~Dogs are just firm cats!
Ultramega Ok! recording!
TPR - FF9 - Over the Hill
Calum Bowen - FF9 - Bossa de Victory
Archangel, Claire Yaxley - FF9 - As Long As We Remember
Abadoss, AndyP, Fishy - FF9 - The Knight of Woeful Sorrow
Natalya Zarraga feat. Seth Tallman - FF9 - A Rose in the Storm
Verdegrand - FF9 - In the Hall of the Gangster King
End up losing focus near the end, bleh.
Aaaa so many things to post about! I still need to do a round-up art post, and I should post about those two new doujin I put up (an FF6 one called JOKER 777 DEATH I totally forgot I had and an FF7 one called Azuma no chihei nishi no eien I think), and at some point I should try to do another Mother 1 post aaaagh, BUT FOR NOW I'm gonna talk about two things: Undertale and the 2-4 Stage Play.
First, Undertale! You may have heard about it, it's a game that just got released recently that's got a lot of buzz going for it, in particular because it's an RPG where you don't have to kill anyone. I ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND CHECKING IT OUT IF YOU CAN.
Without getting too much into the exact specifics, I can recommend Undertale on a lot of different merits - the characters are great, the music is great, the enemies are great, the battle system in particular is AWESOME and creative and fun, the writing is clever and funny, it constantly subverts your expectations in ways you'd never expect, it's meta-aware in a really fascinating way, the ending is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, and it very effectively rips your heart out and stomp on it. It has some similarities with EarthBound and the Mother series, in terms that it can be quirky and strange and heartrending, but it's very much its own beast.
Just on that alone, I'd say Undertale is really worth playing. It's a fun charming experience that offers constant delightful (and horrific) surprises. BUT I think what really sets Undertale apart is the meta-awareness I mentioned above. Part of what makes it so effective is not knowing, so I won't get too into the specifics of the ending or the scope of the plot here. Still, if you want to go into Undertale completely blind, then you can skip the rest of this. It's vague rambling about the system itself again with no specifics, but! I know some people would want a totally blind experience, so.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
What really makes Undertale unique and very special is that what you do in the game has real consequences. First, here's the trailer to give you sort of an idea of the basic "gimmick" of the game.
You can already see here that you have two options in battle - to kill monsters, or to spare them. And obviously one would guess that there are thus two paths through the game - killing everything, and saving everything. But that's not where it ends.
The thing about Undertale is that it remembers what you do. And I don't mean it just remembers it for that playthrough, it remembers forever. If you kill a monster in the game, it will remember you killed that monster, no matter how many times you reload your game, or even if you start a new save. It will remember what you did, and change things in the game accordingly. So if you're a completionist, and you do a murder-everyone run and then do a pacifist run afterwards, the game will know you killed everyone before, even if this time, you're saving them. And it'll change things.
Every decision you make has consequences, permanent consequences, in a way that I don't think I've ever really experienced in a game before. Jaz said that in a lot of games, morality tends to be more of a class than a real choice - be evil and shoot lightning bolts, or be good and heal people. Bioshock's "morality" system was pretty much a joke, and that's the case for a lot of things. Even QFG mostly uses doing good deeds to fuel paladin points and if you feel like being a thief later, you can just start a new game and try it.
You can't do that with Undertale. If you kill that monster, that monster is dead. And its awareness of the player's actions doesn't stop there. The game keeps track of when you save and load and quit as well. So if you kill a monster, then quit and reload to undo what you did... the game will know, and comment on it. If you die against a boss multiple times, the game will know. If you stop and reload to watch a cutscene multiple times, the game will know. And it'll change things accordingly.
It's like... my first run through the game was as a pacifist because no duh when given the choice to be peaceful I'm going to be peaceful, but now I'm really tempted to check out the murder-everything run because I honestly feel like I haven't even seen half of the game. The major NPCs in Undertale are monsters... and you can kill a good number of them. And from what I know of the plot, doing a run where I murder everything would change everything. And from what I've heard IT DOES. It's an entirely new and separate story.
But at the same time, if I do another run and kill everything... the game is going to remember that I did that. What else could change? What dialogue could I lose? What could happen? These aren't questions I'd ask myself if I was playing any other game, cause in those you can really just start over. But the permanence of things in Undertale is part of what gives everything it does and all the characters such weight. Killing an NPC in Undertale feels so serious. Like you can't take that back.
