Crossover: TF2 x Assassin’s Creed, by @donnez-moi-vos-vivres
Short notes
First off, I’m proudly writing in joeHand3, aka Spy’s canon handwriting. Second, the costume and setting of the image are based on Ezio’s trilogy, mainly Renaissance/II and Brotherhood, since these are the games I’m most familiar with. The pose is just some generic mashup of the squatting pose (personal fave) and the pose that Ezio always has with his dual blades. The reason I chose to just do Spy for this is mainly because of the stock knife reskin, the Sharp Dresser. Plus, Spy and the Renaissance seem to go pretty handily (at least better than the other mercs within the setting of the games until Black Flag).
Headcanons
In this AU, no one knows why the Spy still wears his mask under the hood. It serves no purpose, and is actually quite stuffy during hot Italian summers. Spy doesn’t know why either, he just wears it.
Of course, Leonardo is in this AU (how can we be Assassin’s Creed Renaissance without the favorite Renaissance man?). The two of them hang out a lot more than Ezio did in the canon (which I am angry about), and Spy actually treats Leo well, such as actually buying him that really nice wooden mannequin *coughs*.
Spy’s family came from France, and through an incident similar to that of Ezio, he loses his family and their connections, and turns to life as an Assassin to get vengeance on his family and get to the bottom of the plots to root out the Assassin’s Brotherhood in Italy.
It me, Ugg Zombi! This is the first time I regret not pre-ordering Assassin’s Creed… then again Spy isn’t my strongest character (also, I got into AC quite late). This submission means so much to me, I’m tearing up here. Ezio’s signature squat went generally unnoticed (by me), until one time when two dudes were talking near a ledge, and I got on that ledge and crouched, and they completely ignored me, just carried on talking. So Assassin!Spy is perfect!
That headcanon, though. Spy. Please. Take off the mask. Please. You’re making Leo sad. First you don’t hit the hug button fast enough, now this??
Red would just like to step in here and say... of course he doesn't take the mask off! He is one with the mask. Think of the monk tailors! :P
I’m pairing this one with Venice Flight because this song impressed my coworker who usually scoffs at my videogaming. Not because Spy deserves it. He’s too adorkable!
In which Ugg is incoherent zombi because of love Dishonored much
OFFICIAL COSPLAY GUIDE.
HILARIOUS FAN ART.
LOVELY MEME COMMUNITY. (hi @justdishonoredthings u is a sweet!)
Listen I love these game so much I started this post several times and then I gave up because there’s no way this will be succinct. This is all you’re getting from me before I sabotage ALL the posts.
Crossover: TF2 x Portal 2, by Jelli of @jelli-sfm and @ski-mask-fics
The Ap-Sap they’d gotten a while back was apparently named Wheatley, and didn’t really qualify as an artificial intelligence— “artificial idiocy” would have been more fitting. Which is why Dell Conagher was less than thrilled when he was given more contraptions from that same science facility. The accompanying documentation didn’t do much to make him feel better either— apparently, the efforts to make them function properly were so futile, the scientists just gave up. How bad could these bots be, considering that Wheatley was considered a success?
There were so many boxes. Was there a mistake? It had said that there would be two robots, and nothing else. Dell did not want to have to work with more defective machinery than he had to.
He opened a box and found… what looked to be a leg. Pausing, he lifted it up. Yup. Just a leg. Another box showed a nicely-assembled hand, but nothing more.
This was… exciting. He tore through the boxes faster. There were all the advantages of starting from scratch— a chance to determine the main structure of the bots, perhaps tweak their programming— without having to struggle with small nuts and bolts for hours on end, trying to mimic a shoulder joint. Contrary to what some of his teammates thought, that was not the part that Dell enjoyed about being their Engineer. It was designing, upgrading, all the things that his education made him an expert in.
Quickly opening a box, he did not be expect to see, sitting in a round metal sphere, a glowing blue iris. He was staring at it, and it was staring intently back at him. It even blinked several times, as though the sudden light from being unboxed had stunned it.
