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I've been meaning to say this for a while now, but I really do appreciate having JamietheD comment over the mythological origins of the Folks. Mythology has always been one of my weak spots, and a game this much of a love letter to those primal questions about the world is nicer now that I can actually know what those Folks they put in are! Also, was it just me or did anyone else notice that chapter six's setting was becoming more and more 'unearthly' as we fought to get Ellen back and get closer to the true events of that one Samhain many years ago. The closer we got, the more elevated, frenetic, and galactic things seemed to be getting, which really makes me kinda  over what could two kids could've gotten into that seems to have hosed things up on a cosmic level.
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Aug 24, 2014 07:31
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EagerSleeper posted:I've been meaning to say this for a while now, but I really do appreciate having JamietheD comment over the mythological origins of the Folks. Mythology has always been one of my weak spots, and a game this much of a love letter to those primal questions about the world is nicer now that I can actually know what those Folks they put in are! Given the psychological nature of the Underworld, is it necessarily an absolute cosmic level? Or is it just a cosmic level... for them?
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Aug 26, 2014 22:08
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EagerSleeper posted:I've been meaning to say this for a while now, but I really do appreciate having JamietheD comment over the mythological origins of the Folks. Mythology has always been one of my weak spots, and a game this much of a love letter to those primal questions about the world is nicer now that I can actually know what those Folks they put in are! Thanks, I just wish I was better at it, because seriously, myth is one big ol' fustercluck at times. Especially since a lot of this stuff never got properly written down (There aren't many tales of the boggart, for example, because they can be summed up as "Jimmy walks into the marsh nearby, is instantly drowned by bad thing. Don't go in the marsh kids, or you'll end up like lil' Jimmy"), and what is written down has often been written down post-christianisation, which means a load of additions that you have to sift out... Not to mention the additions from fellow academics (I swear, if I hear "This is like X post-christianity concept, because Y, even though A through X and Z don't actually fit the pattern" once more, I'm going to hurt someone.) But if you want some good books on myth and folklore, there are a couple I can heartily recommend. Specifically (natch) about celtic folklore. The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore (Patricia Monaghan) - This woman did at least some research, and even has alternate names in the text. My main sourcebook for the predominantly Gaelic folks we've been seeing. Celtic Legends of the Beyond (Derek Bryce) - A partial translation of the Breton "La Legende De Mort" (Anatole Le Braz), this has some of the archetypal figures of Breton myth such as the priest Tadic Coz (Little Old Father), and is very high on my mythological reading list. Tales From The Mabinogion (Margaret Jones, Gwyn Thomas, Kevin Crossley Holland) - One of the less offensive (in terms of christianisation) translations of the core Welsh myth cycle, this doesn't have many of the other gripping tales Wales has to offer (such as those of Taliesin, the trickster bard), but it's a good start. Haunted Wales (Peter Underwood) - While mostly a collection of ghost stories from around Wales, there are still some interesting tidbits about more mythological stuff like black dogs, saints, hidden treasures, and, of course, some of the fifty or so "True burial sites, honest!" of Myrddin (Who you guys would know as Merlin.) There's a lot more out there if you feel like looking for it, and it is, despite the headache inducing confusions, correlations, and assumptions inherent in the field, a fun subject to delve into. Obviously, myth and folklore inspire games a lot (sometimes with relatively good effect, like Folklore, other times, not so much...), and honestly? A fair few tales are quite epic reads in and of themselves. Glazius posted:Given the psychological nature of the Underworld, is it necessarily an absolute cosmic level? Or is it just a cosmic level... for them? Good question, actually! One could easily argue that, since the center of things is meant to be the primal, underlying heart of reality, things are bound to get a little... Weird. But one could just as easily argue dissociation being the cause... And that's half the fun. 
JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 23:04
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I've been away from my computer most of the week, but not to fear - I planned ahead and have a pretty good backlog right now, with plans to post more videos to Youtube as quickly as I can get them commented and encoded. So while you gather your resources on mythology, why not have a look at the final Realm, the Netherworld Core? I doubt you expected what you're about to see. The Folks here are tough to fight, and while there are a few that will become staples of my arsenal, I think most of them are inferior to Folks we've already got, for both characters. There aren't even very many in the first half. The good news is that we get a choice of which character to use as we proceed, but rather than put it up to a vote this time, I chose to play as Keats because the game will force us to use him when we reach the first boss, and I figured he should probably have the new set of Folks handy for that. We'll cover this area as Ellen in the next video. Chapter 7: Keats Combat First Half Youtube
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Aug 30, 2014 12:30
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Wow, the fire elementals are such assholes. And you're forced to take a hit if you want to kill them with a Kraken. That's bad game design.
