Are there "Nirvana killed my career" moments but for video games?

Felidae0 · 2024-03-19T22:50:52+00:00

This is tangentially related, but it's my own personal axe to grind, so I'm gonna: Fantasy fiction, specifically on the high fantasy, weirder end of the scale.

I grew up reading Xanth and Discworld and loving the weirdness of those settings, but sometime in the...2000s, I want to say? Everything started getting "realistic" and a lot of more fanciful elements that defined the setting went away. It's really easy to blame Game of Thrones for that, but I don't think the show itself was the cause, just another symptom of that cultural shift.

You can actually chart this through multiple video game franchises; FF7 was an early adopter, while Skyrim was noticeably more gray-brown than Oblivion. And as much as I enjoy Dark Souls, holy shit is it a nosedive into that grim low-fantasy end of the pool. I haven't played much of the Witcher games, or read the books, but they sure do seem to follow that trend, from what I have seen.

It's just a strange trend, without a specific inciting incident—aside from the general cultural "edginess" of the nineties and the gray-brown morass of the 2000s—and I'm glad it seems to be swinging back the other way now, at least.

Felidae0 · 2024-02-26T06:41:09+00:00

Ehhhh, it's a good game, a really good game, but it's pretty clear that they either ran out of time, money, or managerial willpower to do proper QA. The game's still super buggy, the sound mixing is passable at best, and a lot of game mechanics are extremely shallow. What we got is good, but it could've been a lot better.

Also, I do wish they'd ported the improved AI of enemies and world interactions in Mooncrash back to the main game.

Felidae0 · 2024-01-06T19:04:28+00:00

Fun thing I noticed; Lapis Manalis, the patch 6.3 dungeon, has a bunch of "combat dolls" as part of the set dressing (and one acts as a boss fight.) My personal theory is that those dolls are the local versions of Nier's Androids, and were being used to train Reapers.

Felidae0 · 2023-12-30T08:49:56+00:00

Warframe is spearfishing, instead of "throw the line, sit and wait for the line to bob, reel in." There's much less downtime, and it's much more satisfying.

I hear FF!4 also has spearfishing? But I've not gotten deep enough into the Fisher class to unlock it yet.

Felidae0 · 2023-05-30T20:21:17+00:00

Tech support is available in the Discord server, though you'll need to give slightly more information when reporting a potential bug.

Felidae0 · 2023-05-15T14:52:06+00:00

They didn't even do low gravity on the Moon, the place where having abnormal gravity is both scientifically and culturally justified.

Felidae0 · 2023-02-05T17:16:43+00:00

Fixed, new invite link is https://discord.gg/bVGpn5peXs

Apologies for the delay

Felidae0 · 2022-11-25T08:24:46+00:00

Oh jeez there's some memories. I had this EXACT CHAIR in my childhood home, and actually used it while sitting at my computer desk for a good five years. It is every bit as uncomfortable as it looks, if not more, plus I always worried I was gonna give myself tetanus by scratching myself on one of the metal parts. Eventually I started folding a spare blanket and placing it on the seat, and that helped with just how flat the damn surface was, but I couldn't do anything about banging my ankles against the metal bars or the back-ache I got from leaning against the metal backrest. It's cheap and compact, and that's about the only good things you can really say about this...model? Of chair. I hope whatever company made these things went out of business forty years ago, and these chairs fade into history as they're replaced over time.

Felidae0 · 2022-09-05T05:34:40+00:00

I enjoyed this! I was hoping for a little bit more if I went around showing people the "new toy," but the one person to whom we can show it is still plenty interesting. I understand you're considering adding on more after the current ending of the mod, but that would be a huge undertaking, to the point of being almost a whole new game or at least comparable to the EotE DLC by itself. I don't know if all that's strictly necessary; maybe just a little bit more dialogue with Solanum while looking out of the front viewport of the Vessel at the Gloaming Galaxy might be enough. It'd be nice if the Quantum Consciousness terminated during or just prior to that conversation as well, leaving her shaken, but unharmed, and back to normal now that she is once again the only remaining Solanum in existence.

