OliveTapenade
No bio...
User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
2d ago
A month late, but what the hey, I'm an M&M fan.
I don't think HoMM is a great example for this, particularly because in hindsight I believe 4 has had quite a positive reappraisal. 4 was very different to 3, which provoked a backlash and a lot of hate, but now that there have been many more games afterwards, including 5 (which was a very traditional return to the formula of 2 and 3), there's much less reason to hate 4. As a result, today 4 has a real fanbase of its own.
5 was then, as you say, a great success. Generally I believe 2, 3, and 5 are considered 'the good ones' of the HoMM series, and of those 2 is often overlooked because frankly everything 2 does well is done better in 3. In general it's 3 and 5. Those are the highest.
6 is another 4, in that it's an attempt to push the envelope and do something quite different. I'd argue that 6 has its merits, but in general it's thought of quite poorly, especially due to a truly dire attempt at online functionality that just does not work. Still, 6 experiments with a lot of interesting ideas (a persistent metagame system, hero alignment, specialist classes return from 4, town conversion, and an attempt to privilege factional unit synergies over just picking the strongest units of every faction along with buffing low-tier units), but they don't all work out (in particular the latter issue often led to cookie-cutter armies that made the game feel repetitive). In a better world, 6's good ideas would have been iterated on and refined for the future, while the bad ideas left out.
Unfortunately, 7 was a mess. 7 was at least conceptually an attempt at something like 5 - previous game experiment a bit much, let's go back to the formula. 7 is basically a straight-down-the-line imitation of 3 and 5. Unfortunately, 7 is also a low-budget affair that didn't have enough development time, so it reuses lots of graphical assets from 6, and it's slow and buggy and has horribly broken AI. You can look at 7 and see a bunch of neat ideas or things that would work if the game were not a dog's breakfast in terms of polish, but unfortunately, it is.
And it seems, tragically, that 7 killed the mainline HoMM series. There might have been a comeback, except Ubisoft didn't greenlight another one. Considering what a low-budget affair 7 was, and how else Ubisoft tried to exploit the IP with cheap spin-offs (with the notable exception of Clash of Heroes, which is fantastic), my guess is that turn-based strategy games just don't sell well enough for Ubisoft to consider them worth funding properly.
Except...
Now they're making Olden Era.
Now Olden Era looks like an indie-style game, closer to Songs of Conquest than to HoMM 6 or 7, and maybe that's a good sign. Maybe Unfrozen have the time and money to make a polished, high-quality release, and not chasing a triple-A style release will help it. I very much hope that's the case.
On the other hand... Ubisoft do not have a good record here, and their ability to screw up HoMM development is impressive, so a very high level of caution is warranted.
Meanwhile the Russian guys behind Horn of the Abyss are continuing to put out excellent, professional-level updates for the third game for free, so that is a strong consolation.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
I thought the Trump campaign was actually surprised by Biden dropping out? They'd been preparing to fight him, and had to pivot rapidly since many of their prepared lines of attack didn't work against the younger Harris.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
I was thinking of Robinson. I always remember an incident in his debate with Chris Rufo:
Robinson: But then I open the leading leftist magazine in the country, Jacobin, and I look at the headlines, and they are about things like the writers’ strike, or they’re about the fact that you can’t afford a one-bedroom apartment working full time.
Rufo: But would you say that Jacobin is representative of the—
Robinson: Of the left?
Rufo: Would you say Jacobin is the ideological force behind the largest movements of the left? I don’t think so.
Robinson: It’s the leading leftist magazine in the country. I think they’ve got a higher circulation than any other leftist publication.
Rufo: I don’t know about that.
This seems absurd, because it's obviously only possible to consider Jacobin "the leading leftist magazine in the country" if you have an extremely idiosyncratic definition of what counts as "leftist".
Whereas I'd say that most people would use the word 'left' to mean 'of America's two big political factions, the one that is further to the left'.
OliveTapenade
8d ago
We have left-wing musings that the failure to reach low-propensity voters comes from a “lack” of a left-wing media ecosystem, which makes me scratch my head somewhat, given the disproportionate skew of media to the left. There doesn’t appear to be any introspection or soul-searching here. The issue might not be a lack of left-wing media, but a lack of trust in that media; becoming more online creates a healthy level of skepticism about what we consume, especially as AI becomes more prevalent.
People who seriously identify as left-wing would often dispute this. Many on the left see the Democrats as a right-wing party, and the mainstream media as centrist, liberal, centre-right, or something else other than left. There is a sense among dedicated left-wing partisans that they are a tiny minority.
Like most of the narratives that people tell themselves about their own political tribes, this is probably false or at least illusionary, but the point is that when people complain about the absence of a left-wing media ecosystem, those probably are not people who regard most of the media as currently on the left.
