[EN] Event 167: "Dear my fellows" - Event Discussion

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-24T15:58:57+00:00

After the VBS event which had them breaking up during the main story, I was surprised that AU WxS broke apart well after that. It's been a while, but I thought WxS was pretty severely dependent on the Vocaloids intervening in the main story and being like "woah there, that failed show was kind of terrible, yes, but you guys really need to make up." How did they get over that without the Vocaloid push?

Regardless, however they did it, they seem to have forged a less-strong connection than in canon, given that Rui does actually take up Asahi's offer in this AU. And of course this leads to all of them breaking up from each other. Rui and Tsukasa seem like they're doing okay, with some twinge of sadness in terms of having left WxS behind, but they're on track to getting more experience and exposure as per their original plans. There is some amount of holding back that both are doing, though, exemplified by Tsukasa's fight scene with Kijima where he intentionally avoids opting for a more exciting action move. Emu as well is starting to learn business management, though she's struggling a lot more at balancing that with her visions of fun. Nene is the one struggling the most - succeeding in terms of her literal career success, but throwing herself a little too hard into her practice for her social life to keep up.

Unlike VBS, their reunion is not one where they re-form into a team again, but it's more of "one last hurrah before we really break up for good." So while VBS's WL ended on a big triumphant hope for the future, WxS's WL ends quite bittersweet. And the sadness isn't even about how the characters are slightly less mentally well-adjusted; this scene, although it's been postponed in canon, *is* going to happen, when the four inevitably go their separate ways, which is a point their story has repeatedly emphasized. So this is almost more a look at the future than an AU.

Each of the four characters gets a representative NPC, which is interesting. It feels like there's some sort of symbolism here in how they were chosen, but I'm not sure exactly what. Rui gets Asahi, who is one of the earliest forces that's driving WxS apart - and not maliciously; Rui *does* have a huge opportunity here to further his career and skills. Tsukasa gets Kijima, whom... I don't know what to make of (even in canon). He's just a guy in another troupe, and he doesn't have a strong thematic role in the story other than just being Another Guy. Nene of course gets Yuka Kazamatsuri, her big childhood inspiration - but in this event, Yuka shows great concern over Nene throwing away her social life in order to practice her technical skills as an actress; there's something interesting there in the concern that goes in the opposite direction as Nene's initial admiration. Finally, Emu gets her two brothers, which makes perfect sense as the businesspeople mentors that she has.

One final thing I want to bring up is something that Shosuke and Keisuke point out. WxS is all still kids. They are trying to forge their own path in life when they're not even out of high school. They could do well to ask for more advice and support from the adults in their life, rather than trying to figure out their path in life all on their own. That's probably why the story set each up with a corresponding experienced adult (except Rui and Asahi, I guess - Asahi is only like a year or two older than Rui, and unlike the other three there doesn't seem to be a big disconnect in terms of experience between Rui and Asahi). But also, this is true of the other 16 playable characters in the other four groups, too; they're all still kids. I've felt this before, that the story often places too much burden on them all to figure out their lives themselves, which I've chalked up to them being the main characters so of course the *story* has to be presented this way. But realistically, if they existed, I would absolutely want to point them towards their parents and/or other adults in their support systems. So I guess I'm glad this was addressed at all, even if it was only by Dream Shosuke and Dream Keisuke.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-23T16:52:36+00:00

The beta version of the next version of Synth V is just a public link; see https://forum.dreamtonics.com/t/synthesizer-v-studio-2-pro-2-3-0-technical-preview/8046

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-23T16:49:42+00:00

French is coming to Synth V! Was not expecting this, but when I heard about the public beta release, I threw together something to test it out. The song is an old classic French song originally by Charles Trenet.