Carefully, Dell checked the label of the boxes, something he hadn’t bothered to do. “Atlas Core” it read. The other boxes had similar labels. “Atlas Left Left”, “P-Body Hand Right”. He hunted through the boxes until he found the one marked “P-Body Core”. If he was right…
Yup. Another eye, looking back at him. This one was orange, housed in a slimmer elliptical case.
After opening everything and sorting through the labels, Dell could only shake his head at the mistakes the original makers had made. The individual parts were decent enough, but the overall design couldn’t have been worse. Dell thought of the tweaks he would make; attaching the legs at a slightly different angle would make a world of difference, and the same thing went for the shoulder plates—
A slight mutter startled him. It must have been one of the cores. They didn’t talk, from what Dell could tell, but for some reason they seemed just as sentient as that sapper Wheatley— and in all likelihood, smarter.
Another mechanical chirp brought Dell back to his senses. Why was he just thinking and theorizing about these robots, when he could actually mess around with them?
A toolkit, that’s what he needed.
Dell wasn’t quite sure how much time had passed, but the mass of boxes and detached mechanical limbs had became two robots, with arms, legs, and one large eye each that functioned as a head, which also functioned as a body. He’d even taken a poke around in their programming— they were just fine, except that the coding designed to let them move their arms and legs had been flawed. A little tinkering with that, and—
Falling flat on their metal faces. Of course.
The explanation was simple, really. Think of a toddler; it has all the proper wiring to walk and jump and even dance, but it needs practice to get those habits into its brain. And the same went for these robots. Just as Dell suspected, they could think. That was interesting, and exciting, but it also meant that he couldn’t just directly program in commands.
Luckily, these robots seemed to pick up on basic motor skills much faster than the average toddler. It took only two tries before “Atlas” could stand up and take a few steps without falling over. Not long after, both of them could walk at a decent pace with little wobbling.
Not bad, Dell thought, nodding his head.
P-body— a.k.a. “the orange one”— paused when Dell made the gesture. An awkward attempt to mimic the head-nod had the robot stumbling.
“Now, that’s interesting,” Dell said to himself.
More time passed— the rest of the team might have been concerned, if they hadn’t known that a shipment involving robots of some sort had just come in. Whenever that happened, they knew Dell would go into his workshop and not come out for a good long while.
And a long while it was. Dell decided to teach them every trick in the book, just for the heck of it. By the time he was done, these bots could not only walk, but also run, jump, do cartwheels, salute (he figured Soldier would like that one), and give a firm handshake— to gain instant respect among any gentleman they happened to run across, obviously.
“Follow me, boys,” he said to them. They most definitely understood him; the proof was right there when they kept pace behind him, as he walked to where he knew his team would be gathered. Sure, maybe their eyes glazed over when he got into the details of quantum mechanics, but no one would be able to ignore this. This was impressive. This was engineering. This was…
Aw heck, it was just plain awesome, and it was impossible to resist bragging.
Dell paused. “Y’all ready?”
P-body gave him a firm salute, as Atlas went in for a strong handshake. Just as Dell had taught them.
“Perfect. Let’s go blow some minds.”
This submission was such a pleasant surprise, as we’re not very familiar with the in-game items– that’s where you, the lovely community, comes in with information. We giggled over Spy and Wheatley, and it just so happens Dell being able to tinker anything into behaving is one of our well-established headcanons! We could just see him reverse engineering them and building more and more until he walks around with a robot army and–!
Wait, are we sure that's not how Mann vs. Machine happened...?
Anyway, that’s how Ugg remembered this song about robot armies. Jelli, this was delightfully mischievous, thank you so much!
1967 - Pirates of the Caribbean (ride)
1987 - On Stranger Tides (book)
1990 - The Secret of Monkey Island (videogame)
1991 - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (videogame)
1997 - The Curse of Monkey Island (videogame)
2000 - Escape from Monkey Island (videogame)
2003 - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (film)
2006 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (film)
2007 - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (film)
2009 - Tales of Monkey Island (videogame)
2011 - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (film; see what they did there?)
