lenticular

Fire Emblem: Fates: I've tried multiple times to get into this, tried approaching the game different ways, focused on different systems, done everything I can to try to find the fun, and I just can't. I don't like the game mechanics, the map design, the story, the characters, the graphics, or the UI. 1-2 range staves are great, and I love the concept of the opera house, but that's far from enough to make up for all the stuff I don't like. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: This was the reason I bought my Switch in the first place. I'd heard so many people talk about it in such glowing terms and it sounded amazing. And then I played it and I just fond it boring. It was as if I was playing a completely different game to everyone else. I wanted to play the great game that everyone else was talking about, but instead I got this? Nothing about this game worked for me. Civilization: Beyond Earth: A spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri? Yes please! Oh man, I was so excited for this. And then I actually played it. There was none of the personality or worldbuilding of SMAC, and the gameplay was bland and generic 4X stuff. It wasn't a bad game, necessarily, just a completely forgettable one. Guild Wars 2: I played the original Guild Wars so damn much, and I loved pretty much everything about it. And then the sequel came out. And I played it a fair bit, and there were some things that I did quite like about it, but the more I played, the less fun I had. So many of the things that I enjoyed in the original were gone, and replaced with a cash shop and grindy gameplay. Thinking about it too much mostly just makes me sad. Pokémon Sword and Shield: I thought that most of the fan outrage over this one prior to release was completely misplaced. I still think that cutting back on the number of Pokémon available is actually a good idea, and the graphics never bothered me personally. They weren't great, but they were fine. So I was all ready to go into this and have a great time with it, just so I could prove the nay-sayers wrong. But then I played it, and didn't care for it. It had all the linearity of the 3DS games, but without any of the story to compensate for it. And its online features were just a mess. Half of them were locked behind a paywall, and the other half just didn't work reliably.

It would depend a lot on the person. Are they happy playing older games with outdated graphics? Do they have experience with other TRPGs or turn-based tactics games? How much do they value story in games? Are they looking for a challenge? And so on. But if I had to pick just one game as a generic recommendation to any and all first time players, I'd probably say Awakening. It does most things at least competently, doesn't have any of the polarising elements of Fates or Three Houses, can be made easy or hard depending on taste, and is a decidedly modern game in terms of design and UI sensibilities.

Why this in particular? I don't see the motivation for it, either in terms of gameplay or story.

I felt similarly about Discovery, with the big difference being that I didn't even get through the full first season before giving up on it. I don't like to say what the true essence or spirit of a franchise is, since I'm sure lots of different people watch Star Trek for different reasons, but I do feel comfortable saying that Discovery didn't match up with my personal tastes or what I enjoy about Star Trek. On the other hand, I thought that Picard was OK. Not great, but good enough for me to get through the first season and plan to watch the second season when that comes out. And I do very much enjoy Lower Decks. For all that it's first and foremost a comedy, it certainly has moments where it wears its Star Trek heritage unabashedly.

Obvious answer is obvious: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I mean, they were commercial flops, very few people bought them (relatively speaking) but I don't think it's particularly controverial around these parts to say that they're actually pretty good. Not as bad as most people think: Star Trek: Enterprise and the original ending to Mass Effect 3. I'm not going to claim that either of these are amazing, but I don't think that they're nearly as bad as the general perception seems to be. For Enterprise, yeah, it was subject to a crapton of network interference and horny fanservice, but if you can manage to look past that, there's a decent Star Trek series trying to get out. For ME3, I was quite content to have an edning that left things fairly vague rather than trying to tie everything up in a bow. The relationship between organic and synthetic life had been a big theme of the series since the start too, so I don't think it was bad to ask the player "based on everything you've seen, what is your personal take on this issue?" But then it turns out I was one of only 17 people on the planet who didn't hate it. Famous authors, less famous books: Zodiac by Neal Stephenson, Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. I don't think that these are especially obscure or especially disliked, but they're certainly nowhere near as acclaimed as their authors' most famous works. And they are my favourites by their respective authors (at least, out of the ones I have read; I'm certainly not going to claim to have read everything Asimov and Le Guin ever wrote). So damn many games by indie and mid-sized developers: With occasional exceptions, indie games just don't end up being seen by huge audiences, and some of them have great stories. To stop myself from being here forever, let's say Analogue: A Hate Story, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Longest Journey series, 80 Days, Black Closet, Growing Up, Never Alone, Gone Home... OK, maybe not all of those go so far as being "great" stories, but I'm fairly sure I enjoyed all of them more than their acclaim might suggest.