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Aug 30, 2014 19:01
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Never thought I'd see Agar-Agar being useful, when enemy groups are annoying to the point of almost always attacking you without a break and guarding isn't always feasible when it costs MC to do so and you can't always see the attacks coming if they're off-screen. Also, a lot of things in that voiced cutscene are kind of unintentionally funny, like the Faery Lord trying to be like Gandalf, Scarecrow's "running" animation (when did the guy pop into the Netherworld Core anyway?), and Faery Lord's absurdly vague and obvious warning after, you know, being stabbed through with a gigantic stabby thing. He might as well have said, "Oh, I think something bad is happening. And also, ow."
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Aug 30, 2014 20:01
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Mehuyael posted:Wow, the fire elementals are such assholes. And you're forced to take a hit if you want to kill them with a Kraken. That's bad game design. This is a really big dick move, seriously. Then again all the enemies in this chapter seem to be huge dicks, contrasting with how nice and peaceful Heaven's Fields themselves look. Gladiolus is awesome though, he's like a big super robot in folk form. 
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Aug 30, 2014 21:42
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GimmickMan posted:Gladiolus is awesome though, he's like a big super robot in folk form. Gladiolus has a pretty great attack, if you ignore the delay and the cost. It's not the best super robot in Folk form, though. Just saying.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:12
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Would they still aim directly at you if you had Kraken'd them from behind? I feel like you might be able to run behind 'em real quick and, provided they still fire forwards, have enough time to throw Spriggan up before the fireballs turn around and try to dick you over anyway. Also, goddamn, Ellen. That turd just acknowledged his plan is basically going to wipe out humanity, and you're still concerned for him? What the hell.
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Aug 31, 2014 02:33
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liquidypoo posted:Would they still aim directly at you if you had Kraken'd them from behind? I feel like you might be able to run behind 'em real quick and, provided they still fire forwards, have enough time to throw Spriggan up before the fireballs turn around and try to dick you over anyway. Amazingly enough, I never thought of that. I guess I'll give it a try the next time I have a chance. It doesn't usually occur to me to try to attack from a certain angle once the red Id pops out because you only have so much time before they recover.
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Aug 31, 2014 18:00
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I'm a sucker for art/themed levels like the one in Chapter 6. Love that skydrop. Naturally this means it's the only netherworld realm you can't revisit. Chapter 7 folks aren't messing around and certainly aren't friendly to players like myself who blazed through the game with reckless abandon! I find it somewhat odd to have new folks so late in the game, but perhaps the quests help put them through their paces?
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Sep 2, 2014 04:38
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Phew! Looks like even the Faery Lord doesn't know everything about the Underworld. What is protecting that tree and why is it made of swords?
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Sep 3, 2014 00:20
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pick-e posted:I find it somewhat odd to have new folks so late in the game, but perhaps the quests help put them through their paces? The real problem, as you can probably guess, is that there's not much time left to build Karmas, particularly the ones that require traveling to other Realms (although there are surprisingly few of those that I can remember, mostly on the Folks we'll be getting from this chapter's quests). Most of the new Folks are also very difficult to use - Ellen gets only one that doesn't have an absurdly long wind-up, and that one is chargeable. Keats gets a few useable ones, but even those are mostly just more expensive equivalents to Folks he already has and has probably built up already. We've already got Telanthera as a combo-less version of Bullseye, Bougainvillea as a less aimable version of Durandal or Urisk, and Gladiolus as a much more expensive and slower alternative to Ga-dearg or Galley-beggar. Out of all the Netherworld Core Folks, I think I'd use about three of the ones Keats gets regularly, and we've seen none of those so far. For Ellen... maybe one, and only because her other options for its element aren't much better. Capturing and upgrading them all is more of a prestige thing at this point.
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Sep 3, 2014 01:16
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I'm definitely impressed by your dedication to building all the karmas. When I played, I maxed out Pouke and similar basic combo folks, and then decided that everything else was too much work for not enough DPS.
