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Akechi’s entire boss fight shows he’s operating on roughly the same emotional level that Ken did in P3. Hell, his fake Phantom Thief getup where he dressed like a Disney prince and used toy ray guns and a lightsaber while summoning a superhero whose only connection to his namesake was holding a bow all add up to a very childish mentality. Even his edgy “true” get up looks like he made it to match a generic Power Ranger villain. His plan sucks, but he’s not shown to be a great schemer. He’s crafty at times, but overall he’s an emotionally stunted child throwing a temper tantrum because he wants to lash out at the world and demand that Daddy Dearest acknowledge him. Morgana flat out says just that in his boss fight.
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Jun 17, 2019 13:14
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Geostomp posted:his fake Phantom Thief getup where he dressed like a Disney prince and used toy ray guns and a lightsaber while summoning a superhero whose only connection to his namesake was holding a bow all add up to a very childish mentality. Even his edgy “true” get up looks like he made it to match a generic Power Ranger villain. You're reeeeeeeeeeally reaching here, especially considering the outfit and Robin Hood persona are mostly meant to trick the player
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Jun 17, 2019 13:26
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Actually, this prompted me to do a little research. My biggest problem with the claim that Akechi's weapons are a reflection of his mental state is that they're...not. Weapons aren't given to an individual by their persona, you buy them at the store. All the weapons are fake, so it's not like Haru couldn't just buy a toy machine gun and use it - that's just a gameplay mechanic, not a narrative component. So, it struck me as possible that Akechi, just like the Robin Hood Persona, only uses the toy weapons as another form of trickery, and turns out he does. If you watch this scene and pay close attention to Akechi when he grabs the gun, he puts the silencer onto it.  So, it's clearly established he has a silencer with him. Is there any scene in the game where we see him in his Loki outfit but also with a gun? Turns out you do:  You can clearly see he's got a gun with a silencer on it. If you watch the full scene, you can actually hear the gunshot is one of a pistol with a silencer on it - it's the EXACT same sound effect you hear when he shoots the cop. So, it's safe to assume that when he carries out his hits, he's not using the lazer sword and ray guns, and those are just a part of the act. So, I think you can safely throw out the theory that Akechi's mental state is meant to be reflected by his weapons.
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Jun 17, 2019 13:58
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Is he really meant to trick the player though? Setting aside the fact that he's incredibly obvious about what he really wants, his design has a lot of contrast with the other thieves so its incredibly apparent that he's not at all one of the PTs. Either way, there's nothing contradictory about him being designed to contrast the party and also him being designed to highlight his childish nature; hell, it even works as another contrast with them. The PTs are a band of vigilantes with what look like real weapons and darker anti-hero Personas, while Akechi sees himself as the gallant hero, with toy weapons and a superhero Persona to match.
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Jun 17, 2019 14:05
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ChaosArgate posted:Is he really meant to trick the player though? Setting aside the fact that he's incredibly obvious about what he really wants, his design has a lot of contrast with the other thieves so its incredibly apparent that he's not at all one of the PTs. Either way, there's nothing contradictory about him being designed to contrast the party and also him being designed to highlight his childish nature; hell, it even works as another contrast with them. The PTs are a band of vigilantes with what look like real weapons and darker anti-hero Personas, while Akechi sees himself as the gallant hero, with toy weapons and a superhero Persona to match. This makes sense until you consider the fact that he doesn't actually think of himself as a gallant hero, only the player at the point in the game where you see that outfit would thinks he thinks of himself that way. And also, keep in mind that the game has to at least pretend Akechi is on your side and can't just outright say "hey he's actually bad and evil," so it has to do at least a little work to keep up appearances. I guess "tricking" is the wrong word, it's more to keep up appearances. But to me, the guns and swords and Robin Hood add into the "hero of justice" persona that he's putting on. He's not drinking his own kool-aid, he's got no illusions about what he's doing and whether or not he's a good guy - he's evil and he knows it. The persona and outfit and guns are all part of an act, but not one he's so childish and mentally unstable that he actually believes. They're an act he's putting on because he thinks he's fooling you the same way he's fooled everyone else. The whole thing is an outfit an evil serial killer would wear to insult the intelligence of the people he's fooled, or at least think he's fooled. But to me that' very different than him being so emotionally stunted the lazer sword and ray gun are actually symbols of power to him RazzleDazzleHour fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Jun 17, 2019 |
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Jun 17, 2019 14:14
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Akechi's outfit is literally the heroic champion of justice he pretends to be, his later outfit is his true nature, both are projections of his beliefs about people and heroism and hatred. But that still means his idea of heroic champion of justice is what amounts to a big fancy outfit befitting nobility and a literal westernised superhero as a Persona. This is in contrast to the actual Phantom Thieves who have a much more nuanced/mature depiction of anti-heroes and the such. Akechi wants desperately the be the hero of his own story, it's part of his issue with Joker, that his life is miserable and lonely when he's such a successful person and Joker who's lost everything is happy with friends. Akechi is complicated, the game itself says as much. He's broken and ultimately at the end recognises and regrets his life, saying he wished he'd met Joker earlier in life and been shown how to have friends and be a person earlier than he was.