6/10. More likely than not, but I wouldn't be shocked if she doesn't make it. Yes, she's popular, but I don't think that she's so overwhelmingly popular that the devs are going to see her as a must-include. I don't think that anyone in Three Houses (except for the house leaders) is that popular, honestly. I can only imagine that she'll be a character who they'll at least seriously think about including, but I could easily see her falling by the wayside in the name of balance of gender/house/social class/etc.

I give Dedue a 4/10. Really, the only thing he has going for him is that he's Dimitri's retainer. Other than that, he's not particularly popular, not particularly plot relevant, doesn't have a relic or personal weapon, and has a main class (armor/axe) that doesn't offer anything unique given that Edelgard exists. The real question here is, do we think that the retainers will be automatically included just for being retainers? I think probably not, though I wouldn't be surprised if they do go that way.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. The old lie has been repeated by many cultures across many time periods. I don't think that it makes sense to single out any one of them over others as the source of that character.

I'm with @Dark Holy Elf here. I think this is an interesting idea and would have had definite advantages, but I'm not sure that I like it. In my case, I think I'm mostly concerned with the implications that it would have for Rhea's character. Rhea certainly has some moments that are fairly morally indefensible, but I think that for the most part, she still manages to come across as at least moderately sympathetic. Her worst moments (eg, burning down Fhirdiad) happen in times of great stress when she is driven to the edge of madness, if not over the edge. If you add "literally tortures children, in cold blood, for her own personal gains" to her crimes, then that removes any sense of moral ambiguity from her character and just makes her an unambiguous villain.

It's not so much that I'm actively trying to reduce Edelgard to being a tragic pawn. I don't have an agenda that I'm twisting the story to try to match. That's just how I see her character. Is that an unusual or minority interpretation? Quite possibly. But if the authorial intent was that I should be focusing on the different ideologies of the three house leaders, then I have to say that the story failed to match that intent, at least for me. Because that's just not what I mostly see. I would largely agree with this. There's just too much piled onto Edelgard as a character. She's the evil villain bent on conquest. She's the glorious hero ushering the continent into a new age. She's the tragic figure with the sad bckstory. She's the schoolgirl with a crush on teacher. And so on. And while I generally think that it's good for characters to be multifaceted, I think that it's hard to properly reconcile all the different sides to Edelgard. She just doesn't quite come together as a coherent whole for me. No matter how I try to make sense of her, there's always some piece of her that just doesn't quite fit properly. I'll readily admit that my own prefered "naive victim" interpretation misses out on parts of her character, but I don't think there's any other interpretation that is completely satisfying. Although. Thinking about this further, one thing that I do like about Edelgard's tragic backstory is the parallel that it creates between her and Rhea. You have these two women, each of whom had a traumatic childhood, and each of whom responds by trying to fix the world, but does so in a way that can brook no opposition, each becoming autocrats. I find this compelling, and wouldn't want to lose it. So overall: I don't know. Writing good stories is hard.

Meh. Fates is a decent game. Three Houses is a decent game. Both games were well received. Three Houses has a Metacritic score of 89 and a user score of 8.8. Fates: Conquest has an 87 and 8.0. In that sense, they are roughly about as good as each other. Neither one of them is anywhere close to the pantheon of truly terrible video games nor anywhere close to being an industry-defining masterwork. Twenty years from now, both of them will be little more than a footnote in gaming history. If Fire Emblem is still around twenty years from now, they'll just be two more entries in the series. We're all going to have our personal preferences, of course. Some people will love Fates and hate Three Houses, some will be the other way around, some will love both, and some won't like either of them. But that's got a lot more to do with personal preferences and taste than it has to do with the objective quality of the games. I could write essays talking about the things that I enjoy about Three Houses and the things that I dislike about Fates, but what's the point? Would anyone actually care? Would it actually change anyone's mind? And more to the point, why would I even want to try to change anyone's mind? It's perfectly fine if not everyone in the fandom likes exactly the same things.

