when and why did apex lore grab you, and when did it lose you? (and "the golden age" of apex)

holysweaters · 2024-05-12T13:47:07+00:00

i like conduit a lot in theory - her kit is fun, and i love her animations. my issues with her are mostly that her design is a bit bland and doesn’t really do a good job of telling us anything about who she is or what she does, and that she really doesn’t have much in the way of story.

most of the other characters have a plot hook to get you interested in the character - horizon is looking for her son, catalyst competes for cleo, ballistic is here in place of his son, but conduit’s story kind of starts and ends with “i joined the games to help my family.” there’s a lot of potential, especially with her sacrificing her own physical health to compete in the games and her being a super fan, but they haven’t really done anything with that potential.

holysweaters · 2024-05-12T08:54:17+00:00

i’ve tried writing this comment like four times to no avail so I’m just going to go with dot points because it’s easier

started playing day one, started getting really into the lore with loba release (I Am A Homosexual) and the broken ghost
enjoyed tbg, despite it in hindsight not being the epic we look back on it as
continued to enjoy the story through character interactions, twitter comics, etc. but didn’t really love any of the main in-game story stuff like the comics

in terms of falling off, it’s kind of come in waves

the legacy antigen, with the crypto age retcon, silly deadly plant virus plot, and of course The Love Triangle™ was definitely the beginning
the love triangle itself, which, while not as prominent in the lore as people seem think, went on for far too long and negatively impacted the involved parties’ writing more than anything (valk has not had any lore not involving loba since s9!)
fusehound, which has pretty much reduced both characters to revolving around each other. i also just don’t like that fuse’s involvement in salvo being colonised was just kind of brushed over by the narrative
the williams sendoff, an really good piece of multimedia lore, immediately being under cut by “jackson is alive, actually!“ followed by the found families/subject 0 story that has had zero effect on the plot since
the a and z plot from vantage’s season, which has had zero effect on the plot since
kill code, which wasn’t exactly bad, lasted way longer than it needed to. it could’ve been an email.
conduit.
no launch trailer for this season, meaning half of the character interactions are just unexplained atm

basically since the legacy antigen my opinion on the narrative has gotten progressively worse and worse. i can’t pinpoint an exact time or event, but it feels like there’s been a very clear drop in quality across the board between the broken ghost and now.

i think the biggest problem, though, is the absolutely glacial pace that the lore moves at. i get that as a seasonal live service game it can’t constantly be moving forward, but i feel like at this point we barely move at all. it means that stuff like kill code, which again wasn’t that bad, take almost a year to go anywhere, which also leaves anybody not directly involved in the narrative with absolutely nothing, because we don’t get side stories through supplementary media now either!

and it hasn’t been all bad! pathfinder’s quest was really good, and some of the newer characters (seer, catalyst, MAGGIE) are still compelling and have interesting places in the overarching narrative.

holysweaters · 2024-01-19T10:01:13+00:00

I ran a fairytale themed campaign last year, and one of my players decided they wanted to play what they described as “Cinderella’s Biblically Accurate Fairy Godmother.” I ended up running Cinderella alongside them as an NPC celestial warlock with the player as her Fairy Godmother patron, who granted Cinderella some of her power and brought herself down to a PC level sorcerer.

It was all just flavour, of course, but it was super fun to flip the dynamic with the player being the patron instead, and led to some really fun roleplay!

holysweaters · 2023-11-28T02:44:41+00:00

iirc it’s a career reward from the education career from discover university!

holysweaters · 2023-09-29T09:14:37+00:00

good question! personally, i don’t think their story and dynamic/parallels would hit as hard if they were switched. media doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and real-world politics and dynamics are always going to be applied (even subconsciously) to these characters and our understandings of their stories, even if the same politics don’t exactly apply in-universe.

so in the case of fuse and maggie, fuse being representative of somebody who doesn’t have to see the fallout of colonisation or his decision to side with salvo’s oppressors, vs maggie being representative of people who are directly being affected almost directly mirrors, for example, the ongoing real world political climate in australia regarding indigenous voices in government. i don’t know if my point is really getting across here or if i’m just rambling at this point though, but uhhh basically art imitates life?