It's a really heavy weight on your choices that really makes you have to consider these things carefully, haha. I THINK I got the best ending with the full pacifist run, but like I said, it feels like I haven't even seen all of the game. And that's not even it! There are gradations between pacifist-murderer as well - you can kill one boss monster, or all the boss monsters and no normal monsters, or all normal monsters and no boss monsters, or just SOME boss monsters, and ALL of those will change things. THERE'S SO MUCH TO THIS GAME, I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN LOOKING FOR IT ALL
But anyway I really recommend it, it's fascinating and so much fun and the battle system is FREAKING INGENIOUS like the new and clever ways the battle system is used throughout the game constantly surprised me, it's AMAZING.
AND ON A LESS META NOTE - GAY CHARACTERS! GAY CHARACTERS THAT AREN'T JOKES! IN A WORLD WITH NO HOMOPHOBIA it's so refreshing and adorable and great and it's treated so normally and the characters are so cute and UGH THIS GAME IS SO WONDERFUL ON SO MANY LEVELS and has so many great gayfemale characters as well
YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLAY UNDERTALE IT'S SO GREAT I have to steel myself to do a murder run at some point but aaaaa
IN OTHER NEWS SOMEONE POSTED THE ACE ATTORNEY STAGE PLAYS HOLY i really had given up hope on ever seeing any of these BUT SUDDENLY HERE THEY ARE
i would seriously buy the 2-4 one but I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THEY'RE SELLING THEM
ANYWAY I took approximately 3000 screencaps of the 2-4 play (and made some gifs) so you know, I have a problem. TO BE FAIR I was just hammering the screencap key whenever Juan was on screen... or Celeste... or Adrian... or Matt... or Gumshoe... or Shelly... or Oldbag... okay basically I took caps of everyone. I'M SURE A LOT OF THEM WON'T BE WORTH KEEPING THOUGH I'll sort through them later and possibly do a post about it.
BUT I LOVE THE PLAY I LOVE IT IT HAD SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE WANTED AND AND AND
JUAN TURNED OUT TO BE A HAPPY ROMANTIC DORK
JUAN CAME BACK AT THE END TO SAY HE LOVED CELESTE FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS HEART
JUAN AND CELESTE WALKED OFF INTO THE AFTERLIFE TOGETHER
UGH MY HEART I COULDN'T EVEN like you guys don't understand I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT JUAN AND CELESTE REALLY LOVED EACH OTHER AND NOW I'M VINDICATED, VINDICATED YOU HEAR ME
JUAN IS A SWEET GOOFBALL AND I AM VINDICATED GDIT
but aaaaa there's so much about this play i love, OLDBAG WAS PERFECT, LARRY WAS PERFECT, GUMSHOE WAS okay Gumshoe could've been bulkier but HIS HAIR WAS PERFECT AND ALSO HE BREAKDANCED AND THAT'S NOT AT ALL A JOKE
MAYA AND PEARL WERE SO CUTE
ADRIAN LOOKED SO FRAIL AND TINY WHY WAS SHE COUGHING
SHELLY LOOKED SO COOL
JUAN WAS SO SWEET AND DORKY AND UGH I LOVE HIM AND CELESTE LOOKED SO PRETTY AND AND AND
juan called adrian kirio-chan ;_; right before he DIED HORRIBLY SCREAMING FOR HELP AGHHHH
I should try to be more coherent about this but I'll probably reconstruct the plot later via screencaps. BUT IT WAS SO GREAT the play differs in a lot of places from the game itself, though most of it is the same. There's still drama about the knife, I'm pretty sure the Matt/Celeste/Juan/Adrian thing is still in play though Celeste/Adrian seems to have been downplayed a bit? ALSO I'M REALLY SAD FRANZISKA AND ADRIAN DIDN'T REALLY GET MUCH CHANCE TO INTERACT, WHYYYY
but waaahh
Larry kind of took Lotta's place in this which i didn't really mind because I LOVE LARRY and it also meant all three kids were in one place for once (Phoenix, Edgeworth, Larry) which doesn't happen often enough if you ask me. OLDBAG WAS GREAT I LOVE HER
Celeste kind of took Mia's place in this which I also didn't mind at all because I always felt bad for Celeste not getting more of her side of the story out there, and in this she wanders around solving her own murder which is PRETTY AWESOME
apparently from what i can tell what Juan hid in the bear puzzle in this wasn't a suicide note but a LOVE LETTER SAYING HE'D LOVE HER FOREVER AND HGGGGGHHHH
though i have a LOT of questions about what exactly his grand prix plot was in this, not that it's super important in the end probably
MATT WAS LIKE REALLY CUTE IN HIS GOOD PERSONA IN THIS like he had a really sweet voice and all these new mannerisms where he looks down shyly or actually looks dismayed about stuff and it's like wow you can totally buy people falling for his shtick. THEN THERE WAS THE REVEAL OF BAD MATT (which was hilariously foreshadowed by matt starting the scene with a wine glass for no apparent reason) AND WOW BAD MATT IS SUPER CRAZY IN THIS
