What WoL Bon would look like. At first, anyway. Couldn't access unlockable hairstyles from character creator, and whenever I think about adjusting a character or making a new Retainer I use the crator to plan them out first.
So torn on whether or not I fantastia on FFXIV and name-change.
Kinda want to keep Kyuushi alive *somehow*, though FFXIV is far from the only medium I'm playing as her on.
But also wanting to make Bon WoL Viera too. Kinda feel like it'll make it easier for me to actually return to FFXIV as well since Kyuushi's still tied to a lot of stuff on here.
So I'm rewatching Across the Spider-Verse, and I just got to the whole "canon event" speech.
I've already known that Miguel's just outright wrong for a while now, I pieced it together shortly after watching the movie back when it came out in theaters with the family. But rewatching this scene now, holy shit is it ever so much more blatantly incorrect than I ever thought. Miguel really thought "I'mma just abandon my Earth and go live on this other Earth instead, it'll totally be fine" and when he learned that it wasn't, he thought it was because he "distrupted the canon" by making it so "Miguel Lives"???
Dude, you did the EXACT same shit that the Earth 42 Spider did, which lead to Miles becoming Spider-Man for Earth 1610-B. But Earth 1610 already had a Spider-Man. So, by the whole logic of "not distrupting the canon", not only should Miles becoming Spider-Man have caused a collapse on 1610, but Earth 42's spider going missing should've caused BOTH Earths to get erased from existence.
Yet, not only are both perfectly fine, but both diverged from their "canon" events MASSIVELY. The hell made you think that it was because you distrupted the canon of the Earth you went to that caused the collapse, instead of the fact you didn't belong there???
It's WILD how unreliable Miguel is as the narrator.
Right off the bat, it felt really good to play a Housemarque game again! I played Returnal when that came out and I really enjoyed it. The gameplay, the story, the aesthetics and music, it was all really damn good and I'm still really fond of it. Can even still remember the musical sting that was a reoccuring thing from it pretty clearly. When I can remember something music-related from a game clearly, that's always a sign of a great game to me.
Saros is definitely an easier game than Returnal, by a fair bit, but still had some challenge to it. Though it has an extremely neat feature that's unlocked after reaching the third zone that allows you to manually activate modifiers in the game to adjust how easy or dificult it is.
It gives the game's world, Carcosa, a "power" meter that, by default, sits at 0. Positive modifiers like increasing your damage output, increasing the range you can pick up the game's primary resource, or making perfect reloads easier to execute will reduce Carcosa's power. Meanwhile negative modifiers like increasing how much damage you receive, lowering how much of the primary resource you will keep if you die mid-run, or completely disabling all your permanent upgrades, will increase Carcosa's power. You're only able to activate 6 of each, and some have varying levels to them, but you can normally only "lock in" modifiers to activate them as long as you keep Carcosa's power between -3 and +3. So it becoms a balancing act where, if you want the game to be harder or easier, you can make it so.
There is a setting you can toggle that lets you lock in even if you're past -3, though, which essentially lets you have as many modifiers active on either side as you want, as strong as you want them. Want to do a run where you have no permanent upgrades and are purely running on base-stats, you gain corruption like crazy, and enemies are more hostile, but you do more damage and take less? Go right ahead. It's your playground, quite literally. It winds up making Saros a lot more fun and a lot less stressful, honestly.
The weapons in Saros are also all quite varied and interesting. There were a handful that I especially enjoyed using, but by the time I had every permanent ability unlock toward the end, I wound up finding myself enjoying a weapon that I really didn't think I would more than most if not all others. One of the shotgun variants. I'd be able to blast an enemy, stagger them while chunking their health, then dash in to melee them for huge damage to outright kill them, then quick turn to start blasting the next enemy so I can stagger and melee them next. It's such a fun, high-pace, active loop that not only was effective, but was satisfying as all hell to actually do. Saros' combat as a whole is genuinely one of the most enjoyable combat systems I've played with in a while once it truly got going.
There were only two complaints I really ever actually had with it, one of which would just be a nice change to make in the future, while the other is a genuine issue.
