rionaleonhart | Is That A Motherfucking Dragon?

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Is That A Motherfucking Dragon?

Ginger now has a PS5, so I can occasionally invade their room to use it. Therefore, I've bought my first PS5 game!

It's a 2023 Square Enix action RPG, you know, the one everyone's talking about, the one starting with F. Fi... wait, no, sorry, that's not an 'i'. Uh, Forspoken.

I'm really interested to see what I think of this game. I know there were memes about how bad it was, but those memes started well before the game actually came out, which makes me wonder whether there was some sort of 'let's tank this game so developers think games with black/female protagonists don't sell' faction involved.

The last time I saw this level of determination to convince the Internet that a highly anticipated game was an irredeemable failure was with The Last of Us Part II. While there are legitimate reasons not everyone liked that game, I thought the sheer level of vitriol it was met with was undeserved, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it had two female protagonists, one of whom is a lesbian.

Or maybe Forspoken is genuinely bad! Whatever the case, I'm planning to find out firsthand.

I'm only a couple of hours in, but so far it seems fine. I like Frey, our cynical but good-hearted protagonist, and the dialogue is cheesy but fun, which is pretty much what I'd expect from a story about someone from our world going through a magical portal into a fantasy realm. I might need a little more time to get to grips with the battle system, but I'm not finding it frustrating.

The problem with videogame depictions of New York is that, having played Insomniac's excellent Spider-Man games, I just want to start swinging around. I can't believe Frey doesn't have spider powers. This is outrageous.

In an early cutscene, Frey's cat miaowed, and Ginger thought the noise was our actual cat and started trying to soothe him, which delighted me.

I wasn't sure at first about Frey's main companion being a talking bracelet, but then I really thought about it. Given that she can't take the cuff off, and nobody else can hear him speaking to her, Cuff is essentially just an inescapable voice in her head. And I love characters having conflicted relationships with the inescapable voices in their heads. I'm now fully prepared to embrace the talking bracelet, and I hope he and Frey have weird romantic tension.

I also made use of Ginger's PS5 to try out the Final Fantasy XVI demo!

I was a little wary at first, particularly as the trailers had focused so much on spectacle and so little on character. The worldbuilding seemed potentially interesting, but the characters felt slightly generic to me. But then the demo a) gave me a pair of siblings to get emotional about and b) made the protagonist suffer hideously, and I was won over. I'm definitely going to play this game, although I'll probably wait for the price to drop a bit first.

I know a lot of you have been playing Final Fantasy XVI, and I'd be interested to hear your general non-spoilery impressions!

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Yeah, it sounds like a specific extremely online contingent tried to convince everyone that it was terrible. Because they want less diversity and more cishet white male power fantasies,

Yeah, I'm not usually given to conspiracy theories, but one possibility definitely stands out above others when you're faced with 'people won't stop talking about how bad this game is, even though it's not actually out yet and we've only got trailers to go on, so all we really know about it is the basic concept and the fact that the protagonist is a black woman'.

I mean "Review-bombing to make the thing look bad because of politics" is a thing that's known to happen.

Oooo I hope you enjoy FFXVI! My bf and I are slowly chipping away at it (about halfway through, I think?) and we're really loving it. Definitely have criticisms for it, but I haven't been this damn excited about a mainline FF game since... 12? Give or take?? I didn't expect to like Clive this much, either. ALSO YOU CAN PET THE DOG 😭😭😭

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it! I wasn't sure about the trailers, but the game seems to have been well received among people I follow, which feels like a very good sign. And I've seen a lot of people cite Clive as a good point, which is promising; an enjoyable protagonist can make such a difference to a game!

I have not played any of those games so I don't have an opinion (not that that stops some people...) but I am sadly very aware of the phenomenon of a loud contingent of people trying to create a narrative that a game is a failure before it's even come out yet. Sometimes it absolutely is an anti-"wokeness" thing, though I've also seen it happen for other reasons. Before the most recent Monkey Island game came out last year, there was an absurdly vociferous pre-release backlash based on the idea that the art style was bad, even though all we had seen yet were a few still shots. It got to the point where the lead dev had to close comments on his blog and leave social media for a while, because apparently a game not having the exact art style some people think it should have was the greatest injustice in world history and worthy of attacking people like they've committed crimes against humanity.

