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lenticular

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    gently deranged

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  1. I don't think it's a particularly good term even if didn't have all of its negative baggage, for two main reasons. The first is that there are a lot of different types of games beyond just video games. There are board games, card games, sports games, casino games, role-playing games, and so on. Each of which has its own communities and subcultures and each of which tends to use the unqualified terms "game" and "gaming" to refer to their particular niche. And while it is true that the exact term "gamer" is mostly (though not exclusively) used for people who play video games, that sort of usage is highly volatile. So if we want a term that unambiguously refers to people who play video games, then we need something more specific. The second is that I have a bit of a personal distaste for the use of agent nouns when referring to hobbies. Just as I won't call myself a gamer, I also don't say that I'm a "reader" because I read a lot of books, or a "puzzler" because I enjoy jigsaw puzzles. I am much happier thinking about hobbies as something that I do and not something that I am. If we frame things as "I am a gamer" then that feels like it invites toxic identity politics in a way that "I enjoy playing video games" doesn't. Though, honestly, both of those reasons are secondary, and the main reason I don't like it is the baggage its picked up and the sort of people who use it most often. If it was used neutrally by decent and reasonable people, then I'd get over myself and accept that sometimes language moves in ways that I don't like. But as is, the fact that I already dislike the term makes it much easier for me to want to completely throw it on the scrapheap. I now return you from "unpopular linguistics opinions" to your regularly scheduled "unpopular video game opinions".
  2. My general rule of thumb is that anyone who uses the term "gamer" without irony or scorn immediately gets a deeply suspicious side-eye at the very least.
  3. There definitely is a risk, in this sort of hypothetical conversation, to imagine the best possible version of how things might have played out, whereas the actual reality would have been significantly crapper. If actual real IS and actual real Nintendo had done this in actual real 2004, then I don't doubt that what they would have come up with would make me cringe and rage in equal measure. But! I'm also pretty sure that, had I played this version of SacSto back in the day, I absolutely would have latched onto this version of Lyon, even if she was terribly written. I can be pretty confident in saying this, because I absolutely did latch onto Heather just a few years later in Radiant Dawn, and she is also terribly written. I think it would also help that Lyon is generally supposed to be more of a tragic figure than an outright villain. Lyon's-body-controlled-by-Fomortis is definitely a villain, but (from memory, and it's been a while since I played) actual Lyon himself never was. You could say that he was stupid, and I wouldn't argue with you, but I don't think it would have come across as "being gay made her stupid". Though, again, it's hard to say when we're working so deep into hypotheticals. But I will say that personally, 2004 me would have found "queer girl has a crush on her straight best friend and makes an ass out of herself" extremely relatable. And yes, I do acknowledge that I would have been in an extreme minority there among Fire Emblem's 2004 audience. I don't think this necessarily has to be the case. I'm imagining it less as "I was almost queen" and more as "I could never have been queen" (that is, it was an absolute agnatic succession system rather than just a male-preference system). And also less as "I want to slightly tweak the system so it benefits me" and more "I want to completely tear up the system and replace it with something else". But again, we're knee-deep in hypotheticals, so it's easy to imagine good implementations and terrible implementations. The devil's in the details, and all that.
  4. It depends on how much gets changed. Consider Lyon, for example. If you made Lyon female but kept everything else the same so she was still secretly in love with Eirika and jealous of Ephraim, then that's a pretty interesting change. Queer characters are more common in games now, but for a 2004 game published by Nintendo that would have been a big deal. And the whole "I always loved you but never felt I could tell you" thing comes across very differently when there are conflicting sexualities involved. My queer ass would definitely find this version of female Lyon much more compelling than the actual Lyon that we got. On the other hand, if you do change female Lyon to be in love with Ephraim but jealous of Eirika, then I don't find that particularly interesting. Maybe it alters the dynamic of Eirika giving away the Sacred Stone a little bit, but probably not significantly. Female Ashnard is potentially an interesting one. For starters, there's all the stuff with Almedha and their kid, which I think would come across very differently if Ashnard was the one who actually got pregnant and gave birth. That would imply a much greater degree of commitment than the male Ashnard ever gave to his child. Both the willingness to have the child in the first place, then the willingness to completely give him up after he turns out not to have any laguz abilities. I think there's also extra potential for female Ashnard, if you're willing to make a few changes or additions. Change things so that female-Ashnard was actually the first-born child of the previous Daein king but wasn't heir because agnatic succession sucks, and I think that's suddenly a much more compelling character. (Related aside: In this scenario, if we had male Almedha and his role in Radiant Dawn was kept the same, then I suspect he'd be a particularly hated character. I mean, it's not as if actual Almedha is beloved, but if we took all her character traits and personality and put them on a male character, then I don't see people reacting at all well.)
  5. Do you have any examples of games that do this well? I don't think I've ever come across a system that works quite like this, and I'd be interested to see how it works out in practice.
