rionaleonhart | We Will Go Where Our Dreams Come True.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/565578.html

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We Will Go Where Our Dreams Come True.

I invited people on Tumblr to ask me questions about videogames; here are my answers!

As these answers were originally written for an audience that didn't necessarily read my Dreamwidth, I may repeat some sentiments I've already expressed here.

Questions from

th_esaurus:

Hardest game you’ve played?

Probably Celeste! It was worth the struggle. I crawled through the main storyline, inch by inch, with ferocious determination, and then I replayed it three times afterwards because I was so delighted to see how much I'd improved.

A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?

This is a tricky one! On one level, I want to say Final Fantasy VIII. On another, I absolutely don't, because I'm far too emotionally invested in Final Fantasy VIII and I'd be so sad if the voices didn't feel right.

Oh, wait, I know the answer! Umineko: When They Cry. A while ago there was talk of Umineko Gold, a project to give Umineko full English voice acting, which is obviously impossibly ambitious; it's well over a million words long. The project's gone quiet, but I still hope it comes through somehow, because I want to hear Battler sobbing and hyperventilating as everyone around him gets murdered, please.

What game do you never tell people you play?

I, er.

I fall back into actively playing Neopets every few years.

Now that Flash is no longer supported and large portions of the site are unusable, I may have escaped for good, but who knows?

Questions from

simplecoffee:

A popular series/game you just can’t get into no matter how much you try?

I really tried to get into Bioware RPGs. I tried Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Inquisition. I just slide straight off them. I tend to struggle with games where the main character doesn't have a defined personality, so games where you create your own character and choose all their dialogue options don't generally click for me.

(Special addition for Livejournal/Dreamwidth: I feel bad about this because a kind anonymous person who largely shares my tastes once recommended the Dragon Age games to me on here! Anonymous person, I don't know whether you still read this journal, but I still appreciate the recommendation, even if the games didn't click.)

That said, there are some cases, such as Life Is Strange, Oxenfree and Persona 5, where you choose most or all of the protagonist's responses, but the protagonist still feels like an established character with enough of a personality for me to latch on to.

Best soundtrack?

An impossible question! Some of my favourite game soundtracks include Okami, Night in the Woods, Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XV and Bravely Default. I also have to give a special mention to NieR and Chrono Cross, which have soundtracks I love despite never having played the actual game.

Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?

I've dressed up as Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII a few times in a thrown-together outfit (I cut the trim off a Father Christmas hat for the fur trim on his jacket); I wouldn't mind having a more accurate version! I also think Rinoa Heartilly's outfit is very cute, although I don't know if I'd be able to wear it because I'm weird about having my limbs exposed.

I'm a very unadventurous dresser, so it's hard to think of a videogame character's outfit I'd actually wear on a day-to-day basis. Elena Fisher? I'd be willing to wear most of Elena's outfits. Uncharted characters in general tend to wear plain shirts and jeans; I'm up for that.

Which is more important, gameplay or story?

I'm going to move the cursor down to the hidden third option: it's characters!

Of the two, I tend to favour story, and I love a lot of games more on the strength of their story and characters than because of their gameplay. That said, there are games I've hugely enjoyed despite a complete lack of story; Baba Is You comes to mind. It's also really frustrating when you like a game's story and characters but hate the actual gameplay; this was a problem for me with Zanki Zero: Last Beginning.

Questions from

runicmagitek:

Best game you’ve ever played?

This is a tricky one! I can talk all day about the games I love, but they're often not objectively the best games. Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XIII and Zero Time Dilemma, for example, are widely agreed to be a bit of a mess, and yet I love them dearly.

With the criteria 'good story, good gameplay, achieves what it sets out to do and does it very well' on top of 'I really enjoyed it', the best game I've played might be Celeste, Portal II, Horizon Zero Dawn or The Last of Us.

A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet?

I was itching with excitement for Final Fantasy XV; I thought it looked cool even back when it was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and then the marketing increasingly started going 'this is a game about FRIENDSHIP' and I went 'yes!! I want a game about friendship!' I was looking forward to this game for a solid eight years before it was finally released.

It lived up to my hopes! The plot's a disaster, of course, and I can understand why the game wasn't what everyone wanted, but it was exactly what I needed to play. It's an absolute mess, but it's got a lot of heart and it slammed straight into mine. I love these stupid boys.

I wish they'd hug, though.

Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?

The ending of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, where I had to pause and dry my face because I was crying so hard I couldn't see the DS screen.