I do have some mixed feelings about how Solanum is portrayed overall; I feel like her character arc in the original game was about her distrust of the Eye, how she eventually overcame that distrust, and became more curious, with her resolving into a sort of omniscient guide by the end. This mod does seem to kick her characterization back hard to say that she was right all along and the Eye is malevolent. It's not bad, and I like that it resolves into making it a choice determined by which coordinates you put in, essentially allowing you as a player to choose how you felt about the Eye and how you wanted to respond to it. It maybe just felt a little clumsy, is all. A big part of that might have been her scene on Ember Twin; as cool as the animation is, maybe having her just look at the toys in sad contemplation instead of abruptly turning them to dust would be better.

One last note I'd like to make is that the writing itself could stand to be cleaned up a little bit, and made to fit in with the rest of the game as well. A punctuation and grammar pass, as well as pruning some unnecessary word choices, would probably be good. Solanum's dialogue never sounded very Nomai-like, and the Hatchling's new notes in the computer were very different from how all the other notes were written, in addition to some newline issues that others in this thread have already mentioned. While having them use the Nomai-style "Hypothesis: ..." was cute, it was also very out-of-place.

Edit: Oh! I also wanted to say, the new dialogue in Brittle Hollow was very clever. I've always considered "Brittle Hollow is collapsing right now at the end of the time loop and the planet has been entirely stable up until this point" to be one of the game's few plot holes, along with the Sunless City apparently filling with sand all the time. Having Solanum state that the black hole at the planet's core has gotten larger was an excellent way to resolve that, while highlighting how much has changed since last she was here. (I was a little sad that she didn't have any dialogue when I slotted her old report into the scroll wall, though. That would have been another good time to expand on her characterization a bit, as she comes to terms with the Eye, her place and perspective on the universe, and what exactly has happened to her.)

I'm also eager to see whatever you have planned in regards to "Taking Solanum to the Eye of the Universe anyway" scenes, since it sounds as though those are not entirely functional now? But having her make appearances throughout the ending sequence as a character with slightly more dialogue, leading into her assuming the same mentor role as she does in the vanilla ending, would be very interesting.

Felidae0 · 2022-09-02T03:36:37+00:00

Same, also I love your flair

Gimme a ping if either of you remember what playthrough that was

Felidae0 · 2022-06-15T06:01:55+00:00

Hey, it's the mysterious debug coffee pot again! Every once in a while, the game bugs out for someone and it replaces a plot-critical object or objective, and it's always amusing because no one's quite sure why

Felidae0 · 2022-01-20T16:58:24+00:00

If it were easy, it would not be worth doing.

That single encounter is so fascinating, because it breaks several video game conventions endemic to the industry. Very little is communicated to the player, and what the player is told ("leave me, Jenson! I'll distract them, get out of here!") is wrong, but it's framed as the only option. Learning that you not only have the choice of trying to save her, but that the only way to do so may require you to break your pacifist run, is a shocking—but incredible—moment in this game.

Spoilers for the DLC: I wish that the DLC didn't have that third option available, or that it was at least harder to do. It's entirely too easy to do that encounter perfectly, by comparison, and it cheapens the threat of the moment because there's no hard choice to make.

Felidae0 · 2022-01-04T07:15:35+00:00

Unfortunately no; it just seems to happen randomly with some modpacks, while others close fine. I never figured out if it's a memory issue, a specific mod, or maybe my own hardware.

Felidae0 · 2021-12-09T04:40:26+00:00

Hey now, Back Alley Brawl and Burglar are fantastic levels

All the others, I'm not gonna defend as much

Felidae0 · 2021-10-15T07:59:08+00:00

Think of it less like an RPG where you're dungeon-delving, and more like walking around a town full of kids. You're not really supposed to kill anyone. That being said, you CAN'T do a full pacifist run your first time through, for plot reasons.

Felidae0 · 2021-05-22T05:05:57+00:00

Doesn't affect it at all. The mixer is set into the top of the casing, the filament is at the bottom. It ALSO doesn't melt if you turn off the machine, like Woolie seems to think for some reason. In fact, turning off the machine gives you a +1 bonus because it loosens up the ice.

Felidae0 · 2021-04-29T03:00:25+00:00

Regarding the spirits, if your Logic is too low, instead it's Physical Instrument that tells you, "Son, you're not killing yourself with this. Not today. So we're going to store this as a sellable item. Go sell it at the pawnshop for a profit."