OliveTapenade
9d ago
Yes, with Islam specifically I think the implied belief is that 'Muslim' is basically an ethnicity or a race. This is silly, especially because Islam is very resolutely and explicitly non-racial and non-ethnic, but no one accused Western political discourse of making sense.
OliveTapenade
10d ago
I don't want to get too deeply into my own experiences, but I doubt that I'm completely unique, and in cases like mine, it doesn't feel like a choice, but rather like a grudging admission of something that I could no longer deny. It usually doesn't feel like deciding to believe in God, but often the opposite, as if one tried to decide not to believe in God, but after long trial and effort it proved impossible.
Perhaps the most famous example of a Christian like this would be C. S. Lewis. From Surprised by Joy, ch. 14:
People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understanding the horror of such a revelation [the reality of God]. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about "man's search for God." To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat. The best image of my predicament is the meeting of Mime and Wotan in the first act of Siegfried; hier brauch' ich nicht Spärer noch Späher, Einsam will ich.... (I've no use for spies and snoopers. I would be private....)
Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be "interfered with." I had wanted (mad wish) "to call my soul my own." I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities. The supernatural itself had been to me, first, an illicit dram, and then, as by a drunkard's reaction, nauseous. Even my recent attempt to live my philosophy had secretly (I now knew) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be "reasonable." But now what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one? Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be "reasonable" in that other, more comfortable, sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even "All or nothing." I think that stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armor and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply "All."
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
OliveTapenade
11d ago
For what it's worth, from the perspective of someone who's very religious, the worst and most frustrating attitude I've ever run into from non-religious people is the idea that because religion is "a choice" it must always come second to other identities. A gay person (supposedly) can't choose not to be gay, but a Christian can choose not to be Christian, or can choose not to be an anti-gay Christian, so gay identity comes first.
But that's not how any serious follower of any religion I've ever spoken to experiences their religion, and it's certainly not how I experience it. I'm not just choosing this or that on the basis of arbitrary preference, such that I could change my mind. Faith is not like picking which car to drive. I'm practicing a particular religion because it's actually true. Telling me "well, you could just choose not to be Christian" feels like, ironically, someone telling a scientist, "well, you could just choose not to be Darwinist, look, Lysenkoism is a perfectly good choice, why not believe that?"
The atheist who thinks that I'm wrong and my beliefs are false is, to my mind at least, better and more tolerable than the atheist who thinks that my beliefs are mere affectation or aesthetic preference. No, I can't just believe something else, because that would be switching from something true to something false. If you want me to change my beliefs, you have to actually convince me that my beliefs are false. There is no shortcut.
OliveTapenade
12d ago
Oh, certainly. I was not identifying as a 'Griggs Republican' myself. I tend to think that the idea of disparate impact can be followed off a cliff (e.g. Kendi-style arguments that any inequalities in outcome are evidence of unequal treatment), but at the same time, it's obviously true that facially neutral policies can be chosen and applied strategically in order to achieve a discriminatory outcome.
OliveTapenade
12d ago
The first major court case on disparate impact. Here, it's standing in for educated white voters who hate affirmative action.
OliveTapenade
15d ago
Pretty much the same as past expansions. If you play FFXIV for the mechanics and don't care about story, I recommend Dawntrail as more of the same.
If you haven't played FFXIV at all...
It is a WoW-style MMO, and specifically, modern-WoW-style, where party finder tools make it easy to engage in fundamentally linear mechanical challenges. It's not like classic WoW in that you do not experiment with different character builds or party comps much, since all class builds are pre-set, and party comp does not matter very much. It's also not a game for you if you enjoy the social challenge of MMOs, so if you're into classic WoW but dislike modern WoW, I'd suggest that FFXIV is probably not for you.
That said, if you like the WoW theme park model, with lots of directed challenges, FFXIV does that very well. The hardest challenges, though, are much more about optimisation and execution than they are about innovation or creativity.
OliveTapenade
15d ago
I feel a bit conflicted about some of that, to be honest.
I beg your pardon for not using spoilers here, but since I already spoilered Dawntrail in the top level post and we're talking about the previous expansion, I'll assume it's okay. People worried about FFXIV spoilers should skip this!
So, on we go:
I take Shadowbringers/Endwalker as something of a duology, and one that noticeably retcons Hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the Ascians. If you take ARR at face value, its depiction of the Mothercrystal has different implications to what we eventually find. In ARR, the first glimpse we get of Hydaelyn comes with her introduction: "I am Hydaelyn. All made one." That is a strange thing to say in light of SHB/EW, where Hydaelyn instead becomes a being of division, fighting against Zodiark's mission to make all one. But she was clearly something different back then. It's just that most people don't care about this, because ARR-Hydaelyn was in the distant background and not very important, and SHB/EW knocked it out of the park story-wise.
