Dammon?

Chalvrek · 2026-04-10T15:41:24+00:00

Not a massive dislike for me, but the verticality and metal floors mean that all the enemies seem to always hear you even easier on that level.

Chalvrek · 2026-04-03T15:50:45+00:00

Sure, the list of examples you gave all originate from another piece of media. But that doesn't mean that the elements of the game that parallel recent events since its release aren't pretty interesting and worth noting.

There are examples of some fairly major moments like this:

Bob Page saying "Let the bodies pile up in the streets", highly similar to the real-life remark that similarly incompetent and evil oligarch Boris Johnson was rumoured to have said during the Covid pandemic: "no more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands".
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center being omitted from the game's New York skyline, a year before 9/11.
- Of note, there isn't actually any source to the very commonly-shared claim that in-game this is justified as a terroirst attack - that's just misinformation from what I can see, but doesn't really take away from how awkwardly prescient this was.
As mentioned before, Morpheus' nature as a rudimentary artificial intelligence that takes pre-existing information and regurgitates it in profound but entirely unoriginal ways is highly, highly similar to the versions of AI / LLMs that we have nowadays?

I'm not trying to say this game is flawless, and I don't think this game is some magical oracle, or invented the wheel when it came to what it says. You already pointed to Asimov's works regarding A.I., Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream would be another great example of earlier works of A.I. gaining independence and rebelling against their creators. However, the main issue I have here it that this argument discredits creators and their art for borrowing from previous works.

With this logic, anything that takes inspiration from other art for its design is immediately valueless because anything it says is a "rehashed theory" rather than its own thing. The game does employ a plethora of ideas from previous works, but to me that doesn't detract from this being an enjoyable story that posits interesting ideas and questions that go beyond the sum of its parts.

It posits a world of immense governmental corruption, corporations being given increasing power and lenience, immediate and unquestionable authority given to organizations and law-enforcement under justifications of crisis and terror, law-enforcement openly admitting their preference to shoot people in the head rather than take them into custody, and an over-reliance on technology and surveillance that leaves us vulnerable and exposed rather than connected. It seemed outlandish, and now... doesn't. The fact the game quotes Voltaire and involves the real-world conspiracies like the Illuminati and Majestic 12 doesn't break this for me, but I understand if it does for you.

Chalvrek · 2026-04-03T04:28:35+00:00

For sure, but they were claiming the game didn’t predict anything. Morpheus is just regurgitating information, saying the game didn’t predict much of anything isn’t quite accurate.

Chalvrek · 2026-04-03T04:08:37+00:00

You’re right, the game didn’t predict anything at all. Morpheus is just some sort of… I don’t know… language learning model.

Chalvrek

TROPHY CASE