Be careful of trying to play on a gaming laptop from bed. I find that gaming laptops tend to run quite hot when gaming (or doing anything else that's processor intensive), so it's usually best to sit them on a table when you're looking to play. If you have them literally sitting on your lap then they can get quite uncomfortable, and if you just rest them on sheets or blankets then that can blcok some of the airflow around them and make them get even hotter. At the very least, I'd recommend also investing in a laptop cooling tray (aka, laptop cooling pad or laptop cooling stand), though even with one, the experience still might not be what you hope for.

I think that this right here is probably the root of our disagreement. I've now written and the deleted multiple continuations to this paragraph, because I'm finding it hard to express my feelings about meritocracy in general and Edelgard's meritocracy in particular without straying further into real world politics than is appropriate for this forum. So instead, I will just say that I am not convinced that Edelgard's reforms would do anything to meaningfully address Fódlan's inequality problems, and acknowledge that if you are more optimistic about their efficacy then I can certainly see how that would lead to a substantial different interpretation of the story and her character. (And for the sake of clarity, I also don't think that the status quo nobility system is good or desirable. I think it's pretty terrible. I just don't see Edelgard's system as being better.)

I said no and no, though Fates is certainly a lot closer than Three Houses. I think that the big thing that really stops me from thinking of Fates as being two full games is the story. Even putting aside the quality of the writing, I don't think that either Birthright or Conquest are really trying to tell a complete story that stands alone as a coherent whole. The three routes of Fates are just three parts of a larger whole. There also is still a lot of content that's reused between Birthright and Conquest. Repeated characters (eg Silas, Kaze, Jacob; about a third of all characters on a given route in total) and therefore also the repeated classes that they carry. Also repeated maps like Notre Sagesse and Fort Dragonfall. And even just the fact that the two games use exactly the same mechanics. Fire Emblem games are always mechanically similar, but they also typically all introduce their own mechanical twists which is a part of the value. Overall, I'd say that Birthright and Conquest combine to make about one and a half full games. Which is fair enough, since that's what they charged for them (at least until the e-shop closes, at which point they'll be much worse value). Three Houses, on the other hand, isn't even close.

Yeah, I also very much doubt that it was the story they were trying to tell. But on the spectrum from "death of the author" to "word of god", I generally tend to lie much closer to the former.