However, it becomes even more evident with the Twelve, which disappointed me because previously they seemed to be portrayed quite positively (recall that 1.0 ended in an act of communal prayer to them!), and the religions around them were likewise presented sympathetically. Even the Ishgardian church, though flawed, didn't have those flaws reflect upon Halone herself, with the Scholasticate quests suggesting that the way forward is to be more true to Halone's teachings, not less. In general FFXIV has been quite positive and sympathetic towards religion (witness the militantly atheist Garleans who hate all things of faith, in contrast to the way the heroes are generally politely reverent, even with other people's religions, like the kami in Stormblood), so I hoped for that to continue.
Well, the Endwalker raid isn't hostile to the Twelve, as such. The Twelve are all genuinely good and presented sympathetically. However, I feel a bit that, like Hydaelyn herself, they are reduced by being suggested to be born of the Ancients, and the story of the raid itself isn't inspiring? The gods want to leave the world for... some reason... so they choose to vanish?
I interpret this as being related to a more general theme in Japanese games, and especially Final Fantasy - the death or at least vanishing of the gods. The espers and magic leave the world in FFVI. In FFVII, an evil corporation whose name is literally "captures gods" (神羅) plunders the spiritual realm for profit. In FFX, the dominant religion is false and the divine beings of this world need to be slain. In FFXII, the closest there are to visible gods, the Occuria, must be thrust back so that humans can take control of history. And so on. It's even more visible in other JRPGs, where killing god or the gods are common endgames.
My theory is that this is because of Japanese history and the shock of industrialisation. The kami were real, and the people were surrounded by these spirits of nature, and relationships with those spirits needed to be maintained for overall harmony. But then the Westerners come along, bringing new technology, Japan rapidly industrialises, and suddenly human power massively exceeds that of the kami. We don't need the spirits any more, and indeed we can do things they never dreamed of. It's a massive cultural shock. What is the place of the gods in the new Japan? Western industrialisation took a few centuries so there could be a process of adjustment, but for Japan it was a very rapid shock. Naturally a lot of Japanese media starts exploring questions like, "Are the gods gone? Is the time of the gods over? What does that mean for us now?"
FFXIV does not consistently suggest that everything to do with the gods is gone forever. If you talk to the Watcher on the moon, he says that in a sense Hydaelyn will always be with you. The Twelve themselves, at the end of their raid, talk about returning to the Lifestream, but they also wish to be reunited with Oschon when he's ready to go too, so it doesn't seem like they're embracing annihilation. In this year's Rising, Deryk/Oschon cameos and says, "In every festival is imbued the hopes and dreams of mortal man. You implore the gods to listen to your pleas, and they hear you. They still do." So it hasn't gone quite as far as saying that the gods are all dead and now you're in an atheist cosmos. There may be something more (I remind myself again that Venat feels a kind of immanent divine presence, after all), but the game is not willing to authoritatively name that presence.
But it's still in this awkward place where it seems that faith is good, but any specific object of faith is undermined somewhat.
Anyway, I understand your disappointment, and I think I'd agree that FFXIV has already hit its highest point. Still, a decade is a pretty good lifespan for an MMO, especially if I compare FFXIV to what FFXI did with story, and sometimes a graceful winding-down is preferable to endlessly trying to escalate and becoming WoW.
OliveTapenade
16d ago
About two months ago, I had a chat with @gattsuru about Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, which I had been struggling through at the time. I've since got on with it and finished Dawntrail's MSQ, and I promised to get back with some more thoughts then.
So, what do I think?
For a starting point, I'd have to grant that this is FFXIV's worst outing since 1.0, and I don't get the impression that this is particularly controversial? There's a clear decline in metascore (PC only, ARR is 83/7.0, HW is 86/8.0, SB is 87/7.5, SHB is 90/9.1, EW is 92/9.0, and DT is 79/5.3), and anecdotally my sense among fans has been that there's a sense that this is a slog. I occasionally chatted to people doing story dungeons, and never encountered pushback on the idea that this is a weaker outing. Fortunately, FFXIV is very good, so the worst FFXIV expansion is still potentially quite good relative to its competitors.
