Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

Welcome to the club, there’s coffee at the back!

I seriously was unhealthily obsessed with this game for two years straight after playing it. Hell, it’s still got a hold on me. I think apart from the sheer quality of the artistry, so many of the themes resonated deeply with me. There is something special about the delicate balance the game strikes between nihilism and hope.

I know you mentioned the phasmid (and it’s great!), but for me the absolute peak is the awful phonecall and the final dream. Very few pieces of media have hit the emotions of loss and obsession, of a terrible love you must let go of so well. The intensity of cathartic emotional torture the game put me through is something else. I keep looking for more Let’s Plays, hoping to find new people to relive those moments through. The game just grabbing you by the heart and and mercilessly wringing you out.

“See you tomorrow, Harry”

Coelacanth, 6 days ago (edited 12 hours ago)

I’m not sure if it’s just my playthrough, but there was surprisingly little revealed about Dora? Do we ever know more about the events from six years before?

It’s extremely hard to find all the pieces on a first playthrough, as details are interspersed into dialogue trees all over, with lots being missable (even big things like the letter in the ledger, the phonecall and the final dream are all missable!). The final dream also gets more dialogue options the more little things you have uncovered during your playthrough.

In fact, a lot of it is deliberately vague as one of the big problems in the relationship was Harry’s distorted view and deification of her. This putting her on piedistal also most likely led to him joining the RCM (to better himself in her eyes - as opposed to being a gym teacher), which tragically led to further mental deterioration for him, the stress also leading to substance abuse. It’s also implied that Dora was involved in his alcohol problem (or at least didn’t help in any way). Both Jean Viquemare at the end mentions this, as well as one line buried somewhere in the final dream dialogues.

And of course his lack of financial stability didn’t help, which also may or may not be part of the reason they aborted their child. Harry is an unreliable narrator, so you have to view the final dream through that lens. What Dora tells him is his projection, colored by his own interpretation of events and by his self-image. They probably agreed on the abortion at the time out of practical reasons, but in his head he failed as a provider (he has very clear issues with masculine stereotypes and expectations), leading to the inner interpretation we see in the dream (“I terminated yours, you poor fuck”).

Does the phasmid appear even if you didn’t complete the quest? I suppose not?

It does always appear, but I think if you don’t have the pheromones from Morell you can’t approach it (the check always fails) and it runs away. It’s one of a handful of rigged checks in the game.

How many playthroughs did you do?

I think I only completed two all the way to the credits, but I’ve mucked around a lot exploring various options. And I’ve probably watched 10 complete playthroughs by other people. Maybe more, actually.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

The pheromones are important because talking to the phasmid is such a huge moment. After the gut-wrenching final dream and the pessimism-drenched Ghost of Christmas Future for Harry that is the Deserter, the conversation with the phasmid comes in with the counterpoint of hope and wonder in the face of dreary reality. Alongside the communist vision quest, it’s one of the aforementioned beacons of hope among the nihilism the game gives you.

God, the entire sequence on the island is so good.

Coelacanth, 3 days ago

I think even 4K can be overkill depending on the size of your monitor. I feel like the size of a monitor that wants 8K for good enough PPI would be impractically huge, at least for desktop use.

Coelacanth, 3 days ago

I don’t know, I never saw it as a meme but rather just shorthand in cases where no other term existed that efficiently communicated the genre or style of a game.

Do you have a replacement term available for Souls-like that sums up what you can expect of a game within that genre using two words or less?

Coelacanth, 12 days ago

My first thought too. I guess drones aren’t stable enough platforms for machine gun fire, and they want something that’s reusable? Still not sold on this thing.

Coelacanth, 3 days ago

I haven’t played 2 or 3, but calling DA:O bad is a bit of a hot take. What did you not like about it?

While the overall plot is fairly standard issue fantasy save-the-world fare, I think the execution and the RPG aspects were excellent. How the game really made your choice of origin matter was incredible to me, and I enjoyed several of the characters too.

It does look like shit though, I’ll give you that. I wish it was less depressingly brown-grey washed out looking.

Coelacanth, 5 days ago

Nothing compares to getting into the flow when you’re playing Spy, I love some psychological warfare. Stringing together long sequences of backstabs and hide-and-seeks with the enemy team is so much fun.

The knife that hides backstabbed corpses and instantly disguises you as them is also super fun to use.

Coelacanth, 6 days ago

Lots of people might have heard of What Remains of Edith Finch, but I’m actually here to promote the debut game from that studio, called The Unfinished Swan.

It’s a very charming sort of adventure/puzzle game with some interesting unique mechanics, some very cool and beautifully designed levels and a a heartwarming story. It’s very short, too, so almost no investment needed!