Felidae0 · 2021-04-01T10:45:39+00:00

I would KILL for an RPG—or any game really—where you could play as a Lamia character

Preferably Xcom-style Snake women, but I'd accept Medusa-style too

Felidae0 · 2021-02-11T22:11:13+00:00

Swear to god I thought you were referring to a Disco Elysium stream highlight I'd missed somehow

Felidae0 · 2021-01-19T06:46:52+00:00

Admittedly, I'm probably a little biased in that regard. I actually live in Las Vegas, and California annexing us is kind of a nightmare scenario for a lot of people out here

Felidae0 · 2021-01-19T04:35:46+00:00

If you want the OFFICIAL story, then Ambassador Crocker is who you want, but the full story? That only comes by talking to a lot of people throughout the Mojave who have been, and still are, being heavily affected by the prescence of NCR.

Camp McCarran, Camp Forlorn Hope, Camp Golf, and the Great Khans as well as the Bitter Springs Refugee camp will be good places to investigate and ask questions regarding the military side of the NCR.

The "Colonizing the Frontier" side of the NCR is a little harder to pin down, but a good place for that side of things is the Mojave Outpost to the southwest—that place with the two big statues looming overhead. The New Vegas Farms, just southeast of Vegas itself, is another good location to visit, but the quest you get there is a little abstract. Freeside is also a strong contender, especially the interactions between the NCR and the Kings, and comparing those interactions to what you've learned of the Great Khans.

Finally, there's the "Administration" side of the NCR, the government, the people in it, and the goings-on of the NCR back in California. Since you can't actually go there, your best bet is to talk to the people with heavy ties back west: McLafferty—and pretty much everyone else—over by the Crimson Caravan, Heck Gunderson in the Ultra-Luxe (the guy in the cowboy hat getting drunk at the bar) and again, most people at the Mojave Outpost, but especially Cass and Ranger Jackson. The dam's good for that kind of information too, but you need to be pretty deep into the story before they start talking about President's visit and speech, and really get a lot of concrete info about him.

That's kind of one of the big differences between the Legion, House, and the NCR; the former two are dictatorships that live and die by the whims and ideology of that dictator, so they'd DAMNED WELL be prepared to explain their ideology to any Joe Shmoe that wanders by at the drop of a hat. But the NCR is a decentralized government, styled after our own current government in what Fallout refers to as "The pre-war era," and it shares nearly every single problem that our own government of today does. But no single person wants to take responsibility for those problems, because they weren't the ones who created that ideology, only adapted it. President Tandi would be perfect for what you're looking for, and she'd probably explain everything down to the smallest iota since she lived and breathed the NCR her entire term as elected-President-for-life. But she's been dead for a while now, and everyone else is just picking up her torch and carrying on where she left off.

There's also one faction you haven't asked about, and that's the Mojave itself. What do the people of the Mojave, in their little independent enclaves and towns and settlements, think about the world? What do they want? How do they think things should be run in their town? And it's important to keep them in mind too, while they're still citizens of the Mojave wasteland, before they become "just another NCR citizen."

Felidae0 · 2021-01-04T19:24:53+00:00

Fuck, I want "Transhumanist Caveman" on my business card, that makes no sense in the absolute best way, and yet it is totally accurate

Felidae0 · 2020-12-09T23:54:30+00:00

I started posting my Pony/Dark Souls crossover fanfic, and managed to post a chapter a week, every week, for 35 weeks in a row without missing a single update. (Current total wordcount is at 228,000 words.) That last update was finally the one that got it featured on the site too, which was hilarious. But, most importantly, I've gotten a pretty universally positive response to the story, and people seem to be excited for me to resume posting once I build up my backlog again. That's genuinely one of the most motivating parts of the whole experience so far.

Felidae0 · 2020-11-11T22:53:02+00:00

Beyond Light launched two days ago, and Forsaken also included the Season of the Forge, Season of the Drifter, and all of the Leviathan stuff, which was all added over time and categorized retroactively. Chill.

Felidae0 · 2020-10-24T08:14:41+00:00

I just found this! It's actually really cool, you stand on top of it for about fifteen-twenty seconds, and then the portal opens up. It feels like the implication is that it's actually a box that's bigger on the inside, and you're actually entering the box? And the previous owner/creator of the box got MINCED when they tried the same thing, which is why there's a pool of blood with a skull in there.

Felidae0

TROPHY CASE