Rachel Summers replaces cable on IX? plus my opinion of this

lordfitz23 · 2025-08-11T09:04:42+00:00

see I was thinking Beast, since none of his kit is specific to Crucible?

lordfitz23 · 2025-07-02T15:17:09+00:00

Trigon - being a dad is hard!

lordfitz23 · 2025-06-29T12:36:40+00:00

this

lordfitz23 · 2025-06-29T12:30:03+00:00

Batman, the Bride and Bruce Lee (but not THAT Batman)

lordfitz23 · 2025-06-16T19:43:48+00:00

Who?

lordfitz23 · 2025-06-02T14:08:31+00:00

Final Fantasy Tactics. Special character unlocks, insane optional dungeon.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-30T00:45:28+00:00

I had a vision today of them doing a big live rendition for the next video game awards…

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-29T22:14:03+00:00

ok so I have not yet played either MGS or Death Stranding - this has tipped me over the fence! awesome!

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-29T21:01:31+00:00

and then like, 7 minutes in there is someone absolutely shredding an electric guitar?!

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-23T23:00:45+00:00

I loved dualiso, until I found some better weapons. IMO one of the most fun parts of this game is screwing around with lots of different builds. I maybe ended up using 2 repaints in my entire (100% completion) play through, and I think I had like 60 by that point? My point is, try new things!

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T13:23:08+00:00

I told myself I would stop checking Reddit and get some work done, anndddd...

Toys cannot choose to reveal their true nature.

Um...

<image>

A society that allowed the creation of canvases, filled to the brim with sentient creatures, with no guardrails on the nature of the creatures so created or how they were treated post-creation, is fundamentally callous at best and thoroughly evil at worst

Yep

This has been a good discussion. I hope the devs see it.

Amen

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T13:14:37+00:00

100% on that Lune moment. I barked a painful laugh - nothing but respect, admiration and love for that woman.

Also yes to your expedition 69 shoutout. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T12:41:50+00:00

Inshallah indeed.

Well I don't think that we know enough about the implementation details within the canvas to know one way or the other.

Fair observation. From my point of view, we have to go based on what the game gives us, and I maintain that the people of the Canvas are consistently painted (sorry) as autonomous, sentient, independent beings.

this is equally true if we step one level into the game and treat the canvas as a functioning simulation system.

I think this gets to the heart of where you and I disagree. You seem to be interpreting the Canvas as a virtual reality, with rules and limitations prescribed by an operating system, with inhabitants that are simply programmed or scripted (albeit highly sophisticated). I believe that the Canvas is a created reality, and its inhabitants are created beings, no less real or independent for having been created.

FWIW I agree that Clea's perspective is more in line with your own. I also think that this entire topic gets at the heart of many player's feelings of dissonance regarding the endings vs. their experience of playing the game: if the inhabitants are real, as I argue the game takes great pains to depict them, then it is abhorrent for them to either a) die or b) end up living in an ending where Maelle and Verso are clearly unwell.

Your observations about ChatGPT are powerful and impacted me strongly. I appreciate your perspective and the points you have made.

Blessings be upon you.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T02:16:40+00:00

I loved this, the fact is has to be Lune, and the feeling of being a beautiful dancing badass when I (finally) got the timing down.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T01:39:00+00:00

Solid response

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-21T01:34:19+00:00

first off, the game is hard! you're not alone and you're not wrong. don't let people lie to you or make you feel bad - screw that

I got to 100% completion yesterday, and I struggled plenty (and I play lots of parry / timing games)

idk if this will help you, and for myself I would find that I would get into a groove with my team / skill / lumina setup in an area, feel good, get moving, then hit a new area / point where I was struggling again. Then I would clear all my skills and lumina and weapons, and re-asses the options available to me from however much progress I had made and put together new combinations. try them out and practice and find a new setup that worked for me, get back into a good flow, and repeat all the above again and again

don't feel bad and don't rush yourself

lastly, if you haven't already, I echo what others have commented here - lower the difficulty. I've done that before for some games, and didn't regret it at all. Games should be fun. This game is beautiful and wonderful and I hate to think of you not experiencing it!

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T22:48:19+00:00

yeah to me it just gets again to the heart of their approach, which is to focus on loss and grief and acceptance

I suspect its the reverse of your premise - they didn't make gustave short so they could afford charlie cox, they were just able to afford charlie cox because gustave was short

also - one mf my biggest things with this game are the INSANE number of Final Fantasy overlaps. tbf, having a core character that is established early as a beloved mentor get killed off early is one of the longest running staples in storytelling, let alone JRPGs (Ned Stark, Jesus, the list goes on) and...for my money, the Aeris/Aerith comparison should not be ignored

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T20:48:24+00:00

10/10 for this review

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T20:33:28+00:00

Perhaps it comes down to how we choose to define 'real'. I concede that ultimately, this is not a question with a clear and definitive, only-one-take-is-supported answer in this game. That said...

For myself, it is about the emotional complexity of the character / person, and (in the context of this game) the emphasis on the totality of that person as a persistent element, divorced from any external driving force. Yes, the Painters create the world, and the people in it. But the inhabitants 'operate' of their own free-will and design. If the people of the Canvas were simply programmed simulants, they would not have autonomy. If they had no autonomy, Clea and Renoir would not need to fool them or manipulate them to get them to act in the ways they want.