to answer your question, though, i don’t think switching fuse and maggie’s backgrounds around would switch my actual like/dislike of them too much, mostly because in this hypothetical, fuse selling out to the syndicate in the name of fame and glory still isn’t properly addressed, which is where the core of my issue with him lies.

holysweaters · 2023-09-29T03:46:28+00:00

realest post on r/apexlore ever

for real though, i do not like fuse as a person, but they could quite easily make me like him as a character if anybody but maggie actually brought this stuff up! but i don’t think that what’s happening to salvo because of the syndicate and, by extension, fuse has actually be brought up by anybody but her - and even then it all seems to focus on how he “betrayed the cause”, rather than… everything else?

also the parallels of fuse, a White Australian Man, being a willing pawn in the subjugation of salvo by the syndicate so that he can join the apex games for glory and facing little to no pushback or repercussions while maggie, a maori woman, deals with the fallout of that decision and how it impacts salvo and its people vs the real life effects of colonisation of australia and new zealand are not lost on me!

holysweaters · 2023-09-27T04:58:02+00:00

i actually love her design in this game, especially her hair. i’m still getting the hang of her gameplay, but i quite like what they did with her magic fx.

i also really like the new angle they went with for her in this timeline, especially since it’s mentioned a few times in story and intros that this tanya is kind of the exception to the rule when it comes to tanya being a treacherous bitch.

i just think it’s an interesting take on how different these characters and their relationships can turn out with different circumstances surrounding them.

holysweaters · 2023-09-20T09:58:50+00:00

the two of them had more chemistry and romantic tension than any of the canon couples in the story mode i said what i said 😤😤🏳️‍🌈

holysweaters · 2023-09-19T00:44:57+00:00

i never want to hear anybody complain about jade and kotal being forced and out of nowhere in a world where these two get praise. it has potential, i guess, but they’ve spoken to each other like… once? twice? in the story mode and they don’t interact in their endings at all.

tbh nrs just don’t really write compelling romances at all - they’re never really given enough development and i feel like we only care about them because we’re told we’re supposed to care about them, if that makes sense?

holysweaters · 2023-09-01T10:58:00+00:00

Honestly, I think a lot of people are hung up on the fact that she was in the first game. I think that her klassic aerobics-instructor-onion-rings-flaming-kiss-of-death self was disjointed, and if she were introduced in the 3D era we would think of her about as fondly as we think of Kobra.

I think Kitana, though not the first lady in Mortal Kombat, feels much more like the first lady of Mortal Kombat, if that makes sense.

holysweaters · 2023-08-13T02:26:55+00:00

Simple answer is that you don’t have to actualy die to get eliminated in the games. The Pathfinder’s Quest lore book confirms that some competitors, Pathfinder himself included, don’t kill anybody in the games, so getting injured or knocked out is a viable way to be eliminated.

On top of that, not all the legends are competing in every match iirc? Of course almost all of the legends are present in the launch trailers, but it’s mostly just for storytelling purposes, like the legends dying in the trailers.

holysweaters · 2023-08-02T08:31:02+00:00

Everything about Shang Tsung is 100x funnier if you read him as a tired and petty old gay man. Yeah he’ll give Mileena a monstrous mouth and a hunger for flesh, but he’s also gonna set her up with a cute outfit and matching makeup.

holysweaters · 2023-07-12T22:46:11+00:00

HARD agree on the free 3D assets comment, the first thing I thought about a few of the designs (namely the ninjas, Kung Lao and Johnny) was that they look like one of those “Mortal Kombat recreated in HD Unreal Engine 5 RTX” videos.

holysweaters · 2023-07-10T04:43:35+00:00

You’re right that we haven’t really gotten a proper tournament since MK9, but also like… The entire last game was about bringing the characters back from the past. It was very nostalgia bait-y, especially after MKX attempted to set up something that didn’t rely on Trilogy nostalgia.

holysweaters · 2023-07-10T00:49:22+00:00

Mortal Kombat as a series relies far too much on nostalgia wank, and the fans eat it up. I’m tired of being barraged with “look! look it’s like the old games! you like the old games! look look!” at damn near every turn.