The final chapter of Ghost Trick on a replay, after which I saw myself in a mirror, went 'wait, why are there bits of tissue all over my face?' and then remembered I'd spent the last twenty minutes mopping up my tears.

The ending of Final Fantasy XV; I wasn't prepared to see my photographs from our adventures next to the credits!

The ending of Umineko: When They Cry, one of the strangest, most intense and most beautiful stories I've ever experienced, after which I couldn't listen to 'Ricordando il passato' without feeling like someone had punched me in the lungs.

The ending of Life Is Strange 2 (I got the 'Redemption' end), where I started sobbing so suddenly and uncontrollably after the timeskip that the cat was staring at me in alarm.

The dance flashback in The Last of Us, Part II, which I'd seen before multiple times in the trailer; I just couldn't handle suddenly seeing it again in the context of everything that came afterwards.

It's been a long time, but I have a strong suspicion I also cried the first time I saw the ending of Final Fantasy X.

Questions from

keltena:

Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?

ALL OF THEM.

In particular, I'd like to see more Final Fantasy XIII crossovers. 'You've all got a clock counting down on your lives, and you have to work out what a god wants you to do, because achieving your mutual goal is bad but failing is worse' is a great way to introduce characters to each other and force them to work together. It could be interesting to see the 13 Sentinels or Persona 4 or Danganronpa characters dealing with that.

Also, while writing that, I had the terrible realisation that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has a large enough cast of teenagers for a Danganronpa game. 13 Sentinels/Danganronpa? I'd read it.

A game you wish your friends knew about?

If I could wave a magic wand and make everyone I know want to play a particular game, it'd probably be Umineko: When They Cry, appropriately enough. I love it so much, it had such an impact on me, but it's a bit of an acquired taste and requires a substantial investment of both time and money, so it's tricky to go around recommending it.

On the more accessible front, Exit/Corners is an in-browser mystery visual novel in the vein of Zero Escape or Your Turn to Die, and it's so high-quality I'm astonished that it's free. It has a grand total of nine fics on AO3, and I feel it deserves a larger fandom! The writing is strong, the plot is entertainingly twisty, Ink is a great protagonist, and it includes the most fleshed-out female character over seventy I've ever seen in a work of fiction.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, meanwhile, is a masterpiece of a videogame that's not nearly as widely known as it should be. If 'traumatised, time-travelling, occasionally amnesiac teenage mech pilots fighting a war they probably can't win' is a concept that appeals to you, pick it up immediately.

Finally (we're still on

keltena's questions):

If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?

A lot of my favourite games would be too dangerous to visit personally, I think! Or I love them on the basis of their characters, and I'd never actually manage to have a conversation with those characters if I spent a day there. Final Fantasy VIII? Good luck talking to Squall Leonhart. Final Fantasy X? Yuna would absolutely talk to me if I approached her, but she's a very private person, so it'd never get beyond surface-level polite conversation about the weather.

Fortunately, I have the perfect answer to this question! I would go to the Pokémon world and admire all the Pokémon and maybe cuddle a Bulbasaur if I'm lucky.

If you have any videogame-related questions of your own, feel free to ask in the comments! It may surprise you to learn this, but I like to talk about videogames.

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I fall back into actively playing Neopets every few years.

I can completely understand that, actually. That stuff's fun!

I tend to struggle with games where the main character doesn't have a defined personality, so games where you create your own character and choose all their dialogue options don't generally click for me.

Oh, interesting. So you need character-driven storytelling, it sounds like.

Fortunately, I have the perfect answer to this question! I would go to the Pokémon world and admire all the Pokémon and maybe cuddle a Bulbasaur if I'm lucky.

Oh man, that would be nice! Like I decided my favorite Pokemon is Mewtwo several years ago, because that's the one I can consistently remember (and the movie Detective Pikachu just proved me right), but I drew a Bulbasaur a few years ago as a gift for my nephew, and those things are cute!

Um, if you could get me to write fic for the storyline of any video game, which one do you think would go best with my writing style?

Bulbasaur is extremely cute and your nephew has good taste in Pokémon.

Ooh, good question! One of the When They Cry games, maybe. I think you'd be good at depicting the steadily escalating paranoid horror of Higurashi. Umineko, meanwhile, has a delightfully shameless, screw-socially-responsible-storytelling approach to the romanticisation of unhealthy relationships and bad coping mechanisms, which you might enjoy!

Oh, those do sound like me!

ooh, i will have to play Exit/Corners sometime! (also will add 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim to my wishlist)

of the genre "eclectic cast of characters thrown into a death game," which game or series is your favorite? (other than Zero Time Dilemma?)