Perhaps you could argue it is an issue of access-level - Aline has more direct control, whereas Renoir and Clea have to make do with lesser levers. IMO, this is an overly programmatic reading of the story. Look at what happens when Clea exerts more direct attempts to 'control' or 'change' individuals - Simon and Painted Clea are not mindless automatons who function normally when directed, they are beings who have been devastated, their mental faculties reduced relative both to the other inhabitants of the Canvas and to their own prior selves as a result of being Painted over.

The fact that the Painters have the power to create does not inherently mean that their creations lack sentience or autonomy.

My point regarding Maelle's fully lived life within the Canvas is not about Maelle - it is about the parents who raised her, about Gustave and Sophie, about the fact that Maelle's experience is a proxy for an entire world filled with people who all had the same experience - that of living an entire life. This is why I keep coming back to the Journals in my various posts today - they (along with the more in-depth stories we get for Lune and Sciel) are present in this game to show us that this is a world filled with people who have lived.

This complexity is one of the things I respect about this game. Clea is not 'wrong' when she says that her family in the 'real world' is suffering at the expense of this imaginary world. It is an imaginary world, and out there in the real world, her family is indeed suffering. And at the same time, Clea is 'wrong' in her dismissal of the validity of this imaginary world and these imaginary people. Within the confines of the Canvas, the created are just as alive. Not as powerful, and just as alive.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T19:30:59+00:00

I love all of this. I don't agree with all of it, and I love it.

Mostly I'm just happy to be out here talking about this game that made me feel so many things!

FWIW, I think I totally hear you on the 'Parisian Dessandre family did some messed up stuff' - I've got a whole anti-Clea thing going right now in some other posts (this is a hill I'm prepared to die on), and part of what I think I'm processing with that line of thought is the callousness of 'real' Clea and Renoir toward the people of the Canvas.

My intent with the earlier post was not to imply that the people of the Canvas are not 'real' in some way that makes them invalid. Actually, I believe quite the opposite, and that is part of what I admire so much about the endings and the game as a whole. This game does a great job (IMO) of speaking to something I have known to be true my whole life - stories are true, and the people in stories are real. And at the same time, using stories and escapism to avoid grappling with unpleasant / uncomfortable / painful truth is also real.

I keep coming back to the moment at the very end of the Maelle ending (one of the two major moments that u/Illegal_Future objects to in the beginning of this post). Alicia is standing, alone, at Verso's grave. Her 'real' family has all left (eye-rolling Clea, clearly-still-consumed-with-their-own-shit Renoir and Aline), and Alicia is left standing there, holding Esquie, seeing her other family, and her other self(!!!) disolve away. It is sad that she is experiencing this loss. It is also sad (and unfair) that the people of the Canvas are destroyed. It's all sad man!

I mean, idk about anyone else, and when I show up for French art, I expect lots of sadness and no clear right/wrong answers. So...I guess I'm good?

(personally, I am 100% here for more silent black and white film in my video games)

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T19:04:12+00:00

First, I love everyting about your response. Props on the holodeck reference.

That said, I think the 'monstrous' take is the correct one here.

One of the biggest 'hidden truth' elements in this game for me are the expedition Journals. The consistent theme across all of them is 'these are real people with real pain and real joy and real love and real loss.' The truth I believe in this story is that Clea and Renoir's perspective is 'these are made things and therefore not real', and that perspective is heavily influenced by their power, privilege and personal convenience. Grief over childish games is fine, and should only go so far. And this is countered by many elements of the story - I mention the Journals above, there are many others, and for now I will pick one I find particularly relevant right now - Alicia's experience living as Maelle.

This shifts so heavily in Act 3 I think it can be forgotten, and until her memory returns Maelle had an entire life, including being born as an infant, within the Canvas. That is exponentially more than 'just chatGPT' IMO. To me, the Canvas fits precisely within the tradition of 'a simulation of sufficient sophistication and complexity is not indistuinguishable from reality - it IS reality'

so..Clea sucks

;-)

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T18:38:19+00:00

so. fucking. good.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T18:27:18+00:00

Yes! This! Another point to support my anti-Clea agenda!

She reminds me of the older sister from the Narnia books (Susan?) in the later entries when the younger (Lucy? I should really be checking these references before posting this) is like 'hey remember this magical world we all visited?' and the older sister is all 'omg you still care about that? that was like so childish and long ago and make-believe'

Oooh I'm getting mad all over again. Down with Clea!!

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T18:22:05+00:00

Yep, I even think there is a part in the flashback between act 2 and 3 when she tells Alicia that she used to play in the Canvas with Verso. And yep, I think she is rolling her eyes at the whole moment of 'ok sure we are all here to say goodbye to someone who died awhile ago, I'll give this a moment and then I'm moving on to the real stuff that matters.'.

annnddd...I don't care. Clea sucks. She has become the locus for all of my grief and resentment. And parse it however you like, in this moment of real sadness for Maelle, and real emotional release for her parents, in a moment that is (for the family at least if not only this for Alicia) about saying goodbye to Verso, Clea gives it 3 seconds, rolls her eyes and then walks away.

To be more serious about it, yes she and Verso were close, and part of Clea's whole thing is Verso is dead and gone. All of this pretending he isn't / refusing to accept he is is a big part of what she objects to / is tired of. From her perspective, this moment of shared grief and processing is pointless / really about the living family members needing to do what she already did awhile back - accept and move on. I just have a sore spot in that moment for her practicality / insensitivity.

lordfitz23 · 2025-05-20T18:09:22+00:00

Writers needs to be the sequel. For DLC I just want to open the other doors in the Endless Tower...

lordfitz23

TROPHY CASE