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Sep 3, 2014 07:16
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Dilb posted:I'm definitely impressed by your dedication to building all the karmas. When I played, I maxed out Pouke and similar basic combo folks, and then decided that everything else was too much work for not enough DPS. That's how I played the first time, not going out of my way to build any Karmas - I didn't even know which Folks to grind for items, so if I didn't have them available, I just ignored those Karmas entirely. It might not have been so bad if I'd done all of the quests, but I think I failed to go back and check the quest lists once I'd captured all of the Folks, or maybe I forgot to check both night and day, because I'm pretty sure some of them never unlocked for me. What I really wanted to do here was give an idea of how long it would take to build up any given Folk and a fair assessment of its full power, once that's available. I think most of them hold up okay - I found uses for a few of even the most useless ones during the more specialized quests. Worthhog is never worth it, though.
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Sep 4, 2014 00:48
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If there's ever a time when an apology is the appropriate response to a video, this is it. I'm sorry, everyone, but today's video is rather regrettably weak. In the whole of the Netherworld Core, Ellen meets a total of one Folk that isn't also available to Keats, although a few (like Telanthera) have very different attacks between the two of them. Ellen's Core Folks just aren't very good, as you'll see. The bright side is that I'll be doing the second half as Ellen first, since the next miniboss is hers to fight, so there will be some novelty left when Keats does that half. This part is pretty forgettable, and I'll even have unlocked most of the Karmas by the end of the video. If I get another video or two done this weekend, I may post the next video early just to make up for the disappointment. That said, it's a short video, so there's little to be lost by watching it, and you really will need to be familiar with these Folks (particularly the single unique one), because they'll pop up over and over in the quests. Chapter 7: Ellen Combat First Half Youtube
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Sep 6, 2014 14:23
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That video didn't need any apologies. It was short and showed off developing some decent fightin' tactics. Didn't mind it at all. Also I think you're unnecessarily maligning Telenthera as a hopelessly delayed missile attack. It seems like it was designed more as a damaging wall that can block body charging folk attacks and get a bit of a hit in afterward. It blocks high and low, stays out to protect you for a couple seconds, and then launches itself forward to get at stuff standing back from you. The Muscari especially couldn't get at you through it as long as you were facing the right way. It probably could stand to get a bit more powerful, but that might develop balance issues by the time you get more "ammo" covering more of your threatened area.
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Sep 8, 2014 17:55
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I've got attacks that do that already, though - Garbera provides all-around coverage of the same element, Bargest works really well as a shield, and Patriot and Spriggan are both quite effective if defense is the purpose. Maybe my reflexes just wouldn't be up to the task of summoning Telanthera at the right time and in the right place to stop an imminent attack.
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Sep 9, 2014 01:04
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Yeah, I'm not saying it's good or anything. Just another also-ran folk with occasional if unreliable utility. I guess the high-striking attack doesn't make up for its low damage and achingly slow deployment. There are just so many folk to remember with so many edge-cases of effectiveness. That said, if there weren't so many folk with damage/effect immunities I can picture an interesting meta-game challenge to facing certain levels with totally random load-outs. Maybe in a Folklore 2 DLC some day...
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Sep 9, 2014 02:10
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ThaGhettoJew posted:That said, if there weren't so many folk with damage/effect immunities I can picture an interesting meta-game challenge to facing certain levels with totally random load-outs. Maybe in a Folklore 2 DLC some day... That's why the game features so many quests, although the ones with restrictions on usable Folks are mainly the in-game quests. A few DLC quests have restrictions, but most of them rely on gimmicks having to do with the Folks you fight. This is why I wish there could be a Folklore 2, so that sort of thing could be explored.
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Sep 9, 2014 03:10
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I appreciate your commitment to this tag-team scenario. But even if Ellen and Keats get the exact same Folks, they do still use them in different ways, don't they? Sometimes vastly different.