I found that the first 75% or so of Dawntrail's story really dragged. I think the primary issue for me was that neither the world nor the cast of characters I was exploring it with were particularly interesting, or revealed any compelling dramatic tensions. I'll talk about the characters a bit later, but Tural in general is not a very interesting place until you get to Mamook, because it's just a very peaceful place with no outstanding issues. The formula for most of the MSQ is that we visit a place, the locals are friendly and generous and tell us about their culture, Wuk Lamat appreciates that culture a bit, maybe one of our rivals does some Scooby Doo level prank to annoy us, we resolve it, and then we move on. Unfortunately the cultures we visit are all very superficial. The Pelupelu like trade and negotiation. The Hanuhanu have a harvest festival. The Moblins patronise craftsmen. The Xbr'aal like chili wrapped in banana leaves. It all feels like surface, and comes off badly compared to some of the cultures we met in previous expansions, almost all of which were complex, contained both sympathetic and unsympathetic traits, had their share of unresolved issues or tensions, and invited some level of engagement with them. Dawntrail improves a bit towards the end - I liked the Old West bit in Xak Tural, where for once there was an interesting domestic conflict, with crime springing up in the wake of a rapid economic and territorial expansion into the ceruleum fields of the north, and formal legal institutions clashing with the ad hoc codes of justice worked out by vigilantes on the frontier - but it doesn't measure up that well compared to the past.
The major exception for me was Mamook, which I did find interesting, but also tragically under-explored. I'd also like to add Mamook to the pile of evidence that FFXIV is secretly a quite conservative game, because to me at least the whole Mamook story felt like a blatant pro-life allegory. Even if it's not quite about abortion, it is very easy to read as being about IVF. The Mamool Ja are desperate for more blessed siblings to be born, mutant two-headed Mamool Ja of superior strength and power, and to accomplish this they've been mass-producing hybrid eggs, even though they know that the vast majority of these hybrids will die unborn, struggling in vain to break free of their own shells. Only one in a hundred of blessed eggs successfully hatches, and the survivors, like Bakool Ja Ja, carry the weight of this holocaust of the unborn. The Mamool Ja believe that they need blessed siblings to survive, but the guilt of this crime weighs on their entire community, a hidden torment that they cannot reveal to the rest of Tural. Naturally the heroic thing to do here is to convince them that they don't need to engage in this kind of eugenics, that it is not worth sacrificing so many lives for the sake of worldly, military power. A more blatant pro-life allegory I struggle to imagine!
Likewise when we get to the end of the expansion, well, it's a bit more subtle, and the script occasionally ventures that we shouldn't be too quick to judge another culture, but there's no disguising the fact that the narrative thrust of Dawntrail is strongly critical of Alexandria and the world of Living Memory. The soul-recycling of Alexandria and the unnatural immortality of the Endless are condemned. This too strikes me as remarkably amenable to a conservative interpretation - much like the world of the Ancients before it, Sphene's paradise is fundamentally flawed, and the right thing to do is to smash its memory banks, let these digital ghosts fade away, and encourage the living to return to the world.
But I've gotten ahead of myself. I do think the expansion picks up considerably once you reach Alexandria. I don't love Alexandria overall, and in particular its neon futuristic aesthetic is a pretty big clash with the rest of the setting, but since it's explicitly from another world, that helps a bit, and it seems likely to remain cordoned off to its own part of the setting. Still, I hope this isn't a sign that Eorzea may end up going the same way as Azeroth, with new, high-tech additions gradually building to the point where it becomes impossible to take the world seriously. Even so, Alexandria is better than most of Tural because it manages to be a portrayal of a society that's complicated. Alexandrians aren't bad people for the most part, and there may be much to admire in Alexandria, but even so, there are clearly deep issues in its society. The fact that we rapidly meet a group of Alexandrian dissidents who articulate some of their complaints helps with that as well.
Now let's talk about characters a bit as well...
This is probably the weakest part of Dawntrail, for me.
Some of the Scions are still around to help us, but for the most part they feel under-used or mis-used. Some of them are present but do almost nothing, and feel like they're just there to provide a familiar face or two. Alphinaud and Alisaie, Y'shtola, G'raha Tia, and Estinien all appear a few times, but none of them do anything in the story or contribute anything, and might as well not be in Dawntrail. Thancred and Urianger sort of have something interesting, and it's neat to see them mentoring Koana, but unfortunately most of that happens off-screen. Lastly Krile... should have had a chance to shine here, but unfortunately I feel she was screwed over a bit. She doesn't do much for most of the story, and then the discovery of Krile's parents and her discovery of her origins is rapidly shoehorned in at the very end of the story, in a way that honestly kind of ruins the pacing of the end as well. I feel Krile was done dirty here. For most of FFXIV before now, Krile has never really gotten a chance to shine, and she should have had it here, but she didn't. Perhaps some of the new characters got in the way?