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Jun 17, 2019 14:28
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Lord_Magmar posted:Akechi is complicated, the game itself says as much. He's broken and ultimately at the end recognises and regrets his life, saying he wished he'd met Joker earlier in life and been shown how to have friends and be a person earlier than he was. He's complicated, but in an undeveloped and uncompelling way. Especially when you consider his interactions with Joker and the other Phantom Thieves that cause him to reconsider his way. Joker...barely ever talks to him during their social links? And the teams confrontation with him basically boils down to "please stop being evil." Like, if Akechi were more developed and had more character interactions that were actually meaningful over the course of the game I think he would be a lot more interesting, but literally all of this discussion about his characterization is about a three-minute scene right before he dies, where his regret over his life and what he's done doesn't even come until after he loses. That's why I think a redemption arc in the current version of the game would be stupid - it's literally a couple sentences in between explaining his evil plan and declaring that he will kill you to his regret over what he's done. The whole scene is too rushed and if they put as much effort into the foreshadowing of his troubled past as they did the foreshadowing of his betrayal he'd be a way better character
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Jun 17, 2019 14:39
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I thought Akechi's weapons in Robin Hood mode were a straight-up reference to Star Wars. See also the great bulk of Final Fantasy XII. I will say that Akechi's real-word-verse tie is very well matched to the design of his Loki. RazzleDazzleHour posted:Joker...barely ever talks to him during their social links? Transitioning to another topic, to be fair that's true of every social link I've seen in any Persona game that has them.
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Jun 17, 2019 16:44
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Well poo poo. Found a Vita at a Goodwill for $40. I wonder how long it'll take me to power through the first 20 hours of p4 to catch up to my emulated ps2 save. At least I'll be doing it in OLED style, this thing is the best piece of hardware nobody ever gave a poo poo about.
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Jun 18, 2019 02:00
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Golden has fast forward for cutscenes so it'll be less of a pain.
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Jun 18, 2019 06:32
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I just finished my third play through of Persona 5 and am looking for an excuse to play through it again. Just did it on hard; how well balanced is Merciless? I looked at the differences from Hard and while I like the extra damage both given and taken from weaknesses and technicals, I'm worried about most of the difficulty coming from forcing you to be relatively underleveled and underequipped. Wouldn't this be a big problem on bosses, most of whom have no weaknesses and are un-critable? Doing chip-damage over an hour-long fight doesn't sound fun.
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Jun 21, 2019 03:16
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Fojar38 posted:I just finished my third play through of Persona 5 and am looking for an excuse to play through it again. Just did it on hard; how well balanced is Merciless? I looked at the differences from Hard and while I like the extra damage both given and taken from weaknesses and technicals, I'm worried about most of the difficulty coming from forcing you to be relatively underleveled and underequipped. Wouldn't this be a big problem on bosses, most of whom have no weaknesses and are un-critable? Doing chip-damage over an hour-long fight doesn't sound fun. Money isn't a big issue as negotiation money isn't scaled. For XP, early on it's about knowing which fights are worthwhile to engage at all, and dodging / fleeing the rest. You will probably be lower level unless you grind a lot, which kinda defeats the purpose. Damage-wise it's a mixed bag. Aren't the damage modifiers the same as hard? XP is scaled, so you'll be lower level but not like half level or anything. And Technical damage off a dizzy wracks up fast on anything vulnerable to it.
