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rionaleonhart) wrote2022-08-13 04:12 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-08-13 04:12 pm
Entry tags:
It's Ya Boy.
The goal of NEO: The World Ends with You is to survive and escape the deadly game you're trapped in. The goal is not to make friends with the in-game shopkeepers. But tell that to my playstyle.
My replay is partway through week two, but there's not really anything spoilery in this entry, largely because I've become fixated on this one shopkeeper and half my notes are about him. I don't understand how this happened.
My mission to befriend Hog Fang shopkeeper Yudai Miki is finally making progress! I think you just can't make friends with shopkeepers until week two, but now he smiles and says '...Welcome back' when I enter the shop.
I just checked Yudai's bio, and apparently 'his friend suggested he take this retail job as a way of improving his lacklustre social skills', which explains the endearing awkwardness that made him catch my attention in the first place. And he's an underground brawler in his spare time, apparently?
Also an interesting line in the bio: 'He is gradually warming up to people thanks to Fret, inspired by his outgoing nature.' Fret, we found you a boyfriend! (Adds a whole new meaning to Yudai asking us '...Wanna try anything on?')
I don't imagine there's any Fret/This One Shopkeeper fanfiction out there. I don't... think I'm going to change that?
'I'm still not used to this whole "customer service" gig,' Yudai just confided in me while I was browsing. I'm alarmed by how invested I've become in this one in-game shopkeeper. He was only programmed in so I could buy clothes from him! But they gave him a few lines of dialogue and included a mechanic that lets him gradually warm up to you, and suddenly I really care about this person who's more a gameplay convenience than a character.
I went through a period of fascination with the shopkeepers in the first game, come to think of it. My favourites (other than the Don, who goes without saying) were the guy who becomes increasingly gay for you if you buy a lot from his shop, the guy who becomes increasingly convinced that you're gay for him if you eat a lot at his restaurant, and the woman working at the extremely high-end shop, who's at first bewildered and then increasingly fascinated by this teenager who keeps wandering in and dropping incomprehensible amounts of money on things.
Rindo feels slightly unusual to me, as a character who's portrayed as introverted and introspective but not especially smart. Sort of the opposite of Zidane of Final Fantasy IX, whose portrayal feels unusual because he's cheerful, confident and extroverted while also being intelligent. They're traits that can easily go together in real life, but I feel fiction often correlates introversion very strongly with intelligence.
Kariya: How's the search going? Swimmingly, I imagine.
Fret: More like drowningly.
The localisation team so clearly had a great time with this game. It makes me smile.
I always feel slightly bad when Fret goes 'man, I'm starving!' at the café and then I just force-feed everyone six cups of coffee. NO FOOD. ONLY COFFEE. You'll thank me when you see your defence stat.
My replay is partway through week two, but there's not really anything spoilery in this entry, largely because I've become fixated on this one shopkeeper and half my notes are about him. I don't understand how this happened.
My mission to befriend Hog Fang shopkeeper Yudai Miki is finally making progress! I think you just can't make friends with shopkeepers until week two, but now he smiles and says '...Welcome back' when I enter the shop.
I just checked Yudai's bio, and apparently 'his friend suggested he take this retail job as a way of improving his lacklustre social skills', which explains the endearing awkwardness that made him catch my attention in the first place. And he's an underground brawler in his spare time, apparently?
Also an interesting line in the bio: 'He is gradually warming up to people thanks to Fret, inspired by his outgoing nature.' Fret, we found you a boyfriend! (Adds a whole new meaning to Yudai asking us '...Wanna try anything on?')
I don't imagine there's any Fret/This One Shopkeeper fanfiction out there. I don't... think I'm going to change that?
'I'm still not used to this whole "customer service" gig,' Yudai just confided in me while I was browsing. I'm alarmed by how invested I've become in this one in-game shopkeeper. He was only programmed in so I could buy clothes from him! But they gave him a few lines of dialogue and included a mechanic that lets him gradually warm up to you, and suddenly I really care about this person who's more a gameplay convenience than a character.
I went through a period of fascination with the shopkeepers in the first game, come to think of it. My favourites (other than the Don, who goes without saying) were the guy who becomes increasingly gay for you if you buy a lot from his shop, the guy who becomes increasingly convinced that you're gay for him if you eat a lot at his restaurant, and the woman working at the extremely high-end shop, who's at first bewildered and then increasingly fascinated by this teenager who keeps wandering in and dropping incomprehensible amounts of money on things.
Rindo feels slightly unusual to me, as a character who's portrayed as introverted and introspective but not especially smart. Sort of the opposite of Zidane of Final Fantasy IX, whose portrayal feels unusual because he's cheerful, confident and extroverted while also being intelligent. They're traits that can easily go together in real life, but I feel fiction often correlates introversion very strongly with intelligence.
Kariya: How's the search going? Swimmingly, I imagine.
Fret: More like drowningly.
The localisation team so clearly had a great time with this game. It makes me smile.
I always feel slightly bad when Fret goes 'man, I'm starving!' at the café and then I just force-feed everyone six cups of coffee. NO FOOD. ONLY COFFEE. You'll thank me when you see your defence stat.
no subject
Cute! I love that Fret is helping, however inadvertently, this shopkeeper-cum-brawler to open up his world. I could ship this. If you were to write fic of these two, I have no doubts I would read it immediately.
So many stores in videogames either don't have shopkeepers at all, or all have what feels to be the same uncharacterized shopkeeper in every store (looking at you, Pokemon! where no matter which Pokemart in the region you're shopping from, every shopkeeper looks the same and says the same darn thing!). Giving shopkeepers their own dialogue, dress sense, and characterization can do a lot for a game's overall personality, and for me it's a huge part of why both TWEWY games ooze style at every turn. The world of the games feel lived-in, real. Shibuya isn't just a funky background, it's a city we might as well be a part of, it interacts with us as if it were a player of the same game. It's so good.
I always feel slightly bad when Fret goes 'man, I'm starving!' at the café and then I just force-feed everyone six cups of coffee. NO FOOD. ONLY COFFEE. You'll thank me when you see your defence stat.
We had the cast eat some truly unholy meals on our playthrough. So many alligators-on-platters from SBY BBQ.