  6. I don't think that really works, though, because it assumes that everyone wants the same level of challenge from their game. Whereas just for myself, I want the challenge set radically different depending on my mood and on the game. Sometimes I just want to have a fun romp with no challenge at all, if I'm just playing for the story or for the power fantasy. But other times I want a difficult challenge that I can really sink my teeth into. I find adaptive difficulty particularly annoying if the game decides that it ought to be either easier or harder than what I'm looking for.
  7. Shadow Dragon -- Obvious choices: Caeda, Kris. Off-beat choices: Jagen, Gotoh, Nagi. Gaiden/SoV -- Obvious choice: Alm. Off-beat choices: The Whitewings (all in one ring), Mycen, Zeke Genealogy/Thracia/Binding Blade -- I've not played them, so no opinions Blazing Blade -- Obvious choice: Eliwood. Offbeat choices: Nils/Ninian, Pent, Merlinus, Mark Sacred Stones -- Obvious choice: Ephraim. Offbeat choices: Myrrh, Seth Path of Radiance -- Obvious choice: Elincia. Offbeat choices: Titania, Reyson, Mist, Ranulf Radiant Dawn -- Obvious choices: Sothe, Tibarn. Offbeat choices: Kurthnaga, Black Knight, Skrimir, Pelleas Awakening -- Obvious choices: None. They've all been taken already. Offbeat choices: Frederick, Tharja, Morgan, Lissa. Fates -- Obvious choices: Azura, Takumi (or any other royal, really). Offbeat choices: Jakob/Felicia, Kana. Three Houses -- Obvious choice: Rhea. Offbeat choices: Seteth, Sothis, Shez. (Not including the gender-flipped versions of characters that we already have, which are super obvious choices if they're allowed.) So I'm having two final lists: The boring list: Caeda, Alm, Eliwood, Ephraim, Elincia, Tibarn, Lissa, Azura, Rhea. The silly list: Gotoh, The Whitewings, Merlinus, Myrrh, Reyson, Pelleas, Lissa, Jakob+Felicia, Sothis. (Optional addition: move Merlinus to be the Binding Blade representative, and then Blazing Blade can have Mark instead.)
  8. The weirdest part to me is that, despite not having settled there, they have a detailed map of its shoreline. It's not just a vague blob with "HIC SUNT DRACONES" written (unusually accurately) on it. They have inlets and outlying islands and assorted squiggly bits, so they've clearly either boated around it or flown over it. (I do dispute the idea that Fire Emblem worlds have an aversion to boats, though. I can think of prominent boat maps in SacSto, PoR, SoV, TH, and Fates, and that's before we even get to the ridiculous broken scale of the navy in Awakening that makes the Battle of Lepanto look like a kid playing in a bathtub.)
  9. I'm the opposite. I'm more likely to just let a death go in the early game, when I'm most likely to be using people I've not invested in and would be replacing soon anyway. By late game, I'm usually only using characters I've grown attached to. That wasn't really my thinking though. Rather, I think it's important with this sort of things to set expectations early. This is something that I've seen given as writing advice and have also observed for myself in things that I read, watch and play. If I go into a work expecting one thing but then what I get is something completely different, I'll often be disappointed, even if the thing I get is something that I would otherwise have liked. So it's important for the start of a work to accurately represent what it's going to be like going forward, which is why I wanted to have an early death. If it's clear from the start that characters dying is on the table, then it's much less likely to upset people. Which isn't to say that you can't play around with this and subvert expectations, because you absolutely can. Sometimes there is a strength to having a death come completely out of nowhere. But I think it's the sort of thing that's best done sparingly and deliberately. That's completely fair, for sure, and may be a better way of doing things. Another advantage of doing it that way is that you get more time to get to know the character first, so his death would hit harder. (Though that does mean that you actually need to make the effort of giving him a character worth caring about, but since this is a hypothetical adaptation only, that can be Someone Else's Problem.) You could even have Mercedes and the Death Knight meeting up and talking, her maybe getting through to him a bit, and then Dimitri bursts in and ruins that. Just to make the whole thing as utterly catastrophic as it possibly could be.
  10. Nope, total coincidence. I haven't engaged with any of the FE adaptations beyond the occasional snippets that get posted on here like this one. Well, I say total coincidence, but it might just be that he's an obvious choice. Killing off one of the Ram villagers is such an easy choice, and I literally can't remember anything about Kliff's characterisation or personality so he's so easy to do without. Yeah, that's entirely fair. I'm not sure who I would have die instead, though. Ingrid would be the obvious one, but meh. Maybe have Edelgard kill both her and Sylvain at the Holy Tomb, to really pile on the angst. Or Gilbert could work too, I guess, but that would cut off an interesting side-plot of his relationship with Annette. I suppose another option would be to just kill of Dimitri at the end and make the whole thing into a full-on tragedy. He finally heals enough to be willing to offer forgiveness to Edelgard, but she uses that to also strike him down with her dying breath? It could work, though it would be pretty dark overall.