Though, now that I think about it, some of the still shots people were reacting to did have Black women in them, so maybe the ART STYLE BAAAAD frothing was just a smokescreen for something else.

I'm sorry to hear the developers were attacked over the Return to Monkey Island art style! I've just looked up screenshots, and it looks cute and polished; I can see why it wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but it's clearly an intentional decision that effort went into.

The harassment some people face over unpopular developments in a videogame can be so strange and so awful. One of the lead actresses on The Last of Us Part II got death threats because of actions her character took in the game. I can promise that a) the actress did not make the character do those things, so there's no point attacking her for it, and b) there's no point attacking anyone for it, because the character is fictional and her actions are not real.

Yeah, I heard about the actress being threatened, which is just... so far off the rails I can't even fathom what is happening in people's brains. Any kind of logic, even logic based on a premise of entitlement and/or bigotry, has gone completely out the window at that point.

The Monkey Island thing is particularly absurd as all of the games have had very distinctive graphical styles - it's not like there's one particular style that would say "hey, that's Monkey Island". Even from Secret to LeChuck's Revenge, which are probably the two most similar, there's distinctive design differences.

(Always did love Curse's art the most, though, something even in your icon just seeing art like the clouds makes me happy!).

This also reminds me that I've still not played Return to Monkey Island - it's currently sat in my Steam library!

-timydamonkey

Yup, absolutely. There ceased to be any One True Art Style for the series as soon as there was more than one game in it!

It's not up to the usual level of a big PS exclusive, and the language is one a lot of people like to dog pile bc ~cringe~ (read: young teenager ((girl, ew)) lingo), but the combat system looked really fun and you really cannot trust the internet when the protag is a female CoC.

and the language is one a lot of people like to dog pile bc ~cringe~ (read: young teenager ((girl, ew)) lingo)

I feel I've been permanently inoculated against ~cringe~ dialogue by playing Life Is Strange. Say what you will about Frey's speech patterns, but she has yet to say 'hella', 'wowser', 'are you cereal?' or 'ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah', so I can probably handle whatever this game throws at me.

I love Life Is Strange, to be clear, but I was constantly terrified that someone would say 'lollerskates'.

lol love you had those phrases ready to at the blink of an eye.

Btw hope you get to play the Horizon Forbidden West DLC. That one sure made some gamerbros angry 😁😁👌👌👍👍

As someone who said hella ironically for so long that at some point it stopped being ironic, I'm offended by parts of this.

General impression of FF16 is that it's very solid in some aspects, and very weak in others. When it's good, it's really good. When it's not, it's... well, it's not atrocious, but it does leave me going "hmm I wish this was better." I liked the first half significantly more than the back half. For the most part it has very solid characters, with some exceptions, and the worldbuilding is mostly good with some WTFery tossed on.

In other words, it's a modern Final Fantasy game. Some good, some bad, some middling. Definitely try it for yourself and see what you think.

Thank you! Yeah, 'very solid in some aspects and very weak in others' could probably describe most Final Fantasy games, and it's sort of fascinating to me that every game in the series has its own distinct set of strengths and weaknesses.

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This is the most promising thing I've heard about this game so far.

i hope you enjoy forspoken! i'm of a similar curiosity where i wonder if the game really is that bad (and even in these cases i tend to enjoy the games) or if it's simply, like you said, an effort to tank a game with a different lead than what's accustomed to in the current mainstream landscape

and that's good to hear about ffxvi! i'll admit I haven't personally been the most interested in it just because it seems so grim in a way that can be a hit or miss for me, but i'm glad to hear the story seems interesting (and i believe some developers who worked on the dmc series also had a hand in it? so from a gameplay perspective it does capture my interest there!)

(and even in these cases i tend to enjoy the games)

I also often find this! I'm easily pleased, so I do sometimes enthusiastically embrace things that are generally accepted not to be great. I can absolutely see why Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XV aren't considered the best games in the series, but I love them with all my heart.

it seems so grim in a way that can be a hit or miss for me

I was definitely concerned, given how grim it sounded, that it wouldn't feel like a Final Fantasy game. I found the demo reassuring, though; it did feel Final Fantasy-esque to me, despite the darker tone.

