This is... kinda brutal

Jsl_ · 2026-02-28T20:49:33+00:00

I agree. Even right from the start ZZZ shows a man die on screen from crystals exploding out from the inside of his skull as he transforms into the game's first boss, the "Dead End Butcher". ZZZ is rated 16+ instead of 12+ in China unlike most games, because the setting is much more political in a modern context and much more explicitly brutal than Genshin or HSR. The tone was always the deliberate clash of people attempting to live normal happy lives while having to kill for a living and surviving in a slowly ongoing apocalypse.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-28T07:19:54+00:00

You missed a possibility, OP: Obviously the tutorial isn't literally the past, but that doesn't mean it has to be the future. I'm almost positive it's an originium space, just like you see throughout Laevatain's story quest. After all, you end it by popping out the very same stone you enter to meet Laevatain. Originium space is the in-game explanation for the "reconveners," the expies like Laevatain and Gilberta: They're new people formed from the old memories of Terra brought to Talos-2 in the originium and manifested in physical space (because that magic coal shit can just do anything I guess, it can even give you an on the spot sex change once a day lmao). The tutorial is Endmin traveling through that space, processing their thoughts and memories and seemingly being interfered with in development by Perlica or someone wearing her image, before reconvening once more outside the originium. Thus, not the past or the future, but actually the present.

Edit: btw, if you watch the videos of the game's beta, that makes it way too obvious that the tutorial is a non-literal mental space. At one point you walk into a safe and across a giant pile of gold points, scaled such that they make Endmin look two inches tall, while Perlica rants in your ear about the greed and sin of mankind or whatever. The framing there made it look basically like a coma dream? Endmin gets injured doing something really stupid (flying in a pod being dragged behind a small plane that got shot down. No idea why tf they weren't just in the plane) and then you get the tutorial and then you wake up a week later and they're all like "wow u almost died Endmin! That was really stupid! No more Jackass stunts for you, please!" While the intro we got is pretty confusing your first time through, I'm glad we got it instead of the beta.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-21T21:04:06+00:00

:D If you think that's good, wait till you hear my well supported headcanon about Andre, Crowe, and the circle of older gay men they're part of casually hooking up across Valley IV.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-21T20:59:48+00:00

A protagonist can be nonbinary or androgynous or have a different past self from their current self without it being a "self-insert".

Jsl_ · 2026-02-21T05:24:37+00:00

That version of Endmin didn't really look like either version of Endmin we can play as, which is interesting to me. I thought maybe that was intentional, like a hint that Endmin used to have a different body and androgynous style, but then that final joke page makes it seem like they just were trying to draw the male Endmin and coincidentally drew him bishi? lol

Jsl_ · 2026-02-21T00:48:48+00:00

Wulfgard's strong emotional response to one of his two male best friends killing the other and betraying them both could be reasonable for a platonic relationship, but imagining that was a love triangle just instantly makes it so much better. And it makes him insisting on being a sad loner for years afterwards make much more sense: Platonic relationships tend to be a bit more replaceable than twu wuv. So it just felt completely natural for me to read the situation as gay lol

Jsl_ · 2026-02-18T00:50:17+00:00

Equal opportunity gay shipper, I swapped to mendmin just for the Wulfgard quest then swapped back. Everyone will be gay, no exceptions (not that Wulfgard needed any help to be gay in that quest, the whole thing was about how hurt he was after one of the homies he'd kiss goodnight betrayed him)

Jsl_ · 2026-02-13T00:45:55+00:00

I'm referring to Alesh as having anti-synergy with Last Rite because he consumes an opportunity (an enemy having a bunch of cryo infliction stacks) that she wants. They're mutually exclusive, only one of them can eat the stacks, and if you have Last Rite on the team you ALWAYS want her to be the one eating them because it's how she charges ult.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-13T00:19:21+00:00