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Sep 10, 2014 02:47
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Glazius posted:But even if Ellen and Keats get the exact same Folks, they do still use them in different ways, don't they? Sometimes vastly different. Probably about half and half - Telanthera has two completely different elements, but Gladiolus is basically the same attack with different amounts of delay. Of the three remaining Folks that they both get, one has two elements (although it's listed as a Fire element for Ellen, which is weird) and the other two have the same element for each character - one with very different attack patterns and the other one pretty similar between the two. Most of them aren't all that great anyway, for either character. Well, while I'm here and posting, I'm seven videos ahead at the moment, and while that leaves a lot left to go, I think that's enough of a buffer to post the next one a bit early. This will be the final set of non-rare Folks for Ellen, and the last bit of story before the final boss - unfortunately, that leaves seventeen videos between now and the resolution of the plot, but if you think of it as building suspense... it's probably still way too long. I'm working on getting to the point where I can post videos faster, but until then, it's time to reach the far end of the Netherworld Core and, at last, the Twin Trees themselves. It's a big moment, as you can guess, since this is what we came all this way for.  Chapter 7: Ellen Combat Second Half Youtube
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Sep 10, 2014 03:28
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For some reason the miniboss on the first page of this realm's picture book looks less like the Fairy Lord and more like Livane. (Both relevant screenshots are at about 7:45 in their respective videos.) And despite this Ellen will still face off against the Fairy Lord as her version of the miniboss rather than Livane? Odd. Edit: Ahh... NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 04:13
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I think Livane chose not to challenge Ellen until now because she never saw Ellen as her enemy despite the latter being the Faery Lord's champion. After all as far as Livane was concerned, Ellen was the Faery Lord's newest puppet so if anything she likely felt sorry for Ellen because she knew that the Faery Lord was a manipulative rear end in a top hat and even noted as much when the two crossed paths in the Undersea City. On a related note, I kinda feel sorry for Bogle now. He genuinely believes that restoring the dead tree will end in something other than complete disaster.
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Sep 10, 2014 05:22
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Folklore did get at least one update (1.10). This added DS4 rumble support to the game. So the good old early PS3 days did indeed have game updates... just not rumble. And that was pretty great how the Skrikers completely missed their mark due to it not being a folk.
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Sep 12, 2014 00:10
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Well, it had to come to an end sometime - this is the final set of new Folks to be captured. Each character has three more to earn from quests, but never again will we see the message for capturing a Folk's Id and earning a new attack type. The Folks in this section mostly aren't too annoying to fight (aside from Agapanthus, which is less annoying because Keats has good Destroy attacks), but it can be a real pain to capture some of them, and we'll need to capture a bunch of almost all of them. That will be for the Grinding video, though. For now, I just need one of each. Chapter 7: Keats Combat Second Half Youtube From here, we'll be doing quests. Lots of quests. 16 videos of quests, to be precise. I've got the first six of those done, and I'm hoping to get ahead enough to start posting two a week before the LP stretches into 2015. It won't all be boring, though - the quests will be filling in a lot of story gaps, although few of them will really provide much information that we didn't already have. The one for next week is a good one, though, and will be a return to a favorite game mechanic, so look forward to it! Or wait until I get to the end of the game and marathon the videos then, whichever.
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Sep 13, 2014 15:57
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Nidoking posted:From here, we'll be doing quests. Lots of quests. 16 videos of quests, to be precise. I've got the first six of those done, and I'm hoping to get ahead enough to start posting two a week before the LP stretches into 2015. It won't all be boring, though - the quests will be filling in a lot of story gaps, although few of them will really provide much information that we didn't already have. The one for next week is a good one, though, and will be a return to a favorite game mechanic, so look forward to it! Or wait until I get to the end of the game and marathon the videos then, whichever.  How many of those are original release, and how many are DLC?
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Sep 13, 2014 16:50
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NGDBSS posted:
There are four remaining in-game quests, one for each character in each time period. The daytime ones are the quest to save Suzette, while the nighttime ones are for the last two Rare Folks. As for DLC quests, I think Ellen has seven left and Keats has eight. (I believe they've each done five DLC quests so far, but Keats has one extra in Holy Night Visitor.) A few of the quests were short enough that I was able to put two in a single video, so I ended up with 16.
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Sep 13, 2014 19:57
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I like the battle music in the new area. Amaryllis is neat conceptually and looks cool, shame that it is the last normal folk in the game and you'll probably miss it. Looking forward to seeing you find things to talk about for 6 hours of quests.
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Sep 13, 2014 20:40
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So how do the new Folks compare to they old ones? Just straight-up more damage out of Keats' four-hit comb?