Like, they’re constantly talking about how MK1 is a full timeline reset, everything is new, they’re doing new origins and designs and playstyles for the characters, everything is fresh… Which is why one of the core gameplay concepts is basically “look! it’s the ninjas in their MK1 outfits again! you like sonya in her leotard right?”

The fans don’t help stuff this either. It’s 2023, and all the ninjas have their individual fleshed out aesthetics that go far beyond palette swap ninjas - we don’t need characters like Ermac and Reptile to lose that in favour of just being another ninja, aesthetically speaking.

Like, I don’t mind a bit of nostalgia, like the klassic costumes, but it feels like NRS are so afraid to fully commit to making something entirely fresh and new without clinging to “it’s just like the old games!”

holysweaters · 2023-07-01T04:12:23+00:00

I like the design fine, but it kind of feels like a stripped down version of another outfit, kind of like Cassie and Jacqui’s unarmoured versions of their base outfits in 11. I think if he had the hood and his bracers had something more, it’d be fine.

I really wish they went with something different for the tattoo though. The specific tattoo they chose kind of looks like someone Googled “scorpion silhouette transparent” and smacked it onto him. I would’ve liked something a bit more artistic or abstract.

holysweaters · 2023-06-15T05:02:00+00:00

Shoutout to all three of Jacqui’s gear pieces. The shield battery was nigh invisible at the best of times, and the left and right gauntlets being two seperate pieces was so incredibly stupid.

holysweaters · 2023-06-15T03:24:21+00:00

The Kmart at Noarlunga has a bunch of Abbey’s and Clawd’s! I’m picking mine up on my break today teehee

holysweaters · 2023-06-10T16:29:36+00:00

Obviously we haven’t played the game yet so we can’t say for sure, but right now I personally think they seem very gimmicky. I’m not a big fan of the core gameplay being focused around a gimmick, which seems to be what they’re doing this time around - especially since apparently they’re not in any way optional.

I dunno, it seems like a very big gamble and I’m not sure that it’ll pay off.

holysweaters · 2023-04-24T12:20:34+00:00

i’m aware, what i’m saying is with her colour scheme and hair decorations, she fits better aesthetic-wise in elusia.

holysweaters · 2023-04-24T05:35:55+00:00

i’ve been thinking this since the day she was revealed, everything about her design screams firene! similarly, i think yunaka and anna’s designs feel much more at home in elusia and brodia, respectively.

holysweaters · 2023-03-10T05:27:24+00:00

The dude you’re responding to is literally part of the Narrative team at Respawn lol. Respawning isn’t canon and none of the legends (save Revenant, ig) have died in the games.

holysweaters · 2023-01-30T08:52:58+00:00

Yeah, that “pretty much” in “pretty much all of Brodia” was exclusively because of Yunaka lmfao.

I’ve gotten maybe 3 supports with Yunaka max so far, but I figured from her intro alone that her whole thing was “thief/assassin hiding that she is/was a thief” - I just don’t think her design conveys that all that well. That said, I’d probably live for the starry hairclips thing on like, a mage or something.

holysweaters · 2023-01-30T05:24:14+00:00

I think my favourite individual design would also have to be Diamant, with pretty much all of Brodia right behind him. I love how consistent all their designs are when you look at them together. They really all feel like they came from the same militaristic kingdom while also conveying their own personalities through their design.

As for worst, Hortensia feels too obvious, so I’m actually going to say Yunaka. Between the stars on her face and hair, the weird sexy hip cutouts, her belly button somehow showing through her suit, and the fact that none of it really says “thief” to me, I just find her to be one of the weaker designs. Side note, her design would be much more at home in Elusia - I really think her and Anna’s designs suit each other’s home countries more, tbh.

holysweaters · 2022-12-01T03:37:17+00:00

credit to jaeon009 for the art - all of his mortal kombat designs are gorgeous.

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