like he was chewing the scenery crazy, i really wonder what his deal is especially in regards to juan. DID HE STILL WANT TO WRECK JUAN FOR HIS GRAND PRIX PLOT? BUT JUAN HID A LOVE LETTER NOT A SUICIDE NOTE, WHAT WAS HIS DEAL
WHY DID HE KILL JUAN IN THIS i secretly hope it was some kind of insane obsession he had with juan to feed my terrible ship
HE WAS REALLY SUPER CRAZY THOUGH shelly got A LOT of screentime especially near the end which was really great, haha. Phoenix was a big ham. PEARL WAS ADORABLE. ADRIAN WAS ALSO KIND OF A HAM BUT I SERIOUSLY WONDER WHY SHE HAS A HUGE BREAKDOWN KIND OF OUT OF NOWHERE and also what she says to celeste during that one sequence
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS i really hope someone translates this, you have no idea how insanely curious i am about what's going on here
BUT I'M SO HAPPY WITH IT IT'S REALLY SILLY AND GOOFY AND WAY OVER THE TOP AND IT'S SO PERFECT
my main question has to do with what happened to celeste in this, her and juan seem super happy together and I THINK it's implied that she's just a flower shop girl and he wants to marry her anyway and possibly people don't approve? i'm not sure. BUT basically matt lures her to some place by saying juan's in danger and then some dudes attack her and there are camera flashes and clicks, and then afterwards she's talking to maya and she's all upset and she said something about the internet and email so POSSIBLY matt had her attacked and then filmed it and put it on the internet? BUT THAT SEEMS REALLY DARK FOR A PLAY THIS SILLY
BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE HAPPENED
at least juan and celeste ended happily, sobs
A MORE COHERENT OVERVIEW WILL PROBABLY COME WITH THE SCREENCAPS LATER presumably
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!
TPR - FF9 - Over the Hill
Calum Bowen - FF9 - Bossa de Victory
Archangel, Claire Yaxley - FF9 - As Long As We Remember
Abadoss, AndyP, Fishy - FF9 - The Knight of Woeful Sorrow
Natalya Zarraga feat. Seth Tallman - FF9 - A Rose in the Storm
Verdegrand - FF9 - In the Hall of the Gangster King
End up losing focus near the end, bleh.
Aaaa so many things to post about! I still need to do a round-up art post, and I should post about those two new doujin I put up (an FF6 one called JOKER 777 DEATH I totally forgot I had and an FF7 one called Azuma no chihei nishi no eien I think), and at some point I should try to do another Mother 1 post aaaagh, BUT FOR NOW I'm gonna talk about two things: Undertale and the 2-4 Stage Play.
First, Undertale! You may have heard about it, it's a game that just got released recently that's got a lot of buzz going for it, in particular because it's an RPG where you don't have to kill anyone. I ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND CHECKING IT OUT IF YOU CAN.
Without getting too much into the exact specifics, I can recommend Undertale on a lot of different merits - the characters are great, the music is great, the enemies are great, the battle system in particular is AWESOME and creative and fun, the writing is clever and funny, it constantly subverts your expectations in ways you'd never expect, it's meta-aware in a really fascinating way, the ending is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, and it very effectively rips your heart out and stomp on it. It has some similarities with EarthBound and the Mother series, in terms that it can be quirky and strange and heartrending, but it's very much its own beast.
Just on that alone, I'd say Undertale is really worth playing. It's a fun charming experience that offers constant delightful (and horrific) surprises. BUT I think what really sets Undertale apart is the meta-awareness I mentioned above. Part of what makes it so effective is not knowing, so I won't get too into the specifics of the ending or the scope of the plot here. Still, if you want to go into Undertale completely blind, then you can skip the rest of this. It's vague rambling about the system itself again with no specifics, but! I know some people would want a totally blind experience, so.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
What really makes Undertale unique and very special is that what you do in the game has real consequences. First, here's the trailer to give you sort of an idea of the basic "gimmick" of the game.