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Sep 19, 2014 09:01
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Glazius posted:So how do the new Folks compare to they old ones? Just straight-up more damage out of Keats' four-hit comb? I haven't really done much comparison - Goggie in particular was the last Folk I actually finished building up, so I didn't use it much. The game throws quite a few Folks at you at the end that aren't even useful against the final boss - and taking the time to build them up before doing the quests rather diminishes the point of doing the quests at all. Most of the Netherworld Core Folks are pretty decent for Keats, if you take the time to build them up, and very few are of much use to Ellen because of the delay in their attacks. I'll do a full write-up in the usual Bestiary near or at the end of the chapter. I will say, though, that Ammobium in particular is pretty good for both characters, and I got a lot of use out of Agapanthus and Protta for Keats. I think the rest are largely forgettable. While I'm here, I've got stuff to do tomorrow morning, so here's this weekend's update. Speaking of quests, we're starting the marathon of quest videos that will go on for way too long. There's good stuff along the way, but today, the quest itself is pretty stupid and the story behind it is the interesting part. As you may remember from the Investigation video, we've been asked to look into Suzette's past and figure out why she committed the murders and how we can rescue her. In this quest, we'll begin that process. I'll show off some of Keats' new Folks here, so it's not a complete waste of time.  Chapter 7: Keats Quests, Daytime First Part Youtube
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Sep 20, 2014 00:43
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Double-posting because I think this may be an important progress update - I'm halfway through the commentaries for the marathon of quests, as I'm calling the 16-video stretch that covers the remaining quests, and waiting to hear from my guests for the grinding videos so I can try to get those out of the way. I've also recorded the final boss fight and the end of the game, so that's one more thing out of the way. I plan to cover a few extra tidbits that I missed in a bonus video, including the use of Habetrot in the Fleshrum fight, the variations of the Chapter 3 ending cutscenes that we didn't see, and some pickups that carry over to a PSP game that I think only came out in Japan. However, today I decided to see whether Dungeon Trial mode was even still online, and I discovered that it is! There are some rewards for achieving certain milestones with each character, and I'm hoping to get as many of those as possible and make a final bonus video for that. So... if anyone has uploaded, or wants to upload, a dungeon that they'd like me to check out and possibly record for the bonus video (I think it only makes sense to record an actual run), give me your username and which character and realm to search in. I'm not going to record any bonus footage until I'm done with the main game, since my hard drive is once again filling up and I'd prefer to archive the whole mess at once, but this could be one last bit of audience participation to go out on. Also, if anyone in the European region has the free download Folks for that region and would like to supply a video of them, either with your commentary or for me to comment over, let me know. It would be nice to make this LP as comprehensive as possible, now that we're nearing the end. Oh, and if anyone has any other requests for things I missed or that they'd like to see in a bonus video, now's the time.
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Sep 20, 2014 19:10
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16 videos of quests?! Wow, and here I thought we were like 3 videos away from the end at most.
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Sep 20, 2014 19:20
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Mehuyael posted:16 videos of quests?! Wow, and here I thought we were like 3 videos away from the end at most. With the two bonus videos, and not counting the two different versions of the second chapter 4 grinding video, I think we'll end up with a nice even hundred.
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Sep 20, 2014 19:26
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Nidoking posted:With the two bonus videos, and not counting the two different versions of the second chapter 4 grinding video, I think we'll end up with a nice even hundred. Great googly-moogly that's a lot of Folkemon grinding and questmaking. Thanks again for the considerable and considerably sustained effort.
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Sep 22, 2014 10:05
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I just checked to see how long this thread has been open and oh my god May 12, 2013 was the opening post. This is seriously a long-running LP.
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Sep 26, 2014 12:00
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Shei-kun posted:I just checked to see how long this thread has been open and oh my god May 12, 2013 was the opening post. I thought I said somewhere way back that it would be slow-paced! I don't even remember when I recorded those first four videos - I published the first two in the Sandcastle in March, I want to say, and may have done the next two after that. I hope we're not going to hit the two-year anniversary with the thread still going, though. I'm making progress in Dungeon Trial mode with Ellen, standing at around 65,000 campaign points out of 150,000 needed and a 3800-some point dungeon out of 4500 needed. Once that's done, I'll have to do the same for Keats, and then record a video about it. Bonus footage after that, and that will be it.
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Sep 27, 2014 00:19
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Let's begin the final set of DLC quests with one that exemplifies how DLC can add to the game's story without being required to grasp the overall plot. The first DLC quest we're going to do jumps straight into character exploration, dealing with Ingrid and what she's been up to throughout the time period of the game's story. Most of this is already information we knew, but we get a bit more detail about some of the earlier parts and, of course, a bit more resolution for Ellen than we get in the game itself. This quest also brings back one of my favorite parts of the game as a combat mechanic, so it's hard to complain about that. Chapter 7: Keats Quests, Daytime Second Part Youtube
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Sep 27, 2014 15:03
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I think that the scene where Ellen collapses beneath the Henge occurs after she faints inside Hellrealm before Keats finds her.
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Sep 27, 2014 22:37
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I still want to know what the hell Ingrid was up to while Ellen was growing up, alone and afraid in a frickin' orphanage! And who was Cecelia talking to that Samhaim, when she prayed for Herve's life?
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Sep 28, 2014 01:36
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