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Jun 21, 2019 04:15
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Damage modifiers are the same as Hard but my concern is that I'll be too underleveled when dealing with things that have no weaknesses/can't be crit or teched. I'm not sure how damage scaling works by level (in fact the game's stat system is really opaque tbh) I just want to make sure that I'm not doing Reaper levels of pitiful damage against non-superbosses
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Jun 21, 2019 06:37
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Fojar38 posted:I just finished my third play through of Persona 5 and am looking for an excuse to play through it again. Just did it on hard; how well balanced is Merciless? I looked at the differences from Hard and while I like the extra damage both given and taken from weaknesses and technicals, I'm worried about most of the difficulty coming from forcing you to be relatively underleveled and underequipped. Wouldn't this be a big problem on bosses, most of whom have no weaknesses and are un-critable? Doing chip-damage over an hour-long fight doesn't sound fun. Merciless is basically a totally different video game for the first two dungeons where you have to, essentially, follow a guide to save enough resources to grind out levels so you're strong enough to beat bosses. It's kind of a neat idea but it's honestly more of a pain than it's worth, I didn't really have any more fun with it because it's not like you're changing what you're doing strategically.
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Jun 21, 2019 06:58
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Fojar38 posted:Damage modifiers are the same as Hard but my concern is that I'll be too underleveled when dealing with things that have no weaknesses/can't be crit or teched. I'm not sure how damage scaling works by level (in fact the game's stat system is really opaque tbh) I just want to make sure that I'm not doing Reaper levels of pitiful damage against non-superbosses No weakness things are generally weak to status (techable) and even if not, Lucky Punch / Miracle Punch / One Shot Kill exist. Bosses are manageable, although some are frustrating (Madarame can be rough, random fights like the forced fight after turning off the power in the museum, Makoto's awakening, the Fuu-ki/Suu-ki/Kin-ki fight by the bank elevator). Once you get to, oh, about Palace 3 or 4, you tend to have sufficient options and later on the triple damage modifier works pretty hard in your favor. As long as you are good at identifying what is actually worthwhile to fight, not be afraid of using items and never let randoms have a turn Merciless is manageable. I find it fun - challenging at the beginning and rewarding at the end. Really, personally it's more annoying that I have to be level 9 for a Hierophant arcana and 26 for a (non-rare) Fortune.
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Jun 21, 2019 14:55
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shido should have been black mask there i said it
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Jun 23, 2019 02:04
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Gen. Ripper posted:shido should have been black mask there i said it I agree actually, especially if the entire game is framed as Igor and Yaldabaoth's respective champions competing in a "game" it makes much more sense for Shido to be the latters trickster considering the entire conspiracy is ultimately centered on him.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:03
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There's a clip of a new song with vocals from P5R making the rounds but the one I saw was short and to me difficult to hear over the battle sound effects -- this is supposedly the new Ambush song and "Last Surprise" will become the non-Ambush battle theme.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:07
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I'm glad the new song will be the ambush theme because Time to Make History wasn't and they punished you for getting an ambush in Golden by making you listen to Reach Out to the Truth, a song I was thoroughly sick of by then.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:10
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They should take a page out of Q2 and just let me pick what battle music I want, including randomizing the songs.
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Jun 23, 2019 04:22
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Alacron posted:They should take a page out of Q2 and just let me pick what battle music I want, including randomizing the songs. I would just play Life Will Change or Whims of Fate all the time
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Jun 23, 2019 04:30
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Let me play the gunshop theme all the time cowards
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Jun 23, 2019 05:46
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Kurtofan posted:Let me play the gunshop theme all the time cowards I guess that's fine.
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Jun 23, 2019 05:51
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Kurtofan posted:Let me play the gunshop theme all the time cowards You better not use this to pull a prank.
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Jun 23, 2019 08:30
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Alacron posted:They should take a page out of Q2 and just let me pick what battle music I want, including randomizing the songs. I'm not a fan of the costume but Obelisk is the best baattle theme.
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Jun 23, 2019 20:51
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Gen. Ripper posted:shido should have been black mask there i said it Yeah especially considering Shido really isn't all that threatening when ultimately he's just a regular person without Akechi. Like he's got influence and the ability to manipulate people, but when you compare that to the Phantom Thieve's ability to enter a magical realm and summon Lucifer he's really not a very intimidating opponent. The game's stakes definitely fall after you finish the Casino. At that point the game can't get away with trying to trick you into thinking the Phantom Thieves have been bested AGAIN so from there you just sort of know that you're going to win, but there's still like 15+ hours of games left RazzleDazzleHour fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jun 23, 2019 |
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Jun 23, 2019 20:53
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Disagreed. The middle months sagged but the end was the most exciting part of the game. The fake Igor and Mementos mysteries were a lot more interesting than what they tried to do at the end of 4, and everything from the Grail to Qliphoth is extremely metal.