I hope you enjoy Exit/Corners and/or 13 Sentinels, if you do check them out! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Given our shared fandoms, I think there's a good chance they'll be to your taste.

Zero Time Dilemma isn't actually my favourite murder game, although I realise I was being a bit misleading there! I was just going for examples of games that make most people go 'well, obviously this is an objectively bad game' and make me go 'this is wonderful and I love it', as a demonstration of my questionable taste. It is my favourite in the Zero Escape series, though.

My favourite murder game overall is Danganronpa 2. The cases strike just the right balance of complexity, and it contains four of my five favourite Danganronpa characters (Hinata, Komaeda, Koizumi, Kuzuryuu; the fifth is Naegi) and my favourite case (case five). Hinata's actually one of my ten favourite characters of all time, and his suffering in the final trial is top-notch. The minigames are largely dire, but the story is strong enough to make up for it.

Am I right in thinking that your favourite is 999?

yep, 999 is my favorite! i've been tempted to replay it recently even though i have like 3 other games on my to-do list, some of which are themselves death games. another friend of mine recently played 999 for the first time and i got to chat with her about it yesterday, it was great. honestly, 999 is the game i've had the most success with getting friends and family members to play, this friend is like the fifth one (three of whom have played the other ZE games thus far)

i do absolutely love Danganronpa 2's cast though, like a third of that cast are my favorites (Hinata, Komaeda, Kuzuryuu, Gundham, Nanami, Impostor); i do have favorites from the other two games but not as many

I really will need to play Exit/Corners - I saw it nominated for Yuletide but then forgot to play it, thus letting down everyone who thought of me as the Yuletide mod who games. I also would love to see Danganronpa/13 Sentinels as a crossover/fusion kind of thing because that would be interesting. Who's your bet for the mastermind in that setting?

Also, on that note: if you could import any game's cast into a murderteens game (and that cast can't be 13 Sentinels), what would it be and why?

I hope you enjoy Exit/Corners if you do end up playing it! I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.

At the risk of making the crossover slightly too similar to Danganronpa 2, I think it's likely that Juro Izumi is the mastermind and Juro Kurabe doesn't handle it well when he finds out.

Also, on that note: if you could import any game's cast into a murderteens game (and that cast can't be 13 Sentinels), what would it be and why?

It's a bit small for a murderteens game cast, but maybe Final Fantasy XIII? There's a good mixture of character dynamics there, which could be fun. Also potentially fun: the combined casts of all the Persona games I've played.

I almost passed up 13S until I saw your posts about it and MY GOD AM I SO GLAD YOU BLOGGED ABOUT IT because it was AMAZING!!!! Thank you. Also you turned me on to Exit/Corners which was also fantastic, and the dev liked my tweet calling R Nando a "dumb asshole," so.

I'm delighted that you enjoyed 13 Sentinels and Exit/Corners, and that I could have a hand in your decision to play them! They're both great, weird, impressively ambitious games that don't have the audience they deserve. (Also, I'm pleased to hear your wise words reached the developer.)

I LOVE HIM I just also can't deny what he is, tmw Tiana was kinda right all along about him.

I would argue that Mass Effect's protagonist offers quite a bit of characterisation over the games! What you choose is their moral alignment and priorities. Especially in the third game, where your Shepard is just so tired and done.

But I want to play too, what's a question I want to ask...

Oh! What's the worst game you've ever played and why?

Of games I have not played to completion, it's Prison Break: The Conspiracy. Did you know there was a Prison Break videogame? Neither did I, until my housemate bought it for me as a joke. We played maybe twenty minutes and laughed a lot at how weird and awkward the graphics and combat were.

Of games I have played to completion? I don't want to say it's objectively the worst, because I think I'm followed by at least one person who likes it, and, given my dire taste, I know how frustrating it is when people go 'this thing you like is obviously terrible'! But I really didn't like Beyond: Two Souls. I found it largely dull, except when it was presenting rosy depictions of suicide that made me actively angry. Also, the protagonist and the ghost that's haunting her never get to kiss, which is a waste of the concept, frankly.

I feel like I should have done a 'hard mode: no David Cage games' addendum to that, because his body of work is very easy to dislike.

i did not know you who had a tumblr! may i have the url, by any chance? (i tend to follow/unfollow more randomly on that site, since my dashboard gets out of hand PERILOUSLY quickly otherwise, but i'd love to take a peek!)