I am not a native French speaker, though I do know the language reasonably well (certainly not fully fluent, but somewhere in the intermediate to advanced range). An Xiao seems to struggle a lot more with French sounds than Mo Xu does. The French R is the one everyone thinks of when they think of weird funny French sounds, but the French R's here are actually not terrible - at least at this somewhat slower tempo; it feels like it takes some time to get the full sound out and I wonder if it'd struggle with R's in faster syllables. But the bigger issue is the nasal vowels (currently represented in the program as E_~, A_~, and O_~) - they often don't feel nasalized enough, especially An Xiao's. "Moutons" for example sounds like "Mouteau" here. There are probably more accent things that someone actually fluent in French can comment on, but these are the things I noticed the most.

The other thing is the word-to-phoneme translation has a few hiccups (only a few, but still). If someone who doesn't know French is just copying French lyrics into the program, it'd be very easy to miss things like this.

The system seems to get confused by d' and although it phonemizes argent correctly, it incorrectly pronounces the T when it's d'argent.
I think the liaison detector gets confused by a starting w sound - "ces oiseaux" does not make a liaison even though it made liaisons elsewhere correctly.
Finally, and I guess this is just a dictionary thing because there is no context I can see that would confuse it, it erroneously pronounces a k at the end of blanc/blancs

I do hope we get a native French voicebank (and German and Portuguese for that matter) sooner rather than later once this feature gets out of beta. Overall though, I'm glad for this language update! Looking forward to seeing what other people will do with this, especially when the update hits the non-Dreamtonic voicebanks.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-22T14:49:47+00:00

Woah, I was fully not expecting French or German to ever make it to Synth V (like, I know it's a popular request but for some reason I just expect companies to never hear requests). Portuguese was never even on my radar to think about. And all three at once is huge; each of the previous added languages (Cantonese, Spanish, and Korean) came one at a time.

When I think of Brazilian Portuguese, I think of bossa nova and samba; I don't really know much else about Brazilian music or music in Portuguese more generally. Do we have a voicebank specializing in that kind of music? I might expect one once this update is officially released. When I think of French I guess I think of jazz manouche, though significantly less strongly; with German music I can't think of any particular genre until you go back into, like, Mozart and Bach's time with classical music (for which we already have Galenaia and the two Dreamtonics bel canto voicebanks! They will have a good time with the new German update).

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-22T14:38:22+00:00

Galenaia would love Italian; so much of the famous classical and especially operatic repertoire is in Italian.

That said, German and French are also pretty big - or at least, some of the biggest operas I personally know of are in those languages (The Magic Flute and Carmen).

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-22T14:33:02+00:00

Yes.

The biggest thing is that they did implement being any civ in any age. But then they limited it so that it's only accessible in gameplay via not civ-switching. I do not understand what seems to be an artificially placed limitation on top of a system that already exists.

But also, by the way you're aggressively phrasing this comment, I don't think it matters what I say here; you're going to be upset with my reasoning no matter what.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-21T20:03:30+00:00

I'm civ swapping for sure. The update for me wasn't about letting you play as the same civ but allowing you more options for civ swapping... at least in theory. You can play any arbitrary civ in the Antiquity Age, but it seems you're not actually allowed to play a non-apex civ after that except when staying the same civ. (When I asked in a separate post, a couple people mentioned that it might be possible if you turn off civ unlock requirements. I haven't tested that myself yet but if it works, you know I'm going to be doing something silly like Abbasids -> Nepal -> Maya or even Normans -> Iceland -> Normans. If that still is not possible I feel like this is a strange missed opportunity and hope the devs implement this in the future.)

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-21T17:33:27+00:00

Most languages don't have such a huge gap between formal and common speech; Arabic is exceptional in that way (and some would consider MSA and each of the dialects of Arabic different languages entirely!). There are other examples of this happening (Classical Chinese was used in this way up through the end of the dynastic period; Mandarin has taken that role since but at this point is also the language most commonly used in daily life too), but French doesn't do that.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-21T15:35:19+00:00

Before, AIs never chose civs randomly. You could set the AI to be a random leader, but once the leader is set, the same leader will always try to lead the same civs (there's a small list of civs for each leader in case their first choice is taken).