The first, despite the game not telling you at all, there IS a sprint. You activate it by pressing the dash button, then holding it down after the dash. After a second or two, a pulse happens around Arjun (the player character) and movement speed will increase fairly significantly while blue streaks trail behind him. The problems I have with it is that you can not dash while sprinting (pressing the dash button will simply cancel the sprint) and sprint is not listed in the controls at all. So you can't remap sprint to another button while keeping dash on it's original placement. It's not a big issue at all, but there's just a lot of buttons that do absolutely nothing in Saros, and I feel like being able to remap sprint to it's own button to be able to just toggle it on and off, and being able to dash out of sprint, would be really nice.
The second, and the ACTUAL problem with the game, is that enemies can spawn inside of the terrain. In walls, under the floor, it can happen. Normally it's not much of an issue, generally combat rooms don't lock you in until you kill everything. There are some combat encounters that will lock you in that will require killing everything however, and there are challenge zones that are in their own areas cut off from the rest of whichever map you were running through prior to starting the challenge. If you have an enemy spawn in terrain in one of these zones, you're literally just shit out of luck, and have to forfeit the run and return to the hub, essentially counting the run as a loss. Thankfully I only ever had this happen once, but the fact it can happen at all is a genuine problem.
As for Saros' story, it was genuinely good! It's definitely played out in a different way than Returnal, but it was still a solid mystery throughout and lead to some great revelations from dialogue or visuals. It actually, genuinely, gave me a moment when I completed the base story where things started to really get revealed that had me impressed how it tied into the little glimpses of various things throughout the game prior. It's just one of those things where you see something that seems like a random visual, but you know there's gotta be a reason for it, where you eventually see the exact reason for said visual and you just go "OH SHIT" and it's satisfying as hell.
I kinda feel like playing it more, so I've not removed it from my console yet, though I'm unsure if I'm gonna try for platinum or not. It has a trophy/achievement to complete a biome without taking any actual damage which I just know is going to be an annoyance for me.
So, massive revelations about the paints, Murray described them as the same wavelength of the Stone of Nightsong, and a "Photo Negative" of it. Which implied the idea that the paints were more akin to the divine source of the Nightsong, instead of a powerful magical thing made from Divine material.
HOWEVER, it was clarified by Brenan that it's the OPPOSITE of the Stone of Nightsong. Between the clarification, and the rest of what Murray said, the Paints seem like a catalyst meant to allow something that's unreal to be made real. That something that doesn't exist can be made to exist.
There's a part of me that still feels like the route of Thjazi coming back via a Resurrection Spell might be the case. It's been stated a few times that Revival Magic just, put simply, does not exit whatsoever in Araman. So "make the unreal real" could result in such a thing. Especially if the paint's magical signature still matches that of the Stone of Nightsong's magic.
However, with all the other information learned throughout the session... the entire situation is such a mess now.
Thjazi commissioned enchanted clay jars for enchanted paints.
He commissioned the enchanted paints from the people of Knife and Palette Pigments.
The paints were apparently made using bloos (perhaps divine) as a base that was then rendered into the paints they are now with a magical signature not only matching but an EXACT OPPOSITE of the Stone of Nightsong.
Thjazi and the people from KPP stopped some vile plot with their help, perhaps an earlier phase of the Tachonis' plot, maybe something from Hallovar.
Thjazi supposedly INTENDED to give the paints to Halandil directly himself, but simply just didn't get the chance to.
Had Thimble handle payments for both commissions (only the jars confirmed, assume she handled paying KPP as well).
Thjazi and Thimble then left to steal the Stone of Nightsong.
What in the fuck was happening, Thjazi??? What the hell did you stop in the background before you went to steal the Stone??? Why did you steal the Stone at all??? WHAT DID YOU SEE BEFORE YOU DIED???