I tried out the demo of Forspoken before it was released and I wasn't majorly impressed with it, but it was mostly due to the big open world that felt shockingly empty and something about the combat didn't click with me. Frey and Cuff's dialogue was...fine, for the most part. The issue wasn't so much the way they were talking to each other, but the amount of dialogue between and during combat that started to grate on me a bit. I hope you're able to have fun with it. I just didn't find it very interesting, personally.

I was just grateful for the opportunity to play a demo before deciding if I wanted to buy the game. I'm so happy game demos are getting a resurgence again. Especially with the cost of games increasing.

Speaking of, I also tried out the demo for FFXVI, since a lot of internet friends have been encouraging me to play it. What little I've experienced of it so far seems pretty promising, although there's always gonna be that little piece of me that misses the Chocobros. I really like Clive as a protagonist and I'm enjoying the combat more than XV's. I can definitely see what people mean when they say XVI is rather cutscene-heavy, but there's also a lot of political intrigue with the plot that's got me hooked. I'll see how I feel once I finish it, but I like it so far.

And I definitely understand what you mean about TLOU2. Even 3 years later it's still kinda difficult to discuss without knowing if the conversation is just gonna devolve into a lot of baseless arguing and name-calling. I personally didn't care for it as much as the first game, but a lot of it came down to story and character-writing for me. I really don't know what Naughty Dog has in store for a future installment or if they're gonna put Abby front-and-center as the main character but I just personally can't bring myself to be invested in the franchise anymore.

the amount of dialogue between and during combat that started to grate on me a bit.

I did notice an option to turn down Cuff's dialogue frequency in the settings, which amused me. I wonder if that was a response to demo feedback.

It's definitely good to see more demos around! I'm also glad that Final Fantasy XVI's demo is just the opening of the game; I can understand the temptation to take an exciting part of the game out of context for your demo, but I always prefer demos where you can learn how things start and carry over your progress.

although there's always gonna be that little piece of me that misses the Chocobros

Absolutely! Final Fantasy XV was so intensely focused on character relationships, and I'm a little sorry that that's not the impression I'm getting from Final Fantasy XVI so far. I think it's cool that different games in the series explore different ideas and emphasise different things, but I personally tend to be more drawn to the games that really focus on the party members and their relationships; I'm not sure Final Fantasy XVI has a party at all.

Yeah, I have friends who found that The Last of Us Part II didn't work for them for perfectly legitimate reasons, but it's difficult to have a proper discussion of its flaws. A lot of the people who vocally dislike it are unreasonable about it; a lot of the people who like it react to the unreasonable dislike by holding it up as a flawless masterpiece. I thought it was fine - a solid, well-made game that wasn't quite as good as the first - and it's bizarre that holding the opinion 'it was neither terrible nor flawless' feels controversial.

Whatever the case, I'm planning to find out firsthand.

I wish more people had this approach tbh

And I love characters having conflicted relationships with the inescapable voices in their heads.

I have to say this is one of the things I would put in the "things to know about Riona" factbox if I were profiling you.

I have to say this is one of the things I would put in the "things to know about Riona" factbox if I were profiling you.

It can go next to 'enjoys men covered in blood', which is something I think we both know about each other.

Can't argue with that!

Something that may endear you to FFXVI: Ben Starr, who voices Clive, is quite and proudly vocal about his love for FFVIII. Check it! (And he also really likes FFXII(!), but that matters more to me than you.)

This actually does make me feel more positive about Final Fantasy XVI! Good to know Clive's voice actor is a person of taste. Not good taste, necessarily, but taste.

Are you saying this life-changing game we both love isn't an indicator of good taste?

I feel it's an indicator of correct taste, which I'm forced to conclude, looking at general opinion, is not necessarily the same thing as good taste.

Okay, but!

Name another game where monsters randomly fall from the moon and yet the game still lets you drop what you're doing to play cards in a space suit.

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