Now that Flash is no longer supported and large portions of the site are unusable, I may have escaped for good, but who knows?

i haven't logged onto neopets in ages, but i am genuinely sad to hear about this, in a very Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" sort of way. who are the stewards of our neopets trust? update the flash games, ye stewards, lest future generations never know the joys of Meerca Chase...!

re: FFXV: I wish they'd hug, though.

oh my god, yes. the scene during the Last Camping Night? i remember shouting at my TV "JUST FUCKING SAY IT" when Noctis was being all hesitant with his words, with everyone bein' so somber and restrained, and it just killed me, like—it's been a while! i know the world sucks but i would lose my entire mind if i got to be reunited with my friends like that, i would not be able to shut up about how much i loved them—

—but of course, that's not what these characters would do, and not how they are, which is what makes the whole thing work, and i guess leaves fanfic writers like me something to do, so :P

re: Zero Time Dilemma: i was about to say "i have literally never heard of this game, please tell me more," but then i googled and... okay, i did play most of 999, and wow no one told me there was a whole series after that??? i am intrigued??? how standalone are the games, in your opinion? e.g., if i remember very little about 999 besides "charming but also LARGE cast (hence why it's hard for me to remember specifics!), and fun puzzles, and also a lot of scifi ramblings about Ice-9," should i replay 999 first to refresh my memory? or can i just dive right into #2?

I'm rixareth over at Tumblr! I'm not very good at Tumblr, though. I use it maybe once or twice a week, mainly just to promote my fics and reblog fanart that catches my eye.

The ruins of Neopia really are a sad thing! It felt like such a huge, fascinating place to explore when I was a kid.

That last camping scene was devastating. These boys! I got so invested in their relationship.

I love that, rather than one of the games I say are actually good, you expressed interest in one of the games I listed as an example of messy games I love anyway.

The Zero Escape games are fairly loosely connected, but I think they're connected enough for a 999 replay to be worthwhile, especially if you didn't finish it the first time around! However, getting the true ending in 999 is a needlessly obscure process, so I'd recommend following a spoiler-free guide to get the Safe Ending and then the True Ending (which you can't get until you've seen the Safe Ending); StrategyWiki has a list of ending requirements. Fortunately, the other games in the series don't suffer from such frustrating game design.

I love that, rather than one of the games I say are actually good, you expressed interest in one of the games I listed as an example of messy games I love anyway

As a fellow messy-game-lover, I appreciate well-crafted things but my heart kinda goes out to the ambitious hot messes :P

And gosh, okay, yes, now I'm remembering why I never quite finished 999. Went in blind, hit a few bad endings, got miffed... replaying with a guide sounds excellent; I'll give it a shot, thanks!

I would've fallen back into Neopets if I could get back my passwords, lol, no judgement.

I wish they'd hug, though

GOD I WISH THEY'D HUG. It's very entertaining to me how not just the fanworks fandom but like, dudebros who've enjoyed XV, constantly describe the boys as very cuddly? But that's also PROOF THEY SHOULD'VE HUGGED. "You guys... are the best" is such a painful scene to me because everyone's sitting alone and separate.

I love a story about friendship too, so much as I'm not a games person it was probably inevitable I'd love XV. (I also love a story about goofy puns with some kidnapping.) Still, you're one of the only people I've heard who was looking forward to it from Versus and really loved/embraced what it ended up as, mess and all.

They're so cuddly! Why can't they cuddle? (I'm delighted that even dudebros are invested in their friendship.)

I was looking forward to meeting Stella, and I was a little sorry that she wasn't in the final game (not least because it now seems very silly that I have an icon featuring Stella), but I still love what we ended up with. It has its flaws, but I got so passionately invested.

Easiest game you have ever played? The best easy game you have ever played? Not looking for recs at all, obviously.

The easiest game I've ever played is probably Higurashi: When They Cry, which is stretching the definition of 'game'; it's a visual novel with no options. All you have to do is click or press a button to make the next line of text show up on the screen, and save when you want to take a break. (Unless you consider the game to be 'solving the mystery', in which case it isn't easy at all.)

If you let me know the consoles you have access to, any genres or themes you're interested in and any subject matter you'd particularly like to avoid, I can try to come up with some easy games that might appeal!

Oh damn, that sounds delightfully easy.

Thank you v much! 😊 I just have a PC, so my options are maybe a tad limited - I like the whole click and explore genre and enjoyed Gone Home, also like the games where you choose what to say and that's the main point (possibly not a helpful descriptor). I don't really have major things I'd want to avoid - super-gory stuff, giant spiders or tons of spiders at once, or an excess of toilet humour/scatalogical fixation whether humorous or not I'd prefer to avoid.

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We Will Go Where Our Dreams Come True.

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