I'm not sure that we can really say that the desire for meritocracy is entirely Edelgard's idea. It is very much something that would have benefited the Agarthans as well. A complete overthrow of the existing social order and replacing it with something new would create a lot of chaos that the Agarthans could exploit. Furthermore, a meritocracy would make it much easier for them to infiltrate into high office. If the system is explicitly designed so that someone can come out of nowhere and be given a position of power and responsibility based purely on their abilities, then that's fantastic for the Agarthans. It's far easier for them to do that than it is for them to kidnap, kill and replace an existing luminary, and then have to deal with people suspicious of the sudden change of behaviour. Why do that if they can just have some random person come out of nowhere and be promoted purely based on their talent? (It is questionable as to whether they would be able to walk into such positions quite so easily, but they are certainly arrogant enough to believe that they would.) A meritocracy would also severly blunt the power of the nobility. A society which doesn't have power concentrated in a small number of institutions and individuals (nobility, the church) is one that has few people who can meaningfully resist when the Agarthans either infiltrate the government or launch a full on invasion. This is doubly so in a world where Crests exist. It is absolutely bad for the Agarthans for Crests to persist, and breaking the nobility is the best way to ensure that they don't. Finally, I'd say that I don't think that Edelgard's implementation of meritocracy was at all successful, and that it shows evidence that she didn't understand the concept particularly well. Based on various different endings, she gives important offices of state to people who are a. nobles and b. her school friends. I mean, Caspar is appointed Minister of Military Affairs, which is a borderline absurdity. He shows no particularly strong grasp of tactics or strategy, is notably rash, and has a weakness in Authority? How could a man like that be put in charge of the entire military in a truly meritocratic society? Edelgard's reforms are not the reforms of someone who has thought deeply about and is utterly committed to the concept of a meritocracy. Notably, she also doesn't give any sort of position in government or civil service to Dorothea, her one school friend who wasn't a noble. Instead, in most of her endings including her paired ending with Edelgard, Dorothea ends up going back to the opera. Which she was trying to get away from by coming to the Officers Academy in the first place. And this despite the fact that, when given a chance in her paired ending with Petra, she proves to be an extremely competent diplomat. No, overall, I am not at all impressed by Edelgard's meritocracy. (I will acknowledge that Manuela ends up in important positions in a couple of her paired endings. But these are her paired ending with Ferdinand, where she marries into the nobility, and her paired ending with Edelgard, which is likely due to nepotism since she's basically the Emperor's closest friend there.) Now, I'm not saying that all this is definitely the case. I don't think there's enough in the text to be able to infer all of this. What I am saying is that I think that this interpretation is at least consistent with what we see in the game: the Agarthans gave Edelgard the idea of a meritocracy because it would benefit them and they believed she would find it an alluring goal, but when she actually achieved the power to implement reform, she really didn't have a firm grasp of exactly what it was she wanted to do. Things are very much confused by throwing Byleth into the mix, since the one inviolable fact of the Three Houses story is that Byleth always wins. Of course, it makes sense that Byleth should always win, both from an out-of-universe and in-universe perspective. Out-of-universe, Byleth always wins because Byleth is the player, and being able to win is an important part of the game. In-universe, Byleth always wins because Byleth carries the personality and the power of Sothis, a literal god. The only route that has Edelgard unambiguously coming out on top of the Agarthans is Crimson Flower, which is the route where Byleth sides with Edelgard. That completely shifts the balance of power. Byleth is the general that can win every single battle due to the ability to see outside of time and know in advance how every tactical decision will play out. Byleth is the soldier who bears the Crest of Flames and can wield the Sword of the Creator. Byleth is the individual who can withstand an assassination attack using extremely powerful dark magic ("the forbidden spell of Zaharas", or however it's spelt). Of course this shifts the balance of power. I'll also add that even in Crimson Flower, it typically isn't Edelgard who finishes off the Agarthans; it's Byleth. Almost all of Byleth's Crimson Flower endings specifically mention the battle against Those Who Slither In The Dark. Other than her paired ending with Byleth, only one of Edelgard's does (that being her paired ending with Lysithea). There isn't really enough evidence in the game to say with any certainty how things would have played out if Byleth hadn't been there. If anything, our best evidence is probably what happens during the five years of the time-skip when Byleth is out of action. At which point, we get a quagmire of a stalemate with no side really making significant progress, which benefits the Agarthans more than it benefits anyone else. I'm not going to claim that as strong evidence, though. The game doesn't show us Edelgard beating the Agarthans or the Agarthans beating Edelgard. It shows us Byleth coming in, completely overthrowing all previous balance of power, and beating everyone. To my way of looking at things, that leaves a huge amount of room for interpretation about how things were and would have been without Byleth.

Yeah, I'd basically forgotten about literally all of that. And I make no apology for having done so. Trying to think too hard about the Agarthans is bad for one's mental health. I don't think it would have been too difficult to establish connections between the Empire and the Church. It's already there, in a way. There's the links between Rhea and the Hresvelgs, Enbarr having been Rhea and co's base of operation during the War of Heroes, Flayn having been born there, all the Empire nobles carrying Saint crests rather than Elite crests, the Empire having been the original nation that Rhea founded with the Kingdom and alliance breaking from it, and so on. It really wouldn't take a lot of rewriting to really push Adrestia as being the most religious of the three polities, which would then make Edelgard's betrayal all the more shocking while also providing that thematic link to tie things together. I think that one of the problems with trying to propose potential fixes for Silver Snow is that there isn't really any single simple fix that would make it really work. It has too many problems so it would take a bigger change to get it in order. That's a fair point. Though, honestly, I mostly ignore all of the epilogue stuff because I think it's all nonsense. Whenever I see "and they all lived happily ever after", my first thought is pretty much always "no, they really didn't". Having them be brushed aside as barely even an after thought is about as believable as "and then Calude single-handedly solved racism" or "and then the system of meritocracy actually worked despite no efforts being made to address equality of access to education". I guess that I mostly think of the epilogues as being told by an unreliable narator, even though there's absolutely no reason to suppose that that was the authorial intent. Just another way to avoid thinking about some of the more nonsensical aspects of the plot. (It also doesn't help that my queer shipper heart is forced to sit through a bunch of heternormative character epilogues, almost all of which I really really want to ignore as hard as I possibly can. I am not incentivised to actually believe in these supposedly happy endings.) Sadly, I've never played (nor heard of) Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and I didn't bother with any of the Spotpass stuff in Awakening (since it all semed fairly ridiculous to me, if I'm being honest), so I can't really comment on either of those examples. I will say that attempts to do that sort of character generally don't work for me, but your mileage may vary. That does at least come across as plausible, but it runs into the problem of having lots of big and important events happen off-screen. There was literally a full blown civil war on the other side of the continent and we didn't get to see any of it, let alone participate in it? Or would you have the player as an active participant in the civil war? I'm not really sure I'm understanding exactly what you're imagining here. One of the big problems with Fire Emblem plots is that they have to be built around the framework of "and we had two dozen pitched battles and won all of them", which isn't exactly a good starting point for a story. Most Fire Emblem games manage to at least do something to shake this up a little (eg, by throwing in a few defend or escape chapters), but Crimson Flower plays it incredibly straight. That really is all that that route is. You have a bunch of pitched battles, and you win all of them.

