Gen ATLAS has a synopsis! Here’s what you can find on its Epic Games Store page:
Thoughts:
waking up alone in a strange place sounds very reminiscent of The Last Guardian
the ruins from what used to be a long forgotten civilization sounds very reminiscent from Shadow of the Colossus
the robot in question seems friendly and like it will help you traverse the world (you guessed it! reminiscent of The Last Guardian AND Ico)
and at the very bottom you can also read:
There’s our confirmation that it will be a single-player open world game! Feeling right at home with this one 🙌🏼
Wishlist options are now available on all platforms it will be released in! Make sure to add it while we wait for a release date and continue to show support for our team 🤍
Random headcanons I'm giving characters in Return of the Obra Dinn.
Spoiler warning
Robert and Abigail have adult kids. The two of them decided to treat this trip as a second honeymoon now that they no longer have to worry about raising their children.
William Hoscut introduced Robert to Abigail.
Charles Miner can passingly understand English but can only speak French.
Winston Smith is a former slave who escaped by stowing away on a ship to England.
Marcus Gibbs is from Massachusetts and ended up in England because he got press ganged into the British Navy.
Nunzio Pasqua does not like shrimp.
Emily Jackson is Miss Jane Bird's attendant.
Omid Gul used to be a street performer.
Timothy Butement's tattoo depicts a woman he had a one-night stand with.
None of the Chinese Topmen got along with each other. Wei Lee preferred hanging out with George Shirley and was teaching him Mandarin Chinese.
Li Hong was the "translator" for Hok-Seng Lau's self-confession. He lied to get Lau executed.
Maba has gotten into multiple drunken brawls.
Lewis Walker and Henry Brennan were personally recommended by William Hoscut and have worked under him on multiple occasions..
Leonid Volkov subcontracted Alarcus Nikishin and Aleksei Toporov for the trip and is grossly underpaying them.
Alarcus Nikishin's actual name is Alexander and he's registered as Alarcus because he misspelled his name when trying to write it in English.
The four Indian seamen are long-time friends.
Samuel Peters recently got released from prison and Nathan Peters got him a job as a seaman.
Abraham Akbar cannot read or write.
The Obra Dinn was Alexander Booth's first naval job. He was hoping to one day become a captain of his own ship.
Samuel Galligan and Patrick O'Hagan hung out often and Galligan convinced O'Hagan to join Nichols's conspiracy.
The creatures that attacked the ship are native to seas around China. They pursued the Formosan royals all the way to Europe to recover their stolen shell.
The Formosan royals were hoping to use the shell to bolster their naval power and declare independence from China.
Li Hong convinced Nichols to steal the Formosan treasure and fully intended to kill him once they secured the treasure and royals. He was hoping to present the treasure and the captured Formosan royals to the Emperor of China to maybe get a cozy position or title.
Originally, Paul Moss and Martin Perrott were supposed to escape with Emily Jackson, Miss Jane Bird, Henry Evans, and Davey James.
John Davies, Olus Wiater, and Leonid Volkov were the only crew members kept in the dark about the escape plan.
Martin Perrott, Paul Moss, Davey James, and Henry Evans decided to free the last creature and return the stolen shell in the hopes it would help the rest of the crew return home safely.
tbh im not entirely immune to a villain with a tragic backstory but i do think villain origins are a lot more interesting when the focus is less "here is the original sin, the first big bad thing that happened to them that made them who they are" and more "here is the first time a person who maybe otherwise felt powerless in their life realized that they could hurt someone and get away with it"
you can get a lot more mileage out of analyzing a truly abhorrent character through the lens of like. what sort of conditions would allow or even incentivize this kind of cruelty? what kind of person benefits from those conditions and how? over the more typical who hurt them type analysis. imo.
i actually wanted to elaborate on this and say that i think it’s a really bad habit of a lot of artists, influenced by current media casting practices, to unconsciously or consciously make every single character they create super pretty, like everyone is just hot in that very boring, homogenous way, and this also comes as a result of people using actors and celebrities as character references or faceclaims and AI facial generation programs like Artbreeder being trained on people who are generally very pretty-looking. it results in alienating, uncanny worlds and drawings completely devoid of people who just look like regular people. it results worlds populated by mannequins fresh off the CW. I feel like whether a character is attractive or not should actually matter, be part of their character, because that kind of thing absolutely affects the way you move through the world and the way the world treats you.
so i wanted to throw in some suggestions that, whenever I’m trying to find a character reference or otherwise draw very interesting-looking yet regular-looking people, which i usually have to do for bit characters in @ikroah or something, I tend to look for references in the following places. these are far from the only reliable way to get inspiration, this is just a non-exhaustive list of places i’ve looked before for visual inspiration when needing to create a character, whether starring characters or background ones:
pre-2000s television (The Sopranos and Twin Peaks especially having incredible character design)
extras in comedy sketch shows
esports players
real photos (not staged stock photos) of line cooks
70s baseball players
athletes from more obscure olympic sports like the javelin toss or greco-roman wrestling, especially if you’re looking for a specific body type
ska, jazz, and blues musicians
firefighters
improv troupes
for teenagers, searching “high school english class project” on youtube and sorting by Upload Date
state senators, small-town mayors, and generally obscure local government positions like comptroller or treasurer (yes i know politicians can be bad sometimes but smaller elections especially don’t really depend on looks)
people who walk by your window (if you live in a city like I do)
and again these are just, in my opinion, deep and easy wells to dive in if you want to get a good idea of what regular people look like. these suggestions aren’t the limits on where you can possibly find inspiration for character design
Yes!!! There’s an entire book called Fellini’s Faces that’s nothing but portraits of his actors that’s phenomenal for this kind of thing, though it’s fairly rare to get a hold of today.
"MIO: Memories in Orbit" is such a cool game!!!!!!! Beats Nine Sols for me. Very very enjoyable and beautiful! played it in April and early May, need to play again sometime, there sure is a lot of content I missed