#hfcb

[anniestilettos]

Love my pinup sisters! ❤️ #anniestilettos #pinup #pinupsisters #hfcbny #hfcb #feelingfabulous💋 #xoxo #anniestilettos

[heart-forge]

thinking about controversial video games under the cut

lots of complaints on forums/reddit (derogatory) complain about Cyberpunk being railroad-y which is honestly the least of its sins (although they do need more ending variety: there's several endings, but they just change where you happen to be standing at the end and not any of the major events, consequences, nor gives you any agency over your character's behaviour in the interim between The End and the Epilogue). CB's issue isn't necessarily that it's railroading you towards a particular ending, but more or less that it's visible to the player that they're being asked to make choices purely to wake them up mid-dialogue.

generally (and esp in games with visuals) the player needs a lot of movement to make their way through the story. so sometimes you get dialogue options just to engage you so you're not mindlessly clicking: the problem is, it then becomes very obvious to the player if you're only asking them to click a 'wake-up' button. CB has a big problem with "no one even really acknowledges that you made a choice or said anything". It's not even like jerks go on game forums to complain about choices not changing things enough: it's literally that when V talks, nobody is listening.

and it's weird and something that should have been baked more in the game oven, as it were (one of cyberpunk's most prominent sins: underbaked in the middle), because like even something as rote as talking to Johnny while things happen around you (Johnny being the Keanu Reeves character, a person who only V can see and interact with) is enough of a wake up and doesn't have any real impact on even the immediate conversation, but frequently instead of doing that or instead of giving you options for how to speak to Johnny, they just have V talk or give you one option to respond. If you do get more than one option, it frequently might lead to identical dialogue as if you'd said nothing at all.

and while I love Keanu's performance as Johnny, I think CDPR almost shot themselves in the foot by making one of their most prominent characters an extremely expensive celebrity. How would they have ever been able to bring Johnny back for DLCs or bonus content, even assuming they had managed to finish the game before release? How could they have afforded that? Johnny isn't a side character. He isn't even a companion character: he's borderline a co-protagonist, so how did they expect to have him persist into the story? That isn't even taking into account the fact that the game just flat out isn't finished by any reasonable metric, so how are they supposed to finish it with a stagnant profit base? Sure they made their money before the returns started rolling in, but who's going to buy it now?

(and that's even assuming they're going to bother to finish the game, which all signs point to big fucking shrug)

[heart-forge]

cyberpunk was so hyped that the moment it was out it felt like we were left with our peen in our hand (that’s the best way to describe the feeling i had tbh)

peen 2 size: big

[heart-forge]

I know you do Not want dozens of messages about the dreaded game but as someone with too many hours in it... I agree with all your initial points (let me specifically say the voice determining pronouns/gender selection is the BANE of my existence) And I know everyone has a hard on for the w_tcher nowadays (I played all 3 too I’m licensed to say this) but the writers still have a penchant for brutalizing women and being as misogynistic as ever, nothing new obviously. There’s one big questline in this game that left me feeling hollow for more than a week and shit in media Never bothers me. It was so excessive and poorly handled. A lot of sloppy writing all around. For bringing this crud into your inbox I offer you my most sincere apologies. You can send me ugly telepathic thoughts in retaliation

Nah it's fine I'll tag it as something and promise that if you don't want to see me dissect a video game then you don't have to. TAG TO BLOCK IS: hfcb. extremely specific so it won't hit anything else, stands for heartforge cyberpunk. also I'll go ahead and shove it under the cut.

And again, for people who are worried I'm just sitting around to dunk on this game, my impression is still: I understand why people would enjoy this, but I'm getting the impression that fan content will forever and ever be more nuanced and genre-savvy in a real way than the original material will ever be.

Okay, full stop, didn't like the witcher that much either. like at the time I found geralt to be very novel in the sense that I always had the impression he was very typical macho hero, which was proven wrong in some ways: enough ways for me to like the story, but the game was kind of....well, agonizingly granular as I'm coming to understand is CDPR's speciality.

I think I made this point on my main but cdpr has been taking prewritten things and adapting them: and believe you me as someone who recently adapted a novel into an IF, it's still a lot of writing, but also take my word for the fact that you have the opportunity to fix a lot of stuff. If something rubs you wrong or if you want to push it further or reel it back you absolutely can, and I agree with your point that CDPR didn't bother with the witcher let alone cb. They could have easily just quietly nixed the "all sorceresses are sexpots because they choose to be because when given a choice all little girls want to grow up to be sexpots, and they all happen to have precisely the same idea of what constitutes a hottie with a body because women are all the same", but they didn't.

The good things about the witcher imo were already kinda there. They didn't invent Ciri or Yenn or Jaskier (frankly imo the show invented Jaskier but that's a different story). CDPr just added things like female characters constantly having their nipples out, an agonizingly in-depth level up screen, a crafting section that was so much work I just never bothered with it.

And I think that's what I'm hitting up against with cb. All the interesting things about cyberpunk as a genre are already there and it's very fun to experience them! I love body mods, I love scanning with your eyes, I love the whole cyber rebel against the world thing, and they did integrate that...but like, I hate how every conversation takes for fucking ever because while I'd normally love to sit and chat, my V can never say anything because I don't think cdpr knew what to do with a blank slate mc. The heist portion with Jackie was one of the best parts of the game so far, because 1) things happened faster, and 2) V got to be angry and scared instead of just kind of cynical and indifferent. There was real momentum and tension: same reason I loved meeting Johnny for the first time in the apt.

Also what was up with them making Kerry gay? Everyone on the TL was going on about bi kerry and I was like fellas aren't we usually very firmly against making gay men bi but then I looked into it and he was bi in the original game. why is he gay now. he's gay because they have two straight ROs and needed two gay ROs because again their understanding of gender and sexuality is about as nuanced as the main page of reddit (which is also a really apt metaphor for a certain aftertaste I'm getting from some of this writing: very you epic le win the internet, sir!).

[rubytgray]

Full group photo! #Heelsforcombatboots #HFCB #DamesforDreams #D4D #CapitalCityDolls #ccd #JaneilBPhotography #allthehashtags @catastrophephotography @wondermomphotography @mskatiemae21 @kait_noir (at Rock The Dock Pub & Grill)

[rubytgray]

Time with my #heelsforcombatbootswashington sisters! #heelsforcombatboots #hfcb #capitalcitydolls #ccd #D4D #DamesforDreams #sisterhood #allthehashtags @wondermomphotography @kait_noir @mskatiemae21 (at Rock The Dock Pub & Grill)