It's difficult to say for sure, since we don't really know what the succession laws are in the Empire. But given that the crown has stayed in the Hresvelg dynasty for a thousand years, I think it's fairly safe to assume that they are very much set up to only allow inheritance within the family. I also think it's fairly safe to assume that there must be some sort of cousin still alive somewhere, since the quality of royal genealogical records tends to be second only to that of thoroughbred horse breeders. I think the more likely problem is that they end up with multiple people claiming to be Emperor rather than nobody claiming to be Emperor. Though, even then, I could easily see Arundel saying that he will stay on as interim regent during the succession dispute to ensure an orderly transfer of power, but then never actually relinquishing the position. But regardless, one thing that I absolutely don't see is how Hubert would end up on the throne.

I very much agree with this. If the nukes had to be included in the story, I think it would have been better to have the Agarthans use them only as an act of absolute desparation. For instance, imagine that they had been exposed, the location of Shambhala had been discovered, the player's army was closing in, and they were about to be completely destroyed. Their schemes and plots of the past centuries had all come to nought; their methodology of plotting from the shadows had failed. That's the point when they should have lashed out with their nukes. Not only would this be more consistent with their characterisation but it would also have shown that maybe their defeat wasn't quite as imminent as we'd previously thought. The way things actually happened, they didn't really have any obvious motivation for deploying their super weapon at the exact time that they did, it didn't succeed in furthering their goals in any way, and actually only worsened their situation by giving away their hidden location. It didn't make me think they were powerful. It made me think they were incompetent. In a lot of ways, I wish that Crimson Flower were a lot more difficult to access and almost like an Easter egg route, as was apparently the original plan. In that case, I think that Silver Snow could have given more focus to the Black Eagles without it feeling either redundant or at odds with Crimson Flower. I think there was potential for an interesting story in having them betraying their homeland because they found Edelgard's actions unconscionable, and watching them struggle to come to terms with the weight of the decision. Though that might require more and bigger changes than @Jotari was aiming for. I think she does come across as an idiot, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I wouldn't characterise it as arrogance so much as naivete. She doesn't realise quite how thoroughly she is being used. By which I mean, she knows that she's being used, but she thinks that she's savvy enough to walk the tightrope and actually be the one who is using the Agarthans. She isn't. They're playing the game at a higher level than she is. But I think that this is important, because it's the only way for Edelgard to remain as a sympathetic character. If she's been abused, gaslit, and manipulated to become who she is, then she's a tragic villain, someone who could have been a good person, even a hero, but by the circumstances of her life was forced down a dark path. If you get rid of the tragic backstory and just have her be someone who's starting wars and conquering other countries because she thinks that sounds like a real swell idea, then what are you left with? Just another Ashnard? At best? Agree with this. Hubert becoming Emperor doesn't make sense to me, at least not without some pretty major rewriting of characters and lore. I don't see how Hubert would have any claim to the throne, nor the personal power to seize it, nor any particular desire to be Emperor. If Edelgard died but the Empire remained intact as a polity, I think the most likely scenario would be for some distant Hresvelg cousin to be dragged out of the woodwork and put on the throne as another figurehead, similar to how Ionius was.