Speaking of... well, I'll preface this by saying that I don't hate Wuk Lamat as a character, and I don't think the issue with her is the voice acting. Sometimes I switch the voices in FFXIV to Japanese and it doesn't substantially change how I feel about Wuk Lamat. The problem is that only a few local Tural characters, mostly Wuk Lamat but also Koana, need to carry most of the story, and it is too much for them. Wuk Lamat is not a particularly interesting or deep character and it means that the expansion spends way too long stretching out a character arc that just doesn't have much bite to it. Wuk Lamat is fundamentally an optimistic, cheerful, kind person who wants to be Dawnservant so she can protect her people's happiness, and her biggest character flaw is just that she's a bit naive and a bit prone to self-doubt, so her story is about gaining confidence. Koana is basically the same - he's a good guy, he wants to help, but he struggles with self-doubt. Add in that Wuk Lamat is basically the protagonist of this expansion, with the Warrior of Light primarily a helper, and a lot of the expansion comes off as just following around a not-massively-interesting person as she goes on a tour. I don't find Wuk Lamat particularly *dis-*likeable, but she's just not up to the task of carrying this story.
In a sense, it reminds me a bit of some of the criticisms of Dragon Age: The Veilguard for being far too positive - all the characters are friends, and rough edges are all sanded off. In this case, Wuk Lamat is nice to everyone, and the WoL and the Scions with her are also all very nice, and no significant conflicts ever emerge. Even the rivals end up quite friendly; Koana is also lovely, and Bakool Ja Ja is a jerk for five levels and then pulls an extremely rapid heel face turn and then he's our friend too. This just makes for a story that feels bland.
By comparison, let's look at some earlier expansions. One of my favourite parts of Heavensward was the Warrior of Light's trip into Dravania with Alphinaud, Estinien, and Ysayle. This was another small ensemble cast, and it worked really well because all of those characters have depth, and are full of complicated feelings and ambivalencies, and those feelings then bounce off each other and throw sparks, creating tensions. Alphinaud is a prodigy who had a brilliant scheme to create international peace, but has recently seen that whole scheme blow up in his face and end in disaster. He thought he could unite Eorzea through diplomacy, but treachery, greed, and violence have seemingly destroyed his dream. Estinien is a veteran warrior driven by a need for revenge against the dragons who slaughtered his family as a child, and stoically holds himself aloof from others. Ysayle is a heretic from the Ishgardian church, a dragon-sympathiser who believes that dialogue will make peace with the dragons possible, and a cult leader whose followers have been responsible for violence against innocents in the past. Together we are going to confront the leaders of the Dravanian Horde - Ysayle firmly believes that they will listen to us and be willing to make peace, and has agreed that, if this fails, we may have to use force; all while Estinien believes that Ysayle's hopes will fail and then we'll need to try it his way, and just kill the leader. You can see how Alphinaud is then in this interesting place between them, where he's been where Ysayle is now and seen it fail, but also doesn't want to embrace Estinien's bloody worldview. However, as the adventure progresses, evidence of a past age of human-dragon cooperation seems to validate Ysayle's view and Estinien perhaps has to re-evaluate his view of dragons, and meanwhile he's slowly developing a father- or older-brother-like relationship with Alphinaud, whom he's clearly taking a shine to. Ysayle's hopes grow, but are dashed when we do meet the dragons and they inform her that all her dreams are impossible, and she collapses in despair as we move on with Estinien's plan.
That's just a period of 2-3 levels in the middle of Heavensward, but I was drawn into it and fascinated because there's a huge amount of tension there - both internal tension, with three characters all of whom find their own beliefs challenged and need to undergo growth, and external tension, as the characters dispute what we must do with each other. And this was just one example. At FFXIV's best, we see these kinds of tensions again and again - think of Yugiri, Gosetsu, and Hien in Stormblood, or Fordola and Arenvald's growing friendship, or the way Shadowbringers built Emet-Selch into a beloved villain through a long period of travel like this, or the way we saw old characters challenged and recontextualised (like Alisaie's despair at seeing her friend become a monster, or G'raha struggling to bear the burden of an entire city's hopes, or Y'shtola becoming 'Master Matoya' and stepping into her old teacher's role). Ever since at least Final Fantasy IV back in 1991, Final Fantasy has been all about an ensemble cast of colourful characters interacting and growing.
That kind of cast is what I think is missing from Dawntrail.
But I'm not done with characters yet, because we need to talk about villains. Specifically, Zoraal Ja and Sphene, both of whom I think have a lot of potential, but both of whom I'm also ultimately a bit disappointed by.
Zoraal Ja has a lot of potential! There's a very obvious theme of fathers and sons going on with him, and measuring up to or exceeding his father, and I think it could work, except it has the one fatal flaw that we just don't see enough of Zoraal Ja. He is an extremely reserved character who almost never talks, and neither do we really meet or talk to people who know him well. Baby Gulool Ja is adorable and it would have been great to learn more about Zoraal Ja's time in Alexandria, how he came to have a son, and then how he came to abandon him, but we don't get to see any of that. Surely there must have been ways to write the MSQ to show us more of its central villain? (Sphene comes in too late, I think, to claim that role, even if she is the final boss.) This is a game in which the player character has the explicit superpower of seeing flashbacks of things that he/she did not witness personally! The Echo has been used quite hamfistedly at times, but surely if it's for anything, it's for this? It is an excuse to let the player just see visions of things that are narratively useful. Why not use it?