Definitely worth an afternoon or two of your time if it seems up your alley!

Coelacanth, 22 days ago

I have a question for any old head race fans around here: I often hear people proclaim their love for Imola as a track. Does this purely come from a technical standpoint, and/or from you guys enjoying driving it on simulators/racing games?

I can’t remember a single good dry race here from a spectator standpoint. It’s just so narrow and un-conducive to overtakes. If I wanted to go back and watch an old dry Imola race on F1TV to learn to love it, what are your recommendations?

As for today’s action, I’m encouraged by McLaren’s pace of course, and will go into the rest of the season a bit more hopeful. Miami wasn’t a fluke, and maybe (only maybe though) we can have genuine fights for the win this season. If it wasn’t so impossibly hard to overtake around here Norris would have had Max on pure pace for a second time. McLaren upgrades hit different.

Aston though, oof. Let’s hope the new wind tunnel this fall will address their correlation issues, because this is dreadful. 9 upgrades and the car performs worse, you just have to laugh through the tears. I have to highlight Stroll though, who had a really good race but nobody will give him credit for it. He’s wildly inconsistent and sometimes underperforms massively, but when he’s on it he can pull off a great race.

Yuki should be mentioned too, really solid race again and Perez must be under genuine pressure now. If both McLaren and Ferrari can keep this kind of gap to Max up RBR really can’t afford an underperforming 2nd driver or the constructors championship is actually under threat.

Coelacanth, 2 days ago

It’s not lying to the public, the waterfall just “needed a little boost”, apparently.

Coelacanth, 21 days ago

Who the hell eats undercooked-

A Florida man…

Oh right. Makes sense.

Coelacanth, 7 days ago

Exploring is a funny one, I think it’s visually more rewarding in Genshin as the environment design Hoyo does is superior so you get better vistas, unique indentifiable locations and environmental storytelling.

On the other hand it’s vastly more enjoyable mechanically in Wuthering Waves, with the infinite running stamina, wall running, grappling hook and almost no fall damage. And stuff like the super jump tech is just fun to execute. Getting to do your Pokémon hunting as part of the open world is also great.

Combat seems to be everyone’s favorite part so I really hope they lean into it and create some cool mechanics and features and stop with the “speed run” events where you could basically walk it and still get max rewards.

Copying the Abyss as endgame is truly a huge error, and having both your endgame modes (Tower and Holograms) be timed challenges is a massive blunder in my opinion. With a combat system that allows for this much skill expression they had the chance to actually differentiate themselves, but instead we get DPS checks again.

Btw, are you keeping up with news for the game at all? Since leaving reddit I’ve had a hard time keeping up with more niche subjects like gacha games…

Yeah, I feel the same way so while I don’t post or comment there I do still follow some subs for news basically.

Coelacanth, 7 days ago

The core of the game is really solid, I just wish it didn’t copy so much from Genshin design wise. It almost feels like an investor was leaning over the shoulder of the developers, constantly telling them to “make it more like that game that makes $100m every month”.

There is a separate, distinct idea somewhere beneath that i wish they leaned into more heavily. Go for that post-apocalyptic vibe fully, don’t intersperse it with idyllic pastoral landscapes just because Genshin looks like that. Go for more war and strife stories and less goofy silliness.

Still, the combat is really fun and the general gameplay design too. All characters feel unique and distinct and the Forte gauge is a really cool mechanic that already has several creative implementations (Sanhua for example).

I really hope they’ll recover from the disastrous launch, there is potential for a good game in there if they get a chance to keep building on what they have.

Coelacanth, 17 days ago

As long as we still have ground effect cars I sadly don’t see another outcome. The entire point of the regulations was having diffusers that throw the dirty air vertically behind the car, which in theory reduces the amount of turbulence on ground level (which would make following easier). And we saw this working at the start of 2022.

Sadly, this also creates the huge rooster tails of water when the track is wet, and it’s sort of unavoidable. The only options, then, are either red flagging or re-evaluating the level of acceptable risk. And there is just no way F1 are going to do the latter in this day and age.

Coelacanth, 18 days ago

Been a while since a game was this polarising I think, right? Some reviewers giving it perfect scores and some 5/10s. Like Stephens also seemed to hate it, though I didn’t watch the video since I haven’t played the game yet.

Very interesting and curious whether I’ll land in the love or hate camp. I really enjoyed the first game so I’m hopeful.

Coelacanth, 20 days ago

I do agree that a lot of the find-the-symbols puzzles felt like an afterthought, but overall they didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game. The story and presentation were fantastic and I thought the blind trial was extremely well done and one of my favourite video game levels.

Coelacanth, 21 days ago

I think Paul Verlaine is my favourite in terms of working with rhyme, but it doesn’t really translate from the original french.