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Jun 24, 2019 03:38
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Randallteal posted:Disagreed. The middle months sagged but the end was the most exciting part of the game. The fake Igor and Mementos mysteries were a lot more interesting than what they tried to do at the end of 4, and everything from the Grail to Qliphoth is extremely metal. Igor is one of the most wild video game twists and it was exciting, but there wasn't any tension. The Phantom Thieves not being able to beat the Grail and then disappearing didn't have me worried that the game might have a Pyrrhic ending like Persona 3 because if they were going to pull that, they would have done it during THE scene. After Okumura's palace, there's a huge uncertainty about whether or not things are gonna work out, and I genuinely thought they were going to kill Joker off and you were going to play the game as Sae from that point on once she left the interrogation room. But, as soon as that scene hits the payoff, there's no more questions about what the tone of the game's ending was going to be, so trying to double back through the Hero's Journey to re-escalate the tension just doesn't work.
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Jun 24, 2019 03:57
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Fojar38 posted:I guess that's fine. Luigi Thirty posted:You better not use this to pull a prank. 
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Jun 24, 2019 04:44
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Frankly I'm glad that the game doesn't have a pyrrhic victory (having to go back to your hometown notwithstanding) and if the ending was like P3's (which I haven't played) I'd probably end up pissed off at the denied catharsis
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Jun 24, 2019 06:09
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Persona 3's ending ruled. Shame that The Answer worked so hard to try to gently caress it up.
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Jun 24, 2019 06:33
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Gen. Ripper posted:shido should have been black mask there i said it Aketchi should have killed Shido and become the boss of his own Palace. If the game wants us to think of him as a rival/evil counterpart to Joker, go all the way. He’d be a more fitting climactic boss before facing Yaldy than his boring daddy. Alternatively, give Shido and his goons a way to manufacture Persona users or summon Shadows so we’d get some decent fights from them. It would also make Wakaba’s research more important and show why it’s dangerous in their hands. Shido would still be one note evil, but he’d at least raise the stakes more.
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Jun 24, 2019 13:26
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Geostomp posted:Aketchi should have killed Shido and become the boss of his own Palace. If the game wants us to think of him as a rival/evil counterpart to Joker, go all the way. He’d be a more fitting climactic boss before facing Yaldy than his boring daddy. Yes, all good ideas. For how big of a deal Wakaba knowing about the cognitive world was, all that really came out of it was "YOU CANT CHANGE MY HEART IF I KILL MYSELF"
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Jun 24, 2019 13:30
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I don't like games that hype up the main bad guy then surprise you never fight them, the lacky who you interact with more killed them first. So don't do that.
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Jun 25, 2019 01:02
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CJ posted:I don't like games that hype up the main bad guy then surprise you never fight them, the lacky who you interact with more killed them first. So don't do that. They could have Akechi make the kill right as it seems Shido’s change of heart is taking hold. Then let him run off to enact his plan, which would necessitate the Phantom Thieves invade his Palace or force them to make the final Mementos run to eliminate his powers. I’m just spitballing here, not trying to get all the details down.
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Jun 25, 2019 01:16
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Geostomp posted:
No, they already tried to do that plot point in 3. It did not work.
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Jun 25, 2019 01:49
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It was fine conceptually in 3, they just forgot to give Jun and Takaya actual personalities and put it all into Chidori.
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Jun 25, 2019 01:51
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Stroth posted:No, they already tried to do that plot point in 3. It did not work. Yeah but that was more of a motivation issue. We already know Shido's motivations and they've got a very good reason for opposing you, and it would make Shido a heck of a lot more threatening than the excuse that he developed some sort of weird Cognitive Defense Mechanism version of Akechi which...you also don't actually fight man, what the hell were they thinking with the last palace
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Jun 25, 2019 01:52
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My favorite part is that since he died in the metaverse Akechi wasn't just killed, he was obliterated from existence and nobody will ever know what happened to him He was obliterated from the plot too lol
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Jun 25, 2019 01:58
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God I'm thinking about how dumb it is that Shido is introduced after the first palace and Joker can't remember who he is, and then the game has the audacity to tell you "hey, that guy seems familiar, like you've heard his voice and seen his face before, who could he be?????" like we don't know only one thing about Joker and it's that some dude ruined his life, who else could it POSSIBLY be
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Jun 25, 2019 02:03
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