You might be interested in a thread from a month or two ago about the best unit in the series. Though, given how many different units get mentioned there, I think it shows quite clearly that there isn't any single objective standard for what makes a unit "best", so any list of the most overpowered units in Fire Emblem is going to have a good amount of subjectivity and personal opinion.

I'm not sure what gaming reviews you were reading in the twentieth century, but the ones that I read pretty much all had numerical rankings at the end. I'd say it's more common to see a review without a score now than it was then, honestly. I'm also not sure why you think reviews back then were less professional than they are now. The barrier to entry to print a magazine was much higher than the barrier to entry to put up a website is now, so there was a degree of professionalism baked in. Magazines also didn't have as much incentive towards click bait and sensationalism that modern websites have. By the time someone was reading a review in a magazine, they'd typically already bought it, so there wasn't really a need to be as attention grabbing. Not that there wasn't some garbage journalism back then and not that there isn't some great journalism now, but overall, I just don't see how the level of professionalism has increased. Anyway, back on topic, this is a bit of a cop out answer, but I want Gen 9 to be released when it's ready. Which is to say, I want the game to follow it's own schedule and be given the time that it needs to make it the best it can possibly be. I don't want for there to be a strict deadline based on the needs of the anime, merchandising and marketing, and the game to be released regardless of whether it's done. If that means we don't see a single new Pokémon game until 2028, then so be it. I'm down with that. I'm happy to wait if it means the game is good. People often like to point to a disconnect between game quality and sales figures, and to some extent, that's true. But I generally think that if a game puts out a bad entry, it's more likely to hurt the sales of future games in the series than to hurt its own sales. A lot of people purchase on the strength of the brand, rather than on the strength of reviews. Oh, hey, it's a new Pokémon game. I always enjoy Pokémon games so I'll buy it. If you start putting out multiple substandard titles, then that gradually erodes the value of the brand. People start to remember the bad entries rather than the good ones, so they start being less eager to buy new ones. If people bought SwSh and BDSP but then didn't enjoy them, that might not show up in sales figures until gen 9. That's pretty much where I am right now. I bough Shield and I bought Shining Pearl and I didn't care for either of them. Which is why I want them to really take their time on Gen 9 and produce something great. Because if it feels like they're just churning out yet another mediocre title, then I'll probably not bother.

What the blazes is that Edelgard artwork? Less armour than Dimitri? Iridescent boobplate? Showing bare skin on her thighs? A red heart design on her shoulder pads for Goddess's sake? I mean, it's a reasonable enough character design, but it's a long way removed from anything I could see Edelgard ever wearing. Which does not fill me with confidence that they will be respecting the setting and characters of Three Houses.

Ahh yes. the blessed state of Schrödinger's Direct, where nobody has seen it yet so all our hopes and dreams are simultaneously alive and dead. I don't typically have any hopes or expectations for Nintendo Directs. I like to go in with the attitude that if there's a single announcement that makes me think "oooh, that looks cool! I want to play that!" then it's a good Direct. But this time? Honestly? Despite my better judgement, I am going to be kinda disappointed if there isn't anything Fire Emblem. It just feels like it's time.

Almost certainly, yes. Provided you're playing on normal difficulty. On normal difficulty, you have the option for infinite grinding, and if you are willing to put the time in, then you can just level up enough to trivialise any problem. And if you aren't able to get far enough to have access to auxiliary battles, you can just use the option to withdraw from battle and retain the xp you picked up. The only reason I'm saying "almost certainly" rather than "certainly" is that I'm not sure whether that option is available in the prologue or not. Even if it isn't, I suspect that auto resolving the prologue on normal difficulty should be possible, though. I suppose that the (very slightly) interesting challenge would be to try to complete the game that way with as little grinding as possible. Which I would guess would be most easily achieved with a Byleth/Lord duo build with both of them in some sort of dodgetank setup. With NG+, it would probably be possible to do no grinding autobattle only, though it sounds like something that would get very boring before long.

I'm wary of alleged leaks at the best of times, but doubly so when they're fairly vague. Why say that there's going to be a two in one remake but not say which two games it's going to be? What are the circumstances of this supposed leak that allowed this person to discover that it was a two in one but didn't let them find out which games? And at the same time, they also claim to know that there's going to be a spin-off of some description but absolutely no details at all beyond that. It's not impossible, but it's certainly weird enough to make me sceptical. Even more so than I would have been already.