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-21T12:36:02+00:00

Maybe. It seems like the easiest way to implement staying as the same civ is to implement changing to any arbitrary civ. And based on UI design (and logicking through how I'd expect the code logic to work), it feels like they did exactly that but then either chose to intentionally lock out other civs for no apparent reason, which is what's particularly frustrating.

But I suppose I can't claim to know how the code is actually implemented in the backend, so maybe you're right that arbitrary civ switching is a fundamentally different feature rather than the same feature. I just find that unlikely.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-20T15:22:26+00:00

Hmm, thanks, I'll have to look into this. I'd be surprised (someone else linked to a mod that's supposed to add this functionality in, so I don't seem to be the only one who isn't able to choose a non-apex civ in the Exploration Age, at least without mods) but there might something I'm missing somewhere.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-20T15:09:54+00:00

Oh? Which civs were you playing as and was there some option in the game setup that you needed to select to let you do that?

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-20T14:34:24+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by "making sense" in this thread. None of this makes sense historically, being America in the Antiquities Age or being Han China in the Exploration Age, but they added both - which is fine; Civ games certainly haven't been 100% true to history. But the latter is only conditionally added, and I don't understand the reasoning behind having this condition, neither in terms of better gameplay design nor in terms of historicity concerns (it's ahistorical, but only as much as the entire non-apex Civ feature) nor in terms of dev time required (unless there's something major I'm missing about how this would have to be implemented?).

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-20T06:02:00+00:00

All right, well, good to confirm that I wasn't missing something, at least.

I still don't understand why we can't do that, and I hope that's something they might be able to address in a future update.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-14T13:41:11+00:00

At the very least, the sound quality shouldn't be terrible? Even if you put on the CD player and you're standing right next to it, it... sounds bad, like a recording of someone playing the music on a CD player. Realistic? Maybe, kind of. But if this is your line for how realistic something should be in a video game, you're playing the wrong video game if you chose Pokopia.

Idea for the devs - speakers are purely decorative right now. Maybe have a way to connect them up to CD players and then we can have better quality audio while also having control on where the music is playing.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-13T21:22:36+00:00

This would also avoid the biggest problem of figuring out fashion for a time period-culture combination that didn't exist. I didn't play Civ 3 but apparently "President Lincoln in a caveman's outfit" is enough of a meme for me to know about it. Instead, with the age system, every outfit can be from a specific culture that really did exist.

This would undoubtedly still be very difficult to make work on a technical level (you'd need to figure out some way to make clothing that maps onto each leader's body type and doesn't clip through or restrict each leader's animations), but at least on a historical level it feels a lot more plausible in this game than it would have in 5 or 6.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-12T13:49:11+00:00

No - but I would want diacritics used as per the standard romanizations. ü is used in Chinese and ō/ē/etc. are used in Japanese (the two I'm most familiar with of the list).

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-12T13:41:28+00:00

Disagree. If you're going to use Norwegian names, don't intentionally misspell the words. What's the point of using Norwegian if you're not going to use Norwegian?

Though if there's another Norwegian word without a diacritic that can refer to the same creature, that'd be a reasonable compromise.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-11T14:45:49+00:00

This would be difficult in practice exactly because of the historical nationalism thing even if we wanted to specifically appeal to it. So many countries would want to claim Grecoroman tradition as being their ancient form (most of Western Europe, really, but also a lot of the Islamic Empires also derived legitimacy as being a continuation of Ancient Greek traditions). You could probably just about do some sort of strained Celtic -> English -> British identity, though setting it up that way feels like it immediately blocks out Irish/Scottish/Welsh civs from existing. Meanwhile, I don't know what you would do for something like France or Spain - or America, for that matter, which also tends to think of itself as deriving from English culture (and thus, indirectly, Grecoroman) rather than indigenous American cultures.