2012 - Disney acquires Lucasfilm
2013 - Disney shuts down LucasArts
2017 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (film)
The history of how interconnected these two franchises are is fascinating. Ron Gilbert lists both the original ride and the book as inspirations for the first Monkey Island, and the staff of the first (and especially the second) film grew up playing these games and made many references to them. Then Telltale made Tales (heh) at the height of the films’ popularity. Disney acquiring the rights puts question marks on Monkey Island; meanwhile the Pirates series continues.
You know what deserves another comic? Portal. Valve hasn’t really fleshed out the world there because the worlds of Half Life and Team Fortress 2 are bigger, though of course they’re all connected. If you’re a fan of both, you’re probably also fond of Sniper/Caroline <3
(If you don’t know that reference: the voice actor for Sniper, John Patrick Lowrie, is married to the voice actress for GLaDOS/Caroline, Ellen McLain.)
It makes me sad that thinkingwithportals has been gone for a year now, but the mapping community continues to make amazing levels in the Workshop! Both the fandom and the stories really shine in the community maps. Some are just puzzles or brain teasers, others are more linear stories, and still other explore entirely new stories on their own. This game really thrives on its community content.
So if you’re looking to crossover with Portal, check out the comic or try some new levels!
Grease is one of those films that normalized various problems even back in its day, and it hasn’t aged well in that department. We’re not even touching on that.
Everything else? There’s a reason this show continues to play internationally. The setting, the costumes, the costumes, and the incredibly catchy nonsense late 70s songs, the petty fights all around. It’s too catchy!
But primarily, how convenient is it that it’s 1972 in the comics and 1978 when the film came out after seven years as a play? This one’s barely a crossover!
Red and I only have one series in common, and that’s TNG. It’s because she’s old, so old.
If you’re planning your submission to be a Star Trek crossover, you already know all about the world and the influence of this series on all of fandom, so instead I’ll tell you about how I watched it way too late.
I don’t think I ever stopped watching Star Trek since I first started, and that was... in university. Sci-fi isn’t really big where I am so it was rarely on TV even at its height. When I became a teenager and the internet became a thing, I was under the impression that you had to choose a camp-- Star Trek or Star Wars. The difference, it was explained to me, is that Trek is harder sci-fi and Wars is softer sci-fi. So I picked camp Trek because I wanted to be badass. I never watched it because this was the days before streaming, before even Amazon. The local VHS place didn’t stock sci-fi series.
Then Amazon became a thing but I still didn’t buy it because shipping was prohibitively expensive so I only made one order every few months. Besides, I wasn’t sure where to start and I didn’t have anyone to explain the world to me.
That someone turned up in university, a boy my age who was liked by the geeks and who I therefore wanted to impress. He told me that people our age typically have Picard as their Captain, so I asked the group for help and one of them hooked me up with TNG, DS9, and Voyager. I spent the next few years watching it and then watching it again.
My Star Trek craze was kind of fading by the time I met my husband, who, it turned out, had never seen it, because he was too busy being a huge nerd. So the cycle began again, and now that it’s on Netflix? The cycle will probably never end!
I never watched Star Wars. Now I make it a point not to, because what’s fandom without silly wars?*
* Also because being a geek this long, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid knowing the basic plot and references, and really Star Trek is old school morality tales while Star Wars is straight up fantasy monomyth dressed up as sci-fi, they’re different experiences and the latter doesn’t appeal to me as much. But it’s so much more fun to frame it as sheer stubbornness!
Hahahaha I love how this trailer makes the game look like it isn’t 99% walking around in an isometric world! Nice job, GOG.
This game is the Bonus because we know it’s relatively unknown, but also if you have the patience for older games, you should check it out*! Here’s the history of the company that made it from Wikipedia:
“In 1997, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson were working on the Fallout sequel at Interplay. Finishing the initial design for Fallout 2, they were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay about the future team structure. They decide to leave Interplay to form a company that felt more like the old Interplay, producing role-playing video games for PC in 1997. They formed their company on April 1, 1998, calling their new company Troika Games (a Russian word “Тройка” meaning “three of any kind”), since they were the three key Designers/Artists/Coders behind the critically acclaimed Fallout. They initially planned to do games exclusively for one publisher (Sierra Entertainment), but every game was published by a different company. After being unable to secure funding for future projects, they were forced to lay off their staff in late 2004 and later close their doors on February 24, 2005.”