Still watching tonight's Critical Role, 3h 32m in when I started writing this, but holy shit
UNDER THE CUT CAUSE OBVIOUSLY
My theory that Thjazi's got a plan to come back is just stronger and stronger this entire session (though there's also one new counter so far)
Confirmation that Thjazi himself commissioned everything to do with the paints
Confirmation that the paints were commissioned BEFORE Thjazi and Thimble wen to steal the Stone of Nightsong
Implication that Thjazi had every intent to give the paints to Halandil himself
Cold open implied that Thjazi and Thimble kept secrets from each other, so him not telling her anything about a possible glimpse into the future makes perfect sense, and it was said that Thimble only handled the payments for the paint commissions, but not the details about them at all, he handled all of that himself
(adding this cause I was still watching while typing everything) Thjazi apparently knew about and stopped some plot that was brewing, perhaps from the Tachonis or Hallovars
The one new counter is one and the same with the third point, where it can be argued "Why would Thjazi intend to give Hal the paints directly himself if he knew he was going to be caught and hanged?" BUT at the same time, that's merely how the shady Warlock doorman for Knife and Palette Pigments read Thjazi. There's nothing saying that's guaranteed how Thjazi was intending for things to go.
Though that also brings up the entirely real posibility that maybe he DID intend to give Hal the paints directly, expecting to die at a later date. But then he got caught, which might've not occurred in this theorized vision of the future, which lead to having to tell Hal about the paints instead of bringing them to him. Perhaps, if him being caught and executed wasn't in his vision, then the deviation from whatever he did see might've lead to whatever it was that he saw in the sky before dying?
SO much new information in C4 E24, and so many new thoughts and theories, it's WILD how much this session's been giving us.
Just got out of Project Hail Mary with my Dad for 29th.
Really good movie!
I had been seeing and hearing a lot of praise for it since it released, and it was a movie that interested me since the first trailers for it. I was excited going into it, and it didn't disappoint one bit. Ryan Gosling nails it again for his role, and all the interactions as the story progresses were fantastic even with the somewhat limited dialogue during a lot of parts.
It's definitely a slower movie, but it's slower pace really pays off for how well it builds up the story and relationships within it.
So many gorgeous visuals, such captivating concepts and designs, it was seriously stimulating my brain and captured my heart for wonderous aesthetics.
Needless to say, I highly recommend watching it, cause it's absolutely fantastic.
I'll go into some more detail under the cut, but that'll obviously include spoilers.
First off, gotta bring up how the story actually plays out, which I feel was handled rather well. It's one of those stories where it's told in two timeframes, but it bounces between the timeframes a little throughout the movie. There's the on-earth time, and the in-space time, with on-earth being the earlier timeframe and in-space being the present within the film. The way they tell it, initially, confused me a little bit here and there, cause I thought it was initially just showing us, the viewers, what happened on-earth to lead up to where we started the film. But as the movie progresses, it became clearer how it was actually being progressed in a way to imply that he was remembering events bit by bit (Ryan's Characer, Doctor Grace, wakes up with amnesia at the start).
As that realization dawned on me, it was only a short while before it was confirmed in the film itself, and the scene where everything returns to Grace was pretty damn heavy after some great scenes. You could really feel how hard it hits him that he really didn't have a choice in what lead to him being on the ship.
Thankfully, despite what's really a rather dark story for his side of things, when Rocky comes into the movie the tone really changes and becomes way more fun. Their ship is utterly gorgeous, the way they speak is interesting as hell, the PoV shots we get from their view are fantastic, and their technology is extremely well thought out. Everything about and around Rocky is so fantastic, and the connection between them and Grace becomes the true heart of the movie. It had a lot of good laughs, great scenes to relax/relieve tension that would otherwise hang over a number of scenes.
The movie strikes a fantastic balance between tension and fun throughout the entire movie, honestly, and it's such a great watch for it all. Plus the emotional connection that naturally forms between Grace and Rocky throughout absolutely makes a handful of moments hit really hard and makes the ending so good.
This was also the firs time I've ever had my leg cramp up while watching a movie, I'm pretty sure. Not that it's the movie's fault at all, of course not, just was something that happened toward the end that was a little surprising.
Really good movie over all, and I honestly really enjoyed it a ton! Highly recommend!
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