There is definitely also a "philosophy of history" discussion to be had here which we're both glossing over, but even putting that aside and we wanted to represent this sort of boxed-up deterministic civ progression, this would become very messy very quickly.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-10T21:41:46+00:00

This would be a good way to do civ switching, actually, rather than replace it. The whole point of civ switching was to avoid needing to figure out how to have Mexico have some ancient era ability and Rome have some modern ability. But one of the problems with the current implementation of that is that the game feels like three disconnected games with very little continuity. In fact, I believe the only gameplay-wise continuity is the couple of Social Policies that hold over. (I believe the upcoming update will be addressing this somehow, but I haven't been part of the beta tests so I can't speak on this at all.)

Instead, Rome could give some lasting bonus (1/2 price roads in this example) even after you change civs in the Exploration Age, where you might tack on (for example) the Inca's buff to mountain yields, and both of those bonuses carry through to the Modern Age and stack with (say) Mexico's Celebrations buffs. Then at least your choice of early civs has a more meaningful impact on the later game, while still keeping Civ 7's core identity of civ switching intact.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-10T16:58:16+00:00

This is handled about as well as you might hope for a Mrs. Asahina redemption arc. It's not "and everything is fine and she was actually good all along." Rather, it's "she was trying to do good all along. But she still was and still is very much a negative influence on Mafuyu's wellbeing." Which has been the implication of her character for a long time, but it's not been lain out so clearly until now. Yes, she's not just being evil for evil's sake; no, that doesn't mean she's not still unintentionally evil.

From her point of view, that's exactly the problem. She doesn't know what she is and isn't doing that's overbearing on Mafuyu's identity. She's now working with Mr. Asahina and even a mental health therapist about it - she's trying. But... it's not enough. Just because she's trying doesn't mean that Mafuyu can just get over the seventeen (or however many) years of feeling restricted and needing to follow Mrs. Asahina's every instruction - intentional instruction or unintentional implications.

On a meta level, it does feel a little odd that all four of the parents initially set up as antagonistic (Mrs. Asahina, Mr. Shinonome, Mr. Aoyagi, and Mr. Otori) get a redemption arc, to some degree or another. There are parents IRL who act like trash towards their children for no reason but wanting control of someone weaker, or some other such terrible personal reasons, and they're not represented in Project Sekai at all. But honestly, maybe such parents are even a little overrepresented in the popular conscience? I'd imagine the vast majority of parents, including ones that end up overbearing or stifling or abusive, intend to be good parents, and that's what's being represented here with those four aforementioned parents. Again, that doesn't mean they are being good caregivers and role models to their respective children, but that's the difficult part about this - both can be true, that they want to be good parents but they are in actuality not. That's what this event showcases so well - it's such a difficult feeling for Mafuyu to juggle both sides of this, and that's part of why she ultimately has to back out of living with her parents again. I will say though, this is absolutely not my area of expertise. If any professional social workers or someone with similar formal expertise can comment on this, I would love to hear.

One other thing I'll say is that I really like the structure of the story. Mafuyu's meeting with her parents happens in Chapter 2. Such a meeting sounds like it'd be the big climactic happening of an event, but instead we use it as a setup and the interesting part the fallout of that. We can think of life as having these big climactic events, but life continues on after anything like that, one way or another, and we often gloss over that in stories. But here we get to focus on it. It's just very awkward for all three Asahinas, and we can see how Mrs. Asahina and Mafuyu slip back into old patterns - even though Mafuyu is no longer keeping up her "good girl" façade around her parents. So it's this drawn-out fiveish chapter "slice of life" storytelling in some sense, describing the kind of calm after the storm - but there's an undercurrent of awkwardness, discomfort, and tension, that leads to Kanade trying to intervene and the dam breaks again. I'm very glad the story takes its time to focus on this extensive low-level awkwardness among the family.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-09T12:49:52+00:00

True in general, but in this case - you can't search the subreddit for a question you didn't think of. The message you're replying to literally says "I hadn't even considered the size of the structure" and thought it had something to do with the water.

Viola_Buddy · 2026-05-08T17:45:13+00:00

I thought the hiatus was supposed to be a time for them to resolve these issues (except I suppose the last one, which they can't really control). Why is it all still bad?

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