Click to viewYou can already see here that you have two options in battle - to kill monsters, or to spare them. And obviously one would guess that there are thus two paths through the game - killing everything, and saving everything. But that's not where it ends.
The thing about Undertale is that it remembers what you do. And I don't mean it just remembers it for that playthrough, it remembers forever. If you kill a monster in the game, it will remember you killed that monster, no matter how many times you reload your game, or even if you start a new save. It will remember what you did, and change things in the game accordingly. So if you're a completionist, and you do a murder-everyone run and then do a pacifist run afterwards, the game will know you killed everyone before, even if this time, you're saving them. And it'll change things.
Every decision you make has consequences, permanent consequences, in a way that I don't think I've ever really experienced in a game before. Jaz said that in a lot of games, morality tends to be more of a class than a real choice - be evil and shoot lightning bolts, or be good and heal people. Bioshock's "morality" system was pretty much a joke, and that's the case for a lot of things. Even QFG mostly uses doing good deeds to fuel paladin points and if you feel like being a thief later, you can just start a new game and try it.
You can't do that with Undertale. If you kill that monster, that monster is dead. And its awareness of the player's actions doesn't stop there. The game keeps track of when you save and load and quit as well. So if you kill a monster, then quit and reload to undo what you did... the game will know, and comment on it. If you die against a boss multiple times, the game will know. If you stop and reload to watch a cutscene multiple times, the game will know. And it'll change things accordingly.
It's like... my first run through the game was as a pacifist because no duh when given the choice to be peaceful I'm going to be peaceful, but now I'm really tempted to check out the murder-everything run because I honestly feel like I haven't even seen half of the game. The major NPCs in Undertale are monsters... and you can kill a good number of them. And from what I know of the plot, doing a run where I murder everything would change everything. And from what I've heard IT DOES. It's an entirely new and separate story.
But at the same time, if I do another run and kill everything... the game is going to remember that I did that. What else could change? What dialogue could I lose? What could happen? These aren't questions I'd ask myself if I was playing any other game, cause in those you can really just start over. But the permanence of things in Undertale is part of what gives everything it does and all the characters such weight. Killing an NPC in Undertale feels so serious. Like you can't take that back.
It's a really heavy weight on your choices that really makes you have to consider these things carefully, haha. I THINK I got the best ending with the full pacifist run, but like I said, it feels like I haven't even seen all of the game. And that's not even it! There are gradations between pacifist-murderer as well - you can kill one boss monster, or all the boss monsters and no normal monsters, or all normal monsters and no boss monsters, or just SOME boss monsters, and ALL of those will change things. THERE'S SO MUCH TO THIS GAME, I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN LOOKING FOR IT ALL
But anyway I really recommend it, it's fascinating and so much fun and the battle system is FREAKING INGENIOUS like the new and clever ways the battle system is used throughout the game constantly surprised me, it's AMAZING.
AND ON A LESS META NOTE - GAY CHARACTERS! GAY CHARACTERS THAT AREN'T JOKES! IN A WORLD WITH NO HOMOPHOBIA it's so refreshing and adorable and great and it's treated so normally and the characters are so cute and UGH THIS GAME IS SO WONDERFUL ON SO MANY LEVELS and has so many great gayfemale characters as well
YOU SHOULD TOTALLY PLAY UNDERTALE IT'S SO GREAT I have to steel myself to do a murder run at some point but aaaaa
IN OTHER NEWS SOMEONE POSTED THE ACE ATTORNEY STAGE PLAYS HOLY i really had given up hope on ever seeing any of these BUT SUDDENLY HERE THEY ARE
i would seriously buy the 2-4 one but I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THEY'RE SELLING THEM
ANYWAY I took approximately 3000 screencaps of the 2-4 play (and made some gifs) so you know, I have a problem. TO BE FAIR I was just hammering the screencap key whenever Juan was on screen... or Celeste... or Adrian... or Matt... or Gumshoe... or Shelly... or Oldbag... okay basically I took caps of everyone. I'M SURE A LOT OF THEM WON'T BE WORTH KEEPING THOUGH I'll sort through them later and possibly do a post about it.