As for Sphene... I think Sphene is fine by herself, but is let down contextually for two reasons. The first is that we've already met Emet-Selch and he already did this story better. An ancient leader of god-like power who wants to sacrifice or doom our world in order to save/maintain/restore an ancient world that he/she believes is utopian and more worthy of existence. We've already seen that story, and Emet-Selch was built up for an entire expansion to try to give that story some emotional heft. Sphene comes in for the last 25% or so of Dawntrail to basically speedrun that story for a second time, and it just can't hit as hard as it did before.
The second is the relationship with the heroes. Good villains in FFXIV have often mirrored the heroes in some way. Nidhogg is compelling in large part because his feelings and motives are the same as Estinien's, to the extent that the two of them literally merge together for a bit. Heavensward is about vengeance and hatred and exacting retribution on the ones who dealt you an inconsolable loss, and both the heroes and the villains undergo that experience. Hopefully even the player does as well - that's why Haurchefant has to die, so that, like all the other major players in the story, we experience that need for vengeance. Zenos, meanwhile, has been presented as a superlative warrior yet one who suffers tremendous ennui, and only finds a purpose to life when fighting against the worthiest of foes, and Zenos explicitly draws a comparison between himself and the Warrior of Light, inviting you to see your own quest for martial excellence (because why are you playing an MMO anyway?) parallelled in his. It's then up to you to decide whether you accept or reject that comparison, and if so, why. Emet-Selch wants to doom your world to save his own - and of course you're in a position where you're going to let his world be lost forever in order to save your own. The blasphemies in Endwalker all played around in this space as well.
A disappointment I had with Dawntrail was that it didn't really explore this the way I hoped. Wuk Lamat talks a lot about understanding Sphene, and indeed this seems reasonable. Wuk Lamat and Sphere are both young queens with kind and compassionate dispositions who are fundamentally driven by the need to protect their people's happiness. Before we reach Alexandria, Wuk Lamat has spent the entire MSQ talking about how precious the people are to her and how she loves them and just wants them to be happy. Then we meet Sphene, who has the exact same motivation, but in Sphene's case, this leads her to ruthless and genocidal excess. You'd think that might be an excellent opportunity for Wuk Lamat to re-evaluate her ideals a little. Does a good leader need to have something more than love for her people? If so, what? Good judgement? Sense of justice? Meeting Sphene seems like it ought to provoke a bit of soul-searching, but alas, it never happens.
Ultimately, I think I come to the end of the MSQ not really sure what Dawntrail was trying to do or say. There were some interesting ideas in here, but they were often a bit rushed or incoherent, or just not explored as skilfully as FFXIV has handled similar issues in the past.
On the positive side, though, the environments and the music are still gorgeous as always, and the dungeon and trial designs are all great. So there is still material to like here, and I hope that with the next expansion FFXIV will be able to return to form.
OliveTapenade
18d ago
Your question is a non-sequitur: why do I have to prove anything more? There is clear irregularity in 2020, either give an innocuous explanation for the counting stopped over a water pipe, or concede.
I don't see why a claim of a burst pipe that turned out to be false is proof of fraud? Why should AppleyOrange need to concede anything? There might be many explanations for concerns about a burst water pipe other than deliberate malfeasance. A single bad actor might submit a false report about a burst pipe. A good faith error might have occurred. There might have been a real but small leak that was exaggerated. There are too many possibilities to reasonably jump from a report of a burst pipe to fraud.
But suppose we grant that there was a suspicious irregularity in 2020 worthy of investigation. It's not proof of fraud, but maybe it's something people should look into. Sure.
I think the point about 2024 holds up?
Let's grant hypothetically that large voter fraud in Georgia in 2020 delivered the state to Biden. Let's also grant that Harris outperformed Biden in 2024. There are two possibilities here - either Harris also committed fraud, or she didn't.
If Harris also committed voter fraud, then we should reasonably expect to find evidence of that fraud. Maybe they did it better, sure, but a large-scale operation like state-wide voter fraud ought to leave some evidence. We might also be inclined to ask why, if Harris' campaign is capable of successfully rigging an election in Georgia so professionally, Trump still won Georgia by a decent margin, and why they apparently failed to rig elections in other states, including much more significant swing states.
If Harris didn't commit any kind of fraud, then we'd seem to have to conclude that her performance in the state in 2024 is not prima facie suspicious. If so, then we have a strange question to ask ourselves - why, after rigging it in 2020, would they not bother to rig it in 2024? Moreover, if the Democrats performed better when they weren't rigging it to when they were... that seems strange? That seems like Dick Dastardly stopping to cheat? If Harris didn't cheat in '24, it seems like it just makes more sense if Biden didn't cheat in '20.