Before this game, the only RPG I had ever played was Arx Fatalis, which is the game that gets pulled out and dusted off every time someone goes why don’t more games have a hunger mechanism? It wasn’t a good choice to be someone’s first RPG, especially since I was coming out of Thief II at that time and was too used to engaging with enemies on my own terms.
Arcanum, being turn-based, turned out to be a much better fit. My first time playing it I persisted until around level 25, which is about halfway through. It was long-winded and I tended more towards sci-fi, so Red gently ushered me towards Fallout, which was convenient because they’re basically the same engine. Although I liked Fallout, I quit it much sooner than Arcanum because I still didn’t know how to minmax to match the difficulty curve.
By the time I played it again and finished it I had changed computers and had to start over, only this time I was older and wiser and less likely to get frustrated with old mechanics I wasn’t familiar with. I’m still picky about RPGs, but I’m still playing Fallout 4 and I’m excited about 5.
* Seriously, if this game seems interesting and you’d like to try it for the competition, hit us up and we’ll send you a gift code for GOG**.
** Yeah, this decision came about as a result of us writing this post and fangirling about how more people need to try this game.***
(This is the point where I asked Red, “By the way, why did you even recommend it to me back then?” And thenceforth this post was hijacked. More below the cut from Red!)
Red here!
Oh my God, I love this game so much. Arcanum was my official introduction to steampunk and gaslamp fantasy, both of which I adore, so this is a game you should definitely check out if you’re into Jules Verne or H. G. Wells or Girl Genius. It does have some standard Tolkien-fantasy aspects (elves vs. dwarves AGAIN, anyone?), but there’s plenty of food for thought (and plenty of shoot-'em-up/hack-and-slash action) too.
For its time, Arcanum delves into some pretty heavy treatment of race and class: player gender doesn’t really matter, but NPCs will react VERY differently to a half-ogre than to a human. Is your Intelligence low? You’ll be somewhat disliked (and pitied), you won’t be able to use much magic or tech, and there will be side quests that aren’t available to you. Is your Beauty high? NPCs will love you and you’ll get away with more. Want to be purely evil? You can do that and not break the game, but you may not like the outcome.
The roles of magic and technology are a huge part of the game’s plot. Balancing the two is possible --you can be a gun-toting wizard, for example-- but difficult, and there's a very real sense that the "old ways" represented by magic are being gradually pushed aside by science and industry. Politics (in the general sense-- no Democrats or Republicans here) plays a surprising role as well. Gnomish conspiracies! Oppression of half-ogres! (That side quest was really disturbing.) Orcs forming labor unions! Unjust imprisonment of dwarves! And you, lucky player, get to have a hand in all of that–and as with Fallout, your choices shape the game ending.
Arcanum isn’t without its faults: most notably it suffers from a big case of Humans Are White (and so is everyone else). Some high-level magic weapons aren’t available unless you’re lucky enough to stumble across their locations (they’re not related to quests), and there are schematics for high-tech weapons that can’t be built (there are plot reasons for this, but still). There’s a huge side-quest involving gods and altars that will literally kill you if you don’t perform the steps in a specific order (luckily walkthroughs exist for this). Most annoyingly, the sequel (Journey to the Center of Arcanum) never got made. Still, it’s dear to my heart, it inspired me to create my own steampunk fantasy universe, and for a game made in the 1990s, it’s got a huge replayability factor. In fact, I think it’s time I paid Arcanum another visit…
*** A disclaimer: This game is old as rocks, so on newer devices you might have to tinker a bit to get it to work. Steam has added it, but the advantage with GOG is that they generally take care of the patching. We’ve tried it on Windows 7 and 8. Either way, totally worth it, especially if isometric turn-based steampunk RPGs are your aesthetic.