  11. Time to do a couple more. First up, Shadows of Valentia. My first death will be Kliff. I think that having one of the Ram Gang die early on would help establish the tone we're working with and really make it clear that this is the sort of story where characters die. I chose Kliff because I think he's the least interesting of the bunch, so we're losing the least by offing him. I considered having him die in the Thieve's Shrine, but I think that instead I'm going to have him killed by Slayde in the prologue. Having Slayde literally killing a young child really sets him up as a detestable villain for the first arc of the story. The second death will be Saber, killed by Grieth, sacrificing himself to save Celica. This would be his first truly heroic act, proving that he really is a scoundrel with a heart of gold after all. It would also strip Celica of the guy who has been an adviser and protector to her. For the third death, I'm really tempted to say that Celica's death should actually stick in this hypothetical adaptation, but I read romance novels and can't quite bring myself to break up the love story. So instead, the goal is going to be to provide a weighty enough death that it seems plausible that we actually could kill of Celica, so the fake-out death feels more earned and less cheap. So this death goes to whichever secondary character in Alm's party got the most character development. Clive would probably be the obvious choice, but I think that in my adaptation, I'd probably increase Clair's role in the story just so I could kill her off. I think I'd have Nuibaba kill her, just in terms of timing. I want the deaths reasonably spread out so that by the time Celica dies, it's been a decent while since the last death, so it seems plausible that it could be time for another one. Next, it's time for Three Houses. Which is easier to do a cop-out version of, but I'm going to try playing it straight. I think that Azure Moon would make the best standalone story, so we're going to go with that. Most of Part 1 passes without incident and without it ever really looking as if anyone is going to die. Yeah, there are some fight scenes but they go well for the protagonists. And yeah, the Death Knight is scary, but nobody ever actually fights against him, so there's no real sense of danger. This lasts right up until the Holy Tomb when things suddenly get very real very fast. My choice for first death is going to be Sylvain, because this is going to be a Dimitri Must Suffer story, and what better way to make him suffer than killing off one of his childhood friends? I went back and forth over whether this should be Sylvain or Ingrid and the choice was pretty much just a coin flip between them (Felix is safe because he needs to be around for Rodrigue's death later). Obviously, he gets killed by Edelgard. And it happens in such a way that wasn't really Dimitri's fault but is something that he could plausibly blame himself for anyway. The second death is going to be Dedue, because that's basically canon. The adaptation never bothered to do his paralogue, so he dies busting Dimitri out of jail during the timeskip. My third death is going to be Catherine, and this one is absolutely going to be Dimitri's fault. I want her to die early in Part 2 and I want the Death Knight to kill her, so we'd have to reorganise things a bit so that can happen. That shouldn't be too hard, though. He can appear in either Randolph's or Ladislava's chapter. Dimitri goes full on boar prince and goes after the Death Knight, even though he's obviously outmatched. Catherine has to chase after him and fight the Death Knight herself. Which is going to be a big epic fight scene because I'm having Catherine and DK both have their storyline strength rather than their gameplay strength. But ultimately, Dimitri manages to get his strongest ally killed. Basically, the whole idea here is to really use the deaths to make Dimitri suffer so that his descent into madness feels justified and understandable. And then his ultimately starting to heal from it feels more cathartic.
  12. For Radiant Dawn: Nolan, around about I-2 or I-3. The Dawn Brigade are supposed to be the underdogs who are vastly outnumbered and outpowered, so it wouldn't feel right for them to escape through the early chapters unscathed. As the (seemingly) oldest and most experienced of them, Nolan seems like the obvious casualty, and having him die could really help bring home the gravity of their situation to Edward and Leonardo. Geoffrey, in or shortly after II-3. As a Ludveck fangirl, I want his rebellion to have teeth. The way I'm picturing it, he realises that they've been sent on a wild goose chase and is eager to try to rush to get back to defend Elincia, but this haste leads to carelessness that gets him killed. Would also lead to a rollercoaster of emotions for Elincia as she manages to survive II-E and keep Lucia alive, only to learn afterwards that Geoffrey died. Naesala, in IV-E(1). Partly because the Tower needs to feel actually dangerous, and killing off a laguz royal would manage that. But it would also give him a proper redemption arc. Let him sacrifice himself to save someone else (maybe Tibarn? Or Leanne?) during the fight against Lekain, and then have everyone find the blood pact afterwards. (The Black Knight is technically playable and would die as well, obviously, but that doesn't really count.)
  13. Any game that ends with some variant of "and so the entire continent was united into a single empire, and this was a good thing".
  14. The monetisation of Heroes. Beyond that, I've always found the implications of the Blood Pact to be particularly horrifying. Just the idea that a monarch or ruler is able to literally sign away the lives of everyone in their country is messed up. Also: every single map with rout as the victory condition that includes enemy healers with no offensive capabilities. Storyline warcrimes are bad enough, but forcing the player to be complicit in them through gameplay is somehow worse.
  15. I want to believe, but I don't think that I do. Given that neither Chimera Squad nor Midnight Suns were particularly commercially successful, it's far too easy to imagine the suits at Take-Two deciding that turn based tactics games just don't sell. Add onto that Jake Solomon having left the company last year, and the way that Civ seems to be moving more and more towards the endless DLC model, and it just doesn't paint a very rosy picture. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong! And I do acknowledge that I'm a pessimist by nature, so I'm more likely to see the glass half empty, but it just doesn't look good to me.
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