Let's consider the four possibilities here: 1) Biden cheats in 2020, Harris cheats in 2024, 2) Biden cheats in 2020, Harris doesn't cheat in 2024, 3) Biden doesn't cheat in 2020, Harris cheats in 2024, 4) Biden doesn't cheat in 2020, Harris doesn't cheat in 2024. It seems like option four just... makes the most sense of the observed data.
OliveTapenade
23d ago
I realise I'm pretty late on this, and apologies, but I'm curious how you'd compare it to older WRPGs, from the 90s or early 2000s?
I... really don't see anything of significance here?
You like Donald Trump a lot, and... okay? There's no substance here, no argument, no predictions about governance style, or anything like that. Often from the left you hear the accusation that Trumpism is a personality cult, and I don't think that's true of most people who vote for him, but this post? This is pure personality-cultism. What do you expect me to say?
OliveTapenade
29d ago
I think that's particularly an issue early in BG1, to the point where I would actually recommend just using console commands to start BG1 at level four or so. Level one play in AD&D is extremely limited and dangerous and BG1 doesn't handle it well.
AD&D has a common issue in most of D&D, which is that casters start out fragile, weak, and extremely limited in what they can do, but become overpowered in the late game. The result is that there's a kind of 'sweet spot' of AD&D combat where fighters and casters are competitive, and there's excellent gameplay at that point, but both very low level and very high level gameplay are broken and boring. I suspect that part of BG2's sterling reputation comes from the fact that you start BG2 around the beginning of the sweet spot, and end it just when you're starting to exit it. Around levels eight through fourteen or so is 'the good bit' of AD&D, where characters have enough options to be interesting, casters are powerful but still have meaningful weaknesses, and fighters are still essential.
BG1 and Throne of Bhaal are noticeably weaker than Shadows of Amn just because the system is unbalanced. It sucks, but there are ways to work around it. XP is on a weird scale in AD&D, so if you just start BG1 with a few extra levels, you don't actually end up that overpowered by endgame - you just remove a lot of the early pain. And once you hit epic levels in ToB, wizards are overpowered, but they're not as overpowered as in the tabletop game due to the limitations of the Infinity Engine (the game can't handle, to pick a very simple exploit, constantly flying; and it certainly can't handle most of the degenerate combos AD&D allows on paper), and because using a wizard effectively requires a lot of tedious spell management, you can and perhaps should manage by still letting extremely-well-equipped fighters do a lot of the work. ToB is not that difficult a game, so you don't need to abuse the extremes of power that much.
OliveTapenade
30d ago
Sorry, to be clear, I consider BG2 the best RPG.
NWN is a fantastic toolbox, and SoU and especially HotU are good, but I don't think the official NWN reaches the high levels of BG2. (BG1 is... interesting. I think vanilla BG1 doesn't measure up, but modded BG1 does become almost a match for its sequel. If you have Tutu and a number of the NPC mods, I think BG1 becomes a very respectable companion piece to its sequel.)
I agree entirely that NWN has some amazing modules and adventures that beat out anything the studio published.
OliveTapenade
30d ago
I still consider it the best Western RPG ever made, and if you have Pocket Plane and Gibberlings Three to upgrade it even further, it's very hard to match. There are some other competitors, but it's definitely up there in the top few. It's right in the middle of Shamus Young's Golden Age of PC Gaming (though I'd expand it to all gaming) - there was a sweet spot there, around 1998-2002 or so, which reminds me of Alan Jacobs talking about moments in time that bring particular arts to a height. There was the right balance between enablement and resistance for digital creativity to flourish.
Is this just nostalgia for when I was a teen? Perhaps. You can certainly point to a lot of excellent games outside of the 1998-2002 period, or perhaps 1997-2004, or however widely we cast the net. But I feel like there's something to it, because that period did birth a number of masterpieces, many of which have had sequels or revisits that try to capture the magic, and fail. Final Fantasy VII in 1997, Starcraft in 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998, Age of Empires II in 1999, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri in 1999, Baldur's Gate II in 2000, Deus Ex in 2000, Diablo II in 2000, Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001, and so on. I could easily go on! I choose these titles because they've all had modern sequels - FFVII remake, Starcraft II, all the Zelda sequels, Age of Empires IV, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Diablo III and IV, GTA IV and V, the entire Halo series up to now, and so on, and while the new generation is definitely much more technologically advanced, it's hard to look at what we have now and see the same kind of inspiration. Several of these games have had a lot of spiritual successors. Dragon Age: Origins was a spiritual sequel to Baldur's Gate, and of course Baldur's Gate III now exists, but while they may be good in their own right (DA:O was great, no comment on BG3), I think it's safe to say that none of them are BG2 levels of good.