BUT I LOVE THE PLAY I LOVE IT IT HAD SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE WANTED AND AND AND
JUAN TURNED OUT TO BE A HAPPY ROMANTIC DORK
JUAN CAME BACK AT THE END TO SAY HE LOVED CELESTE FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS HEART
JUAN AND CELESTE WALKED OFF INTO THE AFTERLIFE TOGETHER
UGH MY HEART I COULDN'T EVEN like you guys don't understand I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT JUAN AND CELESTE REALLY LOVED EACH OTHER AND NOW I'M VINDICATED, VINDICATED YOU HEAR ME
JUAN IS A SWEET GOOFBALL AND I AM VINDICATED GDIT
but aaaaa there's so much about this play i love, OLDBAG WAS PERFECT, LARRY WAS PERFECT, GUMSHOE WAS okay Gumshoe could've been bulkier but HIS HAIR WAS PERFECT AND ALSO HE BREAKDANCED AND THAT'S NOT AT ALL A JOKE
MAYA AND PEARL WERE SO CUTE
ADRIAN LOOKED SO FRAIL AND TINY WHY WAS SHE COUGHING
SHELLY LOOKED SO COOL
JUAN WAS SO SWEET AND DORKY AND UGH I LOVE HIM AND CELESTE LOOKED SO PRETTY AND AND AND
juan called adrian kirio-chan ;_; right before he DIED HORRIBLY SCREAMING FOR HELP AGHHHH
I should try to be more coherent about this but I'll probably reconstruct the plot later via screencaps. BUT IT WAS SO GREAT the play differs in a lot of places from the game itself, though most of it is the same. There's still drama about the knife, I'm pretty sure the Matt/Celeste/Juan/Adrian thing is still in play though Celeste/Adrian seems to have been downplayed a bit? ALSO I'M REALLY SAD FRANZISKA AND ADRIAN DIDN'T REALLY GET MUCH CHANCE TO INTERACT, WHYYYY
but waaahh
Larry kind of took Lotta's place in this which i didn't really mind because I LOVE LARRY and it also meant all three kids were in one place for once (Phoenix, Edgeworth, Larry) which doesn't happen often enough if you ask me. OLDBAG WAS GREAT I LOVE HER
Celeste kind of took Mia's place in this which I also didn't mind at all because I always felt bad for Celeste not getting more of her side of the story out there, and in this she wanders around solving her own murder which is PRETTY AWESOME
apparently from what i can tell what Juan hid in the bear puzzle in this wasn't a suicide note but a LOVE LETTER SAYING HE'D LOVE HER FOREVER AND HGGGGGHHHH
though i have a LOT of questions about what exactly his grand prix plot was in this, not that it's super important in the end probably
MATT WAS LIKE REALLY CUTE IN HIS GOOD PERSONA IN THIS like he had a really sweet voice and all these new mannerisms where he looks down shyly or actually looks dismayed about stuff and it's like wow you can totally buy people falling for his shtick. THEN THERE WAS THE REVEAL OF BAD MATT (which was hilariously foreshadowed by matt starting the scene with a wine glass for no apparent reason) AND WOW BAD MATT IS SUPER CRAZY IN THIS
like he was chewing the scenery crazy, i really wonder what his deal is especially in regards to juan. DID HE STILL WANT TO WRECK JUAN FOR HIS GRAND PRIX PLOT? BUT JUAN HID A LOVE LETTER NOT A SUICIDE NOTE, WHAT WAS HIS DEAL
WHY DID HE KILL JUAN IN THIS i secretly hope it was some kind of insane obsession he had with juan to feed my terrible ship
HE WAS REALLY SUPER CRAZY THOUGH shelly got A LOT of screentime especially near the end which was really great, haha. Phoenix was a big ham. PEARL WAS ADORABLE. ADRIAN WAS ALSO KIND OF A HAM BUT I SERIOUSLY WONDER WHY SHE HAS A HUGE BREAKDOWN KIND OF OUT OF NOWHERE and also what she says to celeste during that one sequence
I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS i really hope someone translates this, you have no idea how insanely curious i am about what's going on here
BUT I'M SO HAPPY WITH IT IT'S REALLY SILLY AND GOOFY AND WAY OVER THE TOP AND IT'S SO PERFECT
my main question has to do with what happened to celeste in this, her and juan seem super happy together and I THINK it's implied that she's just a flower shop girl and he wants to marry her anyway and possibly people don't approve? i'm not sure. BUT basically matt lures her to some place by saying juan's in danger and then some dudes attack her and there are camera flashes and clicks, and then afterwards she's talking to maya and she's all upset and she said something about the internet and email so POSSIBLY matt had her attacked and then filmed it and put it on the internet? BUT THAT SEEMS REALLY DARK FOR A PLAY THIS SILLY
BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE HAPPENED
at least juan and celeste ended happily, sobs
A MORE COHERENT OVERVIEW WILL PROBABLY COME WITH THE SCREENCAPS LATER presumably
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!