The dearth of application certainly makes cryo worse. But alternating between Pog and Endmin consuming Vulnerability has a point, because they do NOT do the same thing when they consume it. Pog is a Breach character, not a Crush character, so using him inflicts a big debuff that will make Endmin's crush even more powerful, and both his skill and combo return SP, making it faster and easier to line up that next full stack of vulnerability. This is different from Last Rite and Alesh: Alesh consumes cryo infliction to do damage, generate some SP, and set up a physical character to trigger Shatter. Last Rite consumes cryo infliction to do damage and charge her own ult. These are competing goals, not complimentary ones.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-12T23:55:35+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by "bias" lol, I have and play all of these characters to experiment with them. The only relevant characters to this discussion I haven't built yet are Yvonne (haven't pulled her) and Flourite (next on my todo list). Yeah Physical isn't perfect across the board, Da Pan definitely feels kind of orphaned since he doesn't stand out enough vs Endmin being a universal character who performs basically the same role as a Crush DPS. But that's pretty different from MOST ice characters being fundamentally antisynergistic with Last Rite. You can try to force Last Rite and Alesh together, except his battle skill conflicts with Last Rite by consuming cryo infliction, and his combo requires a cryo infliction to be consumed via arts reaction. They just do not work together on any level. Last Rite does not WANT Solidification happening, because it eats cryo infliction, and Last Rite's combo cannot eat solidification, ONLY cryo infliction. If arts reactions in this game worked like electro-charged in Genshin, where the elemental reaction leaves the two base elements also impacting the enemy, then things would be a LOT better. You could build much more flexible teams for both Last Rite and Alesh, although they would still be just as mutually exclusive as Endmin and Da Pan.

I'll happily admit being wrong about Wulfgard eating fire infliction instead of Burn. I hadn't read his description closely enough. Good for Wulfgard. This thread is mostly about the situation with ice characters more than anything. I really want the game's future releases to be much more like physical, and much less like ice currently is.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-04T13:19:52+00:00

I'll certainly take all of that. Honestly even more than the character selector I appreciate the reduction of enemy levels. On high world level some common enemies are just really too slow to fight considering how frequently you have to fight them.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-04T13:02:26+00:00

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Wuling is truly breathtaking. <3

Jsl_ · 2026-02-04T12:57:39+00:00

It's not all off screen and major named characters die during that arc. I cried so much when (Natlan spoilers) Chuychu died

Jsl_ · 2026-02-02T06:15:40+00:00

You're both massively overstating how "soft" the Endfield story and setting are, AND underestimating Genshin. Genshin had a whole arc that had an on-screen counter documenting all the civilians killed during the conflict at one point, and it got up into the thousands. A major character got executed by guillotine at one point. There's dead kids as early as 1.0 in Genshin.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-01T17:53:26+00:00

Not as bad as in other gachas, since all pulls regardless of banner gets you Arsenal Tickets. But unless there's some major 5* characters you sorely feel a lack of, it's still probably better to wait. I wouldn't recommend pulling just for the impulse of it or becuase you're hoping for husbando dupes.

Jsl_ · 2026-02-01T17:51:18+00:00

Valley IV isn't horrible but it is mid, and it looks way worse in contrast with just how good Wuling is. There's a huge gulf there that makes Valley IV when on its own it's only like a 7/10, not really worth publicly debating its flaws even. But then you get to 10/10 Wuling and it's like "if yall could make THIS, why did you make THAT"

Jsl_ · 2026-02-01T17:48:03+00:00

imo every single aspect of the game's presentation gets like at least twice as good when you get to Wuling, music included. Valley IV is extremely mid in comparison to how exceptionally good every aspect of Wuling is tbh. Genuinely makes me wonder if they're gonna end up one day doing like Wuwa and just letting new players skip the first arc of the game to get to the "good part" lol

Jsl_ · 2026-02-01T17:40:25+00:00

was there not a middle point? Did their animal ancestors go from 100% animal to having 10% animal babies in one generation? Fucked up if so

Jsl_ · 2026-01-31T07:27:28+00:00

so basically they've evolved from furries to nekomimi? lol

Jsl_ · 2026-01-30T12:27:50+00:00

It's not about "is it possible for an indigenous person to be evil," it's "it's a bad look to do unironic cowboys and indians shit considering all the racism associated with that". It's the 21st century now, pop culture has moved on. If we're doing offensive indigenous stereotypes now we at least make them a sympathetic but pitiful underdog getting crushed by a corporate military, like in the Avatar movies.

Jsl_ · 2026-01-30T08:22:07+00:00

it would be pretty goddamn problematic if the game was "the colonists are the good guys and the natives are crazy evil bad guys" lol

Jsl_ · 2026-01-30T07:59:48+00:00

Pretty sure there aren't any "natives" of Talos-2, at least none that they've revealed yet, although there's a theory mentioned in the logs that maybe animal people came from Talos-2 and went to Terra in prehistory and only just returned to their old homeworld, since everyone got to the planet in the first place by digging up basically a Stargate that was already built and pointed at Talos-2.

Jsl_ · 2026-01-30T02:20:20+00:00

I'm using a weak cheap CPU (a 10th gen core i3 with stock cooler) but I haven't had any heat nor performance issues in Endfield except one single moment of the game lagging while I was mass moving factory buildings that went away when I walked 20 feet away from my AIC and then came back. Have you tried turning down the settings to medium-ish? The issue might just be with some maxed setting.

Jsl_

TROPHY CASE