Am I being unfair or just cherry-picking the best games of that period, or was it a real creative peak?
OliveTapenade
30d ago
I can't really judge BG3 fairly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, in hindsight, Neverwinter Nights is the real Baldur's Gate III - it still has that late-90s D&D culture, BioWare's writing style is still pretty close to what it was in the originals, and it evokes the Forgotten Realms setting as it existed at the time. NWN vanilla doesn't impress me that much, but once it hits its stride in Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark, I'd argue you do get something that's visibly kin to BG2.
From what I've heard, if one is interested in something more authentically in the style of Baldur's Gate, the Owlcat Pathfinder games are much closer, both in mechanics and in terms of writing?
To change subject somewhat...
I count myself a Dragon Age fan, but I'm definitely put off by everything I see in Veilguard. As it is, I loved Origins and Awakening, though 2 had a handful of interesting ideas but ultimately was an unsuccessful game and laid the groundwork for the series' pivot away from Origins' style, and then Inquisition had its share of good moments, but was definitely a game at war with its own design. I can imagine rescuing 2, and I can imagine splitting Inquisition into two different games, both of which might be good on their own merits but which do not successfully fuse, but neither of them ultimately work as a whole. More concerningly, I'd say that Inquisition, despite some superficial similiarities, is a different genre to Origins, and then Veilguard seems to have reinvented itself yet again. I find it a bit hard to talk about Dragon Age as a series - I'd argue that Origins/Awakening essentially take place in their own little continuity, and they work best as a stand-alone game like Jade Empire. Inquisition refers to things from Origins sometimes, but it's clear that it's not the same world.
To me, Veilguard looks like a passable action-adventure, plus some cringeworthy woke scenes that everyone is fixated on, but one that has nothing to do with any previous Dragon Age game beyond a couple of proper nouns. So I'm inclined to give it a miss. I doubt it has much to offer a Dragon Age fan.
OliveTapenade
30d ago
I'm a firm supporter of RTwP over pure turn-based, at least in isometric RPGs like this. RTwP allows me to set the pace of combat as appropriate to the challenge - minor threats can be bowled over without even pausing, more serious threats require a bit of pause and tactical decision-making, and serious threats might become effectively turn-based. It's a gearshift for tactical combat, so to speak? Going from RTwP to purely turn-based, to me, feels like being stuck in first gear for the entire game, even when I want to go faster.
OliveTapenade
30d ago
At times I've been morbidly curious about BG3, but as a huge BG2 fan I just fear it's going to ruin what I remember playing through so many times. I worry that it looks like a product of the post-5e D&D culture, which I don't care for at all. Would you say that these concerns are justified?
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Doesn't this risk being a just-so story? It's not clear to me why a civilisational collapse or dark age would necessarily favour smart people with a higher time preference - you can probably argue just as easily that it would favour impulsive and violent people, because short-term aggression is more valuable in a time of instability. Long-term planning and building is more valuable in a time stable enough for generational or intergenerational investment to bear fruit.
Crises tend to favour fast strategies - and surely you could argue that fast strategies will value IQ less than slow strategies, and so you might expect average IQ to go down through a crisis.
To be clear, I'm not asserting that this is definitely the case. It just seems at least as plausible to me as the theory that crises favour people with higher IQs. I have no strong opinion on how crises influence the genetics of IQ.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Personally I'm surprised by it not because of any rules about word count or padding, but confusion about why you would trust a chatbot about any information about the real world to begin with. I would never assume that anything an AI tells me about a real world matter is true - not without first checking it myself, or asking a human expert. AIs are just too unreliable.
OliveTapenade
1mo ago
Right - the conscience veto didn't work in the case of marriage because it was only a small handful of people willing to stand up for it. It's different when you're looking at most of the bureaucracy. The president can fire them all, but if so he's destroying his own state apparatus and thus his own ability to act.
There's an obvious rebuttal here - "If I fire the bureaucracy I won't be able to act? But I'm not able to act now! My choice is a bureaucracy that refuses to do what I want, and no bureaucracy that does nothing. At least with no bureaucracy, there isn't an institution actively impeding me, and I can get started on the long, difficult process of building a new state apparatus."
But that's where I worry about the election cycle. Four years is not long enough to rebuild the entire federal bureaucracy.
I'm often a bit baffled as well - posts I write that I dash off in five minutes and think are relatively uninteresting sometimes get QCs, whereas posts that I invested a lot of effort and care into and think might be QC candidates don't make it. It's strange.
In this particular case I'd also like to raise my eyebrow a bit at the framing:
This framing makes it look like my post was about gender, which... it wasn't? It happened to be in a thread whose top-level post was about gender, but it was part of a tangent about religion.
Maybe one day I will write a big post about gender, but that day is not today, and was not nine days ago either.
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